Read the book: «The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby»

One

The going was slow. Just south of Marion, the snow changed to sleet. The roads were a disaster, traffic barely moving. Near the South Carolina state line, the sleet turned into rain. Cold, dreary, windshield-fogging rain. Gus swore, switched on the defroster and wondered how long it had been since he’ d last dosed himself with aspirin and black coffee.

He wondered if the burning in his gut was a result of too much of both, or merely a remnant of the flu that had laid him out for a solid week. Not that it mattered. What he needed was coffee, laced with enough caffeine to keep him awake and enough sugar to lend him the energy to keep going.

Three strikes was usually enough to knock any man out of the game. For Gus Wydowski, who had a wellearned reputation for being tougher than your average male, it had taken four.

“Lisa, damn your sweet, greedy soul, I hope you’re as miserable right now as I am,” he muttered, downshifting to pass a tank wagon lumbering south along I-77.

Lisa Crane had been strike one. Tall, gorgeous Lisa, with her midnight hair, her magnolia skin and her mercenary little soul. A confirmed bachelor, Gus had been relieved when he’d first met her to discover that she was no more interested in settling down than he was.

Their affair had lasted more than six months, which was a record for Gus. As a rule, after a few weeks with any woman he began to get that antsy feeling that made him want to move on, but with Lisa…

Not that he’d ever thought he was in love. Hell, at thirty-nine years old, he had long since outgrown all those old adolescent fantasies.

Still, they’d been good together. Especially in bed. So good, in fact, that Gus had actually started thinking in terms of the future. He had even bought her a ring.

As it turned out, Lisa had begun, to think about a future, too, only not with Gus. She had her heart set on one day owning a Ferrari sports car. Gus was satisfied with his 4 x 4 extended cab pickup truck. She liked sushi, salad bars and Streisand. Gus liked barbecue, beer and bluegrass.

Lisa had a weakness for Italian shoes and champagne.

Gus had a weakness for Western boots and anything sweet.

Gus was unabashedly blue-collar. He had calluse s on his hands and a few more on his heart. He’d been around the block a time or two—always with the same kind of woman. His biggest failing was that he was invariably attracted to women who were way the hell out of his league. Long-stemmed, elegant beauties. Classy ladies who were gracious enough to overlook the fact that he was tough as mule hide and a hell of a long way from handsome on anybody’s road map.

Lisa had caught his attention when her hat had blown off during a garden party being held next door to one of Gus’s construction projects. He’d rescued her hat, and they’d gotten along like a house afire right from the first.

About the same time Gus had started thinking in terms of teaming up permanently, Lisa had started playing games. Breaking dates, leaving town without telling him, coming back without letting him know. The sex that had been so good for so long had become less satisfactory, and they’dusually ended up arguing over whose fault it was.

Gus had a temper; he would be the first to admit that. But he tried not to let it get too far out of hand and never with a woman. He’d been taught by a mother, a grandmother, an aunt and a sister that women were to be treated like fine china. And he had always obeyed that rule. Right up to the night when Lisa had told him she had signed a modeling contract and was moving to New York. She was sorry if he was disappointed, but then, they’d never pretended to anything more than a casual relationship.

Casual. Right.

Gus had told her that he was far from disap pointed—a lie. That lately he’d been thinking about moving on—another lie. He’d wished her a lot of luck, but he hadn’t specified which kind.

And then, with the engagement ring he’d bought still in his pocket, he’d gone on a bender—something he hadn’t done in a long time. He’d ended up putting his left fist through a packing crate. That had been strike number two. Number th ree had come when he’d gone to the emergency room for a stitch job. There he’d been coughed on and sneezed at until he’d even tually come away with seven stitches, a tetanus booster and a bug that had laid him out flat for nearly a week. The ring had been missing when he’d gotten around to looking in his pockets. Then he remembered giving it to one of the older barmaids and telling her to buy herself a pair of good sturdy shoes with arch supports.

Jeez, no wonder he couldn’t ’cut it with the ladies. When push came to shove, he was about as romantic as a migraine headache.

Gus lived alone in the first house he’d ever built—an A-frame near a small mountain town in North Caro lina. The house was far from perfect, but he liked it well enough. That is, he’d liked it until he’d been forced to spend a week alone there, sick as a dog, aching in every bone, alternating between chills and fever.

Then had come strike four. The weather. When he’d finally come around, he’d been snowed in right up to his dormers. His truck, which he’d left slewed in the driveway, was buried door-handle deep. The power was out; his house was cold as a tomb; the phone lines were down; and his mobile unit was still out in the truck.

He’d been weak as a kitten. Still was, for that matter. He’d been hungry, too, but what he’d craved even more than a decent meal was sunshine and the sound of another human voice. Not necessarily up close-just close enough to assure himself that he was still among the living. For a man who’d always prided himself on his self-sufficiency, that was pretty damned scary.

So he’d built up his energy by devouring everything in his efficiency kitchen—ice cream, coffee, stale cinnamon buns and Moon Pie marshmallow sandwiches—and then he’d shoveled himself out. Less than an hour after the snowplow had come by, he had locked up and lit out to find himself some sunshine. with his next two building projects still in the permitting stage and miles of environmental red tape yet to be unraveled, he could damn well afford to lie in the. sun and bake his bones until he felt halfway human again.

Just north of Columbia a smoky whipped past, siren screaming, lights flashing, throwing up a muddy spray. Gus swore again. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. He made a quick decision to pull off at the next truck stop and eat something. He was getting down into pecan-pie country. Maybe a slab of pie with ice cream and a pint or so of sweet, black coffee would get him over the hump.

Warily, Mariah eyed the gas gauge on her elderly compact car. It had been known to lie. She should have stopped for gas before now, but she’d been hoping to make it home without spending a night on the road. The trouble was, she hadn’t gotten away until nearly noon. Everything had taken longer than she’d expected. Meeting with the super for her share of the deposit on the apartment she rented with two other models, closing out her bank account, packing, trying to get her car serviced, only to be told she could have an appointment the middle of next week….

And then she’d had to deal with Vic. He’d been livid, and a livid Vic was not a pretty sight. He’d reminded her of the contract she’d signed and of everything he’d done for her since he’d discovered her. Then he’d told her he’d been planning to use her in the St. Croix shoot.

She happened to know he was lying about that because only two models were scheduled to go, and Kaye and Danielle had been gloating all morning over snagging that particular plum.

“That’s life, kiddo,” Kaye had said when she’d tackled her about it. Which summed up Kaye’s philosophy in a nutshell.

“That’s life right back at you, kiddo,” Mariah muttered now under her breath. She’d never gotten the hang of fast, sophisticated repartee. Her mind was still running on Muddy Landing time.

Vic had accused her of not taking modeling seriously, and he’d been right. There had always been an element of make-believe in it. Like playing dress-up, only a lot harder. When it came to make-believe, Mariah would rather choose her own role, and modeling just wasn’t her.

She’d tried that morning to explain about her brother, Basil, and the baby—about how Basil’s wife had run off, leaving behind an eight-month-old daughter, and how his new business was teetering on the brink, and how her family had always depended on her.

Not that Vic had cared. Family? What the devil was family? She was scheduled for fittings! She had runway bookings! Sara Marish Brady, a nobody from a nowhere place in Georgia, was on the verge of becoming the hottest property since Cindy Crawford, and she wanted to walk out on him to take care of a baby?

Well, just maybe, Mariah fumed, reaching forward to smear a circle in the condensation on her wind shield, just maybe she didn’t wantto be the next Cindy Crawford! Until Vic Chin had discovered her perched on a ladder, reaching for a kerosene lantern on a top shelf in Grover Shatley’s Feed, Seed and Hardware Emporium eleven months ago when he’d stopped off in Muddy Landing to ask directions to Sapelo Island, she had never even heard of the woman. She had been perfectly content with her job as assistant manager of the store.

Or, if not precisely content, at least realistic enough to know that it was the best job Muddy Landing had to offer a woman who didn’t own a boat, a set of traps or a business that fronted Highway 17.

And Mariah was nothing if not realistic. As the eldest of five, she’d taken over when her father had walked out, leaving behind an ailing, alcoholic wife and a brood of stairstep children. She’d been a solemn, bookish nine years old at the time, given to daydreams and fairy tales.

Years later, after the last of the siblings had left the nest and she’d had time to think about such things, she had discovered somewhat to her surprise that buried under all those layers of enforced practicality, there still lurked a closet romantic who believed in charming princes and knights in shining armor.

Which might explain why she’d gone along with the fantasy when Vic had promised her the world with a cherry on top. His magicians had worked their magic, turning her into a glamorous stranger who wore exotic clothes and mingled with exotic people who owned yachts and who thought no more of flying over to Paris than she used to think about driving down to Brunswick or over to Waycross. Before she knew it, she’d found herself dreaming again about finding-Well, hardly a prince, but at least a special someone.

It hadn’t happened. It wasn’t going to happen. Mariah knew for a fact that there weren’t any knights or princes waiting at Grover Shatley’s Feed, Seed and Hardware. Muddy Landing didn’t even boast a mayor, much less any royalty. The closest thing to a knight was Moe Chitty, who owned the town’s only garage and had come to her rescue more than once when her car wouldn’t start.

Blinking against the hypnotic spell of windshield wipers, Mariah shifted her position. Her legs were too long for a compact car, even with an adjustable seat—which hers no longer was. She should have taken a break before now, but the thought of jogging a few rounds at a rest stop in the pouring rain didn’t particularly appeal.

Besides, she had too much on her mind. “Maybe I just won’t go back at all,” she said out loud, voicing a thought that had been more and more in her mind this past month. Who needed New York? who needed Palm Beach? Who needed her face on the cover of the Italian Yogue, anyway? Nobody in Muddy Landing had ever even heard of the rag, much less seen it.

Still, it paid awfully well. According to Kaye, fashion models weren’ t limited these days to walking a runway. One of Vic’s girls had recently landed a small role in a soap opera, another had won an exclusive contract with a cosmetics firm.

It had seemed like a good idea at first, with no one at home depending on her. Seldom a month passed that one of her three sisters didn’t call needing advice or a small loan. Financially, at least, her modeling career had been a godsend. Knowing that her family still depended on her in an emergency, she had saved every penny she could.

The trouble was, no matter how glamorous the life of a model looked from the outside, Mariah had never really gotten used to being treated like a side of beef—being handled, draped, pushed, pulled and spokenof as if she weren’t even present by men who wore more jewelry and perfume than she ever had.

Selling hardware was a lot simpler. Muskrat traps, salt licks, well pumps and fescue seed. It was far from lucrative, but then, living in Muddy Landing didn’t cost an arm and a leg, the way even breathing in Palm Beach or New York did.

Besides, she told herself as she squinted through the mixture of fog and rain for a sign of a service station, Muddy Landing was home. Be it ever so humble. which it was. The glitzy life that had seemed so promising months ago had turned out to be mostly hard work, long hours, nastiness and one-upmanship.

Marian flexed her shoulders, shifted on the rump-sprung bucket seat and glanced at the gas gauge. The needle nudged the empty mark and then bounced a zillionth of an inch. “Oh, Lordy,” she muttered, searching the flat gray horizon for a faint gleam of neon. All she needed now was to run out of gas in the middle of I-95 in a cold, driving rain, with night corning on.

She took the first exit, but by the time she spotted the convenience store, her engine was beginning to cough. She flicked on her turn signal, praying that it still worked, and rolled off the highway onto the apron of the sm all store.

“Whew! Made it,” she said with a sigh of relief.

Because she’d been lucky enough not to be stranded on the highway and because she was worried about Basil and Myrtiss ’and the baby, and was still undecided about her own future, Mariah decided to treat her car to a tankful of high-test, and herself to the biggest cherry drink she could find. And maybe a bag of boiled peanuts.

“And a rest room!” she added, shivering in the damp, chilly air. It had been warm enough when she’d set out, and she’d tossed her vinyl slicker and her white denim car coat into the back seat, then buried them under bags and boxes of cloths, books, curlers and makeup.

The rest rooms were inside, and as she had to pay before the attendant would turn on the gas pump, she made a dash for it, chill bumps covering her skin before she even made it through the door. After freshening up, she got her drink and peanuts and made her way to the counter. There was no one in the store except for the clerk and two grungy-looking men who were studying a girlie magazine rack near the counter. Wedging her way up beside them, she said, “Ten dollars’ worth of gas, please. High-test.”

Reluctantly the clerk turned away from the TV set. There was a basketball game under way. “That’ll be ten for the gas, two-fifty for the peanuts, and with a Giant Freeze that comes to…lemmee see…”

Mariah plopped her purse on the counter beside her purchases, preparing to dig out her billfold. One of the two men abruptly left, letting in a blast of cold, wet air. She shivered. Just as the second man turned to follow, his elbow struck her drink, drenching her with the icy red liquid.

Mariah gasped. Appalled, she stared down at the spreading stain on her yellow linen pants and matching tunic and gingerly plucked the sodden fabric away from her body. Oh, blast! Why hadn’t she taken the time to change into jeans? Now she was either going to have to dig out her suitcase and change clothes in the closet-size ladies’ room, or drive the rest of the way home wet, cold and sticky.

Oh, fine. This was all she needed after rushing around all morning like a. chicken drunk on sour mash, trying to tie up two dozen loose ends.

Get a grip, Mariah! You ’re supposed to be Fearless Leader.

That was what her younger siblings had always called her. Ha! If they’d only known what a fake she was.

“Hey, you!” yelled the clerk, and she glanced up in time to see the clumsy dolt who had drenched her running out the door—with her white shoulder bag under his arm!

It took a moment for it to sink in. “Stop him! You come back here!” she screamed. She lunged for the door, flinging out her hand to try to grab the flying strap of her purse.

Two things registered simultaneously as the door slammed shut on her fingers—the dark car that pulled up to the entrance, then sped off with a screech of rubber, and the pain that nearly brought her to her knees.

Clutching her right hand in her left one, Mariah shouldered open the door and barged into a solid wall of flesh. A tough-looking man with a black beard and a fierce scowl caught her by the shoulders.

“Get out of my way!” She shoved at him with both hands. Pain threatened to cripple her again.

“Whoa,” the man growled. “What the hell’s the big hurry?”

“Lady, you’ll never catch him now. He’s long gone,”the attendant called after her.

Mariah ignored him. “Oh, God, he’s getting away!” She dodged to the left just as the dark stranger did. She sidestepped right at the same time he did. The man’s hands clamped down on her shoulders again, and Mariah glared at him, distractedly taking in the image of shaggy beard, battered, black leather jacket, rumpled khakis and worn Western boots. He looked unnaturally pale. “Would you please just let… me…go?” she wailed.

“What’d you do, rob the joint?”

The attendant stood behind her, surrounding her with his beer-and-onion breath. He squinted off into the veil of heavy rain. It was really pounding down now, dancing up off the pavement. A hundred-odd feet away, a steady stream of traffic raced by, headlights and taillights glowing fuzzily in the preternatural darkness. “Sorry, lady. They’re long gone by now.” He turned to go back inside, looking relieved that she instead of he had been the victim.

Breathing in a crazy mixture of lilacs, diesel fuel and cherry extract, Gus stared down at the woman in his arms. But not too far down, because she was almost as tall as he was.

Cheekbones. He’d always been a sucker for good bone structure. She had it. Man, did she ever have it! As long as she was there in his face, so to speak, he figured he might as well take inventory. He might be barely recovered from the lingering flu, but that didn’t mean his male hormones were out of commission.

Her eyes were not quite brown, not quite gray—sort of a pale combination of the two. Her hair was the same no-color shade. Actually, she reminded him of a weimaraner that had taken up at his house a couple of years ago. He’d grown pretty fond of the mutt before the owner had finally shown up to claim him. “What happened?” he growled, wishing his voice didn’t sound quite so rough. It hadn’t been used much in the past week.

“That creep stole my purse! He poured Cherry Freeze all over me and then he grabbed my purse!” She tried to pull free, but Gus held on because, cheekbones or not, she looked pretty shaky. “Let me go! I’ve got to try and catch him!”

“Tall guy, short guy. Two of ’em. One had a base ball cap, the other one had sort of dirty blond hair and crooked teeth,” the attendant said helpfully. “Didn’t see no gun, but that don’t mean nothing. Lot o’ that kind o’ thing going on these days.”

The woman wilted visibly. For one brief moment she allowed her head to rest on Gus’s leather-clad shoulder. “My keys,” she whimpered.“ He even has my car keys.”

Gus glanced at the attendant, who hovered in the doorway. “Don’t look at me, man, I can’t leave this place. For what it’s worth, they headed south in a dark Chevy—looked like a ten-to twelve-year-old model, but they’re long gone by now. I’m real sorry, lady. You got any money on you? You still owe me for the drink and the—”

Gus swore. He jerked out his wallet and handed over a fistful of bills. “Take it out of that!”

While the two men were thus engaged, Mariah left the cover of the canopy. The rain had slacked up momentarily, and she’d spotted something pale and flat lying near the edge of the highway. It was probably only a bit of trash someone had tossed out, but…

Just as she reached the edge of the pavement, an eighteen-wheeler whipped past, throwing up a barrage of dirty water. She gasped at the second icy deluge within minutes.

“Are you crazy? Get the hell away from that highway, dammit!”

She just had time to snatch her purse when another truck roared past. Someone grabbed her hand—her left one, fortunately—and hauled her back from the edge of the highway. Before she could protest, her bearded assailant—or would-be rescuer—swung her off her feet and started jogging back toward the service station. “What the hell is it with you, lady? You got a death wish or something?”

He practically shoved her through the door before she could protest. The moment he set her on her feet again she tugged at the flap of her sodden purse, unthinkingly using her right hand.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she must have made a sound. Blackbeard took the dirty canvas shoulder bag from her, slung it over his own shoulder, and led her around behind the counter t o the attendant’s stool.

“Sit down before you fall down,” he commanded. Very much to her surprise, she did. He handed over her purse. “I can tell you before you even look inside what you’re going to find. Zilch. A lipstick, maybe a hanky, but nothing of value. Might as well face facts right up front.”

Mariah glared at him, daring him to have spoken the truth.

But of course he had spoken only the truth. Gingerly, she held her ruined purse on her lap, wedging it under an elbow, and slid her left hand inside. Out came one sticky comb, one wad of damp, sticky tissues and a few sticky shards of the tiny jar of guava jelly she’d bought when she’d filled up her tank in West Palm. It had evidently broken and leaked all over the inside of her bag.

She didn’t cry. Mariah never cried. Having learned a long time ago that tears were a waste of energy, she had developed her own way to deal with stress. If a few tears escaped now to slither down her rain-wet cheeks, that didn’t mean she was crying. She would deal with this setback the way she had dealt with everything else since she had put away her dolls and taken on the job of raising a family.

Well…perhaps not exactly the same way. At least, not until she got home.

“What happened to your hand?” She glanced up as the pale-skinned, black-bearded stranger reached for her right hand, wondering if he was so pale because he’d just gotten out of prison. She wasn’t ordinarily given to snap judgments, but it was hard not to be a little paranoid when she’d just been robbed and her hand was swollen, aching and rapidly turning an ugly shade of reddish purple.

It was also sticky.

Gus wiped his hand off on a clean handkerchief, wishing he’d never pulled off the highway for a break. Some break! He’d been feeling washed out, run down, mean as a junkyard dog—and that was before he’d had the misfortune to tangle with this p articular walking disaster.

Oh, hell. The woman, her damp hair straggling around her wet face, was staring down at her own hand as if it belonged to someone else. If she hadn’t looked so damned defeated, he might have been able to walk away. But Gus had always been a sucker for lost causes, and with those big, shimmering eyes and that naked, vulnerable mouth of hers, she was about as lost as it got.

“I’m going to wake up any minute now, and y’all are going to disappear. I just thought I ought to warn you.” She tried to smile but her chin was trembling too hard. Her eyes were red-rimmed and the tip of her nose—her elegant, patrician nose, Gus noted almost absently—was beginning to turn pink.

Oboy. Here we go again.

Lilacs. She smelled like rain and lilacs. Backing away, he leaned against the snacks counter. If shadows had a color, that was the color of her eyes. The trouble was, even rimmed with red, they packed a wallop. And her legs—Oh, man, that was the clincher. Under a layer of thin, wet cloth, he could actually see the glow of her skin, the lines of her panties and bra. She didn’t have a whole lot upstairs, but it was adequate. And it didn’t take much imagination to tell that her nipples were all puckered up from the cold.

Why the hell wasn’t she wearing a coat? “You ought to dress for the weather,” he said gruffly, embarrassed at being caught staring at her body. He’d always had a weakness for her kind of looks, but when a guy was half dead from the flu, when he’d just been dumped by a woman he had actually bought a ring for, when his stomach was growling from hunger and acid was burning a hole in his gut, he had to be some kind of a pervert even to notice things like that.

Especially in a situation like this.

He made up for it by ratcheting up his scowl. “Look, this is Florida, lady, but let’s get real. It’s raining out there. It’s February, it’s cold as a well-digger’s assets, and the overhead pipes have busted big-time. You got a coat somewhere?”

The attendant glanced out the clouded window as two cars pulled in.“ Lady, you’re gonna hafta move your car, okay? You’re blocking the high-test.”

“Shut up,” Gus said without even glancing up. “What about a spare key? You got one stashed out someplace?”

“Under the hood, on the right side, on the thingamabob.”

“The thingamabob. Right. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”

And he was gone, leaving Mariah feeling lost and alone. Which wasn’t like her at all. Ever since she’d answered the phone at four-thirty this morning and heard poor Basil’s latest tale of woe, she seemed to have screwed up everything she touched. She was miles away from home and practically all the money she had in the world had been in her billfold, and now it was gone. She was wet, sticky and cold. The jet stream had moved south for the winter, and all her winter clothes were in the attic of her house back in Muddy Landing.