The Baby Bump

by Jennifer Greene

  Her hands found their way past his shirt, rubbed against skin, ribs, chest. Her mouth took another soul-stealing kiss while those busy fingers of hers sneaked down, lower, below his navel.

  There was a line Ike figured every woman ever born knew better than to cross.

  She’d crossed it.

  He might be on the bottom, but he couldn’t wait another second before getting his hands on her. Her top pushed up. Her pants pushed down. She was a long, slow stroke, from her midback to the valley at the base of her spine, to her delectably small little butt. She groaned, softened a kiss against his neck.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

  “You couldn’t.”

  “Ginger. You’re sure this is what you want?”

  “I’m sure that I’m sick of trying to do right things. Sick of decisions. Sick of worrying and all that other nonsense. I just want to live for a moment, Ike. With you. Feel. Experience. Lose myself. With you. Is that okay?”

  For bare seconds, she lifted her head, sought his expression in the shadows. He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. She did look lost. Crushable. A woman who’d had all she could take, at least for a while. And if she wanted him to be the answer, hell...

  He’d have climbed mountains for her. Given her probably anything he had and then some.

  Making love was an easy yes. In spite of the night’s damp chill, her skin was fever-warm...more so when he scooched off his jeans, pushed her pants down to thigh level. A rock dug into his back. His whole backside was soaked through. Smells permeated the night—the verdant earth, bark, grass, sweet leaves. Her.

  He arranged all he could arrange, held her hips in his palms...whether he slid into her, or she climbed on, he wasn’t sure. Didn’t care. Seduction was never all that fun unless it was an even-steven sport. Her smile was sudden and glorious, a little shocked—he loved that, that the feel of him inside her, owning her, claiming her was rich enough to shock her. She went weak all of a sudden...but that was more than okay. He felt richer than Croesus, watched her face, felt her whole body build up tension and need...and too soon, way, way too soon, watched her peak with a sharp, sweet cry.

  He seemed to be breathing louder than a freight train. She sank on top of him with all the strength of a limp noodle, nuzzling her face into his neck. That moment, that exact moment, was so good. Beyond any good he could recall. She was his, the way it never mattered before. He wanted her, no one else. Loved her, like no one else.

  Eventually, she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and then eased up on an elbow. She touched his lip with the tip of a finger. Looked about to say something when they both startled at a sudden voice.

  “Annabelle!”

  They were deep in shadows, but even so, Ginger peeled off him faster than a gunshot. He jolted aware and awake as fast as she did. Both of them buttoning, zipping, straightening—and sharing a look of laughter.

  They were both standing up and reasonably respectable by the time they spotted Cashner, the kitchen light behind him, standing on the back porch in his undershorts and a saggy tee. “Annabelle Marie, you come in the house! You get away from that boy this minute!”

  “Gramps, it’s me. Ginger.”

  “And I’m the one out here with her, Cashner. Ike.”

  “I don’t care who either of you say you are. There’s a dog howling on the porch. A lovesick hound. Woke me out of a sound sleep. You’re grounded forever, Annabelle.”

  “Who on earth is Annabelle?” Ike whispered.

  “I haven’t a clue. I think he’s adding girlfriends to his imagination. He’s not forgetting. He’s just inventing people now and then. Most of them seem to be women.”

  And to her grandfather, she called out, “I’m coming, Gramps. And Ike’ll take Pansy with him. Everything’s fine. We’re all going to sleep now.”

  Maybe they were, but Ike wasn’t.

  She thought she was no risk. That he had nothing but sexual feelings for her.

  Ginger’s father had taken off, or so the town always said. And the doctor she’d fallen for sounded like another take-off-for-where-the-grass-was-greener kind of guy. Somehow she’d started seeing that as a man’s default position. When a guy had to show up for more than fun, he took off.

  Ike wasn’t that way.

  He’d never been that way.

  But that didn’t mean he had any answers for a woman with serious trust issues.

  He drove home with Pansy leaning her extremely heavy head on his shoulder, which meant drool slobbered down his shirt—which meant he’d need to shower before climbing in bed. He could have stopped the dog from leaning, of course. But it was Pansy’s thing—sticking close when her human was upset.

  Ike wasn’t necessarily admitting he was upset. He didn’t get upset. He’d never had a nervous bone in his body. A guy who had two high-powered surgeons for parents learned the hard way, mighty young, that panic in a tough situation accomplished nothing. But he hadn’t liked leaving Ginger after making love. Hadn’t wanted to leave her at all that night...much less after a crazy melding in that rain-soaked yard. He wasn’t sure what she felt...about making love. About him.

  But for darn sure, their whole relationship had abruptly become more complicated and precarious than before.

  Minutes later, he pulled in his driveway—and let out a deep, tired sigh. A battered, mud-painted Jeep was already parked in the drive ahead of him. There were times he valued company. This wasn’t one of them—even if he happened to love this particular visitor. Pansy lifted her head, but didn’t waste the effort of barking.

  She knew Rosemary.

  Every light in the upstairs was on, the front door unlocked. He could hear his washing machine running, and at the top of the stairs—blocking the way—was a duffel bag stuffed with dirty clothes. It was easy enough to track down his sister. He found her—as always—crouched in front of the refrigerator, taking out covered dish after covered dish.

  “About time you got home,” she told him. “And man, I should have stopped by a lot more often than this. You must have every single woman in the county cooking for you! Good grief!”

  “It’s not my fault. I don’t know how to stop it. They never ask. They just show up. Or I get home to find a covered casserole on the porch.” He claimed his hug, then zipped out of sight as fast as he could. It didn’t take him long to shed the wet clothes and pull on old sweats. Rosemary readily picked up the topic of conversation.

  “It’s just because you’re cute. And you’re a doctor. Every Southern mama’s version of a catch. Except for the hound.”

  “Hey, Pansy’s the best chaperone there is. She starts drooling and the women backtrack toward the door.”

  “Not me,” announced his sister, who not only greeted Pansy with a kiss on the brow, but offered the dog chicken divan. From a fork. She did stuff like that to get his goat, because—she claimed—that’s what sisters did. Worked hard to drive their brothers crazy.

  Judging from the heap of dishes on the counter, she’d already had sugar pie and a piece of Coca-Cola cake—before heating the chicken divan. She did the same thing to Tucker—the oldest of the clan—showed up when she wanted feeding. But Ike’s fridge always had the best goods.

  She looked okay, Ike assessed. Her blonde hair was still shorter than grass, her face tanned and freckled, and she hadn’t gained an ounce. Late last spring, just days before a big-to-do wedding, she’d called it off and taken off. No one knew what she’d told George, her ex-fiancé, and the parents were still fit to be tied. Just after that, Rosemary had disappeared up on Whisper Mountain. Well, maybe not exactly disappeared, considering she was a botanist and had a two-year grant to study wild orchids in the region.

  But she was living like a hermit, out in the wild. There was a mountain-top cabin, adequate shelter but not a place meant to live in. It
was rustic, no amenities. She showed up—either to his place or Tucker’s—when she needed clothes washed or some serious food. Or, being Rosemary, to reassure her brothers that she was okay.

  “You were the one who got the brunt of our absentee parents, weren’t you?” he asked.

  “Sheesh. Talk about diving into deep waters before we’ve even done the dishes.”

  “I’m just saying. Tucker and I are guys. Most of the time we didn’t mind fending for ourselves. But you were the girl. Whenever you needed a dress for a prom or the right shoes before school or a permission slip to go somewhere...you needed Mom. Not two brothers who didn’t know a curling iron from a lipstick.”

  “Did you ever hear me complain?”

  “No. But you also never told anyone why you really called off the wedding.”

  “Listen, you.” Rosemary had experience pointing a fork at brothers. “I didn’t come here to be badgered. I came here to do the badgering. I heard from Tucker a couple nights ago.”

  “Any news?”

  “No. He’s still sounding like a lovesick goon. I can hardly talk to him. He’s happy about this, happy about that. He started singing on the phone.”

  “Oh, no. Not that.”

  “Yeah. Like that. I usually check in with him once a week when I’m on the mountain, but I can’t stand listening to all that sweet stuff. And then I checked in with the parents.”

  That made him pause, study her face. Their parents had been gung-ho on her marrying George and had given Rosemary a major hard time ever since. “So...what’d they have to say?”

  “Pretty much the same message I get every time. They’re certain I could still make it up with George, still get a wedding going again. If I just called and talked with him.”

  “And you probably said, oh, wow, thanks so much for that advice?”

  By then she’d finished gorging herself, spun a kitchen towel into a weapon and smacked him. “So,” she said firmly, “what’s the deal with you?”

  “No deals. Just the usual. My life’s good. Love being the town doctor, love that every day’s different, that there’s always something unexpected around the corner. It’s a good place, good people.”

  “Uh-huh. So who’s the woman in this picture?”

  “I’ll be darned. Did I mention a woman?”

  “I’m your sister. I can read between your lines any day.” Rosemary cocked her head—her hair looked like a sun-streaked mop, her eyes too-searing blue. “It’s not someone from town. I knew you’d never get the itch for a small-town girl. You do the laid-back thing really well, but underneath, we’re all stuck with the parents’ overachiever genes.” Abruptly she jogged over from the sink and checked out his face close up. “I’ll be damned. You’re actually seeing someone.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to. I’m looking at your face. Good grief, you’ve got the same goon expression that Tucker has half the time. You’ve got that secret smile. You’re distracted. You just put a dirty dish away in the cupboard.”

  “I probably do that now and then.”

  “No. You don’t. Ever. Wow. Wait until I tell Tucker.”

  “When you were a kid,” he said heavily, “I beat you up now and then. I still could, you know.”

  “That went the way of urban legends. You never beat me up. You were an amazing brother.”

  He changed tactics. “I agree. I was beyond good to you. So why would you pick on me now?”

  “Just tell me her name and I won’t ask a single other question, I swear.”

  “Oh, yeah. I believe that like I believe there’s a man in the moon.”

  “Aha. There is a woman in your life. Come on. Spill.”

  That’d probably happen in one or two zillion years. Ike didn’t spill. Didn’t talk personal stuff the way his sister loved to do.

  But just for a second, he wanted to. All teasing aside, he trusted Rosemary the same way as he trusted Tucker. The MacKinnons had always stood up for each other. He wouldn’t mind getting Rosemary’s take on Ginger’s situation...like whether it was fair for a guy to push—for a relationship, for risk—with a woman who was under so much stress. Whether he was nuts to think the two of them could make it. Whether Rosemary’d think he was even more crazy to have fallen for a lady who was carrying another man’s baby.

  But he didn’t.

  There was no point in telling Rosemary. He already knew those answers.

  He needed to stay away from Ginger. To let her breathe. Let her figure out what she wanted and needed. Pushing her—the way he knew damn well he wanted to push her—was wrong any way he said it.

  But that was going to be extra hard, if not impossible, after making love with her.

  * * *

  Ginger had barely buttoned her favorite pants—a light green that went with an equally favorite cotton sweater—when the button popped. Actually it popped like a bullet, soared to the far window, ricocheted and then rolled under the bed.

  She turned sideways in the bedroom mirror, and there it was again. The new pooch. Not a watermelon or a basketball or anything that huge. But the stomach shape had changed from concave to convex. Just like that.

  In case she wanted to postpone dealing with the pregnancy issues, her silhouette was a caterwauling wake-up call.

  She retrieved the button, yanked her hair back in a low tail and aimed downstairs. Just like that, on the third stair, she remembered Ike. Ike in the moonlight, kissing her. Ike, like a flash of magic, suddenly spinning her troubled world into a soft, whimsical place, where the power of the right man and the right woman could handle anything, fix anything, conquer anything.

  She’d believed that last night.

  She could believe anything when she was with Ike...but more, so much more, after they’d made love.

  Impatiently she put some steel in her spine. This was a real-life morning. It had to be. And all her life she’d fought allowing herself to believe in dreams and magic—for seriously good reasons.

  Her dad had been a nonstop believer in magic, a dreamer who was always sure there could be a pot of gold at the road’s end. When she was little, her dad could talk her out of nightmares with his whimsical stories. And her dad was the reason she should never have fallen for a smooth-talking doc. She knew about smooth-talking dreamers.

  She just never wanted to be one.

  Ike was nothing like her Chicago ex. She knew that. But her twisted, goofy, inexplicable feelings for Ike were darned scary. Steve had introduced her to some strong feelings. Ike—well, Ike was an earthquake, a tsunami, a cataclysmic explosion of emotion. There was no comparison.

  Ike was far scarier.

  She just needed some space away from him for a while. It wasn’t as if she had to invent reasons to be unavailable. She had problems crashing down on her life in every direction.

  She grabbed a mug of tea and an apple, then tracked down Gramps. He looked bright-eyed this morning, was standing in the library with binoculars. “C’mere, Ginger. I think I spotted a bald eagle.”

  “Really? Let’s see.” Gramps handed over the binocs. The creature was across the road, close to the irrigation ponds, perched on an overhanging limb. It was definitely an eagle. A young one. “She’s adorable,” Ginger murmured.

  “I think it’s a boy.”

  “As if either of us could tell from here.” She grinned—Gramps grinned right back—and it was so good to share this kind of moment with him again. They’d always taken joy in the simple things in nature. “You busy?”

  “At my age, I don’t know what busy means any more.”

  “Then would you take a short ride with me?”

  He had trouble getting into her old Civic, and then he grumbled about having to wear a seat belt, but it was obvious he liked it—going out with his
best girl, as he put it.

  “Do we have a destination?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. The first stop was for an ice cream cone at Willie’s—the best ice cream in the universe, even on a cold morning. And Gramps had always been a sucker for chocolate velvet—Willie’s specialty. From there, she drove back home, but instead of turning in the house drive, she turned into the tea plantation.

  She’d finished her single scooper, but Gramps was still lapping on his double cone when she put the car in park and turned the key.

  “Pretty morning,” he said.

  He knew something was coming. Knew the minute she turned in the wrong drive. When Cashner was thinking clearly, he was undoubtedly smarter than she was ten times over. “We need a serious talk,” she said. “Do you want to stay here?”

  “Until I finish my cone.”

  “Gramps. Don’t joke. Is this where you want to be, to live, for the rest of your life?”

  “I won’t live anywhere else. This is home. It’s everything your grandmother and I worked for. Lived for. Every best memory I have is here. And those sure include you, honey.”

  She nodded. “Same here, Gramps. I love you to bits. But we have some financial issues. If you want to stay here, we have to find some way to make money off our tea again. I could learn all I can, but I don’t believe that’s even close to enough. If you want to stay here, we have to find a way to rehire Amos.”

  Cashner finished his cone, wiped his hands on the handful of napkins she’d brought him and shot her a shrewd look. “That’ll happen when hell freezes over. He insulted me.”

  “And from what I hear...you insulted him.”

  “He tried to tell me what to do!”

  She wasn’t sure how long she could count on him to have a clear mind. “Here’s the whole picture, Gramps. If we’re going to live here, two things have to happen. We have to rehire Amos. And we have to find a way to coax the bank into loaning us a boatload of money. They’re both long shots.”

  “Sweetheart—”

  “No, please, Gramps. Just listen. If we can’t make that happen...then there’s still no worry for you. You’ll be with me. Wherever I am, you can live with me, stay with me.” Those were big promises she was making, Ginger knew well. She hadn’t a clue how she was going to make a living, not right that minute. Much less did she have a plan for handling the pregnancy and earning a living at the same time.