The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby. Dixie Browning

clothes under the stiff vinyl coat, and the fact that whatever makeup she had started out with that morning had long since been rained off, chewed off and otherwise eroded.

      Shoulders sagging, Mariah thought that if she’d needed a reminder of who she was and where s he belonged, this did the job. Underneath the glossy finish, she was still plain old Sara Mariah Brady, perennial baby-sitter, bespectacled beanpole who, until at the advanced age of twenty-five, she’d made a fool of herself over Vance Brubaker, had been the oldest living virgin in captivity. At least in Muddy Landing.

      Evidently, the man read body language. He’d probably known the moment he heard her sigh, saw her sagging shoulders, that she was no match for him. “Go ahead and say what you’re thinking,” she said dully. “I’m listening.”

      Which was how she came to find herself a short while later in a motel room somewhere near Saint Augustine. The police had come and gone, for all the good it had done. Her car was back at the gas station, parked in an out-of-the-way spot. Gus had tossed everything from her back seat into the surprisingly ample space behind the seat of his truck.

      “What the hell do you have in here, bricks?” he grumbled, carting the last of the boxes into her room.

      “Do you have something against bricks?”

      He sent her a sour look, and she was reminded that he had an injured hand, too. “It’s books,” she said. “You didn’t have to bring all that stuff. It would’ve been all right in the car until morning.”

      “Do you have a phone credit ca—” Gus caught himself. Of course she didn’t have a phone credit card. It had gone the way of all her other credit cards. “Make whatever calls you need from the room, okay?” He tried to sound gracious, but gracious wasn’t his style.

      He could have been halfway down the coast by now, but, dammit, he couldn’t just drive off and leave her to spend the night where she was. That creep in the service station would have charged her for the floor space she took up. He’d charged for leaving her clunker there overnight, for the plastic bags and the paper towels and the drinks. Gus knew damned well she’d been mentall y running a tab while he was settling up with the guy. She’d asked him to write down his address so she would know where to send the money.

      He’d seen the look on her face when he’d hauled out one of his business cards. what the devil did she take him for, a bum? Was she afraid he was going to hit on her? Was that why she was so worried?

      Because she was worried, all right, and he had a feeling it was more than just getting mugged. That little ditto mark between her eyebrows wasn’t due to an excess of happy thoughts.

      Gus did his best not to look at her any more than he could help, on account of he liked what he saw too much. It was a good thing she’d kept her raincoat on, ‘because in spite of a few superficial deficiencies of a strictly temporary nature, she was something else. Not exactly drop-dead gorgeous. Not even pretty, in the usual sense. The trouble was, she had the kind of timeless beauty he’d always been a sucker for.

      “Maybe you’d better start calling a few people. Family, husband, that kind of thing, but if you want my advice, you’ll call first and put a stop on your credit cards before you find yourself in real trouble.”

      “Real trouble?” she asked, a brittle edge to her voice that Gus didn’t like, not one bit. “You mean’the kind I’m in now isn’t real? You know, I did think for a few minutes there that I might be dreaming.”

      As a joke, it wasn’t even in the running, but he gave her high marks for trying. Maybe after a night’s sleep and a good meal, they’d both feel better. “Hey, are you as hungry as I am? I skipped a few meals today.”

      “Thanks, but I’m not at all—”

      “Piece of pie might lift your spirits,” he tempted. He could have reminded her that she was in hock so deep now that the price of a meal wasn’t going to make that much difference, but he didn’t.

      “Actually, now that you mention it, I’m ravenous,” she admitted.

      He found himself dangerously close to liking her. Studying her with the practiced eye of a connoisseur, Gus summed up what he saw. Five-ten, ten-and-a-half, about 112 pounds. A size six, he figured. Lisa was a size eight. This woman was smaller boned. Almost fragile.

       Back off, man! You’ve taken the cure, remember?

      “So what’ll it be, steak? Seafood?” he prompted.

      “I had a bag of boiled-”

      “Peanuts. Right. They’re on top of the box of bricks. Look, why don’t I check with the desk and see what’s available around these parts while you make your calls? I’m in the room next door. Just bang on the wall when you’re ready.’”

      Gus walked out and slammed into his own room next door, thinking about all the times he’d stopped to pick up a stray mutt and ended up with a stack of vet’s bills and a houseful of fleas, not to mention a few bites. He took the time to shower and change into clean khakis and a black knit shirt. Fortunately, his favorite boots were past the polishing stage. He kept them dressed with wet-proofing, so they still looked pretty good to his way of thinking.

      He wondered if his effort to look respectable would reassure the skittish woman in the room next door. He was already beginning to regret the impulse that had made him take on her case. Maybe he should have just bought her a tank of gas, wished her well and kept on going. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been an option. Even feeling like hell warmed over, strung out on caffeine, sugar and aspirin, all it had taken was one look at those stricken eyes of hers and he’d gone down for the count.

      At least he could take comfort in knowing she wasn’t on the road with a busted mitt and no driver’s license, trying to make Georgia on a dark, rainy night. Although, grimacing at his shaggy image in the mirror as he collected his wallet, keys and pocket change, Gus couldn’t say muc h for the judgment of any woman who would meekly allow a stranger to drive her to the nearest motel, no matter how innocent the situation appeared on the surface.

      He stroked his beard. One of these days he was going to have to take the time to get himself trimmed up. Lisa had tried more than once to talk him into shaving, back in the honeymoon stage of their relationship, but he’d held out. Probably, he admitted now, because he’d been afraid she wouldn’t like what she saw.

      Maybe if he got hot enough down on that sundrenched beach that was just waiting for him somewhere south of here—a beach where he didn’t know a bloody soul and nobody knew him—he might even decide to get reacquainted with his own face. At the moment, however, he needed all the cover he could get.

      Sooner or later, Gus told himself as he let himself out the door, he was going to have to kick a few bad habits. Number one was being unable to say no to a lady—canine, feline or otherwise. Just last summer he’d found himself giving aid and comfort—not to - mention room and board—to a one-eared cat and her litter of kittens, two half-starved pups that had been dumped on a country road and a raccoon that was so old and blind she’d fallen out of a persimmon tree and knocked herself out. Eventually, he’d managed to find them all permanent homes.

      With women, his record wasn’t quite so good. The first woman he’d ever loved—or thought he did—had ended up marrying his best friend. He’d been young and idealistic, and it had taken him a while to get over it, but he’d survived. There’d been other women since then—a lot of them, because Gus truly enjoyed women. But he didn’t date anyone seriously. Not until Lisa, and maybe not even then.

      The trouble was, the kind of woman he was booked on never quite lived up to his expectations. Eventually he’d learned not to expect anything.

      And no matter what Mariah looked like—no matter how much she engaged his sympathy—she was not going to get to him. No way! All he had to do was ignore those big weimaraner eyes and that long, lean, languorous body of hers for a few more hours. Come morning, he would drop her off at her car, treat her to a tank of gas and send her on her way with his blessings.