“Hey, Carter,” she called. “This is real nice of you.”
“Nice of me to what?” His eyes narrowed as they searched for Buffy. There she stood beside a row of dresses, examining a sewing catalog with Finella.
She shot him a startled look. “Oh, hi, Carter. How do you like Buffy’s Boutique, Phase I?”
A boutique in a car repair shop? Besides the obvious risk of damage to the merchandise, it was unheard-of. And how were his customers supposed to drive in through that wall of feminine frippery?
His thumb jerked toward the office. “In there. Now.”
“Not the office.” she said.
“Why not?” He glanced in that direction, and realized someone had hung a curtain over the entrance. “What on earth?”
Mazeppa popped up near his elbow. “Our customers have to try on clothes somewhere. Besides, it’s the only place in your garage that isn’t covered with grease.”
“I hope you big, strong men fixed that leak,” sang out Sweetie Popsworthy, who had a bright blue-and-yellow item looped over her arm. “Don’t worry. We ladies will be over there later to dry out the floor.”
“How do you plan to do that?” he asked.
“With our hairdryers, of course.”
“Don’t run them all at once. You’ll throw out the electrical system,” warned Mimsy.
Carter shook his head, unable to cope with so many inputs at once. Instead, he focused on the main problem. “Buffy!”
“We can talk in the house.” After giving the others an apologetic wave, she led the way.
He wasn’t sure whether to admire her enterprise or wring her neck. First she’d moved into his house, and now she’d taken over his garage. What next? He didn’t really want an answer to that question.
In the front parlor, which was furnished with old-fashioned furniture that had belonged to his mother, they faced each other across the flowered carpet. “A garage is no place to sell dresses,” Carter said before Buffy could speak. “Furthermore, I need my office. I have my financial records in there.”
“It’s only for a few weeks.” The words tumbled out so fast, it was clear she’d been preparing for this conversation. “Carter, I can’t afford to rent a store, and this is a great location. We’ll stay out of your way, I promise, except for the traffic to the changing room. Besides, we’ve nearly sold out today’s stock already.”
“That isn’t the point.” A crash from inside the house startled him. “What’s that? Where’s the baby?”
“She’s in the office in her playpen, with Zeppa keeping watch,” Buffy said. “It must be Toast.”
“Toast?” He headed down the hall, with her on his heels.
“She was rubbing people’s ankles and I was afraid she’d get stepped on,” Buffy explained. “I stashed her in my room. With food, water and a litter box.”
“She freaks out when she’s shut in.” Carter hadn’t thought to warn Buffy that the cat used to be a stray. “You shouldn’t mess with her.”
“I thought she’d be okay. Take a nap or whatever cats do when they’re bored.”
Thrashing noises emanated from behind the closed door. “Doesn’t sound like she’s bored now.” Bracing for anything, he opened it.
The bureau, whose wobbly leg he’d been meaning to fix for months, lay at an awkward angle atop the sofa. Drawers had fallen out and spilled Buffy’s possessions across the floor. Wispy black bras, jewel-colored bikini panties and a bright red bustier seared indelible images into his eyeballs.
From the back of the couch, Toast yowled and sprang to freedom. “My apologies,” Buffy told the cat as she streaked by.
There was no point in chewing out Buffy when she’d intended no harm. Also, that tantalizing lingerie was rendering Carter close to incoherent. “I should have warned you about the dresser not being all that stable. Need help with your, uh, things?”
“I can handle it,” she said quickly.
“Not your—” he cleared his throat, “personal items. Just these papers and suchlike, before they get wrinkled.” Carter crouched to collect a few official-looking documents that had landed in the mix.
“Seriously, don’t bother.” She reached for them.
“No trouble.” He frowned, seeing the letterhead of the Los Angeles fertility clinic where he’d made his donation. “What’s this?”
A sharp, indrawn breath told him something was amiss. Carter took a step back, holding onto the documents. He might not be a suspicious man by nature, but neither was he stupid.
It seemed an awfully big coincidence that the same woman who’d recruited him a year and a half ago in Los Angeles should suddenly turn up in Nowhere Junction. He’d been willing to ascribe it to chance, until now. The presence of these papers, and the fact that she acted eager to hide them, didn’t bode well.
Giving up her protest, Buffy stood silent as he riffled through the documents. They included medical records, his consent form and a letter, which he read aloud, skipping the convoluted legalities. “Dear Mrs. Arden...” Phrases leaped at him. “...checked our records...confirm the error indicated by your DNA test.. .regret to inform you that instead of your husband’s sperm...”
He read the next sentence twice before the significance sank in. When it did, the meaning plunged all the way down his esophagus and landed in his gut like a heavy-duty socket wrench.
It explained why she’d driven a thousand miles to see him. It explained why Allie was the spitting image of his mother. It explained everything.., and nothing.
“The father of your infant daughter,” the letter said, “is a donor named Carter Murchison of Nowhere Junction, Texas.”
Chapter Seven
Everything had gone well that morning. Even the leaky pipe had timed its break perfectly, drawing Carter out of the garage so Buffy and the other ladies could set up shop.
She should have known something would go wrong. Something always did.
But not this crushingly wrong. The stunned expression on Carter’s face worried her. She’d betrayed his trust, and they both knew it.
If only she hadn’t taken off for Texas like a ninny. She should have contacted him first and arranged a meeting with lawyers standing by. Stiff and awkward as it might have been, at least he wouldn’t believe she’d double-crossed him.
“I should have told you sooner.” The words sounded as inadequate to her as they must to Carter.
He stared at the paper in his hand. “I’m Allie’s father? How is this possible?”
Buffy perched on the edge of the couch. “The clinic made a mistake. It was a careless accident.” She babbled on, hoping to stem the tide of dismay. “Things like that aren’t supposed to happen. Usually, from what I’ve read, clinics have double and triple checks at every stage of fertility treatments. Especially the kind involving injections and transfers and donations.”
“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here,” he continued doggedly. “As I understand it, you don’t work for them anymore, so you can’t be here on the clinic’s behalf.”
“Of course not! I’m not representing them, I’m representing Allie.” Heaven knows, that was true. “When I found out you were her biological father instead of my husband, I couldn’t think straight. After a while, I got this idea that it would be better if I told you in person. Kind of idiotic, huh?”
He’d gone as stone-faced as a statue. “If you came to Texas to tell me, why didn’t you?”
Buffy swallowed hard, because she didn’t have a good answer other than her own cowardice. “After I met you, I figured it would be cruel to break the news without some preparation.”
“Exactly what I kind of preparation would that be?” Carter growled.
“I was trying to explain things gradually. I didn’t do very well, did I?” She tensed, fearing an explosion. From where she sat, Carter looked so tall, he must have grown three or four feet in the past few minutes. Or else she’d shrunk.
“Doctors ought to be careful about these things,�
�� he said gravely. “How did they screw up so bad?”
“The director claimed their scanner was on the fritz. Then a technician misread the numbering code, and the nurse failed to double-check. He assured me he’s completely revamped the procedures since then.”
“It’s just plain unforgivable,” Carter said. “I’m surprised lawsuits haven’t put them out of business.”
“Me, too,” Buffy agreed. “That still leaves us to deal with the consequences.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace. Embarrassingly aware of the nature of her fallen possessions, Buffy went to stuff them into the drawers. They could be sorted and folded later.
Carter spoke at last. “How did you learn about this mistake?”
“Roger was trying to avoid supporting his daughter, so he insisted on a DNA test. As if I would cheat on him!” Over the past six months, the pain of her husband’s heartless treatment had faded but not vanished. “I went through with it just to humor him, and bolster my case.”
“Only it didn’t,” he surmised.
She nodded. “It revealed that Allie wasn’t his.”
That horrifying moment when she viewed the results on a secure page of the clinic’s website remained seared into Buffy’s memory. She’d checked and rechecked, certain that she must have entered the wrong code. When she could no longer deny that this was the right page, she’d phoned and argued that the clinic had made a mistake.
Well, it had. But the mistake was much bigger and more life-altering than mixing up its DNA calculations.
“You were married. Couldn’t your husband give you children?” Carter spoke as if from a numb world beyond emotion. “I mean, was he shooting blanks?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Then why did you use a sperm bank?”
She suppressed a flare of resentment at being cross-examined. Carter had a right to answers, especially after she’d kept him in the dark.
“When I was a spokesperson for the clinic, I learned that sperm could be damaged by radiation.” She took a deep breath. “When Roger announced he had business in Japan, I was worried about that nuclear reactor that blew up. I talked him into freezing a specimen.”
“That doesn’t explain why you used it,” he said.
“He was over there for a couple of months,” Buffy said. “I should have suspected he was up to no good, but I trusted him. In fact, I was trying to cement the marriage. We’d been talking about having a child, and I was eager to get started.”
“Why not ask him to come home?”
“I nagged. Frequently,” she assured him. “To shut me up, he told me to use the sperm specimen. It didn’t occur to me he might be bluffing. So I arranged to be inseminated, and nine months later, I found myself with a stunning set of DNA results and no husband. Oh, and a baby.”
“My daughter,” he repeated softly.
“Please don’t blame Allie. It’s not her fault.”
“Nobody said it was.” He frowned into the distance. That appeared to be his entire response. No yelling, no whining, no blaming.
Buffy had never seen Carter play his cards so close to his chest. It scared her more than a stream of outraged accusations because it meant that his outrage must run deep.
What had she hoped for, acceptance? He wasn’t offering it and, she told herself harshly, she shouldn’t expect him to. Accidentally or not, she’d lured him into giving his sperm, and now she’d showed up with a broken car and an empty wallet, demanding his help. He had every right to suspect her of exploiting him.
Moreover, all the men in Buffy’s life, beginning with her father, had bailed out when the going got tough, and sometimes sooner. Things had certainly gotten tough for Carter today.
He couldn’t leave because he lived here. Which meant she’d better start packing before he threw her out.
“Finella’s excited about the dress business, and it’s a benefit for the school. Maybe she can take over.” As usual when Buffy was agitated, words spilled out. “There must be someone driving to a city who can give me a ride. I’ll be out of here tomorrow, if I can find a lift. You keep the car to cover the cost of repairs. In case there’s money left over when you sell it, I’ll send you my mailing address.”
“Pardon me?” he said.
“I won’t prolong the agony.” Buffy swallowed hard. “I can tell it’s time for us to leave.”
Bracing his arm against the wall, Carter shook his head. “You’re not leaving until we sort this out.”
“Are you mad?” she asked.
“Not at you.” He resumed talking in the same grim manner. “I can’t pretend to understand how those clinic people could be so careless, or why that ex-husband of yours acted like a jerk. And you’re a grown woman, so I won’t preach to you about your behavior.”
Buffy said a silent thank-you for small favors. “What exactly do we have to sort out?”
“This thing about Allie being my daughter,” Carter answered. “Our daughter. The one I just found out I have.”
He probably figured she was planning to hold him financially accountable, which she supposed the law might allow even though he’d become a father by accident. In Buffy’s opinion, just because the law allowed something, that didn’t make it ethical. Why should he pay, when Roger had agreed to have the child? “I’m not asking for support.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Carter glanced down at Rover, who had ambled into the room and was depositing his black-and-tan self atop a mound of Buffy’s T-shirts. “We’ll discuss this later. Right now, I’m way behind in my work.”
“Carter, you don’t deserve this trouble,” Buffy said earnestly.
He nudged the dog to one side. “Discovering that I have a daughter is hardly what I’d call trouble.”
He had a whole different perspective from Roger. “What would you call it?”
Carter scratched his head. It was, Buffy decided, one of his most endearing gestures. Funny, too, since the dog was vigorously scratching his flank in almost an identical rhythm.
“I’d call it amazing,” he said.
“Do you mean amazing as in wonderful, or as in bizarre? A or B?” she added, to simplify things.
“C,” he said.
“What’s C?”
“Amazing as in surprising. Kind of like God let Finella rule the world for a day, and she took these odd ingredients and mixed them together a new way.” Carter hoisted the bureau and, with Buffy’s assistance, shifted it upright. One leg had broken and, to compensate, she wedged a how-to book about caring for babies underneath.
What good was advice that didn’t cover the kind of situation she was stuck with? The experts never told you what you really needed to know, such as how to respond to a man who refused to show his emotions.
“That’s all you feel?” Buffy prodded. “Surprised?”
“I’ll think on it and let you know the rest at dinner.” After shaking the bureau to verify that it wouldn’t repeat its tumbling act, he left.
Numbly Buffy went about replacing the rest of her possessions in the drawers. She decided not to pack yet. Not until after he spoke his piece tonight.
*
When he reached the garage, Carter was glad to find that the ladies had finished using the office and removed the curtain. Not a single garment remained hanging from the overhead door, either.
The only person left was Mazeppa, in the office making goo goo eyes at a playpenned Allie. When Carter entered, the woman pursed her thin face and waved a sheaf of twenty-dollar bills at him. “I guess these are yours, to pay for the car.”
“Give them to Buffy,” he said. “I’ll watch the baby.”
She cocked her head as if to argue, but for once restrained herself. With a click of the tongue, Mazeppa departed with the day’s take.
Cautiously Carter approached the playpen. He felt clumsy and not much like a father. Heck, he didn’t even know what a father was supposed to do with a little tyke like this.
A
lthough he’d held Allie several times during the past three days, this was different. Now he knew that his blood ran in her veins. That might be an old-fashioned way of thinking, but it meant she shared his heritage, all the way back to his great-grandfather, a traveling peddler and tinker who’d arrived in town in the 1920s. And his great-grandmother, a cattleman’s daughter. And his other ancestors, down the ages since Adam and Eve or a hairy ape, depending on which story you believed.
Allie didn’t look as if she had that much ancestry in her. She was such a tiny thing, and incredibly smart, to be sitting up straight at the age of six months.
The way she shook her rattle and chewed on her teddy bear’s ear showed uncommon alertness. For a baby, she was delicate and ladylike, and she had gumption, like her mother. Surely everyone who drove past on the street must sense that herein dwelled a rare and special child.
Then Allie flashed him a mega-watt smile that illuminated the garage, the street, the town and the universe. His heart shifted into a new rhythm.
Scooping her from the playpen, Carter lifted his daughter to shoulder height. The baby responded with a delighted gurgle and whacked him in the head with her rattle. “Just like your mother,” he said, and carried her to the worn couch where he’d fallen asleep last Tuesday.
She gazed at him with such wisdom and interest that he started yakking away. Until now, he’d never understood why people bothered talking to babies.
“Those gray eyes sure do look like your grandmother’s,” Carter said. “And like mine, I guess. What did you think of the sale this morning? Did you have fun?”
“Bo ha,” she said.
“You’re right. They should have had at least a few dresses in your size,” he pretended to agree.
“Ga!” She nodded.
It was a letdown when Mazeppa appeared to take the baby for a feeding. Carter reminded himself that he had work to do and obligations to meet.
A father had to set a good example for his child.
*
Buffy hadn’t meant to tell the whole story to Mazeppa, but the older woman had noticed Carter’s strange mood and questioned her until she blurted it out.
Designer Genes Page 10