CHAPTER FOUR
Patrick woke suddenly. His heart was pounding and his mind was racing. He sat up and looked around. He was in his room at the ranch. He glanced at the red numbers on the bedside clock. Four in the morning. He had been enjoying a dream that pleasantly repeated his river interlude with Heather Dupré.
But just as he had been about to enjoy himself, Steve Holden had started laughing at him from the top of a moss-covered tree. He felt cold. It wasn’t the temperature of the bedroom, which was a comfortable 72 degrees Fahrenheit. No, he was cold because he was frightened. Holden’s pride in Laura’s impending motherhood had shaken him to the core.
His conversation with Laura’s fancy man had not gone as he had thought it would. Steve Holden had not backed down. He had acknowledged Patrick’s right to defend his cousin, but then he had announced that Laura was pregnant with his child. Pat had found it hard to believe that thirty-three-year-old Laura was already pregnant, but Holden thought she-bears were unusually fertile. And had no doubts about his own potency.
Could Heather Dupré have been going for the gold ring? She had been in season. Unless she was using birth control, and he had no reason to believe she was, she could even now be cooking a little Bascom.
He was not going to be another Clive. He was not going to litter his bastards through America. He had to go back to Yakima Ridge anyway. He would go and check on curvy Heather Dupré. And make sure she didn’t have a bun in the oven.
He folded his arms behind his head and once again lost himself in a pleasant reverie where he enjoyed his armful of willing she-bear. He drifted off to sleep with the memory of her fragrance. But by the time he woke again, his common sense had reasserted itself. A hillbilly mistress was so not going to happen. The clock said it was six. He was packed and saying goodbye to his Uncle Freddie by six fifteen.
He took the helicopter back to Denver. His desk was heaving with paperwork that required his personal attention. There was no rush to return to French Town. Even if he had knocked up Heather, and it was damned unlikely, she and her inheritance would keep.
* * *
“You’re pregnant,” Jenna said quietly. She put a hand on her cousin’s shoulder. “Do you have a plan, Heather?”
“I didn’t think I could get pregnant. Not the first time. Everybody says you can’t get pregnant the first time,” Heather said desperately.
“A woman can conceive any time she’s fertile,” Jenna’s voice was so kind, Heather knew it had to be true.
“What am I going to do?” Heather buried her face in her hands.
A gentle hand stroked her head. “We could arrange a termination,” Jenna said. “I take it you don’t think the man is going to marry you?”
“I couldn’t do that,” Heather gasped. “And there’s no question of getting married. It wasn’t …” She shook her head.
“You may not have a daddy anymore, Heather, but you still have kin. I know Zeke would be proud to speak up for you.”
Heather could feel her face getting even redder. “I don’t want to marry him, any more than he wants to marry me. I just wish I knew what I was going to do.” Her voice came out in a strangled whisper that she could scarcely get past the constriction in her throat.
Jenna’s face stiffened. “Are you telling me he assaulted you?”
Heather wrestled with the paper that modestly covered her from navel to knees and thrust it down between her legs. She sat up. “It wasn’t rape,” she murmured. “But it wasn’t love either.”
“Having a baby when you’re not married, that’s a rough road to go down,” Jenna replied. “You might want to think about giving your babies up for adoption.”
“Babies?” Heather wheezed.
“It’s early days yet, Heather, but we bears run to multiples. You’re a twin, likely you’ll have twins. I just had triplets.” Jenna shrugged. She stripped off the blue latex gloves she had put on to examine Heather, and tossed them in the garbage can.
“I hadn’t thought it would be more than one. Oh, what will I do, Jenna? You know how much talk there will be. Everyone will be clucking their tongues and talking bad about me and Amber. It’ll be hard on both of us. If only I had gone to Portland – like I wanted to after Grandma Shirley died.” Heather swung her feet off the edge of the examining table and dropped to the floor clutching her paper wrap.
“Portland’s not such a bad idea, Heather. I could lend you some money, and I’ll bet you could stay with Doug and Madeline Enright for a while. I’m going to give you some vitamins to take, and a brochure about adoption.” Dougie was some sort of cousin to them both – his grandmother had been a Bascom – and a part of their clan. He and his wife would probably let her stay with them.
Jenna put her arms around Heather’s trembling shoulders and hugged her tightly. “Read them. It doesn’t commit you to anything, but it’s good to know your options. I’ll call Dougie for you, if you want.”
Heather shook her head. She brushed the tears from her eyes and squared her shoulders. “I’ll call him myself,” she said with all the dignity she could muster. “This is my problem, and I have to fix it myself.”
“Even if you don’t want to marry him,” Jenna said, “The father will be responsible for child support. Zeke’s brother is a lawyer. I’ll talk to him about it if you like.”
Heather about choked on bile. She covered her mouth. Jenna handed her a stainless-steel basin. “Morning sickness,” she said cheerfully. “It should pass by the end of the first trimester. I’ll find you the name of a good doctor in Portland. And I’ll speak to Patrick about getting you child support.”
Heather wiped her face with the damp paper towel Jenna passed her. “I won’t be able to afford a doctor,” she said. “I’ll have to find a clinic where they take the low-income. And I don’t want to ask for child support.” She put a protective hand over her still flat stomach. “My baby would be better off without that jackass in her life.”
“If you change your mind, Heather, my offer still stands.”
* * *
“You borrowed money from whom?” Amber shouted.
“We’re getting nowhere fast, trying to save,” Heather argued.
“I do not know what has gotten into you, Heather Dupré, you know we agreed we weren’t going to be indebted to anyone.” Amber parked her fists on her hips and scowled.
“Amber, I’m going to Portland. I bought a ticket with the money Jenna lent me. I’m going to get a job, and then I’ll send for you.” Heather turned away from her sister and went to stare out the front window at the street below. Pickup trucks wended their slow way through the main street as though the world had not become bleak.
“You’re going without me?” Amber’s hands gripped Heather from behind. “You better tell me what’s going on,” she said more gently.
Heather shook her head. “Don’t ask. I have to go. I asked Dougie Enright if I could stay with him and Madeline until I got a job and a place of my own. I’ll be okay.” She stared resolutely down at the street. Rain had begun and the pavement glistened black in the twilight. Streetlights popped on and cast their reflections in oily pools on the slick surface.
“I guess it’s okay, if you’re going to stay with Dougie and Maddie Enright. They’ll look out for you. But I don’t understand why you want to go without me. Maybe I should borrow some money too and go with you?”
Heather spun on her heel. “No. You have to stay here in French Town. I’ll be okay.”
Amber’s eyes were big in her pale face. She bent forward and sniffed at her twin’s neck. “Oh my goodness, you’re pregnant.”
“Yeah. Now do you see why I have to get out of town?”
Amber sat down on the threadbare couch. She looked as wan as Heather felt. “Who? When?” She whispered.
“It doesn’t matter.” Heather covered her belly with two hands. “I don’t want anything from that jerk.”
Amber dragged her down beside her on the couch. She put an arm around Heather’s shoulders and squeezed. “These days, a girl doesn’t have to get married,” she said stoutly. “But the fella – he sure enough has to pay child support. Even if you don’t want to marry him, Heather, you’ve gotta make him give you some money. We are hardly getting by with just the two of us, add in a baby or two, and there’s no way.” She shook her head sadly.
“I know, Amber, I’ve gone around and around ever since I realized. Jenna suggested adoption, and maybe that’s the way…” Heather couldn’t contain her tears any longer.
Amber had nothing more to say. Heather knew that Amber was trying to think of alternatives and was having as little success as she herself had done. French Town was not a place where unmarried mothers and their bastard children were readily accepted.
That left going to the city, and even there, even with government benefits, it meant a life of grueling poverty with no hope of escape. Nothing she said was going to change that. Whatever she did, she had heartbreak ahead. Heather turned her face against her sister’s shirt and wept until she had no more tears left.
“I’ll come with you, sister,” Amber said when Heather’s storm of tears had passed. “The two of us will make it just fine.”
“I can’t ask that of you.” Heather swallowed hard. “People always want to adopt babies. And these days, adoptions are open. I’ll be able to see them sometimes. And know they’re in a good home. Likely Dougie will know some bears who want cubs.”
Amber answered with a wobbly smile of her own and another hug.
* * *
It had been a long day at the hardware store. They were all long days now that she didn’t have Heather’s company. It wasn’t just that there was more work to do, it was that she was lonely without her twin. Uncle Ambrose had given her a raise and reduced her rent, so she was getting by. But her steps dragged as she walked up the narrow stairs to her front door.
She was unprepared for the big hard man leaning against it with his arms folded across his broad chest. What the hell was Patrick Bascom doing here? She stopped well back of the landing and glared at him. She was not prepared to forget how rude he had been to her sister.
“Hello,” he drawled. “You’re looking well.”
“I don’t know why you’re here,” she snapped. “But you’re not welcome.”
“Now is that any way to greet a man?” His brown eyes roved over her face and body with openly lustful admiration. Amber felt a tide of red wash over her from collarbones to hairline. “I see you can still blush, Miss Dupré.”
“If there’s one of us who should be blushing, it isn’t me. It’s you.” She firmed her lips together before she repeated the vile things he had said to Heather.
“I don’t know what you mean, I’m here to see if there were any repercussions to our last meeting,” he continued in the same mocking drawl.
It hit Amber then like a rock fall on Mountain Road after the rains. She took an involuntary step back down the staircase. Her hands clutched the banister. “It was you,” she breathed. “You!”
“I don’t play games, little girl,” he growled. He stalked the four steps it took him to reach her. His big hands grabbed her shoulder and lifted her bodily onto the landing.
“Let me go.” To her horror, instead of sounding angry, affronted, and firm, her voice rose in a pleading squeak.
He chuckled, and his mouth crashed down on hers. Amber went rigid in his clutches. His tongue probed the seam of her lips, and he had it in her mouth before she remembered she was wearing boots. She kicked him as hard as she could in the shins. That made him set her down.
“What the fuck?” he yelled. Proving once again that he was, as Amber had known from the get-go, no gentleman. She backed away from him but he made no move to come towards her. Something like uncertainty crossed his big, confident face. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Around here,” she let tartness slip into her voice, “It’s considered of the first importance to know the name of the woman you are seducing. I am Amber Dupré.”
His mouth fell open.
She pushed past him and went to the door with her key. “I think you have me confused with my sister,” she said. “You better come inside.”