by Lisa Plumley
“Larry, come on!” Grunting with effort, she managed to drag her dog away from the love-in. She reeled in the leash and locked it in place. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I think I know.” Nick lifted his mail—and Shemp—from his head. “They probably smell the ingredients I’ve been using for my latest invention.”
“Eau de pet chow?”
“Something like that. It’s a sports drink. Beef-and tuna-flavored—”
“Pet Gatorade!” Chloe interrupted. “You really made it!” She couldn’t believe he’d remembered. And taken time away from his growth accelerator work to do it. “Can I put some in Red’s shop? It’ll be a mega-seller. You’ll see.”
“Before you come up with a multilevel marketing scheme, maybe you’d better come check it out for yourself.” He grinned and aimed her bird toward her, letting Shemp click-click his way across a sweepstakes envelope and onto her shoulder again. “You want to?”
“Hmmm.”
“Hmmm?”
“Hmmm, I hope you weren’t planning to enter that.” Chloe leaned forward to examine the Shemp surprise on the envelope.
Nick leaned forward, too. “But I’m already a winner!”
She grinned and batted her eyelashes at him. “You were always a winner with us, Nick.”
“Cute. Anyway, come on inside. I’ll show you what’s got your menagerie all riled up.”
“I’d better take these guys home first.” Chloe lifted Moe from his new perch around Nick’s shoulders. “Next thing you know, Shemp will decide you’re his new lovebird companion and things will get really interesting.”
Nick shuddered. “I don’t even want to know what you mean by that.”
“Nope, you probably don’t. See you in a few minutes!”
Chloe’s “few minutes” stretched into a half hour before Nick heard her coming up his front walk. Female standard time, he mused as he opened his front door and watched her approach. It was a whole other dimension.
She waved, hurrying with surprising pregnant-bellied grace between the white oleander bushes bordering his walk and front porch. Her sneakered feet clomped quickly over the porch floorboards.
“Look!” She waved a huge, ripped-open express mail package. “This was waiting on my doorstep when I got home.”
She bounded inside, powered by excitement and something else Nick couldn’t define. He shut the door and turned to find her jiving across his living room, hugging the package to her chest. This time, that “glow” of hers was no joke, and this time it didn’t come from a workout or her pregnancy. It came from whatever was in that package.
Hell.
It could only be one thing, Nick figured. Even though he’d known it would come someday, the reality still felt like a sucker punch to the gut.
“So, when’s Bruno coming back?”
Chloe’s head came up. Her fingers froze on the package. Somehow, he’d liked it better when she’d been hugging the damned thing. At least then she’d looked happy.
Well, he’d be damned if he’d make her miserable now. Wasn’t this what they’d both worked toward for so many weeks? Bruno was coming back. Nick would be able to concentrate full-time on work again for a change. They should both be ecstatic, dammit!
Or at least one of them could be.
“I mean,” he went on, forcing the words past his suddenly aching throat, “you must be wanting to go get things ready for him. You know, to meet him at the airport.” Why wasn’t she moving? “Or the harbor, I guess. What’s the preferred Marine mode of travel anyway?”
His voice cracked on the joke. Swearing under his breath, Nick stared at the test tubes he’d arrayed in their holders on the coffee table, all set up to show Chloe the different varieties of pet sports drinks he’d come up with. For some reason, the samples looked smaller than he’d remembered.
“Oh, you mean this!” She waved the package. “Nick, it’s the—”
“Yeah. Good news, huh?”
She beamed. Hell. Next she’d probably want to read him the damned thing.
“Let me put these back in my office and we’ll—”
“Nick, wait.” Her voice came hesitantly from across the room. “I’m sorry. Your invention… Awww, Nick. I’m sorry. I was too excited to think straight. I should have—”
“No apologies necessary.” Striding toward the table, he swept the tubes in his arms. They clinked against each other, sounding as hollow as his heart felt. “I can show you these another time.”
“No, wait! It’s just been so long since I’ve heard from my dad that I couldn’t wait to—”
She kept on talking, but Nick’s brain stuttered on the word “dad,” and refused to catch up. The package wasn’t from Bruno?
She touched his shoulder. “Why don’t you show me what’s got Larry and Moe all crazy over you today? Then we’ll do this.” She nodded at the envelope and shook it in her excitement. “Okay?”
Only one thought zinged through his head, replaying itself like an ancient vinyl LP stuck on one really well-played groove: The Package Wasn’t From Bruno song.
“Okay?” she prompted.
Nick shook his head to clear it. He focused on Chloe. It wasn’t an easy task, considering the way she was bouncing in place.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “I’ll show you this later. It’s not every day you get a supersize express mail from your father.”
“It’s never, actually,” she admitted, raising the package. She flipped it over to read the addresses on the front. “He’s very busy.” She frowned briefly, then her gaze zipped to Nick. “Are you sure?”
Nodding, he arranged the test tubes on the coffee table. As long as it wasn’t a letter from Bruno in that package, he’d listen to just about anything.
“Okay!” She jigged toward him, all excitement restored. Her smile brightened as she put her hand in the envelope. The flexible waterproof packaging bulged as she rummaged inside, talking non-stop. “He must have gotten my letter about the baby,” she said breathlessly. “I wasn’t sure whether I should send it to his vacation house in Florida or his new apartment in Manhattan. You know, he’s always, ummm, on the move.”
She withdrew a small bubble-wrapped bundle and an embossed ivory card. For an instant, she hugged the items to her chest. She all but threw them toward him in her excitement. “Look!”
“Okay!” he squealed, mimicking her high-octane delivery. He grinned despite himself as he caught everything. Her enthusiasm was impossible to resist.
The bubble wrap crinkled as Nick juggled everything to get the card on top. He rubbed his thumb over the monogrammed initials on the front of the card. Ritzy. But then, if he remembered correctly, Chloe’s father was a corporate executive for an international consulting firm. He could undoubtedly afford something nicer than a drugstore note card, especially for his own daughter.
Beside him, Chloe hugged his arm excitedly. She gave his biceps a vise-grip squeeze. “Go ahead. Read what it says!”
Resisting the urge to flex, Nick flipped open the folded note card. A business card fluttered out. He caught it with his thumb just before it slipped to the floor, and read the words beside the tasteful logo. Sloan, Hinkle, Hinkle-Sloan, and Carmichal: Consultants.
“Whoa. Consultants too exclusive to reveal what they’re supposed to be consulted about. Swanky.”
“I guess so.” She shrugged as she read over his shoulder. “I’ve never visited his company, but it keeps him pretty busy.”
Not too busy to advertise for more business from his own daughter, Nick noticed. What kind of guy slipped a business card in his family mail?
Chloe tapped it. “Hinkle-Sloan is my father’s second wife,” she explained. “Remember? The one I told you about?”
“The wedding where you wore your Brownie uniform instead of the flower girl dress they gave you and staged a sit-down strike in the middle of the church aisle?”
She gave him a mischievous grin. “I was seven years old.” She made a
show of examining her manicure with inch-thick innocence. “What did I know about weddings?”
“Enough to know you didn’t want your dad to remarry, I guess.”
“Hmmph. They managed to squeeze past me and do it anyway.” Chloe rested her hand on her middle and stroked gently. “Anyway, it wasn’t just me. The ring bearer helped, too.”
“See? Even then you could wrap a guy around your little finger.”
“Fun-ny.”
“He wasn’t wearing a Brownie uniform, I take it.”
“No. He thought his knees looked too knobby in the little skirt.”
Nick laughed as she snuggled nearer. Her belly nestled companionably against his hip, familiarly warm and round beneath her sweatshirt. Chloe hadn’t been this close to him since their patio-table encounter, Nick realized. Over the intervening weeks, she’d kept her distance from him. Now, if he hadn’t had his hands full already, he’d have pulled her even closer.
“Since the wedding, it’s really been Hinkle-Sloan-Carmichal,” she went on, wrinkling her nose, “but Tabitha doesn’t think that looks nice on a business card.”
“Aww. Poor Tabitha.” He grinned. “I hate it when multi-marriages wreck my business cards. Sooo inconvenient.”
“Be nice,” she ordered. And pinched him.
“Youch!” he yelped, rubbing his elbow against his side. “Be nice yourself, you big bully.”
“Sorry.” She jabbed him in the ribs. “Hurry up and look at everything!”
Nick gave her a sideways glance and realized she was probably oblivious to all the Three Stooges poking and jabbing she was doing. In fact, she wasn’t even looking at him anymore. Instead, she squished up closer to him and stared at the things in his hands, twirling her hair against her cheek.
Insecurity clue number one. Messing up that immaculate hairstyle of hers. He wondered what was bugging her. Maybe she’d thought the package was from Bruno, too, and was disappointed it wasn’t.
Grrr. He resisted the urge to rip open the bubble wrap, and scanned the message on the card instead. Congratulations, Chloe, it read in neat laser-printed type. Tabitha and I—
He quit reading and looked up. “Chloe, this message is printed. As in computer-generated and printed.”
Her forehead wrinkled as she glanced at the card. Yup, it’s still the same one, her expression said. “Of course it is. Catch up, Nick! This is the twenty-first century. Secretaries don’t handwrite things these days.”
“Secretaries?”
Another shrug. “My dad suggested I route my correspondence through one of his secretaries. It’s more expedient.”
His jaw dropped.
Then snapped shut when Chloe laughed.
“I know, I know.” She gave him an ignore-those-pesky-concerns kind of wave. “You’re thinking my dad must be some big old stuffy corporate muckety-muck, having secretaries at his beck and call like he does, right? But—”
“No, that wasn’t precisely what I was thinking, but—”
“—but not even four secretaries would have that effect on him. He’s a regular guy, really.”
“Four. Four secretaries?” And the guy still couldn’t find the time to handwrite a note to his only daughter, a month before his first grandchild was due?
“No, he only has three secretaries. Sheesh, Nick, you’re not listening. All I’m saying is, my dad’s just an ordinary Joe who happens to be in big business.” She stared expectantly at him for a minute, then prodded his shin with her sneakered foot. “Keep reading!”
Nick looked at the note card and seriously considered shredding the thing. That was about the nicest treatment it deserved. But Chloe seemed thrilled to have it, so he only raised it higher and went on reading.
Tabitha and I, it said, are delighted with your news. We’ll be thinking of you during our annual Christmas cruise next month! Give the newest Carmichal a kiss for grandpa, and call me if you need anything. Love, your father, Newton Carmichal.
At least the signature was handwritten.
Beside him, Chloe sighed. “Isn’t that sweet? Did you see how he put ‘grandpa’ in there? How he said to call him if I needed anything?” She hugged herself and beamed up at him. “Thank God for Lucinda.”
“Lucinda?”
“Secretary number two.”
“Of course.”
“If not for her, my letter might never have reached him.”
“Right.”
How had Nick never noticed how outrageously…absent her father was? How thoughtless?
“You know, this really gives me hope, Nick. I think this might be a new beginning for us.”
“You and Lucinda?”
“Me and my dad, silly.” Chloe poked him again and gazed fondly at the card. “Sweet, huh?”
Nick gazed down at her smiling, sunlit expression, and realized there was nothing else to do. He didn’t have the heart to tell Chloe a truth she so obviously didn’t want to hear. So he smiled right back and lifted the bubble-wrapped package still waiting to be opened.
“It’s really nice, Chloe.” You’re really a liar, Steadman. He rattled the package in his hand, then winked. “What’s this, do you think? Gold-plated mutual funds? Baby bootie bonds?”
“He’s not a stockbroker.” She took away the note card and hugged it close while Nick unwrapped the bubble wrap. “Just look, will you? I can’t wait for you to see!”
The last of the clear cushioned coating came away. Nick looked inside. Nestled inside the wrap, nestled inside a fancy white box, nestled inside a pillow of tissue paper, was a shiny silver thing wrapped with a white ribbon. Monogrammed with a set of three script letters too fancy to make out on the curved surface and polished to a high-gloss, it looked sort of like a miniature silver dumbbell.
For a newborn baby? The fitness craze was getting way out of hand.
Never mind, Nick commanded himself. Say something nice.
“Umm, I can see my teeth in it.” He made a goofy face at his reflection. “What do you know about that?”
“I know!” Chloe burbled, dancing up on tiptoes. “Isn’t it great?”
“It’s—it’s—” He turned it over and experimentally hefted it like a tiny barbell. “What the hell is it, Chloe?”
She quit dancing. “It’s a baby rattle. From one of those exclusive department stores back east.”
“A baby rattle?” Nick looked at the cold, hard thing in his hands. Even wrapped in a bow and soft paper it looked bleak, somehow. He clapped on the lid. “Not for your baby, it’s not.”
“Nick!”
He raised the box overhead, trailing bubble wrap and ribbon like pastel tears. “He’ll knock his teeth out with it.”
Chloe put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Babies are born without teeth.”
“He’ll knock himself unconscious the first time he lifts that thing. It’s not safe.”
“Babies have hard heads.” She reached for the box. “It’s a built-in safety mechanism to reassure overprotective fathers.” Struggling on tiptoes, she bumped her belly into him and all but climbed his feet to get higher. “Give it to me!”
“No. He’ll put his eye out with it.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” She reached higher, grabbing his upraised arm to steady herself. “You don’t know anything about babies.”
“I know more than you do.”
Her body went rigid. Chloe shoved his elbow to push herself away. Far away.
“That’s a low blow, Nick.”
“It’s the truth.” Pretty irrefutable logic, as far as he was concerned. Obviously she disagreed, if her fire-breathing expression was anything to go by. “Nobody’s born knowing this stuff, you know.”
He reached to pull her close again, but she stepped back before he could touch her. Threading her fingers through her hair, Chloe looked out the window, at the floor…anywhere but at him.
“It’s not the truth,” she said in a voice like ice. Clipped. Precise. Totally Un-Chloe-like. “I’ve been t
aking classes, reading books….”
Practicing on Danny, grilling my sisters for baby tips, he thought, but couldn’t say it.
“I know. Inexperience isn’t a crime. I only meant that I’m already an uncle and you’re—”
“Leaving.” Stiffly, she held out her hand for the box. “What I am is leaving, before this gets ugly. You’re the king of botched explanations, Nick. Good intentions with disastrous results. So why don’t you just quit, okay? This time at least, quit while you’re ahead.”
This time? What was she talking about? Anyway, he couldn’t. Not without one last stab at making her see reason.
“This isn’t a baby gift, it’s a—a—” He shook the box, trying to think up something suitably pretentious, then flung his arms wide. “—it’s a damned paperweight, Chloe! What’s the matter with you?”
Her hand fisted, then dropped to her side. Carefully, coldly, she stuffed the note from her father back in the envelope, then snatched the few scraps of wrapping they’d scattered.
“This is an implement of baby destruction,” Nick protested. “If you want a rattle, I’ll get you a rattle. A nice, safe, well-padded one with something friendly on it. Like bunnies. Not a stupid designer logo.”
“It’s a family monogram.”
“Whatever.”
Biting her lip, she raised her hand toward him, palm upward. “Give it to me, please.”
Maybe a small concession was called for. Nick tried out a smile. “Okay. What do I know, right? I’m just an uncle. I—”
“Please, Nick,” she whispered, blinking hard. A suspicious sheen brightened her eyes. Her lower lip wobbled with the beginnings of what he could tell was a gigantic, stifled sob.
This, from a woman who never cried.
“Awww, hell.” How had he done it to her again? The tears in her eyes had him pressing the stupid box in her hand even before he realized he’d decided to do it.
“Thanks.” Sniffling, Chloe pushed the box back in the envelope again, then went to the door. “Talk to you later,” she mumbled in a choked voice.
“Wait.”
Somehow, he’d botched things big-time. How had it all gone from jumpy-jivey happiness to tears so fast? Judging by the way she clutched her damned envelope, he suspected it had as much to do with his reaction to her father’s gift as it did with what he’d said to her. But why?