Small Town Romance Collection: Four Complete Romances & A New Novella

by Brown, Carolyn

  "Some more chicken?" his grandfather finished the sentence.

  "Nope, Poppa Jack," he sucked in his air, "I want some cowboy jeans and cowboy boots like Emily's daddy wears. He said to tell you we can buy them at any western store. I want them to be long enough to scrunch up over my boots."

  "Jackson Walker!" Tracey scolded.

  "Wait a minute," Jack held up one hand toward her. "You must like Emily's daddy a whole lot, huh?"

  "I don't know if I like him a whole lot or not. I only saw him today. But I liked his clothes. I don't want to wear these stupid slacks with pleats and I don't like these shoes, Poppa Jack. I want to look like the other boys." Jackson didn't look at his mother.

  "Well, then. Maybe we'll go shopping tomorrow. Just you and me. What kind of boots did you say they were?" he asked with a wink.

  "Emily says they're Ropers and all the Texans in Tom Bean wear them. She says they're wonderful and she wears hers when she rides her pony. I'm goin' to Tom Bean someday and I want a pair so I can ride that pony. Maybelle, that's her pony, might not like me if I don't have some Roper boots on, Poppa Jack. And I want to ride Maybelle more'n anything in the whole world."

  "Then eat your supper and then we'll watch Lion King again tonight after you sing and tell us your poem. Tomorrow we'll go to Oklahoma City. I bet they've got some jeans and a pair of boots in your size just waiting for you," Jack told him. He gave his daughter a look that told her not to argue this time.

  He didn't need to worry. Tracey was much too tired to fight after all that driving. If her dad wanted to take Jackson to Oklahoma City tomorrow, that was fine with her.

  Chapter Four

  Austin did not disappoint her.

  On Tuesday afternoon, when her last class was finished, she passed his closed door, uttered a silent prayer of thanks and went into her own classroom. She hadn't seen him in the halls or around school all day, so evidently he wasn't in today. She left her door open, set her briefcase on the floor beside her desk, and went to the back of the room to look out the window at the center of the campus. Students were scurrying around, some going toward the parking lot, some toward the library and a few were clumped in groups, laughing and gesturing with their hands.

  She didn't hear the door between her office and Austin's open, but she did hear the door to the hallway shut and the lock turn. By the time she spun around, he was standing back in the doorway between their offices with his arms crossed over his chest, eyebrows drawn down and one leg crossed over the other one. His eyes were demanding answers to questions he hadn't even asked.

  He looked long, lean, sexy as hell, and just a little dangerous. Not that she was interested. Austin could stand there as long as he wanted, until his foot went to sleep and he fell on his face or until his arms froze in that position. She wasn't starting this conversation.

  "Trace?" he finally said.

  "Austin?" she said right back, in the same cool tone.

  "We're goin' to talk," he said.

  "You can talk. I'll listen." She sat down in the chair behind the desk, adjusted the short skirt of the emerald green suit she'd chosen with such care that morning, and waited.

  His lips clapped together in a thin line and his chin drew up. She remembered that look well. The last time she had seen it was the night he had left her without even looking back. "All right, have it your way." He grabbed a folding chair from the other side of the desk, brought it around to where she was sitting, swung her swivel chair around until it was facing him, and snapped the folding chair out in front of her. When he sat down their knees were touching. His nearness was unnerving, but Tracey steeled herself to ignore the physical sensations his proximity evoked.

  "We'll talk and you'll face me and you'll listen to me," he declared. "Now let's go back to six years ago. I was furious at you that night. You were acting so damned spoiled and I loved you so much. I knew I could never, ever give you all the things you were used to having. But I still wanted you. I just was determined not to let your daddy pick up the bills the way you wanted him to."

  "I did not!" She'd vowed she wouldn't get angry. Vowed in the past three days that he would not make her mad, and here in the first thirty seconds she was seething, ready to strangle him. She took a deep breath.

  "Well, you weren't making any attempts to be self-supporting. And you knew we'd be living on a teacher's salary once we were married," he pointed out.

  Tracey let out the breath she'd been holding.

  "Austin, what went on six years ago is in the past. Let it go," she told him.

  "I thought you were being stubborn because deep down inside, you didn't want to get married. I packed my bags that night and was on my way home to Tom Bean the next morning at daybreak. I told myself I wasn't about to call you and apologize. I couldn't give up that job I had for the break. The money was already earmarked for the next semester's tuition, because my scholarship had run out." He leaned forward and looked her right in the eye. "Don't look away and don't tune me out, Trace. You're goin' to hear this whether you want to or not."

  "When I got home I ran into a bunch of my old high school buddies and they invited me to go out with them. We started drinking. First it was a couple of beers, then someone bought a fifth and we started drinking boilermakers. The next mornin' I woke up in the back bedroom with Crystal Andrews. She was eighteen years old and wild as a March hare. Everyone else had left long since, but Crystal and I stayed in bed for three days before I sobered up and went home."

  "What a romantic story," Tracey said icily. "Do I really have to know all this?"

  "Yes. You do," Austin said. "Crystal had no place to live and she hung around and it wasn't long before she started getting sick in the mornings. She knew she was pregnant and I knew it, too. She wanted to get an abortion and wanted me to pay for it, but you know my views on that. So I talked her into marryin' me. I swore I'd forget you and make a home for the baby and for Crystal. I guess I thought she'd do a hundred and eighty degree turnaround the minute I put that wedding ring on her hand. I was a fool. She turned around all right, but it was for the worst. She told me she hated my guts for getting her pregnant. She slept on the couch and said she didn't want me to touch her. All she wanted was a divorce and an abortion." He paused.

  "Austin, I—"

  "No." He held up one hand. "I want you to hear the whole story. Two months after we were married I came home from work and she was gone. There was a note on the table. She'd gone off with her old boyfriend. A truck driver named Bubba. She wrote that I could do whatever I damned well pleased."

  "What did you do?" Tracey didn't intend to ask any questions or answer any when he got through with his soul-cleansing.

  "I moved back home. Something told me I'd hear from her sooner or later. I got a letter in June from somewhere in Maine. She said that she'd gone in for an abortion but the clinic said she was too far along and she'd let me know when the baby was born. In August I got another letter from Nevada that said she had gotten some kind of divorce in that state. On September 23, she called me from Denison and said she was in the hospital there. She said she'd just had a baby girl and they were discharging her the next day. She told the people at the hospital that I was the father and she used the name Miller. Anyway, she said if I wasn't there when they dismissed her she was goin' to an agency to give up the baby for adoption. I was to be at the lobby at ten o'clock the next mornin'. She and Bubba were leaving for California from the hospital."

  "Good grief!" Tracey shivered.

  "I was there. She handed me the baby with a paper she had written up and had notarized about how that she didn't want this child and never, ever wanted to see it or me again. Bubba picked her up and helped her into the truck and they drove off together. I just stood there with this eight pound baby in my arms, no bottle, no diapers, nothing. The next day I went to a lawyer, who spoke to Crystal's parents. The next time she and Bubba came through town, Crystal signed the divorce papers I had had drawn up, and gave me sole custody o
f Emily. I hear she and Bubba settled down somewhere in California where he's still driving a truck. She's never called or written Emily, so I guess she meant it when she said she didn't want her."

  "Poor, poor baby." Tracey couldn't believe any mother could be so cold.

  Austin wasn't finished. "I found out that a single parent could get a lot of government help to finish school. I applied for it. Emily and I moved to Durant and I quit my job in Texas. I went back to college and finished the next year. Momma wanted me to leave her in Tom Bean, but I couldn't. She was my child, my responsibility and besides I wanted to come home at night to her. I wanted to be the first one to see her walk, the first one to know she'd cut a tooth. I wanted her to run to me when she scraped her knee, not to my mother."

  "I understand," Tracey nodded, and she did. Those were the same reasons she and Jackson had lived in an efficiency apartment when she started teaching.

  "I had a degree and the university administration let me teach here while I got my master's. I started out teaching Comp I, like you, and moved up to Comp II and American Literature a couple of years ago," he explained. "Why didn't you tell me you had a son?" he asked suddenly.

  The story was over and now it was time for the stuff she wasn't going to talk about.

  "What did Crystal look like?" she asked, avoiding his question.

  "She was five feet three inches tall, shorter than you. She had the same color hair you do. That's why the teacher's aide thought you were Emily's mother. She was a pretty girl, but totally wild when I knew her. I haven't seen her since the day she gave up her rights to Emily."

  "You didn't tell Emily that her mother didn't want her, did you?"

  "No. I told her that her mother gave her to me to raise because she married a truck driver and didn't have a house or a place to keep a pony." Austin knew she was avoiding his question. He knew her as well as she knew him, and if they had to sit in these two chairs until the moon came up, he was going to have some answers. There was silence for a full minute before he asked again, "Why didn't you tell me about Jackson?"

  "Why didn't you call and tell me all this when it happened?" she asked.

  "I tried. Your phone line was disconnected. Your father's phone is unlisted. I drove to Purcell and asked the directions to Jack Walker's house at a service station. They told me how to get there but when I knocked on the door, no one answered. I didn't even know if I had the right place."

  Another minute of silence passed.

  "Trace?"

  "Why should I have told you anything? You walked out. You went on a drunken binge for three days. Then you just up and married a girl you hardly knew." She turned her face away from him, remembering the hurt in her heart on the afternoon he had called so long ago. No. She didn't owe him anything now.

  "Good point," he nodded."But you've robbed me of almost six years of knowing my son."

  This was the moment she had been dreading.

  "Your son!" she exploded. "What gives you the right or reason to say Jackson is your son? Jackson belongs to me! I had him after twenty-four hours of labor. I didn't walk out of the hospital and give him away. I've raised him. I've clothed him. I've loved him and I've done it all on my own, without help from anyone!"

  "I know that. I met Jack Walker in Oklahoma City last night for supper. He told me how well you've done on your own. And there was pure pride in his voice." Austin said.

  "You talked to my father?" she said numbly.

  "Yes, I did. Lord, Trace, it don't take a mathematical genius to know how long it takes to produce a baby. Jackson was born on September 13 according to Emily. That makes him just ten days older than she is. I know that Jackson is my son. What I don't know is why you didn't tell me."

  "Why in the hell did you talk to my father? Did you tell him you thought you were Jackson's father?" Her voice was low and husky. Austin figured she was ready for a fit of tears—or he'd better step back and get ready for things to start flying.

  "Yes, I did. I bet you want to know how I got his unlisted number. Jackson wrote it down on a piece of paper for Emily so she could call him at his Poppa Jack's house over the weekend," he told her.

  "Why? Why couldn't you just leave us alone?"

  "Because I've never stopped thinking about you, Trace. And I want to know my son. From the minute I laid eyes on him when Emily introduced us last Friday, I knew in my heart he was mine. You can't deny it."

  "B-but—" Tracey spluttered.

  "Mind you, he doesn't have to be told today that I'm his father. I'm assuming that he doesn't know who his daddy is. But you can figure out when and how to tell him. I'll wait. But not forever. Jackson is my son, and I plan to be a part of his life." Austin leaned back and waited for her to speak.

  Tracey raised her voice to protest. "If you think you're going to interfere with Jackson, you'd better think again, because I'll fight you in every court of law in the state of Oklahoma. You're not named on his birth certificate. It says 'Father Unknown.' "

  Austin's gaze was cool. If that information hurt him, he wasn't showing it. She felt a hot blush rise into her cheeks, betraying her emotions. She couldn't think of a word more to say, but Austin managed a quiet reply.

  "If his birth certificate does say that, you and I still know the truth. I'll give you a week or two to think about what I've said, and then we can figure out what to do." He shook the legs of his jeans down when he stood up. "By the way, Trace, I've never stopped loving you. But we can talk about that later."

  Austin unlocked and opened the door to the hallway, and went through the adjoining door to his office, leaving it ajar. He stuck his head back around and added, "Oh, yeah. Jackson looked pretty good in his new jeans and boots today. And I forgot to tell you that I appreciate the choice of his middle name. Did you know that Emily's full name is Emily Trace Miller? Not Tracey. Just Trace, like I've always called you."

  "You named your little girl for me?" Tracey said in a whisper.

  "Yep. Partly."

  She supposed she ought to feel flattered, but somehow, she didn't. A puzzling thought occurred to her. "Why would her mother let you do that?"

  "Her mother never even wanted to name her. She was Baby Girl Miller when Crystal handed her over to me. Any more questions?"

  Tracey shook her head. Questions came with answers, and she didn't want to know anymore. The prospect of introducing Jackson to his real father at long last was unsettling enough. Although she had an uncomfortable feeling her son would be thrilled, she wasn't about to let Austin back into her life.

  He stood up, smiling down at her in the most infuriatingly calm way. Tracey felt her temper rise, and struggled for self-control. If Austin Nelson Miller thought he could just pick up where he'd left off, he had another think coming. She opened her mouth to say so, but he Austin was heading for the door.

  "See you. And Tracey—?"

  "What?" she snapped.

  "You did a real fine job of raising our boy. I'm not looking to take him away from you. Right now, I just want him to know he's got a father. We can work out the details as we go along. So don't get your feathers up."

  "Oh—!" She picked up a textbook to toss at him, but Austin had already closed the door behind him. The heavy book fell to the floor with a thud.

  Tracey just sat there with her mouth open, overwhelmed by emotions too numerous and painful to even think about. She checked her watch. She had an hour before she had to pick up Jackson, and she intended to use it well.

  Tracey put her head down on her desk and wept.

  The small merry-go-round in the park was deserted. Tracey sat down on it carefully. She'd spent exactly thirty-seven minutes crying her eyes out at her office, until she'd decided to stop. No amount of crying was going to change the fact that Austin had found out about his son at last.

  He had been so calm about it all. He hadn't even been angry with her, which made her even more nervous.

  When Jackson found out who his father was, Tracey thought guiltily, it wo
uld be bound to change the way her little boy thought about her. She could just imagine some of his questions.

  She kicked at the ground, and made the merry-go-round spin a little.

  Why did life have to be so complicated? It had been just her and Jackson for so long. And they had been so happy together. She'd be damned if Austin was going to invade that happiness.

  He didn't care about her, no matter what he said. He certainly hadn't when he'd gotten Crystal pregnant six years ago. He couldn't possibly care about her now. Not after he knew that she'd kept his son from him for so long.

  Austin was a patient man, Tracey knew that much. And sneaky enough to get her father on his side. Not to mention Jackson himself.

  But he had never stopped loving her. Austin's words came unbidden to her mind. She dismissed them.

  After all, she had certainly stopped loving him a long time ago.

  Tracey kicked the ground harder, and spun herself around until she was dizzy.

  Tracey had parked near the school to wait for Jackson when he came barreling out the door with Emily right beside him. "Mom," he yelled. Not Mommy, but Mom. Today of all days was not the day for him to grow up and call her Mom.

  "Guess what, Mom? I saw Emily's daddy again when he brought her to school and my boots are the same color as his. He's a nice man, and Emily wanted to ask you something before her daddy gets here. Well, go ahead, Emily and ask her." He pushed the girl toward Tracey.

  She looked at her jeans and boots which were just like Jackson's and suddenly had a case of shyness. "You are so pretty," she finally said but she didn't look at Tracey. "I wanted to know where it is you buy your dresses. Granny said she would buy me some dresses, but I don't know where to go, and I'm afraid all she'll let me buy is stuff in the western store."

  Tracey's full mouth turned up in a grin. "I bet she could find what you want in the mall. And thank you for saying I'm pretty. I've been feeling a little bit fat," she confided in the child.

  "Oh, no, ma'am," Emily shook her curls. "You're just perfect."