LED ASTRAY

by Sandra Brown

  But he couldn't tell her that. Not now. Not ever. It was a secret he would live with for the rest of his life, even if it meant that he couldn't acknowledge his own child. Jenny had been hurt enough. He wouldn't hurt her any more.

  "I'm like an animal raised in captivity who has just been thrown into the wild. I'm feeling my way into the mainstream of life. Taking things a day at a time. It has to be a gradual process."

  She raised her head and spoke to his profile. "Don't ask me for a commitment, Cage. Everything is so complex. I barely had time to straighten out my feelings for Hal before I realized how I really felt about you." Again her hand was on his thigh. Her fingers curled into the hard flesh. "I only know that if you were to suddenly leave my life, I couldn't bear it."

  He covered her hand with his. "You know what would have happened if Roxy and Gary hadn't interrupted us, don't you?"

  "We would have made love."

  "We would still be making love."

  "And it would be wrong."

  "How can you say that when we've just admitted we love each other?"

  "There's someone else involved."

  "Hal?"

  "Hal's child," she answered softly.

  Cage was quiet for a long time before he said thickly, "The child is yours, too, Jenny, a living part of you. I love you. I love the child. It's as simple as that."

  "Hardly simple." She returned her head to his shoulder and after several moments she confessed, "I wanted to make love with you tonight. But even that confuses me."

  "Why?"

  "I can't honestly say. Is it you I want, or just another night of loving like the one I spent with Hal? That sounds shabby and sordid, I know, but somehow when it comes to lovemak­ing, I can't separate the two of you in my mind."

  Cage's heart soared. "It will be incredible with us. I prom­ise. It'll be exactly what you want it to be. But once I have you, I won't ever let you go." He had had to give her up for Hal's sake. He wasn't willing to give her up again. "Be sure you're ready to make a commitment before you make love with me."

  She smiled up at him, a shy, sexy smile that made his heart accelerate. But instead of pressing down harder on the gas pedal, he applied brakes and slowed the car to a halt on the shoulder of the highway.

  "What are we stopping for?" Gary asked groggily from the backseat.

  "I'm hungry," Cage said.

  "Who can think of food at a time like this?" Roxy complained.

  "I wasn't thinking of food." Cage pulled Jenny into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers.

  It was awhile before the Lincoln was once again under way.

  * * *

  "I thought it was extremely romantic," Jenny said with a huge yawn she unsuccessfully tried to cover with her hand.

  "I thought we looked like the seediest bunch since the Bar­row gang," Cage said. "If I'd been that justice of the peace, I'd have barred my door."

  They had routed the public official out of bed, and he had grudgingly consented to perform the wedding ceremony. The bride and groom had then been driven to a hotel where they would spend a few hours before leaving for the airport. After drinking several cups of coffee in a twenty-four-hour diner and refueling the Lincoln, Cage had turned it toward home.

  "We could get a room and sleep a few hours," he had suggested to Jenny.

  "No. I feel so gritty. I think I'd rather just go the distance, then crash."

  Cage looked at her now and laughed. At some point during the night she had surrendered the losing battle of keeping her hair up and had removed all the pins. The caramel-colored strands hung around her shoulders in tumbled disarray. Her new skirt and blouse were hopelessly wrinkled. She looked like the starlet of a sexy French movie during the morning-­after scene.

  "That funny looking, am I?"

  "That adorable. Stretch out and go to sleep," he said, patting his thigh to indicate she should lay her head on it.

  "I'm afraid you'll fall asleep if I'm not keeping you com­pany."

  "No, I won't. The coffee will keep me awake. Besides, I'm used to doing wild and reckless things like this." She made a face at him and he laughed. "Come on," he urged.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive."

  She lay down on her side, stretching out as much as pos­sible, and settled her head on his thigh. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply. "That feels good."

  Keeping a careful eye on the road, he pulled her blouse from underneath her belt and reached beneath it to massage her back. She sighed. "You're going to spoil me."

  "That would be my pleasure." Her skin was as smooth as satin. And warm. His hand stroked up and down her spine, gently kneading away the tiredness and tension. Eventually he caressed his way around her ribs to her front. Beneath her raised arm he found the soft fullness of her breast.

  "Cage…"

  "It's all right," he said soothingly.

  It felt so right, Jenny silently fell into agreement and relaxed again.

  "Where's your bra?"

  "I had to hide it under the cushion of the sofa when you answered the door." He chuckled and she smiled against the fabric of his pants leg. "I didn't have a chance to retrieve it before we left."

  "I'm glad," he whispered meaningfully, and the ministra­tions of his hand echoed his words.

  "So am I."

  He continued to caress her. His intention wasn't to arouse but to soothe. His heart swelled with love to know she had come so far in trusting him, enough to permit this kind of familiarity. In a few short minutes he knew from her even breathing that she was asleep.

  Temptation got the best of him and he let his fingers sweep across her nipple. His touch was airy light, but it was enough to bring an instantaneous response, even in sleep. She stirred, shifting her weight and rubbing her head against his lap, until she once again settled and became still.

  Cage ground his teeth in an agony of pleasure. "Jenny," he whispered for his ears alone, "there's one thing you don't have to worry about. As long as your head is lying in my lap, I won't be accidentally falling asleep."

  The car sped through the gray predawn.

  * * *

  "Where are we?" Jenny sat up and blinked her eyes against the sunlight. She rolled her head around her shoulders once and stretched her neck.

  "Home. Well, almost. I thought you might be hungry. I'm starving."

  Through the bug-splattered windshield she saw that they were at the same motel on the outskirts of La Bota where Cage had brought her before. He was parked in front of the coffee shop.

  "I can't go in there looking like this!" she cried.

  "Nonsense. You look terrific."

  He swung out of the car door and, after stopping to arch his back and stretch, came around to Jenny's side. She was making futile efforts to smooth the wrinkles out of her clothes and straighten her hair.

  "I look terrible," she said as he helped her out, a hand under her elbow. She swayed against him and clutched at his arm. "Oh, my foot's gone to sleep. You may have to hold me up."

  "I won't mind," he growled in her ear. "You might as well know that I took liberties while you were asleep."

  "That sounds like something you'd do." She tried to look angry, but the sparkle in her eyes gave her away.

  "Hey, what's this?" Something had caught his eye in the morning sunlight. He reached behind her seat and came up with the unopened bottle of champagne. "Well, what do you know? We forgot to make a toast with the champagne."

  Jenny made a tsking sound and grabbed the bottle. "We'll save it for after breakfast."

  "Uh-oh. I've created a monster. You're going to be an ex­pensive woman to keep. I should have started you out on beer."

  Slaphappy and tired, they staggered up the steps toward the door of the coffee shop. Cage reached for the door just as another couple pushed through it on their way out.

  Bob and Sarah Hendren.

  It had been a tradition of theirs to go out to breakfast alone every Saturday morning. Since their boys had been
old enough to fend for themselves, the Hendrens had indulged in that two hours of solitude every weekend. The demands of Bob's work allowed them little time to themselves, so they treated each Saturday as an occasion and spent all week deciding on where they would go next, always choosing a different restaurant.

  The couple stood rooted to the spot as they took in the condition of Jenny's clothes and Cage's day-old beard. Jenny's attempt to brush her hair back only called attention to the tangles in it. Her lips were naturally rouged from the frequent and passionate kisses the night before. Her mascara had been smeared during her nap. Had the older couple looked closely, they would have seen a smudge of it on Cage's trouser leg.

  But their attention was focused mainly on Jenny, who had undergone such a metamorphosis since they had last seen her and who was now unconsciously hugging a bottle of cham­pagne to her breasts.

  "Mother, Dad, hi." Cage was the first to break the tense silence. He would have removed his arm from around Jenny's waist to relieve the awkwardness of the moment, but he was afraid she couldn't stand up under her own power. She had slumped against him heavily.

  "Good morning," Bob said with a discernible lack of ci­vility.

  Sarah said nothing, but continued to stare at Jenny. They hadn't come face to face since that awful scene in the parson­age when she had accused Jenny of seducing Hal. Her hard expression revealed that she thought she had been right in her accusation.

  "Sarah, Bob," Jenny said pleadingly, "this isn't what it looks like. We … Cage and I drove … drove…"

  Cage picked up for her when she faltered. "We drove two friends to El Paso last night so they could get married. We made a turn-around trip and just got back." He was trying to emphasize that they hadn't spent the night away together, though he thought now it would have been better if they had. At least Bob and Sarah wouldn't have known about it, and this scene, which he instinctively felt was about to get nasty, would have been avoided.

  Jenny laughed nervously, fearfully, as though someone had just arrested her for a hideous crime and she couldn't deter­mine if it was a joke or not. "The champagne was for the wedding. We forgot all about it. See? It isn't even opened. Just now we were acting silly and—"

  "You don't have to explain anything to them," Cage lashed out irritably.

  He wasn't angry with her. He knew she was embarrassed, and he would have given anything to have spared her that. But he was furious with his parents for being so judgmental and automatically jumping to the wrong conclusion. He couldn't blame them for thinking the worse about him, but couldn't they have given Jenny the benefit of the doubt?

  "You were like a daughter to me," Sarah said in a trem­bling voice. Tears were collecting in her eyes. She blinked them back while she pursed her lips tighter.

  "I still am," Jenny moaned with soft earnestness. "I want to be. I love you both and I've missed you."

  "Missed us?" Sarah's harsh tone dismissed that notion. "We've heard about your new apartment. You didn't bother to let us know your address, much less take the time to come see us."

  "Because I didn't think you wanted to see me."

  "You forgot us as quickly as you forgot Hal," Sarah ac­cused her.

  "I'll never forget Hal. How could I? I loved him. And I'm carrying his child."

  That gently spoken reminder lifted the floodgate of Sarah's tears and she sobbed against Bob's arm.

  "She's been upset," he said quietly. "She misses you ter­ribly, Jenny. I know we didn't take the news of the baby too well, but we've had time to reevaluate. We want to be a part of his life. Even this morning we talked about calling you and making amends. It's our Christian duty to keep the family intact. I can't be the kind of example I should be with this thing between us."

  The minister glanced at Cage, at the incriminating cham­pagne, at the disreputable picture the two of them made. "But now, seeing you like this, I just don't know." He shook his head sadly and turned away, holding Sarah protectively under his arm as she cried.

  "Oh, please," Jenny said, taking a step forward and ex­tending her arms as though reaching out to touch them.

  "Jenny, no," Cage said softly and drew her back. "Give it time. They have to work it out in their own minds."

  He escorted her back to the car without argument. She surely wasn't up to being seen in public now. Indeed, as soon as she was in the car, she began to cry.

  It seemed to Jenny that for each giant step forward, she took two backward. She had humbled herself and begged Hal to make love to her, but he had left anyway.

  While he was away she had come to realize she didn't love him as a wife should love her husband. He had died, leaving her with the guilt, as though she had deserted him and not the other way around.

  Piecing her life back together, she had embarked upon a new job, only to discover she was pregnant. Now she was a pariah to the beloved people she had considered her family since adolescence.

  She didn't want to return to the life she had lived before Hal left. It had been stifling and she couldn't bear that kind of slow suffocation again. After having tasted independence, she wanted to feast on it. She had achieved a level of freedom, but at what price? The liberation of Jenny Fletcher had been expensive. It had cost her the love and respect of those she held most dear.

  Her tears were bitter as they rolled down her face into her mouth. Knowing that fatigue and pregnancy were partly re­sponsible for this weeping binge, she let herself indulge in it. The outpouring of emotion was cleansing and she let it hap­pen, paying no attention to where Cage was driving until the motor of the Lincoln was turned off.

  She raised her head from her hands and wiped her eyes. "This is your house," she remarked unnecessarily.

  "Right."

  He got out and came around to assist her. "What are we doing here?"

  "I'm going to see to it that you eat a good breakfast. And," he stressed when she opened her mouth to protest, "there will be no argument about it."

  She was too weary to argue anyway, so she said nothing. He unlocked the front door and she trudged upstairs behind him into the master suite. "The bathroom's yours for ten minutes." He rummaged in a drawer and came up with a Texas Tech T-shirt. The red double T against the black cotton was faded from many washings. "Take a hot shower and put this on when you get out. If you're not downstairs in ten minutes, I'm coming to get you." He kissed her swiftly and she was left alone.

  The water was scalding, the soap fragrant and sudsy, the shampoo luxurious, the towels plush. When she pulled the T-shirt over her head, she felt one hundred percent better and ravenously hungry.

  Hesitantly she stood on the threshold of the kitchen, feeling vulnerable and exposed. Her hair was wet and all she had on under the T-shirt was a pair of panties. The hem of the shirt reached mid-thigh, but she still felt awkward and self-conscious.

  Cage seemed not to notice either the brevity of her costume or her bashfulness. The moment he saw her he said, "Well, don't just stand there. Two hands are better than one."

  "What can I do?"

  "Butter the toast."

  She did and within minutes they were sitting down to a steaming platter of bacon and eggs. Hunger made manners dispensable and she dug right in. After several hefty mouth­fuls, she caught Cage's amused eyes on her. Chagrined, she blotted her mouth with a napkin and took a demure sip of cold orange juice. "You're a good cook."

  "Don't let me slow you down." By the time she had cleared the plate of food, she was so exhausted she could barely lift the cup of herbal tea Cage had steeped for her.

  "Come on before you drop," he said, pushing back his chair.

  "Where am I going?"

  "To bed." He swept her into his arms.

  "Your bed?"

  "Yes."

  "I should dress and go home. Put me down, Cage."

  "Not until we get to the bed."

  She should stop him before he took another step up the stairs, but she couldn't collect the energy. The long nap in the car hadn't been
sufficient. She couldn't remember ever feeling so wrung out. Her head fell against his chest and her eyes slid closed. He was so strong. Capable. Trustworthy. And she loved him.

  The sleeve of his shirt felt rough against the backs of her bare thighs. She was reminded of that night in bed with Hal and the way his clothes had felt against her skin, how sensuous it had been.

  Cage set her down beside the bed but kept an arm around her as he flung back the suede spread. Then he gently lowered her to the fresh-smelling sheets. "Sleep tight," he whispered as he pulled the top sheet over her. He brushed a strand of damp hair away from her cheek.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Wash the dishes."

  "That's not fair. You drove all night. You cooked the food." Her mind had a difficult time organizing the words in the right order. Her lips had an even harder time forming them.

  "You can make it up to me another time. Now you and baby get some rest." He kissed her lips softly, but she didn't feel it. She was already asleep.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  «^»

  It took her a moment to orient herself when she woke up. She lay without moving, taking in her surroundings with sleepy eyes until she recognized Cage's bedroom.

  Memory came back intact then. She remembered the sequence of events that had led to her sleeping in his bed. So much had happened since she had opened her front door to him last night and seen him standing there holding the roses.

  It was almost night again. The sky seen through the shutters was violet, deepening into purple. A milky moon seemed within touching distance of the window. And one brilliant star, like a beauty mark juxtaposed to a smile, was positioned just below and to one side of the moon.

  She yawned and stretched and rolled to her back. She sat up and shook her tousled hair. The T-shirt was twisted around her waist. Her legs, bare and silky, since she had availed her­self of Cage's razor when she showered, slid smoothly against the covers she kicked off as she raised her knees and bowed her back to stretch forward.