Righteous Lies (Book 1: Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (18 page)

Three-quarters
of the way back to the ranch he tethered his horse, took a towel from his
saddle bag, and hiked up a narrow footpath to the cavern housing the spring.
Although the air outside was frigid, inside the dusky twilight of the cave it
was warm from the steam swirling and rising off the natural rock pool. Stripping
off his clothes, he immersed himself in the water and rested his head against
the rock wall behind and closed his eyes.

After a while,
haunting sounds echoed from the depths of the mountain. Eerie, unnatural
sounds. Sometimes when he'd sat in the pool the sounds had been like wailing
women. Other times they were more like the sobs of a woman in distress, but eventually
the sounds faded into soft sighs. No one could explain why, only that it was
the way it had always been...

"The spirits are gone now,"
his father told him and Sam years before, after a long stretch of listening to
sounds that eventually faded into soft whisperings. He and Sam were about six
at the time, but as he got older, he was convinced there was some kind of
supernatural being living in the mountain. But whatever the reason, things seemed
better if he stayed long enough...

For a while he
sat in the hot water, listening to the sounds. But then his thoughts turned to
Grace. He imagined her sitting beside him on the natural rock ledge. He'd place
his hand on her bare belly and hold it there and feel Adam kick. Then he'd hold
her breasts and tease her nipples. She liked that, and he liked it too. He
liked the weight of her breasts in his hands. They were naturally large, but
soon they'd be filled with milk.
He could
imagine taking one of those large, dark nipples in his mouth and sucking while listening
to all of Grace's little sounds of pleasure...

"Jack?"

He opened his
eyes and looked directly at Lauren. He'd never felt so vulnerable in his life,
sitting naked in the pool, aroused from thinking about Grace, staring at the
woman who'd killed his son. "
Get out
of here
," he shouted.

"Not until
you listen to me," Lauren replied.

"I don't
want to hear anything you have to say," Jack said.

Lauren removed
her jacket and started unbuttoning her shirt. "You don't have a choice. I
have things to say and I'm getting in there with you."

"Like hell
you are." Jack rose out of the water and climbed onto the rock floor of
the cavern. Snatching up his towel, he started drying off. Grabbing his briefs,
Jack shoved his feet into them and yanked them up his legs, then tugged on his
jeans.

Lauren walked
up and put her hands on Jack's chest, and said, "Make love to me and if
afterwards you still want me to leave, I'll go away and you'll never see me
again. But if you don't make love to me, I'll keep after you until you're ready
to forgive me and love me again."

Jack shoved her
hands away and reached for his shirt.

"She's
nothing to you," Lauren continued. "The only reason she's having your
child is because of a mistake. Susan told me all about it." When Jack
refused to be baited, she said, "She's also too short. You always said you
liked tall women like me. And she has big breasts and you never liked women
with big breasts. You said mine were perfect."

Jack felt his
anger mounting, and with it, an urge to hurt Lauren for all the hell she'd put
him through. He felt like telling her Grace was right for him in every way,
that he liked a woman with big breasts because that's how Grace was, and it
felt right to have his arms around a woman who was not so tall because when she
lay with her back against his chest, and his arm was over her, his hand could
reach all the places she liked to be touched, and it was important to him that
she was going to nurse their son and all the other children she wanted to have,
and he'd be the father of those children because he planned to marry her.

The realization
came to him on the mountain, when he stood looking off in the distance, and it settled
in as he soaked in the hot springs pool while listening to the sounds around
him. It was like an epiphany. Marrying Grace. Having her in his house because
she was his wife, not just because she was the mother of his son. Raising other
sons with her. And daughters. Little clones of their mother. Perfect, like
Grace.

He shrugged
into his jacket and headed out the cavern, and saw tied to a tree at the bottom
of the footpath, the horse Lauren once owned, but had to give up with the
divorce settlement. "You took Creed without my permission," he said.
"I could have you arrested."

"But you
won't," Lauren replied. "We'll ride back together and you can at
least listen to what I have to say. If you feel the same when I'm done I'll
leave you be. Just give me one more chance to make you understand what was
happening with me. Please Jack. Give me that much."

Jack looked at
the woman he once thought was the most beautiful woman in the world, and
wondered what it was he saw in her beyond that. She disgusted him now. And he
owed her nothing, not even ten minutes of his time while riding down the trail
to hear her pour out her heart. "When we get back to the ranch you'll turn
Creed into the corral and leave."

"Then I
can ride with you?"

"I can't
very well stop you." Jack rushed ahead and untied his horse, then launched
himself into the saddle and started back.

Lauren quickly
mounted her horse and caught up with him. "You don't have to say anything,"
she said, keeping pace. "Just listen. When I was in prison I had time to
read about postpartum depression. Everything was like it described. I started
feeling sad, and I became moody and agitated. Then, I started losing touch with
reality. I'd see Jackie and he wasn't Jackie. He was this ugly, distorted...
thing. If anyone had picked up on it I could have been put on drugs. I was
psychotic and didn't know what I was doing."

Jack looked
straight ahead, saying nothing. He was glad the ranch was in view. They'd put
the horses away and Lauren would leave. He had things to say to Grace, and he
wanted Lauren off the ranch when he said them. And he wanted to hold Grace and
tell her he loved her.

"Jack?"
Lauren said. "Can you ever forgive me?"

"Can you
ever bring Jackie back?" Jack asked.

"No,"
Lauren replied, "and I'll be living with it until the day I die."

"So will
I," Jack said, then clenched his jaws.

"Do you at
least understand?" Lauren asked, turning to look at him.

Jack fixed his
eyes on the stables. "Everything wasn't fine from the start," Jack
said. "You refused to nurse Jackie."

"That's
because I didn't think I'd have enough milk," Lauren said.

Jack heard that
excuse from her before, and he'd been furious she refused to give Jackie her
first milk. It had also been the first time he'd looked at her and seen her for
what she was. A vain, egotistical, self-centered woman. "You wouldn't
nurse because you didn't want to mess up your figure. Before we married you
said women got sagging breasts from nursing. I should have picked up on it
then. Well, Grace isn't worried about her figure. She plans to nurse Adam for six
months, and if her breasts start to sag, I'll know it's because she's a good
mother. She's also the woman I plan to marry."

On returning to
the stables, Jack dismounted and led his horse inside. When Lauren did the same,
he took the reins from her, and said, "Leave the ranch. I don't want you
upsetting Grace."

"I'm a
guest of Sam and Susan," Lauren clipped. "I'll leave when I'm
ready."

Jack said
nothing, just silently unsaddled the horses and turned them into the corral,
then headed for the house.

***

"Grace, we
need to talk," Jack's voice came through the closed door to Grace's
bedroom.

"Go away.
I'm busy," Grace called back. She was also angry, and disillusioned. Just
before Lauren arrived, Jack felt something for her. It had come on gradually,
but it was there.

...maybe I'll take you up on fixing my
problem. It would beat taking a cold shower...

And then Lauren
arrived, and Grace felt Jack's response to Lauren against her hand.

She also suspected
that Lauren had been with Jack in the stables the night before, taking care of
his problem the way he wanted Lauren to do from the moment he set eyes on her.
And a few minutes ago, seeing them return from the mountain on horses, she knew
he'd been with Lauren from dawn. They'd also come down from the trail to the
hot springs Flo told her about, where it was common practice at the ranch to
sit naked in the pool and listen to the sounds...

"Grace, I
have something to say to you," Jack said.

"Just go
away," Grace called back. She'd made a big decision during the day and it
was not up for discussion. Jack would have no say.

"I know
you're upset," Jack said, "and that's not good for you."

"I'll be
more upset if you step through the door," Grace warned.

"Yeah,
well, you'll have to deal with it because we're going to talk." Jack
opened the door and stood looking at her, brow puckered as he saw her hunkered
over the bed, putting clothes into one of two large canvas tote bags.
"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Packing."
Grace unzipped an end section and stuffed in a stack of panties and several
nursing bras.

Jack took her
arm and pulled her around. "What are you thinking? You can't leave
now."
 

Grace shook off
his hands. "You wanna bet?"

"I know
you're upset about Lauren, but she's nothing to me," Jack said.

He reached for
her arm again, and Grace yanked it from his grasp. "I'm not even going to
comment on that," she said, tucking a box of nursing pads into another
section.

"Don't do
this," Jack said. "You're not being rational."

"I'm not
your ex-wife," Grace snapped. "I don't do irrational things."

"Going
home is irrational," Jack said. "You're settled here, the baby's
room's ready, I'm here to take you to the hospital when your time comes. And I
won't let you go."

Grace
maneuvered a stack of maternity pants into the bag. "I'm not going
home," she said, "I'm packing for New Jersey. You can tell Susan I'm
having the baby there."

"Hell if you aren't irrational,"
Jack bellowed. "You're two weeks from delivering."

"Actually
nine days," Grace clipped.

"If you're
doing this because of Lauren, it doesn't make sense. I didn't ask her here,"
Jack said. "I told her to leave. And I have no control over what goes on
in Sam's house, and Sam wants her there because she's having a settling effect
on Susan."

"And what
effect is she having on you?" Grace shoved a stack of maternity tops into
the bag. "Never mind, don't answer that. I felt the effect myself."

"Well, you
don't have the facts right," Jack said. "Just before Lauren arrived you
had your hands on me and I was kissing you and that made me hard."

"But not
enough to come to my bedroom later," Grace replied.

"Yeah,
well I needed time to think."

"It turns
out so did I, and I'm leaving for New Jersey."

"It's too
late. The airlines won't let you fly."

"They will
with a certificate from an obstetrician dated within a couple of days of the
flight. I already checked."

"Grace,
you can't do this. You could have the baby on the plane."

"I'll take
that chance."

"I have
some say in this."

"No, Jack,
you don't. Now please go. I'm busy."

"You're
doing this because my ex-wife, who means nothing to me, showed up."

"No, I'm
doing it because of Ricky. Now, do something useful and tell Sam and Susan to
start packing. The sooner we leave, the less chance of Susan and me having our
babies on the plane." When Jack did nothing, Grace hurled the clothes she
was holding onto the bed, swept past Jack and marched out of the house and
across the driveway. Bursting into Sam's house, she glanced from Sam, who was
standing near the fireplace, to Susan, who was sitting on the couch holding
Lauren's hand, and said to Susan, "If you'll agree to carry my husband's
baby to full term, I'll fly to New Jersey to give birth."

Susan looked at
her, stunned. "You'd do that?"

"Yes, but
only if you carry my husband's baby to full term. I don't like the idea of
flying, but I'm willing to do it if we make reservations right away."

Lauren said to
Susan, "Do you mind if I talk to Grace alone?"

Until now,
Grace refused to look at Lauren, but she couldn't stop herself. She also didn't
want to talk to the woman who was determined to get Jack back. "I really
don't think we have anything to talk about," she said to Lauren.

"This has
nothing to do with Jack," Lauren assured her. "But I think you need
to hear what I have to say." She turned to Susan, and said, "It'll be
alright."

Susan looked at
Sam, who shrugged, and said, "I'll stay here with them."

After Susan
left the room, Lauren said to Grace, "Give Jack his son and let me raise
him with Jack and I'll talk Susan into giving her baby to you so you'll have
the baby you started out to have. Jack doesn't love you and never will, and
you're still in love with your dead husband. I'll take good care of Jack's
baby. I'm not the person I was when I..." she stopped, and tears filled
her eyes.

Grace hardened
herself to the woman, who had ruined Jack's life. "When you killed Jack's
son," she completed Lauren's sentence.

Lauren blinked
back tears. "No one understands what happens. Everything's messed up in
your mind. You distort things... see things that aren't there. Jack will
understand in time. He hasn't stopped loving me. I saw it on his face. You
couldn't help seeing it either. I'll give him everything we had before..."