that supposed to mean?” Lightning slashed across the sky, lighting his face. The storms that had threatened all day had finally arrived.
“You can’t even stand to look at a child. Any child.”
He didn’t deny it.
She stood, watching the lightning in the distance, and crossed her arms over her chest. “You say you want to get on with your life, look to the future, but you can’t. Because you haven’t accepted your past.”
“Because I don’t want another baby, like you?”
“In part.”
“You think another baby would make everything better? Make me forget about Brad?” He dragged a hand through the wild waves the wind kicked up in his hair. “Jesus, Caroline. Children can’t just be replaced, like puppies from the pound.”
Thunder battered the old house, and Caroline was glad for it. The shaking ground covered the tremors his words shot through her.
She’d been a fool to think a year would make a difference. A fool to leave Matt, knowing she was pregnant, without telling him about his child. She had hoped that time would heal his grief as it had healed hers, or at least diminish the pain. She hoped he’d be able to love another child.
She’d been wrong.
Matt rose and paced to the porch rail and back again. As he passed by the front door, he stopped, listening. Jeb, fully recovered now, banged randomly on his keyboard, singing the same verse from a nursery rhyme over and over and laughing.
Matt tilted back his head. “How can you stand to live with that every day.”
Her heart sinking, she understood instinctively that Matt didn’t mean Jeb’s bad singing, but the sounds of a child having fun. Of life.
The first fat drops of rain fell like blood against a crimson sunset. In the kitchen, Jeb hit a particularly discordant note. Caroline closed her own eyes and almost smiled. “How can you stand to live without it?”
Nothing had changed at Mahoney’s, Sweet Gum’s local saloon. The tabletops were still scarred, the chairs still didn’t match and the alley out back was still cleaner than the men’s room.
Matt sat alone, picking the label on his beer. He’d already had two bottles, and really shouldn’t have ordered the third. Not without a designated driver.
But even sitting in a bar, staring at beer he couldn’t drink, was better than going back to the Johnsons’ and lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling and trying not to think.
About anything.
Ah, hell. He lifted the bottle and took a long swig. Then another. By the time the Jimmy Buffet fan at the jukebox had run through the singer’s entire repertoire and someone else had put on one of those New Age punk pieces of garbage, five empty bottles littered Matt’s table. The sixth still had a little bit left in it.
Under the bottom curve of his bottle, he saw a pair of boots. Not the work boots the farmers or ranchers in the area wore. Oh, no.
These were patent leather jobs, knee high, with heels chunky enough to block a car on. Between the top of the boots and the bottom of the miniskirt stretched a long length of smooth, slim thigh.
Slowly, Matt lowered the beer bottle.
Gem ran her tongue around her lips while her eyes laughed at him. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Wham-bam-no-thank-you-ma’am.” She scooted her little bottom into the chair next to him.
Too next to him.
He edged to his right, away from her.
“And here I thought you were too pristine to land in a joint like this.”
“What’re you doing here, Gem?”
She reached for his beer. He swung it away. “Who says I have to have a reason?”
“Where are the twins?”
She drew back, almost a recoil. “They’re okay.”
“I’m sure they are. Caroline would never let anything happen to them.” He checked his watch. “But you’re three hours late to pick them up.”
He thought he saw a flash of guilt, of humanity, in her fine-boned features, then the tough street face covered it up. “Well, if you’re going to be that way.” She scraped her chair back and started to walk away.
He snagged her wrist. “You’re also underage and on probation.”
She struggled to pull free, but he held tight. “So call a cop.”
“I am a cop.”
The blood drained from Gem’s face. “I— She didn’t tell me.”
“Obviously. Now what are you doing here?”
“M-my car wouldn’t start. This guy gave me a ride is all. He wanted to stop here awhile, then he’s going to take me home so I can borrow a car to go pick up Max and Rosie.”
“Lame, Gem. You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Really,” she squeaked, pulling harder on her wrist.
“Where is this guy?” Matt had a few words for any man that would bring an obviously underage girl to a bar.
“He’s not a guy, exactly. He’s just a kid. My age.” Her head swiveled, her gaze scanning the sparsely populated tables around the room, probing the dark shadows around the pool table. “I—I don’t see him.”
“Uh-huh.” Matt let go of her wrist and pushed his hand into the small of her back, turning her toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Her voice rose like a frightened child. Which, he figured, was exactly what she was.
“To get your children,” he told Gem gruffly. The farmhouse was the last place he wanted to be right now, but he couldn’t just leave Gem here. “Caroline can take you home. Have you been drinking?” he asked.
“No.”
He squinted at her in the shadows outside the bar.
“Really,” she squeaked.
“Good.” He held out the keys to the truck he’d borrowed from Mr. Johnson. “You drive.”
Despite Gem’s appearance, and her behavior, he believed Caroline was right about the girl. She had a long road ahead, as did her babies. But with Caroline’s help, she just might make it.
Caroline stopped pacing when she saw the headlights beam up from the bottom of the hill.
“Is it her?” Savannah asked.
“I don’t know.” Realizing she had chewed her thumbnail down to skin, she lowered her hand. “It must be. God, I hope
