Sarah gave Katie a brilliant smile and swung her up when the girl raised her arms. "Hey, sweetheart," she said, brushing her cold lips over Katie's warm fat cheek. "Good morning, Daniel."
His only greeting was a nod.
Sarah found another stool on the opposite side of the table and perched on it, holding Katie in her lap while they watched Daniel work. "You do beautiful work," she commented.
He glanced up swiftly, then down again. "Thanks."
He didn't take compliments easily, she'd noticed. Because there had been too few of them in his life? It was a shame, because he was a bright, talented, sensitive man. He was the most special man she had ever met, but telling him so would only embarrass him.
Katie tugged at Sarah's shirt until she looked down. "Go play?" the little girl asked hopefully.
"And what do you want to play?" Sarah asked, bending to nuzzle the girl's round belly. They were limited in their choices since they couldn't leave the workshop. Daniel hadn't laid out any rules or restrictions, but Sarah could read the wariness that slipped into his eyes every so often. He didn't yet trust her enough to leave her alone with Katie, but she didn't mind. If the truth was told, she enjoyed his company almost as much as Katie's. In the past two days he had worked hard and said little, but he was there—strong, quiet, reassuring. She liked that about him.
If the truth was told, she silently repeated with a harmless edge of sarcasm, she liked a lot of things about him. She liked his commitment to Katie, to his work, to his land. She liked his gentleness, his sensitivity, his vulnerable self-consciousness when he was complimented. She liked his hands, so strong and capable, and his size that made her feel as if nothing could harm them while he was around. Most especially, she liked his unwavering devotion to Katie.
Katie was struggling to get down, and Sarah let her, then followed closely behind her. At the playpen, they gathered all the toys and carried them to an empty corner where they sat down to play.
Daniel listened to them as he worked. Sarah's voice was different when she talked to Katie—softer, more alive with emotion. He'd read once that babies reacted to their mothers' voices more than their fathers' because of the softer, higher tones, and he would bet now that it was true. He would rather listen to Sarah's voice than his own any time.
Katie talked, too, mostly nonsensical chatter, coupled with the few words that she knew. He noticed that there were new ones—dog, kitty, bird, teddy. How had she learned so much from Sarah in only two days? he wondered grimly. Maybe he hadn't spent as much time with her as she needed to help her learn. After all, since they didn't have a television, she didn't watch Sesame Street
or other educational programs, and she was never exposed to other kids. All she had to depend on was him, and maybe he wasn't enough.
It was a disquieting thought, one that nagged at him through the morning. He was still considering it when Sarah returned Katie to the playpen for her nap.
"She's a handful," Sarah said when she was sitting across from him again. "I don't know how you manage."
"Maybe not very well," he muttered without thinking.
"Why do you say that?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "She's a very happy, bright, well-adjusted kid, and that's all your doing."
"She needs more attention than I can give."
"Because you have to work?" Sarah rested her elbow on the tabletop and cupped her chin in her hand. "Obviously you can't quit working to devote yourself one hundred percent to her." She smiled suddenly, broadly. "You're facing one of the biggest problems in every working mother's life: dealing with the guilt. You have to work and you have to take care of her." She shrugged philosophically. "You do the best you can. And you've done a good job, Daniel."
She only hoped that she would do as well next month when Katie came to live with her. She would have to leave the child with a baby-sitter or in a day-care center rather than try to work around her, as Daniel did, and she worried over how Katie would respond to the change.
"Do you think she'll like me?"
Her unexpected question stopped Daniel's work, and he slowly raised his head to look at her.
"I mean, living with me. She's so used to you and your house. I wonder sometimes if she'll be happy with me."
The guilt was a sudden pain in his gut, clawing and twisting. How could he look into her eyes, seeing the fear and the love so strong that they brought tears, and lie? How could he say, "Sure, she'll like living with you," when he had no intention of ever letting Katie go?
Sarah gave a sudden sigh. "Beth used to say that I worried too much, but … I've had good reasons for worrying." First Tony's illness, then the divorce, then her pregnancy. Even though Tony's doctors had assured her the disease wasn't hereditary, that the baby she was carrying was at no higher risk than any other baby, she had worried about it, had worried about the effects of the stress and the exhaustion on the baby, had worried about all the other dozens of things that could go wrong with a pregnancy. But nothing had gone wrong. Katie had been born perfect, healthy and beautiful.
He wanted to ask what those reasons were, but he was afraid. If her life hadn't been easy and carefree and self-centered, he didn't think he wanted to know, not yet.
He continued to work in silence. He was used to silence. Along with no television, he had no radio, either. He'd grown up with only the sounds of nature—the birds, the wind, the animals—and had always felt at home with the lack of noise. Now, though, it bothered him … or, more precisely, her silence bothered him. He asked the first question that came to mind to break it. "Where are you going when you leave here?"
"I'm staying." She saw the startled look in his eyes, though he tried to hide it, and smiled. "Not in that house, of course, but in town. In Sweetwater. That way you can see Katie as often as you want, and she'll be able to come up here and stay with you. Of course, everything depends on me finding a job in Sweetwater. It's such a small town, but there's got to be something."
He stood up on the pretext of stretching, then walked to the window to look out. It was still bright and cold outside. He was starting to feel that way inside. "What kind of job?"
"Anything. I can work hard."
He turned to look at her. She was slender, delicate. Insubstantial. Hard work would break her. She was the kind of woman who needed to be cared for, the kind of woman who needed to be supported. The kind of woman he needed.
Hearing his own thoughts, he gave a shake of his head. He didn't know what kind of woman he believed she was anymore. Every time he saw her, his opinion of her changed … to match his changing feelings for her?
Sarah read his thoughtful look as skepticism. "I can work. I used to teach school, but I could do anything that paid enough to support us."
He responded to the least important part of her claim. "What grade did you teach?"
"Second." She smiled briefly, remembering the pleasure she'd found in teaching, in working daily with a roomful of lively, eager children. "But I haven't taught…" She broke off with a sigh, then continued, "In three years." Since she'd given birth to a beautiful little boy who suffered from liver disease. It seemed so long ago that the doctor had told her that Tony would die without a transplant. With his next words, he'd taken even that faint hope from her, when he'd explained the negative factors: the chances against finding a compatible donor in time, the cost, the tremendous risk of the surgery itself. She would have found the money somehow, would have risked the surgery, but she'd never been given the chance. Tony had died before a donor had been found.
She was a second-grade schoolteacher. Daniel was dismayed. He had gone to bed with her, and spent an entire weekend with her, and hadn't known that. What other important things about her had he neglected to learn during that weekend?
All of them, he decided after a moment. In the two days he'd spent with her, he had learned nothing—just that she was lonely and that he was immensely attracted to her. He hadn't learned that she'd had a job, if she had friends or family—parent
s, brothers, sisters, maybe even a husband. He hadn't learned anything.
"What about your family?" he asked. "Do they live in Nashville?"
"I don't have much family, and what I do have is scattered all over Tennessee. There are some aunts and uncles and a few cousins, but I don't really know them. I haven't seen any of them since my mother died ten years ago."
"And your father?"
She shrugged. "The last I heard, which was years ago, he was living in Oregon. He and my mother divorced when I was little. I don't know him."
He came back to the table and sat down, but didn't pick up the chair leg he'd been working on. "Have you been married?"
Sarah studied her hands for a long time. She didn't want to discuss her marriage with him—didn't want to admit how badly it had turned out, how poorly she had chosen. She didn't want to bring even the memory of another man between them. But she wouldn't lie to him. She expected honesty from him; she had to give him nothing less. "Yes, I was married."
"Were you married when we met?" It was an ugly thought. She had seemed so sweet, so good, that he'd never considered the possibility that she could have been married, could have used him to be unfaithful to her husband.
She heard the suspicion in his voice. Maybe she'd given Katie to him because she'd been married, the little voice was suggesting to him, because her husband had objected to raising another man's child. She gave a shake of her head. "No. He divorced me about a year before I met you."
"Why?"
She wasn't offended by the question, simply because it was Daniel asking. Because he was Katie's father. Because he was a good man. "There were—" she searched for a word that would encompass all the reasons Brent had left her without explaining any of them "—responsibilities to being married that he didn't want to accept. He didn't want to grow up."
Life had been one long party to Brent. With him and Sarah both working, there had been money to spend on nice things and good times. He hadn't wanted to spoil that with a baby. When she had accidentally gotten pregnant, she had expected him to mature, to give up the easy fun and settle into the role of father, but he hadn't. Then Tony's illness had become apparent, and Brent had disappeared from their lives.
Biliary atresia. That was the correct term for the disease that had ended Tony's life. The average life expectancy for patients with the surgically noncorrectable form of the disease who were unable to obtain transplants was about eighteen months, but Tony had lived two-and-a-half years. Looking back on the last months of his short life, Sarah didn't know if that was a blessing or a curse.
Daniel watched her, his dark eyes somber. She had forgotten that he was there, he realized. She was lost somewhere in the past, in an immeasurably sad past, if her expression was anything to judge by. Had this sorrow been responsible for her decision to give Katie away for a year? He couldn't ask. He didn't want to learn any details of her life that might make him regret the action he was taking to keep Katie.
As if cued by his thoughts, Katie woke up. She rolled onto her knees and looked around, her eyes heavy with sleep, her expression drowsy and befuddled. Then she saw Daniel, and a smile lit her face. "Daddy," she murmured. After a yawn that crinkled her entire face, she shifted her eyes to Sarah, studying her for a long time with a solemn gaze so like her father's.
Sarah had left the stool and was on her way to the playpen when Katie spoke again. "Mama." It was soft, hesitant, but clear and sweet, the most precious word Sarah had ever heard.
She picked up Katie, hugging her close, then walked over to Daniel. "Thank you," she whispered, carefully balancing Katie while she leaned forward to kiss him.
She had intended only a quick kiss, one of gratitude, but the instant her lips touched his, she paused. It had been so long since they had kissed, really kissed, and she wanted to savor it—the firm line of his mouth, the fragrant woodsy scent of him, the strength in his body where it touched hers.
Hesitantly she probed, and his lips parted beneath hers. His hand came up to rest gently on her back, steadying her, and his other hand circled around Katie to reach Sarah's shoulder. He considered turning away from the table so he could pull her close and cradle her against him, but decided that he wanted it too badly to do it. He made do with her arm pressed against his chest, her hip against his leg.
He let her control the kiss, took what she gave, but didn't give back, didn't interfere. He accepted the delicate intrusion of her tongue, submitted to its slow searching strokes and finally yielded to desire—hers or his, he wasn't sure and didn't care—and became the aggressor.
Sarah leaned into him, letting him help support Katie, and gave him control, gave him everything. He tasted dark and strong, her dazed mind thought. Like need. She recognized the need because she had felt it herself—once for Brent, now for Daniel. First and second. First and last.
Daniel moved his arm from around Katie's back and brought his hand to Sarah's neck. His big fingers stopped there, grasping her firmly, pulling her closer … just a little closer. The hunger was bubbling up inside him, sending restless, edgy, heated sensations through him. He knew what it was like to love her, to feel her slim, fragile body beneath his, to fill her so completely, so thoroughly, as to create a new life. He knew how she moved, how she responded. He remembered her ragged breathing and her ragged cries, remembered how the tension wound itself through her until she exploded, leaving her limp and exhausted. And he wanted that now—all of it. Now.
Annoyed by the lack of attention and by her father's arm excluding her, however slightly, from their closeness, Katie gave a frustrated wail. "No, Daddy, play!" she cried, shoving his arm with all her strength.
Sarah responded to the interruption first, gently, sweetly ending the kiss. She leaned against him for a moment, until the trembling inside calmed, then took a step back.
Daniel's face burned with an uncomfortable flush. He released Sarah awkwardly and refused to meet her eyes. "I, uh … I'll see about … lunch."
She didn't offer to help him fix it. He slid off the stool away from her, got his jacket from the coat tree and stepped outside.
"I think your father's a little bit flustered," she said softly to Katie as they watched him through the window.
Katie laid her hand on Sarah's cheek. "Go?"
"Not yet. Let's give him a little time alone." Sarah turned away from the window and set the girl on the floor. They played happily for the next fifteen minutes, but Sarah's thoughts were on the kiss. Of course Daniel was flustered. He had tried, judged and convicted her before she'd even come to Sweetwater. Probably the last thing he'd expected was to still be attracted to her. But why wasn't she the slightest bit fazed by the kiss?
Oh, she had been disturbed, all right, but all her responses had been good ones. They could be grouped together under a variety of names—lust, desire or, if she was very lucky, love. She wasn't casual enough for lust or foolish enough to believe that what she felt for Daniel was love—not yet, at least. But did she desire him? She respected him, liked him, admired him and, yes, she admitted with a slow smile, she desired him.
"It's easier for me," she remarked, uncaring that Katie couldn't understand her. "You see, your daddy thinks he has to protect you from me. He thinks I'm not a very good person. So naturally he doesn't want to want me. But I know he's a good person. I know he's a good, honorable, decent man, so it's all right for me to want him. Besides, he's your father. What could be better than Katie's mother falling for Katie's father?"
Katie solemnly listened to the whole speech, then stood up and started toward the door. "Go. Eat."
"All right. I guess he's had enough time to settle down." She found the girl's jacket, hustled her into it and zipped it up, then held her hand as they walked to the house.
Daniel came outside to get them for lunch, then stopped on the porch to watch them. They walked slowly, at Katie's let's-look-at-everything-along-the-way pace. He grew cold waiting and wondered once again why Sarah wasn't wearing a coat. This time, searc
hing for anything to cover up the uneasy gentling taking place inside him, he harshly asked. "Where is your coat?"
Sarah looked up while she helped Katie negotiate the steps. "I don't have one," she admitted blithely. It was the truth, but more than that, it was an easy way to silence him. As she'd expected, he was so surprised that he didn't know what to say. With a smile, she walked past him and opened the door for Katie. After a moment she glanced at him. "Are you coming in?"
He turned to face her. "What do you mean, you don't have a coat? It gets cold up here."
She shrugged and followed Katie inside. "It wore out last winter. Katie, let's wash your hands. Come into the bathroom."
Slowly Daniel closed the door behind him, shutting out the chill. Sarah's easy admission stunned him. He'd known that she didn't have much money, but this…! This was unacceptable. "How are you living?" he asked as soon as they were seated at the table.
"I saved money from my job for the past few months." Aware that she couldn't go to Sweetwater five months early, she had found a job shortly after Tony's death. It hadn't paid much, but she'd been able to save enough to support herself, if she lived very carefully, for six weeks or so. "It'll last until Katie and I find a place to live in town and I can start working again."
"How much do you have now?"
The easy, careless tone was gone from her voice when she looked up at him. "I believe we had this discussion before. It's none of your business, Daniel."
This time he didn't drop it, but pressed on. "Can you buy a jacket? Can you afford that?"
She dropped her eyes from his and concentrated on ladling vegetable soup into Katie's bowl. She could make the purchase if it was necessary, although it would mean skipping this month's payments to the obstetrician and the radiologist. She just didn't feel it was necessary. How could she spend money on things for herself when she owed so much money to others? Besides, when it was cold like today, she would be outside only for the twenty minutes it took to walk up the mountain in the morning and down again in the evening. Later, when she was making some money, when she had an income again, it would be soon enough to buy herself a coat.
SOMEBODY'S BABY Page 8