Kentucky Groom (12 page)

A light was already on in Jesse’s room when she got there. Carrie burst into the room to find Jay sitting on the bed and holding her child in his arms. The little girl’s head was tucked under his chin, her heavy sobs already subsiding. Jay wore a pair of shorts and an undershirt, revealing very manly muscles beneath the thin, white cotton.

Carrie stood there and watched the two of them. Her daughter—so young and innocent, so much a part of her. Her very life. And Jay—the brash young man who had charmed his way into her family. Into her life.

Was he making himself irreplaceable at least to Jesse?

In that instant, Carrie loved him more than she had ever loved another man.

“I was still awake,” he said quietly, looking up to catch her gaze. “She’ll be okay. I’ll stay with her until she goes back to sleep. I sometimes sat with my sister like this when she was little.”

Carrie nodded and then moved away. She was tired, and a nagging voice kept asking her why she was letting Jay back into her life when she had already decided he wasn’t to be trusted, let alone loved.

Chapter Eleven

Morning light was a hushed alarm clock drifting slowly between the cracks of Carrie’s window shades. She sat up in bed and fisted the sleep from her eyes. How she hated mornings. In less than a month, she would be going back to school, rising at five-thirty to make it to the classroom by seven. The prospect of an early wake-up call was not pleasant. Yawning, she crawled out of bed.

Barefoot, Carrie padded toward the bathroom, her sleep-clogged mind slowly recognizing the unexpected aroma of coffee. The door was slightly ajar, and before she became fully aware, Carrie pushed it open.

Jay stood at the sink and looked at her through the mirror. In the instant it took for her face to flame, Carrie noticed how his pajama bottoms cupped his well-defined butt and how the muscles of his shoulders and arms were sculpted like some sort of Greek god. Her lungs suddenly lacked air. She wondered if the sharp pain in her chest was the early signs of a heart attack. When Jay turned around with white shaving cream bisecting his face and a bright smile on his lips, Carrie felt the quick burn of desire.

“Good morning,” Jay said with much too much enthusiasm.

“What’s so good about it?” The teasing glint in his eyes irritated the heck out of her.

“Oh, not a morning person, are we?”

Jay was too perky. “No.” Carrie backed out of the bathroom. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

He toweled his face and followed her out, grabbing his t-shirt. “I hope I didn’t wake you. I tried to be quiet.”

Carrie refused to answer him. Jay tossed her another amused look and swept her a mock bow. “Go right in. I’ll finish later.”

Carrie glared at him. The urge to slap his handsome face was as irresistible as the urge of nature’s call. Head high, she marched past and closed the door, making sure he heard the click of the lock.

Jay smiled at the forbidding look on Carrie’s face. She needed a little shaking up—just a little to get her out of the doldrums and perhaps to take her mind off her troubles. Whistling under his breath, he put on his shirt and went into the kitchen. He filled a mug full of coffee and handed it to Carrie when she came out of the bathroom.

“Coffee? Black?”

“Thanks.” She took the mug.

“I guessed right. You don’t take cream and sugar, do you?”

“No.” Her fingers closed around the mug, and she brought it to her nose, allowing the steam to bathe her face.

Carrie’s gaze still said she was spoiling for a fight. Their eyes clashed for a moment before she looked away, moving with unconscious grace toward the sofa. She sat down and drew her feet underneath her.

There was nothing particularly revealing about her long, cotton pajamas. They were a deep forest green, not a bit revealing. Jay couldn’t see through the fabric. Yet for some reason, the way she sat, all balled up on the sofa with her fingers wrapped around the mug and a challenging look on her face, threw Jay into a tizzy. She was too darn sexy with her blond hair tousled from sleep and draped over her shoulders.

“Do you always get up this early?”

“Grooms always get up with the sun.” Jay returned to the kitchen and came back with his own mug of coffee.

“But you weren’t always a groom.”

“No I wasn’t.”

The coffee was as hot as Jay’s reaction to Carrie. He sat down across from her in a chair, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and cradling the coffee mug.

“How did you have the money to buy my husband’s business?” she asked. “Did your father give it to you?”

He considered her thoughtfully. Carrie didn’t know. Couldn’t know. They had argued and then the accident. He hadn’t been able to explain. Suddenly Jay wanted her to know all about him. Not just about his disagreement with his father or his pretending to be a groom, but he wanted to tell her about the positive and important things he had done with his life.

“Have you heard of a computer program called Sampson?”

Carrie shrugged. “Vaguely.”

“I wrote it.”

Jay sipped his coffee. This news didn’t seem to impress her. He could tell she didn’t care about computers.

“Sampson is the multilevel software installed in all Preston Computers. It rivals the giants of the industry with its simplicity and ease-of-use. It’s one factor that has raised Preston’s share of the industry by twenty-four per cent within the last two years.”

Carrie was bored, but this had been his passion. “The point,” he went on, “is that I made a lot of money from the program. It made me pretty damn rich.”

The irony of his words clogged Jay’s throat. Here he was bragging like some multimillion-dollar-a-year sports star when his whole purpose for leaving California and Preston Computers was to find a woman unimpressed by his wealth. Well, he’d done it. Here she sat, her feet drawn up beneath her with the curves of her hips and thighs emphasized by the soft fabric of her pajamas. Carrie didn’t care about his money. She had made it clear she didn’t want his money or him. Jay felt like a hypocrite trying to use his wealth to win her over.

This was crap. His stomach felt cold and hollow. Jay stood up. He walked back into the kitchen and emptied his mug into the sink.

When he returned to the living room, Carrie was watching him with a quiet regard.

“Tate loved computers,” she said. “He was like a boy with a toy whenever he was working on one.” She lowered her feet and sat forwards still clutching her mug. “I could never understand his fascination, but he made a comfortable living for us. He was a good man.”

Jay thought he saw a shimmer of love in her eyes for her dead husband. A painful jealousy stabbed his gut. He wanted that same look of love to be for him. What made him think he could so quickly replace Carrie’s husband? She was recently widowed. Of course, he couldn’t expect her to transfer her allegiance overnight. Maybe it
was
enough to have her gratitude.

“I used to be like that,” Jay kept up the conversation. “With a father in the business, I always had the biggest and the best computer. I taught myself to program and skipped college to develop software applications for Carter.”

“You must be a genius.”

“No, I just loved it, like Tate did.” Jay sat down across from her again. “But to tell you the truth, since coming to Kentucky, I haven’t missed it.”

“Your fingers don’t itch to go back into programming?”

“No.”
They itch to get a hold of your lovely body
.

Carrie rubbed her nose with the back of her finger and sat back against the sofa to regard him once more from under veiled lashes. She looked so darn desirable.

“In fact, I kind of like the horse business,” Jay said. “Maybe it will be my next venture.”

“Bob Flynn, the manager, told me you had never stopped by Tate’s shop.” Carrie’s statement held a hint of concern.

Jay shrugged. “I guess I was avoiding the whole computer world for a while. But that’s a mistake I need to remedy as soon as the doctors let me drive.”

The phone rang, and Carrie got up to answer it. Jesse stumbled from her room. Half asleep, she crawled into Jay’s lap with a strange familiarity. He hugged her tight, accepting her trust and fighting a pang of sadness. He missed his sister Gloria.

When Carrie returned, she paused at the sight of them and then crossed to the sofa and sat down. Her light blue eyes looked almost pale with the worry he saw written in them. Jay bit back his curiosity and waited.

In a moment, Carrie lifted her chin. “I need to ask another favor.”

“Anything. You know that.”

“Babysit for me. I need to go into Louisville and talk to my lawyer.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Jesse announced.

“We’ll walk over to see Dr. Doolittle,” Jay suggested, ruffling the child’s hair. “It will help me get my strength back.”

Carrie’s look carried a quick caress—so quick that it surprised him. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“I’ve got to get ready.” She stood.

“Sure.” As she went into the bathroom, Jay watched her go—the slight sway of her hips and the movement of her mass of blond hair against the small of her back. Concerned about his reaction, he gave Jesse a gentle shove off his lap.

“Here, imp, let’s go make breakfast.”

Together they went into the kitchen and amid much laughter fixed bacon and eggs—something Jay would have rather been doing with Jesse’s mother.

* * * *

Carrie’s observation had made Jay feel guilty. Why hadn’t he stopped by the shop he’d just purchased? The next day when Mary drove into Louisville, he hitched a ride.

Bob Flynn, the manager of Mercer Computer Mart, was in his late-fifties. He had probably been a computer programmer when the industry was in its infancy, making him the kind of pioneer Jay had learned to respect. He liked the manager right away.

“Mr. Preston, I’m honored.” Flynn’s handshake was firm.

“Mr. Preston is my father. Call me Jay.”

“Jay.”

“I’m sorry to have neglected you.”

Flynn showed Jay into the office situated in the back of the crowded retail business. “With what you’ve just survived, it can be expected. Saving Jesse made us all give thanks.”

Jay shrugged as he sat down. “You would have done the same thing.”

“I don’t think I could have made it up the trellis.” He laughed referring to his rather bulky frame and potbelly.

Jay shrugged again trying to dismiss the man’s praise. He felt uncomfortable. He’d only done what needed to be done.

“I’m here to talk business, to see if there’s anything you need, anything I can do. My lawyer has kept me apprised of things. You seem to run a tight ship.”

Flynn sat behind his desk. “Business is good. We’re selling a lot of computers, the Preston brand being our bestseller.”

In spite of himself, the news pleased Jay. At least his father had never slighted his customers.

“So with the business in the black, are you sure you don’t need more capital?”

“If you’re offering gifts, I’m not the one to turn them down.” Flynn grinned and picked up a pencil to twirl in his fingers. After a moment, he continued. “Actually, your purchase paid off the outstanding creditors. As it was, you got a deal. This store was worth more than you paid for it, but because of the debt, you got it for what amounted to `fire sale’ prices.”

Jay sat forward. “Kind of an ironic term, don’t you think?”

“Ironic, but accurate. There’s potential in this store and in Tate’s dream that he never fulfilled.”

Jay cocked his head. Tate Mercer had a dream? “Go on.”

“Because he got sick so suddenly and it took him so fast, Tate never got to act on his idea. But I’ve done some checking into it. Couldn’t get into it myself, not with Mrs. Mercer so bad off, but just maybe with your help…” Flynn let his words hang between them.

Jay’s gaze flicked over the man’s face. He didn’t need to urge him on, because Flynn dropped his pencil and leveled a direct look right at his new employer. “You know computers,” he said. “I know computers. It was Tate Mercer’s idea to purchase computers for large companies. Be the middleman, so to speak. Take a small percentage, but offer excellent service. With your money, it’s something I can make happen.”

Jay sat back. He liked the idea. It was innovative. Brash. Something his father might have thought of.

“Why didn’t you approach Mrs. Mercer with this idea?”

Flynn shook his head. “Like I said, the poor woman was far too swamped with debt. She had her own troubles. Frankly, your purchase of the business was a godsend.”

“And she was grieving for her husband.” Jay wasn’t the first man in Carrie’s life.

With a shake of his head, the store manager picked up his pencil once more. “Sure she grieved, but she was more worried about Jesse and her reaction to her father’s death.”

“You make it sound as if she didn’t love her husband.”

Flynn’s gaze shifted away, defensive. “Now don’t get me wrong. She loved her husband all right, but I always thought their marriage was more one of expedience.”

“I don’t understand.” Jay found himself not breathing.

Flynn looked away again looking embarrassed. “It’s not something I ought to be talking about.”

“If you want to implement this project of Tate’s, you’ll tell me.” Shades of Carter coming out, Jay thought to himself, but he needed to know what Flynn meant by “expedience.”

The manager considered him for a moment. “Let’s just say Tate had to marry his wife.”

“I knew that.”

“But theirs wasn’t a marriage of love. Just respect, I’d say. I don’t think they had the passion you’d expect from most married couples. He was much older, too”

A hard knot twisted in Jay’s belly. Maybe that’s what was wrong with Carrie. Maybe having married for convenience once in her life, she wanted to be darn sure before she married again. Disguising himself as a groom had, on one hand, brought him the woman of his dreams, only to lose her when she had found out the truth. God, he hated ironies.