Rugrats and Rawhide, page 5
Marissa jumped at the tone of his voice and her bottom lip quivered.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” he exclaimed, his mood turning more sour by the second. “You’re not gonna start bawling again like some kinda crybaby, are you?”
Marissa’s chin came up and J.D. saw with relief that she’d inherited her mother’s spunk. “I’m not a crybaby.”
“Good. Now explain to me where your mother went and why she left you here.”
“She went home to get us some clothes so we could stay and take care of you for a while and she left me here to keep an eye on you.” She held up the portable phone. “She gave me this. I’m supposed to dial 911 if you need help. Do you need help?” she asked, leaning forward expectantly, her fingers poised over the numbers.
J.D. scowled. “No, I don’t need help. I just need to go to the bathroom.”
Marissa hopped down from the chair, carefully laid the phone on the seat, then bent down out of sight When she straightened, she held a Mason jar in her hands. “Here,” she said, holding it out to him. “Mama said you aren’t supposed to get out of bed, no matter what. She said for you to make pee-pee in this jar.”
J.D. looked from the jar to the face of the little girl who held it. Her eyes were the same shade of innocence as her mother’s. Heat flooded his cheeks. He snatched the jar from her hands. “Now beat it,” he grumped.
Marissa folded her arms stubbornly across her chest and shook her head. “Can’t. Mama said I’m not to leave you alone for even one second.”
J.D. stifled a groan. If they didn’t settle this pretty dang quick, whether or not Marissa was in the room would no longer be an issue. He couldn’t hold it much longer. “How about if you step outside the door while I make pee-pee?” he asked reasonably. “When I’m done, I’ll holler and you can come back in.”
Marissa looked at him doubtfully for a moment, then shook her head again. “No way. If Mama came back and found out we’d disobeyed her, she’d skin both our hides.”
J.D. stifled a groan. “Tell you what,” he finally said, a pain threatening to match the one in his leg throbbing to life between his temples. “While I’m taking care of business here, you could trot over to the kitchen and fetch me one of those pain pills and a glass of water. Then you’d be taking care of me, just like your mother told you to, now wouldn’t you?”
She continued to look at him, her mouth curved in a pouty frown. “And you won’t get out of bed while I’m gone?”
J.D. held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“Well, all right,” she said reluctantly. “But if you do, I’m telling Mama. Then you’ll be sorry,” she warned.
Chapter Three
Joanie sat in the chair Marissa had sat in earlier, her chin dipped to her chest, her arms folded beneath her breasts, her feet propped against the side of J.D.’s bed. At some point during the wee hours of the night, she must have drifted off because she awakened to sunshine warming her face. Stretching her arms above her head to loosen the kinks the night in the chair had placed in her back, she glanced toward J.D. He lay on his back not a foot away, his arm slung across his eyes, his chest rising and falling in the even rhythm of sleep.
She breathed a sigh of relief. The night had been a rough one, with him tossing and turning and moaning while she’d tried to keep him still and his leg elevated to keep it from swelling any more than it already was. She was glad to see that he rested peacefully now.
While she’d slept, he had managed to kick the bed covers off his good leg, although the sheet still tented the leg encased in the cast. The white cloth dipped in soft gathers at his crotch and slanted across his groin, revealing an enticing expanse of bare, dark skin.
The sight reminded her of the feel of that same skin, heated in passion, rubbing against her own fevered flesh. Sensation swirled low in her abdomen as memories surfaced, and unconsciously she laid a hand there, remembering the seed planted the night they’d shared. She hadn’t had time think about the baby since Doc Reynolds had confirmed her pregnancy the day before, not with J.D.’s unexpected arrival in Liberty Hill, then his accident.
A baby, she thought, still unable to believe it. J.D.’s baby.
She shifted her gaze to his face. Would the baby look like him? she wondered. Would he inherit his father’s dark complexion, those irresistible blue eyes? A soft smile teased at one corner of her mouth as she touched a finger to the furrowed skin between his eyes and smoothed away the frown. Along with, of course, his stubbornness and his irreverent charm.
A soft sigh escaped her lips as she looked at him. She knew she had to tell him the news soon; delaying only made the telling more difficult. But what he would say when he learned he’d fathered a child? she wondered. What would he do? Would he think she’d lied when she had assured him she was protected? Would he be angry with her? Would he refuse to be a part of the child’s life?
She’d never deluded herself into believing a marriage proposal would be forthcoming, nor did she want one. J.D. simply wasn’t the marrying kind. The years he’d lived as a bachelor and the broken hearts he’d left in his wake were proof enough of that. But she hoped for the baby’s sake that he would choose to share in its life.
Unable to resist touching him again, she lifted a lock of hair from his forehead and smoothed it back in place. His reaction wouldn’t matter one way or the other, she told herself. She wouldn’t let it. What was done was done, and if he refused to acknowledge the child, Joanie would just love it enough for them both.
Sighing wistfully, she started to turn away, then gasped when she was snagged at the waist and jerked back around. Before she knew what was happening, she was hauled across J.D.’s length.
Fisting her hands in the mattress on either side of his head, she pushed herself up until she could see his face. “J.D.!” she gasped. “What do you think you’re doing?”
His eyes remained hooded, but a lusty smile curved one side of his mouth. He hiked one of her legs over his cast so that she straddled him, then he shifted to a more comfortable position beneath her. He closed his hands over her rear and snugged her against his groin. His sigh of satisfaction seared her cheek like a blowtorch.
“I’m about to claim me a kiss,” he replied, his voice husky.
Wondering what in the world had come over him, Joanie tried to dodge him, but his hands caught the back of her head and held her in place while he lifted his own head to meet hers. He warmed her lips with his breath first, then moistened them with his tongue before closing his mouth over hers. Joanie knotted her fingers in the sheets as she fought the seductive pull of his kiss.
It’s the drugs, she told herself, trying to distance herself from the sensations he was stirring. J.D. wouldn’t be cozied up to her like this if he had his full wits about him. She’d seen the look on his face when he’d encountered all those kids at her house. If he hadn’t fallen out of the tree and broken his leg, he’d probably still be running. She had to remember that, she told herself.
But then his tongue slipped between her parted lips, dipping deep into her mouth, sending rivers of warmth flooding through her middle, and her mind went blank. Her body turned traitor, responding to him in the most elemental of ways. She melted against him, her breasts flattening against his chest, her hips moving in a slow, undulating circle, chafing against him until his manhood swelled to life against her thigh.
Moaning his approval, he moved his hands to her waist, shifting her slightly until the swell she’d created rested in the soft curve of her pelvic bone. Satisfied, he slipped his hands beneath her shirt and skimmed them upward along her heated flesh until his fingertips grazed her breasts. Her nipples hardened in response to his gentle prodding and she arched away from him, unintentionally giving him easier access.
“Oh, baby,” he murmured, “you feel so good.”
“J.D.,” she whispered helplessly, “you’ve got to stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Sure I do,” he said as he levered her body higher along his chest. “I’m making love to you.” Pushing the plackets of her shirt aside with his nose, he exposed a breast, leaving a trail of fire along her skin with his tongue until he reached the already budded nipple. He closed his mouth over it, his tongue like coarse velvet against her tender flesh as he gently suckled.
A shiver rocked Joanie from her scalp to her toes. Whatever control she’d managed to hold on to was quickly slipping away. “J.D., please,” she almost wept. “You’ve got to stop.”
When he continued to ignore her, she clamped her hands on either side of his face, forcing his lips from her breast and his face to hers.
“J.D., look at me,” she ordered, her voice shaking.
He smiled drunkenly and tried his best to conform to her request, forcing his lids open, then narrowing them against the glare of sunlight streaming through the bedroom window. He peered at her through the slits, his eyes unfocused and glazed.
Joanie glanced at the nightstand and saw the bottle of pain pills and the half-empty glass of water. How had they gotten there? She’d purposely left the bottle in the kitchen so she could monitor the number of pills he took. She glanced at him suspiciously. “J.D., did you take any pills other than the one I gave you?”
He frowned. “Pills?” he repeated. “Don’t want any more pills,” he argued, his words thick and slurred. “Want you.” He twisted free of her hands and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her down, centering his mouth once again over the exposed nipple.
“Mama? Where are you?”
Joanie tensed at the sound of Marissa’s voice, her fingers digging into J.D.’s flesh. He went still beneath her, his eyes opening wide to meet hers. She jerked her shirt back down into place. “Back here, Marissa,” she called, trying to make her voice sound normal as she struggled to untangle herself from J.D.
She rolled to a standing position at the side of the bed just as Marissa burst through the door. Marissa headed straight for the bed, climbed up at its foot and crawled across its length. By the time she settled at the headboard beside J.D., he was sober as a judge.
He grabbed for the sheet and jerked it across his waist to hide his arousal. His eyes filled with panic, he tore his gaze from Marissa to stare at Joanie. “What are y’all still doing here?” he whispered hoarsely, looking at Joanie as if seeing her for the first time. “I told you to go home.”
Joanie’s cheeks still burned from the passion J.D. had stroked to life within her, but his bewildered look proved what she’d feared…he hadn’t known who she was when he was making love to her. She bit back the disappointment that knowledge brought. “How much do you remember about last night?” she asked, evading his question.
His forehead plowed into a deep frown. His gaze slowly moved back to Marissa, as events slowly unfolded. “I remember waking up and finding her here,” he said with a nod toward the little girl. “She told me you had gone home for a change of clothes and left her to look after me. She gave me another pill for the pain. I don’t remember anything after that.”
Marissa snuggled closer to J.D.’s chest. He shrank away as if a rattlesnake had coiled up alongside him.
Joanie swallowed a laugh at the look of sheer terror on his face. “She won’t bite,” she told him, her voice tinged with laughter.
J.D. whipped his head around to glare at her. “You haven’t answered my question yet,” he said irritably. “Why are y’all still here?”
Joanie shrugged. “We couldn’t very well leave you when you weren’t able to take care of yourself.”
His frown deepened into a scowl and he folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t need taking care of. I’ve been doing a damn good job of just that all by myself for years.”
Joanie arched a doubtful brow at his cast. “That may have been true in the past,” she conceded with a nod. “But now you have a broken leg we are responsible for. Knowing that, if anything else happened to you, we wouldn’t be able to forgive ourselves, would we, Marissa?” she asked, shifting her gaze to her daughter.
Marissa’s expression turned somber as she looked from her mother to J.D. “Never,” she replied emphatically. She laid a hand on his chest and patted softly, her lips puckering into a Shirley Temple pout. “I really am sorry you fell out of our tree and broke your leg. Does it hurt very much this morning?”
J.D. shifted uncomfortably. At the moment, something else was aching a lot more than his leg, but he couldn’t very well tell the kid that. “No,” he muttered. “Not too badly.”
Joanie sensed his discomfort and suspected its cause. Though she wasn’t sure J.D. deserved rescuing, she decided to give him a break. “Marissa, sweetheart, I bought some orange juice last night. It’s in the refrigerator. Why don’t you pour yourself and your brother a glass while I help J.D. get dressed?”
Though it was obvious the child would’ve preferred to stay right where she was, Marissa murmured obediently, “Okay, Mama.” She gave J.D.’s chest one last pat, then dug her heels into the mattress and scooted off the bed.
J.D. waited until she was out of earshot. “And just exactly how long are you planning on staying?” he asked, eyeing Joanie suspiciously.
“Until you get your walking cast,” she replied as she carefully shifted his leg from the pile of pillows.
J.D. jackknifed to a sitting position, his eyes widened in shock. “But that might be a whole week,” he cried.
Joanie nodded and turned to carefully stack the pillows on the chair by the bed. “I know, but don’t let that worry you,” she assured him. “You’ll never even know we’re here.”
You’ll never even know we’re here. J.D. snorted. That was worth a laugh…at least it would have been if he felt like laughing, which he didn’t. He tossed the razor down and smoothed a hand over his cheek, frowning at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Cartoons blared from the television set in the den, pans rattled in the kitchen, the washing machine chugged away in the laundry room and above it all he could hear the constant squabbling of two five-yearolds. A man who’d lived his entire adult life alone, he found the noise was slowly driving him crazy.
And to think that less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d been looking forward to the possibility of spending another night with Joanie Summers. The very thought made him shudder in revulsion.
He had to get them out of his house, he told himself. But how? His chest rose and fell in a weary sigh. Joanie would never leave. Not willingly. She was too damn decent a human being. She felt responsible for his breaking his leg. He’d just have to prove to her that he could manage on his own, at least until he could get a message to Manuel in Mexico and tell him to hightail it back home.
He eyed the crutches propped against the wall by the door. As much as he despised the damn things, he knew he needed them. Until his cast was replaced with a walking one, the crutches were his only hope of mobility.
Grumbling under his breath, he snugged the crutches under his arms and swung out the bathroom door, wearing nothing more than his skivvies.
Joanie met him in the hall.
J.D. bit back a curse.
“Are you ready to get dressed?” she asked, wiping her hands with a dishcloth.
“I can dress myself.”
“I know, but since I’m here, why don’t I help?” She ducked through the bedroom door ahead of him before he could stop her. She plucked a pair of jeans from the bed and held them up for his inspection. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of splitting the seam on another pair of jeans while you were freshening up. If I wash every day, maybe we’ll only have to ruin two pair.” She gestured at the bed. “I think it’d be easier if you sat down here and we eased them up and over your cast.”
J.D. wanted to argue with her…no, he wanted to yell at her, to crack her over the head with the crutches just to see if he could get her attention long enough to convince her that he didn’t need or want her help. But he knew it was useless. She was going to help him dress whether he wanted her to or not.
He twisted around and sat, propping the crutches on the bed at his side. Joanie dropped to her knees in front of him, bending to hold the waist of his jeans open. His face burning in humiliation, J.D. lifted the broken leg and allowed Joanie to ease the jeans over his cast and up his leg. When she started to do the same for his good leg, he shoved her hands out of the way.
“I’m not totally helpless,” he muttered as he stuffed his leg in and worked the waist of his jeans to his thighs. He stood, hopping on his good foot while he hitched them up over his hips, then turned his back to button his fly, clinging to that last thread of modesty.
It was such a masculine act and one Joanie hadn’t witnessed in a while. Muscles bunched on his arms and across his back as he struggled to work the buttons through the holes. Her mouth watered at the sight. She swallowed quickly and looked away, reaching for his shirt. “I guess the first thing we’ll need to do is clean the stalls and feed the stock, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I can handle it.”
Joanie fisted her fingers in his shirt to keep from slugging him. As irresistible as he was, the man was as stubborn as a mule. “J.D., you can hardly make it to the bathroom by yourself. How in the world do you think you are going to throw hay and clean out stalls?”
“I’ll figure out a way.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” She tossed the shirt at him. “We’ll be in the truck.”
J.D. ducked, managing to catch the shirt before it slapped him in the face. He sank back on the edge of the bed as he watched Joanie march from the room, her back as straight as a poker.
We’ll be in the truck? Is that what she’d said? A shiver worked its way down his spine, because he feared he knew who “we” was. She was planning on the kids going along.
He buried his face in the shirt, groaning his frustration, knowing full well that if he wasn’t a grown man, more than likely he’d bawl like a baby.
The bossy streak J.D. had first discovered in Joanie at the emergency room and grown to detest in the short time she’d taken up residence in his house came into play full force once they reached the barns.
