The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby. Dixie Browning

Lisa…

      Not that he’d ever thought he was in love. Hell, at thirty-nine years old, he had long since outgrown all those old adolescent fantasies.

      Still, they’d been good together. Especially in bed. So good, in fact, that Gus had actually started thinking in terms of the future. He had even bought her a ring.

      As it turned out, Lisa had begun, to think about a future, too, only not with Gus. She had her heart set on one day owning a Ferrari sports car. Gus was satisfied with his 4 x 4 extended cab pickup truck. She liked sushi, salad bars and Streisand. Gus liked barbecue, beer and bluegrass.

      Lisa had a weakness for Italian shoes and champagne.

      Gus had a weakness for Western boots and anything sweet.

      Gus was unabashedly blue-collar. He had calluse s on his hands and a few more on his heart. He’d been around the block a time or two—always with the same kind of woman. His biggest failing was that he was invariably attracted to women who were way the hell out of his league. Long-stemmed, elegant beauties. Classy ladies who were gracious enough to overlook the fact that he was tough as mule hide and a hell of a long way from handsome on anybody’s road map.

      Lisa had caught his attention when her hat had blown off during a garden party being held next door to one of Gus’s construction projects. He’d rescued her hat, and they’d gotten along like a house afire right from the first.

      About the same time Gus had started thinking in terms of teaming up permanently, Lisa had started playing games. Breaking dates, leaving town without telling him, coming back without letting him know. The sex that had been so good for so long had become less satisfactory, and they’dusually ended up arguing over whose fault it was.

      Gus had a temper; he would be the first to admit that. But he tried not to let it get too far out of hand and never with a woman. He’d been taught by a mother, a grandmother, an aunt and a sister that women were to be treated like fine china. And he had always obeyed that rule. Right up to the night when Lisa had told him she had signed a modeling contract and was moving to New York. She was sorry if he was disappointed, but then, they’d never pretended to anything more than a casual relationship.

      Casual. Right.

      Gus had told her that he was far from disap pointed—a lie. That lately he’d been thinking about moving on—another lie. He’d wished her a lot of luck, but he hadn’t specified which kind.

      And then, with the engagement ring he’d bought still in his pocket, he’d gone on a bender—something he hadn’t done in a long time. He’d ended up putting his left fist through a packing crate. That had been strike number two. Number th ree had come when he’d gone to the emergency room for a stitch job. There he’d been coughed on and sneezed at until he’d even tually come away with seven stitches, a tetanus booster and a bug that had laid him out flat for nearly a week. The ring had been missing when he’d gotten around to looking in his pockets. Then he remembered giving it to one of the older barmaids and telling her to buy herself a pair of good sturdy shoes with arch supports.

      Jeez, no wonder he couldn’t ’cut it with the ladies. When push came to shove, he was about as romantic as a migraine headache.

      Gus lived alone in the first house he’d ever built—an A-frame near a small mountain town in North Caro lina. The house was far from perfect, but he liked it well enough. That is, he’d liked it until he’d been forced to spend a week alone there, sick as a dog, aching in every bone, alternating between chills and fever.

      Then had come strike four. The weather. When he’d finally come around, he’d been snowed in right up to his dormers. His truck, which he’d left slewed in the driveway, was buried door-handle deep. The power was out; his house was cold as a tomb; the phone lines were down; and his mobile unit was still out in the truck.

      He’d been weak as a kitten. Still was, for that matter. He’d been hungry, too, but what he’d craved even more than a decent meal was sunshine and the sound of another human voice. Not necessarily up close-just close enough to assure himself that he was still among the living. For a man who’d always prided himself on his self-sufficiency, that was pretty damned scary.

      So he’d built up his energy by devouring everything in his efficiency kitchen—ice cream, coffee, stale cinnamon buns and Moon Pie marshmallow sandwiches—and then he’d shoveled himself out. Less than an hour after the snowplow had come by, he had locked up and lit out to find himself some sunshine. with his next two building projects still in the permitting stage and miles of environmental red tape yet to be unraveled, he could damn well afford to lie in the. sun and bake his bones until he felt halfway human again.

      Just north of Columbia a smoky whipped past, siren screaming, lights flashing, throwing up a muddy spray. Gus swore again. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. He made a quick decision to pull off at the next truck stop and eat something. He was getting down into pecan-pie country. Maybe a slab of pie with ice cream and a pint or so of sweet, black coffee would get him over the hump.

      Warily, Mariah eyed the gas gauge on her elderly compact car. It had been known to lie. She should have stopped for gas before now, but she’d been hoping to make it home without spending a night on the road. The trouble was, she hadn’t gotten away until nearly noon. Everything had taken longer than she’d expected. Meeting with the super for her share of the deposit on the apartment she rented with two other models, closing out her bank account, packing, trying to get her car serviced, only to be told she could have an appointment the middle of next week….

      And then she’d had to deal with Vic. He’d been livid, and a livid Vic was not a pretty sight. He’d reminded her of the contract she’d signed and of everything he’d done for her since he’d discovered her. Then he’d told her he’d been planning to use her in the St. Croix shoot.

      She happened to know he was lying about that because only two models were scheduled to go, and Kaye and Danielle had been gloating all morning over snagging that particular plum.

      “That’s life, kiddo,” Kaye had said when she’d tackled her about it. Which summed up Kaye’s philosophy in a nutshell.

      “That’s life right back at you, kiddo,” Mariah muttered now under her breath. She’d never gotten the hang of fast, sophisticated repartee. Her mind was still running on Muddy Landing time.

      Vic had accused her of not taking modeling seriously, and he’d been right. There had always been an element of make-believe in it. Like playing dress-up, only a lot harder. When it came to make-believe, Mariah would rather choose her own role, and modeling just wasn’t her.

      She’d tried that morning to explain about her brother, Basil, and the baby—about how Basil’s wife had run off, leaving behind an eight-month-old daughter, and how his new business was teetering on the brink, and how her family had always depended on her.

      Not that Vic had cared. Family? What the devil was family? She was scheduled for fittings! She had runway bookings! Sara Marish Brady, a nobody from a nowhere place in Georgia, was on the verge of becoming the hottest property since Cindy Crawford, and she wanted to walk out on him to take care of a baby?

      Well, just maybe, Mariah fumed, reaching forward to smear a circle in the condensation on her wind shield, just maybe she didn’t wantto be the next Cindy Crawford! Until Vic Chin had discovered her perched on a ladder, reaching for a kerosene lantern on a top shelf in Grover Shatley’s Feed, Seed and Hardware Emporium eleven months ago when he’d stopped off in Muddy Landing to ask directions to Sapelo Island, she had never even heard of the woman. She had been perfectly content with her job as assistant manager of the store.

      Or, if not precisely content, at least realistic enough to know that it was the best job Muddy Landing had to offer a woman who didn’t own a boat, a set of traps or a business that fronted Highway 17.

      And Mariah was nothing if not realistic. As the eldest of five, she’d taken over when her father had walked out, leaving behind an ailing, alcoholic wife and a brood of stairstep children. She’d been a solemn, bookish nine years old at the time, given to