Ooh Baby, Baby Part 2. Diana Whitney

popcorn. What about Peggy?”

      Jimmy looked up, his cheeks bulging. “Wha’ about her?”

      “Don’t talk and chew at the same time,” Sue Anne growled. “Didn’t your mama teach you no manners?”

      Properly chastised, Jimmy swallowed. “Yes, honey pot.” He heaved sideways in the chair, turning his attention back to Travis. “So, what’s wrong with Ms. Saxon?”

      “Sue Anne left her alone, that’s what. Alone.” He shot an accusatory stare at the back of his sister’s head, which responded by jerking around as if it had been physically poked.

      She glared at him. “Dang it, Travis, she’s a grown woman, and she don’t need no baby-sitter. If she wants help, she can pick up the phone.”

      “And how long would she have to wait before help arrives?”

      “Oh, sorry, Travis—”

      “She’s miles out of town. Why, a person could choke to death before an ambulance could even get out of the downtown garage.”

      Jimmy nodded. “That’s true.”

      Sue Anne cowed him with a look. “No one is going to choke to death, or bleed to death, or die in their dadgummed sleep. Peggy and the babies are just fine.” She swiveled on the sofa and fixed her brother with a killing stare. “Got that, Mr. Always-Looking-For-Trouble? Nobody is sick, and nobody is going to get sick.”

      “Wouldn’t dare,” Jimmy mumbled, feigning interest in the televised news program while his wife glowered.

      Travis puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath. Part of him understood that his fear for Peggy went far beyond normal concern for a fellow human being, but he couldn’t help himself. He was consumed by thoughts of her, by memories of her vulnerable eyes, and the way her lips tightened when she was trying to be brave.

      Travis Stockwell knew what it felt like to be alone and afraid. That’s how he’d spent his entire childhood—alone, afraid, waiting for his father to stumble home from the bar, terrified that he wouldn’t make it; terrified that he would. Sober, Silas Stockwell had been frightened by his own shadow. Drunk, he’d feared nothing, not even God. Why should he? Whiskey had made him omnipotent. And it had made him mean.

      Travis had always feared his father would die in a bar fight, crumpled in a pool of his own blood. Instead, Silas had expired in his own foul bed, a skeleton of a man ravished by the cancer that had eaten a vicious path from his liver to his brain. Sixteen-year-old Travis had watched helplessly and been filled with unbearable despair.

      Despite having endured years of cruelty and beatings and drunken rage, in the end Travis had cried for his father, for the man he could have been, for the man he’d become, and for the legacy of disillusionment he’d bequeathed his only son.

      “Oh, almost forgot.” Sue Anne’s voice popped the sad bubble of his thoughts. “You got mail today, something from the pro rodeo association. Looks like a flyer.”

      At the moment, Travis couldn’t have cared less. “Shouldn’t have left her alone,” he mumbled to no one in particular.

      Sue Anne heaved an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for corn’s sake. Quit that dadgummed pacing and come sit down.”

      “I don’t want to sit down.”

      “Then go jog around the block or something. You’re driving me nuts—”

      “Hush,” Jimmy said suddenly, pointing at the screen. “They’re talking about the mayor.”

      Frowning, Sue Anne fumbled for the remote and hiked up the volume.

      “Collapsing at her home before her son’s wedding…” The bespectacled anchorman shifted and stared into the camera. “Mayor Stuart was transported to Vanderbilt Memorial, where she later died. Sources confirm that the mayor’s final word, ‘coal,’ may have been a reference to the zoning vote on a strip mining operation that had politically pitted Mayor Stuart against her son, Councillor Hal Stuart, who favors the development. In other news—” the photograph of a man Travis vaguely remembered seeing at the hospital flashed across the screen “—police are requesting citizen assistance in identifying an apparent amnesia victim. The man, who calls himself Martin Smith, was first spotted by the occupants of a vehicle trapped by a mud slide….”

      The newsman continued his report, but Travis was distracted when Sue Anne suddenly lowered the volume. “Terrible thing about the mayor,” she murmured, hitching her arm over the sofa back and swiveling around to meet her brother’s gaze. “I met her once, over at Higgen’s Five and Dime. Seemed like a real nice lady.”

      “Good tipper,” Jimmy added, reaching for his wife’s can of soda. “Gave me ten for a two-dollar fare.”

      Sue Anne tucked her legs up and scratched her choppy hair. “This sure has been a weird week. The storm, the blackout, the biggest social event of the season going to hell in a bucket when the bride takes a powder, then the groom’s mother meets her Maker worrying about fossil fuel….”

      She paused, clicked her tongue and had just shifted her monologue into general political commentary about the ills of society when Travis jerked to a stop, staring at the television. “Turn it up.” Sue Anne tossed him an annoyed glance, but complied.

      “Third rape in the area since May…Although a police spokesman denies that the incidents are related, a reliable source confirms that the possibility of a serial rapist is being investigated.”

      When a map flashed on the screen, superimposed with large red Xs, Travis gripped the back of the sofa. “My God, that’s just a few blocks from where Peggy lives.”

      Sue Anne drew her brows together in a worried frown. “Now, Travis, don’t go getting your shorts in a twist—”

      But Travis wasn’t listening. He’d already grabbed his hat and hit the door running.

      * * *

      The cranky sound floated into Peggy’s slumber, disrupting the most marvelous dream about a moonlit night and a romantic cowboy who bore a striking resemblance to Travis Stockwell.

      She issued a disappointed sigh as the dream dissipated, and the fussy little noise became more demanding. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and automatically whipped off the covers. A moment later she was padding toward the nursery, stifling a yawn.

      She turned on the hall light to illuminate the twins’ room without flooding it with blinding brilliance, and went directly toward T.J.’s crib. His little face was screwed into a purple mask of pure displeasure.

      “There, there,” she murmured, scooping the firm baby body into her arms. “Mommy’s here.”

      T.J. shuddered, then emitted a startled wail that roused his sister, who was clearly irritated by the interruption. With her cranky son nested against her shoulder, Peggy moved to her daughter’s crib.

      “I know,” she whispered softly, laying T.J. beside his sister so she could tend them both. “Your brother is a noisy roommate, isn’t her?” Ginny blinked up, her tiny chin puckered and quivering.

      It was, Peggy realized, a miniature duplicate of Clyde’s chin. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed that before. Scrutinizing her daughter’s adorable little face, she also saw that Virginia’s nose tweaked upward like her father’s.

      Her father.

      A venomous anger hit Peggy like a body blow. Clyde Saxon didn’t deserve the title of father. He was a coward and a cad, and Peggy was irrationally infuriated that his blood ran in the veins of her beautiful babies. It was her fault, of course. If she hadn’t been so gullibly naive, she’d have recognized the selfish serpent beneath the superficial charm. She never would have married him.

      But as much as it galled her to admit it, she was secretly grateful to Clyde. If not for him, she wouldn’t have been blessed with her precious children. They were everything to her. They were her life.