Her Best Friend's Baby

by Vicki Lewis Thompson, Stephanie Bond

  He glanced at her. “Like what?”

  “Define our purpose.”

  “Okay. I need to pack up some clothes, maybe some books and other personal items. It shouldn’t take long. I don’t want to take too much. Then we’ll haul whatever we have downstairs to the garage and get the car. And go to the hotel.” He could hardly wait to escape this place.

  “Should we deal with Arielle’s things? Her clothes, for example?”

  The prospect made him feel queasy. “I guess so. I’ve been thinking I’d hire a moving company to come in and get the furniture once I have another place to stay. But I don’t want them shipping Arielle’s clothes over there.”

  “Then I’ll pack up her clothes. What do you want to do with them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s give them to charity.”

  “Yes.” He sighed with relief. “What would I do without you?”

  She squeezed his hand. “And you didn’t want me to come with you.”

  “I always wanted you to come with me. I just wasn’t sure it was a good idea from your standpoint.” The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. “I still feel guilty about dragging you up here.”

  “Don’t.” Holding his hand, she walked into the hallway. “Like I said before, we’re lucky we have each other so neither one of us has to face this alone.”

  “We sure as hell are lucky.” In the beginning he might have thought sharing this tragedy was all that held the two of them together. But now he knew better. If things had turned out differently and Arielle had succeeded in getting Mary Jane to come to New York as the baby’s nanny, he would have been thrown into a serious marital crisis. It wouldn’t have taken long for him to realize that Mary Jane was everything he wanted in a woman, everything Arielle had not been.

  The door to his apartment had three locks and an alarm system because of the art Arielle had hanging on the walls. Morgan was really tired of protecting valuable art, especially considering that he didn’t like any of it. Mary Jane’s pictures of flowers and happy people suited him much better.

  He swung open the door and stepped inside with Mary Jane following close behind. The apartment was cold, but then it always had been. Arielle had liked it that way. She’d used heat sparingly in the winter and air-conditioning liberally in the summer.

  The living room smelled of stale air and expensive leather. He shuddered as he looked around at the white calfskin furniture and the black lacquered tables. He wondered why they weren’t dusty and then realized the cleaning woman must have come right on schedule.

  The only spot of color the room had ever contained was gone. Arielle kept a bloodred rose in a Baccarat vase on the coffee table, but the last one she’d bought would have wilted and the cleaning woman had obviously thrown it away.

  He turned to Mary Jane to see how she was doing. She looked pale but resolute. What a little trouper. Even with the lack of color in her cheeks, she was still the most vibrant presence in the room.

  Looking at the furniture, he came to a decision. “I’m going to sell it all. I don’t want it. I’ve never liked it.”

  “Sell it?” Mary Jane’s eyes widened. “But this is pricey stuff! I remember Arielle telling me how much she paid for that leather sofa. You’ll never get your money out of it, and it looks brand new!”

  “That’s because we barely used it,” Morgan said with a trace of bitterness. Once he’d made the mistake of putting his feet up on that pricey sofa, and Arielle had given him a real tongue-lashing. “I’ll call around, find out who could come over here and take it off my hands.”

  “Now, don’t be hasty, Morgan. What are you going to sit on in your new apartment?”

  “I don’t care. Big pillows. Maybe a beanbag chair. Arielle wouldn’t have one of those in the place, but I kind of like them.”

  Mary Jane smiled. “Me, too. But I think selling all your furniture is a bit reckless. You’d better at least keep your bed.”

  If he knew one thing, he knew he wasn’t keeping the bed. “Nope. Everything goes. Even the art.”

  Mary Jane gazed at a painting over the fireplace. It was a series of cubes in shades of black and gray and was typical of the lifeless pieces hanging in various places around the apartment. “Now, there I agree with you,” she said. “And those puppies have probably gone up in value, so maybe you won’t come out so bad in the end.” She paused. “What about the teacup collection in the dining room? That’s probably worth something, too.”

  “Do you want it?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head.

  “Then I’m selling that, too.”

  “Okay. But I think you should reconsider selling all the furniture. Maybe you should move it to your new place and see how it goes before you decide.”

  He had an intense need to hold her. “Come here, you.” Gathering her into his arms, he pressed her head against his chest and rested his cheek on her glorious hair. “Tell me the truth. Do you like anything about this furniture?” he asked.

  She held him close, as if eager to lend him her warmth. “It’s clean, and it doesn’t have any nicks and scratches on it.”

  “Other than that. Do you think it’s pretty?”

  “I think…” She hesitated. “I think it’s sort of blah, but that’s just me. I’m not very sophisticated when it comes to interior decorating. As you noticed when we picked out baby furniture, I wanted rainbows.”

  “I must not be very sophisticated, either, because I think it’s blah. And so damned white. Give me a break. Can you imagine eating pizza on a white sofa?”

  “I see your point.”

  “It goes.” He nuzzled his cheek against her hair. “And for the record, I’m crazy about rainbows.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MARY JANE would have loved to stay safely tucked inside Morgan’s arms forever, but that wasn’t getting the job done. She gave him an encouraging squeeze. “We need to get to work.”

  “Yeah.” He looked very reluctant as he stepped away from her and glanced down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

  She could imagine why he didn’t want to continue with the program. The formal living room was one thing. Now they had to face the more personal space of the bedroom he’d shared with Arielle. Mary Jane wasn’t looking forward to that, either.

  Like a doomed prisoner taking his last walk, he headed down the hallway.

  Her mouth was dry as she followed him. “Do you remember if the bed’s made?”

  “It always is. Arielle insisted on that before we left for the day.”

  Mary Jane was grateful for Arielle’s compulsive neatness. If the sheets had been rumpled, it would have made the bedroom seem even more intimate, the marriage too real.

  Morgan walked into the room and straight to the louvered closet doors. “We can get this done in no time,” he said briskly, as if trying to convince himself.

  Mary Jane wasn’t so sure. The bedroom furniture wasn’t any cozier-looking than the living room set had been. Black lacquered pieces dominated here, and the comforter was, predictably, snow white.

  But on the sleek surface of the dressing table sat Arielle’s silver-backed brush and hand mirror, the ones she’d bought herself while she was working as Mary Jane’s nanny. The exclusive perfume she’d used was there, too, along with bottles of her favorite brands of lotion and makeup, and a Waterford crystal cotton-ball holder that Mary Jane had given her.

  Mary Jane felt the tears coming. She turned away from the dressing table and found herself looking at Morgan and Arielle’s framed wedding picture sitting on a desk by the window. They looked so happy, so right together. Guilt slammed into her.

  Behind her Morgan was making quite a racket pulling his clothes out of the closet. Eyes blurred with tears, she turned to watch him frantically tossing slacks and shirts, still on their hangers, onto the bed. The closet door was open wide. Morgan’s side of the closet was nearly empty, but Arielle’s was full of her designer suits and dresses, all in taste
ful, neutral colors.

  Mary Jane’s old insecurities came roaring back. Compared with Arielle she was so lacking in culture and sophistication. Arielle had tried to educate her, but she hadn’t been a very good student.

  Morgan had. His clothes were the same shades as Arielle’s, she noticed. Next to all that subdued elegance the loud Western shirt he wore seemed totally out of place. She’d encouraged him to buy that bright shirt. Arielle would have called it tacky. She would have lectured Mary Jane for destroying whatever fashion sense she’d been able to instill in Morgan.

  But the problem went deeper than fashion. Meaning to get his mind off his grief, Mary Jane had started him thinking he didn’t want all that he’d worked so hard to have. Now he seemed ready to completely change his life, mostly because of her influence.

  A fresh wave of guilt washed over her. A house in Austin would not have been what Arielle would have wanted for her husband and baby. A house in Connecticut was more like it. Yet Mary Jane had aided and abetted his decision to buy the Slattery place. She’d also taken him to the dealership to buy a red truck. He even listened to country music.

  But there was a good chance that in a few weeks he’d wake up and realize he didn’t want any of those things, that he was a sophisticated New Yorker, not a Texas cowboy. He might wish he’d kept the black and white furniture.

  Morgan threw a large suitcase on the bed. Then he pulled another one out of the closet and put it on top of the cedar chest at the end of the bed. He glanced at Mary Jane, his gaze haunted. “I’m going to carry my clothes down and put them in the car. We can use the suitcases for Arielle’s stuff. Are you still up to packing her clothes?”

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She would help him through this, and then she needed to convince him to sell the Slattery place, trade in his red truck and stay on the path Arielle had mapped out for him. Arielle had known what she was doing, and Mary Jane had no right to upset things.

  She moved to the closet, took Arielle’s clothes off the hangers and folded them neatly as she put them into the suitcases. Arielle would have wanted her to do it that way. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of how completely she’d messed up the life Arielle had created for Morgan. But she still had time to fix things the way they should be.

  Morgan scooped an armload of his clothes from the bed. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  She nodded again.

  “Are you okay?”

  She swiped at her eyes and kept packing. “Sure.” She felt him hovering, as if he didn’t believe her. “Go!” she snapped.

  He went.

  Once the front door closed after him, she fought the urge to break down. She knew he wouldn’t be gone long, and she wanted to be finished by the time he came back.

  And then, on a top shelf, she found a notebook tucked between boxes of sweaters. Pulling it down, she discovered it was a journal belonging to Arielle. She flipped to the first page, dated the day after her marriage.

  I think Morgan expected more passion out of me, Arielle had written. Maybe he thought the wedding ring would make a difference. Maybe I did, too. But we’ll both have to face the fact that I’m no sex kitten. Morgan probably wouldn’t know what to do with one, anyway. Arielle went on to catalog the expensive gifts they’d received with far too much relish to suit Mary Jane.

  She closed the journal and held it against her chest, shaken by what she’d read. Well, that had been the first day of their marriage, after all. She couldn’t imagine a woman living with Morgan for six years and not realizing he was an outstanding lover. Opening the journal again, she riffled through the pages. The entries were hit and miss, sometimes skipping several months, but they continued right up to the week before Arielle had died.

  The front door opened, and Mary Jane panicked. Reading this journal might be devastating for Morgan, but hiding it from him wasn’t right, either. Clutching the journal to her chest, she faced the door as he walked into the bedroom.

  Strain showed in his face and his rigid body. He reminded her of a boxer who had already gone ten rounds with a better opponent. “Almost done?” he asked hopefully.

  “Almost.” She took a deep breath. “I found Arielle’s journal.”

  Anguish showed in his eyes. “Oh.”

  For one horrible moment she thought he might have read it.

  “I knew she kept one,” he said. “But I considered it private. I’d forgotten about it, to tell the truth.”

  She let out her breath in relief. “By rights it’s yours. But I was wondering if you’d…if you’d let me have it.”

  “Of course.”

  He gave in so quickly that she wondered if he had an idea the journal would contain things he’d rather not read. All these years she’d thought Morgan and Arielle had the perfect marriage. Maybe not.

  “Thank you,” she said, setting the journal on the bed. She put a few last things in the two suitcases, then closed them. “Did you hear on the radio that tomorrow’s Mother’s Day?”

  His expression lightened. “Yes, and I thought we could do something special before you leave. A picnic in Central Park, maybe.”

  How she would love a picnic in Central Park, but she knew what they had to do instead. “That’s a nice idea, but I think we should have our private memorial service for Arielle tomorrow. Mother’s Day seems right, somehow. She is the mother of this baby.”

  “So are you.”

  Her heart ached. “That isn’t the way it was set up.”

  “I know, technically speaking, but—”

  “No matter what happens, we owe a debt to Arielle. Tomorrow belongs to her.”

  He studied her for a long time. “All right. What did you have in mind?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, but we can work on it today. We could get some flowers, pick out some things to read that she especially liked.”

  He nodded. “Where did you want to do it?” he asked quietly.

  Mary Jane had been thinking about that ever since the ride in from the airport. “On the spot where she died.”

  SOMETHING about Mary Jane’s thinking had changed. Morgan wanted to blame it on the strain of planning for the memorial, which put Arielle in the middle of their thoughts. It stirred up his feelings of guilt and sure seemed to be doing the same for Mary Jane. The emotional shift might be natural, and maybe they’d both get over it once they’d completed the service.

  In the meantime, life was pretty grim. Mary Jane had brought several books of poetry from the apartment, and she spent hours going through them, picking selections and then rejecting them in favor of others. He heard enough readings of Keats and Shelley to last him a lifetime.

  And he could tell there would be no more lovemaking in their hotel room. The lightheartedness of the night before when they’d shared cake in bed was gone. Mary Jane had No Trespassing signs hanging all over her.

  As the distance between them grew, he began to wonder if she’d decided she wanted nothing to do with a guy like him. In Austin she’d seen a different Morgan Tate, but the picture she was getting in New York might have turned her off.

  He supposed he was different here. Going back to his apartment, hauling all his boring clothes out of the closet, driving the luxury sedan Arielle had thought a man of his position should own—all of it drew him into the role he’d once played. And he hated it.

  He also feared it. Deep down he was afraid this was all he would ever become. The man who had bought a ranch house in Austin, the man who’d picked out a bright red truck and thought he could learn to ride a horse, that man might be an illusion. Arielle would have laughed at his efforts and told him he’d better stick with what he was good at—being a big-city doctor and making money. She would have said he wasn’t the type to live a cowboy’s life, and a leopard couldn’t change his spots.

  If any of that was true, he sure as hell didn’t want to impose himself on Mary Jane. Normally she was as colorful and buoyant as a helium balloon, and he’d be damned if he’d
be the guy to weigh her down.

  By noon on Sunday they’d planned the service and were ready to leave for the airport. Mary Jane had rightly pointed out that two trips to the vicinity of the airport would be dumb, so they’d decided to leave early enough to have the memorial before he took Mary Jane to catch her flight. It wasn’t exactly the kind of Mother’s Day celebration he’d had in mind, but as he’d watched the dedication Mary Jane brought to the planning, he’d completely understood why they had to do things this way.

  If only he didn’t feel as if he was losing Mary Jane in the process.

  The weather, he noticed with some irony, was perfect, a fine spring day in the best New York tradition. As he drove down the road, he thought of Arielle on this same road in the dark and the rain…and in a hurry, as she usually had been. He found himself counting off the distance, the minutes. On this part of the road she’d still been alive. He kept his speed down, and cars whizzed around him.

  “I don’t think I should move into your house,” Mary Jane said.

  He wasn’t surprised to hear her say it, but pain squeezed his chest as he sensed her trying to cut the ties between them. He should let her go, but he wasn’t quite ready to do that. “You’d be doing me a big favor if you would stay there.” He came up with the first excuse he could. “It’s getting hot, and somebody should monitor the watering system for the plants. I could hire a yard service, but I’d want someone to supervise that, too.”

  “Oh. I forgot about that.”

  “Do you think it was a mistake for me to buy that place?”

  She hesitated. “Maybe.”

  He wept inside, but he forced himself to act nonchalant. “Tell you what. If you’ll stay there and watch out for the place at least until the baby’s born, I’ll reevaluate at that point. But when I come down for the birth, I’ll need somewhere to stay and get acquainted with the baby. If, after she’s born, you’re willing to stay at the house yourself for a few days, I think it would make for a smoother transition.”

  She stared straight ahead and didn’t answer, but her fingers tightened over the crystal vase full of rose petals she held.