Rebel In A Small Town

CHAPTER FIVE

JAMES SAT IN his Jeep outside the Slippery Rock B and B—hands at ten and two despite the SUV’s parked position—with the air-conditioning blasting. Her SUV wasn’t in the lot, and he wasn’t above tracking her down in town, but he’d rather have this conversation in private. If he hadn’t stormed off last night, they could have talked then, but he’d been too floored by her revelation.

He rubbed his hand over his neck.

Angry, a little.

Scared, maybe. About the baby, about what the baby meant for his future in the Slippery Rock Sheriff’s Department. About what the baby meant for his future with Mara. Or what his future might look like without her. There had to be some dark reason she’d kept the baby from him for two years.

For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what the reason was. He had a good job, came from a good family, had the same core group of friends he’d had since high school. For Pete’s sake, he was still a member of the Slippery Rock Methodist Church along with his parents and grandparents. He didn’t attend regularly, but he donated at all the usual holidays. He wasn’t a mean-spirited drunk, and he wasn’t a crazy, let’s-jump-off-a-cliff drunk, either. He actually wasn’t a drunk at all, despite the weekly dart games at the Slope. One or two beers was his limit, and not only because he was a cop. Because he didn’t like the feeling that came with having a few too many beers or shots.

For her to have kept knowledge of the baby from him for all this time didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit into his plans on how he’d start a family, for sure. More than that, her secrecy didn’t fit into the Mara he knew. No, their relationship hadn’t been serious, but she’d never lied to him before. Not intentionally and not by omission. The Mara he’d known for most of his life was fearless. She did what she wanted, when she wanted and to hell with the consequences. In that respect, keeping their son from him made sense, but under that brave, rebel exterior, Mara had a kind and soft heart. She couldn’t bear to watch Dumbo because the circus kept the elephant calf from Mrs. Jumbo.

James clenched his jaw. None of this made sense.

A dark SUV turned the corner and pulled into the B and B’s lot. James exited his Jeep and strode across the pavement, waves of heat rising up and making him sweat.

“We need to talk,” he said without preamble as Mara got out of the driver’s seat. The woman from last night wasn’t there, and the baby seat in the back seat was empty. A quick stab of disappointment hit his belly.

Mara didn’t blink. “Why don’t you come inside?” she said as if she were inviting him into her home instead of a rented suite.

He followed her up the walk, reaching around her to open the door.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice starchy.

“You’re welcome,” he returned, his voice just as firm as hers.

Mara unlocked the door to room seven. It was empty. No baby. No nanny. Just a green square playpen thing with mesh sides and dinosaurs on the fabric. A light blanket lay on the bottom, more dinosaurs on it, and a stuffed T-Rex sat in one corner.

Well, at least he knew the baby thing was for real now. Not that he’d doubted it. Mara wasn’t one to make up stories.

She folded her arms over her chest and watched him a long moment. “Well?” she asked. “You wanted to talk. Here we are. Talk.”

James wasn’t sure where to start. “I think you’re the one with some explaining to do.”

“After the way you stomped off last night, you have some explaining to do.”

He squinted. “Because I needed time to process you having my baby two years ago, I’m the one who has the explaining to do?”

“Technically, I had him fourteen months ago. We haven’t spoken in two years.”

“This is really the way you want to handle it? Me the pretend bad guy so you can be the Virgin Mary with the surprise baby?”

An expression he couldn’t read flashed over her face. Mara bent to pick up the baby blanket and began folding it into smaller and smaller squares. “You aren’t the bad guy. There is no bad guy in this scenario.” James harrumphed. “Okay, maybe I was a little bit of a bad girl. I was scared.”

“Of what?”

She put the blanket down and held her hands out at her sides. “Everything? I didn’t know how to be a mother. We only had one real conversation. Every dinner we started ended up in doggie bags and eaten cold because we would run back to whatever hotel we were staying in. I don’t consider cold meals actual dates. Then I was pregnant. It was too much, and I freaked out, and I cut myself off from everything.”

Mara picked the blanket up again and put it into a bag. She tossed the T-Rex in, too, and then took a suitcase from beneath the bed. She pulled open drawers and began to pack. James grabbed a handful of lacy garments and put them back in the drawer.

“No, you don’t get to tell me I have a kid and then pack up to leave. I don’t care how scared you are.” His gaze landed on a picture frame on the bedside table. Big brown eyes stared at him from the frame. The same brown hair, the same nose. Same smile. The jaw was different, but there were enough similarities between himself and the baby in the picture that James forgot to breathe for a long moment. He picked up the picture, lightly tracing the lines of the chubby face with his fingers.

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