He leaned down and kissed her forehead, then rolled away from her, stretching and lying on his back. “I’ve got to get going, find work.”
“Maybe I should go with you. After all, I know what Wes looks like.”
He tousled her hair. “No, ma’am. The best way to find him is to hit the saloons and the mines, and I won’t have you seen either place. You remember what happened that first night we got here. If you want me to stay out of trouble, you stay right here with Mrs. Anderson and help her out like we agreed on. I’ve got Wes’s picture. That’s all I need.”
“I hate for you to be out there at all.” Miranda stroked his arm and kissed it. “Everything out there represents the old Jake. Maybe you’ll go out there and never come back to me.”
He grinned. “Hell, I hope you have more faith in me than that.”
She smiled and caressed his chest. “It’s the troublemakers and the prostitutes I don’t trust.”
He turned to her and moved down to kiss at her breasts, then her neck. “You’re more exciting than any woman I’ve been with, and you make it beautiful because you love me.” He kissed her lightly.
She touched his face. Was he ready for the additional responsibility he would face in a few months? “Jake, before you go, I have to tell you something. I put it off until now because I wanted to get that trip over with first. You had so much to worry about just getting us here.”
He frowned. “You saying there’s something new to worry about? You think your brother is in trouble or something?”
“No, it isn’t that.” She breathed deeply for strength, not quite sure what the news would mean to a man like Jake. “I’m going to have a baby, Jake. My guess is around next April you’ll be a father.”
She watched him closely, saw the familiar fear fill his eyes. He sat up and looked her over, touched her belly.
“You sure?”
“I haven’t had my time for three months now, ever since our wedding night. You were too tired and busy keeping us alive to notice.”
He closed his eyes and turned away, throwing back the covers and rising to pull on his long johns. “I’ve got to wash up.” He walked into the small, curtained-off room where a washstand and a chamber pot were kept.
Miranda waited, wondering if the news would send him running back to that old life because he was too afraid to face being a father. He emerged from the washroom, turning to pick up his shirt. She studied the scars on his back, inflicted on a small boy by a vicious man who was his own father. He pulled on the shirt and buttoned it, then stepped into his trousers. “I’m no material for being a father, Randy.” He tucked in his shirt. “I guess I knew in the back of my mind it would happen, but somehow I hoped it wouldn’t.”
“Hoped?” She sat up, keeping a blanket over her breasts. “Jake, when a man and woman get married and make love, babies usually follow. It’s a fact of nature. I’m sure the women you’ve known have ways of avoiding such things, but I don’t know how to do whatever it is they do to keep from getting pregnant; and I certainly don’t believe in letting quack doctors do horrible things to women to abort their babies, so I’m having this one. You’re going to be a father whether you want to or not.”
He began pulling on socks and boots. “It isn’t a matter of whether or not I want to be a father. I can’t be one.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
He rose and walked to a nightstand where Randy had left her brother’s picture. He put it into his shirt pocket and took his gun belts from a nearby chair and began strapping them on. “It means that because of my own childhood, I can’t turn around and be a father to a lad of my own. What if the kid makes me mad and I hit him? What if I find out I’m just like my own pa?” he said bitterly.
She watched him tie the rawhide holster-straps around his thighs. “Jake, that’s ridiculous. You would never be like that. Don’t you understand? This is your chance to make up for all the terrible things your father did to you. I have no doubt in my mind that you’ll make a better father than most men would, because you remember all the things you wished you had in your own father. Of course there will be times when he’ll be naughty and need a spanking. That isn’t the same, Jake.”
He took his sheepskin jacket from a hook on the wall and put it on. “And what if a spanking turns into something more? I’d rather shoot myself.” He put on his hat. “I figure I can handle settling and being a husband, Randy, but not a father.” He turned to the door.