Look What the Stork Brought (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  “Where is it, Sophie?”

  “My computer? It was—”

  “You know what I’m talking about. I don’t think they got what they were looking for. I think that’s the reason they did a job on the place. Because they couldn’t find the jade, and they were mad as hell.”

  She crossed her arms over her breasts. Scowling at the shadowy garden fence, she said, “That’s hardly my fault, is it? And anyway, how do you know it was a they, and not a him?”

  “Or a her?” So he told her about the tire tracks the deputy had found, that didn’t match her car or his truck, and about the two sets of footprints, one male, one female. He’d missed those because he hadn’t taken the time to search a big-enough perimeter, and because he’d been so damned concerned about Sophie.

  What they said about doctors not treating their families went for cops, too. “Quit stalling, honey. You’re going to have to level with me, and we both know it. For Iris’s sake, if not your own. They’ll try again once I’m gone. This time your car and my truck were both gone. They knew the place was empty.”

  “I don’t want to hear this; I really don’t.”

  He persisted. “Maybe next time, they won’t care who’s home. What happens then?”

  “There might not be a next time. You can’t be sure they didn’t find what they were looking for. Anyway, maybe they found out there’s nothing here worth stealing.”

  “Where is it, Sophie?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Sophie, whose nerves were frayed right down to the bone, flung out her hands, accidentally knocking the glass of iced tea from his grasp. Ice cubes flew out into her petunia bed. The glass hit the porch floor and rolled slowly off the edge. It was the last straw. She swore—something she didn’t do often or well—and then burst into tears. Something she’d done entirely too much of lately.

  Joe swore, too. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, he took her in his arms. Something hard inside him wanted to push his advantage. Something soft—he could’ve sworn there was nothing soft left—said, “Hey, now...it’s not worth crying over. Nobody got hurt. If you’d had a decent burglar alarm, none of this would’ve happened.” It was a lie, and they both knew it.

  “Who’d hear the thing and call it in, my friendly neighbor down the road? All burglars know how to cut wires and things.”

  Joe wasn’t about to go into the technicalities of a good security system. She couldn’t afford much. Probably couldn’t even afford to feed the dog he was going to give her, but that wasn’t going to keep him from trying, on both counts.

  She felt good in his arms. He tried to think brotherly, fatherly, avuncular thoughts, but it wasn’t working. She was all woman. Warm, strong, smelling of baby powder and herbal soap. Any man who would take advantage of a woman at a time like this was three degrees lower than pond scum.

  Not that he would. Not that he had any intention of doing anything more than seeing to her safety, recovering what he’d come for and heading west.

  Sophie took a deep, steadying breath and slid her hands off his shoulders to push against his chest. He let her go instantly. She told herself it was a measure of her intelligence that she didn’t throw herself at him again, because, truly, she would far rather hide in his arms for the next few years than do what had to be done.

  “I’ll go get the shovel.” She sighed.

  Joe tilted his head. “Come again?”

  “Turn on the yard light, will you? It’s the second switch inside the back door. Oh, and listen out for Iris while you’re in there.” She stepped off the porch and headed around the side of the house.

  Curiouser and curiouser. Joe turned, went inside and then joined her a few minutes later in the backyard, at the far end of her vegetable garden.

  He watched in silence as she planted her foot on the spade, pushed down cautiously and carefully lifted a few ounces of red Davie County clay. Watched as she did it again and again, and then he began to swear.

  “Here’s the first one,” she said, handing him a muddy plastic bag with something hard and lumpy inside.

  She moved on to the next row and carefully repeated the exercise. Joe collected the bags. All twelve of them. One piece had been sold. Another, the Ch’ien Lung vase, was back in the Darryls’ aquarium. He’d figured it was as safe a place as any.

  But not as safe as under the first plant in each row of vegetables. “What ever made you bury it?”

  “I don’t have a safe. It was too bulky to fit into a deposit box, and besides, there’s nothing wrong with burying valuables. People do it all the time.”

  “Sure they do.” There’d been a joke going around headquarters a few years back about the con’s wife who wrote to her husband in prison to tell him she’d buried the loot in the backyard.

  A week later, she wrote again and told him the backyard was all dug up and ready for planting.

  Sophie propped the shovel against the fence, dusted off her hands and turned toward the house. Joe, loaded down with muddy, lumpy plastic bags, followed.

  It was all there. God knows what it was worth, Joe marveled. He wouldn’t have given five bucks for the lot Still, some of the carving was incredibly intricate. The color was nice enough, too, if you happened to like green: The stuff ranged from shades of faded khaki to iceberg lettuce. But of all the artifacts his grandfather had collected that were now scattered around his grandmother’s sixteen-room, turn-of-the century mansion, the jade was his least favorite. His own taste ran more to Navaho rugs and baseball memorabilia.

  “So,” she said. They were seated once again at the kitchen table, the jade spread out between them.

  “So,” he echoed, legs sprawled out, elbows on the table, the beginnings of a headache tugging at his hairline.

  “I suppose it’s just as well. To tell the truth, my conscience was starting to bother me. Once I found out what kind of a man Rafe was, I did wonder. Still, he said he collected antiques. He could’ve come by it honestly. And he did give it to me, but looking back, I don’t think he’d really planned to. I just happened to walk in at the wrong time, and he said the first thing that popped into his mind.” She sighed. Propping her chin in her hand, she nudged one of the muddy bags with her forefinger.

  So Joe told her about the reward.

  “Ten-thousand dollars,” he heard himself saying. He’d originally thought five, but five grand didn’t go very far these days. Ten might give her a better purchase on the future.

  He could see it coming. All the telltale signs. Her eyes took on that glittery look. Her chin wobbled, lifted a notch or two and then firmed up again. The tip of her nose turned red.

  “No,” she said. “No, thank you.”

  He frowned. He hadn’t bothered to read his bank statements lately, but he was pretty sure his trust fund could take the hit without even flinching. “Or maybe it was twenty, I forget.”

  “Joe, thank you. I know what you’re trying to do, and I can’t accept. But thank you.”

  It cost her to say it. He could tell by the way her voice rambled all over the scale. “I’m not trying to do anything. I’m only telling you that there’s a reward for the recovery of the J. J. Dana collection. The stuff was insured, after all.”

  Sophie couldn’t look at him. It was over. She’d known all along it would be this way. Now that he had what he’d come for, he would take it and leave. There wasn’t a single reason why he should stay, and she would miss him. It was already starting to hurt. But she’d hurt before and healed, and she would heal this time, too.

  Maybe next time she’d have the good sense not to let herself get emotionally involved with anyone who offered her a kind word. Even stray cats had better judgment.

  “Sophie?”

  “I’ve got some boxes out in the—oh, and you’ll need tissue for wrapping each piece. There’s a box of Christmas stuff in the—”

  “Sophie, listen. About the reward. You might as well—”

  “No. I told you, Joe, I’m not taking a
ny reward for something that belongs to your grandmother. Let’s just call it even, shall we? You helped me out when I needed a hand, and I’m glad I was able to return the favor.”

  He raked back his chair, stood and began to pace. Her kitchen wasn’t all that big. She could feel the energy radiating off his lean, rangy body like heat waves rising off hot asphalt on a blistering summer day. “Well, for heaven’s sake, I’d think you’d be happy! You came looking for your grandmama’s jade whatnots and you found them, and it didn’t cost you a blessed penny! What more do you want? Green stamps?”

  His eyebrows went crooked. “Green stamps? What the dickens do you know about green stamps? They went out with Ozzie and Harries.”

  “It’s just something my mother used to say. At least, I think she did.”

  “Yeah, well, my mother used to say, ‘But it was on sale, George. Look how much money I just saved you.’ So now that we’ve swapped life histories, can we get back to the subject? If you won’t take the money for yourself, take it for Iris. Kids are expensive to raise.”

  “I don’t need charity.”

  Joe brushed both hands through his hair. He started counting. Out loud. He got as far as seven before he broke off. “Fine! Would you just tell me why not? At least tell me that!”

  “Because I sold one of the pieces! It’s gone. I can’t pay you back because I don’t have the money. If what it said on the back of the photograph is right, it was worth a lot more than I got for it, only I didn’t know that at the time. The man at the antique shop offered me a hundred dollars at first—”

  “A hundred dollars!” Joe’s sun-bronzed face turned red. “You didn’t—”

  “No, of course not Give me credit for better sense than that. He ended up paying—well, a lot more than that, at least.”

  He took a tight turn around the table and came to a halt with the toes of his worn Western boots about two inches from her muddy white sneakers. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want to know anymore. We’ll just deduct whatever you got for it from the reward money, and your conscience will be in the clear.”

  “I said no, and I meant it. I don’t want to fight with you about this, Joe. You got what you came for, so why can’t you be happy?”

  The sound he made came from somewhere deep in his throat. Taking her face between his hands, he forced her to meet his gaze, and because she couldn’t help herself, she stared back. Defiantly, at first.

  Neither of them spoke, but Sophie’s breathing quickened. So did Joe’s. He had touched her before, but never like this. She sensed anger, impatience, frustration and... something else. “Joe,” she whispered.

  “Don’t say it.” His breath was warm, sweet, soft. His hands were hard, callused, urgent. She couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it.

  He was going to kiss her. Her lips softened, parted, and her eyelids drifted down. She felt her skirt brush against his legs as she moved imperceptible closer. She took a deep breath...

  And then felt the brush of his lips. Her knees threatened to buckle. She began to tremble. Moist, incredibly soft, he stroked her lips with his own as if afraid to commit to something deeper.

  A familiar sound broke through her consciousness, and she thought, no, no—not now!

  “Sophie,” Joe murmured against her mouth.

  “I know,” she said the same way.

  “I don’t want to let you go.”

  But you will, she thought. There was never any chance that you wouldn’t.

  Pulling away was like trying to swim through cold molasses, but she did it By the time she had arranged herself in the rocking chair, unbuttoned her blouse and settled her daughter to nurse, she’d stopped even hoping he would follow her.

  Of course he wouldn’t follow her. Why should he? There was nothing the least bit enticing about a flabby, badly dressed woman nursing a baby.

  All the same, she sighed. Sighed and started thinking of all the adjustments she was going to have to make in her plans for the future. No waiting until Iris was three months old, for one thing. She’d have to send out résumés right away and see if she could borrow a PC from the agency so she could go on writing. It didn’t bring in anywhere near enough to live on. but for the moment, it was all she had.

  As for buying the house, option or no option, she might as well forget it. She’d be lucky to pay the rent.

  Clothes. She’d have to start exercising right away so that once she found a job she could fit into her prepregnancy clothes, because she certainly couldn’t afford to buy a new wardrobe. Her feet had grown half a size during her pregnancy, too. Somehow, she didn’t think exercise was going to change that.

  By the time she finished the nursing, burping and changing routine, she had things all pretty much settled in her mind. She had a strong tendency toward orderly thought...until just lately, that was.

  Joe was nowhere to be found, which was probably just as well. She could hear his footsteps overhead. The bathroom mirror was steamy. Evidently he’d showered and gone up to bed.

  With a sense of loss she didn’t care to explore, she took her own shower, examined herself closely in the mirror for stretch marks and other indications of bodily changes, and went to bed.

  Lord, she was tired! But then, considering all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, it was no wonder.

  In the middle of a dream, with no notion of what had disturbed her, Sophie came wide-awake. Sitting up in bed, she glanced over at the crib, which she’d moved into her bedroom. By the faint pink gleam of the night-light she could see the reassuring hump of Iris’s bulky diapered bottom lifting the sheet.

  She heard a thump. The sound came from the back of the house, not the front Someone was in the kitchen.

  Dear Lord, not again! Had Joe forgot to lock the pantry window?

  Her first impulse was to call him, but she didn’t. She was having a hard enough time as it was, convincing him that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself. She felt for her housecoat, didn’t bother with slippers and walked silently to the door, avoiding the floorboard that always creaked.

  There was a light coming from the kitchen. The door was shut, but it shone underneath. She could call 911 and wait for help, or she could throw open the door and scream for Joe. Knowing that any phone call she made could be heard easily from the kitchen, she chose the latter.

  She had surprise on her side. Once she yelled, Joe would be down those stairs like a shot. Before the intruder could recover Joe would be on him, of that she hadn’t the least doubt. It was what policemen did, after all. React to emergencies.

  Her heart was thumping up against her esophagus. She forgot to breathe and then gulped air and had to stifle a cough. With her hand on the doorknob, she braced herself, flung open the door and screamed Joe’s name.

  Joe dropped the sugar bowl. Wearing nothing but boxers and boots, he stared at the apparition in the flapping flowered robe, her hair a wild nimbus around her flushed face.

  “Huh?”

  Shoulders slumping, she covered her face with both hands. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she whispered. Her eyes widened as peeping between her fingers, she took in what seemed to be vast stretches of naked flesh above and below his shorts.

  He had a better build than she did. Smaller waist. Flatter abdomen. Shapelier legs, even if they were covered with short dark hair. He was lean, muscular and absolutely without doubt the most...

  Swallowing hard, she forced her eyes above his chest. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Did I wake you? I tried to be quiet, but I dropped the lid to the butter dish.”

  “I thought you were a burglar.”

  “Ah, jeez, honey, I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought something to eat—” He held out the cheese, the butter and a jar of marmalade.

  Sophie let out the breath she’d been holding. “It’s all right. I had trouble, too. Getting to sleep, I mean. And then, when I did, I had a bad dream—all about being chased by a pirate with one o
f those great big curvy knives.”

  Joe set the food on the table. He’d already taken out the milk and bread. “Let me fix you a sandwich.”

  “My stomach’s still quivering.”

  “Then milk’s what you need. Lactating women—”

  “I know about lactating women,” she said repressively, pouring two glasses of two-percent and reaching for the reduced fat cheddar. “This hasn’t been my day.”

  They ate in silent companionship. Sophie consciously avoided looking directly at his body, and after a while, the initial effect of all that raw masculinity began to wear off. She even went so far as to tell herself that if he so much as mentioned that damned jade, she was going to bop him with the marmalade jar.

  But he didn’t, and she didn’t, and then Joe put the remains into the refrigerator while Sophie rinsed out the glasses, and she thought, this is what having a husband would be like. Someone to share sleepless nights with. Someone to turn to when dreams go bad and things go wrong, and you need someone to hold you and not ask questions for which there aren’t any answers.

  “Ready to turn in?” he asked. She knew he was deliberately avoiding putting pressure on her. Pressure of any kind. And she appreciated it; she really did.

  All the same, she wished he would hug her. A simple, friendly good-night hug. Was that too much to ask?

  Evidently Joe picked up something in her attitude. Something about the hesitant way she reached for the light switch. The reluctant way she turned toward her own room.

  “Stitl not sleepy?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “But don’t worry about it. As soon as I fall asleep, Iris will wake me up. Her timing is flawless.”

  “Then why don’t I come in and keep you company until you wind down. We can sit over by the window and hold a whispered conference about colleges—about whether to send her to a military school or an all-girl’s college. And about what kind of dog we’re going to get—male or female.”