The Sweetest September

Shelby glanced back at the field. Tractor still churning...or doing whatever tractors do.

Sighing, she sank onto the top step of the porch. There were rocking chairs framing a bank of windows, but sitting in one seemed presumptuous...like she was an old friend, familiar enough to sit on his porch. But she wasn’t an old friend...or even a new one. Shelby was nothing to this man...and he likely wouldn’t feel too “friendly” when she delivered her news.

She glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. Hadn’t someone seen the car come up the drive?

“Hey,” a voice came from her left.

Shelby turned and peered over the overgrown sweet olive bush to find a young sunburned guy in sagging jeans and a flat-billed cap staring at her with suspicion. She stood. “Oh, hey. I wondered if anyone was around.”

“If you’re sellin’ something, we don’t want it,” he said, wiping his brow with a soggy blue bandanna.

“Well, how do you know you don’t want it?” Shelby asked.

“If I ain’t offered nothin’ I don’t have to choose whether I want it or not. Stands to reason it’s easier to say I don’t want to buy nothin’.”

Roundabout logic, but it made sense.

Shelby walked down the five concrete steps. The guy with the bowlegged gait, stained T-shirt and bright blue eyes narrowed his gaze.

“I’m not selling anything, but I am looking for John Beauchamp,” she said.

“Out there on the tractor.” He pointed at the big green tractor. It was so far away Shelby could see only the outline of a figure inside the cab.

“Oh,” she said, licking her lips, trying to look calm.

“You here from the church, then?” he asked, shoving the bandanna in his back pocket.

“The church? Uh, no.”

He lifted his brows. “Well, the boss—”

“But I do need to speak to Mr. Beauchamp. It’s important,” she interrupted.

The kid shook his head. “We in the middle of harvest and don’t quit for nothin’. Not even a pretty lady.”

Shelby didn’t know what to say. Seemed evident the worker wasn’t about to fetch John off the tractor. “But this can’t wait.”

“Guess I can take you out if you want. Boss will have to stop then.” He gestured to a golf cart on steroids. “I’m Homer. Been working for the Stantons forever. Reckon I can decide you’re all right and take you out to do whatever business you got with Boss Man.”

Boss Man? Had she entered a time warp? “Thank you. I’m Shelby.” She stuck out her hand, but Homer waved it away, lifting his hands and showing streaks of grease on his palms.

“I’ll just say how you do.” He bobbed his head.

Southerners were weird sometimes. And charming. But mostly weird. “You called Mr. Beauchamp Boss Man but you said this land belongs to the Stantons?”

“The boss married a Stanton and runs the place for the family. Ain’t nobody works this land the way Boss Man do. Even ol’ Mr. Stanton, who died right there in that tractor of a heart attack, didn’t love it like Boss, and there ain’t nobody left to run this place, which is a shame since this land’s been worked by Stantons for long as I can remember and way past that. Boss’s wife died last year in an accident.”

“Oh,” Shelby said, not really wanting the history lesson, not really wanting to soften over John losing his wife. She wanted to get on with telling John about the baby and go back to a place that made sense to her.

Homer cracked another smile. “You ain’t from here, are you? You talk funny.”

“I’m from Washington State.”

“Well, tell the president ‘hey’ for me when you see him.”

Okay, she wasn’t touching that one. “Will do.”

“I’ll get a towel outta the barn for you to sit on. Don’t want to mess that fancy dress up,” Homer said, loping off toward the barn.

Shelby waited, fiddling with the key chain and double-checking she’d locked the rental car since she’d left her purse on the floorboard. Of course no one was around to make off with it, but living in Seattle most of her life had ingrained certain precautions.

But then, sometimes taking precautions failed. She stood here living proof about to climb into a cart and bump out to a tractor operated by a man who was going to get the shock of his life. Yeah, sometimes in spite of a best effort, shit happened.

Like getting pregnant.

When Homer came back around, he carried a faded striped beach towel, which he placed on the seat of the cart. “Here ya go.” He patted the towel.

Shelby eyed the new boots she’d bought before peeing on the pregnancy test stick and learning her life would go from single, focused substitute teacher to single, unfocused mother. Somehow the sleek knee-length boots she’d bought to make her feel better about the whole Darby fiasco seemed frivolous for her new role, but that didn’t mean she wanted them spattered with Louisiana mud.

Minutes later they took off, rolling over ruts in bone-jarring fashion. Shelby clung to the handrail attached to the roof of the cart and focused on not sliding out since the seat belts looked to have been cut out.

She watched the green tractor in the distance grow larger. It still chugged along, workers scurrying behind. Finally, when the motorized cart Homer called a mule got within a hundred feet, the big tractor stopped. Seconds later the stranger from the bar climbed out, looking tired and puzzled.

Homer hopped out of the cart and jogged over to John Beauchamp whose edges looked sharper than she remembered. Sobriety did that. “Brought you a pretty lady who says she needs a word with you. I’ll come back for her in a few. Gotta get this part over to Henry.”

John glanced over to Shelby, his eyes narrowing, face bewildered. Shelby wondered what he thought. Probably had that same sinking feeling she’d had when her boobs had grown heavy and achy and the telltale crimson flow hadn’t appeared. Pure dread.

“Thanks, Homer, but you better give me the part. I’ll drive it over to the combine. Can you take over here for me?”

Homer saluted before scrabbling up the tractor into the cab. He called down, “Sure thing, Boss Man.”

John frowned, shaking his head. “Stop calling me that.”

Homer cackled. “Hey, it’s what you are.”

Shelby sat still as a puddle, watching John walk toward where she held a death grip on the handle. This wasn’t going the way she’d planned, but then again, things were all over the map in regards to plans lately.

Readjusting an old ball cap on his head, John stopped beside the driver’s seat, glancing back at the men standing behind the tractor, drinking water. They all stared, questions in their eyes, at the woman dressed for brunch sitting in a mucked-up cart in the middle of a cane field. “Go on, fellows. We need to finish this field today. Already late on this planting.”

The men leaped into action as the tractor lurched forward with Homer at the helm.

Shelby took a moment to take stock of the man she hadn’t seen since he’d slipped out of the bathroom that fateful night. John’s boots were streaked with mud and his dusty jeans had a hole on the thigh. A kerchief hung from his back pocket, and the faded chambray shirt he wore stretched across broad shoulders. He looked like a farmer.

She’d never thought a farmer could look, well, sexy. But John Beauchamp had that going for him...not that she was interested.

Been there. Done him. Got pregnant.

He looked down at her with cautious green eyes...like she was a ticking bomb he had to disarm. “What are you doing here?”

Shelby tried to calm the bats flapping in her stomach, but there was nothing to quiet them. “Uh, it’s complicated.”

He slid in beside her, his thigh brushing hers. She scooted away. He noticed, but didn’t say anything.

“Complicated,” he repeated as though tasting the word. “You didn’t go back to...Seattle, was it?”

“No, I went back.”

“But you’re here again.” His words held the question.

She glanced at him and then back at the men still casting inquisitive looks their way as they followed the tractor down the furrows.

John got the message and stepped on the accelerator, this time heading toward the huge combine sitting silent in the opposite field.

Shelby yelped and grabbed the edge of the seat with her other hand, nearly sliding across the cracked pleather seat and pitching onto the ground rushing by the wheels. John reached over and clasped her arm, saving her from meeting the hard ground.

“You good?” he asked, releasing her arm and making no apology for the abrupt launch and turn.

“Yeah,” she said, finding her balance, her stomach pitching more at the thought of revealing why she sat beside him than at the actual bumpy ride.

So how did one do this?

Probably should just say it. Rip the bandage off. Pull the knife out. He probably already suspected why she’d come. If it had been anything other than her being pregnant, she’d have found him before now.

As they turned onto the adjacent path, Shelby took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”

He made no sound, but she felt his reaction. Glancing sideways, she saw him go rigid, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“Pregnant?” he said, his voice low, perhaps even angry. “By me?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“That’s very unlikely.”

“Oh, I am. Went to the doctor. Saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Pretty sure there’s a baby in there.”

He slowed down and eyed her in the brightness of the afternoon, looking as if he studied an insect that had landed on his windshield. Squash or let it blow away on its own? “I understand the concept, but it’s not mine. We used a condom. I remember because it was bright pink and I’d never seen anything like that before.”

“Yeah, I thought pink condoms were kind of fun, but that’s not important. Or maybe it is, because something went wrong with it. Besides you ran out before—” She snapped her mouth closed, wishing she hadn’t mentioned his running out. The fact he hightailed it like a coward was the least important part of the whole travesty. “The condom must have broken. Or did you notice any, um, leakage maybe?”

His head snapped around. “No.”

For a moment he didn’t say anything and she wondered if he was searching his memory for that night. “Look I don’t remember much, but I’m pretty sure I would remember that. I was drunk but not stupid.”

“I’m not lying.”

John frowned. “I’m not saying you are, but I can’t accept you got pregnant that night.”

“Look, I’m not thrilled, okay? I’m only here because I thought you should know.”

“Are you sure it’s mine?”

She almost slapped him. Would have been melodramatic and very Scarlett O’Hara-like, fitting considering she sat in the middle of a field in the Deep South feeling rather beat down. “Thanks for the unspoken accusation that I’m a whore. And a stupid one at that.”

John slammed the brakes, his arm catching hers before she could slide forward into the dashboard. “I’m not calling you anything. A woman I barely know shows up saying she’s pregnant, I think I’m entitled to ask a few questions.”

Shelby yanked her arm away and shifted even farther from him. “I came to tell you. That’s it. I don’t expect anything from you. I can take care of the baby on my own.”

John sank against the cracked bench seat, looking as if someone had taken the starch out of him. “Just give me a sec, okay?”

Shelby didn’t say anything more. She got it. She’d needed a lot of moments herself over the past few weeks.

For several minutes they sat; the only sounds were the tractor humming, the occasional shouts of the men working the fields and their mingled breaths, which was vastly different from the last time they’d been together. Very sober. Maybe too sober for the reality that had just crashed into both of their worlds.

“So what are your plans?” he asked. “Are you going to, uh, move forward with the pregnancy?” He sounded choked, as if the words stuck in his throat.

“Yeah. At first I thought about taking care of it—”

“Oh, God,” he breathed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I can’t imagine. I can’t—”

“I know, but my first reaction was to erase the mistake we made then I could just move forward, but...” She trailed off, wondering how she could put into words what she’d experienced when she’d seen the heartbeat, heard the rhythm established by a life growing inside her. It was almost sacred.

John’s eyes met hers, his gaze still convoluted, still shocked. “But what?”

“I heard the heartbeat,” she whispered, swallowing the sudden emotion. Something warm crept up her spine. It wasn’t an aw emotion. More like something that might eat her and swallow her whole. Not danger, but something life altering, something that made her palms sweaty.

John said nothing, merely turned his attention to the field full of glossy green leaves of sugarcane stirring in the slight wind. Captured stark against the horizon, he stood in sharp relief. John was a man shaken to his core.

“I’m sorry,” she said, after several more seconds of nothing from him. The knot in her stomach grew tighter. She didn’t know what to do, how to make it better for him. Or her.

“Me, too,” he offered, his eyes fastened on the horizon.

“If you’ll take me to the house now, I’ll let you get back to work,” she said.

John scratched his head beneath the Ragin’ Cajun ball cap. “Not yet. Let me run this part out and then we’ll go back to the house.”

Shelby didn’t want to spend any more time with him. She wanted to go to her hotel room in Baton Rouge, take a bath and curl up beneath the coverlet with the TV drowning out everything in her life. Escape sounded perfect, but obviously John wasn’t going to let her slink away. The knot inside her tightened and twisted. “Fine.”

After handing off a part to someone named Henry and bumping back along the original path, John headed to the farmhouse. It appeared around the bend, plain and lonely against the cerulean background. A turn of her head showed her John’s stoic profile, jaw squared as he contained his emotions.

Okay. She’d done it. She’d told him about the child growing in her belly. Their child. Mission accomplished. Now all she had to do was go back home, tell her parents, move out of the guesthouse, get a permanent job, take a birthing class, register for preschool, start a college fund....

Oh, dear God.

Parenting wasn’t for wussies...and she’d be alone.

Sweat broke out on her upper lip and her body started to tremble as the enormity of her situation, combined with the residual anxiety from telling John, crashed over her. Her teeth chattered as the knot inside her unwound, releasing some strange hormonal thing that smothered her.

John stopped the cart and climbed out.

But she couldn’t move.

Silly as it was, all the emotion she’d balled inside over the past four weeks rolled over her, rendering her, well, overwhelmed.

“Shelby?”

Oddly enough, during the middle of what was possibly a panic attack she realized she liked the way he said her name. He had a drawled Southern accent quite different from Darby’s soft Acadian dialect. Maybe a slight lilt.

Shelby waved her hands as if she could make the panic enveloping her go away. “I’m just a little—” Gulping deep breaths, she couldn’t finish.

“Jesus,” John said, taking huge steps around the mule to reach her side.

“No, don’t touch me,” Shelby said, brushing away the hand reaching for her, shrinking from him.

“It’s okay. Breathe.”

Shelby wanted to say something biting like what in the hell did he think she was doing, but she couldn’t seem to care enough to be a smart-ass.

“Come into the house,” he said, taking her by the forearm, his touch as gentle as his words. “We’ll have some tea or something and take a few minutes to process all this.”

“I just wanna leave,” she said, teeth still chattering, her breathing ragged. She figured if she didn’t get out of there, away from him, she might hyperventilate. “I told you. That’s it. I’m done.”

He stiffened again, but didn’t release her arm. “I understand, but you need to gather yourself before you drive. Come inside. It will be okay.”

“It won’t be okay,” she said, inhaling deeply, trying to find her calm, trying to find herself in the hysteria edging in. How dare he even imply such a thing? It will be okay. What a fat lie. She might be resolved to her fate, but having the baby of a stranger was not even remotely okay. “This is a screwup of enormous magnitude.”

“You’re right, but it will be okay.”

“Stop freaking saying that.”

He clamped his mouth shut and studied her for a moment. The same perusal he’d given her earlier. Scientific. “You don’t need to drive. You’re upset.”

“Duh. You think?” Shelby drawled, the anger, the lack of control pissing her off. She’d had a plan. Tell him. Leave. But somehow her body...or her mind...or something...hadn’t gotten the damn memo to play it cool.

He didn’t respond. Just stared at her. And tugged on her arm in an insistent manner.

“Fine,” she said finally, struggling to her feet. “I’ll gather myself and have a cup of tea. We can even pretend we’re normal people.”

Again, nothing from him. He released her arm as she stood.

Shelby took a deep breath, relieved her task was nearly over. Now someone other than her doctor knew about the life knitting together within her womb. Of course, she’d shared that information with a man she didn’t know beyond the investigative report sitting in her sock drawer...and the fact he sang off-key to old George Strait songs when he danced.

Wordlessly, side by side, they climbed the steps. When they reached the top step, where Shelby had perched a mere half hour ago, John stopped.

Shelby turned around, still fighting the edging panic.

“You’re not alone, Shelby.”

His words did what he meant them to do. Found their way inside her, creating a small bit of warmth in the midst of the madness of her life.

John stood there, handsome as sin, saying the right thing at just the right moment.

Damn him.

He was still the bastard who had treated her like a fungus, impregnated her with a child and implied she was some sort of whore.

But he knew exactly what to say.

And as he took her hand and pulled her toward the door, she realized he also knew exactly how to make her feel cared for.

And that was more dangerous than any other feeling she’d had since seeing him again.

CHAPTER THREE

JOHN LED SHELBY up the steps of the house that had been his home for a decade, every nook and cranny known and loved despite the flaws. Inside, he quaked as much as Shelby did. Outside, he maintained a semblance of control. Like always.

Shelby was pregnant with his baby. Or at least she said she was. The irony of the situation rubbed him, bitter and biting.

Rebecca’s desire for the pitter-patter of little feet had been a driving force in their marriage for the past year of her life. With her death, the thought of children ceased to exist. And now, he’d gotten what he’d once desired so greatly...at the hands of a drunken hookup in a crappy bathroom off Hwy 5.

God had a sense of humor. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe God liked to sucker punch John for the hell of it.

He pulled the screen door open, holding it with his boot as he turned the century-old iron doorknob and pushed inside.

His yellow Lab sat, tongue lolling, ready to greet him.

“Down, Bart.” John pushed the hairy beast with the generous kisses off his thigh and walked inside the cool darkness of the living room, turning right and escorting Shelby toward the kitchen. Bart followed after them, tail threatening the doodads on the low antique tables Rebecca had scattered throughout the foyer and formal dining room. He should pack them away, but something held him back.

It always did.

“You have a dog,” Shelby said like she’d never seen one.

“Yeah. This is Bart.” John released her hand and pulled out a chair in the kitchen. He didn’t know why he’d grabbed her hand to begin with. Maybe because for a moment she looked like a lost child and he hadn’t wanted her to run away. “Here. Sit. I’ll boil some water for tea.”

Bart sat, too. Right at Shelby’s feet. She patted the dog’s head, causing Bart to nudge her hand for more.

John never made tea because he always went for a beer at the end of a long day. In the pantry he found some boxes of herbal tea that had expired a few months before. Tea didn’t go bad, did it? Probably. But this would have to do.

He found the kettle and lit the flame on the stove, eyeing Shelby out of the corner of his eye. Her teeth had stopped chattering, and though she was pale, she looked less panicked.

The woman was almost too pretty, with flaxen hair likely achieved in a high-end salon. Wide blue eyes were framed by inky long eyelashes; high-rounded cheekbones and a mouth he remembered thinking belonged on a pinup girl. Plump and made for sex. Large breasts, nice legs and a waist that was still trim despite her pregnancy. A freaking Playboy Bunny of a woman.

God.

He filled the kettle at the sink and tried to figure out how to handle the situation. Shelby had seemed offended when he asked if she was certain the child she carried was his, but he had to ask, right? He knew nothing about her, and she’d seemed more than willing to pull that condom out of her purse that night.

Of course, it didn’t mean she was morally loose.

Morally loose? Jesus. He sounded like his father.

Stay away from those kind of girls, Johnny. No girl who gives it away is worth your name, and if you knock her up you’ll have to marry her.

So should he insist on a blood test? How did those work? Maybe the baby had to come first before they could test and that was months away. He didn’t know how to handle this situation. Hell, who really knew how to handle this situation? He felt like he’d fallen into a well and was treading water with no foothold on the slick walls, no way to heft himself up.

He focused on what he could control. “Looks like all I have is Apple Orchard or Peachy Keen.”

Shelby stopped petting Bart and the dog whined his displeasure. “Either, as long as it’s caffeine-free. I’m not supposed to have caffeine.”

John put the kettle on and stepped toward the back door, whistling for Bart to come. Reluctantly, the dog stood and waddled to the door. “Go tee-tee,” he said out of habit.

When he turned, Shelby had a weird look on her face. “Go tee-tee?”

He shrugged. “Started when he was a puppy. Somehow changing the term to piss seemed wrong.”

The kettle whistled, and John grabbed a cup, plunked in a tea bag and poured the water. Then he grabbed himself a beer. He’d allow himself only one, though he felt like he needed a six-pack to deal with the woman sitting at his kitchen table. But he needed to get back to the fields.

Pulling out the chair beside her, he slid the cup to her and cracked open his beer. “Feeling better?”

“Yes and no,” she said, lifting the tea and inhaling. Just like Rebecca. The memory punched him. “Thank you for the tea.”

“You’re welcome. So...I’d like to talk a bit more.”

“I assumed that’s why you made me come inside and drink this.” She didn’t look happy about his wanting to know more. What had she said? I told you. Now I’m done.

“So what are your immediate plans regarding the pregnancy?”

“Immediate plans? Go back to Seattle, break the news to my parents and find a permanent teaching job.” She fiddled with the teacup, bending a finger around the rim. Her nails were clipped short and painted a soft pink. Definitely a nice manicure.

“You’re a teacher?”

“I teach high school math. My last teaching assignment in Spain ended this past spring, and I didn’t come stateside in enough time to interview for a permanent position. It’s hard to pick one up midyear so I’ve been substituting in the Seattle school district on a part-time basis. The baby’s due in June, so I should be able to maintain a permanent position next year.”