Her Minnesota Man (A Christian Romance Novel) (38 page)

"Your manager was here," she informed him in a small, dead voice.

Relief flooded Jeb's heart. This was something he could fix.

It was no hard trick to imagine what had happened: She'd had another stressful day at the tearoom, and just when she'd come home to put her feet up and read the newspaper and decompress, Shari had shown up looking for him.

Finding him away from home, Shari would have been both annoyed and annoying. Laney would have made every effort to respond with kindness, but that wouldn't have saved her from been filleted by Shari's razor-sharp tongue.

"I'm sorry you had to deal with her, princess. She had no business bothering you about—"

"She needs to talk to you." Laney dropped the words like stones, each one heavy and hard and cold.

Jeb's temper flared. How many times did Shari need to be told that he was finished with Skeptical Heart? "Laney, whatever she said, don't let it upset—"

"You'd better call her." Laney backed away, stepping across the doorsill and into her kitchen. "It's urgent."

"
Laney
." Jeb caught the door as she tried to close it in his face. "What exactly did she say?"

"It isn't my place to tell you. Go home and call her." She tried again to close the door, but Jeb managed to
slip inside
.

"Laney, please." Tamping down his exasperation, Jeb assured himself that he'd have this mess cleaned up in another minute, and then he'd share the exciting news about his day in Nashville. "Just tell me what happened."

She glared at him for a moment, and then she suddenly deflated. Her gaze faltered, her shoulders hunched, and her chin sank toward her chest.

"Oh, Jeb." Her voice wobbled on his name, and then it dropped to a horrified whisper. "Shari's pregnant."

He blinked. "What does that have to do with—" He stopped, suddenly getting it. "Princess,
no
. You've misunderstood something. What you're thinking— Well, it just isn't possible."

She raised her head and looked straight into his eyes. "Obviously, it
is
possible," she said coldly. "And you know that very well, Jackson, because this isn't the first child you've fathered, is it?"

Jackson
.

If she'd slapped him or spit in his face, he couldn't have been more shocked or more devastated. In all the years they'd known each other, she had never called him Jackson.

"You said you didn't have that kind of relationship," she accused, brushing away an angry tear. "You said it was all business, and I believed you. But it was a lie, wasn't it?"

"No, it wasn't!" he insisted.

Sure, Shari had hit on him a few times. And yes, he'd been tempted. But she'd been a valuable asset to the band, so he'd never have risked jeopardizing their professional relationship.

Unless he'd been too wasted to realize what he was doing.

As his inherent honesty forced him to acknowledge that possibility, his gaze fell away from Laney's.

She took that as an admission of guilt.

"I knew you did bad things." Twin tears slid down her cheeks, which anguish had stained a dusky pink. "But I never asked you about them because I knew that no matter what, you'd tell me the truth. So when you kept things from me, I never pushed, because I was afraid of what I might hear. But just this one time, I pressed you for an answer. I was jealous of her, I admit it, and so I asked you if—" Laney stopped and caught a ragged breath. "And you said
no
. I never thought you could lie to me, but you did!"

Jeb shook his head in desperate denial. He needed to pull her close and just hold on tight until they both stopped shaking and the world started making sense again, but when he opened his arms and swayed toward her, she swatted his hands away.

"Don't touch me! You lied!"

But he hadn't meant to do it. If he'd told her something untrue, he hadn't meant to do it. Why didn't she know that?

"Shari's going to have your baby and I—" Shaking her head, Laney emitted a harsh laugh. "But you don't want this baby any more than you wanted the other one, do you? Are you going to do what you did last time? Are you going to just walk away and tell yourself it's nothing to do with you?" She closed her eyes, squeezing out two more tears as she whispered, "You're just like my father!"

Appalled by that accusation, Jeb slumped against the doorframe.

"Go home," Laney commanded in a low, trembling voice. "Just go and leave me alone."

So this was the end. After sixteen years, Laney had finally lost her faith in him. She had stopped believing that underneath it all, he was a good person.

And if Laney couldn't believe it, then he didn't have a hope of ever making it true.

Alone in her kitchen, Laney pressed both hands against her face to cover her wicked mouth—too late.

What had she done? How could she have said those awful things to Jeb?

When she'd accused him of being just like her father, he had looked utterly defeated. He had offered not a single word in his defense, but with downcast eyes had turned and gone out and closed the door so gently that she'd barely heard it latch.

Laney swallowed convulsively, fighting a wave of nausea rolling in on a swelling tide of remorse.

She hated knowing he'd made a baby with Shari. And she hated that he'd lied about his relationship with the woman. But at least a lie could be forgiven and, in time, forgotten.

A baby was different. A baby changed everything.

In her mindless panic, Laney had said some unbelievably cruel things. But in her heart, she knew Jeb wouldn't make the same decisions he'd made last time. So the question now burning in Laney's mind was: How large a portion of his life would Shari, as the mother of his child, lay claim to?

Yes, Laney was jealous of the connection this baby would forge between Jeb and Shari. In the years to come, discussions would be held and compromises sought on things like education and where and with whom the child lived. And even if Jeb and Laney eventually married, Laney would have little or no say in any of those decisions.

She didn't doubt for a second that she would come to love Shari's baby. But this wasn't the sweet, uncomplicated future she had dreamed about.

She brushed tears from her cheeks and reminded herself that she wasn't the only one hurting tonight. Recalling the desolation she'd seen in Jeb's gray eyes when she'd ordered him to leave, she wanted to run after him and tell him how wrong she'd been and how sorry she was. But when she was still so upset, would that be wise?

She'd better give herself some time to calm down. And surely Jeb would need some time alone to process this shocking news—and to discuss it with Shari.

First thing in the morning, then. Tonight, she would pray for forgiveness—and for release from this awful, heart-twisting bitterness.

Still emotionally numb and hoping he stayed that way for a good long time, Jeb sat shivering on his screened porch in the morning twilight. Not counting the trips he'd made to the kitchen at regular intervals to refill his coffee mug, he'd been sitting there all night doing nothing at all.

Well, not nothing. He'd tried and tried to call Shari.

Then he'd booked a flight to L.A.

But otherwise, he'd just huddled in the wicker chair next to the back door, his old fishing coat buttoned all the way up, his bare hands wrapped around a warm coffee mug. He'd watched hundreds of stars crawl across the perfect black sky, and judging by the orange-pink glow now visible in the east, he'd soon see the determined sun heave itself over the horizon.

He had tried several times to pray, but he'd been unable to focus. So he'd given up and just sat on the porch drinking coffee and shivering.

He loved Laney with all of his heart, but he was beginning to be angry with her for giving up on him. He was fully aware that he'd never deserved her friendship. But considering that she'd forced it on him and then trained him to count on it, she had a lot of nerve revoking it now.

The wicker chair creaked as he uncrossed his legs. He was about to get up to refill his coffee mug when he remembered the pot was empty, and that he couldn't make a fresh one because he'd run out of ground coffee. He set the mug on the marble-topped table beside him, and then rubbed the whiskers on his chin and considered hopping in the Explorer to make a coffee run.

He could get some cigarettes, too.

No, better, not. He didn't want to risk running into Laney as she came out her kitchen door on her way to work.

He remembered his old man's stash.

Don't do it
, his conscience begged, but he was already on his feet and making for the music room.

He sat down at
the
desk and opened the bottom drawer. For several moments, he just stared at the three bottles of whiskey his father had left behind. Then muttering one of the expletives he hadn't used in weeks, he scooped up the bottles and headed back to the kitchen, where he poured every bit of the stuff down the sink.

It smelled good. No sense in not admitting that.

It would have tasted even better. But as hard as he'd fought to clean up his life, he wasn't about to surrender now just because he'd gotten his pathetic heart stomped on.

He picked up the phone he'd left on the kitchen table and tried again to call Shari. It was two hours earlier in L.A., but he wasn't concerned about waking her up. After what she'd done to Laney, she deserved to lose some sleep.

She still wasn't answering.

He wondered if Taylor knew anything about this. An anomaly among rock drummers, who tended toward the psychotic, Taylor was a dropped-out sociology major who saw himself as Skeptical Heart's resident therapist. Whatever was going on with Shari, it was entirely possible that Taylor not only knew about it, but had already analyzed it.

Jeb placed the call.

"Jackson?" a sleepy voice inquired. "What time is it?"

"Early," Jeb admitted.

Taylor yawned. "
Somethin
' wrong?"

"Maybe. This is awkward, Taylor, but—" He had to force the words out. "Is Shari pregnant?"

There was a brief silence, and then in a wide-awake voice, Taylor said, "She told you?"

Jeb slumped onto a chair. "So it's true."

"Of course it's true." Taylor sounded almost offended. "Why would she lie about it?"

Jeb lowered his head and squeezed the back of his neck with his free hand.

Why had God allowed this to happen? Why
now
? Things had been going so well with Laney, and he'd begun to hope that—

"Jackson? You still there?"

"I'm here."

"Are you
comin
' back to L.A.?"

Jeb sighed.

Come to me
, Jesus said,
and I will give you rest
. But since the night he'd fallen to his knees in that hotel room and offered his heart to God, Jeb's life had only gotten more complicated.

"Jackson?"

"Yeah," Jeb said wearily. "I'll be there today."

"For real?" Taylor sounded like a kid who'd just been promised a trip to Disney World. "So you're
thinkin
' about
comin
' back to the band?"

Thinking? That was a laugh. At the moment, Jeb's brain was so fried he didn't even know his own name.

Oh, wait. Yes.

His name was
Jackson
.

Pain slammed through him as he remembered how ugly those two syllables had sounded coming out of Laney's mouth. That utterance had flattened his spirit more effectively than any of the curses his drunken father used to hurl at him.

"Taylor, I'll talk to you later," he said, and ended the call.

He hadn't really doubted that Shari was pregnant. She was a hard woman, but she wasn't a liar. Still, he would insist on some tests before he made her any promises. He honestly couldn't remember being intimate with her, so he was going to need some irrefutable proof before he accepted this child as his own.

If it
was
his child
 
.
 
.
 
. Well, he wasn't sure what would happen next, but he knew he couldn't let it be like before. He'd protect this baby at any cost. So if it took a promise of marriage to make Shari agree to carry it and allow it to be born, Jeb would make that promise.

Laney was lost to him in any case.

He knew he ought to pray, but bitterness had seeped into his ravaged heart, so he returned to his music room and sat down at the piano hoping to find oblivion. He considered for a few moments, and then he lifted his hands and—

Slammed them down, producing a loud, discordant sound that accompanied his own anguished cry.