Look What the Stork Brought (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  She could have used another day to rest up and prepare herself for the responsibility of motherhood, but her insurance wouldn’t cover it. And thanks to a handsome, smooth-talking rascal who had stolen her heart, her savings, her self-respect and just about everything else of value she possessed, she couldn’t swing it on her own.

  At least he’d left her with something, although that was purely accidental. If she hadn’t taken it to the bank with her that day to show it to her friends and see if it would fit into a deposit box, he would’ve taken that, too.

  She was wearing her old maternity tent. The going-home outfit she’d packed wouldn’t fit over her flab and her outrageous bosom. She’d felt like crying, but then they’d brought in her baby and she’d felt wonderful all over again. Tired, aching, but still wonderful. Euphoria, her new friend would’ve called it.

  She had just asked the orderly to call her a cab when he poked his head around the door and then followed it with a pair of shoulders wide enough to scrape highways. Joe Dana, she decided, was a man who didn’t like to reveal too much of himself. Yesterday she’d seen his scars. Before that she’d noticed only that he was big, even bigger than she was. And dark. Black hair shot with gray. Dark eyes that reminded her of the tinted glass some people had in their cars. From the inside you could see out, but those on the outside didn’t stand a chance of seeing in.

  Even as distracted as she’d been then, and as tired as he’d obviously been, she’d felt his intensity. It was almost audible. Like humming power lines.

  “Good morning,” she greeted, a self-conscious smile trembling at the corners of her lips. “We never got around to finishing our conversation, did we?”

  “You’re fixing to go somewhere?”

  “Home. I’m already cleared for takeoff, as they say in all the airplane movies. I’ve never flown. One of these days I’m going to, though.”

  She beamed at him. He looked baffled, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, which was understandable. She always talked too much when she was nervous. “I just sent someone to call me a cab. The hospital’s lending me a car seat for the baby until I can get one of my own. Isn’t that nice of them?”

  “No need to call a cab. my truck’s right outside.”

  “Oh, but I can’t—”

  “Sure you can. I’ve got a vested interest in little Miss Fatcheeks, remember? The least I can do is see her home.”

  “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind. And then you can ask me whatever it was you wanted to ask me.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, and saying something about pulling his truck up to the front entrance, he left.

  For one crazy moment Sophie started to call him back. Didn’t want him to leave her. She told herself it was only postpartum silliness, and that it would pass. She was already forgetting the birth pangs, just as the nurse said she would. In a few days she’d be back at her computer, juggling nursing, diaper changing and writing ad copy for the agency that currently helped pay the bills while she mailed out résumés and tried not to get her hopes too high.

  All the same, she wondered just who he was, and why he was still hanging around.

  Miss Fatcheeks, indeed! Her name was Iris Rebecca Bayard.

  Three

  “It was the yard that convinced me. That big old oak tree will be just perfect for a swing. And you saw my garden. In a year or so I’m fixing to fence in the other side to make a play yard. I might even get a few laying hens. Out here in the country, you can keep chickens, you know. It’ll be a wonderful place for Iris to grow up.” Sophie only hoped she sounded as confident as her words implied as they turned off the highway.

  Joe had hardly spoken a word since they’d left the hospital, but then she’d already discovered that he wasn’t much of a talker. She’d chattered all the way home because it was what she did when she was nervous, but she was beginning to run out of things to talk about. The truth was, she was feeling less confident with every mile. What on earth had she been thinking of, moving way out here in the country? The closest neighbor was nearly a mile away, and not even particularly friendly. She’d made the mistake of paying a call soon after she’d moved in, and it had been plain from the first that she’d interrupted the grumpy old man in the middle of his morning nap, or something equally important. The first words out of his mouth were that if she was selling something, he wasn’t buying. If she was collecting, he wasn’t giving anything, either, because he was living on social security and there was dagnabbed little of it.

  If her house were to catch on fire, she’d thought at the time, and he happened to see the smoke, he might stir himself to call the fire department. But what if she just needed someone to talk to? What if she needed advice? Looking after a house and a brand-new baby took a certain amount of experience, and she was beginning to think she might’ve bitten off more than she could chew. Not that she’d had much choice. Once the first domino had fallen, the rest had come tumbling down before she even realized what was happening.

  When it came to soaking up guilt, however, Sophie had plenty of experience, dating back to a time when she’d been too young to understand what it meant and had overheard someone say that it was because of her that her father had run off. Since then, she’d collected guilt the way a magnet collects steel filings.

  Flies in the house? Her fault. She must’ve left the window open.

  The cake fell? Oops, she must’ve slammed a door.

  Rained all over the Sunday school picnic?

  Well. She wasn’t quite that powerful. All the same, if she’d prayed a little harder, it might not have rained.

  Now Joe was frowning, and that was probably her fault, too. She’d allowed him to drive her home when she could easily have called a cab. It would have cost a fortune, but any day now she’d be hearing from the ad she’d put in the paper. Last time, she’d taken the whole set to an antique dealer to have it appraised, and he’d offered her five thousand dollars for the lot. Thank goodness she’d had sense enough not to be taken in. He’d ended up paying her twice that for one eensy-weensy piece that looked like something you could buy at Walmart. She’d been patting herself on the back ever since.

  She’d also learned a lesson. The stuff might be tacky, but it was valuable. And it was hers. Rafe had given it to her, and dead or not, he owed her something for all the things he’d stolen. Not to mention child support.

  She slanted a glance at the man beside her. He looked as if he had something on his mind.

  Well, of course he did. He’d told her that yesterday, when he’d strolled into her garden and gotten trapped into playing Good Samaritan. He might be frowning now—he might try to act tough, but she knew better. Underneath it all he was a kind, decent man. The kind of man a woman trusted instinctively. The kind with a good heart.

  And she was even getting used to his face. It was interesting, with all the sharp edges and angles. It was certainly masculine. And strong. And at the moment, scowling.

  “You wanted to ask me something?” Heaven help her if it was about her taxes. She’d always done them herself and never had a smidge of trouble, but along about April 15 of this year she’d been in no frame of mind to concentrate on filling out forms.

  At least not government forms. Her own had filled out so fast it had boggled the mind.

  “It’ll keep,” he muttered.

  “Are you headed back to Texas?”

  “What makes you think I’d be going to Texas?”

  “You have Texas plates. And you mentioned staying at a hotel, so I didn’t think you were from around here.”

  “Right.”

  Right, which? That he was from Texas, or that he’d be going back? She didn’t want him to go. And if that wasn’t scary, she didn’t know what was. Any woman who’d been stupid enough to believe that a handsome, charming scamp like Rafe Davis could take one look at her and fall head over heels in love, needed her head examined. He’d told her she was his golden goddess, and she’d wanted so desperate
ly to believe him she’d let herself be taken in.

  Stupid. That said it all. Here she’d been on her own since she was sixteen-and-a-half, and she hadn’t learned anything at all about men. There was probably a psychological term for women who allowed themselves to be hornswoggled, but she didn’t want to hear it, she really didn’t. At the rate she was going, she’d probably be first in line to buy that oceanfront lot in Arizona if the right man offered it for sale.

  Instead the wrong man had come along and offered something entirely different, and she’d bought it. And before she’d come to her senses, the skunk had ransacked her jewelry box, turned her closet inside out, stolen her bank card and her three-year-old car, driven to the nearest ATM and cleaned out her account.

  And kept on going. Three weeks later he had driven her car into the side of a passenger train down in Georgia.

  But he’d left her with something far more valuable than anything he’d taken. Iris. Her baby. Her family.

  Not to mention all those tacky little jade whatnots that were worth a fortune.

  Joe cleared his throat. From the baby seat between them, Iris smacked her gums without waking up. “Joe, what was it you wanted to ask me?” Let the man state his business and leave, Sophie. You don’t need a crutch to lean on, you only think you do.

  “Have you got a crib? Some kind of baby bed?”

  “Better than that, I have a complete nursery all painted, furnished and ready to receive. Almost the first thing I did when I leased the house was fix a place for her. I knew my ladder-climbing, paint-smelling days were numbered.”

  Sophie laughed. Joe didn’t. So far he’d proved to be kind, helpful and dependable, but a barrel of laughs he was not.

  She thought he might be a policeman, from a few things he’d said while he’d been seeing her through her labor. Now, why on earth would a Texas policeman want to ask her anything? She’d never even been west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  Unless it had something to do with Rafe. As far as she knew, Rafe had never been to Texas, either. But then, what did she know about the man? He’d told her he was in the commodities business and like a dunce, she hadn’t even asked him what kind of commodities he dealt in. By the time he left and she’d had to report the robbery to the sheriff, she wished she’d been a little more wary. And six weeks after that, when the two men had come out to tell her that her car had been found totaled and that the thief was dead, she’d been too dazed from losing her job and learning that she was pregnant. Most of what they’d said had gone in one ear and out the other.

  Joe pulled up beside the house and cut the engine. “Looks like rain.”

  “There’s not a cloud in the sky. Listen, I’ll pay you back for the diapers and all the rest,” Sophie said earnestly. “I’d planned to do my last-minute shopping next week. I get paid on Monday.”

  “No problem. Call it a baby present.”

  “You’re more of a present than a boxcar full of diapers. Honestly, Joe, I’ll never be able to thank you for all you’ve done. If you hadn’t come along—”

  “You’d have picked up the phone and called someone else and everything would have turned out just fine.”

  “I know that,” she said with a certainty she didn’t feel.

  Call who? The few friends who hadn’t moved away were in Winston, at work. She couldn’t have asked any of them to walk out in the middle of a workday, drive all the way out to Davie County, hold her hand while she timed her pains, drive her to the hospital and stay with her until she delivered, and then come back the next day and drive her home again. “All the same, it was a nice thing to do. I guess policemen have to be jacks-of-a-lot-of-different-trades.”

  “What makes you think I’m a policeman?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Not anymore.” He’d told her yesterday when she’d questioned him, that he was retired. Before she could ask from what, she’d had another hard pain. “Better let me take the baby, then I’ll come back and get the rest of the stuff in. Have you ever thought about getting some decent locks installed? A kid with a paper clip could break into your house in ten seconds Sat.”

  Sophie eased herself gingerly out of the high cab and reached back inside for her purse. “And do what? Rob me blind? In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have anything worth stealing.”

  “Everybody’s got a few valuables. Important papers. Jewelry. Antiques.” Carefully he lifted the baby from the car seat and settled her in the crook of his arm.

  Sophie labeled the thought that popped into her mind inappropriate and told herself to grow up. “Oh, sure,” she said airily. “When it comes to antiques, there’s the house itself, only it’s not mine yet. Unless the heirs of the woman who owned it stop squabbling, it might never be mine, but I do have a cookbook that belonged to my great-grandmother if that counts as an antique. As for jewelry, my watch came from the drugstore. Everything else went south a long time ago, but I still have a TV that’ll pick up four-and-a-half stations when weather conditions are just right.”

  Joe didn’t even crack a smile. Hardly surprising. Sophie’s heart felt like a lump of wet dough. This was it, then. He’d leave in a few minutes. He was certainly under no obligation to stay and help her get settled and cheer her up when she got the blues.

  That was probably what ailed her now. Postpartum blues. She’d heard all about it. It was miserable, but hardly terminal.

  Forcing herself to smile, she said. “There’s some sliced beef and a Vidalia onion in the refrigerator if you want a sandwich before you go. Here, I’ll take her now.” She held out her arms for the small, pink-wrapped bundle.

  Joe handed her over. “Feeling possessive, are we?”

  What she was feeling was happy, tearful and hungry all at the same time. At this rate it might take her emotions even longer to recover from childbirth than it did her body.

  “Sure she’s not too heavy for you to be carrying? You just got out of the hospital.”

  “I carried her for almost nine months.”

  “I’d have thought more like twelve.”

  “She’s a big baby. Twenty-three inches long. I was twenty-two and weighed over ten pounds when I was born.”

  “Your family runs to big babies?”

  She shrugged. “I was an only child. When you’re little it’s hard to judge sizes. The whole world’s ten-feet tall.”

  They were standing in the front room. Sophie had painted the walls and hung the curtains from her apartment when she’d moved in. Seeing it now through the eyes of a stranger, it struck her that the new furnishings she’d been so proud of when she’d lived in town weren’t quite right for a house in the country. Less glass and wrought iron, more wood and chintz would’ve been better. She’d sold off one of the jade pieces to lease the house, buy the appliances she’d needed and pay a mover. There’d been little left over for redecorating. Insurance had bought a replacement for her car, but she’d had to settle for a secondhand one. It had given her nothing but trouble ever since. By the time she sold off the next piece, she’d have another stack of bills waiting to be paid, but she was determined to save as much as possible for Iris’s future. Wood and chintz would simply have to wait.

  Joe continued to watch her, his interest disguised by the lazy-lidded look he’d cultivated over the years. He couldn’t quite figure her out, and that bothered him. As a rule he was good at reading people. Give him half an hour, one-on-one, and he could tell you what motivated a particular suspect, whether or not he was hiding anything, how close to breaking he was and just where to apply the pressure to make him bust wide open and spill his guts.

  Ms. Bayard appeared to be an open book. Unfortunately it was written in a foreign language. She was tired and edgy, which was only natural. She wasn’t a whiner. She’d struck him right off as the kind of woman who looked on the bright side of things, even when the going got rough. In that respect, she reminded him of Miss Emma. Or rather, of the way Miss Emma used to be.

  “You got any
family?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Friends?”

  “Well, of course I have friends. Everyone has friends.”

  So where were they? Why hadn’t they showed up at the hospital with flowers and pink balloons?

  At least she had neighbors. Correction—she had a neighbor. An old boozer who’d turn in his own mother for jaywalking if there was a reward.

  He still wasn’t sure who the baby’s father was. Had a pretty good idea, but he wasn’t certain. If it was Davis, as he suspected, then what had their relationship been? Did she know he was dead? Did she know he’d had a wife in Rowlett, a suburb about twenty miles east of Dallas?

  “Well, anyway, if you don’t want a sandwich, maybe you’d like a cup of coffee. One for the road? It won’t take a minute to make a pot, or I have iced tea already made. I don’t reckon it’s gone cloudy since yesterday.” She paused, and a wondering look came over her face. “Just yesterday. When I made that tea, I didn’t have any family at all, and now look at me—I’m a mother!”

  Joe tucked his questions back into a mental file and managed to scrape up what passed for a smile these days. It was easier than he’d expected. She looked so damned earnest with her tired eyes, her frowsy hair and her baggy dress. “You’re mighty eager to get rid of me.”

  “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, of course, but I know you’re anxious to get on with—well, whatever. Anyway, I’m truly beholden to you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if—”

  He cut her off. Dammit, now she was making him feel guilty.

  Holding the baby in one arm, she went and shook a few flakes into the aquarium. “Hi there, Darryl. Look what I brought home,” she said softly.

  “I could’ve done that,” Joe muttered.

  “Darryl’s no trouble. He’s real good company...for a fish.”

  “Yeah, well...don’t overdo things.” He took the baby from her, jiggled the lightly wrapped bundle in his arms and said, “You mentioned coffee? Point me in the direction of the nursery and I’ll put her down and join you in a cup. I could use that sandwich, too, come to think of it. You like mayo or mustard on yours? I’ll make ’em.”