Cricket saw the change in Jack the moment he left his father’s hospital room. Jack made a beeline for her, grabbed her by the hand, barely said goodbye to his siblings and mother and Sara and left as if his heels were on fire.
“What’s going on?” Cricket asked. “We need to stay here with Josiah.”
“We need to go home and let you rest,” Jack said.
“What happened in there? Is your father all right?”
“He’s all right,” Jack said. “He’s not going to be any different because there’s a young kidney inside him.”
“Then why are we leaving? It feels like we’re ditching the family when they need us the most.”
“No.” Jack looked both ways before he dragged her across the street. “Visiting hours are over, I promise.”
“Then I need to head back to Fort Wylie. I have a lot to do.”
“Great. Where are you parked?”
“Right here.” Cricket stopped, looked up at him. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve never been better.” Jack gestured at the car. “I think it’s best if I drive you home.”
“No,” Cricket said. “I’m fully capable of driving myself. And you can drive your truck home to your ranch and do what your father asked of you.”
“I’m going with you,” Jack said.
“No,” Cricket said, her tone as stubborn as his, “you’re not dealing with your mother being here.”
Jack shook his head. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you only want to marry me to get out of what you need to do. It’s the big excuse, Jack.”
“I’m going to be a father. I don’t think there’s anything disingenuous about marrying the mother of my children.”
“Maybe not with anybody else, but with you, it is.” Cricket looked at him. “Prove that you’re not just running off with me like I’m your new rodeo gig.”
“That’s not fair,” Jack protested. “And besides, how would I prove that I’m not avoiding something?”
“Tell me what your father said to you in his hospital room,” Cricket said.
Jack’s eyes hooded. “He said he felt fine.”
“And?” Cricket was positive she was onto something because he was acting like a snake, coiled and waiting for danger to pass him by.
“I don’t remember.”
“I believe that,” Cricket said. “And I believe that there’ll be a lot of things you conveniently forget when we’re married.”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of me,” Jack said.
“On the contrary. I admire a man who constantly backs down.”
His gaze narrowed. “No, you don’t.”
She raised her brows. “Tell me what happened in there, and don’t tell me nothing did, because it was obvious by the way you flew out of there that something had.”
Jack sighed. “This isn’t going to work if you keep trying to read my mind.”
She tapped a toe, waiting.
“Pop said,” Jack told her reluctantly, “that he wanted me to hang around. He said he needed me here.”
Cricket gasped. “And you’re trying to hoodwink me into giving you a ride out of town! Shame on you, Jack Morgan! Your father said he needed you!”
“Yeah, but that’s Pop,” Jack tried to explain. “In the last year, he decided he needed all of us. He doesn’t really need us. He’s just—”
“A man who wants his family around,” Cricket said. “Jack Morgan, how could you desert your father?” She stared at him. “It doesn’t bode well for our future, that’s plain to see.”
“It has nothing to do with our future,” Jack said, grabbing her and kissing her until Cricket thought her breath was going to give out. It was a wonderful kiss, a soul-stealing kiss, and Cricket very much wanted to fall in with his plans and let him hitch a ride in her Bug to Fort Wylie.
But she knew this was a pattern with Jack.
“That’s what bodes well for our future,” Jack told her. “I’m going to kiss you every day of your life, there’s not going to be a day of our married life when I don’t.”
Cricket shook her head. “I’m not marrying you. You can’t desert him in his darkest hour.”
“Pop always has dark hours when he’s trying to get what he wants!”
“We just can’t do this while he’s recuperating.” Cricket got into her car, rolled down the driver’s-side window. “You stay here and take care of family business. I’ll be back in a few days to hang drapes.”
He noted her change of subject and sighed. “Pop gave the ranch and land to Gisella. You probably better check with her about curtains and stuff.”
Cricket nodded. “I will. It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other, which will be a pleasure.”
“I want you to get to know me,” Jack said.
Cricket started the engine. “Marry in haste, regret at leisure,” she told him. “Bye, Jack.”
Jack stared after Cricket as she drove off in the little Volkswagen. She thought he wanted to be with her to get away from Pop. And his mother. His family, in general.
She was right.
He got in his truck and followed her.
Cricket was completely aware that Jack was following her down the highway. In a way, she hadn’t expected anything less from him. Jack lived by his own rules. This time, however, he was going to have to bend, although she had to admit to a tingle of excitement that the man was so persistent in his pursuit of her. She had never been the object of a man’s focus before, and the fact that the man was Jack would be enough to make her pulse pound with giddy pleasure under normal dating circumstances.
Yet they weren’t dating. They were rushing down the road toward parenthood, which for Cricket took some of the romance and giddiness out of the equation.
By the time she got to her house in Fort Wylie, she’d figured out what she was going to say to him. Go home, Jack, we need some time apart.
“Hey,” he said, pulling up next to her and getting out of his truck, “if you invite me in, I’ll buy you the biggest diamond I can find in Fort Wylie.”
Cricket shook her head. “I don’t need a big diamond.”
“For triplets, you do. I’d say you deserve a medal of honor.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Jack Morgan, sweet-talking me isn’t going to get you in my house. I need to be alone for a while.”
“Why? I can be good company, sometimes.”
“While that may be true, I suffer terribly from morning sickness. You do not want to be around for that.”
“I’ll watch TV. Don’t worry about it.” Jack grinned. “You think I’ve never seen a sickly woman before?”
“I’m not sickly!” Cricket frowned at him. “I’m pregnant. This phase will pass eventually, according to the doctor.”
“Let me carry you over the threshold,” Jack offered. “I need practice for carrying you over when we get married.”
Cricket opened her front door and waved him in. “I don’t want to be carried.”
“You’re not the most romantic girl,” Jack told her as he scooped her up anyway and set her gently down in the foyer. “I’m a romantic guy, however.”
“It can’t all be your way,” Cricket told him.
Jack sighed. “True, otherwise you’d be a lot easier to get along with. I never thought that the woman I asked to marry me would turn me down. It’s a blow to my ego, I don’t mind saying.”
Cricket turned on a few lamps, filling the room with soft light. “Make yourself at home on the sofa in front of the TV, keeping your hands to yourself and your thoughts fairly pure.”
“Wow,” Jack said, “did that come out of the How To Scare a Guy To Death dating guide or something that deacons keep on hand for couple’s counseling?”
Cricket sighed. “I’m going to change into something more comfortable.”
“That sounds more promising.” Jack sat on the sofa.
“If you think baggy kimono robes are promising, you may be in for a surprise. It’s hardly Victoria’s Secret.”
“Next time,” Jack said. “Anyway, I could romance you if you were wearing a paper bag. As a matter of fact, I’d find that really sexy.”
Cricket shook her head and slipped into her bedroom to change. All the talk of marriage was making her nervous. “Was your father in a lot of pain?” she called to him from the bedroom.
“No, he’s just a pain,” Jack said. “It’ll take more than surgery to slow him down.”
Cricket wrapped the silky kimono robe around her, found some cozy slippers—not the high-heeled mules a woman who had a hot cowboy in her living room might prefer—and put her hair up in a ponytail. She walked back into the living room, finding Jack lounging on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. “Cowboy, what are you doing?”
“Thinking about how strange life is. Did you ever think when we met that we’d end up together?”
“Absolutely not. You weren’t in my car twenty seconds and I knew you were bad news.” She went into the kitchen, fishing around for some tea and crackers. “You should have stayed with your father,” she said as Jack followed her into the kitchen.
“I should be with you,” Jack said. “You’re having my children. My father is merely having fun planning my future.”
“Was he?”
“He never takes a break from plotting.” Jack ran a hand through his hair and seated himself on a kitchen bar stool. “I need to meet your parents, you know. I’m very behind in my duties as a father.”
“Oh,” Cricket said, “I guess.”
“Hey,” he said, “I’m going to get my feelings hurt if I continue perceiving a decided lack of enthusiasm on your part toward my courtship.”
“I’m sorry.” She set a glass of tea on the counter that separated them. “I’ve got motherhood on the mind, not matrimony.”
Jack drank some of the tea. “If you were counseling us as a deacon, what would your advice be?”
She looked at him. I’d want to say, “Girlfriend, you better hang on to that sexy cowboy with all your might.” “I’d advise that rushing into things is a bad idea when two people don’t know each other very well.”
He shook his head. “Terrible advice.”
“What would you say?”
He hopped over the counter, landing in front of her, and took her in his arms. “I’d say get me in bed as often as you possibly can, you lucky woman. Life’s too short to miss out on the good stuff, and I am definitely good stuff.”