The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby. Dixie Browning

Man, did she ever have it! As long as she was there in his face, so to speak, he figured he might as well take inventory. He might be barely recovered from the lingering flu, but that didn’t mean his male hormones were out of commission.

      Her eyes were not quite brown, not quite gray—sort of a pale combination of the two. Her hair was the same no-color shade. Actually, she reminded him of a weimaraner that had taken up at his house a couple of years ago. He’d grown pretty fond of the mutt before the owner had finally shown up to claim him. “What happened?” he growled, wishing his voice didn’t sound quite so rough. It hadn’t been used much in the past week.

      “That creep stole my purse! He poured Cherry Freeze all over me and then he grabbed my purse!” She tried to pull free, but Gus held on because, cheekbones or not, she looked pretty shaky. “Let me go! I’ve got to try and catch him!”

      “Tall guy, short guy. Two of ’em. One had a base ball cap, the other one had sort of dirty blond hair and crooked teeth,” the attendant said helpfully. “Didn’t see no gun, but that don’t mean nothing. Lot o’ that kind o’ thing going on these days.”

      The woman wilted visibly. For one brief moment she allowed her head to rest on Gus’s leather-clad shoulder. “My keys,” she whimpered.“ He even has my car keys.”

      Gus glanced at the attendant, who hovered in the doorway. “Don’t look at me, man, I can’t leave this place. For what it’s worth, they headed south in a dark Chevy—looked like a ten-to twelve-year-old model, but they’re long gone by now. I’m real sorry, lady. You got any money on you? You still owe me for the drink and the—”

      Gus swore. He jerked out his wallet and handed over a fistful of bills. “Take it out of that!”

      While the two men were thus engaged, Mariah left the cover of the canopy. The rain had slacked up momentarily, and she’d spotted something pale and flat lying near the edge of the highway. It was probably only a bit of trash someone had tossed out, but…

      Just as she reached the edge of the pavement, an eighteen-wheeler whipped past, throwing up a barrage of dirty water. She gasped at the second icy deluge within minutes.

      “Are you crazy? Get the hell away from that highway, dammit!”

      She just had time to snatch her purse when another truck roared past. Someone grabbed her hand—her left one, fortunately—and hauled her back from the edge of the highway. Before she could protest, her bearded assailant—or would-be rescuer—swung her off her feet and started jogging back toward the service station. “What the hell is it with you, lady? You got a death wish or something?”

      He practically shoved her through the door before she could protest. The moment he set her on her feet again she tugged at the flap of her sodden purse, unthinkingly using her right hand.

      Tears sprang to her eyes and she must have made a sound. Blackbeard took the dirty canvas shoulder bag from her, slung it over his own shoulder, and led her around behind the counter t o the attendant’s stool.

      “Sit down before you fall down,” he commanded. Very much to her surprise, she did. He handed over her purse. “I can tell you before you even look inside what you’re going to find. Zilch. A lipstick, maybe a hanky, but nothing of value. Might as well face facts right up front.”

      Mariah glared at him, daring him to have spoken the truth.

      But of course he had spoken only the truth. Gingerly, she held her ruined purse on her lap, wedging it under an elbow, and slid her left hand inside. Out came one sticky comb, one wad of damp, sticky tissues and a few sticky shards of the tiny jar of guava jelly she’d bought when she’d filled up her tank in West Palm. It had evidently broken and leaked all over the inside of her bag.

      She didn’t cry. Mariah never cried. Having learned a long time ago that tears were a waste of energy, she had developed her own way to deal with stress. If a few tears escaped now to slither down her rain-wet cheeks, that didn’t mean she was crying. She would deal with this setback the way she had dealt with everything else since she had put away her dolls and taken on the job of raising a family.

      Well…perhaps not exactly the same way. At least, not until she got home.

      “What happened to your hand?” She glanced up as the pale-skinned, black-bearded stranger reached for her right hand, wondering if he was so pale because he’d just gotten out of prison. She wasn’t ordinarily given to snap judgments, but it was hard not to be a little paranoid when she’d just been robbed and her hand was swollen, aching and rapidly turning an ugly shade of reddish purple.

      It was also sticky.

      Gus wiped his hand off on a clean handkerchief, wishing he’d never pulled off the highway for a break. Some break! He’d been feeling washed out, run down, mean as a junkyard dog—and that was before he’d had the misfortune to tangle with this p articular walking disaster.

      Oh, hell. The woman, her damp hair straggling around her wet face, was staring down at her own hand as if it belonged to someone else. If she hadn’t looked so damned defeated, he might have been able to walk away. But Gus had always been a sucker for lost causes, and with those big, shimmering eyes and that naked, vulnerable mouth of hers, she was about as lost as it got.

      “I’m going to wake up any minute now, and y’all are going to disappear. I just thought I ought to warn you.” She tried to smile but her chin was trembling too hard. Her eyes were red-rimmed and the tip of her nose—her elegant, patrician nose, Gus noted almost absently—was beginning to turn pink.

       Oboy. Here we go again.

      Lilacs. She smelled like rain and lilacs. Backing away, he leaned against the snacks counter. If shadows had a color, that was the color of her eyes. The trouble was, even rimmed with red, they packed a wallop. And her legs—Oh, man, that was the clincher. Under a layer of thin, wet cloth, he could actually see the glow of her skin, the lines of her panties and bra. She didn’t have a whole lot upstairs, but it was adequate. And it didn’t take much imagination to tell that her nipples were all puckered up from the cold.

      Why the hell wasn’t she wearing a coat? “You ought to dress for the weather,” he said gruffly, embarrassed at being caught staring at her body. He’d always had a weakness for her kind of looks, but when a guy was half dead from the flu, when he’d just been dumped by a woman he had actually bought a ring for, when his stomach was growling from hunger and acid was burning a hole in his gut, he had to be some kind of a pervert even to notice things like that.

      Especially in a situation like this.

      He made up for it by ratcheting up his scowl. “Look, this is Florida, lady, but let’s get real. It’s raining out there. It’s February, it’s cold as a well-digger’s assets, and the overhead pipes have busted big-time. You got a coat somewhere?”

      The attendant glanced out the clouded window as two cars pulled in.“ Lady, you’re gonna hafta move your car, okay? You’re blocking the high-test.”

      “Shut up,” Gus said without even glancing up. “What about a spare key? You got one stashed out someplace?”

      “Under the hood, on the right side, on the thingamabob.”

      “The thingamabob. Right. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”

      And he was gone, leaving Mariah feeling lost and alone. Which wasn’t like her at all. Ever since she’d answered the phone at four-thirty this morning and heard poor Basil’s latest tale of woe, she seemed to have screwed up everything she touched. She was miles away from home and practically all the money she had in the world had been in her billfold, and now it was gone. She was wet, sticky and cold. The jet stream had moved south for the winter, and all her winter clothes were in the attic of her house back in Muddy Landing.

      Truly, she’d had better days, she thought. When the bearded stranger came back inside, she tried to force a smile, but evidently it wasn’t very convincing. He walked right up to her and clamped his big square hands on her upper arms and squeezed.