Cottage by the Sea (43 page)

   Despite this, she knew that she had never longed for anything as much as she ached to bear a child created by the overwhelming passion she had shared with a man she loved. It was time for some straight talk.

   She had fallen in love with Lucas Teague.

   It was classic.

   Just as her lawyer had feared, she'd taken a mad fancy to the tall, dark, handsome guy with a leaky roof!

   From the first she'd been attracted by Luke's humor… his innate courtesy… his core understanding of who he was and where and how he'd chosen to live his life. She respected his sense of history and commitment to continuity, as well as his steady, unflappable attitude about shouldering the burden of an eight-hundred-year family legacy. She appreciated his kindness toward the people who worked for him, and his regard for her own organizational and artistic talents. She even admired his taste in tweed jackets and his passion for tea at four o'clock.

   And she flat-out adored him in bed: the brass daybed in the stable loft… her double bed in Painter's Cottage… and most certainly the memorable, mad, bad Bawdy Bed of Barton!

   She crossed into her small kitchen area and turned on the tap. Her hand was trembling as she filled a glass with water and drank it down. Then she turned around and leaned against the copper sink. Suddenly she was assaulted by a sharp stab of regret that their intense love affair, this wildly romantic idyll, would end so soon. Was she actually prepared to face the reality of remarriage—especially to another Brit—with all that implied? More to the point, would the Brit want a pregnant Yankee wife? Having the baby she always longed for was one thing… but, to put it bluntly, would Luke be anxious or even willing to be a father once again, and was
she up to swallowin
g the whole enchilada? A baby
and
marriage?

   The thought of being some man's wife again—in tradition- bound Britain, no less—gave her pause.

   And not just "some" man's wife, she told herself sternly as she stared out over the English Channel.

   
Luke's wife.

   Considering the gravity of the issues that could divide them, how strong would her love be for a man who couldn't welcome fatherhood with the same sense of blinding joy she was beginning to feel?

   Even so Blythe couldn't deny the depth of her emotional connection to this Englishman. It had sneaked up on her, like the stealthy wave that had caught them unawares that day at the beach.

   The problem, she realized with a combination of awe and dread, was that she had fallen in love with someone who was extraordinarily warm and affectionate toward her, but who kept himself emotionally remote from his son—as well as from anyone who dared to take him to task for his cool behavior. The alarm bells that had dimly rung each time she had observed the way in which Luke distanced himself from Dicken now clanged with a deafening warning. The kindest "California psychobabble" interpretation she could put on the situation was that Luke had avoided dealing with the grief related to the loss of his wife, and that attitude had cruelly injured an innocent child.

   However, his aloof manner toward ten-year-old Richard could easily boil down to the uncomplicated fact that Lucas Teague simply didn't enjoy being a father.

   And so the question became: would he want another child in his life? Specifically, would he want
her
child?
Really
want it, and not merely accept it as part of a Blythe Bartonand-Her-Millions package deal?

   The miserable irony was, in every other aspect Luke had proved to be the loving man of her fantasies. Unlike Chris, he was not an egomaniac, not a narcissist. He wrapped her in the circle of his warmth. Yet something was drastically wrong. Why did he behave in such a detached way toward his own offspring?

   Blythe inhaled deeply and rested her hands on her abdomen. Lost in thought, she allowed her gaze to follow a flock of gulls flying in the face of a freshening wind. If she were, in fact, pregnant, she would
have
this baby—even if it meant having it on her own. Any child of hers would be surrounded by love as it grew up, and not merely tolerated on school holidays. Under no circumstances would she permit her son or daughter to be ignored or made to feel a burden. A feeling of fierce, protective love for the tiny spark of life that might be inside her flared with intensity.

   
Lucas Teague, however much I care for you, I will do what I must
to protect this baby from a life of hurt!

   Blythe continued to stare moodily out the window at the surf crashing on the rocks below. In nine months' time would she still be living in heavenly, mysterious, forgetthe-7-Eleven Cornwall with a man who would likely be unhappy to hear he might be a father for the second time?

   Blythe closed her eyes. Perhaps all this speculation was distinctly premature, she lectured herself. Like Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone with the Wind,
she wouldn't think about all this now. She'd think about it tomorrow, after she'd been to see Dr. Vickery above Rattle Alley.

   As she finally drifted off to sleep sitting in her chair, she wondered if she was simply one of those women destined to have disastrous taste in men.

An hour later, the sound of a car's engine woke Blythe with a start. Huge thunderheads had gathered over Dodman Point. Late-afternoon sunshine bled through the gloom and slanted off the water in front of the cottage, turning it into a sheet of tarnished silver.

   Groggily Blythe rose from her chair, relieved to discover that, for the moment, calm continued to reign within her stomach's inner sanctum. If fact, she was ravenously hungry.

   En route to the front door to see who the visitor might be, she snatched an apple from the bowl perched on her small dining table. She reached for the iron latch and immediately found herself staring at a cream-colored Rolls-Royce parked just outside the gate on the other side of the field.

   Eleanor Barton closed the driver's side of the vehicle and then Blythe's sister opened its rear passenger door. Ellie's head and shoulders disappeared inside. A few moments later, the young woman straightened up, cradling a child's molded plastic infant seat in her arms.

   
Oh, Jesus… this is perfect! She's brought the baby along!

   Probably as a shield, Blythe added silently. Ellie was certainly shrewd enough to know that she'd slam the door in her face otherwise.

   Blythe watched as a younger version of herself picked her way across the moist grass, avoiding sheep dung as she slowly walked toward Painter's Cottage. Ellie's curly hair was the same shade of auburn as Blythe's own, cut inches shorter now. Her long legs were clad in faded blue jeans, and she wore a big navy-blue sweater. Its thick, cable design did nothing to disguise the new mother's full bosom, swelled to bovine proportions from breast-feeding her infant, speculated Blythe.

   
If you've got it, flaunt it—in your sister's face.

   When Eleanor finally arrived at Blythe's front door, she halted and inclined her head toward the sleeping child.

   "The minute we drive in the car, she conks out," Ellie announced brightly, as if popping by with her baby for tea were an everyday occurrence.

   Wordlessly Blythe gazed at the sleeping infant tucked under a luxurious pink blanket. She saw that the child had no particularly distinguishing features. She was plump— bordering on pudgy—with a fuzz of blond hair the color of Chris's capping her head.

   
They call her Janet,
Blythe thought suddenly. Named for the baby's grandmother. That made this child her first and only niece, and Grandma Barton, if she'd been alive, a great-grandmother.

   Just then a biting wind swept across the field, and a few splashes of rain splattered on the stone step that separated the two sisters. The baby stirred in its sleep and appeared about to wake.

   "You'd better come in."

   "Thanks," Ellie said, and followed Blythe inside the cottage. "I've just fed her, so she should sleep for at least an hour or two."

   "I asked Chris to tell you I didn't want to see you while you're here," Blythe said quietly, pointing to a shadowed corner where Ellie could settle the infant seat on top of a square table. "Why did you come, anyway?"

   "Because Dad told me to," Ellie said with a trace of her old truculence. She glanced curiously around the stone chamber. "And because I thought you should see the baby… see that she's real… see that we both have to accept what's happened, including Dad's marrying that real-estate lady and selling the ranch."

   "And why are you suddenly doing what Dad tells you to?" Blythe countered, ignoring Ellie's remarks. "You never have in the past."

   "I knew this was how you'd be," Ellie snapped. "Always playing the Good Sister to the max."

   "Well, I certainly don't qualify as the Bad Sister, since you've perfected that role your whole life."

   "Look, Blythe," Ellie said in a tight voice. "I didn't come here to hear this."

   "And what, exactly, did you come to hear?" Blythe replied evenly. She was doing her level best—and failing—to mask her outrage at this deliberate invasion. "That all is forgiven? That I've gotten over walking in on you—twice—while you fucked your brains out with the men in my life!"

   "You couldn't stand Otis McCafferty by the time he got his hands in my pants," Ellie declared, "so don't play the Tragedy Queen on that one! "

   "There was quite another tragedy involved—on
that
one!" Blythe said bitterly.

   "Well, glory be," Ellie retorted, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "I figured that when it suited you, you'd break your precious code of silence about Matt's death!"

   "And have you ever had the guts to come clean?" Blythe asked, trying her best to regain control of her temper.

   "Yes, I have."

   Taken aback by Ellie's unexpected answer, Blythe merely stared while her sister added flippantly, "All that shrinkage you paid for must have done me some good." Then she shrugged. "Last spring I thought it was time for some truth telling at the old Double Bar B."

   Blythe turned and gazed out the window as the sea moved in massive swells toward the shore. A steady rain had begun to pelt the windows.

   Truth telling.

   Blythe had simply buried the truth about her brother's death, just as she had helped her family bury a seventeenyear-old in the hard Wyoming soil. And then, for more than a decade, she had refused to speak to anyone of the events that had followed the life-changing moment when Matt Barton was dragged to his death by the bronc that had been mistakenly loaded into the bucking chute.

   Today, however, as Blythe turned her back on her younger sister, she suddenly saw herself, sitting astride Ranger just inside the rodeo arena on that cool July evening. The majestic Grand Tetons were rising in the distance, still dusted with patches of snow at their highest elevations. Blythe and her horse waited in the shadow of the grandstand as the final glow of sunset descended on Jackson Hole.

   That night she had worn her turquoise jeans and a matching shirt that Grandma Barton had embellished with a five-inch row of fringe dripping with silver sequins.

   Before she even knew what was happening, Matt was lying in the dirt. She could see at a glance that his broken neck was attached to his shoulders merely by the blood-streaked flesh that covered his bones.

   As if she were watching a home movie, Blythe pictured the young woman she had been then, scrambling off her horse to confront the stock contractor. Virgil Bailey's anguished cry had galvanized Blythe into action.

   
I told Oatsey not to buck him out tonight!

   She had stared at the grizzled veteran for a long moment, and then turned to face Matt's panting horse, finally under control by the daring rodeo clowns. She had raised her whip over her head and began to lash the animal so hard, its neck soon looked like a piece of bloody lace.

   Amazingly, the pickup men who'd finally got the animal shut down merely stood by, holding the reins, and watched. Then Blythe whirled on the heels of her turquoise cowboy boots and rushed past the distraught officials. She had headed directly for the corrals that were adjacent to the bucking chutes.

   She had found Otis McCafferty inside the shed behind the rodeo arena. Her rejected boyfriend, a twenty-six-year-old former bull rider with a bum knee, stood with his back to her, his jeans draped around his ankles and his bare buttocks shunting back and forth at a frantic clip.

   Blythe closed her eyes against the memory of her startled sister gaping at her over Oatsey's shoulder. The youngster—for that was what Ellie had been at fifteen—also was half-naked, her jeans pushed down below her knees. She'd been awkwardly reclining on a horse blanket tossed on top of three hay bales stacked against the wall.

   Blythe had only been able to utter a shriek of rage before she ran over—her horse whip still in hand—and began to lash Oatsey's back. His exposed buttocks glistened obscenely beneath his filthy cowboy shirt. The sweat-stained fabric had been red, she remembered… like her brother's blood.

   To escape Blythe's attack, Otis swiftly fell forward onto the hay bale where he'd been penetrating Ellie with carnal concentration. Somehow he gracefully twisted his body sideways and regained his footing with the agility of the bull rider he'd once been.