Baby Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  “We can take care of that,” he said, and after reaching in the open window of the car to switch off the radio, he drew her toward the slope to the beach.

  “See that big tree?” he said. “Draw a line straight north of there for about fifty feet, and that will be my house’s deck. It’ll have stairs down to the sand, and the second story will have huge windows so I can see the ocean every morning when I first wake up.”

  “That sounds wonderful, Joe,” Rachel said.

  “Doesn’t it? I’ll have family gatherings there, and a big kitchen so we can all cook at the same time if we want to, and a playroom for the kids so they won’t be underfoot, and a lot of other things that I can’t even imagine at this point.”

  “How did you find this place? It’s perfect.” The moon spilled a gilt path across the water, and she thought that if she stood at the water’s edge, she could step onto it and walk all the way to the stars.

  He slanted a look at her out of the corners of his eyes. “When I was in high school, we used to come here to watch the submarine races. It’s called Fisher’s Rock.”

  “Submarine ra—” Rachel realized what he was saying and found herself laughing. “A make-out place, in other words.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking amused, and he put his arm around her. “Let’s walk on the beach, want to?”

  She was wearing high heels. She looked down at them, and Joe caught her hesitation.

  “It’s either that or neck in the car.”

  She reached down and pulled off her shoes, tossed them through the car’s open window into the back seat. “That answer your question?” He only laughed.

  Hand in hand they made their way down the path, Joe going first so he could help Rachel over the rough spots. Joe took off his shoes at the high-tide mark and rolled up his pants legs as well.

  “Do you come here often? I mean, now that there aren’t submarine races anymore?”

  He chuckled. “I’ve never been here at night since my high school days. Never seen the moon on the water, never walked beside a beautiful woman in the place where I plan to build my house.”

  Rachel tried to absorb what he was saying. He thought she was beautiful. When she was with him, when he looked down at her the way he was looking at her now, she felt beautiful. She felt utterly and fantastically gorgeous even though she knew that she wasn’t. Her lips were too full, for one thing, and her hair was too curly, and she’d rather have blue eyes than brown.

  “Anyway, now that I’m making money hand over fist, I’ve hired people to help me with the business. I can afford to take time off, so I’ll start building my house soon, I hope.”

  “Mmm,” was all she could think of to say.

  “And there’s something else I’d like to do with all this time I’m going to have. I’m hoping you’ll let me spend some of it with you.” His voice was earnest and carried the weight of conviction—something that Rachel hadn’t been prepared to hear.

  She moved slightly ahead of him as they walked. “I’ll be leaving,” she reminded him. The light from the lighthouse flicked over her briefly, then left her again in darkness.

  “You could stay on. You said that your grandmother would like that.”

  It was the second time he’d said something about her staying, and she whipped her head around. She was surprised to see such a beseeching look on his face.

  “Well, think of it this way, Joe. If I leave, our ‘almost engagement’ will be broken. You can blame it on me, and your family will never know that you pulled the wool over their eyes at Christmas dinner.” She spoke lightly, but she knew he wouldn’t respond in the same vein. What she didn’t know was quite what he would say.

  “I don’t want to blame it on you, Rachel. And I’m not at all sure I want to break our ‘almost engagement.’”

  “I suppose you like being ‘almost engaged’?” There was no choice but to keep on with this. If she quit bantering, they’d have to confront what was really going on here, and she didn’t think she could handle any more intensity.

  “Yes, I like it. I could like it a lot more,” he said.

  She didn’t look at him. She merely kept plodding along in the sand just out of reach of the little wavelets lapping the shore.

  “All right. So you don’t like talking about that. We don’t have to. We can talk about anything you want. Pick a topic, any topic.”

  A glance over at Joe told her that those remarkable silver eyes were dark with unvoiced thoughts. Suddenly the breeze from the ocean took on a chill, and the night sky seemed too immense and unfathomable.

  “A topic,” she repeated, but she couldn’t think of anything. She racked her brain, trying to think of news events, something holiday related, anything. She wanted Joe to take her hand, then she hoped he wouldn’t. She wanted to bump against him as they walked, then she moved farther away so it couldn’t happen.

  “Let’s talk about stars,” she said in desperation, because the stars were everywhere, poking twinkly rays of light through the vast dark curtain of the sky, rippling on the water, too many of them by far.

  “Stars,” Joe repeated. “All right, we’ll talk about stars. Stars are bits of fairy dust, did you know that?”

  She shook her head.

  “And those bits of fairy dust land all over the place. You can’t sweep them up, you can’t mop them up, all you can do is chase them around. Sometimes they get into the darnedest places,” he said, curving an arm around her waist and pulling her closer. He stopped walking, and so did she. For a moment her breath caught in her throat. Fairy dust, she thought. I can’t breathe because of it.

  His hand stole up to toy with a fluttering wisp of her hair that had escaped from its knot. He touched her cheek, ran a finger along the slope of her jawline. And then he was pressing her so close that the warmth of his body penetrated her clothes. He made no attempt to kiss her, however, and she found herself burying her face in his shirtfront. He felt so solid and so real, and suddenly she wanted to hold on to that strength, to draw her own strength from it. It was what she needed—something to cling to so she wouldn’t be swept away by her own doubts and uncertainties. No, not something, someone.

  Someone who cared about her, about what happened to her, and who wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her ever again.

  As if that person really existed, she told herself. As if anyone could do that for another person.

  “I care about you, Rachel. So very much,” Joe said, his warm breath fluttering loose strands of hair in the vicinity of her ear.

  She closed her eyes, inhaling the rich, male scent of him. Her arms went around him before she had time to stop them, and she felt herself tremble within his embrace. If she lifted her face just so, he would kiss her. And yet this wasn’t passion, it was something else. It was tenderness and caring and incredible yearning. It was also comfortable. She could get used to being held like this, Rachel thought. Oh, she could—if only she deserved it.

  She was swept with dismay. For a moment she had hoped that she’d overcome those awful feelings that had held her in their grip ever since the fire. Feelings of anguish, remorse, regret and the knowledge that she didn’t deserve anything better out of life. She had believed all these years that her punishment for not getting her family out of the house was to be alone for the rest of her life.

  Did she dare to hope that she could have something more?

  “Rachel?”

  In that moment, with the beam of light from the lighthouse illuminating his face, Joe was looking at her so lovingly that she couldn’t speak. She only stared at him.

  “Some of that fairy dust has settled in your eyes. Here, let me kiss it away.” And he did, his lips brushing one eyelid, then the other. She thought that in all her life she had never felt a sweeter kiss.

  “I want to show you where I live. My apartment. And I’ll show you the house plans I’ve had drawn.”

  He kept his arm around her waist as they walked back up the beach, and after a time,
because it was awkward walking so close that her arm hit him every time she took a step, she put her arm around him, too.

  As they drove back to the mainland where Joe lived, her mind was reeling with thoughts too complicated to enumerate, but some conclusions began to stand out with a clarity that she couldn’t have imagined a few days ago. One was that she might not deserve a lifetime of happiness, but surely she could steal a night of it. Another was that she could enjoy this gift and then she could walk away. It could be a holiday flirtation and nothing more. When the affair was over—and she was sure that it would be over sooner rather than later—she would return to Lakemont and her little apartment where there would be nothing to remind her that she had ever known a man named Joe Marzinski.

  But that apartment, her home, seemed far away as she preceded Joe into the ground-floor garden unit where he lived. Inside, a small foyer opened into a large living room graced by a high, vaulted ceiling and a weathered Spanish-tile floor. The furniture was a mix of styles unified by the repeated use of a boldly striped blue-and-white fabric and the lesser use of a coordinating plaid. And there were pictures of his nieces and nephews everywhere, which created a homey feeling in what would have otherwise been a pleasant but perhaps sterile bachelor pad.

  The kitchen was spacious and equipped for what Joe termed serious cooking, although he said he never did any. “Never have had much time,” he said. “But now I think I might learn to cook some things. A good Polish meal like my mom makes. Maybe something very nouvelle Florida, like shrimp with honey-mango sauce.”

  Joe flicked a switch, and mellifluous music began to spill from hidden speakers. Rachel peeked into the bedrooms and used the bathroom while Joe played back his answering-machine messages. This gave her time to think, to reconsider. She knew that if she asked him to take her home, seriously asked him, he would do it. But after so long holding herself away from other people, of living in virtual isolation, she ached to be with someone, to smile and have someone notice, to be in tune with another human being.

  For a moment she forced herself to concentrate on the fact that this wasn’t merely another human being—it was a totally masculine, dangerously exciting man. Being alone with him in his apartment seemed like a singularly daring exploit, but she didn’t care. She would let whatever happened happen; for once she wasn’t going to be cautious. After so long without anyone, after years of sexual starvation, Joe Marzinski was like a banquet, set out in front of her, and she was feeling more and more like a starving woman by the minute.

  Her nerves were humming in heady anticipation when she returned to the living room, but Joe was frowning. She forced herself to sound matter-of-fact, as if she went to men’s apartments all the time. “What’s happened? A condo crisis?”

  “No, thank goodness. AU is quiet on that front for a change. It’s Gina. Listen.” He tapped a button to start a message playing on his machine, and Rachel sat down on the couch while she listened to Gina’s frantic voice.

  “Joe? Joe! Are you there? It’s me, Gina. I just felt like talking to you. Nothing important. Weil, kind of important. I think I’ve made a mistake, a terrible mistake, Joe, and I need to tell you about it”

  Rachel looked at Joe in alarm as Gina began to cry. The message continued through the tears. “Well, since you’re not home now, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’m staying with Anna, and she and her fiancé and I are getting together at a friend’s. Talk to you soon, okay?” Gina hung up and the machine beeped.

  “She sounds really upset,” Rachel said thoughtfully.

  “That’s just the way Gina is. She’s not the most stable girl in the world, but she’s doing great when you consider her background. She and her sisters actually lived on the streets until we found out about it through the church,! and then my mom and dad took her in. I suspect that all this tonight is that she’s worried about changing her class schedule for next semester. She probably wants to switch back to her original major.”

  “Why don’t you call her now?”

  “I think I will,” Joe said. He punched out a number on the phone, and while she waited, Rachel got up and wandered over to the sliding doors leading to the patio. It was a large open-air space decorated with a number of substantial potted plants as well as a table and chairs.

  “Go ahead, open the door,” Joe said to her, holding his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.

  Rachel slid the door open and stepped outside. A high wall surrounding the patio was overhung with bougainvillea vine, its flowers a riot of magenta, pink and purple. She took a deep breath, hoping to inhale some good common sense. Not that it worked very well; she felt a little fluttery. Slightly demented. Adventurous. She shouldn’t have drunk so much wine with dinner.

  After a minute or so Joe appeared in the doorway. “Gina’s not home. I left a message that I called, and I’m sure she’s fine. Anna is a nurturing person, and she’ll look after her sister. Now. How about a glass of wine?”

  “Okay,” Rachel said, who even as he spoke was attempting to count how many glasses of wine she’d drunk during the evening. Well, it was too late to undrink any of it. At the moment she wanted to lose all her inhibitions; she wanted to enjoy this to the fullest.

  While Joe went inside to pour the wine, Rachel lit a candle on the patio table, and soon Joe came out of the house carrying two stemmed glasses and a rolled-up set of house plans. He spread the plans out on the table in front of her, weighting the furled upper edge with the candleholder.

  “This,” he said, pointing to the drawing after she’d sat down beside him, “is the foyer. It’s two stories high with a library loft overlooking the living room. The living room windows cover one wall for a view of the ocean, and there are two wings opening off it, one for the family room and kitchen and my home office and one for the bedrooms. Lots of bedrooms for lots of kids.”

  Even though she knew that Joe’s house was important to him, Rachel would have gladly forgone learning about it. She could hardly think with him sitting beside her, vibrating at what she was sure was her frequency. But when she made herself look at the plans, she found that they fascinated her.

  She and Nick had refurbished their old frame house themselves, and she had thoroughly enjoyed the project, which had taught her a lot about home construction. The plans that Joe showed her were for a different kind of house, but she was immediately captivated by the illustration of the house’s front elevation. As for the rest of the plans, the house was grand—even elegant—but it had a family aspect to it, too, with lots of gathering places for the people who lived there. She could imagine Joe in that house.

  She drank her wine quickly, all too aware of everything about Joe. His manner, his solicitousness, his eagerness to please. She found the latter especially charming, and it contributed to her comfort level so that she felt utterly and completely relaxed with him, as if she’d known him for much longer than a few days. When he got up to pour more wine, she followed him into the house.

  His hand brushed hers as she accepted the refilled glass, and she would have ignored the little frisson of energy that passed from him to her. But one of them—she wasn’t sure if it was Joe or if it was her—tipped the glass ever so slightly, and the wine sloshed over the side of the glass and spilled down the front of her bodice.

  She stepped back and looked blankly down at the stain and the drops of wine falling from her dress to the floor. One thing she had never been was clumsy. She must really have had too much to drink, she thought; she must be getting tipsy.

  “Here,” Joe said, wetting a napkin with water from the kitchen faucet. He made as if to wipe the stain, but she held out her hand for the napkin and he gave it to her.

  “Yeah,” he said wryly as she silently sponged at the bodice of her dress. “I guess you’d better do that.”

  She risked a look at him. He was standing in front of her, a slightly bemused smile on his lips, his arms folded over his chest. She knew well the muscled strength of those arms and exactly how they felt
when wrapped around her, and she knew how she reacted—with longing and a desire that she couldn’t, no matter how much she’d tried, deny. In her confusion she dropped the napkin and without thinking bent down to pick it up.

  As she straightened, Joe cupped her shoulder. “Damn,” he said softly. “I can’t take a view like that. Forget the dress, Rachel. I’ll buy you another. I’ll buy you a hundred dresses.”

  Too late she realized that by bending over, she’d given him a clear view down the front of her bustier.

  “Joe, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.” It was her voice, but she barely recognized it.

  She saw the muscles in his jaw working, and he caressed her shoulder before circling his arms around her. When his lips aligned with hers and then slowly came to touch them, all rational thought left her. The first kiss was gentle and tender, the second relentless. In the next few moments she realized that her feelings for him had been inescapable from the moment she’d seen him in the lobby, water pouring from the ceiling, silver in his eyes. She’d mistaken him for an angel in those moments, but he’d been real. And now, despite every reason she’d mustered to the contrary, she was willing to meet him halfway.

  When he ended the kiss, she didn’t dare look him in the eyes. Instead she focused on his mouth, which was directly in her line of vision. She had never noticed that sensual droop to his lower lip, nor had she cared that he had an especially deep groove in the space above his upper lip. Now those characteristics took on an irrational importance. All her senses were attuned to him, to everything about him, so that she wanted to know how it would feel to be totally in his possession. She was stunned by this feeling, this emotion, so much so that she felt lost and dizzy, suspended somewhere in time and space.

  In that heart stopping moment, his hands went to her hair and curved for a moment around the contours of her head before sliding beneath the pins that held her hair fast. A few pins fell away, and then her hair was tumbling out of its knot, a cascade of golden curls. She had used lemon-grass shampoo, and the scent of it mingled with the taste of the wine on her lips as his mouth descended on hers.