The guerrillas with whom he had been traveling had abandoned their plan to overthrow their government two days ago, deciding it might be better to wait until after the rainy season was over before trying again. They had invited Mason to return then, to cover the story of their glorious deeds of heroism and freedom fighting, but said for now, they were just going to call time out and go home to be with their families.
Mason had thought it was probably a very good idea. He had briefly entertained similar thoughts of returning to Washington to be with Lou and Emily and Mick, but when he thought about seeing Lou again, he’d realized it was still too soon.
Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? How come every time he closed his eyes at night—or, hell, during the day—it was to have visions of Lou dancing in his head. Like Lou seated across from him at the dinner table in her apartment. Or Lou working on some story at the newspaper. Or Lou laughing at something he said while they walked down the street. Or Lou breathless and naked beneath him in bed. It didn’t make sense. No woman had ever stuck in his brain the way she had.
And the hurt. Was that ever going to go away? Every time he remembered the look on her face when he’d told her she was just like any other woman, it felt like someone was turning a knife in his gut. He’d hoped putting distance between them would take care of all the bizarre emotions that had crept up inside him. He’d thought if he could just stay away from her for a while, the fond affection he’d always felt for her would come back to replace the new feelings that had taken its place. Feelings of want, feelings of need. Feelings of other stuff he was afraid to think too hard about. Feelings like he’d never known before and was none too crazy about having now. Needing someone wasn’t in Mason’s character. Taking care of Lou because she needed him was one thing, but feeling a need for her in return? Nuh-uh. He’d never needed anyone. He didn’t know how to need. And he sure as hell didn’t want to.
“Mason, is everything okay?”
The question brought him out of his thoughts only long enough to remember he wasn’t alone at the bar. He recalled vaguely he was supposed to be entertaining his new friend, Whatshername. Taking a deep swallow of his beer, he replied, “Yeah, great. Everything is just great.”
“Do you want to tell Brigitta about it?”
The beautiful blonde smiled a pouty little smile Mason was sure drove all the boys wild. Until a few weeks ago, it probably would have had the same effect on him. Now all he could do was compare her blatantly suggestive expression to Lou’s laughing, open face, and he frowned. Lou never played the games people always played with each other. She wouldn’t be caught dead trying to entice a man with superficial little poses. She wouldn’t have to.
“No, thanks, Brigitta,” he replied, cursing himself for comparing her to Lou—again. “It’s a long story.”
He forced himself to focus on the woman beside him and forget about the one he’d left looking so devastated on Sonora. He told himself Brigitta was everything he looked for in a woman—beautiful, experienced, interesting to talk to, someone who understood the rules of the game and would play by them accordingly. They’d have a terrific time tonight, and in the morning they could go their separate ways, neither of them feeling cheated or expecting anything more. In that regard, she was the complete opposite of Lou. And that, Mason assured himself, was precisely why he preferred women like her.
But for some reason, it wasn’t Brigitta who kept usurping his thoughts. It wasn’t Brigitta’s face that superimposed itself at the forefront of his brain. And it wasn’t Brigitta he really wanted to make love to. It was Lou, dammit. And somehow he knew it was going to be that way for a long time. Maybe forever.
“Brigitta, I’ve got to go,” he said as he stood abruptly and threw some bills down on the bar to cover the costs of their drinks.
“But we just got here,” she objected, clearly startled by the turn of events.
“I know, and I’m sorry to abandon you like this.” Interestingly, though, he wasn’t sorry at all. There was only one woman he’d ever been sorry to abandon. And she was thousands of miles away. “But I really do have to go.”
“Where?”
“Washington, D.C.,” he told her. “Home. I’ve got to go home.”
“And what’s waiting for you there that you can’t have here?” she asked.
Mason took a deep breath and met Brigitta’s gaze levelly. “A woman,” he said simply. “A woman who loves me.”
It was all he could do to keep from adding, A woman I love in return.
****
“It’s time,” Emily announced quietly over breakfast Saturday morning as she poured herself another cup of decaffeinated coffee.
Lou glanced up at the statement, all but forgetting about the spoonful of cereal she had been lifting to her lips. “Uh-oh,” she said softly.
Mick rattled the newspaper section in his hand in an effort to unfold an article about the Chicago Cubs. “Time for what, honey?” he asked.
Emily spooned a generous helping of sugar into her cup. “For the baby. It’s time.”
Mick set his own cup carefully on the table and let the newspaper fall into his lap. “What?”
“I’m going into labor,” Emily said calmly. “It shouldn’t be much longer now.”
“Uh-oh,” Lou repeated, setting her spoon back into the bowl.
For a long moment no one spoke, no one moved, no one breathed. Then Emily smiled and placed her open hand across the floral overalls covering her ample abdomen.
“Oh, yes, it’s time,” she said again.
Mick leapt up and sprang into action. “Right. Suitcase is all packed and in the hall closet, and the car’s gassed up. Lou, get Dr. Stenghal on the horn—her number is magneted to the fridge—and I’ll take Emily’s things out to the car. Emily, you just sit tight and breathe deeply.”
“Are you doing natural childbirth?” Lou asked as she reached for the telephone. “Lamaze?”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Emily replied as Mick exited the kitchen in a blur. “The image I’ve always had of natural childbirth is squatting out in the jungle in the middle of a typhoon. I’m taking the fullest advantage of modern medical technology my doctor will allow.”
Lou nodded sympathetically.
“Okay, let’s go,” Mick announced when he returned a few minutes later. To Lou, he added, “Everything set?”
“Dr. Stenghal said she’d meet the two of you at the hospital in twenty minutes,” Lou assured him.
“The two of us?” Emily asked as Mick helped her out of her chair. “You mean the three of us. I want you to be there, too, Lou.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lou balked. “I’m not real good with hospitals, even maternity wings. I’d just be in the way and—”
“It would make me feel better,” Emily added.
Lou wanted to decline, feeling as if she’d be an intruder on the happiest moment the Dantes had ever experienced. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be a witness to their loving celebration when her own love life lay in tatters.
She started to refuse again. “I don’t think—”
“Please, Lou?”
How was she supposed to turn down such a caring request from a pregnant woman who was going into labor? Wasn’t that a capital crime against the American Way or something? Besides, Mick was looking anything but patient with his hands settled on his jean-clad hips and his chest rising and falling anxiously beneath his gray sweatshirt.
“Okay,” she said, relenting. She was glad she’d changed out of her pajamas and into a pair of blue jeans and a pink short-sleeved blouse. “Lead on, Dantes. I’ll be right behind you.”
****
Mason had assured himself he was prepared to return to Washington to find Lou wasn’t home. And he had been decent enough the night before when he found her not home to not use his key to enter without her permission and wait for her return. It had been because he had respect for her privacy, not because he’d been afraid he might witness her coming home w
ith some guy again. But now it was late Sunday morning, and she still wasn’t home. Never mind that he had telephoned her four times during the night and received no answer. Never mind that he had been waiting in the coffee shop across the street from her apartment since seven waiting for her to return.
That didn’t mean she’d spent the night in someone else’s bed, he told himself. It probably just meant she had turned off the phone and forgotten to switch it on again before leaving really early to get doughnuts or something. Then she may have gone to one of the numerous weekend events that were always going on in the nation’s capital this time of year. It didn’t mean she had been with some jerk guy all night. It didn’t mean she had already given up on Mason.
But wasn’t that what he’d wanted? Hadn’t he told Lou himself she should see other guys? Hadn’t he made it clear she had no place in his own romantic plans for life?
Yeah, but that was before, he argued with himself. Before she took up such a prominent place in his thoughts. Before she became so damned important to him. Before he realized he was in love with her.
All was fair in love and war, right? Mason thought now as he stood at Lou’s front door once again. He removed his keys to her apartment from his pocket and inserted them into the lock. That was how the saying went, right? So this wasn’t actually illegal entry, was it? No, it was something else. It was…
Okay, so it was illegal entry, he admitted as he pushed the door inward. But it was for a good and noble cause.
Irritated at being awakened, Roscoe emitted a low cat sound from his position on the couch. If Roscoe was here, Mason deduced, then Lou couldn’t have gone far. She always made sure there was someone taking care of her cat. Nothing was amiss in the apartment. The refrigerator was as stocked as it normally was for a single woman living alone, and there was no indication she had planned for an extended stay anywhere. As Mason passed by the table near her kitchen, he glanced briefly at a pile of mail lying there. He would have taken no more notice of it if his eyes hadn’t lit on the return address of the envelope atop the pile and the fact that it was the address of a newspaper in New York. Curious, he lifted the stack and sifted through it, discovering another letter from a newspaper in Miami.
Why would Lou be getting mail from other newspapers? Then he noticed that her typewriter was sitting out. Beside it were two more letters Lou had apparently received that week. He read them shamelessly. Just because he had acknowledged the fact that she was a grown woman with whom he had fallen in love didn’t mean he was going to stop looking after her. The words contained within those letters, however, caused him to slump into a nearby chair and shake his head in disbelief.
Lou was leaving, he realized with no small amount of panic. She had two positive replies for what had clearly been a job search on her part. One from Phoenix and one from—Seattle? That was a million miles away. She couldn’t go to Seattle. He’d never see her again.
Which was probably the whole point, he told himself. She wanted to be as far away from him as she could get. And why was that surprising? What had he expected? That he would come home to find her curled up on her bed crying her eyes out for him two weeks after he dumped her? That he would just say, “I changed my mind. I love you,” and have her leap into his arms?
Well, yeah, actually, that was what he had been hoping would happen. But she was an adult woman and would behave as such in facing reality’s obstacles. She would pick herself up and get on with her life, just as he’d always encouraged her to do. The problem was, he’d never intended for her to get on with her life without him.
What if she’d already accepted one of these offers? What if she was in Phoenix or Seattle right now telling them she just had to go home and pack her things and would start work at the end of the week? Where would that leave him?
It wasn’t something Mason wanted to think about. Living without Lou? It was a concept he’d never even considered before. He’d just always assumed she would be there. He’d been so certain that their lives would remain parallel forever, that one wouldn’t do anything without the other’s knowledge. Had he been wrong to assume that? What did he base his certainty on anyway? Had he ever taken Lou’s feelings into consideration? Had he ever let her know that was how he felt? Had he ever offered her any indication he wanted her to be around forever?
No, he hadn’t done any of those things. Instead, he had told her to take it somewhere else. And now she was clearly planning on doing just that. He was such a jerk. How could he have let things get so messed up?
His fingers clenched furiously on the piece of paper in his hand. Where was Lou now? he wondered. Seattle? Phoenix? Someplace even farther away? Wherever she was, he was the one who’d sent her there. He only wondered if he’d be able to talk her into coming back. Because suddenly, Mason knew that the only thing he wanted in the world was Halouise Lofton of Hack’s Crossing, West Virginia. And it wasn’t the kid who’d come down from the mountains six years ago he wanted, either. He wanted the woman Lou had become, every last inch of her. And he would do whatever it took to get her back. Because his life would be meaningless without her.
The sound of a key in the lock brought him to attention. His pulse raced at the prospect of seeing Lou now, when he was so unprepared, with his heart baring itself for the world to see. But maybe it would be better to let her know how he felt, right off the bat. To his combined relief and annoyance, however, it wasn’t Lou who entered the apartment, but her across-the-hall neighbor, Mrs. Maloney. When the elderly woman saw a man at the table, her hand went up to splay open over her heart.
“Oh, Mason,” she said. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Maloney. I came in looking for Lou, but she isn’t home.”
“Well, I know that. I’ve come to feed her cat. Been picking up her mail, too. She’s in Cannonfire this weekend, visiting your sister and brother-in-law.”
“But we weren’t supposed to go until next weekend,” Mason said. “The baby isn’t due until then.”
Mrs. Maloney shrugged. “Lou got a call on Thursday night. Emily wanted her to come this weekend because she was sure the baby was going to be early. Lou told me not to expect her back before Tuesday.”
Mason went to the phone in the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “Have you heard anything more?” he asked. “Did Lou call?”
Mrs. Maloney shook her head. “No, nothing, dear.”
He dialed the Dantes’ number and waited for it to ring ten times before replacing the receiver. “There’s no answer at the house.”
Mrs. Maloney grinned. “Maybe your sister was right. Maybe they’re at the hospital right now.”
“Uh-oh,” Mason mumbled. He hurried toward the front door. “I’ve got to go, Mrs. Maloney. Thanks for taking care of Roscoe.”
“No worry,” she called after him as he raced down the stairs. “Give my best to all concerned!”
Her final words were lost on Mason. He was much too preoccupied with other matters. His sister was about to have a baby. He was about to become an uncle. But even more important than that, Lou wasn’t in another city being interviewed for a job that would take her far away from him. A flicker of hope sparked deep in his soul. Lou hadn’t left him. Yet. He only hoped he would be able to make it to Cannonfire in time.
****
“Time?” Mick demanded as Emily cried out in the labor room, crushing his hand in hers.
“Four minutes,” Lou told him, fixing her gaze on her wristwatch as she totaled the passage of time between the other woman’s contractions. Emily had been in labor for three hours, and Lou could nearly feel the tension clearly tightening Mick’s muscles. He was a man who prided himself in his physical strength, and to know he was helpless to ease his wife’s suffering during childbirth was probably tying him in knots.
“All right, I’m going after Dr. Stenghal,” he muttered. “This has gone on long enough.”
Lou nodded as he rushed out the door then turned to smile reassuringly a
t Emily.
“Michael doesn’t understand that the pain is something I can handle,” Emily said as she inhaled another sharp breath. “He thinks I’m too fragile to go through with this. He forgets that women have been doing it for millions of years.”
“Mason is the same way,” Lou replied. “The whole time we were on Sonora, he was so sure he would have to be the one who kept me out of trouble and felt responsible for keeping me protected from danger and had to make sure I didn’t get hurt. And I was perfectly safe for the duration of the trip. The only time I got hurt was when…was when he told me to get lost.”
“Lou, he didn’t mean it,” Emily assured her as she took her hand.
Lou smiled sadly. “That’s just it, Emily. I’m sure he did.”
The hand holding hers gripped harder as another contraction shook Emily. “Oh, boy,” the other woman whispered roughly. “That was a bad one. Time?”
Lou checked her watch. “Three and a half minutes.”
“They’re getting closer. Where are Mick and Dr. Stenghal?”
“Right here,” Mick replied as he burst through the door with doctor in tow.
Dr. Stenghal was tall and willowy, with silver hair coiled into a chignon and horn-rimmed glasses. Beneath her white jacket, she wore hospital-green scrubs, and Lou thought she looked like the most capable woman on earth. Her concern for Emily eased.
“So, I hear you’re about ready to bring that little nipper into the world,” Dr. Stenghal said with a smile.
“I’m past ready,” Emily told her.
“Well, then let’s get you into the proper room. This is the labor room, in case you didn’t notice. You can’t deliver that baby until you get into the delivery room.” Dr. Stenghal’s smile broadened. “We do have rules in this hospital, you know. Rules that simply must be followed.”
“Then get me out of here,” Emily said on a shallow breath.
Lou watched as Dr. Stenghal wheeled Emily out of the room, noting how Mick held his wife’s hand and murmured reassuring words meant only for her ears. She followed the group out, but where the others turned left for the delivery room, Lou headed right for the waiting room. It would probably be a long afternoon. She wished she’d brought something to read.
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