A Mother's Wish / Mother To Be: A Mother's Wish

She’d been half tempted to toss everything into the truck and take off right then and there, until reason prevailed and she realized she was far too emotionally drained for the long drive back, especially at night. Although—breathing hard, she glared at the thirty-pound monster pumpkin still on the porch, decided Forget it—considering how badly she’d slept again, she might as well have left last night. If she had—

“C’mon, girl,” she called to the dog, then climbed up behind the steering wheel after her.

—she’d be home by now. Home, with all this craziness behind her—

“What the heck?” she muttered when she turned the ignition key and got…nothing. Not a growl, not a rumble, not even a burp.

She tried again. Still nothing.

Her eyes shut, Winnie slumped back in her seat. Muttering bad words. While she wasn’t the most mechanically inclined chick in the world, even she knew a dead battery when she heard it. Or in this case, didn’t hear it. But how could that be? She’d just had a tune-up before the trip, she hadn’t left the lights on or anything…

So much for her dramatic exit. Okay, not so dramatic, it wasn’t like she had any witnesses, except for the pumpkins and the dog. But still. In her head, it had been dramatic.

On a weary sigh, Winnie fished her phone out of her shirt pocket and punched in Aidan’s cell number. Nothing there, either, not even voice mail. The man truly took reclusiveness to new heights. And she had no clue what his house phone was, or if he even had a landline.

On another, even wearier sigh, she banged open her truck door, slid to the ground, waited for the dog, then began what turned out to be a surprisingly long trek up the leaf-strewn dirt road, the crowing growing louder with each step.

Chapter Five

“Day-um,” Winnie muttered twenty long, panting minutes later, when she came upon the multilevel, timber-and-glass-and-tin-roof mountain hideaway set in the fowlinfested clearing, every surface either blending into or reflecting its surroundings. Not the place to be in case of a forest fire, she thought over the frenzied clucking of chickens with a Border collie in their midst, followed closely by, Then again, some things are worth the risk.

And standing here gawking at it wasn’t getting her home.

She and Annabelle waded through the chickens—well, Winnie waded; Annabelle did her slinking herding thing, only to discover that chickens didn’t herd—then climbed the stone steps leading up to the wide-planked porch. Winnie pressed the doorbell, twisting to admire the incredible view while she waited for Florita to answer. A few seconds later, she heard the door open behind her, followed by a chilly pause.

She turned. Not Florita.

“You have chickens?”

“Flo has chickens,” Aidan grumbled.

“Speaking of whom…Where is she?”

“Out. Took her niece shopping.”

“Tess? The one who’s pregnant—?”

“What do you want?”

“Not a morning person, are we?” Aidan glowered at her. Winnie sighed, trying not to notice how well his paintsmeared, waffle-weave Henley clung to his torso. That his hair was still damp from his shower, all cherub-curly around his anything-but-cherubic features. That apparently her hormones and his pheromones were a perfect match. “My car battery’s dead,” she said, holding her breath. “I need a phone book. Or the number of a mechanic.”

“You don’t belong to an auto club?”

“Since I never go anywhere—up until now, I mean—it didn’t seem worth the expense.”

“Did you leave your lights on?”

“No, I did not leave my lights on,” she said, thinking, What is this, twenty questions? a split second before Aidan said, “So you jumped into your truck and drove all the way here without checking first to make sure everything was in working order?” and Winnie wondered if he had any idea how close she was to smacking him clear into next week.

“Okay, Aidan? This little detour was not on my agenda this morning, so I was already halfway to pissed when you opened the door. Of course I had the truck tuned up before I left. And the battery’s new, I had it replaced before right before the trip, I have no idea why it’s dead. So if you’d just hand me the phone book—”

“You walked all the way up here from the Old House?”

Apparently completely oblivious to her having just read him the riot act, Aidan was now squinting past Winnie’s shoulder. Wondering what sort of fumes he’d been breathing over the years, she muttered, “Short of saddling Annabelle, that was my only option…What are you doing?”

What he was doing was putting on a denim jacket and coming out onto the porch, closing the house door behind him. Then he kept going, turning when he got halfway down the porch steps to spit out, “Well? Are y’coming with me or not?”

She crossed her arms. “Excuse me—did I pass out for a second and miss a chunk of the conversation? Coming with you where?”

That got a put-upon sigh. “Back to your truck, of course.”

“And…why are you taking me back to my truck?”

Another sigh. “So I can have a look myself?” At her continued blank stare, he added, “Before you go and t’row your money at some yahoo who’d be only too glad to take it from you for basically nothing?”

Apparently, the more agitated he became, the heavier his accent got. It was almost cute, in a remarkably irritating kind of way. “Somehow you don’t strike me as the mechanical type.”

“Looks can be deceivin’. Now can we get a move on? I haven’t got all day.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—just give me the damn phone book so I can call a mechanic or somebody—”

“Don’t know where t’is,” Aidan said, continuing to his own truck.

On a sigh, Winnie followed.

Ten minutes later, the verdict was in.

“It’s not your battery,” came Aidan’s half-muffled voice from in the bowels of her truck. “It’s your alternator.”

“Are you kidding me?” Against her better judgment, she got right up beside him to have a look, staring so hard into the netherworld under her truck’s hood she could almost ignore the low, steady hormonal hum thrumming through her veins. Like getting too close to uranium with a Geiger counter. “So that’s what killed my battery?”

“It would seem so.”

Not that Winnie entirely knew what she was looking at, but at least she knew what an alternator was for. Of course, she knew what her kidneys were for, too, but she didn’t know what they looked like, either. With her luck, it would probably be cheaper to get a new kidney.

As though reading her mind, Aidan said, “The good news is, I can change out both and save you a bundle.” Although he didn’t sound like this was exactly good news for him.

“And the bad news?”

He slammed shut her hood, wiping his hands on an old rag he’d had in his own truck. “What makes you think there’s bad news?”

“Could be that dark cloud always hanging over your head.”

He looked at her steadily for a long moment—tick! tick! tickticktickticktick!—then let out the sigh of a man whose patience is being sorely tried. “If we set out for Santa Fe now, we can pick up the parts and I can have you on your way after lunch.”

“I hate to put you to so much trouble—”

“And we can stand here arguing for the rest of the mornin’, or you can stop being so bloody stubborn and we can get goin’.”