Baby at His Convenience

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As she watched Martha lumber down the hall to one of the examining rooms, Katie sank into one of the chairs lining the walls of the waiting area. She’d seen the gleam in Martha’s eyes and knew the woman was dying to know what was going on. Aside from the fact that she wasn’t used to seeing Katie with a man, Martha was wondering why Katie had been the one to bring Jeremiah into the clinic. Everyone in town knew that Harv was the only Dixie Ridge resident Jeremiah was acquainted with and would have been the likely candidate to drive him to the clinic.

When Jeremiah settled his tall frame into the chair beside her, she sighed. “This is all my fault and I’m so very sorry.”

For the first time since she’d met him, the corners of his mouth curved upward in a rare smile. It changed his whole demeanor.

Her heart skipped a beat and her breath lodged in her lungs. Jeremiah Gunn wasn’t just good-looking. When he smiled, he was drop-dead gorgeous.

“Forget about it.” He shook his head. “I’m sure I misunderstood what you meant when you said—”

“Well, hello again,” Dr. Braden said, smiling as he walked out of his private office. “I didn’t expect to see you here again so soon, Katie.”

“I’m not here because I need to see you,” she said hastily.

Before she could explain things further, Dr. Braden turned his attention to Jeremiah. “So, you’re here to see me?”

Jeremiah nodded. “I told Katie I was fine, but she insisted that you needed to check things over and be the one to take it out.”

Dr. Braden’s eyebrows rose as a stunned look spread across his face. “It really is best for both parties to have a clean bill of health before proceeding with something like this. But you’ll be the one to take care of the actual—”

“You mean I have to have a physical, then take this fishhook out myself?” Jeremiah asked, frowning as he held up his thumb.

Katie’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire when Dr. Braden glanced her way. There wasn’t a thing she could say that wouldn’t make matters worse. All she could do was pray that this nightmare came to an end soon.

Turning his attention back to Jeremiah, Dr. Braden nodded toward the hall. “I’m afraid I misunderstood the reason for your visit. If you’ll follow me, we’ll get that hook out and you can be on your way.”

As she watched the two men disappear into the examining room at the far end of the hall, Katie wished with all her heart that this day had never happened. When she’d gotten out of bed this morning, all she’d had on her mind was to get her yearly physical out of the way, work at the café until closing time, then go home and start a new quilt to sell to one of the gift shops in Gatlinburg.

She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. How had everything gotten so complicated? So humiliating?

Sighing heavily, she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. As soon as she drove Jeremiah back up the mountain to the cabin he was renting, she’d make some excuse about temporary insanity running in her family. Then she’d go home and hope with all her heart that she would never have to face him again.

After Dr. Braden had given him a shot in the knuckle to numb his thumb, Jeremiah sat on the examining table and watched the man carefully remove the fishhook from the fleshy part of his thumb. But instead of concentrating on what the doctor was doing, his mind was on the conversation that had taken place in the waiting room.

“You thought I was here for an entirely different reason than having a fishhook taken out of my thumb.” It wasn’t a question, and if he was any judge of character, Jeremiah knew Dr. Braden wouldn’t try to deny it.

The man met Jeremiah’s gaze head-on. “Yes.”

“I don’t guess you’re at liberty to tell me what that reason was?” Jeremiah watched Braden cut the barb off the end of the fishhook, then pull the rest of it out of his thumb.

“No, I can’t discuss it,” Dr. Braden said, applying a generous amount of ointment to the wound. “Let’s just say I was wrong in my assumption and leave it at that.”

Jeremiah smiled. “In other words, if I want to know, Katie’s the one who’ll have to tell me.”

The doctor grinned as he wrapped gauze around Jeremiah’s thumb. “That’s about the size of it.” He taped the bandage in place, then stepped back for Jeremiah to stand up. “I’m assuming since you just got out of the military a tetanus shot won’t be necessary?”

Jeremiah frowned. He wasn’t at all comfortable being the talk of the town. “Let me guess, Harv told you I was in the marines.”

Braden nodded. “Don’t be too ticked off at old Harv. Having everyone know all about you is one of the hazards of living in a town the size of Dixie Ridge.” He laughed. “When I moved here from Chicago five years ago, having everyone know who I was or what I was doing was one of the hardest things for me to get used to. But it didn’t take me long to figure out it’s their way of letting you know they care about you and want to make you feel like you’re part of the community.”

“I’m sure that was an adjustment.”

Jeremiah refrained from telling the good doctor there were two sides to every scenario. It had been his experience that small-town gossip was far more destructive and alienating than it had ever been accepting.

As he prepared to leave the treatment room, Dr. Braden pointed to Jeremiah’s thumb. “You don’t want that to become infected. Let it heal for a few days before you go fishing again.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

Following the man out into the hall, Jeremiah stopped at the reception desk to pay for the doctor’s services, then walked into the waiting area where he’d left Katie. As soon as he entered the room, he couldn’t help but notice the apprehension in her aquamarine eyes.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, rising to her feet.

He nodded and held up his left hand. “The hook is out and I’m ready to go.”

“Good.” A sudden clap of thunder caused her to jump. “I need to drive you to the cabin and get back down the mountain before the storm hits.”

As they walked across the parking lot to her SUV, Jeremiah frowned at the sight of dark clouds beginning to appear over the top of the mountains west of Dixie Ridge. It had rained almost every day for the past two months. Sometimes it was just a light shower, but other times storms came up from the other side of the mountain and dumped several inches of water in a very short time. It looked as if today it would be the latter.

“Does it rain like this all the time, or is this a particularly wet year?” he asked, sliding into the passenger side of the Explorer.

“It’s been a pretty normal year,” she answered as she started the truck and steered it onto the road leading out of Dixie Ridge. “Here in town we average about fifty inches of rain a year. But up on top of Piney Knob the average is more like sixty inches.”

“That’s a lot of rain.”

She nodded. “A meteorologist could explain it better than I could, but it has something to do with the clouds coming over the mountains.”

“I guess that explains why the creek regularly floods the ford across the road just south of the cabin,” he said, thinking aloud.

She drove a little faster when fat raindrops began to plop on the hood and windshield of the SUV. “And that’s why I need to get back down the mountain as soon as possible. If I don’t, I’ll have to wait to cross the creek after the water recedes sometime tomorrow.”

He wasn’t entirely comfortable taking the hairpin turns leading up the side of Piney Knob at the rate of speed Katie was driving on the rain-slick roads, but Jeremiah decided it was safer to keep his mouth shut and not distract her. Only after they were on the other side of the creek did he breathe a little easier. The water was higher than its normal ten inches when she eased the truck across the ford, but it hadn’t risen to the point where it would flood out the engine when she crossed it on her way back down the mountain.

“Do me a favor,” he said when she pulled to a stop in front of the cabin. “Don’t drive like a bat out of hell when you go back down the mountain.”

Before she could take him to task over his criticism of her driving, he opened the passenger door, got out and sprinted through the increasingly heavy rain to the porch. By the time he climbed the steps and turned back to watch her leave, the taillights of the SUV were already disappearing around the curve of the driveway.

Jeremiah shook his head as he pulled his key from the pocket of his jeans to let himself inside. “Women! She’ll probably drive even faster just because I told her to take it easy.”

He removed his boots and left them on a mat by the door, then padded over to the fireplace on the opposite side of the great room in his sock feet. Even though it was June and fairly warm, the rain had caused the outside temperature to drop considerably and drenched as he was from his run through the rain, a fire would chase away the chill and feel good by the time the sun set.

As he placed a couple of logs on the grate and put kindling around them, he thought about Katie driving back down the mountain. He didn’t like the idea of her navigating the dangerous road in this kind of weather, and he could kick himself for not telling her to call when she got home to let him know she’d arrived safely.

His heart stalled. Now, where had that come from?

Katie was nice enough, but he didn’t really know her. And besides, she wasn’t his to worry about. Nor did he ever intend for her to be.

He’d spent most of his adult life avoiding her type like the plague. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be concerned for her well-being, did it? He’d be just as bothered if it was Harv driving back down the mountain in a driving rain.

Satisfied that he’d discovered the explanation for his uncharacteristic anxiety, he rose to his feet and pulled his wet T-shirt over his head to drop it on the hearth. He’d wait a reasonable period of time, check the phone directory for her number, then call to make sure she’d made it down the mountain without incident. Once he’d done that, he could go about his business with a clear conscience.

Pleased with himself for coming up with a reasonable solution, he unbuckled his belt and popped the snap on his jeans. But just as he started to lower the zipper, something thumped against the old wooden door hard enough to take it off the hinges.

When it happened again, Jeremiah grabbed the shotgun from the gun rack over the fireplace and cautiously approached the door. The sound hadn’t been the rhythmic sound of someone knocking, but more an erratic pounding. It was highly possible one of the many black bears in the area had lumbered up onto the porch seeking shelter from the storm.

Pushing the curtain on the back of the door aside, he tried to see what had caused the sound, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Convinced that the wind had slammed the swing into the side of the cabin, he turned to put the shotgun back over the fireplace when something thumped against the bottom of the door yet again.

Ready to scare off whatever creature was causing the disturbance, he grabbed the knob, counted to three and threw the door open with a war cry that would have impressed the hell out of any of the superior officers he’d served under. But instead of finding a bear or raccoon on the other side, Jeremiah discovered a wet, mud-covered Katie slumped in a defeated heap at his feet.

Three

When Jeremiah shouted loud enough to wake the dead, Katie would have jumped back and screamed at the top of her lungs if she’d had the energy. As it was, all she could manage was a flinch and a pitiful whimper.

“My God, Katie, what happened?” He propped the gun he held against the door frame, then reached down to pull her to her feet. When her legs threatened to buckle, his strong arms closed around her and he pulled her to his wide, bare chest. “Are you all right, honey?”

She started to answer him, but her teeth were chattering so badly she finally just shook her head and burrowed deeper into the warmth of his big body. She was soaked from the top of her head to the soles of her feet and colder than she’d ever been in her life.

“Come on. Let’s go inside by the fire where you can warm up.”

Her legs were so stiff they didn’t want to work and before she knew what happened, Jeremiah swung her up into his arms and carried her over to set her on the raised hearth of the stone fireplace. She didn’t want to think what might be running through his mind about how much she weighed. At the moment she was too preoccupied with whether or not she was going to freeze to death.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, trotting down the hall. When he returned, he knelt in front of her to drape a thick, fluffy towel around her head and shoulders. He wiped water from her face with another towel, then started to unbutton her blouse.

“N-n-no.” Her protest lost most of its effectiveness when her teeth continued to click together like the false sets sold in novelty shops, and her body shook as wave after wave of chills swept over her.

“You’re close to being hypothermic,” he said, continuing to work at getting the buttons through the soaked fabric. “We have to get you out of these clothes and warmed up, fast. Otherwise, there’s a chance you could go into shock.”

“I—I’ll…b-be f-fine,” she said, making her mouth form the words. She wrapped her cold, stiff fingers around his in an effort to stop him.

“No, you won’t be fine,” he said firmly.

To her horror, the buttons on her blouse went flying in all directions when he impatiently ripped the wet garment open and peeled it from her body. But her biggest humiliation was yet to come. Reaching behind her, he unhooked her bra and took it off as well.

If she’d thought her day had been bad up to this point, it had just turned into a complete disaster. Goose bumps covered her exposed skin, but Katie wasn’t sure if her reaction was due to being colder than she could ever remember, or from having Jeremiah strip her from the waist up. Either way, she was sure that if it was possible for a person to die of embarrassment, she should be expiring at any moment.

Folding her arms over her chest, she covered herself the best she could, while at the same time trying to make herself as small as possible. But that was darned difficult, considering her size.

Her mortification grew with each passing second as he began to vigorously rub her upper arms, shoulders and back with a second plush towel. “One of the first lessons of basic survival is to get out of wet clothes and into something dry,” he said as if he was teaching a class on the subject.

She wasn’t sure whether to be thankful that he hadn’t been affected by the sight of her breasts, or disappointed by the fact that he obviously found her unappealing. But as his ministrations worked their magic and she felt warmth begin to seep back into her chilled body, she decided she didn’t care.

“I—I don’t feel…as c-cold now.” At least her teeth had stopped chattering enough to let her speak.

“Good.” He handed her the towel he held, removed her tennis shoes and soggy socks, then stood up. “Take off the rest of your clothes here by the fire, while I get the water running in the shower.”

She immediately wrapped the towel around her chest. “The shower?”

He nodded. “A hot shower will help get the blood circulating and bring your temperature back to normal.”

As she stared at him, she began to notice several things that she hadn’t paid attention to when he first opened the door. Jeremiah Gunn was more than an excellent example of a man in his prime, his body was absolutely beautiful.

His shoulders were impossibly wide, his chest broad, and he had enough ripples on his stomach to make a bodybuilder jealous. A thin coating of black hair covered his impressive pectoral and abdominal muscles, enhancing their definition and perfect tone, while a tattoo of the Marine Corps insignia drew attention to his rock-hard left biceps. A small white scar ran horizontally along the outside of his right upper arm and another marred the tanned skin on his right side.

“I was grazed by a couple of sniper bullets during Desert Storm,” he said, apparently noticing her inspection of his body. He shook his head. “But that’s ancient history. Right now you need to get out of the rest of those wet clothes.”

A shiver that had nothing whatsoever to do with being chilled raced up her spine when the muscles on his right arm flexed as he reached out to help her to her feet. Katie did her best to hold the towel in place over her breasts when she accepted his hand, and forcing her stiff knees to straighten, she rose from the hearth.

“I can start the shower myself,” she said firmly. “Where’s your bathroom?”

He motioned toward the hall. “First door on the right. While you take a shower, I’ll get a pair of sweatpants and a shirt for you to put on.”

She gathered as much of her dignity as she could muster and walked in the direction he’d indicated. She’d suffered enough embarrassment for one night, thank you very much. After showing up on his porch looking for all the world like a drowned rat, she’d had her breasts exposed, and been caught staring at him like a hungry dog eyeing a juicy bone. There was no way she was going to add to her humiliation by taking off her jeans and panties until she was safely behind the closed bathroom door.

“When you get the sweats, you can hand them in to me.”

Jeremiah followed Katie across the great room. “Make sure the water is good and hot.”

When she nodded and shut the door in his face, Jeremiah continued on to his bedroom. His hands shook as he shucked the rest of his own wet clothes and pulled on a set of warm sweats.

Having to remove Katie’s shirt and bra had really done a number on his libido. The sight of her full breasts with their coral nipples beaded to pebble hardness from the cold, had almost caused him to have a coronary. The woman had a body that a man could lose himself in, and unless he missed his guess, she didn’t even know it.