Nobody's Baby But Mine

Chapter Fifteen

J ane used the small screwdriver she always carried in her purse to disable the automatic gates. Now they would remain shut and it had taken her less than two minutes. When she reached the house, she parked the Escort in the driveway, stomped inside, and fetched some twine that she secured in a tight figure eight around the twin knobs set side by side in the double front door. She fashioned a wedge from several cooking utensils and used it to secure the back door.

She was checking the bolts in the French doors that opened off the family room when the intercom began to buzz. She ignored it and headed for the garage, where she used the small ladder that was stored there to unplug the automatic door opener from its ceiling outlet.

The angry buzzing of the intercom assaulted her ears as she stalked back into the kitchen. She yanked all the first-floor draperies closed and pulled the phone off the hook. When that was done, she grabbed her screwdriver, made her way to the intercom, and punched the button.

“Cal?”

“Yeah, listen Jane, there’s something wrong with the gate.”

“There’s something wrong, all right, buster, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the gate!” With a twist of her wrist, she loosened the connection, and the buzzer fell silent. Afterward, she stalked upstairs, booted up her computer, and set to work.

It wasn’t long before she heard the rattling of doors accompanied by a determined pounding. When it grew so loud it disturbed her concentration, she tore a tissue in two and wadded the pieces in her ears.

Blessed quiet.

An Escort! Cal hauled himself up onto the lower section of roof that jutted out over the first-floor study. First she’d sabotaged his Lucky Charms, and now she’d embarrassed him in front of the entire town by driving a ten-year-old Escort! He couldn’t explain why both offenses seemed a lot worse than the fact that she’d managed to lock him out of his own house. Maybe because he was enjoying the challenge of getting back in, not to mention the anticipation of the fight they were going to have after he’d managed it.

He walked as lightly as he could across the roof because he didn’t want the damn thing to spring a leak the next time it rained. As he glanced up at the dark clouds skidding across the darkening sky, he figured that rain might not be too far off.

He reached the end of the roof, where it met up with the corner of the balcony that extended across the front of the house, and experienced a moment of disappointment because there wasn’t a bigger gap to make this more of a contest. Still, the grillwork railing was too shaky to hold his weight, so that made it a little more interesting.

Using the bottom edge of the balcony as a handhold, he lowered himself over the side and, legs dangling, worked his way along the balcony’s edge until he came to the corner column. A clap of thunder reverberated, and rain began to pelt him, plastering his shirt to his back. He wrapped his legs around the column for support, then, bracing one hand on the wobbly grillwork, shinnied up the slippery surface and lowered himself over the railing.

The lock in the French doors that led into his bedroom was flimsy, and it annoyed him that Miss Big Brain hadn’t done anything to secure it. She probably thought he was too old to make it this far! The fact that his lip hurt, his ribs ached, and his bad shoulder throbbed like a sonovabitch fueled his irritation, and as he jimmied the doors open, his temper flared up again. She should at least have had enough respect for him to shove a chair in front of the knob!

He walked across his dark bedroom into the hallway and moved toward the light that spilled out from her room. She sat with her back to the door and all her formidable concentration focused on the columns of incomprehensible data scrolling past on her computer screen. Puffs of blue tissue stuck out of both ears, making her look like a cartoon rabbit. He thought about marching up behind her and giving her the fright of her life by pulling the tissues out. It was exactly what she deserved, but since she was pregnant, he modified his plan. Not that he believed Annie’s dire warnings about marked babies and twisted cords, but still, he wasn’t taking any chances.

The smell of beer clung to him like barroom smoke as he made his way downstairs. He was wet, sore, completely pissed off, and every bit of it was her fault! His blood pounded in anticipation as he reached the foyer. Throwing back his head, he bellowed out her name.

“Jane Darlington Bonner! You get down here right this minute!”

Jane’s head shot up. His roar penetrated her homemade ear plugs. So, he’d managed to find a way inside. As she pulled out the wads of tissue and tossed them in the basket, she wondered how he’d done it. Some amazing feat of bravado, no doubt, since the great quarterback wouldn’t dream of demeaning himself by anything as obvious as breaking a window. Despite her pique, she felt a certain amount of pride.

As she rose from her desk and discarded her glasses, she tried to figure out why she had no desire to lock herself in her room. She’d never liked conflict and never been all that good at it-witness her dismal skirmishes with Jerry Miles. Maybe she wasn’t anxious to avoid this battle because it would be with Cal. All her life she’d been so polite, so dignified, so careful not to offend. But Cal was impatient with politeness, unimpressed by dignity, and impervious to offense. She didn’t have to watch what she said or mind her manners. She could simply be herself. As she crossed the room, her pulses hummed, and her brain cells went on full alert. She felt completely and wondrously alive.

From the foyer below, Cal watched her approach the top of the stairs. Her trim little butt swayed from side to side inside her slacks, and her green knit top emphasized a pair of breasts so unimpressive in their size he couldn’t figure out why he was so anxious to set eyes on them. Her hair, pulled away from her face with barrettes like an upper-crust schoolgirl’s, swung back and forth, as saucy as her mouth.

She looked down at him, but instead of being scared as she should have been, he could swear he saw a spark of mischief in her eyes. “Somebody looks mad,” she drawled, all spunk and sass.

“You-”He slammed his hands on his hips. “-are going to pay for this.”

“What are you gonna do, big guy? Spank me?”

Just like that, he got hard. Damn it! How did she keep doing this to him? And what kind of kinky talk was that for a respectable college professor?

An unwilling vision of that sweet little butt curving beneath his palm shot through him. He clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and gave her a look so mean-assed he was ashamed of himself for using it on a poor, defenseless, pregnant female. “Maybe a bare-butt spanking is exactly what you need.”

“Really?”Instead of fainting from fear the way any sensible woman would have done, she got this calculating look on her face. “Might be fun. I’ll think about it.”

Just like that she turned on her heel and swept back to her room, leaving him standing at the bottom of the stairs in her dust. He was stunned. How did she manage to keep turning the tables on him like that? And what did she mean, she’d think about it?

He remembered that mangled Escort sitting in the drive right where his kickass Jeep should have been and charged up the stairs after her. He wasn’t half done with this fight!

Jane heard him coming and was ashamed of the thrill of anticipation the sound of those pounding feet gave her. Until these past few weeks, she hadn’t realized how heavily the mantle of maintaining her dignity had weighed on her shoulders. But Cal had no more use for dignity than a dog for panty hose.

He flew through her bedroom door and jabbed his finger in the general direction of her forehead. “Starting right now, the two of us are going to get a few things straight. I’m the head of this household, and I expect respect! I don’t want to hear another piece of sass out of you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

His confrontation techniques undoubtedly worked very well with men, but she felt a flash of sympathy for those poor young girls he’d chosen as his past companions. He must have devastated those curvaceous little infants.

But for some reason the picture of him yelling at a defenseless twenty-year-old beauty queen wouldn’t take shape in her mind, and it didn’t take her long to understand why. He would never do it. Cal was incapable of unleashing the full force of his anger on someone he regarded as weaker than himself. The knowledge gave her a deep sense of pride.

“Your lip is bleeding again,” she said. “Go in the bathroom, and I’ll fix it.”

“I’m not going anywhere until we settle this.”

“Pretty please. I’ve always fantasized about tending a wounded warrior.”

That gave him pause. He got this dangerous, squinty-eyed look that made her knees a little wobbly. He was 190 pounds of dynamite getting ready to detonate, so why wasn’t she afraid?

He stuck a thumb in the pocket of his jeans. “I’ll let you patch me up under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“After you’re done, you sit quietly-and I mean with your mouth shut-while I take you apart.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”His roar nearly blew out her eardrums. “Is that it? Lady, you must not understand what I’ve got in mind because if you did, you wouldn’t be standing there telling me ‘okay’!”

She smiled just because she knew it would further irritate him. “I believe that open communication is important to a marriage.”

“We’re not talking about open communication. We’re talking about me taking you apart limb by limb.” He paused and thrust out his jaw. “Hand to bare butt.”

“Whatever.”She waved breezily as she set off toward the bathroom.

She almost felt sorry for him. He was an intensely physical man cursed with a strong moral conscience, which made it extremely difficult for him to have a truly satisfactory fight with a female. She finally understood why he loved football with its hard hits and thick rule book so much. To Cal, the combination of rough body contact and swift justice would be the best of all worlds.

This presented a definite problem in his relationships with women.

She crossed the cryptlike bathroom to the medicine cabinet and began a search of its contents. “I hope there’s something in here that really stings.”

When he made no comment, she turned, then gulped as she saw him pulling his shirt over his head. As he stretched, his scraped rib cage grew more prominent, and his navel formed a narrow oval. She saw the tufts of silky hair under his arms, the scar on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

He tossed the shirt aside and popped the button on his jeans. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m taking a shower, or don’t you remember you poured a pitcher of beer over my head, then locked me out of my own house in the middle of a savage thunderstorm? And that front gate you sabotaged had better be back in service first thing tomorrow morning or there’s gonna be some big-time hell to pay.” He pulled down his zipper.

She turned away, making the movement as casual as possible. Luckily the bathroom contained enough mirrors that by tilting her head she had a full view. Unfortunately, it was only of his back. Still that was pretty magnificent. Broad shoulders tapered to narrow hips and tight, flat buttocks. There was a red mark on one side of his spinal column from his fight with Kevin. She frowned at the collection of old scars and new scars and thought of all his aging warrior’s body had endured.

He swung open the door of the cylindrical shower stall, which looked as if it belonged on the starship Enterprise, and stepped in. Unfortunately, the frosting on the bottom half of the glass kept her from seeing more.

“You’re exaggerating about the savage thunderstorm,” she called out above the sound of the water. “It just started raining.”

“BeforeI made it over the top of the balcony.”

“Is that how you got in?” Impressed, she turned toward the shower.

“Only because you didn’t have enough confidence in me to secure those top doors.”

She smiled to herself at the injured note in his voice. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Obviously not.” He ducked his head under the spray. “Do you want to join me?”

She yearned to say yes, but his voice held a silky seductive note that reminded her of a snake slithering up the Tree of Knowledge, so she pretended not to hear. While he showered, she searched through the drawers of the vanity trying to locate some antibiotic ointment.

She found a tube of Crest Tartar Control squeezed up from the bottom and a column of neatly capped deodorant. His black comb was spanking clean and still had all its teeth. The drawer also held dental floss, a pair of shiny silver nail clippers, shaving cream and several razors, along with Extra Strength Tylenol, and a large tube of Ben Gay. And condoms. A whole box of them. The fact that he would be using these condoms with someone other than herself gave her a pang so sharp she ached.

Pushing the image aside, she knelt to look under the sink and found more Ben Gay, three cartons of Epsom salts, and a tube of antibiotic ointment. The water shut off and, moments later, the shower door clicked.

“Tucker’s using you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“That’s not true.” She turned in time to watch him wrap a thick black towel around his waist. His chest was still wet, the dark hair matted.

“Sure it is. He’s using you to get back at me.”

The fact that he didn’t believe Kevin could find her attractive stung enough that it forced her to retaliate. “That may be true, but there’s also a subtle sexual chemistry between Kevin and me.”

He’d been in the process of pulling a hand towel from the rack to dry his hair, but his arm stalled in mid-reach. “What are you talking about? What sexual chemistry?”

“Sit down so I can fix your lip. It’s bleeding again.”

Droplets from his wet hair flew as he took an abrupt step forward. “I won’t sit down! I want to know what you mean.”

“An older woman, a very attractive younger man. It’s been happening since the beginning of time. But don’t worry. He won’t mess around with married women.”

His eyes had narrowed into mean-street slits at her description of Kevin. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

“Only if the idea of Kevin and me together is discomfiting.”

He snatched the towel and vigorously rubbed his hair. “You know he’s only interested in you because you’re wearing my ring. If it weren’t for that, he wouldn’t pay any attention to you.”

He’d found her most vulnerable spot, and, just like that, the fun went out of the game. His meaningless threats of violence hadn’t bothered her, but the fact that he believed she was too geeky for another man to find attractive stung to the quick. “No, I don’t know that.” She headed toward her bedroom.

“Where are you going?” he called after her. “I thought you were going to patch me up?”

“The antibiotic is on the vanity. Do it yourself.”

He followed her into her bedroom, coming to a stop just inside the door. “Does Kevin- Does he mean something to you?” He flung down the hand towel. “How the hell could he mean anything to you? You don’t even know him!”

“Our discussion is over.”

“I thought you believed in open communication?”

She said nothing, but gazed out the window, wishing he’d go away.

He came up behind her, and she heard a curious gruffness in his voice. “I hurt your feelings, didn’t I?”

She slowly nodded.

“I didn’t mean to. I just- I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all. You don’t have a lot of experience with jocks. They can be-I don’t know-hard on women, I guess.”

“I know.” She turned back to him in time to watch a crooked rivulet of water slide toward a flat brown nipple. “I think I’ve had enough high drama for today. You’d better go.”

He came closer instead, and when he spoke, his voice held a surprising note of tenderness. “We didn’t even get to the bare-butt spanking.”

“Maybe some other time.”

“How’bout we just do the bare-butt part?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to bare anything to each other for a while.”

“Now why do you say that?”

“Because it makes everything too complicated.”

“Last night wasn’t complicated. At least not ’til you got all snooty.”

“Me!”Her head shot up. “I’ve never been snooty in my life!”

“Oh, yeah?” Her renewed feistiness must have been what he was waiting for because the glimmer of battle once again flared in his eyes. “Well, I happen to have been at that drive-in with you, and, believe me, you were snooty.”

“When?”

“You know very well.”

“I don’t.”

“Thatquite pleasant crap.”

“I don’t know what- Oh, that.” She regarded him more closely. “Did what I said bother you?”

“Hell, no, it didn’t bother me. You think I don’t know how good I am? And if you don’t realize it, well, I guess that’s your problem and not mine.”

He looked sulky, and she realized she had hurt his feelings last night. The knowledge touched her. Despite his seemingly boundless self-confidence, he had insecurities like everyone else. “It was more than pleasant,” she admitted.

“Damn right.”

“I’d say it was- It was-” She regarded him out of the corner of her eye. “What word am I looking for?”

“Why don’t you start out with pretty damn terrific?”

Her spirits made a quantum leap upward. “Terrific? Yes, that’s a good start. It was definitely terrific. It was also…” She waited.

“Exciting, and sexy as hell.”

“That, too, but…”

“Frustrating.”

“Frustrating?”

“Yeah.”A combative thrust to that square jaw. “I want to see you naked.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because I do.”

“Is this a guy thing?”

His truculence faded, and one corner of his mouth-the uninjured corner-curled. “You could say that.”

“Believe me when I tell you that you’re not missing much.”

“I’m probably a better judge of that than you are.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. You know those endlessly long legs you see on models? Those legs that go all the way up to their armpits?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t have them.”

“Is that a fact.”

“My legs aren’t short, but they’re not exceptionally long, either. Just average. And as for breasts- Do you consider yourself a breast man?”

“They’ve been known to catch my attention.”

“Mine won’t. Now my hips are a different matter. They’re huge.”

“Your hips are not huge.”

“I look like a pear.”

“You do not look like a pear.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, but since you haven’t seen me naked, you’re not exactly a competent judge.”

“We can take care of that right now.”

He was at his most enticing: gray eyes glinting, that unexpected dimple on display just beneath his cheekbone, funny, warm, sexy. And she was at her most vulnerable. In a flash of insight that nearly knocked her from her feet, she realized that she was in love with him. Deeply and forever in love. She loved his masculinity, his intelligence, his complexity. She loved his sense of humor and his loyalty to his family, as well as that old-fashioned moral code that dictated he watch out for a child. Even one he didn’t want.

There was no time to think about it, no place to run so she could ponder the enormity of what had happened. She watched him lift his arm and trace the curve of her jaw with his thumb. “I like you, Rosebud. I like you a lot.”

“You do?”

He nodded.

She noted that he’d said he liked her, not loved her, and swallowed the lump in her throat. “You’re just saying that to get me naked.”

The creases of amusement deepened at the corners of his eyes. “It’s tempting, but this is too important to lie about.”

“I thought you hated me.”

“I did. But it’s hard to hold on to a good-and entirely justifiable-hatred with you.”

Hope sprang inside her. “You forgive me?”

He hesitated. “Not exactly. It’s a pretty big thing to forgive.”

Once again, she felt a great wave of guilt sweeping through her. “You know I’m sorry, don’t you?”

“Are you?”

“I-I can’t be sorry about the baby, but I am sorry about the way I used you. I didn’t think of you as a real person, just a dehumanized object that could give me what I wanted. If anyone treated me that way, I’d never forgive them, and if it’s any consolation, you should know that I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Maybe you could do what I’ve been doing and work on separating the sin from the sinner.”

She gazed into his eyes, trying to see through them to his heart. “Do you really not hate me anymore?”

“I already told you that I like you.”

“I don’t see how you could.”

“I guess it just happened.”

“When?”

“When did I decide I liked you? That day at Annie’s when you found out I was smart.”

“And you found out I was old.”

“Don’t remind me. I still haven’t recovered from that. Maybe we could say the DMV made a mistake on your license.”

She ignored the hopeful glimmer in his eyes. “How could you have decided you liked me that day? We had a terrible fight.”

“Beats me. It just happened.”

She considered what he was revealing. Nothing could be farther from a declaration of love, but his words did show a certain warmth of feeling. “I’ll need to think about it.”

“About what?”

“Whether or not I’m going to get naked.”

“All right.”

That was another thing she liked about him. For all his bullying and bluster, he knew how to distinguish what was important from the trivial, and he seemed to understand he couldn’t hurry her on this.

“There’s one more thing we have to settle.”

She regarded him warily, then sighed. “I like my car. It has personality.”

“So do a lot of psychopaths, but that doesn’t mean you want one in your house. Now here’s the way it’s going to be-”

“Cal, please don’t waste your breath giving me one of your high-handed lectures because I’ll only end up locking you out of the house again. I asked you to help me find a car, you refused, so I did it myself. The car stays. And it won’t even hurt your reputation. Think about it. When people see me driving around in it, they’ll take it as one more sign of how unworthy I am to be your wife.”

“You’ve got a point there. Everybody who knows me knows I wouldn’t be keeping any woman around for very long who drove a heap like that.”

“I won’t even comment on what that says about your sense of values.” He had a wonderful sense of values. It was his taste in women that needed an overhaul.

He grinned, but she refused to let it affect her. She wouldn’t be so easily won over. “I want your word of honor that you won’t touch my car. No driving it away or sending a tow truck when I’m not looking. The car is mine, and it stays. And just so we understand each other, I’m telling you right now that if you lay a finger on my Escort, you’ll never enjoy another box of Lucky Charms in this house.”

“More marshmallow sabotage?”

“I never repeat myself. Think rat poison.”

“You are the most bloodthirsty woman I’ve ever met.”

“It’s a slow and painful death. I don’t recommend it.”

He laughed and headed back into the bathroom, where he shut the door only to pop his head back out. “All this arguing has stirred up my appetite. How ’bout we scrounge up something to eat as soon as I get dressed?”

“All right.”

As the rain continued to fall outside, they dined on soup, salad, and sandwiches, with a side order of taco chips. While they ate, she managed to wheedle a few more details out of him about his work with teenagers and discovered he’d been devoting his time to disadvantaged kids for years. He’d help fund rec centers, made speeches to recruit volunteers for after-school tutoring programs, set up intramural leagues, and lobbied the Illinois state legislature to improve their drug- and sex-education programs.

He shrugged off her comment that not all celebrities would be willing to give up so much time with no obvious reward to themselves. It was just something to do, he growled.

The hallway clock struck midnight and, gradually, their conversation dwindled. An awkwardness settled between them that hadn’t been there before. She toyed with an uneaten bread crust. He shifted his weight in the kitchen chair. She’d been so comfortable all evening, but now she felt awkward and self-conscious.

“It’s late,” she finally said. “I think I’ll head up to bed.” She picked up her plate as she stood.

He rose, too, and removed it from her hand. “You cooked. I’ll clean up.”

But he didn’t head toward the sink. Instead, he stayed where he was and gazed at her with hungry eyes. She could hear his unspoken question. Tonight, Rosebud? Are you ready to cut through all this pretense and do what we both want?

If he had reached out for her, she would have been lost, but he didn’t do that, and she understood that this time she would have to make the first move. His eyebrows rose in a silent dare.

Wings of a panic beat at her breastbone. The new knowledge that she had fallen in love with him made all the difference. She wanted sex between them to matter.

The powerful brain that had guided her throughout her life refused to function, and confusion gripped her. She felt paralyzed, and the most she could manage was a polite, social smile. “I’ve enjoyed tonight, Cal. I’ll fix the gate first thing tomorrow.”

He said nothing; he merely watched her.

She tried to think of some casual comment to defuse the tension, but nothing came to mind. He stood there watching her. She knew he was aware of her uneasiness, but he didn’t seem to share it. Why should he when he didn’t share her feelings? Unlike her, he hadn’t fallen in love.

She turned away, enveloped by a sense of loss. As she left the kitchen, her brain told her she was doing the right thing, but her heart told her she was a coward.

Cal watched her disappear through the doorway, and disappointment filled him. She was running away, and he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t pushed her tonight. He’d given her space, made certain the conversation stayed on safe topics. As a matter of fact, he’d been enjoying himself so much he’d nearly forgotten about sex. Nearly, but never entirely. He wanted her too much to put it out of his mind. She’d enjoyed their lovemaking last night-he knew she had-so why was she denying both of them one of life’s most basic pleasures?

He carried the dishes from their dinner to the sink and rinsed them off. His disappointment turned into irritation. Why did he let her bother him so much?

Disgusted with himself, he stalked upstairs, but entering his bordello bedroom only made his mood grow bleaker. A crack of thunder rattled the windows, and he realized the storm had intensified. Good. It matched his mood. He sat down on the side of the bed and yanked off one shoe.

“Cal?”

He looked up to see the bathroom door swing open, but just then a blinding flash of lightning shook the walls, and the house was plunged into darkness.

Several seconds ticked by, and then he heard a soft giggle.

He flung down his other shoe. “We just lost our electricity. You want to tell me what’s so funny about that?”

“It’s not exactly funny. It’s more of a good news/bad news situation.”

“In that case, hit me with the good news first.”

“They’re both sort of rolled up into one.”

“Stop stalling.”

“All right. Now don’t get mad, but…” Smothered laughter drifted toward him. “Cal… I’m naked.”