“What?” Mirabella blinked, then laughed. “Romance? What’s that got to do with anything?”
He shrugged, then got up and came around the seat. Disconcerted, she took a step backward. “It has to do with everything, that’s what. Don’t you know that? Pretty near every great story’s about love. You notice every other Disney movie has one? Cinderella has one, Snow White has one-even Bambi has one. Only Pinocchio doesn’t. Shoot, the only female in it’s that fairy.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him. “I can’t believe it. You’re a romantic.”
He accepted that with that same half-serious, half-embarrassed little smile. “And you’re not,” he said thoughtfully.
The sleeper felt crowded and too warm, and she didn’t know whether it was because of his presence in it, or the subject under discussion. “As far as I’m concerned,” she said tightly, “the whole business is overrated. I’ve never met anybody in love who was happy about it. It just seems to make everybody miserable.”
“You ever been in love?”
She just looked at him; opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again and gripped the edge of the mattress with both hands.
Another one. He’d been half expecting it. He was puzzled, though, and a little disappointed because now he didn’t know whether it had been the contraction coming on or the mention of love and romance-particutarly the question he’d asked-that had made her tense up like that.
If it had been the latter, that might explain a lot, he thought as he thumbed his stopwatch, glanced at it, then set it again. Say she’d got her heart broken, the baby’s father had run out on her-now that was a possibility that hadn’t even occurred to him, but it sure would explain her being where she was and the situation she was in. Not to mention the attitude.
Hard to imagine any man doing that, though. Especially to her. If she’d been his…
He squelched the thought, but it lingered in his voice as he coached her with a fierce kind of tenderness. “Don’t tense up on me, now. Breathe…”
Chapter 9
“How you doin’ back there?” “I’m droppin’ back a little, but I’ll make it.”
I-40-New Mexico
“Why do you always say that?” she asked in a strained and testy voice. “You and Charly-always the same thing: Breathe. I am breathing, dammit. Otherwise I’d be dead. Oh-ow. That hurts.”
“It hurts,” Jimmy Joe scolded, “because you’re not breathin’ right. And you’re all tensed up. Look at you.” Although he couldn’t exactly blame her, considering the knot his own insides were in. “You gotta relax, now.”
He peeled one of her hands off the mattress and sat down beside her. Holding it with both of his, he began to delicately manipulate the small bones in her palm, gently bending each finger, lightly stroking along the tendons in the back of her hand as if he were fine-tuning a musical instrument or an intricate piece of machinery.
And all the while his jaw was clenched tight and his mind was screaming, Charlie? Who’s Charlie?
“Charlie-that your husband?” he casually asked as he watched his fingers work their way from the base of her palm to the incredibly fragile bones of her wrist. He told himself it was to get her mind chewing on something else besides the pain she was in.
But it was hard to overlook the way he felt when she replied, with a funny little snort of laughter, “She’s my coach.” He felt light-headed and sort of goofy, like he wanted to smile but knew he shouldn’t.
“Well, she’s right. You should listen to your coach.” He crooned the words with a perfectly straight face. But inside, his heart was singing like a set of jakes on a downhill grade. She. Not a husband. Not even a boyfriend. She. “Here, why don’t you lie over there, now. Let me rub your back…get that breathin’ goin’ right.”
She shook her head rapidly, emphatically. Her eyes were closed and he could see that she was in that other place now, the place he couldn’t go, concentrating hard on the breath she was taking. The hand he was holding had gone limp and boneless and the other appeared to have relaxed its grip on the edge of the mattress, so he kept his mouth shut and rode it out with her. Which was all he could do.
“It’s going,” she whispered on a long exhalation, slowly rocking herself back and forth. And finally, “There.” And she smiled and opened her eyes. “Gone.” She looked triumphant.
He noticed then the nightgown she was wearing, the outlines of her body clearly visible beneath the cartoon character on the thin T-shirt material-the fullness of her breasts, the pert little button of her turned-out navel. Her bare arms and her feet swathed in his thick white socks looked oddly defenseless, almost childlike.
“You warm enough?” he asked her, lightly brushing her arm with the backs of his fingers, frowning when her skin suddenly roughened with goose bumps. “Let me get you somethin’ to put on…” His voice thickened in his throat.
He loosened his hand from hers in a hurry, heart thumping, and got up to rummage through his closet. He found a plaid flannel shirt, one of his favorites, nice and soft with some blue and green in it that he thought would look nice with her hair.
“Here you go,” he muttered, the words crowding his chest, getting mixed up with air he seemed to have forgotten to exhale. “Put your arm in here.”
It smells like him, she thought as she pulled the shirt around her. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she took in his scent, letting her mind drift, free to follow paths and currents of its own choosing. She saw-no, felt-a beautiful shimmering spring, its water warm and clear and life-giving; felt it surrounding her, bathing her in comfort and security. And then somehow the water wasn’t there anymore and instead it was Jimmy Joe, and for a moment it was he who held her, safe and comforted, in his arms.
“That’s good,” she heard him say softly. “You’re relaxin’ better already.”
She felt his fingers on her forehead, on the spot between her brows where the tension knot would be. And for some reason his touch made her face ache and her sinuses burn with an overpowering urge to cry. She let the breath out abruptly and pushed herself erect, compelled by a confusing combination of fear and birthing instincts to stand, to move, to flee.
“Let me out-I want to go to the bathroom,” she said, querulous and demanding, knowing she was being unreasonable. And not caring.
A chuckle came from close behind her, near enough to stir the hair behind her ear. “You’d freeze to death out there, dressed like that. Come on, now…settle back down here.”
His hands brushed her upper arms. She pulled away from him like a contrary child, insisting, “But I have to go.”
“No, you don’t. You just think you do. You just went not ten minutes ago, you know that?” His voice was gentle, patient. “Wait a little bit. Then if you want, I’ll wrap you up in a quilt and take you.”
“You’re not going to carry me!” Mirabella rounded on him, raw and furious. “I’ll walk, or I won’t go at all.”
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. And to her added fury, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a dimple.
Suddenly she felt smothered, as if she was being buried beneath an avalanche of emotions. Confusing, conflicting, overwhelming emotions. “How am I supposed to do this?” she demanded, gesturing wildly. “I can’t do this!”
“What is it you can’t do?” Jimmy Joe’s eyes were soft, his voice tender. She wanted to hit him.
“This! I can’t have a baby here. There isn’t any room. I can’t even walk around. How am I supposed to have a baby if I can’t walk around?”