Lady Be Good (Wynette, Texas #2)(45)

Shelby looked a bit startled by Emma’s reaction, then gratified. “I guess it takes an outsider to see things clearly. Everyone in Wynette just shrugs it off. They say, well, that’s just the way Kenny is, and then they start telling stories about how he threw a stone through somebody’s window or stood up his prom date. Since he wins golf tournaments now, he doesn’t have to follow the same rules of decency as everyone else.” Once again, her eyes filled with tears. “I just love that little baby so much and—” She fumbled in the pocket of her tunic top for a tissue. “I’m sorry, Lady Emma. I don’t usually get like this, and I really wanted to make a good impression on you. But it’s nice to have some sympathy for a change.” She stood, blew her nose, then picked up Kenny’s discarded towel and walked to the edge of the pool. “Bring him here, Kenny. We have to go.”

“We just got in. He’s having a good time. Aren’t you, Petie boy?”

The baby gave a squeak of delight and slapped the water with his hands.

“He needs his nap, and I want him now!”

Kenny frowned and brought the baby to the edge of the pool. “Jeez, Shelby. What’s wrong with you?”

“You’re what’s wrong with me! Come here, Petie.” She leaned down and snatched the baby from Kenny, then wrapped him in the towel Kenny had brought from the house. As she walked over to pick up the overalls and her purse, she gave Emma a wobbly smile and something Emma was very much afraid might be a small curtsy. “Thank you, Lady Emma. This has meant a lot to me.”

Emma nodded, and Shelby walked away without so much as a glance at Kenny.

Emma heard a faint splash and turned to see that Kenny had dived under the water. Long moments later, he emerged at the far end of the pool and begin to swim laps. One after the other. Slow, lazy laps. The laps of a man with nothing better to do. No honest work. No responsibilities. No children he’d abandoned.

He flipped to his back, poked along, and as she watched, her anger singed away at all the soft, forgiving places inside her. She’d dedicated her life to being a champion for children, and this man represented everything she detested. Her stomach coiled in self-disgust as she remembered how close she’d come to letting herself be seduced by him.

He emerged from the pool, looked for his towel, then apparently remembered Shelby had left with it wrapped around his illegitimate son, so he sluiced the water from his skin with his palms. As she watched those long, languid strokes, nausea propelled her to her feet. Dimly, she understood that this wasn’t her fight, but she couldn’t reason away the avalanche of angry emotion that was churning inside her. Anger and the awful, suffocating disappointment that he wasn’t who she thought. It pushed her forward, toward the side of the pool.

He looked up at her. Smiled his lazy smile.

She didn’t plan to do it. Didn’t even feel it coming. But the next thing she knew, her arm was swinging through the air, and her hand had connected with his jaw.

From some distant, red-hazed place, she watched his head jerk and saw beads of water fly. A stain spread across his jaw where she’d hit him. Her stomach cramped.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” He cursed, then stared at her with eyes that had gone as deep and dark as a bruise.

Her legs felt as if they’d turned to water. She should never have struck him. Never. This wasn’t her concern, and she’d had no right to appoint herself his executioner.

His eyes blazed. “I’d throw you in that pool right now, except you’ve got your suit on, so what would be the point?”

His anger recharged her. “You’re despicable.”

A muscle jumped in his injured jaw, and at his side, his fist clenched. “Aw, hell . . .” Without warning, he scooped her up and threw her out into the deep end of the pool.

She came up, sputtering and furious, only to see him stalking toward the house, walking away from her as he’d walked away from that beautiful baby. “What kind of man are you?” she cried. “What kind of man abandons his own child!”

He froze in his tracks. Slowly turned. “What did you say?”

Her hat floated up next to her. She snatched it as she treaded water. “Being a man means more than planting sperm and then writing a big check. It means—”

“Planting sp—”

Her anger rekindled. She plunged through the water toward the side of the pool, the weight of her sodden cover-up making her movements awkward. She lost her hat as she reached the ladder, but she was on a mission now, and she didn’t care. “He’s a beautiful baby! How could you—”

“You’re an idiot!”

He stood in the center of the back lawn with the sun striking flash fires in his wet hair. His legs were braced, beads of water gleamed on his skin, and he looked as if he were getting ready to murder her. “That beautiful baby boy is my brother!”

Everything inside her went still. His brother? Oh, my . . . She was an idiot. “Kenny!”

But he was already stalking away.

She hauled herself from the water and regarded his retreating back with dismay. What had happened to her? She’d never been a person who rushed to judgment. At St. Gert’s she listened to every side of a dispute before taking action, but she hadn’t been willing to do that with him. She owed him an apology, and she could only hope he’d have the good grace to accept it.