SOMEBODY'S BABY

by Marilyn Pappano

  She had known her revelation would slow Beth down, but she hadn't expected these long moments of complete silence. She kept waiting for some response, then finally prompted, "Beth?"

  "Sorry," came the dry rejoinder. "I was just trying to imagine—as big as he is, and as scrawny as you are—how in the world the two of you manage to—"

  Sarah interrupted. "We manage very well, thanks."

  "Then you've told him about Tony." The lawyer couldn't see the hard, cold man she'd met a few weeks ago in Zachary Adams's office conveniently forgetting his opinion of Sarah as a mother who had given away her child. Only a full explanation of the reasons would satisfy him.

  "No."

  Beth was silent again. "Well then, you're going to tell him about Tony, right? I mean, the guy's got a right to know—after all, it affected him, too. You can't expect him to build a life with you without knowing about something as important as your son's death."

  Sarah's sign was long and heavy. "I said that I love him. I never said anything about how he feels about me."

  Even without her voice breaking at the end, Beth would have recognized the tears. They'd been through too much together in the past three years for her to miss them. "Oh, Sarah," she sighed. "The man is nothing but trouble. Come home and forget about him for the next ten days. Then we'll go get Katie together, and you won't ever have to see him again."

  "I can't do that," she whispered. "Beth, I can't."

  Her friend sighed again. "Is there anything I can do, like maybe talk some sense into the idiot?" The suggestion brought a reluctant smile to Sarah's face.

  If anyone could talk sense into Daniel, it certainly wouldn't be Beth. To say that they hadn't hit it off was like saying the South was a little warm in July. "Will you be here on the first?"

  "We have an appointment with Ryan in Zachary Adams's office at one o'clock. How about if I come early and take you to lunch first?"

  "That sounds fine. Beth?"

  "Yeah, Sarah?"

  "You're the best friend I have—"

  Uncomfortable with emotional displays, Beth interrupted with a flippant response. "The only one right now, kid. You're in enemy territory there."

  "You've done a lot for me and Tony and Katie, even though we'll be old and gray before I can pay you." She rubbed her hand over her wet cheeks. Beth had always insisted that she wanted no money, but Sarah had been equally insistent about paying her … someday. "Anyway…" She swallowed past the lump in her throat. "I love you, too. I'll see you next week." She hung up quickly, before her friend could respond with a joke, and headed back toward the doctor's house.

  Daniel and Katie were waiting in the truck. Dr. Hamilton had seen her immediately, had made a quick exam and taken a chest X ray, then given Daniel a prescription for antibiotics. The whole visit had taken less than fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes that Sarah hadn't been willing to give them.

  Her behavior bewildered him. He knew she loved Katie every bit as much as he did, but she certainly hadn't shown it this morning. Would it have cost her so much to go in, meet the doctor and hold Katie's hand through the exam, as he had done?

  There was an annoying niggling at the back of his mind, something he needed to remember, something to do with Sarah and doctors… Before he could bring it to mind, though, he saw her walking along the sidewalk, head ducked, drenched by the rain, and whatever anger he had left faded. She looked so sad. Lost. There were questions he needed to ask, answers he needed to hear, but they could wait. When they were home and Katie was resting, when Sarah was dry and warm—then, he promised himself, they would talk. He tucked Katie's blanket over her, then got out of the truck, unmindful of the rain, and met Sarah on the other side.

  Sarah wondered why he'd gotten out in this miserable weather to meet her. So Katie wouldn't witness his anger? She raised her head slowly, feeling the sting of the raindrops, and looked into his face, expecting to see cold, harsh derision. Instead there was a mix of expressions—bewilderment, curiosity, concern. When he opened his arms, she walked right into them, pressing her face against his chest. She knew the demand for explanations would come later, but for now, she gratefully accepted his offer of comfort.

  "Are you okay now?" he asked, bending his head so his mouth was near her ear.

  Nodding, she looked up into his face, blinking away the sting of the rain. "Daniel, I'm sor—"

  Before the word was out, he'd stopped it with his mouth, kissing it away gently, sweetly, tenderly. When he lifted his head, his eyes, grave and solemn, met hers. "I need to go to the drugstore; then we'll go home, all right?"

  She nodded once. Home. That was where she wanted to be.

  Forty minutes later they were back at the house. Daniel shrugged out of his coat, shifting Katie with his movements, then draped it over the coatrack. "Go upstairs to the bedroom and find something dry to wear," he told Sarah. "I'll put Katie to bed. Then we can talk."

  She agreed and led the way upstairs. In his room she added another log to the fire, then removed her wet clothes, leaving them on the stone hearth while she dried herself. In his closet she found a soft gold-plaid flannel shirt that she put on; then, with the quilt from the bed, she curled up in the single chair near the fireplace, taking advantage of the quiet time to look around the room.

  Like Daniel, the furniture was massive and solid. The four-poster bed, the dresser, the chest and the chair were solid pine, made with his own hands—she recognized the workmanship. The cushions where she sat were pale blue and white, and the quilt she'd taken from the bed was navy blue with small splashes of the same colors. There were windows on two walls, and the stone fireplace filled half of the third. The mantel above it was filled with photographs.

  Sarah tugged the quilt closer while she studied the pictures. They were in no special order, just a random chronicle of Katie's life, from the time she had come to live with Daniel until recently. Katie, so tiny and sweet, sleeping peacefully beside her Raggedy Ann. Smiling to show off her two new teeth. Dressed in red velvet and white lace, unimpressed by the Christmas gifts around her but smiling for her father anyway. Asleep, laughing, smiling, pouting, playing, loving. Now Sarah knew why there were no photos of their daughter in the living room. Daniel kept them here, where he could see them at night before sleeping and first thing in the morning after waking.

  He came into the room, drying his hair with a towel. He had already discarded his shirt in the bathroom; now he needed dry jeans. He changed quickly, then added the damp jeans to her pile of clothes. She looked startled by his appearance, he noticed, as if she were still engrossed in the different faces of their daughter.

  Lifting her up, he sat in the chair, then settled her across his lap, pulling her head to his chest. "You didn't get a chance to see the pictures last night, did you?" he asked, his voice a comforting rumble deep in his chest.

  "My attention was on something else." She rubbed her cheek over the rain-cooled skin of his chest, then hesitantly asked, "How is Katie?"

  "She'll sleep for a while. It's just a cold, Dr. Hamilton said." He thought for an instant of the memory of Sarah and a doctor, but let it slide from his mind. There would be time for that later.

  "Daniel?"

  "Hmm." He brushed his lips over her hair. It tasted cold, damp, sweet.

  "I'm not a bad mother."

  Daniel's arms tightened around her. She made the claim quietly, wearily, as if she'd had to defend it too many times in the past. As if she didn't expect to be believed. As if she sometimes didn't believe herself. "I know."

  "It wasn't easy sending Katie away. I used to have nightmares that you wouldn't give her back when it was time, or that she would never forgive me."

  He sat still and stiff beneath her. He reminded himself that he wasn't going to keep Katie from her—he was going to unite them as a family—so there was no reason for the guilt. There was curiosity mixed in, too, and hopefulness. Was she finally going to trust him with her past?

  "I wasn't even sure that you
would want her," she continued, her voice soft, her gaze distant. "But I remembered how you'd looked when you talked about wanting children. As if babies were special, a gift to be treasured. And I knew that you would be a gentle, loving father."

  He stroked her hair, still damp but drying into honey-gold wisps. "Why did you do it, Sarah?" he whispered. "You love her. You're her mother. Why did you send her away?"

  Behind his words, she heard the echo of this morning's angry, condemning taunt. Damn it, Sarah, you're her mother. "I did what I had to do," she said with a sigh. "Nothing can change it. Nothing can make it right … or wrong." She moved, pushing the quilt back. With the fire burning brightly, the room was warm. With Daniel's body next to hers, she was warm.

  Daniel accepted that she wasn't going to give him any answers this morning. It was enough to know that, whatever her reasons, sending Katie to live with him had cost her dearly.

  They sat for long moments, enveloped in silence—warm, close, comforting silence, like the heat from the fire, the heat from their bodies. He held her and stroked wherever his hands happened to rest—her hair, her arm, her hip. Eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime to Sarah, his hand moved gently, hesitantly, beneath the gold-plaid shirt.

  The muscles in her belly rippled and grew taut as he rubbed his hand across it. Although he couldn't feel them now, last night he'd traced the thin faint pregnancy lines that marked her skin. How had she looked pregnant, he wondered, with her belly big and rounded with his baby? Had her breasts gotten full and swollen with milk? Had she suffered from morning sickness, backaches and swollen ankles? Had she had anyone to turn to for help? The next time would be different, he vowed. He would be with her, would help her, would take care of her. The next time she would have him.

  Her midriff was as smooth as silk and just as warm. Although she'd gained a few pounds in the past couple of weeks, she was still too thin. He could feel her ribs, too prominent beneath her skin. But he had no complaints about her breasts. They were small, soft, sweet, perfect.

  "Sarah … about last night…"

  Her eyes were shut, her breathing uneven. When his thumb and forefinger closed around her nipple, she stopped breathing completely for a moment, then dragged in a harsh, sweet breath. "Don't regret it, Daniel," she whispered.

  "I don't. But…" He slid his hand back to her belly, stretching his fingers from one jutting hipbone on the left to its mate on the right. "You're not taking birth control pills, are you?" It was a meaningless question, one he already knew the answer to.

  "No." She was stunned by how completely she'd overlooked the risk of pregnancy—not wise for a thirty-one-year-old woman whose two pregnancies had both been unplanned.

  "While I was in the drugstore, I—" His face was flushed a dull red. It wasn't an easy subject to discuss under the best of circumstances, but doing it after the fact made it even harder. "But it might be too late."

  She opened her eyes then and looked directly into his. "What would you do if it was too late?"

  He answered without hesitation, without qualification. "I'd take care of you." After a moment he asked uncertainly, "What would you do?"

  Sarah began unbuttoning the shirt she wore and guided his hand back to her breast. "I would force you to marry me," she said with a fierceness that added weight to her threat. "It couldn't be helped that Katie was born illegitimate, but it won't happen again, Daniel."

  He looked vaguely annoyed as he stroked her breast. "I just said I would do that, so you couldn't 'force' me."

  "You said—"

  "I said that I would take care of you. That means marriage."

  She shook her head. The sensations his big rough fingers were sending through her were making it hard to speak, hard to think clearly. "To some men that means living together … or helping to support the baby … or paying for an abortion…"

  He lifted her so that his mouth could make contact with her straining nipple. He nipped at it, bathed it with his tongue, sucked it greedily. "I'm not most men," he reminded her when he laid her on his lap again. There, warm against her bare thigh, she could feel the hard, thick length of his desire straining against the confining jeans.

  "Daniel?"

  "Hmm." He moved his hand to her other breast while his mouth nuzzled wisps of hair away from her ear. His soft response shivered through her, and she turned her head, trying to capture his mouth even as she spoke. "I want you, Daniel. I want you inside me. I want you to love me like you did last night and never stop."

  "Yes." That was what he wanted, too. To never stop.

  They moved to the bed, removing his clothes along the way. She wore his shirt, the buttons loose to allow him intimate access. While he took care of protection, she teased and tormented him with her hands and her mouth, making him feel her need, making him taste his own need, and when he took her, it was sudden, rough, demanding, yet curiously gentle. In spite of the ferocity of his need, in spite of her writhing, driving pleas, he never hurt her. He pushed her to the limit, but never crossed the line. Just further proof, Sarah thought in the quiet aftermath, of what an incredibly special man she'd found.

  "Do you have to work this afternoon?" she asked when he turned away to check the time. Idly she traced her fingertip down the smooth curve of his spine, over taut skin and powerful muscle.

  Daniel lay down again and mimicked her actions, his finger gliding over her skin, leaving a heated trail behind. "That depends."

  She was too sated to respond even when he reached the soft golden curls at her thighs. "On Katie?"

  "And you."

  "What about me?"

  He nudged her leg aside, bending her knee. He lifted her other leg and trapped it between his thighs. The position left her completely vulnerable to him. "Do you want to take care of Katie?"

  "Sure." She shivered when his hand returned to touch her. His finger glided through the curls, relaxing her; then, without warning, he stroked the most sensitive part of her, heated and swollen, and made her gasp.

  "Or would you rather split the baby sitting with me—" he stroked again, this time dipping inside her and ending on the sensitive nub of flesh "—and spend the rest of the day taking care of me?"

  She couldn't answer. Her body was throbbing from too much stimulation, yet not enough. She was mindless, aching, hungry for release from this lovely new pain, but not certain she could survive it. Her fingers twisted into the jumble of covers beneath them, and her hips arched in silent pleading. Then the view behind her tightly closed eyes turned purple, navy, black, until it exploded, accompanied by a drawn-out helpless whimper, into a bright, blinding display of colors.

  Daniel watched the shudders that racked her body, then the smile of lazy satisfaction that came to her lips. He could grow addicted to it, he thought—to this power to make her cry and plead, to make her writhe, to satisfy her pleas. To satisfy her need. To fill her body and her heart and her soul until there would never be a place for another man as long as she lived.

  As he watched, her smile changed from satisfaction to threat. "You'll pay for that," she whispered, her voice husky and promising. "When I find the strength … you'll pay."

  October 24

  Tomorrow would be the twenty-fifth, the day the private detective's report on Sarah was due. Daniel had told Zachary that he would drive into town on Thursday or Friday to meet with him, but he was dreading it. Soon he would know the past that Sarah had deliberately kept hidden from him. Soon he would find out from a stranger all the things that she didn't want him to know. It was wrong … but as long as she refused to tell him herself, as long as she refused to trust him, it was his only choice. Still, it was wrong.

  Maybe today she would talk to him. Maybe if he asked the right questions … if he even knew what they were.

  "You look like you're a million miles away," Sarah remarked.

  He looked up and saw that she was watching him from across the worktable. The sleeves of her pale blue sweatshirt were pushed up to her elbows, and
she was sanding the narrow bar of wood that he'd given her, occasionally running her hand over it the way she'd seen him do. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes coated with fine dust, but she was beautiful. And he wanted her.

  Not just physically, although that need was still there. They'd spent all of Monday and most of Tuesday in bed, and she'd slept beside him each of the past three nights. There was still hunger, but its edges weren't so sharp now. No, he needed more than the feel of her small delicate body beneath his, joined with his. He needed to see her smile, to hear her laugh, to watch her with Katie. He needed to talk to her, to work with her, to spend the quiet evenings beside her. He needed to know that she would be with him today, next week, next month, next year.

  His frown grew dark and fierce. What he was describing was love, and he was not, God help him, going to love her. Not yet. She had too many secrets, too many mysteries. He would offer her friendship. He would take care of her. He would care for her. But until all his questions were answered, until he was satisfied with her answers, he wouldn't let himself love her.

  Sarah suspected from his stony expression and long silence what he was thinking, and she dreaded it. She didn't want to fight with him, she never wanted to, but when he finally spoke, his voice low and dark and rumbly, she knew they would.

  "Why did you give Katie away?"

  "Daniel—"

  "Why did you do it? Didn't you care about her? Didn't you love her?"

  "Of course I did, but—"

  "Then why in God's name did you send her away? You were her mother! A baby needs her mother! A baby deserves a good mother!"

  Sarah turned her back to him and stared out the window. It was still rainy and dreary and cold. With Daniel's last words, she was starting to feel that way inside.

  Maybe it was time to tell him everything. Maybe, by some miracle, he would understand that she'd done what was best for everyone. Maybe he would see that sending Katie away had broken her heart. Or maybe he would continue to believe that no good mother would ever give up her daughter.