Nobody's Baby But Mine Part 19

"But I backed off. G.o.d, I felt good about that for at least a week. Smug and self-righteous."

"Whatever you're doing to yourself, I want you to stop it right now."

"I want to start over. I thought maybe on our vacation ... but we hardly talked to each other. Why can't we start over?"

"Because you'd hate it now just as much as you hated it then."

She was as unreachable as a distant star, but he still needed to touch her. "I loved you so much, you know that, don't you? Even when I let my parents talk me into agreeing to a divorce, I still loved you."

"It doesn't matter now, Jim. Gabe came along, and then Ethan, and there wasn't any divorce. It was all so long ago. There's no sense in stirring up the past. We have three wonderful sons and a comfortable life."

"I don't want to be comfortable!" Fury exploded inside him, fueled by frustration. "G.o.ddammit! Don't you understand anything? Jesus, I hate you!" In all their time together, he had never once touched her in violence, but now he grabbed her arms and shook her. "I can't stand this any longer! Change back!"

"Stop it!" Her fingers dug into his upper arms. "Stop it! What's wrong with you?"

He saw the fear on her face, and he jerked away, appalled by what he'd done.

Her icy reserve had finally melted, leaving rage behind, an emotion he'd never until that moment seen on her face.

"You've been torturing me for months!" she cried. "You belittle me in front of my own sons. You poke at me and jab me and draw blood in a thousand ways every day! I've given you everything, but it's still not enough. Well, I won't put up with it anymore! I'm leaving you! I'm finished!" She raced from the kitchen.

Panic welled inside him. He started to run after her, but then stopped just as he reached the door. What would he do when he caught her? Shake her again? Christ. What if he'd finally pushed her too far?

He drew a deep breath and told himself she was still his own Amber Lynn, sweet and gentle as a mountain afternoon. She wouldn't leave him no matter what she said. She just needed time to calm down, that was all.

As he heard her car peel out of the driveway, he kept repeating the same thing to himself.

She wouldn't leave him. She couldn't.

Lynn's chest was so tight that she had to gasp for breath as she raced along the narrow, winding road. It was a treacherous piece of highway, but she'd been driving it for years, and not even her tears made her slow down. She knew what he wanted from her. He wanted her to open her veins again and bleed with love for him the way she once had. Bleed with love that would never be returned.

She struggled for breath and remembered that she'd learned her lesson years ago when she'd been little more than a baby, naive and ignorant at sixteen, utterly convinced that love could conquer the enormous gap between them. But that naivete hadn't lasted. Two weeks after she'd told him she was pregnant with Gabe-Cal had only been eleven months old-her innocence was shattered forever.

She should have seen it coming, but of course she hadn't. When she'd told him she was pregnant, she'd bubbled over with happiness even though Cal wasn't yet a year old, and they were barely managing as it was. He had sat frozen as she'd babbled on.

"Just think, Jim! Another sweet baby! Maybe it'll be a girl this time, and we can name her Rose of Sharon. Oh, I'd love to have me a girl! But a boy'd might be better so Cal'd have somebody to roughhouse with."

When his expression didn't change, she'd started to get scared. "I know it'll be a mite hard for a while, but my baking business is goin' real good, and just think how much we love Cal. And we'll be real careful from now on to make sure there ain't no more. Tell me you're happy about the baby, Jim. Tell me."

But he hadn't said anything; he'd just walked out the door of their little apartment, leaving her alone and frightened. She'd sat for hours in the dark until he'd returned. He hadn't said a word. Instead, he'd pulled her into bed and made love to her with a ferocity that had driven away her fear.

Two weeks later, while Jim was in cla.s.s, her mother-in-law had come to see her. Mildred Bonner had told her that Jim didn't love her and wanted a divorce. She'd said he'd planned to break the news to her the same night Lynn had announced that she was pregnant again, but now he felt honor-bound to stick by her. If Lynn truly loved him, Mildred said, she would let him go.

Lynn hadn't believed her. Jim would never ask for a divorce. He loved her. Didn't she see the evidence every night in their bed?

When he came home from studying at the library, she told him about his mother's visit, expecting him to laugh it off. Only he didn't. "What's the use of talking about it now?" he said. "You got pregnant again, so I can't go anywhere."

The rose-colored world she'd built shattered at her feet. Everything had been an illusion. Just because he loved to have s.e.x with her didn't mean he loved her. How could she ever have been so foolish? He was a Bonner and she was a Glide.

Two days later his mother came to the apartment again, a fire-breathing dragon demanding that Lynn set her son free. Lynn was ignorant, uneducated, a disgrace to him! She could only hold him back.

Everything Mildred said was true, but as much as Lynn loved Jim, she knew she wasn't going to let him go. On her own, she could have managed, but her children needed a father.

She found some hidden reservoir of strength that gave her the courage to defy his mother. "If I ain't good enough for him, then you'd better fix me up so's I am, because me and my babies ain't goin' nowhere."

It hadn't happened easily, but gradually the women had formed a fragile alliance. She'd accepted Mildred Bonner's guidance in everything: how to talk, how to walk, what food to fix. Mildred insisted that Amber sounded like a white trash name, and she must call herself Lynn.

While Cal played at her feet, she devoured the books on Jim's English reading lists and exchanged baby-sitting with another woman so she could sneak into some of the larger lecture halls and lose herself in history, literature, and art, subjects that fed her poet's soul.

Gabe was born, and his family loosened the purse strings enough to take over Jim's school expenses and her medical bills. Money was still tight, but they were no longer desperate. Mildred insisted they move into a better apartment, one she furnished with Bonner family pieces.

Lynn's transformation was so gradual that she was never certain when Jim grew aware of it. He continued to make love to her nearly every night, and if she no longer laughed and teased and whispered naughty words in his ear, he didn't seem to notice. She grew more restrained out of the bedroom as well, and his occasional approving glances rewarded her for her self-control. Gradually, she learned to keep her love for her husband locked away where it would embarra.s.s no one.

He finished his undergraduate work and entered the grueling years of medical school, while her world was defined by the needs of her young sons and her continuous efforts at self-improvement. When he finished his residency, they returned to Salvation so he could join his father's practice.

The years pa.s.sed, and she found contentment with her sons, her work in the community, and her pa.s.sion for the arts. She and Jim had their separate lives, but he was unfailingly considerate of her, and they shared pa.s.sion, if not intimacy, in the bedroom. Gradually the boys left home, and she found a new serenity. She loved her husband with all her heart and didn't blame him too much for not loving her back.

Then Jamie and Cherry had died, and Jim Bonner had fallen apart.

In the months that followed the deaths, he'd begun wounding her in so many countless ways she sometimes felt as if she were slowly bleeding to death. The unfairness left her reeling. She'd become everything he'd wanted, only now he didn't want that. Instead, he seemed to want something that she no longer had within herself to give.

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Annie called Jane shortly before eight o'clock on Monday morning and announced she wasn't up to doing any gardening for a few days, and she didn't want either of them bothering her until she asked. As far as she was concerned, she said, a pair of newlyweds should have something better to do anyway than pester an old lady to death.

Jane smiled as she hung up the phone and returned to the oatmeal she was cooking. When she was an old lady, she hoped she had the guts to be as good at it as Annie.

"Who was that?"

She jumped and dropped her spoon as Cal, all bedroom-rumpled and gorgeous, wandered into the kitchen. He wore jeans and an unb.u.t.toned flannel s.h.i.+rt. His hair was tousled, and he was barefoot.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" She told herself the unwelcome thudding in her heart was caused by fright and not the sight of him so disheveled and outrageously handsome.

"I wasn't sneaking. I'm just a quiet walker."

"Well, stop it."

"You are one grouchy fud."

"Fud?"

"P.H.D. Us dumb jocks call you guys fuds."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed up a clean spoon and jabbed it back into the oatmeal. "Us fuds call you guys dumb jocks, which just goes to show how smart some of us fuds really are."

He chuckled. What was he doing here? He was usually gone by the time she came downstairs for breakfast. Even on the mornings last week when he'd stayed around to drive her to Annie's, they hadn't eaten together. He'd been in his study.

"Who was on the phone?" he repeated.

"Annie. She doesn't want us bothering her today."

"Good."

He walked over to the pantry and came out with one of the half dozen boxes of Lucky Charms he kept there, along with potato chips, cookies, and candy bars. She watched from the stove as he poured a mountain of the multicolored cereal into a serving bowl, then walked over to the refrigerator, where he got the milk.

"For a doctor's son, you have an abysmal diet."

"When I'm on vacation, I get to eat what I like." He grabbed a spoon, slung one leg over the counter stool, and sat with his knees splayed, bare heels hooked over the rungs.

She tore her eyes away from those long, narrow feet only to shudder at the sight of him digging in. "I'm making plenty of oatmeal. Why don't you eat some of it instead of that stuff?"

"For your information, this isn't stuff. It happens to be the culmination of years of scientific research."

"There's a leprechaun leprechaun on the box." on the box."

"Cute little guy." He gestured toward her with his milky spoon. "You know what the best part is? The marshmallows."

"The marshmallows?"

"Whoever thought of adding all those little marshmallows was one smart guy. I've got it written in my contract that the Stars have to keep the training table stocked with Lucky Charms just for me."

"This is fascinating. I'm talking with a man who graduated summa c.u.m laude summa c.u.m laude, and yet I could swear I'm in the presence of an idiot."

"The thing I wonder about is this ... As good as Lucky Charms are, maybe there's another cereal just waiting to be invented that's even better." He took another bite. "That's what I'd do with myself if I had a brain as big as yours, Professor. Instead of messing around with that top quark, I'd come up with the best breakfast cereal in the world. Now, I know that'd be hard. They've already added chocolate and sprinkles and peanut b.u.t.ter, not to mention all these different-colored marshmallows, but answer me this- Has anybody thought about M&Ms? No, ma'am, they haven't. n.o.body's been smart enough to figure out there's a big market for M&Ms in breakfast cereal."

She absorbed this as she watched him eat. He sat there at the counter-bare feet, naked chest showing through his unb.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt, muscles rippling like liquid steel every time he moved. A gorgeous picture of dumbness. Except this gorgeous dummy was smart as a fox.

She filled her bowl and carried it over to the counter along with a spoon. "Peanut or plain?"

He thought it over. "It prob'ly wouldn't pay to get too fancy right off. I'd go with plain."

"Wise decision." She added her own milk and sat down next to him.

He glanced over at her. "You're really going to eat that?"

"Of course I am. This is cereal as G.o.d intended."

He reached over without an invitation and scooped up a heaping spoonful that included all the brown sugar melting at the center.

"Not bad."

"You took my brown sugar!"

"But you know what'd really be good on it?"

"Now let me think ... M&Ms?"

"You are one smart lady." He picked up the Lucky Charms box and shook a few on top of her oatmeal. "This'll give you the crunch that's missing."

"Gee, thanks."

"I do like those marshmallows."

"So you've said." She pushed the Lucky Charms to the side, and took another bite. "You know, don't you, cereal like that is made for children?"

"Then I guess I'm a kid at heart."

The only thing about him that reminded her of a kid was his immature att.i.tude toward women. Was that what had kept him out until three in the morning? Picking up younger women?

She saw no need to keep herself in suspense any longer. "Where were you last night?"

"Checking up on me?"

"No. I wasn't sleeping very well, and I heard you come in late, that's all."

"Where I was doesn't have anything to do with you."

"It does if you were with another woman."

"Is that what you think?" He let his gaze ramble down over her body in what she could only interpret as a gesture of psychological warfare. She was wearing a red T-s.h.i.+rt with Maxwell's Equations printed on it, although the final equation disappeared into the waistband of her slacks where she'd tucked it in. His eyes lingered on her hips, which certainly weren't as slim as the hips he was accustomed to seeing on his women. Still, she took heart from the fact that he didn't look all that critical.

"It's crossed my mind." She pushed away her oatmeal and studied him. "I just want to know what the rules are. We haven't talked about this, and I think we should. Are we free to sleep with other people while we're married or not?"

His eyebrows shot up. "We? What's this What's this we? we?"

She kept her expression carefully blank. "I beg your pardon? I'm not following you."

He shoved his hand through his hair. It had grown a bit longer in the last few weeks, and a spike stuck up on one side. "We're married," he said gruffly. "That's it."

"That's what?"

"It!"

"Uhmm."

"You're a married woman, and a pregnant one, to boot, in case you forgot."

"And you're a married man." She paused. "In case you forgot."

"Exactly."

"So does that mean we're going to mess around with other people while we're married or we're not?"

"It means we're we're not!" not!"