Ooh Baby, Baby Part 2

The question so excited T.J. that he flung his fists, hit himself in the nose and let out a wail that was instantly matched by the howl of his startled sister.

Peggy’s confidence crumbled. “Sh, it’s all right, sweeties, Mommy’s here. Mommy’s—” she winced as they hiked up the volume “—here,” she finished lamely.

Clearly, the situation called for considerably more than her esteemed presence in the room. They were hungry. Both of them. At the same time.

Responding to her infants’ cries, Peggy’s breasts became engorged, painful. Two breasts. Two hungry babes. Fortuitous enough, but the thought of simultaneously juggling two feeding infants made her break out in a cold sweat.

She sighed, scooping up T.J. while Virginia thrashed with righteous indignation and struggled to focus newborn eyes. “Sorry, sweetie,” she murmured to her wailing daughter. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes. Your brother asked first.”

* * *

By a quarter of two, both infants had drifted into a satisfied slumber, and their exhausted mother returned to the sanctuary of her own tiny room. Peggy’s shoulders ached. Her head throbbed, and she was so tired she wobbled when she walked.

Her bed, invitingly tousled by her abrupt departure, beckoned like a lover. She sighed, crossed the room and glanced out the window. Something struck her as odd. She stopped, lifted a blind slat for a better look and saw a strange vehicle parked at the front curb behind her car.

A nervous skitter slipped down her spine. The full moon splashed the vehicle’s hood, providing enough illumination to confirm that Peggy had never seen it before, and she was certain it had no legitimate reason to be there.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow duck around the side of the duplex. A large shadow. A man’s shadow. Someone was out there, a sinister presence creeping beneath her bedroom window. Peggy had never been more terrified in her life.

Chapter Six

The cat’s eyes gleamed feral in the moonlight. Back arched, the animal froze for a split second, then shot past the fence into the shadowed safety of the woods.

Crouched beside the porch, Travis flipped off his trusty penlight, blew on the lens, then spun it like a bone-handled revolver and tucked it into his jeans pocket. He sat back on his boot heels, rubbing his stiff neck. The startled cat was the third varmint he’d chased off since midnight, none of them two-legged.

Which suited Travis fine. A puny penlight was enough to frighten off raccoons and pussycats, but it wouldn’t provide much protection against an armed felon. If it came to that, Travis would rely on the element of surprise. The way he figured it, criminals were gutless cowards who preyed on the weak and would wet themselves if confronted by someone their own size.

At least, that was his fervent hope. Heroism wasn’t really Travis’s thing. He much preferred leaving valor to those whose palms didn’t sweat at swaying tree shadows. But a cowboy’s got to do what a cowboy’s got to do.

He stood slowly, bones creaking as he stifled a yawn. When he turned toward the street, light erupted all around him, a blinding brilliance that made his eyes water.

“Freeze. Police!” The command boomed from the core of the radiance. “Get down! Down on the ground. Get down now!”

Startled and confused, Travis raised a forearm to shade his eyes. Something leapt out of the light, grabbed his wrist and twisted him around.

It was a chaos of grasping hands, bellowing voices, an unintelligible din of pandemonium. Before he could take a second breath, he’d been flipped over the freshly chopped tree stump, bounced off the newly stacked woodpile and was sprawled on the ground, sucking dirt. His sore ribs shrieked at the indignity. Someone yanked an arm behind his back, shoved his wrist up to his shoulder blades. A knee bludgeoned his spine. A rock bit into his cheek. Rough hands dug through his pockets, emptied them. Cold metal wrapped his wrists, clicked tight.

Then, as quickly as the swarm had descended, it rose up, leaving Travis flat on his belly, winded, bulldogged and tethered like a thrown steer.

“Find a gun?”

“Nah, just his wallet and this.”

Twisting his head, Travis saw a uniformed police officer displaying the penlight to someone beyond his view. He felt the vibration of feet around his prone form, saw several pairs of shoes and estimated that he was surrounded by at least three, possibly four officers.

A moment later, two of the cops flanked him and hauled him to his feet. He swayed there, spitting grass, and cast a woeful glance at his beloved Stetson, which lay on the ground dangerously close to a pair of tromping feet. “My hat,” he managed to mutter. “Don’t step on my danged hat.”

The officer on his right gave his manacled arm a jarring jerk. “You won’t be needing it, pal.”

Not need his hat? Travis blinked up, alarmed by the heresy. Why, a cowboy without his hat was like, well, like a cop without a badge. He cleared his throat, tried to speak rationally despite a distracting film of wet grit on his tongue. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t doing whatever it is you think I was doing.”

The policeman who was grasping his shackled wrist shot him a cynical stare.

Travis tried again, more succinctly this time. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Sure, buddy, sure.” Clearly unimpressed, the policeman squinted toward the front porch, then turned toward a fellow officer who was using a massive flashlight to search the yard, presumably for evidence. “Hey, Charlie. Is that the RP?”

Charlie glanced toward the duplex. “Yeah, I imagine. Dispatch said the prowler report came directly from the resident.”

Travis frowned, followed the policeman’s gaze and saw Peggy Saxon’s horrified face peering out the front window. His heart sank halfway to his boots.

A moment later, the porch light flashed on and she dashed out, clutching her robe at the throat. “Travis?” Her eyes were huge. “Ohmigosh, Travis, is that you?”

He tried to smile, but his lips stuck to his teeth. “You oughtn’t be out here, ma’am. You’ll catch a chill.”

Peggy’s jaw drooped like a gate with a broken hinge.

Officer Charlie stepped forward. “Mrs. Saxon?” She closed her mouth, managing to nod. “You know this fellow?”

For a moment, she simply stared at Travis, stunned. Then her eyes narrowed into mean green slits. “It would serve you right if I told them that I’d never seen you before in my life,” she snapped.

Travis hung his head. “Yes’m.”

“What in the world are you doing here?”

“Well, thing is…” He paused, opting for a diversionary tactic and flashed his trademark grin. “So, how’d you and Sue Anne get on? She said those babies were cuter than a pair of big-eyed calves—”

“Cut the bull, Stockwell.” She folded her arms, glaring at him. “You were spying on me, and I want to know why.”

“Spying? Why, no, ma’am, I wouldn’t do any such thing. I was just, well, passing by and, ah…” Alerted by her furrowed frown, Travis realized that Peggy Saxon wasn’t the least bit fooled, and had no intention of buying a load of hooey, no matter how tempting the price. She wanted the truth, and if the angry wrinkle of her darling amber brows was any clue, she wanted it now.

But danged if she wasn’t pretty when she was mad. Those green eyes flashing, and that pert little nose all scrunched up—Peggy tapped an impatient foot.

Travis rolled his shoulders forward and sighed. “It just didn’t seem right, you being alone your first night home with those babies. And when I heard that there’d been, ah, some trouble around here, I figured I could catch a few winks in my truck so I’d be close by in case—”

“Trouble?” Peggy blinked once and spun toward the squat, ruddy-faced policeman who had a death grip on Travis’s left bicep. “What kind of trouble?”

Startled, the officer tipped his hat, his gaze darting to Travis, then back to Peggy. “There’ve been a few incidents, ma’am,” he admitted. “Some women have been, uh, assaulted.”

Even in the pale moonlight, Travis saw the color drain from her face. “Oh.”

An older officer with a bushy mustache loped back from the street clutching Travis’s wallet and the portable two-way radio he kept in his pickup truck. “The truck checks out,” the officer told Officer Charlie. “No wants, no warrants registered to Travis J. Stockwell. He’s clean, too,” he added, nodding at Travis.

The ruddy-faced policeman seemed disappointed. “Maybe he’s been using that scanner to keep tabs on the police.”

“It’s not a scanner,” the mustached officer replied. “It’s just a CB radio.” He glanced up at Peggy. “We can still take him in for trespassing, if you want, ma’am.”

To Travis’s horror, she pursed her lips as if considering the option. “Trespassing? Oh, no, Peggy, ma’am, I wasn’t trespassing.” He straightened, shaking his head so violently he could feel his hair vibrate. Words rushed out, nervousness accentuating his Texas twang until it was thick enough to hang a hat on. “Something was moving out yonder in those woods, heading straight for your backyard. I couldn’t rightly tell what it was, so I just moseyed over for a quick look-see—”

Peggy interrupted. “What was it?”

“Ma’am?”

“The ‘something’ that came out of the woods. What was it?”

“Oh.” He coughed and studied his boots. “It was, umm, well, a cat.”

Officer Charlie chuckled. The ruddy-faced officer snorted in disbelief.

“What color was it?”

Travis looked up, perplexed. “The cat, ma’am?” She gave an irritated nod. “It was orange, I think, and kind of striped.”

Peggy turned away, but not before Travis saw the telltale quirk of that sweet little dimple. At that point, he realized that she had no intention of having him arrested.

He exhaled all at once, then managed a reproachful stare. “Why, ma’am, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were just funning with me. `Course that can’t be true, on account of a fine lady such as yourself being too well bred to enjoy watching a man sweat like a pig in a butcher’s kitchen.”

“You’re mistaken, Mr. Stockwell. I’m enjoying it very much.” Peggy unfolded her arms and fiddled with the lapels of a robe that Travis now noticed was worn through at the elbows. “You took ten years off my life,” she muttered. “I ought to let them have you.”

He let his head droop forward, then rolled his eyes up and widened them, using the same whipped-puppy expression that used to melt Sue Anne’s heart whenever she got perturbed at him. “Yes’m, Peggy, ma’am. I’m real sorry.”

A smile twitched the corner of her mouth. “Nice try, cowboy.”

“Excuse me?”

“I learned a long time ago that you can avoid stepping in it if you recognize the smell.” She heaved a sigh, shoved back a tangle of fiery hair. “Lucky for you, I’ve been feeding a little orange-striped stray. There’s a food bowl on the back porch.” She turned to Officer Charlie. “I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, Officer, but apparently there’s been a misunderstanding. I won’t be pressing charges. You can let him go.”

“You sure, ma’am?” When she nodded, albeit reluctantly, Officer Charlie moved around to remove the handcuffs.

Travis rubbed his wrists, retrieved his wallet, CB radio and hat, and cast Peggy a woeful look as the ruddy-faced policeman hauled him aside to give him what appeared from Peggy’s vantage point to be a stern lecture.

Peggy sagged against the porch rail, drained and oddly disoriented. She wanted to be angry. Dammit, she was angry. When she’d seen that slinking male shadow outside her window, she’d nearly fainted in terror. Her hands were still shaking.

If Travis Stockwell could be believed, he’d been trying to protect her, a concept that boggled her skeptical, independent mind. No man had ever put himself out for Peggy before, not her husband, not her father, not even the hormone-pickled, adolescent dog who’d escorted her to the prom, then abandoned her for a tipsy blond cheerleader rumored to be taking all comers behind the high school gym.

That had been a hard lesson, one of many that had taught Peggy not to expect much from the male of the species. Men, even relatively young ones, were transitory at best. At worst, they were deceitful, selfish and downright cruel.

Clearly, Travis Stockwell did not represent the worst of his kind, which to Peggy’s mind meant that he was basically amicable, probably decent, a person who would treat others with respect for however long he chose to hang around.

Naturally, Peggy didn’t hold Travis personally responsible for the emotional wanderlust afflicting his gender. She was, however, acutely aware of his maleness. From the brim of his Stetson to the scuffed toes of his stamped leather boots, Travis Stockwell was pure, unadulterated man. That kept her wary. It also affected her in deeper, more disturbing ways.

The rev of a car engine broke into her thoughts. As she glanced up, one squad car was pulling away from the curb. The other had already hung a U-turn and was speeding into the night.

Travis stood awkwardly at the foot of the porch steps, hat in his hands, shifting from foot to foot like a scolded child. “I’m real sorry to have upset you, Peggy. It was the last thing on this earth I meant to do.”

“I know that, Travis.” The fact that he’d finally dropped the formality of calling her “ma’am” didn’t escape Peggy’s notice. It made them seem closer, somehow. More like friends. She smiled, fidgeted with a loose thread on the cuff of her robe and was suddenly embarrassed by her shabby attire. “Your intentions were honorable enough, but I wish you’d have let me know what you were up to.”

“I figured you’d just say you didn’t need watching out for and send me packing.”

“You figured right. Still, it was a kind gesture and I appreciate it.”

The porch light illuminated his strained expression as he glanced over at his truck and back again. “So, have the babies been keeping you up tonight?”

“Among other things.”

He actually blushed. “You should go on inside, then, try to get some rest. G’night, Peggy.”

For some reason, she felt a small surge of panic as he turned to leave. “Wait! I mean…” Her voice trailed off as he glanced expectantly over his shoulder. “Can I, ah, get you anything?”

“Ma’am?”

“A glass of water, something to eat. I could make coffee.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“Ah, yes, so it is.” She tangled her fingers together, locked them at her waist, but made no move to reenter the house.

Travis shuffled his feet and peeked up in that endearing manner that, although clearly manipulative, was nonetheless appealing. “You can sleep easy, Peggy. If you need me, I’ll be right outside.”

“I won’t need you, Mr. Stockwell.”

“Now, don’t go getting your back up.”

“My back is perfectly fine, thank you.”

“Yes, ma’am, it sure is.” He smiled, a brilliant flash that lit up the night and melted her heart.

Then a strange thing happened. Their eyes met and held. Travis’s smile faded into an expression of awed confusion. Peggy stood there, frozen, transfixed by a peculiar radiance emanating from his mystified gaze. He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before, never seen any woman before. There was a reverence in his eyes that took her breath away, and a sensual promise that sent her heart into frantic palpitations.

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