Temporary Dad Page 4

  His hands still on her shoulders, Jed turned Annie to face him, which only upped the stakes of the battle raging inside her. Standing behind her, he was dangerous enough. When he stood in front of her, staring at her, she found that just looking at him was emotional suicide.

  She’d already been through so much.

  She couldn’t open herself up to more pain.

  Her move to Pecan was about healing. Making a fresh start. It was about—

  Jed took her hands and gave them a gentle squeeze, flooding her with the kind of simple, wondrous, unconditional companionship she hadn’t felt in years. Except that it wasn’t unconditional; it came with strings. Strings that would vanish the instant they reunited Patti with her babies.

  “I—I have to go,” Annie said, turning for the door, putting her hand on the cold brass knob.

  “Howie’s her husband,” Jed said. “He should be with her right now. But I can’t find him, Annie. Until I do, I’m all she has. I have to help her. She’s all I’ve got.”

  Annie swallowed hard.

  How had he known?

  Of all the words in the English language, those were the ones that spoke the loudest to her heart. It was exactly the way she felt about her grandmother.

  “Annie, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got a mile-long streak of pride running through me. I hate asking for help. Even worse, I hate needing help. But in this case—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “You will?”

  Lips pressed tight, fighting silly tears of trepidation, maybe even excitement, Annie nodded.

  Jed pulled her into a hug, and the sensation was warm and comforting, like slipping into a hot bath. This sure wouldn’t make it any easier to fight her feelings for this man.

  Releasing her, he clapped his hands, then rubbed them together. “Great! Let me tackle a few quick errands. I’ll beg, borrow or steal time off from work and we’ll get this show on the road. I’m assuming you’ll need to call your folks? Or your grandmother? Or—” he crossed his fingers for a negative on this one “—your boyfriend?”

  Annie shook her head. “The only family I have is my grandmother, and there’s no need to worry her with a short trip like this.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. Why even broach the subject with Grams? The older, wiser woman would think she was nuts—which she probably was.

  “All right then. If you wouldn’t mind hanging out here just a little while longer, we’ll be good to go. Oh—before I forget…” He took a cell phone from the coffee table and plugged it into a nearby charger. “Is your cell battery fully charged?”

  “I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “How come?”

  “I’d rather spend the fifty dollars a month on decorating supplies.”

  He smiled. “I knew I liked you. Finally, a woman who actually prefers an activity to talking.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t like to talk.” She winked. “I just don’t want my conversations to cost more per year than a custom-upholstered sofa and love seat.”

  Chapter Four

  It was nine the next morning before they finally pulled onto Highway 75 leading out of Pecan and into Tulsa where they’d catch Highway 412. Annie had talked Jed into taking a nap that’d thankfully turned into a decent night’s rest. Meanwhile, she’d run to the store for a more realistic stock of formula, diapers and diaper wipes, and also managed to grab a little shut-eye for herself while the babies were sleeping.

  During her brief time away from Jed’s formidable appeal—not to mention that of his niece and nephews—she’d given herself a nice, long pep talk.

  Jed was just her neighbor.

  And yeah, he was gorgeous, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was falling for him. She was a big girl. So why was she so confused? Why did she feel that by agreeing to what should be nothing more than a brief road trip, she was essentially giving away her heart?

  Could it be because that heart of yours hums whenever the guy’s within three feet?

  Annie cracked open the map. “Want me to find some shortcuts?”

  Both hands on his sister’s minivan wheel, Jed shook his head. “I’m an interstate kind of guy. I see no reason to tempt fate.”

  “Oh.” She slipped off her sandals and propped her bare feet on the dash. Admiring her fresh pedicure, she said, “Don’t you just love this shade of pink? The silver sparkles look like there’s a party on my toes.” She glanced his way and caught him rolling his eyes.

  Eyebrows raised, he asked, “Do you have to do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get your dirty feet all over the clean dash. I just dusted it this morning.”

  “My feet aren’t dirty—or dusty.” She twisted in the seat to display her soles for inspection. “See?”

  Barely ten minutes into the trip and the woman nearly had him crashing the car! Jed cleared his throat, thankful for that keep your eyes on the road rule, otherwise, he’d be sorely tempted to take the bottoms of those squeaky-clean feet and—

  Nope.

  Not going there.

  This was a family trip.

  G-rated all the way.

  For an instant, he squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. Did she have any idea that when she’d raised her feet for inspection, she’d also raised the frayed bottoms of her jean shorts? The sweet curve of her behind had him thinking anything but sweet thoughts!

  He tightened his grip on the wheel.

  “Tell me about Ditch,” the constant temptation sitting beside him said.

  He was grateful for the change of topic. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “For starters—” she hiked her feet back onto the dash “—please tell me that isn’t his real name.”

  “Nah. We used to take walks down our dirt road, and every time we heard the tiniest little noise, he’d hit the ditch, sure it was a bear.”

  She crinkled her nose.

  Was it wrong of him that such a simple thing gave him such a peculiar thrill?

  “If it had been a bear,” she said, “why did he think getting in the ditch was going to keep it away?”

  Jed laughed. “Good question, which is why the other kids and I gave him such a hard time.”

  “Poor guy. Did he ever—”

  Waaaaahuh!

  “What’s the matter?” Annie asked one of the boys. “Already needing a snack?” She took a pre-warmed bottle from an insulated bag, tested the formula’s temperature on her wrist, then offered it to Jed’s nephew, who promptly batted it away. “I’ll take that to mean he’s not hungry,” she said.

  Waaaaaaahuh!

  Waaaaaaa!

  Great. Now Pia had joined in.

  “Good Lord,” Jed said. “We haven’t even made it to Tulsa and already they’re crying? I thought babies liked car rides?”

  “Most do,” she said above the racket, “but I guess these guys are the exception. Well, except for Richard. He’s sound asleep.”

  “How do you know that’s Rich?”

  “Technically, I don’t. But he has slightly thicker eyebrows than his brother, so that helps me tell them apart.”

  Sure. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Jed sighed.

  “What? You think I’m making that up?”

  “When we make our first stop in Kansas, I’ll take a look.”

  “Kansas? I hate to burst your bubble there, but judging by the howling, we’re going to have to stop way before we even reach the Kansas Turnpike.”

  “The hell we will.” And to prove it, Jed stepped on the gas.

  FIVE MILES DOWN the road at a run-down picnic stop where hot, dry wind rustled scattered litter on the ground, Jed scowled.

  All three babies wailed.

  “This place doesn’t look very clean,” he said.

  “It’s not like we’re going to roll your niece and nephews across the pavement.”

  “Yeah, well, all the same,” he said over Pia’s especially heartfelt cry. “Maybe
we should just—”

  Annie unfastened her seat belt and hopped out of the van.

  Jed looked at the sun-bleached concrete parking area and the shabby picnic tables and shook his head.

  An empty two-liter pop bottle rolled like tumble-weed until it stopped against the carved wooden sign urging folks to Put Litter In Its Place.

  Annie slid open the van’s side door. “Listen to you all,” she crooned to the bawling trio. “My goodness. The way you’re carrying on you’d think some TV exec canceled Sesame Street.”

  She unbuckled Pia and scooped her from her seat. After patting the rump of her pink shorts, Annie said, “What’s up, sweetie? Your diaper’s dry.” While talking to Pia, she rubbed Ronnie’s belly. “Seeing how they tossed their bottles, I’m guessing they’re not hungry, which leaves general crankiness as the cause of all this angst. Come on,” she said, awkwardly taking Richard from his seat, too. “You grab Ronnie and we’ll take them for a quick walk.”

  “A walk?” Jed had stepped out of the van and was standing behind Annie. “We were supposed to be halfway to Colorado by now. This is going to completely blow the schedule.”

  “What schedule?” Two babies and a fat diaper bag in her arms, she backed out of the van. “Think you could help me down from here? I don’t want to trip.”

  Suddenly, Jed didn’t just have lost time to worry about, but Annie’s soft curves landing against his chest. He caught her around her waist, guiding her safely to the ground, getting himself in trouble with the trace of her floral perfume.

  “No, no.” He shook off his momentary rush of awareness to remember his argument. “Why are you leaving the van? It’ll just take that much longer to load back up.”

  Already halfway across the lot, aiming for the nearest picnic table, she called over her shoulder, “Could you please grab Ronnie? Now that we’re stopped, I’d like to do an official diaper check.”

  Muttering under his breath, Jed did Annie’s bidding, cringing when he reached the table only to find her spreading the babies’ good changing pad across the graffiti-and-filth-covered concrete slab.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked mid-change on Richard, her right hand efficiently holding the gurgling baby’s feet while she wiped him with her left.

  Pia sprawled on a blanket Annie had spread beneath a frazzled red bud. The little faker was grinning up a storm while gumming the baby-friendly rubber salamander he’d bought for her at the zoo.

  “What’s the matter?” he echoed, hands on his hips. “These kids are bamboozling us.”

  Annie shot him an entirely too chipper smile. “Jed, they’re just over three months old. There’s no way they could systematically set out to mess with your schedule.”

  “Yeah, well, what else explains this?” He held out Ronnie, who was also alternately giggling and cooing.

  Annie looked up only to hastily look back down.

  She returned her attention to sealing the tapes on Richard’s diaper, then resnapping the legs of his short-sleeved cotton jumper.

  Why did she have the feeling that a whole lot more than the beating sun and dry Oklahoma wind were making her cheeks hot?

  Like the sight of entirely-too-handsome-for-his-own-good Jed wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, camo-green cargo shorts and a white T-shirt, while holding tiny little Ronnie so tenderly in his arms.

  Once he learned to loosen up, Jed would make a great father.

  Obviously not to any children of hers—just some lucky woman he had yet to meet.

  “Okay,” she said with forced cheer, hoisting Richard into her arms. “Pia’s bone-dry, so let me check Ronnie’s diaper and we should be good to go.”

  “So she faked all her tears, too?” He sighed.

  Annie gave him a dirty look, suddenly annoyed when she ended up a little too close to Jed in order to give Ronnie’s diaper the pat test. “He’s dry, too,” she said, turning quickly, planning to grab Pia and her blanket, along with the diaper bag.

  “Wait,” Jed said, his fingertips brushing her forearm.

  Even with the breeze, the August air was stiflingly hot, yet somehow each individual imprint of his fingers on her skin felt hotter. She looked at Jed. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  The breeze blew strands of hair into her eyes, and since her arms were full with Richard, Jed used his free hand to sweep away the stray curls. “What for?”

  “What do you think?” He stared at his baby, then hers. “Much as I hate to admit it, you were right. There’s no way I could’ve made this trip on my own. So in case I get too wrapped up later on—thanks.”

  His grumpy attitude about their first pit stop?

  Forgiven.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, afraid to look at him for fear she’d be that much more attracted. “Wanna put Ronnie in his seat while I grab the princess?”

  “I’ll get her and the gear,” he said. “You be the brains and beauty behind this operation. I’ll be the brawn.”

  Beauty, huh?

  Settling Richard in his carrier, then climbing back into her own seat to feign interest in the map, Annie realized that trying not to fall for Jed would be about as easy as keeping three babies content for the next eight hundred miles.

  “Y’ALL KEEP a good eye on those cuties!” The burly tow-truck driver waved, then veered into the heavy stream of back-to-school traffic clogging Wal-Mart’s lot.

  One arm around Richard, the other around Pia, Jed said, “When I get my hands on that no go brother-in-law of mine, I’ll—”

  “Calm down,” Annie said. “It’s only a flat.” She took Pia from Jed and placed her in front of her brothers in the three-seat stroller.

  Jed snorted. “A flat that could’ve been fixed on the side of the road in under ten minutes. But no-o-o-o. Howie’s the only man in the world who lets his wife and children drive around without a spare.”

  Hand to her forehead, Annie shielded her eyes from the baking sun. “You never know. Maybe they used the spare and haven’t had a chance to replace it.”

  “Don’t,” Jed said, steering Annie toward the automotive section of the store.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Try making this easy for my sister. Even if that no good brother-in-law was too lazy to replace the tire, Patti knows better. How many times have I told her always to be prepared?”

  Annie laughed. “Like you were prepared to call a tow truck by forgetting to grab your cell from the charger? We were lucky that Triple A guy stopped for us on his way to work.”

  “I told you not to remind me about my cell phone.”

  “Sorry. Just thought poor Howie needed defending. Besides which, I think you’re too hard on yourself. Things happen. You can’t always be in control.”

  Wanna bet?

  Yeah, forgetting his phone was a major screwup—right up there with not checking for a spare himself. But no more. From here on out, this trip would be run with military precision.

  They’d reached the podium-on-wheels the tire guy used to write up their ticket. Jed held his jaw tight through the entire ordering process, during which the tire guy explained how the popularity of the back-to-school tire special meant his department was running about two hours behind. But there was a waiting area for their convenience.

  “Sir?” the tire guy said. “Your keys?”

  Jed fished in his pockets for the gaudy pink rabbit’s foot key chain his sister had given him. It wasn’t there.

  Realizing what he’d done, he groaned.

  “Sir? Your keys?”

  Annie giggled. “You left them in the van, didn’t you, Mr. Always Prepared?”

  “AREN’T THEY SWEET?” Annie said, eyeing the three sleeping angels while slurping the last bit of cherry heaven from the bottom of her Icee cup.

  Jed, who’d just finished checking his messages—or lack thereof—from a payphone, growled.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Would you get over it? Everyone makes mistakes. I lock myself out of my car all the time,
which is why I now keep a spare key in a little magnetic box under the front wheel well.”

  “I’ve got one, too,” he said, “only it’s under the truck bed. Fat lot of good it’s doing me there when I’m driving my sister’s stupid van.”

  Fingertips aching to reach out and touch him, Annie toyed with a potato chip instead. “Are you more upset with your sister or yourself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why are you so angry? Are you still fired up about the missing spare tire? Or is your miserable mood more about the keys?”

  Ever the pillar of responsibility, even when it came to his choice in drinks, he took a swig of bottled water. “Just drop it, okay?”

  “Now what are you ticked off about?”

  Jed pretended to be captivated by a pink, blue and yellow cotton candy display. “Do you think yellow is banana flavor?”

  “Yes. And I also think you’re avoiding my question.”

  “How do you know it’s banana?”

  She sighed. “Because it’s my favorite and I buy it all the time. Back to the important stuff. Are you avoiding my question?”

  “Absolutely. Now would you mind dropping it?”

  “Excu-u-u-use me,” she said, pushing herself up from the table to put her cup and remaining chips in the trash. Was it just him, or had her hands been shaking when she’d dumped the stuff? “I’ll be in the clothing section until the car gets done, okay? While you were off grabbing all that auto emergency stuff, I changed everyone’s diaper and filled fresh bottles, so you shouldn’t have any trouble watching the babies by yourself.”

  Right before she left, she snatched a tiny pink Velcro bow from Pia’s PJ sleeve and put it in her purse. “It’s evidently a choking hazard,” she said. “Kind of like looking at you.”

  “Dude, you got schooled,” said a baggy-clothed punk passing Jed’s booth.

  Huh? Ignoring him, Jed just sat there, watching Annie walk away. Dammit. Why the hell hadn’t he said something? He should’ve tried to explain.