“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I think you better start calling me Nancy, don’t you?”
“If you say so. Nancy. I’d like that.”
“Me, too,” she said, patting him on the arm.
“I came to see Blaire. Is she here?”
Nancy Harding’s smile tightened. “Oh, dear. Well, to be completely honest, Justin…”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry, but, no, she’s not here.”
“Oh, okay. I can go get a cup of coffee at the café or something. When do you expect her back?”
“I’m afraid she won’t be back for a day or two. Maybe even a week.”
Justin felt his gut clench. “Did something happen? Where’d she go?”
“You have to understand, Justin, she’s under a great deal of stress these days.”
“I do understand that. I offered her a partial solution to help her out, and we were supposed to talk about it today. You mean she just took off?”
“She went up to Enid to her cousin Connie’s.”
“Enid?” He blinked, dumbfounded. “She went to Enid?”
“That’s right.” Mrs. Harding—Nancy—turned her head and gave him a sly look from the corner of her eye. “I could give you the address, if you’re interested. Something tells me you wouldn’t get very far by calling her.”
“Something tells me you’re right,” he muttered. “Okay, yes. I’ll take that address. Thanks.”
“I have it right here.” She picked up a piece of paper from the end table near the door, as if she’d known he would come and would need the information.
“You’re a peach, Mrs.—Nancy.” He leaned down and brushed his lips across her cheek.
Blushing to beat the band, Nancy beamed at him. “You go after my little girl, Justin, and you do right by her.”
“I’m trying, ma’am. Nancy. I’m trying.”
It was after dark by the time Justin reached Enid and located the address Nancy had given him.
He’d tried, very hard, to keep from losing his temper during the drive. First, because he tended to drive fast when he was angry, and second, he didn’t want to jump to any erroneous conclusions regarding Blaire’s sudden trip to Enid.
Maybe it wasn’t a sudden trip. Maybe she’d had it planned.
But she hadn’t said so, and her mother hadn’t indicated such. He was inclined to believe that either this was Blaire’s way of telling him she wasn’t interested in marrying him, or she planned to tell him no, but couldn’t face him. Or, he thought, she was running scared, not knowing what to do.
He hoped it wasn’t the latter, because that would mean his offer of marriage had added more pressure than it had alleviated. Adding pressure to Blaire was the last thing he wanted to do.
The polite thing to do now would be to get a room for the night and come back to her cousin’s house tomorrow, around midmorning.
But there was every chance that her mother would tell her he’d been by to see her and was coming to Enid. If Blaire would leave town knowing he was going to call, that he was expecting an answer to his proposal, such as it was, she would surely disappear on him this time, too.
He parked his pickup in the street and walked up the driveway, then the short sidewalk to the front door, where he rang the bell.
Behind the door a dog barked, a child shrieked and giggled.
A man about Justin’s age opened the door with a wriggling, giggling toddler under one arm. “Yes?”
“I’m Justin Chisholm. I’m looking for Blaire Harding. Her mother said I’d find her here.”
The man eyed Justin carefully. “Her mother sent you, you say?”
“Yes. Her mother. Is Blaire here?”
“Hey, Blaire,” the man yelled over his shoulder.
“Annie Bare, Annie Bare,” squealed the child.
“That’s Aunty Blaire,” the man explained. “I’m the local interpreter. Somebody here to see you,” he added over his shoulder.
Blaire came through the doorway from the hall, wiping her hands on a dish towel. At the sight of Justin she stopped dead in her tracks. “Justin.”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here? Go on, Billy, I’ll handle this,” she said to the man with the toddler under his arm.
“Are you sure?” he asked, eyeing the tight look on her face.
“I’m sure. It’s fine. Go help Connie in the kitchen. She’d appreciate that, you know.”
Billy rolled his eyes and hauled the kid down the hall.
Blaire rushed over to the door and practically pushed Justin back out onto the porch. It was cold enough that their breath came out in white puffs.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
Justin eyed her a minute and sucked on the inside of his jaw. “The more pertinent question, I’d say, is what are you doing here?”
“I came to see my cousin, if it’s any of your business.”
“Any of my business? Last night we talked about getting married.”
“You talked about it.”
“You said you would think about it. We agreed I was going to call you today for your answer. You’re not home for me to call you, so here I am. Waiting for my answer.” He wanted those last words back the instant they were out of his mouth. He had just as much as dared her to throw his suggestion of marriage back in his face.
Which was essentially what she did when she laughed. “You mean you were serious about that?”
If she thought she could hurt his feelings and send him running off with his tail between his legs, she was sadly mistaken. If she thought he was buying this casual woman-of-the-world act, she was deluding herself.
“I had no idea,” she added.
Justin folded his arms across his chest and shifted his weight. “Bull hockey.”
She laughed. “Bull what?”
“Hockey. I’m about to become a father in a few months. I’m cleaning up my language. Are you going to marry me, or do you need more convincing?”
Shaking her head, she held her palm out toward him and backed away until her back was to the door. “Justin, don’t.”
“Don’t what? I realize it’s a big decision, but don’t you think sitting down and talking about it would be more productive than running away?”
She snapped straight, as if a drill sergeant had just called attention. “I wasn’t running away.”
“Sorry. My mistake.” He moved in closer to her to shield her from the north wind. “But that’s what it looks like from my view.”
“I can’t help what it looks like to you.”
“Can’t help, or don’t care?”
She threw her hands in the air. “What do you want from me?” she cried. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t tell you about the baby. You’re just going to pester me to do things I don’t want to do. I won’t be pushed around, Justin. I won’t be pressured.”
“That’s fair,” he told her. “I don’t make a habit of pushing people around, and I don’t intend to start with you. If taking you to dinner puts pressure on you, I’m sorry. If asking you to marry me to give our child legitimacy and the Chisholm name puts pressure on you, I’m sorry. You won’t be pushed around, I won’t be brushed off or ignored.”
“Hmph.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Ignoring you would be about like trying to ignore a mountain lion in your living room.”
“I don’t know,” he said, slipping off his leather bomber jacket and putting it around her shoulders. “You seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.”
“Don’t.” She slid his jacket off and pushed it back into his hands. “I’m going back inside.”
“All right. That’s probably a good idea. I don’t want you catching cold, and I don’t want you blaming me if you do.”
“Why would I blame you?”
“Because you’re not too happy with me right now, I’m guessing.”
“I don’t like the idea of your following me all the way here.”
/> “Why did you leave without telling me?”
She gave a toss of her head, but spoiled the gesture of defiance by sniffing and rubbing the end of her nose. “I don’t answer to you.”
“No, you don’t answer to me. But I wish you would answer me about us getting married.”
“All right, look. If you must know, I came up here so I could spend a couple of days not thinking about it.”
He gave her a small smile. “I guess I ruined that, huh?”
“I guess you did.” She shivered in an icy gust of wind.
Justin reached out and rubbed her arms, which were clad only in the thin cotton of her blouse. “Go inside before you freeze to death. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She swallowed and looked at him a long moment, then nodded. “All right. But I don’t think I’m going to be ready to talk about any of this tomorrow.”
“I’ll call you. You can tell me then if you’re ready or not. Fair enough?”
She gave him a reluctant nod. “Fair enough.”
Against his will, Justin stepped back and watched her go back into the house. The door closed softly but surely in his face.
On his way to find a motel room for the night, he tried to decide if he’d made a mistake in coming after her like this. There were no promises between them, no ties, other than the baby. She wasn’t answerable to him or he to her.
But dammit, he wouldn’t have left town knowing she expected to talk with him without letting her know he was going. She should have had the courtesy to at least tell him she didn’t have an answer for him yet.
Instead, she had fled.
He knew she hadn’t left him a message on his cell because he had checked. When he’d called home to tell them he wouldn’t be home tonight he’d asked if there were any messages for him, and they’d said no.
He found a motel and checked in. The night passed slowly for him. He was tired, but his mind would not shut down. He kept remembering the last time he’d stayed in a motel. He hadn’t slept that night, either. But that had been because he’d been too busy making love with Blaire Harding. Busy creating their child.
A baby. She was having his baby. The thought left him awed. As if no man in the world had ever sired a child before.
When Justin had left Blaire at her cousin’s, Blaire had closed the door behind herself and leaned against it, closing her eyes for a moment to regain her mental balance.
She wondered if it was normal to feel like the only woman in the world to conceive a child outside of wedlock. Shouldn’t she feel guilty? Ashamed?
She felt neither of those things.
Instead, this sharp sense of anticipation, mixed with enough nerves to keep her careful and attentive, permeated her from head to toe.
“Was that him?”
Blaire gave a start at the sound of Connie’s voice a scant few inches away. In fact, she was right next to Blaire, peeking between the blinds on the living room window next to the front door.
“Wow.” Connie let out a low whistle. “Looks like a keeper to me.”
With a half snort, half laugh, Blaire gave her cousin and best friend a slight shove. “He’s not a damn fish.”
“Maybe not, but he still looks like a keeper to me. What’s he like? Oh, never mind. Sit down first, before you fall down. He really gets to you, doesn’t he?”
Sitting down seemed like the thing to do, so Blaire sat. It would have been too embarrassing to slide down the door and end up on the floor.
“What am I going to do, Connie?” Blaire buried her face in her hands and strove for calm. She could tell Connie anything.
There were four of them. They called themselves the Four Cousins. Or sometimes just The Four, or the Four Musketeers, or the Four Stooges. Whatever the occasion called for.
Connie, Sherry, Gayle and Blaire. They were all about the same age, and their mothers were sisters. The Four knew each other’s secrets, heartaches, triumphs. And phone bills, because they called each other all the time and ran up ridiculous charges.
Connie rubbed Blaire’s shoulder and made a humming sound in her throat. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know? I can’t think straight around him. I can’t even think straight about him. When I think about him or get near him my heart starts pounding, my palms sweat, my lungs don’t want to work.”
“You’ve got it bad, don’t you.”
“I guess I do, whatever it is. When I’m with him and all these stupid things are going on inside me, he can ask me a reasonable question and I get all defensive and stubborn and stupid, and I know he must think I’m an idiot, but I can’t seem to help myself. What’s wrong with me?” she wailed. “Is this what I have to look forward to until the baby comes? Is this what it’s like to be pregnant? Raging hormones and all of that?”
Connie shook her head in commiseration. “That might be part of it, but what it really sounds like to me is something else entirely.”
Alarmed, Blaire straightened and stared at her cousin. “Is it bad? Can it harm the baby?”
“It’s only bad,” Connie said, “if it’s not reciprocated.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about love, dummy. You’re in love with the guy.”
“No.” Blaire jumped up from the sofa and started pacing the length of the living room. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. It’s impossible.”
“Why? You must have felt something for him at one time.” Connie got up and paced beside Blaire, bending over and peering up into Blaire’s face. “I know you, cuz. If you hadn’t cared a great deal about him, you never would have slept with him.”
“That’s beside the point. That’s lust, not love.”
“Um-hmm. Sure. Lust, that’s fine. It’s important. But it’s not enough to get you to strip down and do the deed with a guy you’ve been out with only a few times. You know I’m right.”
Blaire stopped pacing and made a face. “So what if you are right? So what if I felt something a couple of months ago? That doesn’t mean I’m in love with the man. Feeling something and being in love are a mile apart.”
“If you say so.”
“Now you’re humoring me.”
“Hey. You asked my opinion, I gave it. If you want my advice, I say grab on to him with both hands and don’t let go. He’s a Chisholm, for crying out loud. From the Cherokee Rose. You can’t do better than that. Those Chisholms have got honesty and integrity coming out their pores. I bet before another week goes by he asks you to marry him.”
Blaire heaved a sigh. “He already did.”
“What?”
Another sigh, this one of disgust. “You heard me. He asked me last night when he took me out to dinner. All the way to Norman, no less. He said he would call me today for my answer.”
“Ah, now I see.” Connie crossed her arms and tapped the fingers of one hand against the elbow of the opposite arm. “He was going to call you for an answer, so, logically, you got in your car and took off without giving him that answer. Good heavens, no wonder he drove all the way up here after you. The man wants to marry you!”
Blaire sat heavily on the sofa again and, with a groan, buried her face in her hands. “Only because he happened to accidentally get me pregnant. You know that doesn’t work.”
“Maybe it would. It could. He already likes you. Why wouldn’t he fall in love with you? And what if he didn’t? You could still—”
“Two words,” Blaire said darkly. “My parents.”
Connie stopped, nodded. “Okay. Fair enough. So what are you going to do? And you know, don’t you, that just because your parents—”
“I know, I know, I’m not my parents. But I’d be a fool, wouldn’t I, to ignore their lessons?”
A cry and a crash came from the kitchen.
“Oh, God. Billy. I left him alone in the kitchen.”
“He’s a grown man,” Blaire protested. “Whatever it is, he can handle it.”
“The last tim
e he handled it, the fire department had to come put it out.”
Blaire choked back a bark of laughter and followed her cousin into the kitchen to see what disaster Billy had created this time.
“Dammit, Billy!”
“’Ammit, Beeowy!” mimicked their toddler.
“Here.” Connie plucked her son from his father’s arms and handed him to Blaire. “Get him out of the line of fire. Or, in this case,” she said with disgust, kicking at a clump of suds oozing out of the dishwasher, “the line of suds. It’s going to get bloody in here. He’s too young to witness what I’m about to do to his father.”
With her lips mashed together to keep from laughing at the look of panic on Billy’s face, Blaire hustled the youngster out of the kitchen.
Billy, it seemed, had used dish washing soap instead of dishwasher detergent in the dishwasher. An honest mistake—for an idiot—but for the fact that it wasn’t the first time for Billy. He’d been positive that the last time had been a fluke, that Connie had just given him a hard time because she had to clean up his mess. After all, what did he know about mops?
He’d actually thought he could get away with it this time.
“And you think I need a husband?” Blaire cried in mock horror.
Connie laughed. “Oh, but he has his uses.”
At ten o’clock Blaire hugged her cousin good-night and went to bed.
When the family arose the next morning, she was gone.
Chapter Six
“Gone?” Count to ten, man. Be calm. Don’t lose your temper, Justin told himself. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“Come in, come in.” Connie took him by the arm and led him into her house. “Have a seat. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks.” She was gone. She had run out on him again. A smart man might start to get a certain message here. He blinked and looked around, not remembering how or why he was inside Blaire’s cousin’s house, seated on her gray and white sofa with a fuzzy kitten staring at him from the arm of the sofa and a stuffed purple dinosaur between his feet.
“Okay.” Connie let out a hefty sigh. “I’m going to butt in where I don’t belong.”
The Cowboy on Her Trail Page 7
