BLAME IT ON BABIES

by Kristine Rolofson

  "If it's too uncomfortable, you can always end the evening before you order appetizers. Or when he shows up at your door you can tell him you've changed your mind."

  "Once he sees the real me, he's going to back up and fall down the porch steps."

  "Maybe not," Emily said, but she didn't sound convinced. "Not if you've known each other for years."

  "He doesn't remember me," Lorna explained, smiling despite her nervous stomach. "I was the girl who lived down the street and admired him from afar."

  "Well, you're going to see him up close tonight." Emily's gaze went to Lorna's belly. "If you wear something loose enough, he might think you've just gained weight."

  "Wishful thinking," she replied, at the same instant the back door opened and Emily's children tumbled into the kitchen. The ensuing chaos – as the two older children both talked at once, the baby demanded her mother and George good-naturedly complained about the decision-making process at the video store – ended their conversation.

  "Good luck," Emily whispered a few minutes later, when Lorna moved toward the door.

  "Thanks."

  "Let me know how it goes?"

  "Oh, you'll know. If you look out your window at seven-oh-five, you'll see him running back to his car," Lorna promised. Emily laughed, but Lorna hadn't been joking.

  She went home to her depressingly quiet house, with its half-painted, half-furnished living room and a bedroom that reminded her of that one night with Jess. She'd been foolish to bring him home, even more foolish to put him into her bed. She'd been so bone-wrenching tired that night, so tired she'd crawled into bed with him because there was no other place to sleep but the wood floor.

  She should have known better, she told herself as she headed for her pink-tiled bathtub. He'd touched her and kissed her and she'd melted against him as if she belonged with him, skin to skin, mouth to mouth. She'd been too sleepy to think of birth control, too aroused to think of anything but that Jess Sheridan was making love to her.

  Maybe, with luck, he wouldn't remember a thing about it.

  * * *

  Jess tried to remember what to do on a date. He hadn't been out with anyone but his wife so he was out of practice. They would go put to dinner, but then what? A movie? The only thing playing was a war movie he'd seen in Huntsville two weeks ago. Dancing? Well, he wasn't much of a dancer, but it would be a good excuse to hold her in his arms.

  No, he wanted to avoid any physical stuff. He didn't want her to think he was trying to get back in her bed on the first date. Not that he'd mind, but the point of this whole damn silly dinner idea was…what? Damned if he knew now, except he couldn't wait to see her again.

  He'd thought about her all day. Thought about impressing her with food and wine and dessert. Chelsea said not to forget to order dessert and to offer to share anything she was thinking about choosing, but then not to eat much of it and let her have it all, especially if it was chocolate. Jess stopped at the gift and floral shop on Main Street

  and picked up the flowers Chelsea had insisted on ordering.

  He felt like an idiot, especially when the gray-haired woman behind the counter winked at him, told she'd added extra "baby's breath"– whatever the hell that was – to the bouquet and wished him a nice evening.

  Nice? He was going to spend the evening wishing he was in bed with her. He was going to spend the next two, three, four hours trying not to touch her, not to scare her off. He didn't know why he turned into a lust-crazed maniac each time he saw her, but he should damn well be able to get over it. His years of marriage should have cured him of making another mistake. His divorce had proved he could get over anything he set his mind to.

  Lorna answered the door after the first knock and she pushed the screen door toward him to let him in. "Come in," she said, and he thought she sounded almost as nervous as he felt.

  "Thanks." He took off his Stetson and noticed she'd worn her curly hair long tonight, with the sides pulled back off her face with sparkly barrettes. She turned away from him and led him over to the living room area. He vaguely remembered the room and had the impression it had been empty when he was last here.

  "Would you like a drink? Whiskey and soda? Beer? Pop?"

  "Whiskey and soda, thanks." She wore a dark blue dress made out of some floaty fabric, and her hair cascaded down her back. He didn't remember it being that long, but he liked it. Her back was toward him as she left the kitchen, and then he remembered the flowers. He'd left them in the car.

  "I'll be right back," he called, and raced out the door, down the steps and to his car. The young woman across the street, a little kid attached to her hip, watched him curiously, probably thinking there was some police emergency. He retrieved the flowers – yellow roses with lots of little white flowers surrounding them – and headed back to Lorna's front door, where he let himself in and returned to the living room.

  She stood in the hall watching him, his drink in her hand. He couldn't identify the expression on her face, but he knew she was the loveliest woman he'd ever seen.

  "These are for you," Jess said, noting the surprised expression cross her face. Her blue eyes lit up with pleasure as she traded his drink for the flowers and, for only a second, touched his suddenly shaking hands.

  "They're beautiful." Lorna didn't look as though she had expected flowers, which pleased him. "I'm sure you don't remember, but your mother used to let me pick flowers in her garden."

  "My mother?"

  "We lived down the street from you in Marysville."

  "So you are that Walters. I couldn't remember—" his gaze dropped lower to note that the dress she wore was pretty big, as if it belonged to someone else – or else Lorna had gained weight "—if they had a daughter or not."

  "I'll put these in water," she said, and turned to hurry away, through the living room to the kitchen. He didn't remember the kitchen, had a vague memory of a pink bathroom and a bedroom with nothing in it but a bed.

  He returned to the living room, to sink into the beige loveseat and sip his whiskey. He guessed she didn't think he was a drunk or she wouldn't have offered it to him. She seemed to be gone a long time, but when she returned she carried a large white vase filled with his flowers, which she set on a flat-topped trunk between them before she perched on the edge of an overstuffed chair covered with faded flowers.

  "So," he said, wishing he'd planned what he was going to say. "Are you hungry?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "But?" He frowned at her. For some reason she looked guilty. Definitely guilty. "You're going to back out?"

  "As you can see, I'm not exactly dating right now." Good, he wanted to say, not that he wanted to get involved with a woman again. But he sure didn't like the idea of Lorna going out with just anybody. "Why not?"

  She gave him an odd look, almost as if she thought he was joshing her. "No particular reason," she eventually replied, but the look on her face didn't change. She really was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen, Jess realized.

  "I made reservations at the Steak Barn," he said. Now he wished he had planned to drive to Marysville instead, to someplace more intimate and where they wouldn't be interrupted by everyone in town. He wore his pager, but he sure as hell hoped that Carter could handle anything that came up. The kid was eager enough and Jess figured he secretly longed for a crime wave.

  "For what time?"

  He glanced at his watch. "Seven-thirty." This wasn't going well. Next thing he knew he'd be talking about the weather, which was damn boring. "Tell me about Texas Tom. How did you end up working for him?"

  "I answered an ad in the paper. I'd lost my job in Dallas and decided to come back here when my aunt left me this house."

  "And you'd just moved in last July?"

  "You remembered the boxes. Yes, the house was pretty empty."

  Except for the bed, he remembered. Jess took another sip of his drink. She really was wearing the strangest dress. He didn't know what he'd expected. Something tighter. With
a short skirt. Like a waitress outfit only in a different color. That would have looked nice. "What did you do in Dallas?"

  "I was an assistant buyer at Neiman Marcus, but they downsized and that was that."

  "From Neiman Marcus to Texas Tom is a pretty big jump."

  "Dallas to Beauville is, too," she answered, giving him one of her heart-stopping smiles. He wanted to haul her off to her bedroom and see if the passion he remembered so vividly was actually real.

  "Yeah," was all he could come up with. He swallowed hard and took another sip of his drink. The lady bought good whiskey.

  "I only worked for Tom for that one day. Then Charlie offered me the waitressing job and I took it. I'd waitressed in college, so I knew what I was doing."

  "Do you miss Dallas?" Are you going to leave here and go back to the city? he wanted to know.

  "Not really. I guess I'm a small-town girl at heart, even if I do have a closet full of expensive shoes."

  The dress looked expensive, too, he noted. So maybe it was meant to hide her figure and discourage men from jumping her. Maybe she'd worn it to discourage him. The thought annoyed him.

  "We'd better go," Jess said a little abruptly. He finished his drink in one swallow, set the glass down on the trunk top and stood.

  "All right." She got up from her chair and turned to pick her purse off a little table nearby.

  That's when he saw it. The outline of her abdomen. The curve of her belly. The unmistakable shape of…pregnancy? Lorna Walters was in the middle of having a baby. No wonder she didn't date much these days. Jess looked away and strode to the door before he said anything stupid, like who the hell is he? and what were you doing with someone else? or do you love him? or do you want me to arrest him for you?

  "Jess?" She came up behind him.

  "What?" He turned and kept his gaze on her face. She looked uncertain and very, very vulnerable.

  "You don't have to do this," she said.

  "Do what?" Of all the things he anticipated tonight, discovering that Lorna was pregnant was never on the list.

  "Go out to dinner. I already told you how you ended up here and you know about Texas Tom hitting you, so there really isn't anything else to—"

  "You said you were hungry," he interrupted. He frowned down at her, unwilling to give her a chance to end the evening before it began.

  "Are you?"

  Did she realize he'd noticed she was very pregnant? He wasn't going to back out, not when he had something to prove. "Yes," he said, then louder, "Yes."

  "Well, it would be nice to be waited on for a change," she admitted, her voice soft, the way he liked it.

  "Then let's get out of here," he said, holding the door open for her. From the back she didn't look pregnant. "I hope you like steak." He'd never dated a pregnant woman before, hadn't even been around too many of them. He didn't know if they ate special stuff or what.

  "I do," she said. "I've never been to the Steak Barn."

  He felt clumsy and awkward, but he settled her in the passenger seat of the county's Ford Tahoe and hoped for the best. Maybe he could pretend he didn't notice, like a gentleman pretended he didn't notice when a lady had a run in her stocking or lipstick on her teeth.

  Jess drove to the Steak Barn and tried not to think about Lorna's future child. Where the hell was the father? He thought for a split second – and only for a split second – that the child could be his, but he wouldn't have been foolish enough to take a chance like that. Besides, he and Sue had never had kids, though they'd tried hard enough those first years. He'd heard she and her new husband had had a baby last month, so not getting pregnant was one more thing to add to the list of Things That Were His Fault.

  "It's a lovely evening," Lorna said into the silence. So they were talking about the weather now. Well, Jess thought, it sure beat the hell out of talking about babies. "Yeah," he said. "Nice."

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  «^»

  Lorna waited for the question, but throughout dinner Jess pointedly ignored the fact that she looked pregnant. Instead he asked her about Dallas. And her home in Marysville.

  "I lived in the blue house on the corner," she explained. "My mother and father taught square dancing all over this part of the state. They loved to dance."

  "And you?"

  "I have two left feet," she admitted. "Much to their disappointment I wasn't very musical either. They tried to give me all sorts of lessons – even the steel guitar – but I was hopeless."

  "Do they still live there?"

  "My father does. Mom died a few years ago and Daddy still belongs to a group and dances every weekend. He still calls square dances too, though there isn't as much demand for it as there used to be." The waitress came and cleared their dinner plates, then promised to be back with the dessert menu. "What about your family?"

  "My older sister's in Austin. She's trying to be the next Shania Twain, or at least that's what she tells me. Do you remember her?"

  "Vaguely." She'd been more entranced with Jess, the tall quiet boy who always treated her as an equal whenever their paths had infrequently crossed. He was already in high school when she was picking flowers in his mother's garden, but once he helped her dig up a rosebush his mother had given her. And she watched him out her bedroom window when he drove to school each day. She'd always thought of him as hers, so it came as a shock when she graduated from high school and learned he was engaged to someone else.

  The waitress, an older lady who looked as if she'd been working at the Steak Barn all her life, plopped the dessert menus in front of them. "Y'all want coffee?"

  "Tea, please," Lorna said.

  "Sheriff, what about you?"

  "Coffee, thanks, Pat."

  "Anything for you, honey," she said, and smiled as if the sun just came out. "You want the usual?"

  Lorna looked at him. "What's 'the usual'?"

  "Apple pie," he admitted. "I've eaten here a lot since I moved back. But I think I'll skip it tonight and just have coffee. Not decaf, the real stuff."

  "You think I'd give a police officer decaf coffee?" Pat eyed Lorna. "What about you, honey? How about the chocolate mousse cake or a nice piece of peanut butter ice cream pie? You have any cravings yet?"

  Lorna ignored the question and looked at Jess. "You're not having any dessert?"

  "Order what you want and we can share, if you like."

  "All right." She turned to Pat. "The apple pie, with whipped cream. I want to see if it's better than what we serve at the Coffee Pot."

  "That's why you looked familiar. I worked there, too, when I was younger and could get up that early in the morning. Tell Charlie I said hi."

  "I will," Lorna promised, then wondered if Jess was deliberately avoiding the subject of her pregnancy or if he was just blind. "Do you wear contacts?"

  "No." He gave her an odd look. "Why?"

  "Just wondering." So he was intentionally ignoring the size of her abdomen. She didn't know if that made tonight easier or not. Didn't he wonder if he had anything to do with it? Or was he truly unaware that they'd made love that night? He looked at her sometimes as if he remembered, all right. Like now. He was looking at her as if he wanted to kiss her, and she wished he would. She would like to be kissed by him again. "What about your parents? What are they up to these days?"

  "They sold the house, bought an Airstream trailer and travel all over the country."

  "That sounds like fun."

  "It's a little strange," he said, "but I'm getting used to getting postcards from places I've never heard of."

  Lorna shared the pie, drank her tea, talked about Beauville. She told him waitress stories; he told her tales of his days as a young and naive deputy sheriff. She didn't ask about his ex-wife or the divorce, but she would have listened if he wanted to tell her about it. He didn't.

  "Jess," she began, when there was a lull in the conversation.

  "I think Jake Johnson and his wife just walked in," he said, his attention focused
over her shoulder to the entrance of the restaurant.

  "Oh." She thought she would tell him, had worked up her courage to tell him she was going to have a baby. She didn't want to tell him this was his child. Unless he asked, of course, and then she wouldn't lie. He deserved to know, but did he want to? Maybe he was one of those people who didn't want to know, and therefore wouldn't have to deal with the problem. Lorna didn't like thinking of her baby as "the problem," though. She certainly didn't want Jess to feel that way either.

  The Johnsons appeared at their table to be introduced to Lorna, who told them she was at their wedding serving barbecued ribs.

  "We must make it up to you," Elizabeth said. She was radiant and she held her husband's hand as if she never wanted to let it go. "You'll have to come out to the ranch for dinner sometime. I'm learning how to cook, so you'd better be brave."

  "Thanks for the help yesterday," the tall rancher told Jess. "I sure didn't want to see Bobby land in jail."

  "Did he sober up?"

  "Eventually. Dusty Jones is the new foreman, and he's got his hands full." Jake turned to Lorna. "It's nice to see you someplace besides the café. I didn't know you two knew each other," he said, giving Jess a curious look. "You've been in town for five days and you already have a date with the prettiest lady in Beauville."

  "We met at your wedding," Jess replied. "Would you like to sit down and have a drink?"

  Elizabeth blushed. "Oh, I can't drink right now."

  Lorna knew exactly what the woman meant. "Congratulations?"

  "Yes," the woman admitted. "How smart you are!"

  "When are you due?"

  "June twenty-first," she said, beaming. "We didn't want to tell anyone until I made it through the first trimester. I guess I was a little superstitious about it."

  Jess stood and shook Jake's hand. "Congratulations, Jake." He bent over and kissed Elizabeth's cheek. "I couldn't be happier for the two of you."

  "Sit down and finish your coffee," Jake said. "We're going to find a quiet corner, have dinner and argue over baby names."