Jackpot Baby

by Muriel Jensen

  “You know Shelly intends to file for custody.”

  “She called me this morning.”

  “The news story should improve her chances, don’t you think? She was determined that those guys weren’t getting Max.”

  Luke smiled. “I think so.”

  “Good.”

  So Shelly could eventually adopt Max, Connor thought, and the two of them could live happily ever after while he tried to pretend it wasn’t ripping his heart out to see them together.

  Oh, hell. He’d endured heartbreak before.

  This was different, though, he realized. With Lisa, he’d only thought he’d been in love. With Shelly, there was no doubt.

  Shelly came out of the kitchen with two giant hot-fudge sundaes and placed one in front of each of them.

  Luke blinked. “I didn’t order this,” he said.

  “I know.” She pushed it closer to him. “It’s hot-fudge sundae day. A sort of customer-appreciation thing I’m doing. Everyone gets a free one with lunch.”

  “Ah…” Luke seemed prepared to demur, but she pushed it back at him.

  “Eat it,” she said firmly, “or I’ll hit you with my frying pan.”

  Amanda, on the other side of Luke, shook her head at Shelly. “Money’s made you such a savage. Where’s mine?”

  Shelly rolled her eyes at her. “Wait your turn. I’ve only got two hands.”

  “Well, you’d think with all that money,” Amanda called after her, “you’d be able to buy another one!”

  Chapter Eleven

  “How would you feel about going to Pine Run tomorrow?” Shelly asked Connor that night over dinner. They sat on opposite sides of a red-and-white-checked tablecloth spread out on the living-room floor, a continuation, she’d explained, of the day’s celebration. Sean Connery, who’d disappeared during the melee with the Yates brothers, was perched on the edge of the cloth.

  “An extension of customer-appreciation day?” he’d teased. “Since we’re at home, just what kind of customer am I? And what kind of business are you running?”

  She made a face at his suggestion. “It’s just a continuation of the celebration, and at this point it has no name. We’re just partying. I had a red-and-white tablecloth, a bottle of Chianti and spaghetti in the freezer. It was serendipitous. Or whatever that is in Italian.”

  “Ah. Well, then. I’m delighted to be a part of it.”

  And he was. There was a curious peace between them that lacked the sparkle that had existed between them before. But it also lacked the heartache of their separation, so he was happy enough with it.

  “When Nathan returned my call this afternoon, he told me you were off tomorrow. And he’s willing to come to court for me, by the way.”

  “Right on both counts,” Connor replied, reaching to the middle of the tablecloth for a bread stick. “Weather’s a little quieter. Should be easy driving. But is there any particular reason?”

  “Yes.” She batted her eyelashes. It was a playful gesture, but it surprised him. She was almost openly flirtatious. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. “I’m going to buy clothes and makeup. There’s a little outlet mall there that has everything I need. Your job, I’m afraid, is to keep Max happy and be a sort of fashion critic.”

  He winced. “Fashion critic?”

  “You lived in L.A. just recently,” she said. “You should know what’s trendy.”

  “I never paid much attention.”

  She dismissed that claim with a swing of her bread stick. “You know how to make love in a bathtub. Don’t tell me you never noticed women.”

  Okay. He was going to have to give her some of her own back. She couldn’t torture him like this and not expect retribution. “You instinctively knew how to make love in a bathtub. If you consider that a measurement of fashion sense—though I can’t say I make the connection—then you’re qualified yourself. Maybe even overqualified.”

  Her eyes met his without flinching. His blood pressure rose and his rapid pulse was rattling his arm.

  “I’m sorry about the fight,” she said, dropping her bread stick on her plate.

  That was easy enough to agree with. “So am I.”

  “Maybe we could just agree to disagree on the subject of marriage.” She sounded hopeful.

  He would have liked to agree to that, too, but simply couldn’t give up the fight.

  “I’ll just disagree, if you don’t mind,” he said. “On principle.”

  She shook her head at him. “The principle that you have to have it your way?”

  “The principle,” he corrected, “that we’d be very happy loving each other forever.”

  “I’m offering you that.”

  “No,” he said patiently, “you’re not. You’re inviting me to stay with you, not to marry you.”

  “Why isn’t that enough?”

  He wanted to hold it back, knowing it would result in the same old argument all over again. But she was waiting for an answer. “Because, for the way I want to live, it isn’t adult enough for me. You’re so used to living your parents’ life, that you’re afraid to live your own. And you know if you promise yourself to me, that’s what it would mean. A step out into your own life.”

  She got to her feet with a growl. “And I think,” she said, obviously fighting temper, “that you want to…to mortar me into place so that I don’t leave like Lisa did.”

  He stood also, shaken by her perception of what he offered. “Is that how you think marriage would be—like two bricks held together with mortar?” He jammed his hands in his pockets and took a few steps away, then turned and came back. “I was thinking in terms of something less cold and rigid. Like two flowers in a vase. Two books on a shelf. Each with its own identity, but together.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she said with a determined toss of her head, “I am free for the first time in my life. And that’s the way I want it.” She took several steps toward him, just a few steps separating them. “I’d love to have you here with me, but I have been so confined all my life, I can’t promise that again.”

  He spread his hands helplessly. “Then, I guess that’s it. I’ll keep Max happy tomorrow so you can do your shopping, and I’ll even stretch my abilities to be your fashion consultant. But when Mrs. Pearson comes, I’m out of here.”

  There was a defeated inclination of her head, then she nodded. “I understand,” she said.

  He reached for Max’s carrier. “I’ll give him his bottle. I may as well take advantage of my last few opportunities to spend time with him.”

  “Sure,” she said, busying herself with gathering up the remnants of their picnic.

  CONNOR EXPECTED the shopping trip to be a disaster, but, again, they’d found a curiously companionable level on which to coexist without actually sharing their lives as they’d done before. She seemed willing to hold no grudges and he certainly believed she’d given him far more good than bad in the time they’d spent together.

  So he followed her from shop to shop, the baby happy and bright-eyed and crying only when hungry or sleepy.

  It was almost enjoyable in the beginning to watch her try on clothes, do a turn in front of the three-way mirror that seemed to populate the world with dozens of her. She was slender and graceful and surprisingly stunning when free of the pants, sweaters and aprons she always wore.

  In one shop she tried on a flared and sequined black dress with a pair of black heels with almost nothing to hold them on but two tiny straps. She smoothed the neckline, then the waist, and did a turn toward him that flared the skirt and made it sparkle.

  “What do you think?” she asked. She looked excited. He was sure she was seeing something in herself she’d probably never had time to notice before. She was beautiful, and for the first time in her life she had time to explore where that could take her. She didn’t have to work like a dog if she didn’t want to. She could do all the things she’d always wanted to do, and she didn’t have to do them alone. She had Max.

 
“I think you and the dress are gorgeous,” he replied honestly. And that was the last coherent thought he managed before he sank into a well of misery.

  It had been one thing to argue with her about what he thought best for them, but quite another to realize, like a sudden epiphany, that what was best for him probably wasn’t best for her at this point in time.

  For the first time since they’d started to argue about this, he really understood that he’d lost.

  He wasn’t sure how he survived the next two hours. The lingerie was particularly difficult. The clerk helping her, not realizing they weren’t a family, swept aside the curtain on her dressing room in line with the chair on which he and a sleeping Max waited. Shelly looked embarrassed, then shrugged in an “Oh, well” gesture and struck a pose for him.

  She wore a one-piece thing in pink silk that clung to her pert breasts and draped loosely over her hips, except that when she moved, the fabric clung and outlined her curves.

  He was too far away for them to hear his groan as he gave her a thumbs-up.

  Despite his objections, she bought him a tie with tools all over it, a dressy tweed jacket she’d caught him admiring and a box of chocolates.

  “Shelly,” he said firmly. “I’m not even wild about chocolates.”

  She smiled at him. “That’s why I’m going to help you eat them.”

  “Why didn’t you just buy them for yourself?”

  “Because that would be indulgent.”

  Sure. He didn’t have to make sense of things, he just had to survive the day.

  She bought makeup, and several clips and things for her hair and all kinds of things for the baby.

  It was dark when they headed home, and he drove carefully, aware of the dangers of the snowy roads. Mercifully, the baby was asleep, and Shelly lay back drowsily, unusually quiet for her. He found himself yearning for the sound of her voice.

  “Warm enough?” he asked.

  “Yes, thanks,” she replied.

  “Where are you going to wear the black dress?”

  “Tuscany,” she said without hesitation.

  He glanced at her quickly. “Really. I didn’t know you wanted to go there.”

  “You can take a culinary tour of the area,” she said with a dreamy sigh, “eating and cooking. I’d love to do that. I’m sure there must be some wonderful restaurant or hotel where I can wear my dress.”

  “Right.”

  “You could come with me, you know,” she said wistfully.

  He didn’t want to get into that again. “Some of us have to work for a living,” he teased.

  “I thought you had more disposable income than I do.”

  “I do. But when I came to work for Nathan, I promised to be available pretty much all the time for the first year. He’s desperate for a break, and I can relate to that. I’m going to have to get my kicks out of finding a house to buy while you’re sparkling in Tuscany.”

  She sighed. “Too bad.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was just after two in the morning when Shelly put her bedside lamp on and padded quietly to the closet to get the sequined dress she’d hung there. Then she went to peer into Max’s crib. In the shadowy corner of the room, he remained fast asleep.

  She lay the dress on her bed and sat cross-legged beside it, trying to imagine herself in it in among the olive groves on a moonlit night in some northwestern Italian hideaway.

  She got the picture, then tried to imagine her excitement at being there. But that wouldn’t quite come. She saw herself, one side of her hair clipped back with the tiny silver butterfly she’d bought, her dress glittering in the moonlight, the high heels dangling from her fingers as she leaned over a flowered balcony to look down at the olive trees below.

  But she couldn’t feel what that woman felt. It was as though that woman wasn’t her.

  She folded her arms in disgust. This was just some weird self-deprivation thing going on in her mind because she was trying to think about exploring life beyond Jester. It would be so good for her. Good for Max.

  She hung the dress up again and glanced at the clock—2:07 a.m. She was getting to be as bad as the baby, she thought with bleak humor. She hadn’t closed her eyes once tonight, and as the Fates would have it, Max slept on contentedly.

  She was too restless to lie down again, and too fidgety to find something to do. But her mind kept conjuring up images of Connor and she didn’t want to think about him now. Memories of making love with him flashed vividly behind her eyes and she struggled to ignore how much being with him meant to her.

  How much it had changed her.

  She used to be a woman of purpose and direction, but now felt as though every step she took was in darkness. She used to want nothing more than to stay in Jester, run the restaurant that was a legacy from her parents and be a friend to her friends. She’d accepted that the exciting relationships other women enjoyed were not for her.

  Then she’d won the lottery and suddenly dozens of opportunities she’d once thought would never come her way now lay open to her. The possibilities were exciting. She could travel, see and do all the things she’d once thought impossible. But now she was confused. Stay or go? Love or learn?

  Then fate gave her a baby and a man on the same day. If she’d thought she was confused before, that was nothing to the chaotic thoughts she now suffered. Keep the baby? Love the man? Keep the restaurant? Take a trip? There seemed no way possible to accommodate all four issues at the same time.

  She turned off the light and went back to bed, her mind in a whirl. She really should try to get some sleep. She had to be up early tomorrow. Betsy wouldn’t have thought to reset the tables for the morning. And the soup had to be prepared.

  She fell back against her pillows and wondered why life always had to be so complicated. Why couldn’t she have just fallen in love with a man, taken a trip, had a baby, then won the lottery? Timing, it was said, was everything.

  She turned onto her side and snuggled into her pillow, wishing desperately that it was Connor. Then she heard a noise.

  It was a very small sound. A clink of something. The garbage can against the side of the house? Raccoons, maybe. She lay still and listened.

  She heard something again, but this had a slightly different tone. Not high like a clink, but soft yet shuddering.

  Like the opening of a window!

  No, that couldn’t be. She kept all her windows locked. She sat up abruptly, her heart hammering, as she remembered that this morning she’d unlocked the window over the kitchen sink to check the state of the bird feeder outside. Had she locked it again? She couldn’t remember.

  Then there was a loud thud, a cry of alarm in a high, female voice, then a shouted order. That was Connor’s voice.

  Shelly grabbed her robe, left the door open so she could hear the baby and flew down the stairs. She was shocked to find Connor, still dressed as he’d been all day, with a firm grip on the arm of what looked like a high school girl.

  A high school girl who appeared to be having a major meltdown. She was very small, with one disheveled dark brown braid, her blue eyes filled with despair. She was sobbing hysterically.

  “What happened?” Shelly asked Connor as she approached them.

  “She broke in through the window,” he said in consternation. “I caught her heading for the stairs.”

  To Shelly’s complete and utter shock, the girl broke away from Connor and flew into her arms.

  “Oh, please!” she wept, holding Shelly tightly. “Please. I didn’t want to leave him, but I didn’t have a car or a place to live or money to buy diapers. I didn’t know what to do! And I remembered that you’d been nice to me.”

  I didn’t want to leave him. Shelly held the fragile young woman away from her and looked into her eyes. She saw Max in her eyes and her nose. And caught a whiff of the subtle rose scent that had clung to Max when she’d found him in her restaurant.

  A crushing, painful we
ight descended on her chest.

  “I’m Max’s mother,” the girl whispered, swiping a hand across her eyes in an effort to stop crying. But her eyes spilled tears again and she continued to sob. “I’m so sorry. I know I’m awful! I just didn’t know what to do.”

  Shelly looked up at Connor. She was sure her eyes were filled with the grim dread she felt. He looked as though he shared her anguish.

  But he couldn’t help her. No one could help her.

  Max’s mother was back.

  He pushed them both gently toward the sofa. “Do you want me to call Luke?” he asked Shelly.

  The girl put a trembling hand to her mouth. “Luke. That’s the sheriff, isn’t it? I saw him in the paper.”

  “Yes,” Shelly replied a little sharply. “You just broke into my home, young lady. How old are you?”

  That was it, she thought with a tiny swell of hope. The girl had abandoned her baby, then broken into Shelly’s home. Certainly those were two crimes that could be used against her when Shelly filed for custody.

  “I’m nineteen,” the girl said, swiping again at her tear-streaked face. “My friend and her mom said I could stay with them in Pine Run, and I can have the baby there. I just have to find a job. Please let me take him home with me!”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “My dad died when I was twelve, and my mom married this guy who was always trying to…” She hesitated, then looked her in the eye and said with a shake of her head, “We just didn’t get along.”

  Shelly winced at the realization of what the girl really meant but didn’t say.

  “I left when I was sixteen and I did pretty well. There was a shelter in Oregon where I stayed for a long time. I liked it there. But you have to leave when you’re eighteen, but that was okay because I had a good job as a waitress in a classy place on the river. Then I met Max’s father.” She sighed heavily, and said in a sad and sincerely adult tone, “If I’d known then what I know now…He had big plans to open a motorcycle repair shop, but it never happened. I ended up supporting him and me.”