The Late Bloomer's Baby

by Kaitlyn Rice

  She hadn’t just reminded him of LeeAnn.

  LeeAnn reminded him of Callie every time she suggested that they split a restaurant course. Ethan smiled at Callie. “Okay, and I have to order the lobster risotto.”

  “Me, too.”

  They both chuckled as they refolded their menus. Yia Yia’s was a treat for the senses, in more ways than one.

  “Remember the time we sat here until closing, talking?” Callie asked as she studied the dining room lit softly with wall sconces and tabletop candles. Oversize booths abutted the room’s limestone walls, while cloth-covered table groupings filled its center. “We wound up walking by the river afterward, and when we finally drove home to Augusta the highway was almost empty.”

  “It was our second anniversary,” Ethan said.

  “Right.”

  Callie didn’t say it, but they must both be remembering. On their first anniversary, they’d come here, too. They’d left before they finished dinner, driving straight home. They’d made love all night long.

  “Those were some good times,” he said.

  Callie smiled, nodding as she held his gaze.

  When the waitress arrived to take their orders, she said they were a cute couple and asked if they always dressed to match.

  Ethan glanced down. He hadn’t realized, but he’d worn a tie with a swirl pattern that almost matched the one on the green dress. “No, it’s just a coincidence,” he said, not bothering to confess that they weren’t a couple at all.

  Not anymore.

  When the waitress left, he watched Callie. He wondered about her wedding ring again, and about what else might be different in her life. He didn’t want to bring up the subject of that confounded divorce packet again, even though they’d met here to discuss it.

  “Isabel’s house is coming along,” Callie said, sparing him the trouble of finding a safe topic of conversation.

  Ethan hadn’t gone to Augusta to help since last Saturday—he’d had to work a shift this morning—and his thoughts about the divorce had pushed Isabel’s woes from his mind for a while.

  Callie wouldn’t be able to get away from her sister’s plight. She’d work tirelessly to help Isabel so that everyone in her family could resume their normal lives.

  “Have they installed the new kitchen tile yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet.” Callie moved her water glass to make room for the appetizer platter, which had just arrived. After the waitress left, Ethan watched Callie transfer some shrimp to two small plates and hand one across.

  “What’s Isabel doing about Blumecrafts?” he asked.

  “I called her repeat clients and warned them about a delay in orders,” Callie said. “She’ll have to restock some ruined supplies, but she’ll begin making the quilts again soon. They’re her biggest sellers.”

  Callie might be the most like their mother in some ways, but Isabel lived as frugally as Ella had. “She still doesn’t mind working at home?” he asked. “It’d drive me crazy.”

  Callie had just bitten into a shrimp. “Man, that’s good,” she said as soon as she’d swallowed. Then she gasped, as if she’d remembered something. “She loves being home now,” she said. “Luke needs his mama around.”

  “Oh, right.” Ethan picked up a shrimp, but didn’t eat it immediately. “Will you return to Denver soon?” he asked, trying to smooth a forehead that wanted to furrow.

  “Not until Isabel is in her house,” Callie said. “We’re going to do a lot of the basement work ourselves, and even when she’s home we’ll have to clean the items we salvaged. We’re not even caught up with her…with their…laundry. Can you imagine?”

  Ethan bit into the shrimp and murmured with pleasure, responding as much to Callie’s answer as to the taste of the food.

  At one time, she’d been almost obsessed with her BioLabs job. He’d tried to talk her into looking for a similar position in Wichita, but she’d confused the issue, saying he didn’t find her work important. He’d only wanted her to live a whole life. He’d made friends in Denver, but reticent Callie had contented herself with her research, her efforts to conceive, and him.

  Maybe his absence had been good for her. Maybe she was reaching out more now.

  He continued talking to Callie as they finished the appetizer, as he drank another glass of Chardonnay and as they savored their dinners. The conversation flowed from comments about the food to another discussion of Isabel’s house to their jobs.

  He completely forgot, until she was standing right beside him, that LeeAnn had said she’d join him after her concert.

  He checked his watch. It was only ten o’clock. River’s Bend must have finished early.

  LeeAnn was in full regalia. Her blue jeans were slung low beneath a rhinestone-studded Western shirt and finished off with her baby-blue cowboy hat and boots.

  She stood smiling at him. Callie sat scowling at her. And Ethan swiveled his gaze between the two of them. He felt extremely uncomfortable, and not only because he’d forgotten to tell Callie that LeeAnn might be joining them.

  If the truth were known, he was reluctant to end his private conversation with his wife.

  Estranged wife.

  Soon-to-be ex-wife.

  His feelings for Callie might be complicated, but the divorce discussion was necessary. They hadn’t lived together for two lonely years. That was too long to live as he had—as an ignorant fool who didn’t know whether he should divorce the woman he’d left.

  Whenever someone asked Ethan if he was married, he wasn’t sure how to answer.

  I’m married, but I left my wife several years ago.

  We’re separated…indefinitely.

  I’m going to divorce my wife, someday very soon.

  He needed to take action.

  “You gonna scoot over, cowboy?” LeeAnn asked. “Or should I plant my patootie right there in your lap?”

  Cowboy? LeeAnn didn’t call him cowboy, and she didn’t speak to him in that tone. They weren’t that far just yet.

  However, her little show for Callie was probably normal under the circumstances.

  Ethan slid next to the wall, allowing LeeAnn to plant her patootie on the bench next to him. “Callie, ah, Taylor, this is LeeAnn Chambers,” he said. “LeeAnn, Callie.”

  Callie remembered her manners. She stood up halfway and extended her hand across the table. “Nice to meet you, LeeAnn. Ethan has spoken well of you.”

  “Oh, he talks about you, too, hon,” LeeAnn said.

  Callie would detest that condescending tone. Her narrowed eyes confirmed it: she was simmering.

  If LeeAnn kept it up, Callie would eventually skewer her with her lightning-quick intellect.

  Ethan scowled a warning at LeeAnn, but she was too busy watching Callie to pay much attention. “You act as if you are surprised to see me,” she was saying. “I apologize if he forgot to mention that I’d be coming. We spend most of our Saturday nights together these days, so I told him I’d meet him here after your little talk.”

  Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. After LeeAnn’s pouty response to his news about this meeting, he’d promised to meet her later.

  She’d insisted that he meet her here, later. She’d also suggested the dessert idea.

  “Of course.” Callie’s expression remained calm, but Ethan didn’t feel calm. He felt ignored and frustrated, and he didn’t like LeeAnn’s cattiness. Maybe she deserved to feel the scratch of Callie’s claws.

  “How was your little talk, anyway?” LeeAnn asked, still speaking to Callie.

  That was none of her business. “Just fine,” Ethan interjected. “We had a nice chat.”

  LeeAnn must have heard the insistence in his tone, because she shot him a sideways glance.

  She switched gears, winking at him and giving Callie a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Good. Have you ordered dessert yet? I’ve heard raves about the menu here.”

  Callie was sharp. Would she realize that Ethan hadn’t brought his girlfriend here?

&nb
sp; Sure enough, Callie’s gaze held his a touch too long, her eyes bright and soft. She thanked him silently for preserving the memory of this shared, special place.

  Seconds later, she redirected her attention to LeeAnn. “You’ve heard right,” she said in a gentle tone. “Dessert here is wonderful, but I can’t indulge. I need to go.” She lifted her tiny purse to the table and clicked it open.

  What? She intended to leave without teaching LeeAnn a lesson? She had changed.

  “What are you doing, Callie?” Ethan asked.

  She shrugged. “Paying for my dinner, then leaving.”

  “But we haven’t finished talking.”

  “Oh, well.” She glanced at LeeAnn.

  Callie was right again. They couldn’t talk with LeeAnn sitting with them, listening. Ethan reached a hand across to snap Callie’s purse shut. “I’ll get this,” he said, and when she angled her chin he shook his head. “I insist.”

  She slipped her purse under her arm and scooted from the booth. Standing beside the table for a moment, she shook hands with LeeAnn again and said goodbye to them both.

  As Ethan watched her go, he wished he hadn’t told LeeAnn about tonight’s meeting. If he and Callie could have spoken at leisure, they’d have eventually discussed the divorce packet. Surely they would.

  He also wished for things he shouldn’t.

  For reasons he barely understood.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Callie sat in the passenger seat of Josie’s truck, gripping the hand rest, watching the passing farm fields and thinking how quickly a life could end if even one of the other drivers on the road made a tiny error in judgment.

  A quick turn. A slow one. Even a too-eager response to a green light could send cars crashing and souls flying.

  Josie drove in the manner of certain teenage boys—skillfully, but with little regard for other folks on the road who might not be so quick to react, and with little regard for such inconsequential things as speed limits and traffic lights.

  When her sister reached town and turned onto the main road, Callie noted the cars parked in front of Augusta’s hardware store. Thank God we made it, she thought, even as she said, “Thank heaven, they’re open.”

  Like many vendors along the highway, the store had received flood damage, too. The newspapers had reported that many businesses in this area had been under two feet of water during the worst of it. The hardware store owners were still recovering, but they had reopened quickly, willing to sell whatever they could. With luck, they had plenty of paint.

  Josie pulled into the lot, stopped short in a front-row spot and scrambled out of her truck before Callie had relaxed her grip on the hand rest. “Wait, Josie,” Callie hollered after her.

  “Yo.” Josie leaned down to stick her head in the window. “You’re not coming in?”

  “Not yet.” Callie worked to unclench her muscles.

  “What’s the holdup?” Josie asked. “I want to get that bedroom painted this evening.”

  “Did you bring your cell phone?” Callie asked. She knew it was in Josie’s glove box. She’d checked earlier.

  Josie pointed. “It’s in there.”

  “Can I borrow it?”

  Josie sighed. “Relax, Cal. Luke just went to sleep an hour ago. He’s fine with Isabel—you know she’ll hover over him. During your hot date last night, she hardly ever put him down, even after he was asleep.”

  “That was no hot date, and I’m not calling Isabel.”

  “Oh. Well, go ahead and use it then,” Josie said, smirking. “Should I wait?”

  Luckily, Josie had no curiosity about Callie’s plans for the phone. If she knew whom Callie was planning to call, she’d surely state her opinion about the conversation.

  At the moment, Callie didn’t want to hear that opinion. “Go on in and start them mixing the paint, Josio Andretti,” she said. “I’ll be right in.”

  She watched her sister disappear inside the store, then pulled a scrap of paper from her jeans pocket and Josie’s phone from the glove box.

  Last night hadn’t gone well.

  Callie had hoped to stimulate Ethan’s good mood by talking about the old days, then convince him that the divorce could wait until a better time. She’d hoped he might even be convinced that he didn’t like LeeAnn quite as much as he’d thought. But she hadn’t counted on Lee-Ann’s arrival, or Callie’s emotional response to the interruption.

  Or to the woman herself. LeeAnn was hot in exactly the way most men fancied. Sassy, with dark-fringed eyes and a flirtatiousness that Callie had never even dreamed of attempting.

  She could understand Ethan’s attraction to that type of woman—especially after he’d spent so much time with a wife who sometimes forgot that she was a woman.

  It’d taken quite a bit of control for Callie to keep her cool after LeeAnn had arrived, especially when she’d realized that Ethan’s girlfriend wasn’t bringing her patootie by to say hello, then taking it away so Ethan and his wife could finish their little talk.

  Ethan had been at fault for inviting LeeAnn.

  LeeAnn was simply easier than Ethan to dislike.

  Cowboy, indeed.

  Sighing, Callie punched in the number written on the paper—Ethan’s home number—then held her breath as the phone rang once, then again.

  An image passed through Callie’s mind, of LeeAnn sitting beside the phone at Ethan’s house. Hat pulled low on her forehead, booted feet stretched across the coffee table, sass kicked into high gear.

  She’d laugh when she saw Ethan’s caller ID. She’d call out to Ethan that J. Blume was on the phone. She’d ask sweetly if she should grab it or if he wanted to get out of bed to answer.

  For Pete’s sake, it was almost three in the afternoon.

  Callie had waited late to telephone Ethan, hoping to avoid exactly that possibility. Whether Ethan had spent the night with LeeAnn or not, he’d be out of bed.

  Without question.

  It was none of Callie’s business.

  None.

  Callie closed her eyes and willed Ethan to answer. As she listened to another ring, she noticed Josie pass by the store’s front window.

  The fourth ring was interrupted. “Hullo.”

  Good, it was Ethan. “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Yeah. Your sister’s name is on my ID. Anything wrong?”

  He sounded breathless. “Is this a bad time?” Callie asked, wincing.

  “No. I just got home from work an hour ago, then I went for a run.”

  He’d worked a shift already? Callie smiled, foolishly happy to hear that he’d been at work all day. “Hard day?” she asked.

  “Not really,” he said, sounding tired. “We had sixteen call-outs, but most were just traffic related. We did get one call to a domestic, and the guy had a gun. Lord knows what would have happened, so I’m glad the idiot’s in custody.”

  “I am, too,” Callie said. “I won’t keep you. I called because we didn’t manage to finish our business last night.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  She sighed. “I need to ask for a favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know we’re rushing to get Isabel in her home. She needs to set up her workshop. We’re all working so hard.” Callie paused, took a breath, then said, “I can’t take the time to meet with your attorney this week. I hope you understand.”

  “Sure I do. I’ll cancel the appointment,” he said, and added in a low voice, “You can just sign the papers and mail them, Cal. No problem.”

  That would be a problem, though—a huge one. With a couple of stamps and a signature or two, she could vastly increase her possibilities of losing Luke.

  “Oh, but I think we probably do need to sit together with an attorney to make sure everything’s in order,” Callie said. “Can it wait a while, though?”

  Until she’d had time to escape to Colorado…then until she’d moved, leaving no forwarding address.

  Ethan was quiet for a long, long time. “I suppose so,”
he finally said. Then, “I really don’t mind waiting. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  Cheered by his brightened tone, Callie said goodbye and clicked off the phone. She returned it to Josie’s glove box and went inside to help her sister carry the paint to the truck.

  She spent the next couple of days helping her sisters in every way she could. While Luke slept, she cooked or cleaned or traded places with Isabel, painting or dealing with contractors to give her sister an opportunity to rest. When her son was awake, Callie took him along on errands or incorporated him into her routines.

  She discovered that if she gave Luke a bucket of water, he loved to play-paint the steps of Isabel’s concrete porch while Callie worked nearby, cleaning a few of the Christmas ornaments they’d salvaged.

  Callie completed every task with speed and precision, knowing that if she and her sisters made constant progress, they’d finish soon. She could get Luke home to relative safety. She could also answer the complaints of her Bio-Labs co-workers. Her most trusted assistant, Patty, had worked two straight weeks of overtime. She was the most familiar with the data collection workstations, and she kept meticulous records. The rest of the crew had been grumbling about favoritism.

  Callie knew her colleagues could settle the problem themselves if they focused their energies creatively, but she really should think about getting her life and her research back on track.

  And if she stayed busy enough, the memories she’d refreshed during one Saturday evening at Yia Yia’s wouldn’t hurt quite so much.

  On Tuesday, after she and Luke had spent the morning grocery shopping, Callie dropped by the house to take her sister some lunch. She gasped when she noticed Ethan’s car at the curb. She glanced at Luke, who was sitting in his car seat drinking orange juice from a bottle.

  Taking the little boy inside would be risky. Any moment now, Ethan might see himself in Luke’s brown-eyed grin or in the determined dimples that formed in his cheeks when he attempted anything new.

  She should leave.

  But if she went to Josie’s apartment, Ethan might drop by later and find Luke with her, anyway. She frowned, feeling awful for hiding her son. Even though the alternative might turn her life to hell.

  She could head to Wichita. Maybe she’d drop by the furniture showroom where Josie worked. Her little sister might steer her toward some bargains for Isabel’s house—a new mattress, maybe, or a couple of living-room chairs.