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“I need you to do another favor for me.”
“Mom...”
“No, this time it’s serious.” By the time her mother finished relaying the situation, guilt consumed Jessie for thinking she held the world record for heartache.
After disconnecting, she cradled the phone to her chest.
“Let me guess,” Grady said. “She needs us to run another errand?”
“Yes, but you’re not going to believe this... We need to drop by the Rock Bluff police station to pick up a baby.”
“Wait—a baby?”
“You heard right. Crazy, huh? I guess the poor little thing was found in a field by the highway. It’s a miracle she’s even alive.”
“Why’d they call your mom?”
“Because of the day care. She’s a registered foster parent, and occasionally takes temporary custody of really young kids who are in rough situations—she even has a nursery set up at the house. Police told her they expect to run through the few license plates in the immediate area where the infant was found, and will most likely find her family within hours. Mom needs us to get the baby, because we have the car seat.”
“Ah...” He took the Rock Bluff exit. “Makes sense.”
Jessie alternately dreaded and anticipated claiming the infant for even a short while. Though she’d long since come to terms with her own childless situation, that didn’t make it easier to bear when parents of her second graders brought baby brothers or sisters to Open House or parent/teacher conference nights.
In under ten minutes, Grady parked the vehicle in the chaotic police station lot. A makeshift volunteer camp had been set up in the adjoining empty field, and a tent city flattened the formerly tall grass.
Jessie didn’t wait for Grady to open her door as she once would have. Even if urgency hadn’t propelled her forward at a frenetic pace, they were no longer on terms where she’d have expected—or even wanted—him to pour on any level of courtesy or charm.
The station’s lobby was even more of a mob scene than the parking area, but she spotted their mutual friend Allen, who had married her good friend Cornelia—aka Corny, Corn Dog or Corn Nut—and headed his way.
Jessie sensed Grady behind her, and walked faster through the crowd in a failed attempt to make the humming awareness stop.
“Holy shit,” Allen said upon catching sight of his old football buddy. They gave each other slapping bro hugs. “Wish you were here under better circumstances, but it’s good seeing you, man.”
“Likewise.”
“I didn’t figure we’d see the whites of your eyes till Thanksgiving.”
“I hadn’t planned on being here,” Grady said. “But once Mom and Dad told me about the ranch, I had to come.”
“I understand.”
While the men caught up, it was clear to Jessie that they regularly stayed in touch. That hurt. How could Cornelia have kept that information from her? Had Grady been to their house? Sat on the same sofa as her? Jessie’s mind should be focused on the task at hand, but that was hard, considering her current level of betrayal. Who else in town had hung out with Grady and wasn’t talking?
“I imagine you’re here about the baby,” Allen said, leading them out of the lobby’s bustle to the break room. “Crazy to think that out of all this wreckage, this little sweetheart survived without a scratch.”
The guys had made a corner nest for her out of faded, neatly folded quilts that the local churches had donated to the jail.
“Oh, my gosh...” Jessie’s heart nearly broke. “She’s so tiny.”
The blond-haired, blue-eyed cherub couldn’t have been over two months old, and mud crusted her fuzzy pink PJs. Someone had been thoughtful enough to wash her face and hands, but her curls still held dirt and grass.
Jessie scooped the sleeping infant into her arms, cradling her against her chest. “The girl’s parents must be frantic.”
“I know, right?” Allen shook his head. “The thing is, out of all the missing persons’ files we’re working, none of them involve an infant. The chief’s guessing her folks must have been among those injured on the highway, and that they were taken to an outlying area hospital. We’ll run her DNA to have matched against the deceased in the morning. If you and your mom don’t mind caring for her until we find them, it’d sure ease our minds, knowing this little lady’s in good care.”
“Of course,” Jessie said, smoothing the infant’s matted curls. “We’ll be happy to keep her for as long as it takes you to find her true home.”
* * *
AFTER BUCKLING THE baby into the safety seat, Grady climbed behind the SUV’s wheel. Jessie rode in back, alongside their tiny new passenger.
Watching Jessie dote on the infant did crazy things to his insides. All at once, he was furious and sad and filled with resentment. How dare she deny him his own long-held dreams of becoming a dad? Of course, the moment that thought hit his head, he knew it was crazy, but sometimes that was exactly how he felt. Had he and Jessie married out of high school, like Allen and Cornelia, they’d already have school-aged kids. The notion incensed him—just how fast his life was passing by. On the surface, he was happy enough. But peel back his carefully shrouded emotional layers and he was a freaking disaster. Which was why, aside from holidays, he avoided Rock Bluff and all of its inhabitants, who reminded him of what he’d lost.
Back at the house, the women fussed and cooed, bathing the infant and dressing her in fresh-smelling, soft pink clothes. A pediatrician friend of Billy Sue’s stopped by, and pronounced the baby to be in remarkably good condition. Through it all, the exhausted tiny creature slept, blissfully unaware of how frightened she might be upon waking to find herself surrounded by strangers.
Grady wanted to join in the spectacle of adoring this miracle, but he’d been shut out. Not deliberately, but the fact that they assumed he knew nothing about babies, coupled with the sad truth that Jessie hadn’t even made eye contact with him since they’d returned to her parents’, told him loud and clear where he stood—on the outside, forever looking in.
Tired of lurking in the hall, hovering in the shadows just outside the nursery, Grady made his way downstairs to join his father and Roger in watching an old John Wayne war movie.
“How’s it going up there?” his dad asked during a commercial.
“Good,” Grady said. “They’ve got things under control.” Which was a damn sight more than he could say for himself. The sight of Jessie holding a stranger’s baby had triggered something in him that his knotted stomach refused to let go of.
His dad noted, “Your mom and I sure were hoping to get a grandkid or two out of you by now.”
“Before this whole mess with the twister,” Roger piped in, “Billy Sue and I were just talking about that same thing. We’re not getting any younger.”
“I could use a beer,” Grady said. “You guys want one, too?”
“You bet.” Roger shifted on his recliner. “And if you don’t mind, bring my pretzels from the pantry—and that horseradish cheese dip Billy Sue hides on the lower shelf of the fridge. Look way in the back.”
“Will do.” Grady was relieved his stab at changing the subject had been a success.
Rummaging in someone else’s pantry and refrigerator struck him as just about as uncomfortable as the whole grandkid speech. Come to think of it, since he’d stepped foot back in town, not a lot had been comfortable—except for those fleeting moments of shared laughter between him and Jessie in her mother’s car.
From upstairs he could hear the faint sound of infant whimpers, and then a full-on wail.
Cotton added excited yipping to the mix.
Arms full, Grady returned to the family room.
“On second thought—” Roger aimed his remote at the TV to notch up the volume to cover the baby’s cries “—Ben, maybe the last things we need are grandkids.”
“Maybe so,” his dad said, while, on the TV, John Wayne drew his gun.
With both older men engrossed in the movie, Grady took his beer and meandered out to the shadowy pool deck.
More power had been restored to the outlying areas affected by the storm, but the swath of greatest destruction was still dark.
The screen door creaked open and then banged shut.
Grady looked over to witness Jessie dart from the house.
In the low light, she couldn’t see him watching her as she retreated to a bench-seat covered swing. When she then started crying, Grady found himself in the unfamiliar territory of being unsure what to do. Since the day he’d earned his SEAL Trident, it had been drilled into him to make swift, fact-based decisions, but nowhere in any drill or manual had a situation like this been covered. Since Jessie had broken things off with him, his experience with women had resided solely in the realm of the temporary. Things were fun while they lasted, but the moment he was called out on his next mission, he cut things off with clinical precision. There were no hurt feelings, because he’d been clear from the start that whatever was shared was purely physical.
He might be brave in gunfire, but when it came to surrendering his heart? Forget it. Jessie had assured he would never love again.
Lord, he wanted to go to her, drawing her into his arms—not just to stop her tears, but figure out the reason behind them. But what good would that do? They were no longer friends any more than they were lovers. They were nothing. Strangers who’d happened to meet under difficult circumstances.
In stealth mode, using the shadows to his advantage, he crept from her line of sight.
But before retreating around the backside of the house, he made the mistake of taking one last look at her defeated form.
She sat sideways on the swing and hugged her knees to her chest. Moonlight shone in her teary eyes. The effort it took to stop from running to her damn near killed him. But for his own self-preservation—hell, self-respect—he had to avoid her like poison. Because to him, to his ego, to his carefully walled-off emotions, that was exactly what she was.
Chapter Five (#ulink_251f9d4f-7347-5743-b7fc-8d0b56a2ce46)
Jessie raised the hem of the old high school softball T-shirt she’d changed into to dry her eyes. Crying about not having a baby wasn’t going to get her one, and those extra few tears shed over what might’ve been with Grady were just plain wrong. He wasn’t even worth her tears. He was a cocky cowboy-turned-SEAL who never would have settled for a broken mess like her.
She forced a deep breath and pulled herself together.
Before Grady’s arrival, she’d never been prone to crying jags—although, to be fair, she also hadn’t dealt with her entire town and life being blown to smithereens.
A coyote’s lonesome howl summed up her feelings.
“I hear ya, bud.”
Back in the house, the TV erupted with a WWII battle. From upstairs came the baby’s now frantic cries.
Jessie wandered into the laundry room for peace, only to encounter Grady sneaking through the back door.
She jumped. “Jeez! I didn’t even know you were outside.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t know I needed your permission to leave the house.” Then he winced. “Is it always this loud around here?”
“Yes, on the TV. No, on the baby. Wanna go grab a beer?” Jessie didn’t know why she’d asked the question. But standing close in the confined space, she realized that after all these years her racing heart still recognized the scent of his breath, and she’d go anywhere with him if for no other reason than to escape the current chaos.
“I’m down. Only, since I’m already on my second, think you could drive?”
“Deal. I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed her wristlet wallet and keys, then dashed upstairs for a quick change into hip-hugging faded jeans, a white tank and cowboy boots. After yanking out her ponytail to finger-comb her long hair into messy waves, she added lip gloss, then rejoined Grady in the laundry room so the two of them could slip out before their parents had even noticed they were missing.
Twenty minutes later, they occupied two stools at the bar of the Dew Drop Tavern over in Schilling—also unaffected by the storm. The few times Jessie had been there on dates, it hadn’t been this crowded, but then there had also been a dozen other establishments for folks to gather that no longer existed.
After their on-tap Buds had been delivered, along with a basket of hand-cut fries to share, Grady said, “Last time I was in this place was after that homecoming game our sophomore year when it rained the whole damn night. Allen and I thought we had it won, then lost in, what? Like the last ten seconds?”
“Technically, there had been three seconds left on the clock.”
He winced. “Thanks for reminding me. Pretty sure my back still hurts from that game.”
“So this is where you guys went, huh?” Jessie grinned, running her index finger around her glass’s rim. “Corny and I waited for you two losers thirty minutes outside the locker room. When you never showed, we went to the dance alone and pissed. Come to think of it, your whole flat-tire story was pretty dumb, considering you could have just walked to the gym from the field.”
“Sorry. Allen and I needed a guys’ night, so we snuck out of the locker room through the coach’s door.”
“Creep!” She pummeled his chest, never meaning her actions as anything other than playful fun. But when Grady trapped her hands squarely over his heart, she discovered it beat as fast as her own. Suddenly he leaned in for what she hoped, thought, prayed would be a kiss, and she thought her heart would stop altogether.
And then he abruptly backed away to down the remainder of his beer before signaling the bartender for another.
For the second, maybe even third, time that night, Jessie’s eyes welled, but she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction of knowing she still cared. She didn’t. It had been a good long while since she’d been kissed, and that craving—no, more like yearning—tugged at her heartstrings. Nothing more. If he were to dare claim otherwise, she’d slap his no-good, whisker-stubbled cheek for sass.
But he not only didn’t make claims, sassy or otherwise, but wouldn’t even look her way until after she’d eaten all the fries and he’d finished his third beer.
Mortification and loneliness didn’t begin to cover the way she felt all crammed in next to him in the crowd, with their thighs, hips and shoulders brushing, and that achingly familiar attraction she held for him humming, when he seemed oblivious to her. In fact, when he went so far as to ask an old classmate of theirs—who’d wedged in on his other side in her too-tight jeans and a rodeo buckle practically bigger than her pile of fake red hair—to dance, Jessie threw up a little in her mouth.
After the twosome left, she might have gained breathing room, but she’d lost her ever-loving sanity.
The dimly lit joint was humming with energy as the whole place sang along to Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup.” The air was thick from smoke and far too many tall tales.
“Hey, little lady.” A cowboy sporting a brown leather hat and obligatory Wranglers held out his hand and smiled. “Wanna proceed to party?”
“Sure.” Why not?
It wasn’t as if she had any reason to stick around the bar. She only carried her wristlet wallet, into which she’d stashed her keyless remote, credit card, cash and lip gloss—not that she’d even had need for the latter, since her first coat of the night was sadly in place even after munching all those fries.
She took the cowboy’s hand, letting him guide her through the crowd to the dance floor, where she spied Grady and his redhead. He held his hands low on her hips, and had hooked his thumbs over the top edge of her leather belt. The girl from high school, whose name Jessie couldn’t even remember, had tucked her hands into Grady’s back pockets.
“What’s your name?” the stranger asked.
Jessie told him, and they somehow made small talk over blaring, old-school Johnny Cash.
At the end of the song, her stomach sank when she realized that Grady was no longer on the dance floor. Had he taken the redhead outside for air? The very thought of him kissing another woman turned her stomach almost as much as thinking of herself lip-locking with another man did—ridiculous, in light of the fact that unless she intended to die alone, one day she would kiss another man and like it!
But not tonight...
“Thank you,” she said to Bobby, a nice guy whose only fault was that he wasn’t Grady. “This has been fun.”
“Who says it has to end?”
She laughed. Great question. And so she danced with him again to a slow Garth Brooks tune about heartache and pain. Grady appeared through the shadows, as if the song had summoned him, and he asked Jessie’s current partner if he minded if he cut in.
The pass-off was amicable enough.
The way her pulse raced like a caged hummingbird’s was not.
“What’re you doing, Grady?”
“Seems obvious, Jess.” His breath smelled familiar and sexy and laced with just enough beer that she credited Budweiser for any sweet-talking rather than him. “I saw the prettiest girl in the room and claimed her.”
