A Bride for Jackson Powers (Desire, 1273)
Page 14
Gravely she said, “I’d suspected there might have been a few. The fact that you have a daughter is a dead giveaway.”
“Yeah, well, I just wanted you to know that it’s never—oh, hell, this sounds like one of those Valentine clichés. It’s never been like this for me before.” The words came out all in a rush. “What I mean is…”
Taking pity on him, she covered his lips with her fingers. “I know what you mean. It is sort of—well, overwhelming, isn’t it? All I have to do is look at you and—”
“I know what you mean. Me, too.”
He looked at her, and she looked right back, and then they laughed and fell into each other’s arms. Again.
The phone call came just as the sky was beginning to turn a pinkish-gray in the east. Hetty, used to sleeping with one ear open for a baby, rolled off the sofa, reached for the phone and mumbled into the receiver.
“Is that you? Hetty, you sound weird.”
“Jeannie, what’s wrong?”
“Why do you automatically think something’s wrong every time I decide to give you a call?”
“For one thing,” Hetty replied dryly, rubbing her eyes with one fist, “you’ve never called before. For another, it’s the middle of the night.”
“Well, pardon me! I should’ve known you didn’t really care about Robert. Sorry I bothered—”
“Jeannie! Don’t hang up. Wait—just give me a minute to get my eyes open.”
Jax flopped over onto his side. His arm fell across her lap. He mumbled something, and Hetty whispered for him to go back to sleep.
“Who’re you talking to? Hetty, is someone there with you? Is it a man? Are you—God, I should’ve guessed when you didn’t come back home!”
“Jeannie, what’s wrong? You said something about Robert. Is he all right?”
“A lot you care!”
“Dammit, I do care! Stop playing games and just tell me what’s wrong.”
“Oooh, listen to who’s cursing now. Saint Henrietta-who-can-do-no-wrong. Boy, was Nicky ever right about you. You sure didn’t waste much time picking your next victim, did you?”
Hetty took a deep breath. She’d dealt with Jeannie’s spite for years, telling herself it was only natural for a daughter to resent the woman who took her mother’s place in her father’s life.
By now Jax was fully awake. He eased out from behind her and padded, naked as the day he was born, to the bathroom. Hetty, listening to Jeannie go on and on about babies who never sleep and husbands who refuse to help with the housework and who go into debt to buy a brand-new pickup truck, admired his physique. If he’d been short, balding and pudgy, she probably would have admired him almost as much. It was the sum total of who he was she’d fallen in love with, not the sum total of what he looked like.
Although the looks didn’t hurt at all, she had to admit.
“Rub his gums,” she said into the phone. “If you dip your finger in ice cream and rub his gums, he’ll stop crying. It’s the crying that makes him swallow air, and that hurts his little tummy. Oh, and if you drag that old porch rocker into the bedroom and rock him while you’re rubbing his gums, he’ll fall asleep and then you can go back to bed.”
She listened to more complaints. Jax reappeared, stepped into the kitchen, and she heard the sound of the microwave. “Look, I can’t help you with Nicky— Jeannie, be fair. You know I can’t just—”
She accepted a cup of reheated coffee, well diluted with cream. Jax touched her head, smoothing her hair, and then began collecting his clothes. He had yet to put on a stitch. It was hard to concentrate on Jeannie’s laundry list of complaints with all that glorious masculinity parading back and forth in front of her. She suspected he was doing it deliberately. As if she might need reminding of her promise to marry him.
“Because I can’t, that’s all. Jeannie, do you have any idea how much it costs to fly from here to Oklahoma?”
She nodded her thanks when Jax spread his shirt over her naked shoulders, realizing for the first time that his wasn’t the only bare body in the room.
Mercy. If the sight of hers affected him the way the sight of his affected her, they were both in trouble.
“No, I can’t send you any money. Jeannie, be reasonable. Nicky is going to have to stick with a job longer than three days, and you’re both going to have to grow up. You have a son to think about now. Remember what your grandmother used to say about making your bed and sleeping in it?”
She held the phone away from her ear. The sound of an outraged voice came through clearly. After a while she broke in and said, “No, Jeannie, I’m not lecturing you, I’m just trying to help you understand—”
Before she realized what he was up to, Jax removed the phone from her hand. “Jeannie? Jackson Powers here. I’m Hetty’s fiancé—yes, that’s right. Hey, don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve had a rough time trying to talk her into marrying me, but—yes, I know she’s bossy. I can handle it.”
There was a long pause, during which Hetty started in awe at the man she had just agreed to marry—although he’d never actually got around to asking her. She listened while he talked about Sunny, and about swapping baby pictures. He talked about the value of continuing education, which for Jeannie would mean getting her GED first.
And then he said, “If you’ll promise to do it and make the arrangements, I’ll pay for it. But I have to have some assurance you’ll go through with it. It takes patience and a certain degree of maturity, but Hetty assures me you’ve got what it takes.”
Hetty rolled her eyes. A few moments later Jax hung up the phone, and she lit into him. “Would you mind telling me what that was all about?”
“Mostly about fence mending. About your peace of mind. If I’m going to have to live with you, I deserve—”
“You’re not going to have to do anything, as far as I’m concerned. We can just unsign this so-called verbal contract right now, if—”
He laid a finger over her lips. “Shh, don’t get your bloomers in a wad.”
She removed his finger, glaring up at him. “That’s a disgusting expression!”
“I thought you might like it, you being a country girl and all.” The corners of her mouth quivered before she could clamp her lips together. Dead giveaway. He was on to her now. “May I remind you that once a verbal contract is signed—”
“You can’t sign a verbal contract, and even if you could, I haven’t signed anything yet, remember?”
“Sure you have. You gave me your word, remember?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to take on my whole family.”
“No? Isn’t that just what you did when you married Gus?”
“Well, yes, but that was different.”
“You fell head over heels for the guy, is that it?”
She pulled his shirt more closely around her throat, wishing she weren’t exposed from the hips down. Dignity was hard to achieve when a woman was half-naked, still rumpled from having made mad, passionate love. “I…I learned to love him, yes.”
“You’re taking on my whole family. Do you think you might learn to love me? In time, I mean. I wouldn’t expect it right away.”
That was when the whole game fell apart. She lifted her eyes to meet his, and no power on earth could keep her feelings from shining out like a beacon in the night.
Jax whispered her name on a sigh and sank down beside her. Given the deplorable condition of the springs, she was toppled against him. He took full advantage. “You do love me, don’t you? No, don’t even try to deny it. I might be lousy at a lot of things, but when it comes to reading people, I’m an expert.”
“If you’re such an expert, how come you’re just now figuring that out?” she grumbled, hiding a smile.
It wasn’t until much later that she got her answer. “I was afraid to hope. Afraid to trust. I guess when it comes to love, I’m still a rank beginner.”
“I have a feeling you’ll be a fast learner, though.”
“With the right
teacher, there’s no telling what I can do,” he vowed, his voice earnest, his eyes alight with all the things she’d never dared hope to find there.
“Want to know why I fell in love with you?” she whispered.
“Does telling break the spell?”
“No, that’s wishing on a star.”
“No stars, but just to be on the safe side, don’t look out the window.”
If a heart could burst with love, hers came close. “Almost from the first I began to notice things about you I’ve never seen in another man. The way you looked so stiff and arrogant even though you were obviously out of your element.”
“That’s it? You love me because I’m stiff and arrogant?”
“Well, I noticed you first because your baby needed changing, but pretty soon I got interested in more than Sunny. Once I discovered that inside you’re soft as a marshmallow, it was all over for me.”
Flopping over onto his back, Jax covered his eyes with an arm. “Don’t even think such a thing. If word leaks out, I’ll never win another case.”
“That’s another thing. You have a sense of humor. Gus was the dearest man in the world, but he never laughed. I need to laugh, Jax. I want to be able to laugh and cry and not have to hold it all in.”
His arms came around her, and she hurried to finish what she had to say before she lost her train of thought. “I tried not to at first. Love you, that is. Because I kept telling myself I had a life back in Oklahoma—a family who needed me.”
“You can go back anytime you want to, sweetheart, only not without me. Sooner or later the kids need to get to know each other. They’re sort of cousins or something, aren’t they?”
“That might be stretching it, but…why not?”
“Yeah, why not? Hell, I’ll even take on Jeannie and that jerk she’s married to, if it’ll make you happy.”
Eyes glowing, Hetty rolled over to lie on top of him “You make me happy. Sunny makes me happy. Everything else is gravy.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1333-3
A BRIDE FOR JACKSON POWERS
Copyright © 2000 by Dixie Browning
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit us at www.romance.net
*Outer Banks
‡The Lawless Heirs
†Tall, Dark and Handsome
§The Passionate Powers