Texas Homecoming by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page B

kept an eye on him," Luke said.
    She lifted her brows. "He has allergies. He'll probably be up all night coughing. I'll have to pick up some antihistamine while we're out."
    Luke started to say something nasty. She could tell by the look on his face and the quick beginning of a word that broke off so fast it came out sounding like a primal grunt. He bit his lip, drew a breath.
    "What?" she asked, almost challenged.
    "Nothing. I, um...I was going to say if you're short on cash, I could loan you enough to get you by for a while."
    She blinked in surprise, then shook her head. "That cousin of yours really does have some influence with you, doesn't he?"
    "Why do you say so?"
    She shrugged. "Because I know perfectly well you'd sooner see me tarred and feathered and branded with a scarlet
S
for Stripper than holed up here in your precious house with you for a few days. And yet here you are, chivalrously offering me a loan."
    He narrowed his eyes on her. "Look, I was just trying to be nice."
    "Try being honest, instead. It's so much more satisfying."
    "Oh yeah?"
    "Yeah."
    "Fine. I'll be honest. I think you're lying through your teeth about who you are, and I think you're running like hell from something or someone, and you're scared half out of your wits. And so's that boy out there. And maybe that's why you're hovering over the poor kid so close you're damn near smothering him, but I don't think so. From the looks of him, you've been doing that for a long time now. So maybe whatever happened to send you running out of Chicago has only turned it up a notch or two. But either way, the kid's the one suffering for it, and you need to ease up on him."
    She glared at him. "You dare to criticize my parenting skills!"
    "That's right. I do."
    "What do you know?" she all but shouted. "You've never been a parent!"
    "No, but I've been a kid!"
    "To hell with you. You don't know anything. That boy out there is my entire life. He's everything to me. Do you have any idea what it's like to love something that much? So much that if you lost it you'd just stop being? You'd just curl up and dry up and vanish? Do you have any idea how scary that is? I'd do anything for my son. And I have!"
    He went quiet for a moment, staring at her as the high color in his face eased down a notch. Then he said, "Like...the dancing?"
    She lowered her eyes. "I'm not ashamed of what I do. Dancing is art. The female body is beautiful. Women have been performing erotic dance for over five thousand years."
    He raised his eyebrows. "But not for drunken perverts, for the most part."
    "Thanks. Jerk."
    He shrugged. "I meant...it can't be fun."
    "Don't knock it till you've tried it." She was being sarcastic, but she didn't expect him to pick up on that.
    "Come on, gimme a break, will you? I meant, it's a hell of a sacrifice to do what you do for a living. You must love him a lot."
    "I thought we'd already established that."
    He sighed, rolled his eyes. "You ready to go, or what?"
    She sent him a scowl and pushed past him out the door. Her feet tapped across the wood floor of the front porch, and she glanced out toward where Baxter had been playing.
    He wasn't there.
    "Bax?" She tapped down the steps. "Hon, where are you?"
    "Up here, Mom! Look at me!"
    She followed his voice and spotted him as the screen door banged closed and Luke stepped up beside her. Baxter was hanging upside down from a tree limb about fifteen feet in the air. To her, it looked more like a thousand feet, but her logical mind said fifteen. Even so, her blood ran icy cold. "Don't move!" she cried. "Don't you move, Baxter!" She ran down the steps and out toward the tree with Luke on her heels.
    He said, "Will you stop panicking? You're scaring him."
    "I'm scaring
him?"
She got to the tree trunk. Her shoes were long gone. She'd kicked them off on the way, and now she grabbed a low limb and pulled herself easily up onto it.
    "Hey, wait a minute! What do you think you're—
Jasmine!"
    She wished he would shut up.