Nobody's Baby but Mine (18 page)

“Oh, that.” Some of the tension left his body, and his weight eased on her.

“God, I hate you,” she whispered. “I would have had a better chance at a sperm bank.”

“Exactly where you should have gone in the first place.”

Despite his words, he no longer sounded quite so angry, but acid churned in her stomach. She knew she had to ask him, even though she dreaded hearing the answer, and she forced out the words. “What’s your IQ?”

“I have no idea. Unlike you, I don’t keep it tattooed on my forehead.” He rolled to the side, which allowed her to struggle to her feet.

“Then your SATs. What were they?”

“I don’t remember.”

She regarded him bitterly. “You’re a liar. Everybody remembers their SATs.”

He swiped at some wet leaves on his jeans as he rose.

“Tell me, dammit!”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.” He sounded annoyed, but not particularly dangerous.

That didn’t calm her. Instead, she once again felt a swell of hysteria. “You tell me right now, or, I swear to God, I’ll find some way to murder you! I’ll put ground glass in your food! I’ll stab you with a butcher knife while you’re sleeping! I’ll wait until you’re in the shower and throw in an electrical appliance! I’ll—I’ll club you in the head with a baseball bat some night when you walk in the door!”

He stopped brushing his jeans and gazed at her with what looked more like curiosity than apprehension. The fact that she knew she was only making herself appear more irrational further inflamed her. “Tell me!”

“You are some bloodthirsty woman.” Looking faintly bemused, he shook his head. “That electrical appliance thing . . . You’d need an extension cord or something to reach all the way into the shower. Or maybe you weren’t planning to plug it in.”

She gritted her teeth, feeling prodigiously foolish. “If it wasn’t plugged in, it wouldn’t electrocute you, now would it?”

“Good point.”

She took a deep breath and tried to regain her sanity. “Tell me your SATs. You owe me that much.”

He shrugged and bent over to pick up her glasses. “Maybe fourteen hundred, or somethin’ like that. Mighta been a little lower.”

“
Fourteen hundred
!” She punched him as hard as she could, then stomped away from him into the woods. He was a hypocrite and a fraud, and she felt sick down to the very depth of her soul. Even Craig wasn’t as smart as this man.

“That’s dumb compared to you,” he called after her.

“Don’t ever speak to me again.”

He came up next to her, but didn’t touch her. “Come on, Rosebud, you’ve got to settle down enough so I can take you apart for what you’ve done to me, which is a whole lot worse than my damned SATs.”

She whirled on him. “You didn’t do anything to
me
! You’ve done it to my child, don’t you see that? Because of you, an innocent child is going to grow up to be a freak.”

“I never told you I was stupid. You just assumed.”

“You said
ain’t
! That first night we were together, you said
ain’t
twice!”

A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. “A little local color. I’m not apologizin’.”

“There are comic books all over the house!”

“I was just livin’ up to your expectations.”

She collapsed then. She turned her back to him, crossed her arms against the nearest tree trunk, and rested her forehead against her wrist. All the humiliations of her childhood returned to her: the taunts and cruelties, the awful isolation. She had never fit in, and now, neither would her child.

“I’m going to take the baby to Africa,” she whispered. “Away from civilization. I’ll teach her myself, so she doesn’t have to grow up with other children taunting her.”

A surprisingly gentle hand settled over the small of her back and began to rub. “I’m not going to let you do that to him, Rosebud.”

“You will once you see what a freak she is.”

“He’s not going to be a freak. Is that how your father felt about you?”

Everything within her went still. She pulled away from him and fumbled in the pocket of her Windbreaker for a tissue. She took her time blowing her nose, wiping her eyes, regaining her self-control. How could she have let herself fall apart like this? It was no wonder he thought she was crazy.

She gave her nose a final blow. He held out her glasses, and she put them on, ignoring the strands of moss caught in one hinge. “I’m sorry for causing such a dreadful scene. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” He grinned, and to her amazement, a dimple popped into the hard plane of his cheek. Stunned, she gazed at it for several long moments before she was able to pick up her train of thought.

“Violence doesn’t solve anything, and I could have hurt you quite badly.”

“I’m not trying to get you cranked up again, Rosebud, but you don’t have a whole lot going for you when it comes to packin’ a punch.” He took her arm and began steering her back toward the house.

“This is my fault. Everything’s been my fault from the beginning. If I hadn’t let myself buy into every conceivable stereotype about athletes and Southerners, I would have been a more astute judge of your mental abilities.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me about your father.”

She nearly stumbled, but his hand on her elbow steadied her. “There’s nothing to tell. He was an accountant for a company that manufactured paper punches.”

“Smart man?”

“An intelligent man. Not brilliant.”

“I think I’m getting the picture here.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“He didn’t have a clue what to do with you, did he?”

She picked up her pace. “He did his best. I really don’t want to discuss it.”

“Did it occur to you that your problems as a kid might have had more to do with your old man’s attitude than with the size of your brain?”

“You don’t know anything.”

“That’s not what my diploma says.”

She couldn’t respond because they had reached the back of the house, and Annie waited for them at the screen door. She glared at her grandson. “What’s wrong with you? You get a pregnant woman upset like that, it’ll put a mark on the baby, for sure.”

“What do you mean?” He bristled with belligerence. “Who told you she’s pregnant?”

“You wouldn’t have married her otherwise. You don’t have that much sense.”

Jane was touched. “Thank you, Annie.”

“And you!” Annie turned on her. “What was in your head carryin’ on like that? If you go berserk every time Calvin upsets you, that baby’s gonna strangle on the cord long before it has a chance to catch its first breath.”

Jane thought about addressing the physiological improbability of that happening, but decided to save her breath. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Next time he makes you mad, just take a shotgun to him.”

“Mind your own business, you old bat,” Cal growled. “She’s got enough ideas of her own for doin’ me in.”

Annie tilted her head toward Jane, and a sadness seemed to come over her. “You listen to me, Janie Bonner. I don’t know what happened between you and Calvin so he ended up marryin’ you, but from what I saw a few minutes ago, the two of you don’t have no love match goin’. He’s married you, and I’m glad about that, but I’m tellin’ you right now that if you did anything havey cavey to bring him around, you’d better make sure Amber Lynn and Jim Bonner never find out about it. They’re not as broad-minded as me, and if they even suspect you’ve hurt their boy, they’ll cut you off at the knees, you understand what I’m sayin’?”

Jane swallowed hard and nodded.

“Good.” She turned to Cal. The sadness faded, and her old eyes grew sly. “I’m surprised somebody with such a bad case of the flu as Janie here had enough strength to walk over the mountain.”

Cal cursed softly under his breath. Jane stared at Annie. “What do you mean? I don’t have the flu?”

Cal grabbed her arm and began to pull her away. “Come on, Jane, you’re going home.”

“Wait a minute! I want to know what she meant by that.”

Cal drew her round the side of the house, but not before she heard Annie’s cackle. “You remember what I told you about that cord gettin’ twisted, Janie Bonner, ’cause I think Calvin’s about to upset you again.”

“You got a problem with that?”

“I expected to meet your parents. I thought that’s why you brought me here.”

“You’ll meet ’em. When I decide to introduce you.”

His arrogance was like setting a spark to tinder. This was the result of letting him spend the last few weeks calling all the shots, and it was time she put a stop to it. “You’d better decide soon because I’m not going to let you keep me cooped up any longer.”

“What are you talkin’ about, cooped up? Here I’ve gone out of my way to make sure you can work without a lot of people bothering you, and you’re complaining.”

“Don’t you dare act like you’re doing me a favor!”

“I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

“How about
imprisonment? Incarceration? Solitary confinement?
And just so you don’t accuse me of going behind your back, I’m breaking out of the joint tomorrow to help Annie plant her garden.”

“You’re
what
?”

Think about Annie and her garden, she told herself, instead of the fact that her child would be another misfit. She snatched off her glasses and began cleaning the dirt from them with a tissue, concentrating on the job as if it were a complicated equation. “Annie wants to get her garden in. If the potatoes aren’t planted in the next few days, they’ll be puny. We’re also planting onions and beets.”

“You are
not
putting in a garden for her. If she wants a garden, I’ll hire Joey Neeson to help her.”

“He’s worthless.”

“You don’t even
know
Joey.”

“I’m just repeating what I heard. The reason nothing’s getting done is because she doesn’t want strangers around her place.”

“Well, that’s just too bad because you’re not doing it for her.”

She opened her mouth to launch another attack, but before she could get the first word out, he cupped her head and pushed her down on the seat so that her cheek squashed against his thigh.

“What are you doing?” She tried to sit up, but he held her down.

“My mom. She’s coming out of the shoestore.”

“I’m not the only one who’s gone crazy! You have completely lost your mind!”

“You’re not meeting my family until I decide you’re meeting them!” While he held her fast, he steered with his opposite knee and waved. Damn! Why couldn’t his parents have stayed away longer, like another two months or so? He knew he had to let them meet the Professor, but he’d hoped to postpone it as long as he could. Now his elderly wife had ruined everything with her morning’s trek over the mountain.

He glanced down. Her cheek lay mashed against his thigh, and her hair felt soft under his fingers. She was always so tidy, but now her French braid had pretty much given up the ghost. Silky blond tendrils tumbled over his hand and across the faded denim of his jeans. She sure did have pretty hair, even decorated with twigs and bits of dried leaves. The elastic band holding the braid together was barely hanging on, and he had to resist the urge to pull it off and loosen the rest with his fingers.

He knew he had to let her up soon, since she was madder than a wet hen and starting to sputter, but he kind of liked the idea of her head in his lap, even if she was spitting nails. He noticed that she didn’t have more than a speck of makeup left on her face. Still, without those glasses, she looked kind of cute. Sort of like seventeen going on twentyfive. Maybe he could still pass her off as—

As if she’d let him. Damn, but she was one hardheaded woman. He remembered how many times he’d wished Kelly hadn’t been quite so sweet. Kelly was a beautiful girl, but he’d never been able to have a decent fight with her, which meant he couldn’t ever entirely relax. One thing he had to say about the Professor—she sure knew how to have a good fight.

He frowned. Were his feelings toward her softening?
Hell, no
. He had a long memory, and he wouldn’t ever forget how she’d tricked him. It was just that he seemed to have lost the white-hot rage that had carried him through the first couple of weeks. Maybe it had finally burned itself out when she’d leaned her head against that tree trunk and told him she was taking the baby to Africa.

Except for what she’d done to him, he was beginning to realize that she was probably a decent person. Too damn serious and uptight as hell. Still, she worked hard—he’d seen lots of evidence of that from those equations she left like mouse droppings all over the house—and she’d made her way in a man’s world. The fact that she wanted to help Annie spoke well of her, even though it made things twice as tough for him. Maybe his feelings
had
softened a little. She’d been so upset today when she found out he wasn’t the dummy she’d counted on that he’d actually felt guilty. Her old man sure had done a number on her.