Texas Homecoming (10 page)

He went quiet for a moment, staring at her as the high color in his face eased down a notch. Then he said, "Like...the dancing?"

She lowered her eyes. "I'm not ashamed of what I do. Dancing is art. The female body is beautiful. Women have been performing erotic dance for over five thousand years."

He raised his eyebrows. "But not for drunken perverts, for the most part."

"Thanks. Jerk."

He shrugged. "I meant...it can't be fun."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it." She was being sarcastic, but she didn't expect him to pick up on that.

"Come on, gimme a break, will you? I meant, it's a hell of a sacrifice to do what you do for a living. You must love him a lot."

"I thought we'd already established that."

He sighed, rolled his eyes. "You ready to go, or what?"

She sent him a scowl and pushed past him out the door. Her feet tapped across the wood floor of the front porch, and she glanced out toward where Baxter had been playing.

He wasn't there.

"Bax?" She tapped down the steps. "Hon, where are you?"

"Up here, Mom! Look at me!"

She followed his voice and spotted him as the screen door banged closed and Luke stepped up beside her. Baxter was hanging upside down from a tree limb about fifteen feet in the air. To her, it looked more like a thousand feet, but her logical mind said fifteen. Even so, her blood ran icy cold. "Don't move!" she cried. "Don't you move, Baxter!" She ran down the steps and out toward the tree with Luke on her heels.

He said, "Will you stop panicking? You're scaring him."

"I'm scaring
him?"
She got to the tree trunk. Her shoes were long gone. She'd kicked them off on the way, and now she grabbed a low limb and pulled herself easily up onto it.

"Hey, wait a minute! What do you think you're—
Jasmine!"

She wished he would shut up. "Stay still, Baxter," she called. "Mama's coming, baby. Just don't move."

She monkey-climbed her way up higher and higher. Her son was talking calmly, carrying on what sounded for all the world like a normal conversation with Luke, while she climbed like a wild woman. Finally, finally, she reached the limb where Baxter had been hanging. Only he wasn't there.

Her heart hammered so hard she thought it was coming through her chest, and she shot a glance toward the ground, half expecting to see his broken body lying there. Instead, she heard laughter and saw her son being held in the big arms of Luke Brand. Luke was grinning like a loon and ruffling Baxter's hair, and Bax was laughing out loud up at him.

Luke looked up. "Hey, he's okay. You can come down now."

She blew her hair out of her face. "How did you get down there so fast, Baxter?"

He smiled. "I just jumped. Luke catched me."

"You jumped?" She glared at Luke. "He
jumped?"

"Well, don't look at me, it wasn't my idea." He set Bax on his feet, brushed the twigs out of his hair, then looked up at her again. "Well, are you coming or what? I swear, it takes more work to get you two going on a simple shopping trip than one man can bear to handle."

Muttering under her breath, she started back along the limb. Only one of her footholds didn't hold so well. She heard the sharp crack of the small limb and, though she grabbed hold of another, her hands slipped over the smooth bark and she was plummeting earthward almost before she knew it

She didn't even have time to shriek.

And then she was in those big arms, just as her son had been moments before. And Luke was looking down at her, his eyes surprised, then amused. His chest was supporting her, his arms under her shoulders and legs, holding her against him. So every time he breathed, she felt herself rise and fall with it. And his face was so close she could see the light shadow of stubble peeking out of his skin.

"You can put me down now."

"I can?" The words were muttered and not a real question. Then he caught himself, blinked and said, "Oh, right, sure," and set her on her feet.

Baxter was sitting there staring from one of them to the other. And Jasmine suddenly felt a rush of guilt rising up in her chest. She didn't know why. She hadn't done anything, and it wasn't as if she had any intention of changing that. But logical or not, the guilt was there, and in force. She'd nearly kissed this man, or maybe he had nearly kissed her. She couldn't be sure which, but there had definitely been a kiss lingering in the air between them, waiting to be claimed. She'd nearly kissed a man in front of her son. Her Baxter. As if he weren't even there. As if he didn't matter.

OKAY, LUKE THOUGHT. SO SHE
was like a she-bear guarding a cub when it came to that boy of hers. Jasmine had clambered up the tree so all-fired fast that Luke hadn't even had time to offer to do it for her. Much less to suggest that might not be the safest course of action she could take. He had never seen anything like it. She hadn't even paused to think it over, just leaped onto the first branch she could reach and scuttled up so easily it would have made a mama chimp jealous of her skill.

Damn.

She loved the kid. Luke had already deduced that much. Hell, he
knew
she loved the kid. But in case there had been any room for doubt—in case he'd been thinking her overprotectiveness had some other cause, like anal-retentive disorder or something—he now knew better. She might be a lot of things, but chief among them was one: she was a devoted mother. And that was something he couldn't help but admire.

In all his life, as a kid like Baxter, with a mom like Jasmine, he had never ever once doubted that his mother loved him. That she would step in front of a speeding train for him without batting an eye. Even though she'd kept him from a lot of things— like close friends, extended family, a peer group— even though she'd smothered him to the point where he'd nearly grown up to be an isolated, cutoff loner of a man—he'd loved his mother. When he'd lost her, for a while he'd been lost himself. If he hadn't come here, found this big warm family...

Well, hell, it didn't pay much to think on what might have been.

Jasmine rode beside Baxter and Luke in the pickup that had been parked in back, out of sight, bouncing in her seat with every pothole they hit. She looked a bit more "Quinn" than she had when she'd first arrived. She'd gone lighter on the makeup by about a pound and a half, he guessed. And the hair wasn't quite so big now. Still full and fluffy, and soft as a dark silk cloud, but not as over the top as before. And the jeans and T-shirt looked good. Damn, they looked good, and he wasn't quite sure why. They weren't tight, but slightly loose. She just was one of those women he figured would look good in anything, including a feed sack. However, those ridiculous talons of hers, with their gem-stones winking, were still in place. And those shoes! God, where did she shop, at some dominatrix supply store? The heels were like vampire stakes, sharpened up for business. How did a person
walk
in those things?

"You might miss a few of these Texas-sized potholes if you'd quit staring at me and keep your eyes on the road," she told him, her tone a little sharp.

He glanced from her feet to her face. No amount of makeup could hide those big brown eyes now that he'd noticed them. Doe eyes. He felt as if he might fall into them before he managed to jerk his gaze back to the road. "I was wondering how you manage to walk in those shoes," he said, to make conversation.

"One step at a time, cowboy. Just like everybody else."

He glanced sideways at her, saw her lips quirk in a slight smile and knew she was teasing him a little. He didn't say any more, but sent Baxter, who sat between them, a wink.

A short while later he pulled the pickup to a stop. "This looks like a good place to start," he said. "What do you think, Baxter?"

Bax glanced through the windshield, and his eyes lit up when he spotted the giant ice-cream cone on top of the small log building.

Jasmine rolled her eyes. "Hell, you're just determined to make me fat, aren't you?"

Luke shrugged. "I'm guessin' you could eat nonstop for about a week and still have a ways to go for that, woman."

She smiled at him suddenly. Right out of the blue. "Thank you."

"Shoot, that was no compliment. Why do you city girls always take being malnourished as a good thing? You're downright scrawny." He looked at Baxter. "I say we get her a triple scoop super mocha sundae with extra whipped cream."

"Yeah!" Baxter said, giggling.

Jasmine was glowering at Luke again. "I'll have a soda," she said. "Diet."

"Darn. Looks like Bax will have to eat that sundae, then."

Bax laughed as if he would bust a gut, and Jasmine's glower eased away. Maybe she was starting to understand that he was kidding here, trying to keep Baxter's mind off his troubles.

He thought so even more when Jasmine ordered a small cone with a chocolate dip. They ate at one of the umbrella shaded picnic tables outside. He got momentarily lost in watching Jasmine eat ice cream. It was suitable fodder for the Playboy Channel, he figured. Or maybe it was just him. When they finished, he hauled them all over to the Wal-Mart, found a parking spot and stopped the truck.

Jasmine looked at the store, then sent Luke a doubtful glance.

"Anything you could possibly want or need, this is the place you'll find it," Luke promised her. "Hair care, clothes, shoes, even groceries. Knock yourself out."

"If you say so." She drew a breath and reached for Baxter's hand.

"Jasmine?" Luke said, and she looked back at him. He made his eyes as sincere as he could. "Why don't you let Baxter hang with me while you get your shopping done? I just have a few errands in town. Heck, I take Bubba with me all the time. Sometimes for the whole weekend, and he hasn't once gone home with so much as a mosquito bite."

She bit her lower lip. Luke noticed it, then made himself stop noticing it. "I don't know..." she said. Which meant she was wavering.

"You said you had a lot to do. And you know it'll be easier without him in tow. I promise, I won't let him out of my sight not even for a second."

"Please, Mom?" Baxter asked.

She met Luke's eyes again, and he saw her message clearly. Let anything happen to my boy and I will kill you slowly. But aloud she said, "Oh, all right."

Bax squealed with delight and clapped his hands together. But while he celebrated, Jasmine reached out and her slender hand, with its deadly nails, locked around Luke's arm with surprising strength.

"It's important you keep that promise about not letting him out of your sight," she told him, her voice very low. "Very important. And if you see any strangers paying him undue attention, get him out of there. Watch him, Luke."

The way she said it, the intensity in her eyes and the pressure of her hand on his arm...all those things combined delivered a message he would have preferred not to have received. The kid was in danger. Or Jasmine believed him to be. So those "bad guys" Baxter had mentioned twice were not just unpleasant characters or casual enemies, were they?

What the hell was going on with these two?

Too late to ask. She released him, leaned down to kiss her son's face and got out of the truck. "You be good, Baxter. You stay close to Luke, you hear?"

"I'll be good, Mom. Really."

AN HOUR LATER JASMINE EMERGED
from the store, her arms loaded down with shopping bags. She'd cashed both her own paycheck and Rosebud's on her way out of Illinois, so cash wasn't a problem. Not yet, anyway. As she entered the store, she practically bumped into a woman she didn't know. The woman had a baby on her hip. Jasmine muttered an apology, but the woman only stepped back, looked at her closely, and then smiled and said, "You must be Jasmine!"

Jasmine frowned, going on instant alert. "How do you know who I am?"

She was a pretty thing, with a Lois Lane look about her, and her baby was utterly gorgeous. Fat cheeks, blond curls. A little boy, six or seven months old, by Jasmine's best guess, wearing a tiny baseball cap with his jumper. The woman went right on speaking. "You're new in town. You're shopping right where my cousin said you'd be shopping. And of course, there are the nails. They clinched it."

"Not the nails again," Jasmine muttered, relaxing a bit as it hit her this must be yet another Brand.

"They're gorgeous," the woman said. "Let me take a few of those for you." She helped herself to three of Jasmine's bags, holding them in one hand and her baby in the other arm. "I'm Penny. My husband Ben is Garrett's brother. And this is Zachary, our son."

"He's adorable," Jasmine said, looking at the bright eyes that stared right back at her. The baby smiled and cooed. Then Jasmine said, "Did Luke send you here, then?"

"Uh-huh. He said to pick you up. He and Baxter, your own adorable little fellow, will meet you at the dojo in a bit Okay?"

Jasmine shrugged. "Fine, I guess." She walked with Penny Brand out to her car, which turned out to be a hulking four-wheel-drive SUV in a pretty shade of forest-green. They stashed the bags in the back and the baby in the car seat, then got into the front.

As she fastened her seat belt, Penny said, "By the way, welcome to Quinn. I can't tell you how glad I am to meet you. It's like fate sent you along at the perfect time."

Jasmine frowned. "Why would you say that?"

Penny shrugged, turning the wheel, expertly pulling into the light traffic of town. "Baxter tells me you're a dancer."

"Um, yeah." She wondered if Luke had elaborated on that, if he'd told his cousin-in-law that she danced, all right—at a strip joint in the seedy part of Chicago.

"I think that is so incredible. God, I've always wished I could dance. I just seem to have two left feet. Were you formally trained or self-taught?"

So Luke hadn't told her the rest. Hell, he must be a throwback. You could only fake so much— she didn't think you could fake the kind of...chivalry, or whatever antiquated moral value prevented him from spilling her secrets to his family. And glancing at Penny, she saw yet another woman who seemed kind, friendly, genuinely interested in her, and not sporting any ulterior motives. She was beginning to think it didn't make a lot of sense to believe every single person she met was an incredibly talented actor, trying to snow her, up to no good.