to see in him, after all. “Good for you.”
He snorted. “If you say so.”
“Hey,” she told him flatly, “I was brought up by practically the Good Samaritan of all Good Samaritans and her sisters and mother and other relatives. I don’t think a whole lot of the way you involved me in this, but I can appreciate the sentiment big time. Accept a compliment when you get one. I bet it doesn’t happen often. Now when are we going to stop and take care of Sasha?”
A chuckle, dry and unwilling, spilled from Jeth. “You don’t quit, do you?”
“Stubbornness is, like, one of my worst features,” Allyn agreed tongue-in-cheek, reverting to the Valley speak practiced in one of her favorite movies. If Sasha was all right, she might actually discover she was enjoying herself—except for Jeth Levoie’s assertion of danger waiting in the wings, of course. “Now when are we stopping? I think he’s starting to wake up. When he does he’s probably not going to be happy to be wet and cold. If he’s sick… I don’t know if you’ve ever traveled with a cranky two-year-old before, but I have. It’s not pleasant.”
“Was it your two-year-old?” Jeth wasn’t sure why it made a difference—except from the standpoint that he didn’t want to deprive another child of its mother. But it was also more than that. It was that ringless left hand niggling uncomfortably at the back of his mind.
Whether this was the time and place or not.
“Not mine, no. Single, never married, no kids.” Then wickedly, because in her estimation he deserved the dig, “Just lots of relatives who’re expecting me to show up in Kentucky sometime tomorrow or the next day. You?”
He heard the denial with a sort of peculiar relief that fastened in his mind on many fronts: no child awaited her return, and neither did a husband. That made her fair game. Reaction to the part about relatives awaiting her arrival was delayed, made his gut wrench when he heard it. No way could he let her go tomorrow or the next day. The only place he felt certain Sasha would be safe was deep in the Grand Canyon reservation where Jeth had grown up, and where tourists needed to schedule visits well in advance and where there was only one real access open to non-natives. It was a place where those who didn’t belong were noticed at once, and where tribal members were friendly but closemouthed and didn’t encourage contact between themselves and the outside world. All of which meant that he had over twenty-three hundred miles to travel before he could even begin to feel Sasha might be safe, and public transport of any sort was out because it was too damned easy to trace. A car, a family off on a summer vacation, that was the way he’d intended to play this, and paying cash all the way. But if she had family that’d be looking for her…
Nuts. He didn’t even have a car seat for Sasha, nor much in the way of clothing for either himself or the baby. Grabbing opportunities when they arose didn’t leave a lot of time for the kind of planning traveling cross-country with a toddler required. He needed this blasted woman he’d stuck himself with—a trace of something soft and elusive swirled around his senses, and he felt himself tighten suddenly—in more ways than he cared to admit.
A lot more ways.
He couldn’t go with her to meet her family. He knew nothing about her, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be expecting their darling Allyn to turn up with a strange man and a sick baby in tow. Not unless they hadn’t seen her in a while, which he doubted, because that wasn’t the way his luck was running today.
But he couldn’t exactly just avoid the issue, either, now, could he?
Damn. You’re tired, but no falling apart. Sort it out, he ordered himself. Take it one thing at a time. You’ve bought a few hours, at least, before anybody figures anything out. Stop for food, clothes and a phone book with a list of free clinics. Make the rest of your plans from there.
He drew a breath. “There any place we can get clothes, food, diapers and a car seat all in one stop?” he asked.
Allyn rocked the beginning-to-whimper Sasha and shook her head. “This is your temporary stomping grounds. I’m just passing through.”
“Pig whistles,” he muttered.
Allyn swallowed the beginnings of a grin. She didn’t think she’d ever heard that particular expression before. “Excuse me?”
“Had to pick a damned out-of-towner. No use whatsoever.”
“I didn’t ask to be picked, you know.”
He grimaced. “True.”
She waited a few beats. “Where have you shopped while you’ve lived here?”
“Corner liquor store, corner grocery store, corner pharmacy.”
Allyn cleared her throat, trying hard not to laugh at how disgruntled he sounded. “I see.”
“I doubt it,” he assured her darkly. Then he sighed, checked the Saturn’s side mirrors and switched lanes, zigzagging through the city toward the expressway where he hoped to find an exit labeled Shopping.
Chapter 3
They stopped fourteen miles from Baltimore at a super-store in Ellicott City.
After a fair amount of negotiation over who would go in, Allyn bundled Sasha into the smallest zip-front sweatshirt she had with her. Then all three of them went into the store.
This was what he’d wanted when he’d started out this morning, wasn’t it? Jeth thought. A woman whose mother tiger instincts would come straight to the fore once she took a look at Sasha? He simply hadn’t bargained on finding one who was quite so…uniquely qualified to hand him his head and stir up his senses at the same time.
Or quite so enthusiastic about helping him shop.
As Jeth watched, Allyn spent a fair amount of his cash on hand with a certain flair he found both impressive and frightening—as though she’d been trained by a take-no-prisoners master in the art of procurement. Other than for staples, he shopped as infrequently as possible.
But when she headed into the men’s department, Jeth had the most disturbing sense that he was doomed.
In the parking lot, she’d ransacked his duffel bag, then her suitcases in search of something to diaper Sasha in. What she found had made her roll her eyes and tsk disgustedly at him.
“What?” he’d asked, feeling a certain impatience and paranoia to be moving—and also feeling suddenly daunted by the fact that she found his wardrobe wanting.
She’d blinked at him. He looked at her eyes and was suddenly more afraid of her than of the people from whom he’d retrieved Sasha. Because what he saw there told him better than anything she’d yet done that she was not some timid flower he’d plucked on a whim; she was the wind that blew the flower.
“These all the clothes you’ve got with you?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with it?” Oh, good, be belligerent. Show her the tough guy. Intimidate the hell out of her.
Yeah, right. As if. Instead of being either intimidated or impressed, she’d offered him exaggerated patience.
“How far do you plan to travel with me ’n’ Sasha?” A two-beat
