The Sweetest September (Home in Magnolia Bend) (8 page)

She felt vulnerable because she was on her own and still slightly scared she might lose the pregnancy that had brought her to Louisiana in the first place. That was it. Had to be. She wasn’t attracted to him. Didn’t want to mean anything to him.

Okay, she
was
attracted to him. The man made a chambray shirt and worn jeans look movie star sexy...so no use lying to herself about that one.

Guard yourself, chickadee.

Right.

“Drive safely,” Abigail called as they crossed the wide porch with the freshly painted rocking chairs and ferns dropping dried fronds. A pair of pumpkins flanked a fancy arrangement of cornstalks, hay bales and bright mums. In the bright light of day, the Laurel Woods Bed-and-Breakfast reminded Shelby of places she’d never known...opposite of the sleek steel world she’d inhabited.

John’s old farm truck idled in the drive. It had obviously been running the entire time John had been inside. What was up with that? Was that a thing? Just leave an unattended truck running?

Then John jogged around and opened the passenger door for her.

You’re not in Kansas anymore...not that she’d ever been to Kansas in the first place.

Of course, it wasn’t like there were no well-mannered men in Seattle, but something about the easy way things were done down here—a sort of “this is the fabric of who we are”—struck her as a good, gracious way to live one’s life.

Didn’t mean she wanted to live here. Because above all else, Shelby Mackey knew she didn’t belong in Magnolia Bend.

CHAPTER SEVEN

J
OHN
SLID
BEHIND
the wheel, and with a quick wave at his worrisome sister standing on the porch in her apron, they bounced down the rocky drive. John winced as they hit a pothole and darted an apologetic look at Shelby.

“Hitting a pothole is not going to cause a miscarriage. I asked your doctor friend.”

“I know,” he said, though she could tell he hadn’t known any better than she had. Blind leading the blind.

A few minutes’ worth of highway sped by. Cows dotted pastures and the brilliant sun stretched over the flat alluvial plain as they wound around the road chasing the Mississippi’s edge.

John cleared his throat. “Tell me about yourself, Shelby.”

“Huh?”

“About your life in Seattle, parents, siblings, the students you teach.”

“Oh, so we’re going to backtrack, huh?” she asked.

John shrugged, drawing attention to his broad shoulders. She’d always been partial to strong, manly shoulders. Really, who wasn’t? “Well, I don’t know much about you. Might be a good idea to correct that since we’re sharing, uh, such an intimate sort of...thing.”

There was that.

Shelby inhaled, wishing she didn’t have to reveal the impersonal world in which she’d been raised. John obviously had a caring family. Shelby obviously had a family of cyborgs. “I grew up in Seattle.”

“You like it there?”

Did she like it there? Hmm. “Well, it’s lush and green from all the rain. My parents have a boat and my favorite times are on the Sound—something about the briny air. When I was young, I wanted to spend all my time at the piers eating fish baskets, sucking down ice creams and running through packs of gulls making them scatter. Other than my stint at Oregon State and the years I spent in Spain, it’s all I know.”

John looked out at the flat land dotted with trees and the occasional bayou as if he weighed his world against the world she’d presented. “What about your folks?”

“My father’s a successful attorney, partner in a large firm. My mother’s family owns a company for which my mother is CEO and always at the office. I have an older sister by six years who works in L.A. as an executive for Warner Bros., and my brother’s a plastic surgeon. He lives in San Diego.”

John glanced over, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, and I’m just a teacher.”

“Just a teacher is a pretty important thing,” he said in the quiet space left after such a self-deprecating statement. “My late wife, Rebecca, was a teacher, too.”

Of course she was. Probably ironed all his T-shirts, gave blood at every drive and babysat for free, too. One of those too-good-to-touch girls Shelby had never been. “What did she teach?”

“Preschool, but she worked with kids who had disabilities.”

Exactly. Saint Rebecca. “That’s a tough job.”

“She loved it, though,” he said, sliding his gaze back over to her. “I bet you do, too.”

“Never wanted to be anything else. When all my other friends played dress-up or tea party, I’d have all my stuffed animals lined up and I’d be in front of my mini chalkboard teaching. I amused my parents greatly until I actually set education as my major.”

John made a “huh” sound in the back of his throat. “So why Oregon State?”

“’Cause they’re the Beavers,” she deadpanned.

“And you don’t like the Ducks?”

“I would have looked hideous in highlighter-yellow. And I refuse to quack at football games.”

That made him laugh, and he looked good when he laughed. The corded muscles of his neck stretched, and his delicious mouth begged to be nibbled. Hardness melted into something most touchable.

“Actually the campus was gorgeous,” she said. “And it took me away from home.” Far away from scandal and the colossal mistake she’d made when she was eighteen. Her parents hadn’t even cared she hadn’t made it into Stanford or the other “more academic” schools her brother and sister had attended.

“You said you’re teaching in Seattle now?”

“Presently I’m substituting. My plans weren’t concrete when I came back from Spain, so I didn’t interview for any permanent positions.” Because she thought she’d be planning a wedding. Like a moron, she’d thought she’d be Mrs. Darby Dufrene, wife to the junior attorney in her father’s firm. Stupid, stupid Shelby. “I’ve been staying in my parents’ guesthouse until I figure out a permanent job. Then I’ll get a place near wherever I end up teaching.”

“So your parents are supportive about the baby?”

“I haven’t told them yet. Only you.” Shelby glanced down at her hands.

“Why not?”

“Because,” she said, knowing it sounded lame.

“Because?”

“What’s with the interrogation? I didn’t want to tell them yet, okay?” Because they would flip out not at the social stigma of being an unwed mother, but because Shelby had been so stupid as to get knocked up by some random dude she didn’t know...and who could be dumber than dirt. “Let’s just say I don’t have the most supportive family so I’ve put it off. Besides, I felt like you should know first.”

“Why?”

“Is that all you can ask? Why?”

He glanced over at her and said nothing else.

She exhaled. “I don’t know why I haven’t told them. I’d planned on doing it over Thanksgiving. You know eat turkey, tolerate your siblings and drop the bomb that you’re pregnant by a stranger. Could’ve been fun telling my mother she’ll be a Nonna in June, but instead I’m stuck in the home of Skeeter Burnside. By the way, who is Skeeter Burnside?”

“Oh, you saw the sign,” John said, a flicker of amusement in his face. “He’s my uncle Skeeter. He holds the state record in the long jump and participated in the 1976 games. Has a bronze medal.”

“Wow,” she said, not sure how much enthusiasm she should use in responding to that comment.

They drove a few more miles in silence before he cleared his throat. “What I meant was why did you tell me first?”

Shelby fidgeted with the seat belt. Fact was she had no clue why she hadn’t told her parents. Though they worked long hours, she lived on the family estate and could have caught them at breakfast before they left for the gym and dropped the news. But she hadn’t.

Not to mention, she’d still not told them about the split with Darby. In fact, her mother had assumed her departure for Louisiana was another attempt to talk Darby into interviewing for Mackey and Associates. To date, she hadn’t felt strong enough to admit how badly she’d screwed up again. “I don’t know. When I lay there in that doctor’s office listening to the heartbeat, I felt so powerless and so full of...I don’t even know. Hope? A new beginning? Fresh start?”

He said nothing.

“So that night I lay in bed and a realization hit me—if I want to raise this child to be strong and ethical, I have to start with being that way myself. I have to do the right thing. Telling you about the baby seemed the first step in that process. Coming clean with my parents and pulling up my big girl panties is the next step.”

John turned off the highway, cutting through to the interstate, but remained silent, which chafed her. Here she was being totally honest, laying it all out, and he couldn’t bother himself to say a simple “thank you”?

Maybe he wasn’t thankful. After all, since she’d turned up at his doorstep with the news, she’d been nothing but a problem to him.

When John reached cruising speed on I-10, he glanced over at her again. “Stay here.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“In Louisiana. Stay here with me. For a while longer. For the pregnancy.”

Grappling with that bomb of a request, Shelby snapped her gaping mouth closed and stared out at the trees whizzing by.

Stay here?

In Podunk, Louisiana, with a man she didn’t know beyond his preference in underwear—which was boxers, by the way.

Staying with John made no sense.

“That makes no sense,” she said.

“It makes some. You have little support at home. No apartment. No job.”

“Thanks for pointing out what a loser I am,” she drawled.

“I’m not,” he said, his mouth firm, his demeanor serious as a funeral director. “But you need support, and I’m offering you some.”

“Why would you want me in Magnolia Bend bringing the shame? Lemme ask, do I get a scarlet
A
to wear and everything? Will I have to always use the back door?”

“So I screwed that up,” he said, a flush rising to his cheeks as he veered the truck into the lane indicating Baton Rouge. “I apologized.”

“You did,” she admitted.

“I was up half the night thinking about what to do.”

“And this was what you came up with?”

She watched uncertainty flit across his face. “Yeah.”

“What will you say when people ask you about me? There’s going to be talk.”

“Sure, I accept people will talk, but I don’t want you going back to Seattle. I want you to stay.”

“With you? Or get an apartment? Does the town have apartments?”

“You can stay with me at Breezy Hill,” he said, though he didn’t sound so certain anymore. “I’m here for you and the baby.”

Something struck inside her—a buried need for someone to want her. Inside the smart-ass with the big boobs and the bright smile was the girl who wanted to be loved. She knew herself, but it didn’t matter. This particular yearning had been the cause of many a downfall in her life. Still, John wanting her in his life enough to weather the community’s censure made her heart ache. He risked his reputation for a chance to...what? Share in the life of their baby? “I can’t. You’re still mourning your wife and...and...I can’t just move in.”

“Why not? I have four bedrooms and it’s just me and Bart. None of Rebecca’s family lives here anymore. Her mother moved to a patio home in Gonzales before Rebecca’s death.”

“What’s she going to say about her former son-in-law who runs her family business shacking up with some floozy.”

“You’re calling yourself a floozy?”

“You know what I mean. This is a crazy idea.”

“Breezy Hill is
my
home and Rebecca’s mother promised me after Rebecca died I would stay there. Carla holds the trust, but I run the company with the understanding it will become mine upon her death. Don’t worry about Carla—I’ll make sure she understands you and I are essentially roommates.” Again, uncertainty shaded his voice.

“You’re going to tell her we’re roommates?”

“Yes, but even if we were more to each other, she has to have foreseen the possibility I would find someone new someday. Besides, the business relationship works—the improvements I make to the land increase the value. There’s no reason to change anything.”

Shelby made a noise in the back of her throat. “I wouldn’t bet on that. You’re thinking like a businessman, but for Carla it might be more personal. So what about the baby? Making a baby isn’t something ‘roommates’ do.”

“That was a onetime mistake. I can make her see that.”

His words slapped her and she turned away, trying to remember she had no right to be hurt. What they’d done in that bathroom
was
a onetime thing. But in the outside world people wouldn’t see it his way. When the baby bump popped up, there would be suspicion, and Shelby doubted John’s former mother-in-law would accept a onetime screw as a valid explanation. But then again, what did she know about John’s relationship with Rebecca’s mother?

John exited at College Drive and after a few minutes pulled into a Chinese restaurant parking lot.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

Does a nun pray? “Yeah, but I’d rather finish this conversation first.”

He shifted into Park, killed the engine and turned to her. His green eyes roved her face and tugged at her heart despite her insistence the man meant nothing to her. “I get this is out of left field.”

“Or right field. Or out of the blue. Or...” She shook her head.

“When I thought about you leaving, I could hardly breathe.”

Shelby couldn’t stop her heart from aching at those words.

“I want to be there for every part of your pregnancy. Neither of us planned this, but you don’t have to go through this alone. I can’t go to Seattle, but you can stay here. We can have this baby together.” His words were like soft silk, enfolding her, brushing against the clenched resolve.

“But we’re strangers.”

“We know enough about each other to make a rational judgment call,” he said.

“You can’t possibly use
rational
in a sentence describing me.”

“Fine. You’re funny, pretty and haven’t told my sister Birdie’s been spying on their neighbors. So I’ll add loyal to children to the list.”

“How did you—”

“You glanced out at where my niece sat in the tree as we were leaving...and you smiled a secret smile. I caught Birdie yesterday with her sketch pad prop.”

Shelby couldn’t stop the grin. “Poor Abigail. Her daughter’s Harriet the Spy.”

“More like poor Birdie,” he said, pulling the keys from the ignition. “Abigail will find out and be appropriately appalled. Birdie may never climb another tree.”

Shelby turned to him so they held each other’s full attention. “I don’t want to make something not so great worse.”

“Maybe it won’t be worse.”

“I can’t imagine not going back to Seattle. These whole few months have been surreal. I keep waiting to wake up.”

“I understand. Take a few more days to decide. We won’t mention the pregnancy to anyone until you figure out what you want.”

“Why do you want me to stay so badly?”

John’s eyes sparked with something she couldn’t name. He lifted his hand and laid it on her stomach, the heat searing her, making her start, before warmth curled in both her girl parts and somewhere around her heart. “Because you carry hope for a life worth living.”

Shelby swallowed, sudden emotion sticking in her throat. Christ Almighty. How could a woman argue with something like that?

She pressed her hand on his, and he turned it over so they held hands. The moment shimmered with tenderness, something neither had between them. Here they sat, virtual strangers, united by an unborn child...an unborn child who gave them each a new beginning.

Releasing his hand, Shelby redirected her gaze, afraid she might tear up. Her emotions had been roller-coastering for the past weeks. She’d cried over a tampon commercial for cripe’s sake. “Okay. I’ll consider staying for a while. I wholly acknowledge you’re part of this baby and, therefore, have certain rights.”