Passion's Baby

by Catherine Spencer

  “Hey!”

  She was almost at the door when he stopped her. “You called?” she inquired sweetly, not bothering to turn around.

  “Are you by any chance a schoolteacher?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you talk like one.”

  “I see. Is there anything else, Mr. McGuire?”

  “Yes,” he said irritably. “You can stop calling me Mister McGuire in that snotty way. My name’s Liam.”

  “How nice! Will that be all, Liam?”

  He thumped the flat of one hand on the armrest of his chair and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as though calling on divine intervention to save him from himself. “I’m going to regret this later,” he announced morosely, then swung his gaze back to her. “Since you’ve made the damn coffee anyway, you might as well stay and have a cup. There’s canned milk in the cupboard, if you want it.”

  “That’s very kind of you, I’m sure, but I just remembered that Bounder’s outside and I don’t want him running loose all over the island.”

  “Bring the benighted hound inside, then. It won’t be the first time he’s made himself at home here.”

  “My goodness!” she said, unable to quell the mean-spirited pleasure of having finally wrung a concession from him. “How can I refuse such a gracious offer?”

  He waited until the coffee was served, she had taken a seat on the couch, and Bounder was snoozing beside the wheelchair, before he spoke again. “Have you been…by yourself for very long?”

  “Just over two years.”

  He stared into his mug. “What you said, about understanding how I feel in this chair, was your husband…?”

  “Yes, for the better part of the last three years of his life.”

  He averted his gaze, but not before she saw the grimace he couldn’t control. “I’d go mad if I was facing that length of time,” he said.

  “It’s amazing what people come to accept when they don’t have any other choices.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I’m not handing over control of my life to anything or anyone else, especially not a bunch of doctors who don’t know what they’re talking about. According to them, I should settle for being alive with both legs still attached, and never mind expecting to walk again. But I’ll show them! It’ll take more structural failure at the bottom of an offshore oil rig to keep me tied to a wheelchair for the rest of my life.”

  Good grief, the man lived dangerously! She’d seen news reports and documentaries about offshore drilling for oil. The rigs had struck her as frighteningly inhospitable, even those parts above the water. She couldn’t imagine how much worse they’d be fathoms deep in the ocean. “I gather,” she said, treading delicately, “that you had an accident of some kind?”

  “You could put it like that, yeah. I found myself pinned under a steel beam and had a bit of trouble getting free.”

  Since he was so determined to dismiss what had clearly been a life-threatening incident as something of no great consequence, she deemed it wise to respond in like fashion. Tilting one shoulder in a faint shrug, she said, “Well, there’s no doubt that, given the will and a reasonable amount of luck, some people do make remarkable recoveries. May I pour you more coffee before I leave?”

  “You’re leaving already? Why? Where’s the fire?”

  If he hadn’t already gone to such lengths to try to get rid of her, she’d have thought he wanted her to stay a bit longer. But, Wishful thinking, Jane, she told herself. You’re just dazzled by those beautiful sea-green eyes.

  “No fire,” she said, as much to refute her own foolishness as to answer his remark. “Just the opposite, in fact. I want to take Bounder down for a swim before the tide turns.”

  At the mention of his name, the dog reared up in excitement, a running shoe clamped in his mouth.

  “He needs a few lessons in obedience, if you ask me,” Liam said, grabbing the shoe and flinging it under the table, then seizing his coffee cup before it was swept on the floor by Bounder’s thrashing tail. “He’s out of control. Settle down, idiot!”

  “He’s not much more than a puppy,” Jane said defensively. “He’s still learning and I have to be patient.”

  “Patient, my eye! He’s already mastered one lesson and that’s how to control you! If you were as dedicated to making him behave and keeping his teeth off other people’s property, as you are to nosing around in business that doesn’t concern you, you’d be a sight better off and so would he. He’s too damned big to be galumphing around like this.”

  She swallowed a laugh. “Well, the truce was nice while it lasted, but it’s clearly over so I’ll get us both out of your hair before you start tearing it out by the roots. Thanks for the coffee. Come on, Bounder.”

  “Yeah, well…thanks. For what you did. With the shutters, and all.”

  He might have been having all his teeth pulled without benefit of anesthetic, he sounded so pained! But she made allowances because she knew that his pride was injured at least as badly as his leg. Anyone could see that Liam McGuire wasn’t accustomed to being helpless and that it particularly went against the grain for him to have to watch a woman take on what he considered to be a man’s job.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

  “It’s the only way I could think of to get rid of you.”

  The smile which accompanied his remark, though meager, transformed his face. Charmed more than she cared to admit, Jane smiled back and said, “I’ll make a deal with you. I promise not to bother you again, provided you agree to call on me if you need help.”

  “And how do you propose I do that, Goldilocks?”

  “Tie a towel or something to the post at the end of the porch railing so I can see it from my place.”

  He chewed the corner of his lip thoughtfully, then shrugged and extended his hand. “Sounds like a one-sided deal to me, but if that’s what it’ll take to keep the peace….”

  Since he’d shown a near-aversion to touching her any more than was absolutely necessary, she expected his handshake would be brief and businesslike. But, noticing her raw knuckles, he stroked his thumb carefully across her fingers and said, “You’ve chewed yourself up pretty badly. Do you have something you can put on these to prevent infection?”

  “Yes.” His concern, though impersonal, left her foolishly misty-eyed.

  He noticed that, too. Misinterpreting the reason for her distress, he said, “Are they hurting that badly, Jane?”

  “Uh-uh.” She swallowed and shook her head. “It’s just that I’m not used to having someone be concerned about me. It’s usually the other way around.”

  Raising his eyes, he subjected her to a brief, intense scrutiny before dropping her hand and turning the wheelchair toward the door. “Then go put some salve on your scrapes and look after yourself for a change. You’ve wasted enough time on me for one day.”

  She felt his gaze following her all the way along the path. Before climbing the steps to her own front porch, she looked back and sure enough, he’d stationed himself beside the post at the edge of the porch. When he saw her turn, he lifted his hand in a salute. She did the same and, fanciful though it might be, it was as if a small flame sprang alive in the cold, empty wasteland which for so long had been her heart.

  That simple gesture set the pattern for the days which followed. Whenever they happened to see one another from a distance, they’d mark the occasion with a wave, an acknowledgment which, though wordless, nevertheless conveyed a sense of cautious awareness of each other.

  Once, she saw him seated at the wheel of Steve’s eighteen-foot runabout and heading across the stretch of water separating Bell Island from Clara’s Cove on Regis Island. Another time she caught sight of him hauling driftwood up the ramp from the beach. But though her every instinct screamed for her to go over and make sure he was coping by himself, she honored their pact and kept her distance.

  The heat wave softe
ned to the more typically temperate warmth of early July, with cool, refreshing nights and mornings cloaked in milky haze. The leisurely days worked their magic and Jane found the healing, the sense of contentment and peace within herself, which had for so long evaded her.

  She spent evenings sitting on the porch in one of the wooden Adirondack chairs her grandfather had made years before, and watching the first stars come out. Early each morning she left a trail of footprints along the newly-washed sand at the water’s edge. She swam in the sun-warmed waters of the cove, and hiked the lower slopes of Bell Mountain to pick wild blueberries. She taught Bounder to sit and stay on command.

  Her skin took on a sun glow and she gained a pound or two because her arms and legs no longer seemed quite so scrawny. She slept like a child—deeply, dreamlessly—and rediscovered a serenity of spirit she’d thought she’d lost forever.

  Sometimes, she thought she could live like that indefinitely, hidden away with only Bounder for company and the bald eagles and killer whales to witness her comings and goings. But nothing stayed the same for very long. Time, life—they moved forward. Change occurred.

  For her, it began the morning she went outside and found a pail of fresh clams at the foot of her porch steps. He didn’t bother leaving a note, but she knew Liam had to be the one who’d left them there, though how he’d found the stamina to navigate the rutted path from his place to hers she couldn’t begin to fathom.

  In return, she waited until she saw him take the boat from its mooring, then sneaked over and left a loaf of freshly baked bread outside his door.

  And so they established another tenuous line of communication: half a small salmon from him, a bowl of wild strawberries from her; apple pie still warm from her oven as thanks for prawns the size of small lobsters which he hauled out of the deep water of the mid-channel. And all done furtively so as not to contravene the terms of their pact of peaceful but independent coexistence.

  Then, one time, she noticed his unoccupied wheelchair leaning drunkenly against the post at the top of the ramp leading to the house. Afraid that he’d somehow lost control of it, she sneaked over and crept up the ramp to his cottage, dreading what she might discover.

  She found him stationed on the seaward side of the porch. Using the railing for support, he was testing his weight on his injured leg.

  Be careful! You can’t rush recovery! she wanted to cry out, because he was a big man, tall and powerfully built. And the fact that he was trembling with the effort it cost him to put himself through the exercise told her he was pushing himself too hard, too soon.

  Her concern wasn’t entirely altruistic. She knew a tiny disappointment, too, because as his recovery progressed, the likelihood that he’d call on her for help grew increasingly remote. And solitude, she was beginning to learn, had its drawbacks. There was only so much intelligent conversation one could hold with a dog, even one as smart as Bounder.

  Apparently, Liam McGuire reached the same conclusion because a few days later, instead of leaving an offering of food, he left a note.

  You can come for dinner tonight, if you want to, and bring the dog. Seven o’clock.

  Not the most gracious invitation, perhaps, but a gilt-engraved summons issued by royalty could not have thrilled her more. “See you at seven,” she scribbled back, anchored the reply under a rock on his porch railing, and, in a fever of anticipation, rushed home to make wild raspberry tart.

  While it baked, she hauled the big tin bath tub in from the back porch to the middle of the kitchen floor, filled it with water heated in a pail on the stove, and soaked luxuriously. She shampooed the sea salt out of her hair, then rinsed it in cool water from the rain barrel outside. She creamed perfumed lotion all over her sun-dried skin and fished out the meager supply of cosmetics which hadn’t seen the light of day since she’d arrived on the island. She ironed one of the few dresses she’d brought with her, a sleeveless, delphinium blue cotton affair with a full skirt and fitted waist.

  After all that, when seven o’clock rolled around, she knew the most frightful attack of nerves, wiped the lipstick off her mouth, threw the dress to the back of the closet, and put on a clean pair of red shorts and a matching top.

  “As if it matters what I wear,” she told Bounder. “I could show up stark naked and he probably wouldn’t care, as long as I don’t presume too much on his hospitality.”

  He’d acted against his better judgment and was living to regret it. Had regretted it, if truth be known, ever since he’d slunk away from her front step after leaving the note. Cabin fever must have taken hold without his realizing it. Why else would he deliberately sabotage his well-ordered life by inviting her and her demented dog to intrude on it? And why would he waste the better of the afternoon trying to tart the place up to look more than it really was? The picnic table on the grass below the porch had seen better days, and paper towels hardly qualified as fine linen.

  He poured himself a glass of wine from the ice chest at his side and wheeled himself over to the railing overlooking the beach. It was almost a quarter after seven and she struck him as the punctual type, so the odds were she’d changed her mind about joining him for dinner, which was fine by him. It wasn’t as if her share of the food would go to waste. The energy it had taken for him to organize the meal had left him ravenous.

  Funny thing, though, how a man’s mood could shift. That afternoon, while he’d readied the outdoor fire pit for action, he’d found himself whistling under his breath. He’d believed he was looking forward to the evening, to watching her face break into a smile, to hearing her laughter.

  After a while, a guy got sick of the sound of his own voice, and sicker still of the same old thoughts chasing around inside his head. Was he ever going to walk under his own steam again? Was he finished as the expert everyone called on to design a new offshore project?

  He needed distraction and under normal circumstances, he’d have found it with other people. With women—though not with a particular woman because that usually led to complications.

  No, Jane Ogilvie had done him a favor by canceling out, no doubt about it. Start feeding her, and she’d be moving in before he had time to bolt the door. She had a thoroughly domesticated look about her, and if proof was what he needed to back up the opinion, she’d provided it with all that home baking. So what if she’d never actually produced bran muffins? She managed to make just about everything else, which amounted to the same thing.

  He took another swig of the wine and rubbed his newly shaven jaw irritably. Scraping off several days’ growth of beard had left his skin tender as a newborn baby’s backside—and that was all her fault, too. If she hadn’t moved in next door, he’d have remained a contented, unkempt slob of a hermit, instead of jumping through hoops trying to make himself look half decent when the only facilities at his disposal were a cold-water shower and a pint-size mirror hanging over the kitchen sink.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught a movement to the left of the porch, a flutter of red and a blur of black, followed shortly thereafter by the thud of paws galloping up the wooden ramp to the porch, and the unmistakable whiff of ripe berries.

  To counteract the completely absurd rush of satisfaction threatening to wipe out his ill humor, he shuffled lower in the wheelchair and glowered determinedly at the sun sliding down in the west. Why the devil couldn’t she have stayed at home where she belonged?

  CHAPTER THREE

  “SORRY we’re late,” she said, balancing the raspberry tart on one hand and trying to control Bounder with the other.

  “I didn’t notice you were,” Liam said, apparently too mesmerized by the ribbons of lavender and rose strung across the western horizon to notice the time, let alone her. “Is it seven already?”

  “Almost half past, actually. I was afraid you’d have given up on me.”

  “The thought never crossed my mind.” Rousing himself to a less supine position, he inspected the contents of his glass and said sullenly, “I was too busy enjo
ying my solitude.”

  So it was to be like that, was it? Pressing her lips together in annoyance, Jane gave silent thanks to whatever minor god had urged her not to overdress for her role in what promised to be nothing short of a dinner farce. “I hope my coming here hasn’t put you out too much.”

  “Not a bit. We’ve both got to eat, and it’s not as if we plan to make a habit of joining forces.” He slewed a glance her way and gave an exaggerated start of surprise at the sight of the tart. “Oh, gee, you baked a pie! Why doesn’t that surprise me? Stick it in the cooler over there, why don’t you? And while you’re at it, pour yourself a glass of wine. I’d get up and do the honors myself but—”

  “Oh, please! I wouldn’t dream of expecting you to bestir yourself.”

  Obtuse as he was, even he caught the edge in her tone. “Exactly what are you expecting, Jane? That I’m going to treat you as if you’re a date? Because if so, you’re in for a disappointment. I happened to catch enough crab for two and since you’re my nearest neighbor, I invited you to share the feast. The fact that you’re reasonably young and not too ugly has no relevance. I’d have done the same if you’d been seventy-nine and toothless.”

  “I’m more relieved to hear that than you can possibly begin to guess,” she cooed, the “not too ugly” label stinging worse than anything a wasp could inflict. “Because, loath though I am to damage your massive ego, if a date had been what you had in mind, I’d have been obliged to turn you down. You’re not my kind of man.”

  “And what kind of man is that?” he asked offhandedly. “Someone with two good legs who can chase you all over the island, then throw you over his shoulder and carry you off to his lair to have his wicked way with you?”