The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby

“I’m not real crazy about waffles. Anything else suits me, though. You choose.”

Following the directions he’d received from the night clerk, Gus drove to the steak house. The waiting line stretched all the way out to the edge of the canopy. Without a word he backe d out and headed for the two closest seafood places, only to discover that the shortest wait at either place would be at least an hour.

“Goodness, I wonder what it’s like on a week end,” Mariah murmured. Her stomach growled noisily.

“This is Florida, right? It’s February, so what d’you expect?” He was hungry, too, but it was hard to feel too grim when he was this close to a woman who turned him on big time without even trying. Which was crazy, because he wasn’t even over his last affair! At least, he hadn’t thought he was. But there was something downright disarming about a growling stomach on a woman who looked like the cover of a six-dollar fashion magazine, even in a plastic raincoat.

They drove a few miles farther, picked up a couple of chicken dinners and headed back to the motel. Gus eased into the parking place, then leaned across and opened her door, trying hard to ignore the mingled smell of fried chicken, lilacs and warm woman. He tucked the boxes under his coat and made a dive for the shelter.

Mariah was right beside him, her wet face and wet slicker glistening under the security lights. She was laughing, but Gus noticed she was supporting her right hand with her left. He knew from personal experience that two hands were better than one, especially for things like opening chicken boxes and shucking plastic utensils out of their packets.

And hell, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.

While the rain droned down a few feet away, he watched her struggle to unlock her door left-handed, then impatiently took the key and did the job for her. She wasn’t a whiner, he would give her that much.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “And, Gus, thank you for supper.” She lifted a box off the stack and stepped inside. “I’ll add it to my account.”

Gus was going to say “You do that” when his throat betrayed him again. His cough, a remnant of the flu, soun ded a lot worse than it was.

“That sounds awful! Come inside for a minute, I might have something…” She had that same mother-hen glint in her eye his sister Angel always got when she was trying to cure his sweet tooth. “I know I’ve got something in one of my bags—everybody’s been coughing lately.”

Nearly strangling, Gus followed her inside. Even with his eyes watering, he couldn’t help but appreciate her rear end as she leaned over to fumble left-handed through the bottles, jars and tubes in her makeup case. “Hey, don’t go to any trouble on my account,” he rasped. “I never take medicine.”

She pulled out a card of foil-wrapped lozenges and held it out to him. “Yes, you do. I saw you take aspirin earlier, remember?”

“That’s not medicine, that’s—Ah, hell, give me the thing,” he snapped, and immediately regretted his surliness. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“It has, hasn’t it?” There was no reproach in her voice, but her quiet Georgia accent made him feel about the size of a small cockroach.“ I expect you’re hungry, too. Why don’t we have supper and make an early night of it? I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow, and you probably do, too. Where are you going, anyway?”

As she was making a real mess of trying to open a chicken box one-handed, Gus took it from her and finished the job. With a courtly gesture, he pulled out her chair, partly to make up for being a sorehead.Play it cool, man. This is strictly business. Ships in the night, and all that. “Wait here. I’ll get us something to drink. You want cold from the machine, or coffee?”

“Cold, please. Diet cola’s fine.”

“Chemicals are bad for you. Sugar’s real food.”

She smiled, and it occurred to him as he dug in his pocket for change that if she smiled much more, there was no telling how big a fool he was going to make of himself before he manag ed to get away.

Awkwardly, she set out the napkins and plastic cutlery. “Don’t go to any trouble,” Gus warned. “I can eat in my own room.”

“Yes, but if you stay here you can have my biscuit and the wing on my breast quarter. I never eat wings.”

“Are you trying to bribe me?”

“Not at all. Call it a down payment on what I owe you. Did you order the potatoes and gravy, or the fries?”

“There’s one of each, take your choice,” he said, and she smiled again. He wondered if she was coming on to him.

She wasn’t. He wasn’t quite sure how he knew—he just knew. There was nothing at all flirtatious about the way she picked up her chicken breast in her left hand and bit into it. Hell, she probably, wasn’t any more anxious to get involved than he was, he told himself, wondering why the thought wasn’t more reassuring.

Gus knew for a fact that some women took one look at his battered face, scarred from one too many foot ball collisions and the usual run of on-the-job accidents, and took a fast hike. But just because this one‘ hadn’t, didn’t mean she was feeling the same pull of sexual attraction he was feeling.

And he was definitely, undeniably feeling it, all right. It was a good thing they would be splitting pretty soon, or else Gus might just find himself forgetting a few hard-learned lessons from his own recent past.

Three

Dinner was devoured quickly, with little conversa tion. Mariah told herself there was nothing at all wrong with finding herself alone in a motel room in a strange town with a strange man. It happened.

A small inner voice, one she had never quite managed to outgrow, whispered that it might happen to some women; it had certainly never happened to Sara Mariah Brady.

As a model, Mariah’s social life had been even more limited than it had been back home, if for an entirely differ ent reason. The novelty of beautiful clothes, beautiful people and exotic locations had quickly worn off. After initial training, her days had begun early, and by the time she’d gotten back to the apartment all she’d wanted to do was devour an enormous meal and fall into bed.

Instead, she usually made do with a quick shower-cool, so as not to dry out her skin—a manicure touch-up, half an hour of yoga and a light supper of fruit, rice and vegetables. Then she would fall into bed.

Back in Muddy Landing the store had closed at five in the wintertime, six during the summer. By the time she’d cooked supper for whoever happened to be living at home, she’d been tired, but not too tired to have gone out for a few hours if anyone had asked her.

The trouble was, in Muddy Landing, there was no “out” to go to. Nor was there anyone to go with once she’d discovered that Vance Brubaker, charming, attentive sales rep for a garden tractor manufacturer, had four motherless children at home, and was seeing a woman in Darien and one in Wayne County at the same time he was courting Mariah, in the hopes that one of the three would be willing to take on his family. Nor did he particularly care which one. Mariah had almost convinced herself she was in love with the man when the whole affair had started to come unraveled.

Sighing, she finished supper and deftly closed the remains inside her box with her left hand. “I never knew I was ambidextrous.” It was the first thing either of them had said since Gus had opened her salt and pepper packets and she’d thanked him.

“Good thing you are. Let’s see about getting that mitt of yours iced down again before I leave you.”

Thunder and lightning had set in about half an hour earlier. Now a blast of thunder rattled the windows, making her flinch. “Actually, I’m not all that sleepy. I wonder if there’s a weather channel we could tune in to.”

There was. While Mariah washed her hands, then studiously stared at all the L’s, the H’s and the curving dotted lines on the weather map, Gus filled the ice tub from the machine outside.

“What’s the prognosis?” he asked when he came back inside. He refilled the bag, arranged her right hand on the chair arm, spread a small towel over the swollen bruise and then carefully placed the ice bag in position, trying not to admire her graceful, long-fingered hands too much. Trying not to let his imagination run away with him.

“Prognosis? Oh, the weather, you mean. I forgot to listen.”

The truth was, Mariah had been too busy thinking about Gus. Wondering who he was. Where he was from. Why he was traveling alone.

To a job, perhaps. Maybe he was looking for work. She’d spent hours in his company, yet she didn’t know the first thing about him except that despite his rough looks, the semipermanent scowl that was etched on his bearded face and the pallor she had first taken for something sinister, he was kind. Most men would have walked away long before this, but for some reason he seemed determined to help her.

Whether she wanted him to or not! “Gus, where are you headed?”

The narrowed glance he sent her way spelled Keep Out in dark, electric blue. “South,” he said tersely. Removing the bag, he unzipped it, popped out a few cubes, resealed and replaced it.

“I’m going home to Georgia,” she confided. “I guess I already told you about Muddy Landing, didn’t I?”

“Yep.” He stepped back to frown down at her, his fists bracing a pair of narrow hips. “Need a couple more aspirin before you turn in?”

“If I do, I’m sure I have some somewhere.” He obviously wanted to get away. That, for some reason, irritated her. After protesting her independence earlier, for all the good it had done her, she was suddenly in no mood to be alone.

Too much to think about. Too many questions with no answers that she’d just as soon put off asking as long as she could. Which wasn’t like her at all.

But then, nothing about this whole messy business was typical of the practical, unflappable woman she’d always been. While finishing high school, holding down a part-time job and later, a full-time one, all the while taking care of her siblings, Mariah had dealt with every childhood disaster imaginable.

Of course, she’d had her own method of dealing with stress in those days. Digging. Planting and transplanting. There were too many things in her life she couldn’t change, so she changed the things she could. Rearranging furniture had never given her half the satisfaction that rearranging shrubbery had. She had the greenest thumbs in Muddy Landing—every body said so—but Basil had once told her that all she had to do was step outside the back door with a certain look on her face, and every shrub in the yard flinched.

Lately, she’d had to make do with yoga.

“Well…good night, Gus. And thank you for my supper and the room. And all the rest. Naturally, I’ll mail you a check just as soon as—”

“Yeah, sure,” was the gruff response.

The man was a bear. If it weren’t for those remarkably beautiful eyes of his, he wouldn’t even rate a second glance, she told herself, stung by the fact that he could obviously hardly wait to get away.

Oh, yes, he would, too. In spite of surface appearances, the man radiated authority. He was intensely masculine. And while some women might be put off by the beard and all that shaggy black hair, with those wide shoulders and narrow hips, and those strong, amazingly gentle hands, he most definitely rated a second look.

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