Her Minnesota Man (A Christian Romance Novel) (40 page)

Taylor yawned into the phone. "I would've told you before, but you hung up before I could explain. She started
havin
' trouble with her cell phone when she was in Iowa for her brother's wedding, and she didn't get back from there until late last night, so she hasn't had a chance to get it fixed yet."

"But she's not answering her landline, either," Jeb said.

"Yeah, 'cause she's
stayin
' at my place."

Jeb blinked. Why would she be staying with Taylor?

"I'd let you talk to her," Taylor went on, "but she's asleep right now. That trip was hard on her. Bad scene with her parents. And with her morning sickness and all the stress over wedding plans, she can't hardly—"

"
Wedding
plans?" If Jeb hadn't been hampered by a seatbelt, he'd have risen to his feet in outrage. The woman was assuming an awful lot!

"Yeah, I think she wants to tie the knot three weeks from Saturday," Taylor said. "I told her not to wear herself out, but you know Shari."

Yes, Jeb knew Shari. But she didn't know
him
very well if she thought she could railroad him into marriage. He
didn't know
what God expected of a man in these circumstances, but until he did, he was going to be extra careful not to make any wrong moves.

"She didn't tell me she'd set a date," he said dryly.

"Yeah, well, she says if she's
gonna
do it, she might as well do it quick and get it over with," Taylor said. "Not very flattering, I guess, but any man would be lucky to get a woman like Shari."

Shaking his head, Jeb wondered about Taylor's definition of
luck
.

"So, you
plannin
' to be there?" Taylor inquired.

"I don't know," Jeb said, although his thoughts were flowing more along the lines of never, no way, not in a million years. "She and I will have to work some things out before I decide."

"What things?"

Jeb frowned at the uncharacteristic note of belligerence in Taylor's voice. "Personal things," he said shortly. Like a paternity test, for starters. "Listen, Taylor, I'm at LAX right now, just getting off a plane. I'd like to come over to your place and talk to Shari."

"Okay, man. Want me to pick you up? On the way home we could stop and get her favorite coffee and muffins for a surprise."

"A ride would be good," Jeb said. Taylor's place was less than twenty minutes from the airport, so he wouldn't have long to wait. "Thanks."

"No sweat. Just let me find my pants and write a note in case Shari wakes up. Be there in a few."

Jeb didn't have any bags to claim, so he got a cup of coffee and went out to the passenger pick-up area to wait for Taylor. He had just tossed his empty cup into a trash receptacle when Taylor's silver Jaguar convertible rumbled to a stop just a few feet away.

Jeb opened the passenger door, tossed his backpack behind the seat, and climbed in.

"So what's up?" Taylor asked.

Jeb pulled the seatbelt across his chest. "Like I said, I need to talk to Shari."

Taylor nodded as he eased out into the traffic. "She'll probably be awake by the time we get there."

"Yeah. About that. What's she doing sleeping at your place?"

"Exactly what you think she's doing." Taylor gave him a look of smug amusement. "Don't tell me you've gone and joined the morality police, Jackson. Not after all the times we—"

"It's a fair question," Jeb pointed out. "Why's she sleeping with you when she's making plans to marry
me
?"

"Marry
you
?" Taylor sliced him with a look of pure outrage. "What are you
talkin
' about?"

Jeb just shook his head. "All right, I give up. What game is she playing?"

Taylor hit the brakes and yanked the Jag back to the curb, where they came to a violent stop. "She's
marryin
'
me
!" he shouted.

Jeb opened his mouth and immediately closed it again. "Awkward" didn't even begin to describe this situation. After a moment he asked, very carefully and not without a great deal of hope, "Do you think the baby might be yours?"

"
Might
be?" Taylor wrenched his door open and leaped out of the car. Stunned, Jeb watched him place a hand on the Jag's hood and kick his body over it like a guy in an action film. An instant later, he nearly tore Jeb's door off its hinges. "Get out!" he growled.

He wanted to fight? Well, fine. It had been far too long since Jeb had had the pleasure of hitting somebody. He jerked his seatbelt off and swung his right leg out of the car.

He never made it to a standing position. Taylor's roundhouse punch caught the left side of his jaw and sent him sprawling.

Lying on his back, his left foot caught inside the idling Jaguar, Jeb looked up at Taylor's furious face and tried to make sense out of what was happening.

"Get up!" Taylor snarled.

Jeb pulled his foot out of the car and sat up. Then he slowly shook his head, partly to ascertain whether Taylor's stunning punch had knocked his brain loose, but mostly because he had just remembered he was a Christian now, and Christians didn't pound the snot out of people.

Not even people who were begging for it.

"
Get up
!" Taylor kicked Jeb's thigh with the pointed toe of a cowboy boot.

Jeb rolled up to his feet and backed away, hands up and palms facing the irate drummer. "Hold on, Taylor! What's this all about?"

"You can't have her!" Taylor threw another punch.

Jeb ducked just in time to save himself from losing a few teeth. "Are you crazy?" he yelled, backing up some more. "I don't want her!"

"You don't?" Taylor rubbed his skinned knuckles and shook his long blond hair back from his face. "Then why do you want to see her so bad?"

Keeping a wary eye on Taylor's dangerous right hand, Jeb said, "Because she's pregnant and the baby might be mine."

Quick as a Texas rattlesnake, Taylor's left fist slammed into Jeb's belly.

Jeb staggered backward, bent double and fighting to suck in some air. "Taylor," he wheezed, raising one hand in surrender. "Come on, man. I don't even know what this is about!"

"You know what it's about," Taylor said, but he sounded less certain now.

"No, Taylor, I
don't
know." Jeb cautiously unbent his body, pulling himself up to his full height in front of the drummer who had once seemed to cherish an almost childlike admiration for him. "Shari came to Minnesota and told my girlfriend she was pregnant. But I never—" He stopped, remembering the haze of drugs and alcohol that had shrouded his former life, and decided to rephrase that. "If I ever spent a night with her, Taylor, I don't remember it."

"How could you not remember?" Taylor demanded, his face flushing with renewed outrage.

Jeb just looked at him and waited for him to figure it out.

Finally, Taylor nodded. "The baby's mine, Jackson. I don't know how you got the hare-brained idea that—"

"She tricked me, Taylor." Yes, it was childish and unprofessional; Shari had been downright weird lately. "She wanted me back in L.A., so she made trouble between me and my girlfriend. I don't know if she just hinted or if she flat-out lied, but the message my girlfriend gave me was that Shari was pregnant and the baby was mine."

"The baby's
mine
," Taylor said from between clenched teeth.

"Yeah." Jeb rubbed his bruised jaw with one hand and his aching belly with the other. "Yeah, man, I got that."

"And she's
marryin
'
me
." Taylor jerked a thumb toward his own heaving chest.

"Yeah." Jeb looked up at the blue California sky and choked back a hysterical laugh. "Congratulations."

Late Thursday evening, Laney sat at her dining room table and divided the "Paris at Night" puzzle into six large sections, which she carefully laid in the box she'd saved. If she ever changed her mind about hanging the puzzle in the hallway with those her mother had completed, it would be a quick job to put it back together. She'd make the tiny H-shaped hole in the midnight sky less noticeable with the black guitar pick Jeb had given her to glue behind it.

Rubbing the smooth plastic pick between her finger and thumb, she turned to look at one of the framed photographs on her mother's antique sideboard: Jeb at his piano, head thrown back and eyes closed, lost in his music.

She ached to know he was all right. He hadn't promised to call from Los Angeles, but she could call him, couldn't she? Just to see if he was okay?

No, she couldn't call. She was crippled by the fear that he'd insist she was better off without him. And she just didn't think she could bear hearing him suggest, very gently, that she not call him again.

Her heart fluttered painfully as she laid his guitar pick on top of the puzzle and closed the box.

She was headed upstairs to bed when her phone rang. Assuming it was Ollie or Crystal returning her call about the hockey tickets, she grabbed the phone off her bedside table and didn't bother to check the display.

"Hi, princess."

Surprise and relief robbed Laney of breath. For several seconds, speech was impossible.

"Laney? Are you there?" Jeb sounded anxious and exhausted.

"I'm here," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Laney, it's not my baby."

Her legs gave out and she sank onto her bed. Silent tears slipped down her cheeks as gratitude broke over her in powerful waves.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you.

"Laney? Did you hear me?"

"I heard," she said faintly. "I'm glad, Jeb."

"She knew all along who the father was. She and I never—" He cleared his throat. "But she was mad at me. Frustrated. And she said something about hormones and mood swings and a fight with her parents. Whatever the reason, she deliberately misled you in order to make trouble for me."

What a dirty trick. Laney was amazed by the woman's callous deception, but she was too relieved to dwell on it.

"I'm just glad it's over," she said.

"Yeah. And I'm sorry about—"

"Don't, Jeb. We dealt with all of that before you left, remember? We're okay."

"Yeah." He sighed the word, still sounding dead on his feet. Had he even gone to bed last night?

His cell phone was picking up a lot of background noise. Laney could hear a male voice droning through a PA system that Flight Something-Something to Nashville was now ready to board First Class passengers.

Clearly, Jeb was sitting in an airport departure lounge. But he hadn't said he was coming home.

"Are you still in Los Angeles?" Laney inquired uneasily.

"Yeah." Jeb's reply carried a distinct note of reluctance. "The airport."

The fingers of Laney's right hand pressed down on her quilt and then slowly curled until she was gripping a handful of fabric. "Are you coming home?"

When Jeb didn't immediately answer, she knew. He was getting on a plane, but not one heading for Minneapolis-St. Paul.

She really ought to have seen this coming. She'd gotten an earful of this stuff from Sarah Jane and her other women friends: Men often pulled back the moment a relationship took a serious turn. Tell a man how you felt about him before he had accepted his own feelings, and you risked making him feel trapped.

And just that morning, Laney had uttered those three man-terrifying words:
I love you
.

"Princess." His deep voice was full of apologies. "I'm not coming home right now."

Squeezing her quilt even tighter, Laney shot an exasperated look at the ceiling. Sometimes she really hated being right.

Well, she would just have to prove to him that her love wasn't a cage. She'd back off; she'd give him all the time he needed to think things through.

He'd come home eventually. All she had to do was be patient.

"I know you have a lot to straighten out." She was proud of her calm, reasonable tone. "Your career, and all."

"Yeah," he said with palpable relief. "I flew to Nashville yesterday morning. I was going to tell you all about it when I got home last night, but then that other stuff happened. Anyway, I'm going back to Nashville to—"

"It's all right, Jeb. I know you're busy, and I—"

"Could you speak up?" he interrupted. "It's noisy here."

"I know you're busy," she repeated. "It can't be a simple thing to break up a successful band."

"No," he agreed. "It's going to be a mess."

Skeptical Heart was based in L.A., but since Jeb was going to Nashville, that must be where the record company was located. There was undoubtedly a great deal of money at stake in this breakup; it might take him weeks to sort things out. And for all Laney knew, he was already trying to hook up with a new band.