Czytaj książkę: «A Girl, A Guy And A Lullaby»

Chapter One

Like bungee jumping off bridges or hiking the Himalayas, cross-country bus trips were best undertaken by those with a taste for adventure. Such endeavors were not meant for the lily-livered or the terminally pregnant. Since she currently qualified in both categories, Ryanne Rieger had to wonder. What the heck had she been thinking?

It was late. She was tired. And no matter how much she wriggled in her seat, she couldn’t shift her enormous belly into a less tormenting position. Frustrated, she kicked off her shoes. When had they morphed from high-fashion sandals into medieval torture devices?

And when had they crossed the equator? Humid night air streamed through the open window with the refreshment factor of a wool blanket. Fanning one’s self with an empty bag of chips was no substitute for conked-out air-conditioning.

Rifling through her tote bag for a ponytail elastic, Ryanne finger-combed her long hair and twisted it into a dark, off-kilter wad. Then she tried stretching from side to side, but nothing would ease the nagging pain in her lower back.

At least her restless squirming hadn’t disturbed the elderly Native American beside her. Since falling asleep in Arkansas, the old fellow had not moved, snored, burped or breathed. Apparently he suffered from a rare medical condition in which extreme heat and bone-rattling movement induced clinical relaxation.

“Ouch.” Ryanne winced as her unborn child commenced clogdancing on her bladder. The kid was good. Made the Lord of the Dance look like a lead-footed serf. “Please, baby,” she whispered. “I can’t handle any more major discomfort.”

She glanced at the rear of the bus and considered her options. No way was she going into that undersize closet they called a rest room. Even if she managed to squeeze in, she couldn’t maneuver. She’d get stuck, and they’d have to use the jaws of life to pry her out. As entertaining as that might be for her fellow travelers, she’d had enough indignity in her life lately, thank you very much.

She would just tough it out. Soldier on. She could do it, if the baby canceled the encore and she banished all thoughts of liquids. She’d just about perfected a mental movie of sand dunes and desert vistas, when a hungry soul across the aisle popped the lid off a snack can of Vienna sausages.

Like an evil genie released from a lamp, the swirling aroma commingled with the scent of whatever the motion-sick two-year-old had yakked up behind her. After merging with the powerful cologne of the stout gentleman in front, it made a beeline for Ryanne’s sensitive nostrils.

Ah, eau de mass transit. Capable of altering genetic structure and undermining the democratic process.

Her stomach lurched and she fought back the familiar wave. She slumped in the seat, feeling uncharacteristically sorry for herself. She was alone, pregnant, penniless. And on her way back to Brushy Creek in disgrace.

Nausea was an unnecessary redundancy.

She’d left home the day after high school graduation, confident she would set Nashville on fire. She’d had big plans. She would play her fiddle at the Grand Ole Opry. Fend off big-name stars clamoring to perform her songs. Become the darling of country music. She was supposed to have a freaking Grammy by now.

Confident? Try delusional.

Five years and hard experience had taught her that life possessed a number of painful ways to humble dreamers and impose reality. She didn’t have many dreams left, but she’d gladly relinquish the last of her illusions just to get off this bus.

And soon.

“Hey, driver. How much farther to Brushy Creek?” She couldn’t take many more bumps like that last one, and she was seriously thinking of iced tea.

“Comin’ up now, little lady.” The driver shifted gears, and the brakes squealed as he pulled off the road.

She stared out into unrelieved darkness. Brushy Creek, Oklahoma, population 983, had been a wide place in the road when she left. Had it graduated to full-fledged ghost town in her absence? Where were the lights? The people?

More to the point, where was the nearest rest room?

The door opened with a swoosh and the driver hopped out. Ryanne set the carryall on the floor and pulled her fiddle case down from the overhead compartment. Where the heck were her shoes? Unable to bend over, she poked her feet under the surrounding seats, blindly searching for the strappy little numbers that had so much in common with her ex-husband.

Like him, they’d been taken home on impulse, had never really fit, and ended up causing more pain than their cute looks justified.

“Lady, this ain’t a regular stop. If you’re gettin’ off, you best be gettin’. I gotta schedule to keep.” The driver, obviously a man with a mission, had unloaded her suitcases from the baggage area and climbed back in his seat.

“Tonight sometime,” he muttered.

“Fine!” Forget the stupid shoes, they weren’t that cute. Ryanne grabbed her fiddle case and tote and padded barefoot and apologetic down the long aisle, bumping into everyone she passed. At the door she looked back. The old man still hadn’t moved.

She stood in the doorwell and spoke to the driver. “I know you have a schedule and all, but you might want to check that passenger back there for a pulse.”

Stepping out in the dark onto the still-warm pavement, she landed squarely in a giant glob of discarded chewing gum. Teetering on one foot, she scraped the sticky mess on the curb. Surely there was a special table in hell reserved for the careless masticators of the world.

She was spun around by a violent jerk, accompanied by the sound of ripping fabric. Dismayed, she watched the bus angle back onto the road with a thin strip of her voluminous maternity dress waving from the door.

What next? She stared up and challenged the night sky. Cue the unexpected cloudburst. Dispense the lightning bolts. And while you’re at it, how about some golf-ball size hail? Come on. Show me what’s behind door number three.

Then she recalled the words of Birdie Hedgepath. Her Cherokee foster mother had often told her, If you don’t stand up and laugh at the curves life throws you, you’ll fall down and cry.

But don’t laugh too hard, she amended, until you find that toilet.

She looked around. Darkness everywhere. And no sign of life. There were no public facilities, so she’d have to settle for some nice bushy bushes and pray she wouldn’t step in anything else.

“It’s funny,” a deep voice drawled behind her. “But up until now, I thought ‘barefoot and pregnant’ was just a figure of speech.”

Ryanne peered into the void as a man emerged from the shadows, all wide shoulders and long legs. His clothes were the color of the night. Dark shirt. Dark jeans. Dark hat.

Oh, goody. A cowboy vampire comedian. Just what she needed to make the evening complete.

She couldn’t see his face, but she heard the smirky grin in his voice. The smirk was the last straw. She could not have stopped the words, even if she’d wanted to. They spewed forth, hot enough to peel paint.

“You think it’s funny? I guarantee there is nothing even remotely amusing about any of this. I just spent two days on a bus ride from hell. With puking children, sweaty people, and no air-conditioning.

“I’m tired. I’m hot. Every muscle and bone in my body aches. And as you so cleverly observed, I’m pregnant. You know something? When I got on that bus, I had shoes. I lost ’em. But, hey! It doesn’t matter. They don’t fit. Because, like the rest of me, my feet are beyond humongous, and I am retaining enough water to irrigate every cornfield in Oklahoma. Do you see how not funny that is, cowboy?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The clod didn’t even have the manners to conceal what was obviously a bald-faced lie. That only fueled the fire. “But the fun doesn’t stop there. I just stepped in a wad of bubble gum the size of a cow patty!” Her final shriek fell well within the vocal range of howler monkeys.

“Let me see.”

The man’s quiet request had a cold-water-in-the-face effect on Ryanne. She stared at him. Or at least in his direction. She really couldn’t see him very well. “What?”

“Give me your foot.”

Under normal circumstances she would not consider surrendering her foot, or any other body part, to a total stranger. However, these were not normal circumstances. Like much of the bus trip, they bordered on the surreal.

The total stranger in question pulled a red bandanna from his pocket and moistened it liberally with his tongue. Straddling her uplifted foot like a blacksmith shoeing a mare, he rubbed her sticky sole until it tingled.

She clung to his rock-hard arm for balance. His rear end was backed up against her, and the wave of heat she felt had nothing to do with ambient temperature.

“That’s better.” He finished scrubbing and returned her foot to the sidewalk.

“Did you just spit on me?” She still felt off-balance. Even with both feet firmly on the ground. When she noticed where her hand lingered, she snatched it away.

“I reckon so.” His words constituted a verbal shrug.

“Well, thanks. I think.”

“Happy to oblige.”

Ryanne groaned when the baby executed an impromptu shuffle-ball-change. “Cowboy, it’s only fair to warn you that if I don’t find a rest room soon, I cannot be held responsible for what happens.”

“I can help there, too.”

“I doubt it.” Ryanne pressed her hands to the small of her back. A cloud skidded past the full moon, permitting a quick glimpse of her rescuer’s face. Too tanned to be a vampire. Way too amused to be dangerous.

That was the good thing about podunk towns. They didn’t have much to offer psycho ax-murderers.

“Well, don’t just stand there.” She knew some might call her tone “bitchy,” but she preferred a less-common adjective such as churlish.

“What is it you expect me to do?”

“I don’t know. Rob me? Mug me? Dump my battered body in a bar ditch?” Like a stressed-out lab rat, Ryanne could no longer run the maze. Biting the head off her own kind seemed a logical progression. “Is that what you’re planning?”

“Hell, no, ma’am.”

“If you have crime on your mind, I can save you the trouble. Nothing I own is worth working up a sweat over.”

“Ma’am, I don’t want anything.”

“What? You’re just a good-ol’-boy Samaritan? Have spitty hanky, will travel. Is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“Okay, then. Watch my stuff while I go to the bushes. And it better be here when I get back or I will track you down and sit on that silly hat.”

“But I—”

“Just watch it, buster.” Although what he had to guard it against, she had no idea. A marauding coyote perhaps?

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ryanne picked her way into the darkness, muttering to herself. She threw a parting comment over her shoulder. “And stop calling me ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She thought of bugs and snakes only in passing. She was more worried about the man in black, a gifted quipster who communicated only in short sentences. There was something unnervingly familiar about him. Or maybe the unnerving part was knowing he waited, politely, on the other side of the shrubbery while she conducted business of a very personal nature.

And she thought the world had run out of ways to humiliate her.

Tom Hunnicutt wasn’t interested in the woman’s pile of battered, mismatched suitcases. But like a man who couldn’t tear his gaze away from a train wreck, he was fascinated by the woman. Despite the bad attitude, the lopsided ponytail, and the gummy bare feet, she was just about the cutest little egg-shaped female he’d ever seen. Even if she did waddle like a Christmas goose.

Who was she? What was she doing here? And why had she been put off the bus in the middle of the night? Those were all legitimate questions, but what he really wanted to know was, how did such a tiny girl carry around a belly like that? She had to be expecting a medium-size third-grader.

“Do you have a phone, cowboy?” Miss Congeniality was back and she had a way of making even simple questions sound like stamp-her-foot demands.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Didn’t I tell you to stop ma’aming me?” She thrust out her hand.

Not knowing what else to do, Tom shook it. “Nice to meet you. I’m—”

She snatched it back and propped it on her hip. “May I use your phone?”

“I don’t have it on me. It’s attached to the house.”

Using an I-must-be-speaking-to-the-impaired voice, she drew a vague circle in the air. “Is…there…a…phone…any…where…around…here?”

Tom didn’t much appreciate the implied slur on his intellect. He was only trying to assist someone who obviously needed all the help she could get. However, even good-old-boy Samaritans had limits. He wasn’t a robber or a mugger. And he was no clabberheaded fool. But if the little mama wanted dumb, he could give her dumb.

He shuffled his feet. “Ah, shucks, ma’am. Nearly ever’ body in Brushy Creek’s gotta telly-phone nowadays. They got the e-lectric, too.” He doffed his hat and scratched his head in broad hayseed fashion. “’Cept ol’ Possum Corn back in the hills. He don’t hold for nothin’ fancy as all that.”

Her pretty face wrinkled in a pained grimace. “Oh, no. I’ve gone and offended you. I am so sorry.”

Such total lack of sincerity. “You run around loaded for bear like that, a fella’s bound to get grizzly.”

She took a deep breath. “I really am sorry. It’s just been—”

“Let me guess. A rough day?”

“Actually it’s been a rough year, but why nitpick over the details? Can we start over? I’m Ryanne Rieger.”

He stepped forward for a closer look. “I don’t believe it. You’re little Ryanne?”

She patted the small mountain that was her belly. “Not so little these days, but, yep, that’s me.”

“Birdie said Short Stack was coming home.” Her foster daughter’s fall from grace had been a hot topic with the coffee and pie crowd at Mrs. Hedgepath’s diner.

“No one’s called me Short Stack since I waited tables at the Perch. You know Birdie?”

“Place like this, everybody knows everybody.”

“And everybody’s business, I suppose?”

“Pretty much.”

She made another face. “So what else do you know?”

“Birdie might have mentioned your, uh, difficulties. In passing.”

She threw up her hands. “Oh, great. Please tell me the whole dang populace doesn’t know that my marriage and my career have been sucked down the toilet.”

Tom fought a smile. She sure had a way of turning a phrase. “Possum Corn, back in the hills, might not have heard. He doesn’t have a telly-phone.”

“Very funny.”

“There was one thing Birdie left out.”

“My shoe size?”

He looked pointedly at her expanding middle. “She didn’t say a word about you being in the family way. That was a big surprise.”

“Big being the operative word.”

Tom frowned at the unmistakable waver in her voice. One minute she was fit to be tied and the next she was teetering on the brink of tears. Her mood swings might not make her dizzy, but they sure did him.

“Do you remember me?” he asked. “I’m Tom Hunnicutt.”

She stood on tiptoe and pushed his hat back with her finger. A cowboy didn’t tolerate many people messing with his headgear, but he’d overlook it this time.

Her eyes widened. “Omigosh! Tom Hunnicutt? No wonder you looked familiar. I used to have such a crush on you.”

“You did?” The unexpected confession should not have surprised him. Ryanne seemed to blurt out whatever thought her brain sent tongue-ward.

“Please. Me and every other girl in town. I was so stuck on you, I wanted to propose when your team won the college rodeo championship.”

“Why didn’t you?” The dog-bitten scrap of ego he had left was duly flattered.

“I was grounded because of my math grade. Birdie said anybody who couldn’t do decimals, couldn’t get married. Even to a hotshot saddle bronc rider.”

He laughed. Maybe Ryanne wasn’t unstable after all. Her flightiness could be a temporary condition brought on by stress. “It’s just as well. What were you, ten?”

“Twelve. And you were already engaged. A fact that caused no end of bitter disappointment among the adolescent female population, as I recall.”

“I don’t know about that.” He was unaware of mass adulation, adolescent or otherwise. As long as he could remember, there had been only one love in his life.

“You had a childhood sweetheart. What was her name?”

“Mariclare Turner.” He couldn’t say her name without tasting the regret. He’d lost the woman he loved because he’d assumed his dreams were enough for her. It never occurred to him she might have dreams of her own.

“Oh, yeah. Mariclare-with-the-Perfect-Hair. That’s what we jealous teens called her. You’re still rodeoing, right?”

“No. I’m not.” Realizing how harsh that sounded, he added, “I got hurt last summer and had to give it up.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

It was bad manners to stare, but Tom had never been this close to anyone so busting-out pregnant and didn’t quite know where to look. He chose down. Bare feet seemed a safe alternative to protruding belly button and excessive cleavage. Ryanne was shaped like a primitive fertility totem he’d once seen in a museum, and that made him nervous.

“Does your daddy still own the store?” She stood with one foot propped on the instep of the other. Her feet were far from humongous. They were tiny. Fragile. The bones in the one he’d held had felt as insubstantial as a child’s. Hardly strong enough to support her weight.

“Yeah. Pap had a quadruple bypass last winter and it slowed him down some, but he’s hanging in there.” He held up the key to Hunnicutt Farm and Ranch Supply. “I could have let you in to use the rest room.”

She rolled her eyes. “Now you tell me.”

“I tried. You wouldn’t give me a chance. That was some kind of roll you were on.”

She failed in her attempt to look abashed. “I know. My mouth always gets me in trouble. Birdie says it’ll be the first part to wear out. Forgive me?”

It was hard not to. She had an exasperating charm. Her blinding, 100-watt smile was calculated to make a man forget how high-strung she was. “We’ll chalk it up to duress.”

“Hey! Maybe I could use the phone in the store to call Birdie. She would have met me, but she’s not expecting me until next week.”

He frowned. “It’s after midnight. No sense in her driving all the way into town. I’ll take you home.”

“Really? That would be great. If you’re sure you don’t mind trekking out to the boonies in the middle of the night.”

“I’m running behind on good deeds this week.” Tom quickly committed to the plan. The sooner he handed Ryanne over to Birdie’s safekeeping, the sooner he could get back to what passed as his life these days. He scooped up the suitcases and directed her across the street to a black late-model, extended-cab pickup. He tossed the bags in the back while she climbed into the front seat.

“There’s been some zoning changes since you left,” he said as the engine purred to life. “Officially, Birdie doesn’t live in the boonies anymore. She’s out in the sticks, ten miles farther down the road.”