The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby

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.

Truly, she’d had better days, she thought. When the bearded stranger came back inside, she tried to force a smile, but evidently it wasn’t very convincing. He walked right up to her and clamped his big square hands on her upper arms and squeezed.

Hard.

“Here, I found this in your back seat. Better put it on before you catch something”. He held out her vinyl slicker, and she slid her arms into the sleeves, wincing as the stiff plastic scraped her injured hand.

At that moment Mariah wanted nothing so much as to lean against the tough-looking stranger with the beard and the worn Western boots, close her eyes and forget everything. At least for a moment. For just a single minute, until she could think of what to do next.

Instead, she tilted her chin and tried to look as if she had everything under control. Which, evidently, was no more convincing than her smile had been.

He moved in closer until she could feel his heat, smell the mingled scent of leather and coffee and something essentially male. Which, oddly enough, was more reassuring than threatening.

“Hey, hey, now,” he rasped. “It’s not so bad. We’ll get you sorted out in no time.”

Two

Mariah made a real effort to pull herself together, if only because her bearded good Samaritan seemed to expect it of her. She never liked to let anyone down, and besides—he was a lot kinder than he looked. Aside from that prison pallor of his and his shaggy beard, and the fact that he had a tendency to scowl a lot, he wasn’t unattractive. Not handsome, certainly, but there was a rugged strength about him that was mighty appealing at the moment.

“I’ll be fine,” she murmured huskily. She fully intended to be, only it was going to take a bit of doing. “I’m just not used to being robbed,” she said with a smile that was part bravado, part an effort at self-deception.

Turning away, she asked the clerk if she could use his telephone to call the police, not that she expected any results.

“Pay phone’s outside next to the compressor,” the attendant told her. She glared at him, and he had the grace to look embarrassed. Grudgingly, he indicated the private phone between the cash register and the jar of pickled eggs.

Dialing was a problem. Just one of several she was about to face, Mariah suspected, hanging up the phone a few minutes later.

The other man had gone outside again. He came in just as she was hanging up the phone, looking concerned under his intimidating scowl.“ You got a name?” he asked.

“Mariah Brady.”

“Gus Wydowski,” he returned. “Look, Miss Brady, what about credit cards? If you had ‘em, you might want to put in a stop call.”

“Oh, Lord, my cards.” She was beginning to tremble. Panic hove red just over the horizon.

“Driver’s license, checkbook, keys…” He frowned, and Mariah wondered if he were capable of another expression.

“At least they headed south. I live north of here.”

He nodded absently, his mind obviously miles away. Probably eager to be shed of her problems and be on his way. She noticed for the first time that his eyes were an unusual shade of dark blue, and that he had two scars on his face, one leading into his hairline, another disappearing under his beard.

“Were you carrying much cash?” he asked, and she was tempted to tell him it was none of his business, but she supposed she owed him a civil answer.

Her hand was beginning to throb painfully.“ Don’t ask,” she said, which was about as civil as she could manage at the moment. She’d been carrying four hundred and seventy-three dollars and odd change. To some people, it might not be much. To Mariah, it was a fortune. Except for a minimum balance in her hometown bank, a five-thousand-dollar CD that wouldn’t mature for several months and a run-down house in a tiny community where property values were a standing joke, it represented her entire life’s savings.

It had been Vic Chin who had told her once that her face—or to be more precise, her bone structure—was her fortune. The trouble was, bone structure wouldn’t pay the bills. Nor would it buy many groceries.

“How far are you going?” Gus Wydowski had a gruff way of speaking, almost as if his throat hurt.

“Muddy Landing,” she said morosely. “It’s in Georgia, near Darien.”

“Near Darien. Right,” he said, and she could tell from his tone that he’d never heard of Darien.

“Between Brunswick and Savannah, on the Little Charlie River,” she elaborated. Actually, the Little Charlie was more of a creek, barely navigable since it had silted up. It was used mostly by trappers and fishing guides. The whole town had been built on a wetland before the Environment Protection Agency had even discovered wetlands, which was why property there was virtually worthless.

Gus was staring down at her swollen hand. Mariah stared, too. She could have cried—would have cried—if crying wouldhave done any good. Some models she knew actually insured certain body parts. She pictured herself moving down the catwalk to the music, concentrating on every cue—smile here, open jacket here, pause here, drop stole and turn.

Great! Her jacket-opening hand was ruined. If she’d needed a sign, maybe this was it.

“You’re going to have the devil of a time driving with that, you know.”

She knew. She was going to have the devil of a time driving on an empty tank, too, but she didn’t think their friend behind the counter would advance her much credit. One cheekbone’s worth of high-test, please?

“I’ll manage,” she said, but Gus had already turned away. During the few moments it took him to stride down one aisle and up another, snatching a roll of paper towels and a box of plastic bags from the shelves, two women came in to use the rest room. Both stared at her curiously, and Mariah had an idea it was not because they recognized her from her brief career as a fashion model.

Gus ripped a plastic bag from the box, filled it at the ice machine, sealed it up and then tore open the roll of paper towels. A few long strides in the cluttered little store brought him back again, so close she could smell the leather of his coat and a hint of some smoky, spicy scent that reminded her of long-ago cookouts in the woods. If he wore a cologne, it wasn’t obvious.

While she was still mentally comparing him to the overdressed, overscented men she had worked with for the past few months, he lifted her throbbing hand. She flinched, anticipating pain, but his touch was surprisingly gentle as he wrapped paper towels over the ba ck of her hand. It was when he was folding the half-filled bag of ice around her swollen fingers that she noticed the fresh scar on the thumb side of his left hand. Swallowing a nervous urge to giggle, she said, “It looks like, between us, we have one good pair of hands.”

He didn’t even spare her a glance. “That hurt? Sorry. Ice’ll take down some of the swelling. You allergic to aspirin?”

She shook her head.“ No. That is, yes, I know it will, and no, I’m not.”

He pulled a tin of tablets from his shirt pocket, dumped two into her free hand and another two into his own. Then he got two drinks from the cooler, twisted off the tops and handed her one.

It was lemon-lime. She didn’t like lemon-lime, but she drank it anyway, to wash down the painkiller.

“Got a proposition for you,” he said, and she waited warily.“ The way I see it, you’re in no shape to drive, even if you had a driver’s license. You really ought to see a doctor about that hand, and—”

“No. No, thank you.”

“If it’s broken-”

“It’s not.” She couldn’t afford for it to be broken, not with Basil bringing the baby down from Atlanta on Saturday. Couldn’t afford it, period.

“Don’t get your back up so fast. Just hear me out, okay?”

“Look, I’ll stop off and see a doctor on the way home, all right? And while I appreciate all you’ve done, Mr. Wydowski, I really don’t need your help.”

He muttered something under his breath, and Mariah was just as glad she hadn’t heard him clearly. He stared at her for the longest time, making her acutely aware of her lank, wet hair, her damp, stained clothes under the stiff vinyl coat, and the fact that whatever makeup she had started out with that morning had long since been rained off, chewed off and otherwise eroded.

Shoulders sagging, Mariah thought that if she’d needed a reminder of who she was and where s he belonged, this did the job. Underneath the glossy finish, she was still plain old Sara Mariah Brady, perennial baby-sitter, bespectacled beanpole who, until at the advanced age of twenty-five, she’d made a fool of herself over Vance Brubaker, had been the oldest living virgin in captivity. At least in Muddy Landing.

Evidently, the man read body language. He’d probably known the moment he heard her sigh, saw her sagging shoulders, that she was no match for him. “Go ahead and say what you’re thinking,” she said dully. “I’m listening.”

Which was how she came to find herself a short while later in a motel room somewhere near Saint Augustine. The police had come and gone, for all the good it had done. Her car was back at the gas station, parked in an out-of-the-way spot. Gus had tossed everything from her back seat into the surprisingly ample space behind the seat of his truck.

“What the hell do you have in here, bricks?” he grumbled, carting the last of the boxes into her room.

“Do you have something against bricks?”

He sent her a sour look, and she was reminded that he had an injured hand, too. “It’s books,” she said. “You didn’t have to bring all that stuff. It would’ve been all right in the car until morning.”

“Do you have a phone credit ca—” Gus caught himself. Of course she didn’t have a phone credit card. It had gone the way of all her other credit cards. “Make whatever calls you need from the room, okay?” He tried to sound gracious, but gracious wasn’t his style.

He could have been halfway down the coast by now, but, dammit, he couldn’t just drive off and leave her to spend the night where she was. That creep in the service station would have charged her for the floor space she took up. He’d charged for leaving her clunker there overnight, for the plastic bags and the paper towels and the drinks. Gus knew damned well she’d been mentall y running a tab while he was settling up with the guy. She’d asked him to write down his address so she would know where to send the money.

He’d seen the look on her face when he’d hauled out one of his business cards. what the devil did she take him for, a bum? Was she afraid he was going to hit on her? Was that why she was so worried?

Because she was worried, all right, and he had a feeling it was more than just getting mugged. That little ditto mark between her eyebrows wasn’t due to an excess of happy thoughts.

Gus did his best not to look at her any more than he could help, on account of he liked what he saw too much. It was a good thing she’d kept her raincoat on, ‘because in spite of a few superficial deficiencies of a strictly temporary nature, she was something else. Not exactly drop-dead gorgeous. Not even pretty, in the usual sense. The trouble was, she had the kind of timeless beauty he’d always been a sucker for.

“Maybe you’d better start calling a few people. Family, husband, that kind of thing, but if you want my advice, you’ll call first and put a stop on your credit cards before you find yourself in real trouble.”

“Real trouble?” she asked, a brittle edge to her voice that Gus didn’t like, not one bit. “You mean’the kind I’m in now isn’t real? You know, I did think for a few minutes there that I might be dreaming.”

As a joke, it wasn’t even in the running, but he gave her high marks for trying. Maybe after a night’s sleep and a good meal, they’d both feel better. “Hey, are you as hungry as I am? I skipped a few meals today.”

“Thanks, but I’m not at all—”

“Piece of pie might lift your spirits,” he tempted. He could have reminded her that she was in hock so deep now that the price of a meal wasn’t going to make that much difference, but he didn’t.

“Actually, now that you mention it, I’m ravenous,” she admitted.

He found himself dangerously close to liking her. Studying her with the practiced eye of a connoisseur, Gus summed up what he saw. Five-ten, ten-and-a-half, about 112 pounds. A size six, he figured. Lisa was a size eight. This woman was smaller boned. Almost fragile.

Back off, man! You’ve taken the cure, remember?

“So what’ll it be, steak? Seafood?” he prompted.

“I had a bag of boiled-”

“Peanuts. Right. They’re on top of the box of bricks. Look, why don’t I check with the desk and see what’s available around these parts while you make your calls? I’m in the room next door. Just bang on the wall when you’re ready.’”

Gus walked out and slammed into his own room next door, thinking about all the times he’d stopped to pick up a stray mutt and ended up with a stack of vet’s bills and a houseful of fleas, not to mention a few bites. He took the time to shower and change into clean khakis and a black knit shirt. Fortunately, his favorite boots were past the polishing stage. He kept them dressed with wet-proofing, so they still looked pretty good to his way of thinking.

He wondered if his effort to look respectable would reassure the skittish woman in the room next door. He was already beginning to regret the impulse that had made him take on her case. Maybe he should have just bought her a tank of gas, wished her well and kept on going. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been an option. Even feeling like hell warmed over, strung out on caffeine, sugar and aspirin, all it had taken was one look at those stricken eyes of hers and he’d gone down for the count.

At least he could take comfort in knowing she wasn’t on the road with a busted mitt and no driver’s license, trying to make Georgia on a dark, rainy night. Although, grimacing at his shaggy image in the mirror as he collected his wallet, keys and pocket change, Gus couldn’t say muc h for the judgment of any woman who would meekly allow a stranger to drive her to the nearest motel, no matter how innocent the situation appeared on the surface.

He stroked his beard. One of these days he was going to have to take the time to get himself trimmed up. Lisa had tried more than once to talk him into shaving, back in the honeymoon stage of their relationship, but he’d held out. Probably, he admitted now, because he’d been afraid she wouldn’t like what she saw.

Maybe if he got hot enough down on that sundrenched beach that was just waiting for him somewhere south of here—a beach where he didn’t know a bloody soul and nobody knew him—he might even decide to get reacquainted with his own face. At the moment, however, he needed all the cover he could get.

Sooner or later, Gus told himself as he let himself out the door, he was going to have to kick a few bad habits. Number one was being unable to say no to a lady—canine, feline or otherwise. Just last summer he’d found himself giving aid and comfort—not to - mention room and board—to a one-eared cat and her litter of kittens, two half-starved pups that had been dumped on a country road and a raccoon that was so old and blind she’d fallen out of a persimmon tree and knocked herself out. Eventually, he’d managed to find them all permanent homes.

With women, his record wasn’t quite so good. The first woman he’d ever loved—or thought he did—had ended up marrying his best friend. He’d been young and idealistic, and it had taken him a while to get over it, but he’d survived. There’d been other women since then—a lot of them, because Gus truly enjoyed women. But he didn’t date anyone seriously. Not until Lisa, and maybe not even then.

The trouble was, the kind of woman he was booked on never quite lived up to his expectations. Eventually he’d learned not to expect anything.

And no matter what Mariah looked like—no matter how much she engaged his sympathy—she was not going to get to him. No way! All he had to do was ignore those big weimaraner eyes and that long, lean, languorous body of hers for a few more hours. Come morning, he would drop her off at her car, treat her to a tank of gas and send her on her way with his blessings.

And then he’d head south and continue his quest for the sun. There damn well had to be a sun out there somewhere!

It was still coming down like Niagara Falls when Mariah let herself out a few minutes later. Gus took one look at her and then hurried out to unlock the truck.

Down, boy. Think big, juicy steak. Think pecan pie smothered with ice cream…think anything but what you’re thinking!

The lady cleaned up real good. She was wearing jeans, a man’s white shirt, vinyl slicker and a pair of cork-soled sandals that towered about three inches off the ground, making those skyscraper legs of hers even more spectacular. She looked like a million bucks. But then, even wet, stained, bruised and swollen, she’d rated well over the top on any man’s gauge.

Gus figured the sooner they parted ways, the better. “Steak, seafood, waffles or burgers, take your pick. There’s a chicken takeout three miles farther down the road.” He did his best to ignore the way she got into a truck. Mariah was tall enough to edge her hip onto the seat and swing both legs inside in one smooth, flowing motion.

He closed the door and stalked around the hood. Dammit, it was going on nine and his last meal had been a candy bar a couple of hundred miles ago. “Make up your mind,” he said, his voice rough from an earlier bout of coughing.