And Baby Makes Five (5 page)

L
illy needed a shower. She needed to feel the hot water pelting the fog from her brain and the soreness from her muscles. She hurt everywhere. Okay, she’d been foolish and reckless and was paying for it. Thankfully, her baby wasn’t. He seemed fine, kicking and moving and generally having a grand time this morning.

A rap on her back door startled her. Company? At this hour? Her fingers froze in shock on the top button of her flannel pajama top. When was the last time she’d had someone rapping on her door?

Forever.

The knocking grew to a pounding, so she turned the shower off and waddled as fast as her short legs would carry her down the long hallway lined with pictures of her many generations of Tipps women.

“Hey, Grannies, someone is knocking at my door.” Company was a very abnormal occurrence—still, Lilly wasn’t sure that made her talking to photos any less pathetic. Maybe she should get out more. She reminded herself that she had been helping out with the play a couple of nights a week for the past month. But now that the play was over, she had nowhere to go.

That was okay. She obviously had no people skills. She’d behaved shoddily last night. It had been such a wonderful night, and then she’d allowed Satan a hold over her and run her neighbor off with her sharp tongue.

All night she hadn’t been able to get the memory of Cort stomping away in anger out of her mind. She’d driven him away, and he’d just been trying to help her.

True, he was bossy, and had a bad way with words. But so did she, and she hadn’t had control of Samantha. Her adrenaline had simply been pumping from the excitement, and she’d said some pretty silly things. She needed to apologize to Cort. They were neighbors, for crying out loud. Why couldn’t they get along? They were the only ones around for miles.

A quick look in the mirror by the door had her slapping a hand over her mouth.

“Eeks!” It was a bad, bad thing to wake up looking like Shirley Temple gone wrong.
Way wrong.
She really needed that shower.

“I hope whoever is on the other side of this door has a good heart,” she muttered, then straightened her back and lifted her chin. Who cares what I look like, anyway? she thought.

Cort, standing on her porch, immediately made a mockery of that thought. She ran a hesitant hand through her tangled hair, but the moment his stone-cold gaze met hers she knew it was hopeless. His eyes flickered to her curls, registered alarm or hysteria—two very close expressions—then flicked back to her face. To his credit he controlled his laughter.

That is, if the man had any laughter. Just as he’d looked last night, he looked about as friendly as a porcupine. Granny Gab would say he looked as if he’d swallowed a pickle with a hook in it.

“I believe I have something that belongs to you,” he drawled, none too happily holding up the end of a lead rope. A lead rope attached to—

“Samantha!” Lilly exclaimed, stepping onto the porch. “You didn’t? Not again.”

“What’s new?” Exasperation edged his voice, and Lilly couldn’t blame him.

“I found her stuffing her face in the alfalfa bin when I went out to ride this morning. Don’t you feed this animal?”

“I am so sorr—
yes,
I feed the little pig. Leroy spoiled her so much that I don’t know what I’m going to do with her.” Lilly wrapped her arms about her tummy and shivered in the icy morning air. After the show ended last night, the sleet had rolled in again. The sun had come out for the morning, but the wind was still bitter.

Despite his obvious irritation and dislike for her, Cort motioned toward the doorway and remained true to his bad habit of telling her what to do. “You’d better get back inside. I’ll tend to Samantha. You tend to your baby.”

If she hadn’t been feeling guilty about her own bad behavior, and if she hadn’t been so cold, she might have rebuked him. Instead she backed toward the door. The last thing she wanted was the irritating man having to take care of her business, but she was too chilled to protest. And he was right. She didn’t need to risk falling.

“Her stall is the second one in the barn. Surely she has to be exhausted from all her scavenging. I think she’ll stay put for at least a little while.”

Cort didn’t look as if he agreed. He stomped off the porch and strode toward the barn with long, determined steps.

He hadn’t gotten far when he slipped on a patch of ice. His legs went flying from beneath him and he splattered right at Samantha’s feet.

“Oh!” Lilly gasped, starting toward him.

“Stay right where you are!” Cort’s harsh shout stopped her with one foot hovering between the inside and the outside. “Don’t even think about coming off that porch.” Slowly sitting up, he rubbed the back of his head and glared at Samantha.

His hat had flown off and his dark hair fell across his forehead in a thick, shiny swath. It wasn’t exactly the time to notice, but he had really nice hair, despite his grumpy disposition.

“This little beast is going to get one of us killed. The sun’s made all this ice very slick, so stay put.”

Nice hair or not, he really didn’t need to repeat himself. Lilly had already complied with his demands—only because she was afraid she would end up on the ground beside him if she didn’t. Her bones were aching from the last two nights’ escapades. She didn’t need any more strenuous activity.

She watched him straighten his six-foot bossy frame. Cort was an extremely attractive man. Even if he was difficult.

The grannies would not have been pleased to know she continued to notice such a thing. Lilly nibbled on her lip. Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d thought about his smile off and on for two days. But most of all she’d thought about his frown.

What would make a man frown so much? It was a question she was really curious about. There was a part of her that wanted to make him smile.

Poor guy—meetings with her had certainly not given him anything whatsoever to smile about. Except that once.

“You do know that it’s a proven fact that if you were having a bad day, a laugh or even just a smile would improve your disposition.” Now, why in the world had she said that? He replied with the same question when he nailed her with a glare. She wasn’t doing his disposition any good. Things had gone quickly from bad to worse.

And it didn’t improve when in the next instant, to Lilly’s horror, Samantha picked Cort’s hat up off the icy ground and started chewing!

Lilly closed her eyes and groaned, “Oh, Samantha, how could you?”

When it came to being around his new neighbor, Cort had endured about as much humiliation as one man could stand. Had it not been for Samantha nosing around his barn, this would have been the last place he’d have come this morning.

After last night, he hadn’t cared if he ever saw Lilly again. She and her donkey had become thorns in his side.

Forget feeling alive again. He wasn’t sure he liked the cost.

Right now he was cold and wet, and his attitude toward Lilly or Samantha wasn’t improving. Both seemed to have a distaste for him. His hat, on the other hand, was an altogether different story.

The hairy bag of bones was staring down at him with doe-brown eyes while mutilating his favorite Stetson with her slobbery mouth.

Something about this picture just wasn’t right.

Carefully he stood up. Not wanting to sprawl on the ground again, he hid his pride, made like a little old man and took his time.

“Gimme that,” he growled once he was on his feet. He snatched at the hat—or attempted to snatch it—but the cantankerous donkey bit down on the brim and held on as if she had lockjaw.

That did it. Cort’s patience snapped. Grasping the brim of the hat, he yanked hard, but Samantha, the little prankster, was having none of it. She wagged her head from side to side and started backing up in a tug-of-war.

“Hey, you little beast! Let go of that.”

“Samantha.” Lilly whooped with laughter from the doorway.

Cort shot her a sharp look. So much for his pride. It was on the line and she was laughing.

“Samantha needs obedience school,” he snapped. “What is up with this donk—” He nearly fell over when Sam let go of the hat abruptly and trotted off, fried tail swishing to and fro in a singed frizzy ball.

Cort grunted, slammed his hat onto his head and carefully followed Samantha to where she stood looking at him like an expectant puppy. In all his years dealing with horses, he’d never come across anything quite like Samantha. She was almost human.

“Cort, leave her there and come in. You’re cold and wet and I’m so sorry about all of this. Please.” She hesitated, replacing the edge in her voice with sincerity. “Please let me make you some coffee. Believe me, Samantha isn’t going anywhere right now. And I think we need to start over. What do you say?”

Thawing to the invitation, Cort turned toward Lilly and raised an eyebrow. “How do you know she isn’t going anywhere?”

Lilly laughed. “She’s like Curious George. She’ll have her nose plastered to the window the minute you enter this house. The busybody wants to be in the know about everything.”

Coffee did sound good. And the donkey was home. And Lilly was smiling, offering coffee…and they were neighbors. They needed to be able to get along. So why was he standing out in the cold when he could be inside with a cup of hot java?

Looking into the laughing eyes of his neighbor, he could think of a lot of reasons.

But at the moment he didn’t want to list them.

L
illy held the door open wide to allow Cort entry. He stepped onto the linoleum, moving just far enough inside for her to close the door, as if he wasn’t certain he wanted to be there. She didn’t blame him. She wasn’t positive she wanted him, either, but she’d had to invite him in. It was the neighborly thing to do.

In the small space of the entry hall his stature was magnified, making her lack of height all the more obvious. Standing there, he looked uncomfortable, with his rumpled hat in hand, wet jeans and heavy work jacket.

“Oh, here!” Lilly said quickly, reaching for his hat. “Let me take that. Oh, your poor hat. I’m so sorry about the chewing. Why don’t you take off your coat and I’ll throw it in the dryer while we have that coffee I mentioned.”

Boy, could she use it, too. She really didn’t know what had gotten into her. Men didn’t usually make her nervous. But then, she hadn’t ever been as rude to a man as she’d been to Cort.

Of course, no man had ever made her as mad as he had, either.

But none of that explained why her heart was pounding so erratically or why her brain had gone west. Or south—? Ugh! She needed some coffee. And some taffy wouldn’t hurt, either.

“You really don’t have to dry my jacket,” he said, stripping off the damp coat. “It’s waterproof. It looks wet on the outside, but I’m dry except for my jeans.”

Lilly took the jacket from him and studied it. Sure enough, it was dry inside. Cort’s spicy scent rose from the coat and tickled her senses….
Nope, none of that.
“I’ll just hang it up here, then,” she said, hooking the coat and hat on the rack beside the door. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she did, and cringed. She could just hear Granny Gab exclaiming, “Child-a-mine, you look like something the cat dragged in.”

Yeah, well, so be it. Pushing aside her pride, Lilly moved through the doorway into the kitchen. “Come on in,” she called over her shoulder.

She pressed the button on the coffeepot. She always prepared the pot the night before so that it was a quick thing to have her morning caffeine fix. She’d tried the decaf and had high hopes that it would grow on her, but so far it was a no-go. Therefore for the baby’s sake she allowed herself only one cup of regular coffee in the morning.

“Why don’t you stand over there?” She waved a hand toward the wall heater and avoided eye contact with Cort as she popped the top off the canister next to the icebox and grabbed a couple of pieces of taffy—the way she was feeling, she held back from tucking the whole can under her arm and running away to scarf it down. “You can dry out those jeans while I go do something about this monster on my head.” Not waiting to hear him agree or disagree, she hurried out of the room and down the hallway.

At least, she tried to hurry. Waddling gave a person little room for speed no matter what the emergency. There was no way she could appear pleasant knowing she looked the way she did. Man or no man, no one should have to endure what she’d seen in the mirror.

Cort watched as Lilly disappeared down the hall. She was a cute little thing, with her hair all crazy. Those curls looked alive the way they stood out all over her head. He’d noticed immediately that they bounced with her every step. He’d also noticed the way they curled around her pixie face and how the darkness of the curls contrasted with her pale skin and caused her golden eyes to warm like honey in the morning sunlight. But there was something more than the way she looked that had him following her with his eyes. There was a wariness about her. She was a paradox. At times he glimpsed a take-charge kind of bravado and at other times he glimpsed something almost sad hidden in her eyes—it seemed that she, too, had a past. A past that—like his—had left scars. He wondered how deep hers ran.

What was he thinking?

He didn’t like the effect his neighbor had on him. He was here to get his life back on track. And that had nothing to do with a kooky gal about to have a baby. Walking over to the wall heater, he waited for Lilly to return while he warmed his back and closed down his newfound need for companionship.

Companionship that could go nowhere for a man like him.

Feeling like a bear in a trap, he took in his surroundings. Lilly’s home reminded him of his grandmother’s house. The kitchen was large and open with white painted cabinets and green Formica countertops. The green-and-white-checked curtains in the window had red roosters lined up across the bottom. In the corner of the kitchen beside the gas stove there was a large whitewashed cupboard with chicken wire insets in front of a mass of brightly colored dishes. In the center of the room was a long wide island, and Cort imagined many meals having been prepared there. It was a farmhouse kitchen—warm, useful and inviting.

A noise at the window beside the breakfast table drew his attention. Samantha stood just outside the pane with her damp nose plastered to the glass, two huge circles of fog highlighting each nostril as she breathed hot and heavy against the glass. That was truly one strange little burro. As he watched, Samantha turned her head sideways and plastered one eyeball against the glass, as if trying to see at a better angle. Her eyelashes made stripes in the fog as she batted them against the glass.

“She’s a nosy girl,” Lilly said, startling him.

He turned at her comment. In a matter of seconds it seemed she had tamed her hair with something that smelled good. She had changed into a pair of overalls and a bright pink top. She looked—what did it matter how she looked? Cort tore his gaze away from Lilly and focused on the hairy girl in the window.

“Nosy. You can say that again,” he agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like your Samantha.”

Lilly grabbed two mugs from the cabinet and poured coffee into them.

Cort was in need of the rich-smelling brew. His brain was fogged up more than all the steam streaming out of Samantha’s nose onto the windowpane.

“Cream or sugar?” Lilly asked with a bright smile. It was obvious that she was trying to be pleasant to him. He needed to do the same.

“Just black, thank you.”

She pushed one cup toward him, then counted out three heaping teaspoons of sugar into the other cup. Walking over, Cort picked up his cup and watched as she proceeded to dump just as much if not more creamer into hers, then pick up her spoon and begin to stir.

And stir.

And stir.

She grinned. “I stir exactly twenty-seven times. Granny Bunches always said that twenty-six was too little and twenty-eight was too much. Twenty-seven was the magic number that caused the coffee’s flavor to bloom to its full potential.”

Cort lifted an eyebrow and watched Lilly place the cup to her mouth, close her eyes and sip.

“Mmm, mmm, good. Granny Bunches sure told the truth.”

The woman could sell coffee to millions if she were on TV. Watching her savor the aroma before she took a sip had Cort wanting to trade his cup in and have what she was having. Normally he never added cream or sugar to his coffee. His only weakness was for taffy, but that was it on the sweet stuff. He could never say no to taffy.

She laughed, popping her eyes open and winking at him. “My granny was full of weird little top secret things like that. She shared them with me throughout my childhood.” She rattled off a few more things about her grannies, tilting her head to the side and chuckling as she recalled them. There was a softness in her voice and a twinkle in her eye at the remembrance. Then she frowned. “Of course, not all they taught me was cute or funny. Granny Shu-Shu would be madder than a wet hen if she knew your kind was standing in her kitchen.”

Cort took a sip of his hot coffee and tried not to choke on the steaming liquid when Lilly lifted her eyes to meet his and winked at him again. He could almost hear Granny Shu-Shu telling him he was worthless.

“Are you okay?” she asked, shuffling over and peering up at him.

“Fine. I’m fine.” He bit out the words while the hot liquid burned a layer out of his stomach before fizzling out.

“Granny Gab would say take smaller sips.” She was beaming and wagging a finger at him playfully. The flicker of a frown was gone, replaced by the lighthearted girl who seemed almost determined to show him that she wasn’t hard to get along with.

Cort scowled down at the little pixie smiling up at him. She had a way about her. “You always like this?”

She backed away, one hand resting beneath her tummy as if supporting it. “Like what?” Picking up her cup, she ambled over and sat at the table next to the batting eyeball of Samantha. She thumped the windowpane with her fingers, making Samantha turn her damp nose and smudge the glass.

“Perky.” The word jumped out of him. Yeah,
perky,
that was the word to describe Lilly Tipps. Waddling or not, the woman was perky personified.

He watched her lift her feet one at a time and place them with a thud on the chair she’d scooted out in front of her. She had on striped socks that looked like gloves for the toes.

“I wouldn’t call this perky. I feel like I’m gonna blow any moment now.” Sighing, she took another sip and wiggled her toes. “These legs of mine feel about as heavy as—oh, never mind. Yes, I usually have a lot of energy. But that’s enough about me. I truly am sorry for all the trouble Samantha is causing you. And about my rude behavior last night. I didn’t have everything under control. I just get excited about weird things sometimes. I am so grateful you caught Samantha before the fire reached her skin. Thank you.”

Cort studied Lilly. “You’re welcome,” he said, noticing how she looked tired around the eyes. He couldn’t help wondering about those false labor pains she’d been having that first night in his barn. He might have come to Mule Hollow seeking solitude, but there was no way he could ignore the fact that his neighbor looked as if she needed a little bit of help.

Even if all those grannies she was so fond of quoting had filled her mind with a bunch of hogwash about men. He also kept reminding himself that everything she did was her business. It didn’t matter if he agreed or disagreed.

“Don’t worry about Samantha. It looks like she’s been wandering for a long time. I’ll figure something out,” he said. Being alone and pregnant, the poor woman had enough to worry about without having to fret over Samantha bothering him. “Her visiting me isn’t that big of a deal. If it weren’t for my show stock it wouldn’t matter at all.”

“I understand completely,” she said with a sigh. “I know I could lock her in. And I should.”

She rubbed an earring between her thumb and forefinger, worry in her eyes. Again it hit Cort that she had a lot on her plate. Where was her husband? The question had bothered him ever since she’d told him there was no Mr. Tipps. And never would be. So if there never was, then what had happened to her? With her distaste for men in general he didn’t know what to think.

What does it matter? It’s none of your business, he thought.

Yeah, but Samantha was one thing he could help her with.

Setting his cup on the counter, he reached for his jacket. “Leave her be and I’ll figure out something over on my end—that is, if you don’t go out looking for her in the middle of the night again.” He pinned hard eyes on Lilly, hoping she’d heed his warning for the sake of her baby.

She looked almost as if she had a jaunty reply ready for him, but then surprised him with one of those smiles that socked him in the gut despite his need to dodge the blow.

“I can do that,” she said. “I guess you need to get home?”

“I’ve got horses to exercise and stalls to clean, and daylight’s burning,” he grunted, forcing himself not to ask for another cup of coffee. “The sun’s not going to last long, you know. That ice is going to start laying down again after lunch. You need anything?” He had to ask. His conscience would allow nothing less of him.

She shook her head. “Nope, thanks. I’m fine.”

Nodding, he stepped out the door. The blast of cold had him wishing for the warmth of Lilly’s kitchen, but his better sense told him to go home and stay there.

Lilly might not think highly of men, but that didn’t keep him from wondering just why exactly that was. What could have happened to turn all the Tipps women against men?

Lilly watched Cort walk carefully out to his big truck and drive away. The man was not a grinch…not exactly. She’d caught that hard look he’d given her when he’d asked if she could hold herself back from going out in the night in search of Samantha. Her first reaction had been to tell him that it wasn’t any of his business what she did, but something had passed across his tough expression, something in his eyes, in the softening of his voice—longing, regret…something. Whatever it was, it had touched Lilly. It had reached in deep and wound around a dark place in her heart that she had locked away and was determined to keep locked…and yet she’d responded to it by keeping her mouth shut.

The grannies wouldn’t have liked it, but what was done was done. Instead she’d smiled, nodded and told him she could refrain from wandering around at night taking care of Samantha, for her baby’s sake.

Lilly was all her baby had. Her grannies were gone. One at a time they’d passed on into eternity, leaving her alone with a bunch of heartfelt advice. And memories. So many memories. When she thought of Granny Shu-Shu and Granny Gab she pictured vinegar mixed with sugar. So much hurt and bitterness filled their lives. Both had been hurt by the men they’d loved. Their pain also ran through Lilly’s veins, put there like poison. Granny Bunches had tried to turn aside the bitterness, to show Lilly that there were other opinions in the world. But after Lilly experienced her own rejection, her heart had hardened. She was working on expelling the past, on moving forward. Some days were good. Some days weren’t.