“Why not?” His mouth hovered a suspenseful whisper above hers.
“I can’t do this-I can’t,” she breathed, moving her head back and forth just slightly, as if fighting a hypnotist’s powers. “It won’t work. I’m much too old for you. It’s not-”
“Hush.” With one word and a gentle shake of her head he silenced her. Then he pulled back, but only far enough so she could see his eyes. And there was no gentleness in them now; they were brooding and dark, with a fire in their depths she’d seen once before. When he spoke, the tone of his voice was familiar to her, too-the same firm, unyielding voice she’d clung to through a long, dark night, and that had calmed her fears and brought her safely through the birth of her child.
“I’m gonna ask you one question, and I want you to answer me truthfully, and then we’re gonna be done with this, you understand? I want you tell me-in all that time we spent together in my truck, did it even once enter your mind to think about how old or how young either one of us was?”
“But that was-”
His mouth stopped her there. Then once again he drew back to gaze down at her, the fire in his eyes banked to a tender glow. “Marybell, I do enjoy arguing with you, and I expect we’re gonna be doin’ a lot of it, about a lot of things. But this ain’t one of ’em. We’re done with this now, y’hear?”
She was conscious only of mild astonishment as she heard herself answer meekly, “Yes, sir.”
Overriding every other thought and feeling was the most intense hunger she’d ever known. She watched his mouth descend to hers as though it were the only drop of water, the last crumb of bread, the only blade of grass in a barren and thirsty world, feeling as though she would die if she couldn’t taste it again-just once more. She actually felt a sharp pain when he suddenly halted, still a tantalizing, tormenting hairsbreadth away.
“Oh-” she cried, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a whimper. On her chest Amy was stirring and making impatient snuffling noises.
“Looks like she’s wakin’ up,” said Jimmy Joe, one hand dropping, lightly as a falling leaf, to the baby’s bobbing head. He looked at Mirabella and his eyebrows rose. “May I?”
“Oh-of course.”
She watched, breath suspended, an aching knot of warmth growing inside her as she recalled the last time those strong, sensitive hands had cradled her daughter’s tiny body-slippery wet with gunk and warm from her own body, attached to her still by a pulsing cord, kicking, punching and squalling with outrage at the shock of cold on her skin and the intrusion of air in her brand-new lungs. How gently he’d held her, then placed her on Mirabella’s belly and guided her frantically searching hands to take the place of his.
“She sure has grown,” he said huskily. In response to his voice, Amy’s head turned slowly from side to side like a radar scanner as she searched for the face that went with it. Homing in and locking on, she studied it with infant intensity, her mouth pursing and stretching as she ran through her entire repertoire of facial expressions for this new and fascinated audience.
“Red hair?” He touched it with a fingertip and smiled. “She looks just like you.”
And suddenly as if in response to his words, Amy’s eyes crinkled up and her mouth popped open and then stretched wide, and the corners tilted upward. “She’s smilin’,” he said, looking up at her mama, all but thunderstruck. He felt as if his heart was going to burst.
“She sure is,” Mirabella murmured, moving closer so she could see it, too. “That’s a first.” She looked oddly misty to him, like a flower in the rain.
“That’s no gas pain, either. Look at her-she just won’t quit.” He thought he could have drowned in that smile. Then he felt like maybe he was drowning, the way his chest hurt and it was so hard to breathe.
“Okay, now she’s got her priorities straight,” Mirabella said with a tender snort, as one of the baby’s waving fists found its way to her mouth and she began to suck avidly on it.
Jimmy Joe chuckled. “Looks like she’s hungry.”
“She’s always hungry. Which is another way she’s just like her mother. Yeah…funny, isn’t it?” Her smile was blurred and soft as she gazed down at her daughter and tickled her cheek with a finger. Mirabella’s eyes flicked up at him and her smile grew wry. “If you want to make God laugh, just make a plan-isn’t that what you told me? All I can say is, He must really be holding his sides right now. I mean, here I had it all planned, picked out the perfect set of genes. I was going to have a tall, slim, blond little boy with a sweet, beautiful smile and…” Her voice caught, and she looked quickly back down at her baby with her face so full of adoration, watching her was like looking into the sun. “Look what I got-a round, roly-poly redhead with an appetite like Pac-Man…”
“And just as pretty as a little wild rose,” said Jimmy Joe, in a voice so fierce and raspy he felt as if he might have swallowed a whole bush’s worth of those rose thorns himself. “And I wouldn’t mind…”
His breath ran dry, and he stared at her, realizing he was on the verge of blurting it all out, everything he’d come to say to her-that he not only wanted her and Amy to come and live with him and share the rest of his life with him, but that he would be tickled to death to have several more just like her, eventually, Lord willing. Just like that, without any warning or leading up to it, without telling her all the reasons he thought he could make her happy, without presenting any of the arguments he’d thought up to answer the doubts she was sure to have. Just clobber her with it, before he’d even had a chance to woo her-Lord, he hadn’t even given her the flowers yet! And then if she said no, then what?
He was staring down at her, with the baby held between them like a vow and his heart hammering in his throat, feeling as scared and helpless as he had the night Amy was born, and Mirabella was staring back at him, looking so beautiful he wondered if maybe he ought to chuck his whole game plan and just kiss her again, and go on kissing her until she didn’t have any breath left to say no.
He was about to embark on that new strategy when a voice behind him sang out, “Oops, home too soon!”
He turned, heart pounding like a guilty teenager’s, while Mirabella said, “Hi, Mom…Pop.” in a breathy, little-girt voice he didn’t recognize.
“Pete,” her mama was scolding as she bustled up the walk with her hands full of plastic grocery bags and a plastic rain-bonnet on her head, “I told you we should have eaten lunch first.”
“The hell with that,” growled the barrel-chested man beside her, waving around the umbrella he was holding so it wasn’t doing much to keep the rain off anybody. “I told you I want to meet the man-shake his hand. And that’s what I’m gonna do.”
He heaved himself up the steps, furling the umbrella as he came, his chin jutting out ahead of him in a way that reminded Jimmy Joe so much of Mirabella, he almost forgot his manners completely. He had to fight hard to contain his smile when he saw the traces of rust mixed in with the thick, straight, irongray hair.
Mirabella gamely murmured introductions, which her father mostly drowned out with his crisp and authoritative, “G‘momin’, son. I sure am glad to meet you…glad to meet the man that brought my granddaughter into the world. Come on in here, now. No sense in lettin’ all the warm air out.” He dragged Jimmy Joe into the house, pumping his hand.
Behind her husband’s back, Ginger caught Jimmy Joe’s eye and winked. “Ohh, look-roses!” she cried, spotting the bouquet he’d left on the table. “Aren’t they gorgeous? They need to go in some water. I’ll just take these groceries into the kitchen-”
“Let me carry those for you, ma’am.”
“Now, let me see, how’s my little ol’ baby girl?”
“She just woke up, Dad. She needs her diaper changed. She’s hungry again, too. I was just going to-I better go feed her…”