Adam (8 page)

“All right.”

“Just like that? All right?”

“I don't want Buck,” she said. “I want you.”

Adam groaned and pulled her into his arms, holding her so tightly that she protested, “I'm not going anywhere!”

“I can hardly believe that you're here. That you want to be here,” Adam said with a boyish grin. “I've been going crazy for the past week.”

“Me, too,” Tate admitted. “But everything is going to be perfect now, isn't it, Adam? You do love me, don't you?”

She didn't wait for an answer, just kept on talking.

“We can be married and start a family. Oh, how I'd love to have a little boy with your blue eyes and—”

Adam abruptly sat up on the edge of the bed.

Tate put a hand on his back and he shrugged it off. “Adam? What's wrong?”

He looked over his shoulder with eyes as desolate as an endless desert. “I thought I'd made it clear that I wasn't offering marriage.”

“But you love me. Don't you?”

Instead of replying to her question, he said, “I was married once before, for eight years. It ended in a bitter divorce. I have no desire to repeat the experience.”

Tate couldn't have been more shocked if Adam had said he was a convicted mass murderer. “Why didn't you ever say anything to me about this before?”

“It wasn't any of your business.”

“Well, now it is!” she retorted, stung by his bluntness. “You don't have to make the same mistakes this time around, Adam. Just because one marriage failed doesn't mean another will.”

He clenched his teeth, trying to dredge up the courage to tell her the truth. But he wasn't willing to risk the possibility that she would choose having children over having him. And he refused to offer marriage while his awful secret lay like a wedge between them.

“I want you in my bed, I won't deny it,” Adam said. “But you'll have to settle for what I'm offering.”

“What's that?” Tate asked. “An affair?”

Adam shrugged. “If you want to call it that.”

“And when you're tired of me, then what?”

I'll never get tired of you
. “We'll cross that river when we get to it.”

Tate was shaken by the revelation that Adam had been married. She wished she knew more about what had gone wrong to make him sound so bitter. Her pride urged her to leave while she still could. But her heart couldn't face a future that didn't include Adam. With the naïveté of youth, she still believed that love would conquer all, that somehow, everything would work out and that they would live happily ever after.

“All right,” she said at last. “An affair it is.”

She snuggled up to Adam's back. He took her arms and pulled them around his chest.

“It's a good thing my brothers can't see me now,” she teased.

“I'd be a dead man for sure,” he said with a groan.

“Just thank your lucky stars that I've been using a false last name. They'll never find me here.”

“Let's hope not,” Adam muttered.

The conversation ended there, because Adam turned and pulled Tate around onto his lap. He still didn't quite believe that she hadn't stalked out in high dudgeon, that she had chosen to stay. He straightened her legs around his lap and slipped inside her.

Tate learned yet another way to make love in the morning.

It was a mere three weeks later that their idyll came to a shocking and totally unforeseen end.

T
ATE WAS PREGNANT.
At least she thought she was. She was sitting in Dr. Kowalski's office, waiting for her name to be called so she could find out if the results of her home pregnancy test were as accurate as the company claimed. She was only eight days late, but never once had such a phenomenon occurred in the past. Who would have thought you could get pregnant the first time out!

It had to have happened then, because after that first time she had gone to see Dr. Kowalski and been fitted for a diaphragm. She had managed to use it every time she had made love with Adam over the past three weeks—except the time she had seduced him after spending the night at the river with Buck. So maybe it had happened the second time out. That was beginner's luck for you!

“Mrs. Whitelaw? You're next.”

Tate sat up, then realized the nurse had said
Mrs
. Whitelaw. Besides, she had given her name as Tate Whatly. So who was this mysterious
Mrs
. Whitelaw?

The tall woman who stood up was very pregnant. The con
dition obviously agreed with her, because her skin glowed with health. She had curly blond hair that fell to her shoulders and a face that revealed her age and character in smile lines at the edges of her cornflower-blue eyes and the parentheses bracketing her mouth.

Tate found it hard to believe that it was pure coincidence that this woman had the same unusual last name as she did. Jesse had been gone for so long without any word that Tate immediately began weaving fantasies around the pregnant woman. Maybe this was Jesse's wife. Maybe Jesse would walk in that door in a few minutes and Tate would see him at long last.

Maybe pigs would fly.

Tate watched the woman disappear into an examining room. She was left with little time to speculate because she was called next.

“Ms. Whatly?”

“Uh, yes.” She had almost forgotten the phony name she had given the nurse.

“You can come on back now. We'll need a urine specimen, and then I'd like you to strip down and put on this gown. It ties in front. The doctor will be with you in a few minutes.”

Tate had had only one pelvic examination in her life—when she had been fitted for the diaphragm—and all the medical hardware attached to the examining table looked as cold and intimidating as she remembered. The wait seemed more like an hour, but actually was only about fifteen minutes. Tate had worked herself into a pretty good case of nerves by the time Dr. Kowalski came into the room.

“Hello, Tate. I understand the rabbit died.”

The doctor's teasing smile and her twinkling eyes immediately put Tate at ease. “I'm afraid so,” she answered.

The doctor's hands were as warm as her manner. Tate found herself leaving the doctor's office a short time later with a prescription for prenatal vitamins and another appointment in six weeks.

Tate was in the parking lot, still dazed by the confirmation of the fact she was going to have Adam's baby, when she realized that the woman who had been identified as Mrs. Whitelaw was trying to hoist her ungainly body into a pickup.

Tate hurried over to her. “Need a hand?”

“I think I can manage,” the woman answered with a friendly smile. “Thanks, anyway.”

Tate closed the door behind the pregnant woman, then cupped her hands over the open window frame. “The nurse called you Mrs. Whitelaw. Would you by any chance know a Jesse Whitelaw?”

The woman smiled again. “He's my husband.”

Tate's jaw dropped. “No fooling! Really? Jesse's your husband! You've got to be kidding! Why, that means he's going to be a father!”

The woman chuckled at Tate's exuberance. “He sure is. My name's Honey,” the woman said. “What's yours?”

“I'm Tate. Wow! This is fantastic! I can't believe this! Wait until I tell Faron and Garth!”

Tate sobered suddenly. She couldn't contact Faron and Garth to tell them she had found Jesse without taking the chance of having them discover her whereabouts. But Jesse wouldn't know she had run away from home. She could see him, and share this joy with him.

With the mention of Tate's name, and then Faron's and Garth's, Honey's gaze had become speculative, and finally troubled. When Honey had first found out she was pregnant, she had urged Jesse to get back in touch with his family. It had taken a little while to convince him, but eventually she had.

When Jesse had called Hawk's Way, he had found his brothers frantic with worry. His little sister Tate had disappeared from the face of the earth, and Faron and Garth feared she had suffered some dire fate.

If Honey wasn't mistaken, she was looking at her husband's little sister—the one who had been missing for a good two and a half months. The prescription for prenatal vitamins that Tate had been waving in her hand suggested that Jesse's little sister had been involved in a few adventures since she had left home.

“I have a confession to make,” Tate said, interrupting Honey's thoughts. “Jesse—your husband—is my brother! That makes us sisters, I guess. Gee, I never had a sister. This is great!”

Honey smiled again at Tate's ebullience. “Maybe you'd like to come home with me and see Jesse,” she offered.

Tate's brow furrowed as she tried to imagine what Jesse's reaction would be to the fact that she was here on her own. On second thought, it might be safer to meet him on her own ground. “Why don't you and Jesse come over for dinner at my place instead?” Tate said.

“Your place?”

Tate grinned and said, “Well, it's not exactly
mine
. I'm living at the Lazy S and working as a bookkeeper for Adam Philips.”

“Horsefeathers,” Honey murmured.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing.” Except that Adam Philips was the man she had jilted to marry Jesse Whitelaw.

“Well, do you think you could come?”

If Tate didn't realize the can of worms she was opening, Honey wasn't about to be the one to tell her. Honey was afraid that if she didn't take advantage of Tate's offer, the girl might run into Jesse sometime when Honey wasn't around. From facts Honey knew—that Tate obviously didn't—it was clear the fur was going to fly. Honey wanted to be there to make sure everyone came out with a whole skin.

“Of course we'll come,” she said. “What time?”

“About seven. See you then, Honey. Oh, and it was nice meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you, too,” Honey murmured as Tate turned and hurried away. Honey watched the younger woman yank open the door to the '51 Chevy pickup her brothers claimed she had confiscated when she had run away from home.

“Horsefeathers,” she said again. The word didn't do nearly enough to express the foreboding she felt about the evening ahead of her.

Meanwhile, Tate was floating on air. This was going to work out perfectly. She would introduce Adam to her brother and his wife, and later, when they were alone, she would tell Adam that he was going to be a father.

Boy was he going to be surprised!

Tate refused to imagine Adam's reaction as anything other than ecstatic. After all, just as two people didn't have to be married to have sex, they didn't have to be married to have children, either. After all, lots of movie stars were doing it. Why couldn't they?

Long before seven o'clock Tate heard someone pounding
on the front door. She knew it couldn't be the company she had invited, and from the sound of things it was an emergency. She ran to open the door and gasped when she realized who was standing there.

“Jesse!”

“So it
is
you!”

Tate launched herself into her brother's arms. He lifted her up and swung her in a circle, just as he had the last time they had seen each other, when she was a child of eight.

Jesse looked so much the same, and yet he was different. His dark eyes were still as fierce as ever, his black hair still as shaggy. But his face was lined, and his body that of a mature man, not the twenty-year-old boy who had gone away when she was just a little girl.

“You look wonderful, Tate,” Jesse said.

“So do you,” she said with an irrepressible grin. She angled her head around his broad chest, trying to locate Honey. “Where's your wife?”

“I came ahead of her.” Actually, he had snuck out behind Honey's back and come running to save his little sister from that sonofabitch Adam Philips. Jesse had never liked the man, and now his feelings had been vindicated. Just look how Philips had taken advantage of his baby sister!

“Faron and Garth have been worried to death about you,” Jesse chastised.

“You've been in touch with them? When? How?”

“Honey talked me into calling them when she found out for sure she was pregnant. Is it true what Honey told me? Are you living here with Adam Philips?” Jesse demanded.

“I work here,” Tate said, the pride she felt in her job apparent in her voice. “I'm Adam's bookkeeper.”

“What else do you do for Adam?”

Tate hissed in a breath of air. “I don't think I like your tone of voice.”

“Get your things,” Jesse ordered. “You're getting out of here.”

Tate's hands fisted and found her hips. “I left home to get away from that kind of high-handedness. I don't intend to let you get away with it, either,” she said tartly. “I happen to enjoy my job, and I have no intention of giving it up.”

“You don't have any idea what can happen to a young woman living alone with a man!”

“Oh, don't I?”

“Do you mean to say that you and Philips—”

“My relationship with Adam is no concern of yours.”

Jesse's dark eyes narrowed speculatively. His little sister glowed from the inside out. He was mentally adding one and one—and getting three. “Honey said she met you in the parking lot of Doc Kowalski's office, but she didn't say what you were doing there. What were you doing there, Tate? Are you sick?”

Jesse was just fishing, Tate thought. He couldn't know anything for sure. But even a blind pig will find an acorn once in a while. She had to do something to distract him.

“Honey's a really beautiful woman, Jesse. How did you meet her?”

“Don't change the subject, Tate.”

Jesse had just grabbed Tate by the arm when Adam stepped into the living room from the kitchen. “I thought I heard voices in here.” Adam spied Jesse's hold on Tate, and his body tensed. He welcomed the long overdue confrontation with
Tate's brother. “Hello, Jesse. Would you mind telling me what's going on?”

“I'm taking my sister home,” Jesse said.

Adam searched Tate's face, looking deep into her hazel eyes. “Is that what you want?”

“I want to stay here.”

“You heard her, Jesse,” Adam said in a steely voice. “Let her go.”

“You bastard! It'll be a cold day in hell before I leave my sister in your clutches.”

Adam took a step forward, eyes flashing, teeth bared, fists clenched.

“Stop it! Both of you!” Tate yanked herself free from Jesse's grasp, but remained between the two men, a human barrier to the violence that threatened to erupt at any moment.

“Get out of the way, Tate,” Jesse said.

“Do as he says,” Adam ordered.

Tate put a firm, flat palm on each man's chest to keep them apart. “I said stop it, and I meant it!”

“I'm taking you home, Tate,” Jesse said. But his words and the challenge were meant for Adam.

“If Tate wants to stay, she stays!” Adam retorted, accepting the summons to battle.

Tate might as well not have been there for as much attention either man paid to her. She was merely the prize to be won. They were intent only on the conflict to come.

There was a loud knocking at the door, but before any of them could move, it opened and Honey stepped inside. “Thank goodness I got here in time!”

Honey stepped between the two men who fell back in def
erence to her pregnant state. “What are you two doing to this poor girl?” She slipped a comforting arm around Tate's shoulder. “Are you all right, Tate?”

“I'm fine,” Tate said. “But these two idiots are about to start pounding on each other!”

“He's got it coming!” Jesse growled. “What kind of lowdown hyena seduces an innocent child!”

“Jesse!” Tate cried, mortified as much by his use of the term
child
as by his accusation. Jesse might still remember her as a child, but she was a woman now.

Adam's face had bleached white. “You're way off base, Whitelaw,” he snarled.

“Can you say you aren't sleeping with her?” Jesse demanded.

“That's none of your damn business!” Adam snapped back.

Honey stepped back a pace, taking Tate with her, beyond the range of the animosity radiating from the two powerful men.