A Stranger In Texas

He was the father. It might help him over this terrible time of being alone.

Actually, the fatal trip had been to bond him with his son. He hadn’t been much of a part of his other family. Why would he be interested in sharing a surprise child?

He ought to be told.

She’d figure that out another time. He could get a DNA test and see how careless he’d been. He was—careless? What had she been doing in his room?

Don could have gone up with Zach. Actually, no one needed to go up with him. He was an adult. He could have handled himself. He was handling himself. She’d just gone along with him and been available.

A woman accompanying a man to a hotel room isn’t all that smart. Some conduct is necessary for a woman under all circumstances. As her mother had always told her: If you don’t walk on the tracks, you won’t get hit by the train!

It was good advice.

So. She was just as responsible. She hadn’t made one protest. Instead, she’d gone with him and sorted out his problems and even given him the pill so that he could sleep.

She had given more than a pill. She had given herself.

Had being twenty-nine triggered her foolish behavior? What would this do to the town? To her place in the town? To her family? To her? To the child? Yes, the child.

It was a little late for such thoughts. She ought to have figured it out sooner.

It was three months later, on a Friday morning, and Jessica had gone to the hotel. She was girding up to face the family’s doctor, when who should walk into The Horizon but Zachary Thomas!

Him!

For some strange reason, she’d taken her eyes from the computer monitor. She looked through the open door past the desk as he approached the door and came through it.

He was more alert.

That was an interesting observation for her to have. She’d not thought, there he was, or what was he doing there, but that he was alert.

He looked wonderful! He was a really well-set-up human male animal. Her shocking body noticed. Her knees became subtly restless. Her breathing changed. Her eyes were enormous.

As he approached the desk, he looked through the door and saw her. He grinned and kept his eyes on Jessica.

When Don came to the desk, Zach shook his head and grinned as he continued to look at Jess. He lifted his chin and said, “I’ve come to see Jessica Channing.”

Her lips suddenly puffy and parting, Jess pushed back her swivel chair and walked to the desk’s counter like an uncontrolled robot.

He didn’t say hello or anything normal; he asked, “Are you free?”

She could have replied in any number of ways, but she nodded.

He said, “Come walk on the beach with me.”

It was raining. It was a nice early summer’s rain. She put on her raincoat because Don held it for her. As she walked around the end of the counter, Don gave Zach an umbrella.

The two walkers didn’t say anything. They just went out of The Horizon and down onto the beach. Zach was in very casual clothing. He’d just gotten off a shuttle plane. He was there.

Jess looked at him now and again. His face was relaxed. His eye crinkles crinkled as he smiled down at her. He breathed deeply and sighed in contentment.

In three months, he was back to see another woman? That was quick.

He said, “Some of the recipients of the Donor Harvest are coming to the hospital tomorrow. I was invited to meet them. This was an opportunity to see if you are real. You are.”

Grieving for his wife, he’d noticed another woman?

She looked at the TEXAS sky, which was in shades of gray. It was beautiful. The rain was misty and touched her hot face. Her metabolism had changed and she was generally too warm.

He said, “You’ve lost some weight. You’re skinny. Are you all right? Your cheeks are hot. Are you well?”

She replied, “Yes.” That was for whatever he’d said. She didn’t mention that the skinniness wouldn’t last.

As they went back toward the hotel, he asked awkwardly, “Could you take the afternoon off and…be with me? Tomorrow would you go with me? I’m not sure…how to handle…all this. You were so logical last time. I will never be able to repay you for your help.”

She blushed scarlet just about all over, but he saw her face redden. He was startled. “Are you all right?”

She assured him, “Yes.”

His hand caught hers. “I’m glad. You were such a help to me. You were so calm. I don’t think I could ever make it up to you. If you should ever need any kind of help, I’d be grateful if you’ll let me be the one, or at least be in the crowd that would help you.”

She looked down at her feet while she could still see them. Pregnant women said such. But she again blushed scarlet. Damn!

In some earnestness, Zach pressed, “Are you okay? Why did you blush that way?”

“It’s nothing.” Nothing!

He took her arm and stopped her steps. “Jessica, you wouldn’t hide from me, would you? You and Paul could claim my very life in support. You both have calls on me. If there is anything—”

“There isn’t.”

He watched her soberly. And she looked everywhere else.

Zach asked gently, “Will you go with me to the hospital?”

She looked down but she said, “Yes.”

“I have a strong feeling you’d rather not go with me, but I accept that you will go along and I’ll hold you to the agreement.”

She nodded.

He shortened his steps as he looked at his watch. And he pretended to be offhand as he closely quizzed her. “Everything at the hotel okay?”

“Yes.”

“Your family all okay?”

He wasn’t one damned bit subtle. He knew something was riding her. Well, something had ridden her. Him. How was she to get through this? Would she have to get rid of him again? Get on with it all alone?

He was down to asking, “The town’s steady?”

And somewhat irritated, she replied to him, “No earthquakes, either.”

So he was silent. As they walked, he turned his head and looked around as men do, but he was thinking and his eyes squinted just a bit.

Finally, he asked, “Are you involved with some man?”

“Not seriously.”

Zach stopped and demanded, “But you admit you are involved?”

And she was honest. “In a manner of speaking, I…was.”

He said nothing.

She looked up at Zach and there he was, good-looking, serious, interested, concerned. Hell.

Softening his male voice, he told her, “If you have any problem, at all, tell me how to help you. I owe you.”

She replied briefly, “No.”

Three

Jessica took Zachary to her parents’ house for lunch. She hadn’t even called them ahead of time. The two just went there. She introduced him as Zach Thomas. And she named her parents as Mark and Cynthia Channing.

Jess’s red hair, green eyes and translucent skin were her mother’s. Cynthia was a beauty. And it was easy for Zach to say, “I know what a beauty Jessica will be in her time.”

How many times had Cynthia heard such talk about her precious daughter? It was a given. How can one take credit for something over which one has no input? Cynthia barely smiled. But her green eyes weighed what sort of man Zachary Thomas might be.

That made Zach smile.

Cynthia said to him, “I remember you. Paul Butler was so concerned for you.”

“I would never have made it, if Paul and Jessica hadn’t been there.”

Her parents nodded once to acknowledge his words.

Mark Channing ran Sea View’s weekly newspaper and was always home for lunch. Well, on some Thursdays when the paper was being put to bed, Cynthia took her husband’s lunch and sometimes his supper to him.

Jessica’s parents welcomed Zach and made him comfortable with their casual TEXAS manners. And with skillful subtleness her mother added enough of everything in sandwiches and salad to include the surprise guest quite easily. She was used to doing that.

It was natural…seeming. Both parents were ordinarily very curious. However, the only really comfortable person there was Zach. Both parents’ eyes caught every minute as Zach’s glances lighted on their daughter.

Jessica’s cheeks were scarlet. She licked her lips a lot. She held herself calmly in check.

And the parents looked at Zach. They narrowed their eyes and listened to him. He was talking about teaching. Then he touched on witnessing the harvest results the next day.

Vulnerably, he said, “I’m not sure I can handle seeing kids who have transplants from Mike. Jess has been kind enough to agree to go with me. She and Paul Butler have been so supportive. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

Zach’s face was so calmly earnest.

The parents watched silently.

Jessica toyed with her food and her cheeks continued scarlet.

The conversation gaps didn’t bother Zach. Jessie’s dad said enough and her mother’s observations were neutral as usual. She never had appeared to be strident, but Jess knew her to be ironhanded adamant.

Jess wondered when her mother would quit silently considering her and begin to question her. Right then, her mother was considering—Zach. She was a courteous, well-brought-up woman who was now reserved.

Jessica sighed without seeming to. She had learned to do that in her early years. It was of special need for their aging preacher’s rambling sermons.

When would Jessica Channing get a sermon from their next relatively new, but now aging preacher? Who would tell him that Jessica Channing was pregnant?

Not her parents. She could get to nine and a half months and her parents wouldn’t publicly “notice” any difference in her unless she mentioned it to them.

At the table, next to Jess, was the father of her child. And although Zach was sensitive enough to realize that there was something bothering her, it hadn’t occurred to him that he was a part of it.

Should she tell him?

Ah, how could she? He was now so free! Actually, he’d probably been this markedly individual all of his life. He was on his own. He had been that way even with a family to support. And the deaths of Hannah and Mike had shocked him raw. But now he was getting back to being himself.