About a Baby

by Ann Yost

  “Oh my god. I’m already wet.”

  “Oh, baby, baby,” he groaned.

  Her hands fumbled with his shirt. “Got to get these jackets out of the way.”

  “There isn’t time.”

  His whole body was trembling. She made a quick decision. “Screw the jackets,” she said as she unbuckled his belt and eased the zipper over the pulsing mound of his erection. And then she was stroking him.

  “Honey, I can’t take that. I need, I need…”

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence. She knew what he meant. It was a little awkward, but they managed to get her panties and pantyhose off. He was gasping with need, and she wasn’t far behind.

  He picked her up to settle her over himself.

  “Wait,” she said. “Wait.”

  His eyes were glazed. “What?”

  “I want to wear my ring.”

  A moment later she found his mouth again and wiggled until she felt him inside her, until she was all around him. He dropped his head back against the seat and she began to move. It was heady, exhilarating to have sex only a few yards away from the hungry people of Eden. It was awesome to be on top, the position of power. She loved the way his fingers dug into her hips, too hard, as if he were out of control. It was wonderful to feel the friction, that perfect fit that drove them higher and higher until the now-familiar magic flung them into the air and they collapsed against each other, spent and sated.

  The proposal had been perfect. She loved that he’d planned an elegant evening. She loved even more that he’d wanted her enough to propose at Buddy Burger. She loved that they’d made love in the lot of Staghorn Realty.

  Most of all, she loved knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that he loved her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hallie’s face was frozen from the biting sleet.

  She’d ruined another dress and a pair of pantyhose and, to top it off, she’d slipped on the ice-slick wooden steps outside her apartment and twisted her ankle.

  She’d never been happier in her life.

  She’d waited forever to have someone who belonged to her, and now he was here.

  Baz took her key and turned it in the lock. An instant later they were inside. “Hallie, I’m sorry—”

  She cut him off with a kiss, probably the fiftieth or so of the night. He winced, and she figured his lips were chapped like hers. “No apologies. It was the best night ever.”

  “Even though right about now you’re so hungry your stomach is up against your spine?”

  “Yep.”

  “Even though your ankle hurts?”

  “Yep.”

  “Even though I messed up by staying away for twelve months?”

  “Yep.”

  “Even though I don’t plan to stay in Eden?”

  She grinned at him. “I’m still hoping to change your mind about that.”

  “Hallie, I—”

  “I wonder if the cleaners will be able to get that stuff off your pants. Calling Bill Clinton.”

  A slow smile spread across his rugged features.

  It was the smile that never failed to make her melt.

  “Do you like the ring?”

  Good grief. She hadn’t even looked at it. She held it up to the light. “Oh, my.”

  The stone in the center was larger than the ones next to it but they were all emeralds. Not the dark, heavy kind of emeralds but the paler versions, the ones called green beryl. They reminded her of the first leaves of spring.

  She looked up at him. “I told you last fall, a year ago last fall, that I had always liked pale green stones. That day we went to the Natural History Museum in L.A.?”

  He nodded.

  She studied the ring. “It’s so beautiful. I can’t believe you remembered it all this time.”

  “It wasn’t as long as you think. I bought the ring in January.”

  “Last January? You planned to propose to me a year ago?”

  He nodded. There were parentheses carved on either side of his mouth. His gray eyes had become very solemn. “There’s something I have to tell you, honey. I should have done it before, but I was too damn afraid of losing you.”

  A premonition of disaster sent a shiver down her spine. Suddenly she was afraid of that, too, so she stalled. “Let’s get something to eat first,” she said.

  He hesitated then nodded.

  She slipped out of her ruined dress and into a soft, chenille robe. While Baz was doing what he could to salvage his clothes, she towel-dried her hair.

  He grinned when he saw her. “I remember that bathrobe. A gift from Cam and Daisy wasn’t it?”

  Hallie held out her arms so he could see the dozens of fluffy pink pigs cavorting in a green pasture.

  “I love it.” He held her face between his hands and dropped a kiss on her nose. “I love you.”

  She touched his cheek and her heart soared.

  “Whatever it is you’re planning to tell me, Baz, it won’t make any difference. Not after tonight. We are definitely, absolutely, positively engaged.”

  His lips quirked in the beginning of a smile.

  “Because of the ring?”

  She pretended to think. “The ring’s a consideration, but I think it was the sex in the front seat that sold me.”

  “It was hot.”

  She grinned at him. “And empowering. I feel like a sex goddess.” She dished the eggs onto a plate and spread some butter on the toast.

  “Hallie?”

  “Almost ready.”

  They sat at the table facing each other. The food smelled delicious, but after one bite Hallie couldn’t eat. Sex goddess aside, she felt the sword of Damocles hanging over her head. There were still unanswered questions about this past year. She needed to know why he’d stayed away, but she dreaded the truth. There was no way she could enjoy her new found happiness much less breakfast.

  Baz looked at her and put his fork down, too. “I can’t eat, either. I have to get this off my chest. I have to find out whether this will ruin everything.”

  She couldn’t swallow past the blockage in her

  throat. She wondered if it was her heart.

  “Last year, right after you left, I was miserable.

  I’d decided long ago never to marry, but I missed you like the devil. I told you I bought the ring in January. It was late January. For a few weeks I thought I’d get over it.”

  She gripped the seat of her chair. “During those few weeks you met someone else.”

  It wasn’t a question. It had to be someone else.

  “In a way.”

  The lump seemed to be expanding. She couldn’t suck in a deep breath.

  He never broke eye contact with her; she could feel him willing her to understand and, probably, to forgive.

  Please, God. Don’t let this involve a baby.

  She clamped her jaw shut, afraid she’d said it

  aloud.

  “I started spending the evenings at some dive. I sat at the bar like one of those losers in the movies and drank beer after beer until I’d had enough to fall into such a dead sleep that I didn’t dream of you.”

  She waited.

  “I met a cocktail waitress. Her name’s Nicole.”

  Hallie envisioned a shapely blonde working her way through law school on tips. “Is she pretty?” She bit down on her tongue. What difference did it make if she was pretty?

  “What?” He seemed startled by the concept. “I guess. I don’t know. She’s a kid. We started to talk.

  She’s a pretty good listener.” He frowned as if unsure on that last point.

  Great. His girlfriend was not only a Playboy bunny and a Rhodes Scholar, she was also a good conversationalist.

  “You told her about me?”

  “Yeah. Some. Mostly I listened. She was vulnerable and scared, Hallie. She’d been in an abusive relationship, and she’d run away from it.

  Some two-bit mobster out of Vegas., At first I was just grateful to get my mind off what I
’d done to you, to us. Then I began to think about how you wouldn’t just have listened, you’d have found a way to help her.”

  She kept her gaze on his eyes. She didn’t like the darkness she saw in their gray depths. “You wanted to help her?”

  He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck the way he did when he was tired or exasperated or both. The gesture looked familiar, and she realized his brother did the same thing.

  “She was pregnant and scared to death that this guy would kidnap her. She needed protection, a place to stay, medical care. I could provide that.”

  Hallie fixated on the first three words. The damning three words. She was pregnant. The phrase sent a fist into the middle of her chest. Baz was still talking and she had to force herself to listen.

  “We drove down to Tijuana and got married.”

  “You got married.” She repeated the phrase as if hearing it again would help her grasp the concept.

  “You married a woman who was pregnant.”

  He used two fingers to lift her chin so he could hold her eyes. She saw the remorse in his.

  “Right from the start I told her it was temporary. I didn’t want to be married, remember?”

  “I remember.” The words were faint.

  He shrugged. “Something happened when I said my vows. I looked at Nicole and I saw you. That’s when I knew I’d made a huge mistake. That’s when I knew nothing could stop me from coming to Eden to plead for a second chance.”

  “Nothing,” she said, dully, “except the fact that you were married to someone else.”

  His jaw tightened.

  Pain throbbed in Hallie’s chest. She pressed one hand against it. She wanted to get away from him.

  Away from here. She knew she could not. She was doomed to hear the rest of the story.

  “I brought her to the condo, got her doctor’s appointments, and found her a job at a florist’s shop.

  The job didn’t work out, of course. Nicole’s got major attention deficit issues. She can’t stick with anything for more than a few weeks.”

  “She stuck with you.”

  “Sure. I provided everything she needed.”

  She looked into gray eyes that suddenly seemed foreign. “Did you go to the doctor’s appointments?”

  She could tell from the sick look on his face that he had. And then a new wave of pain swept through her.

  “You were with her when the baby was born.”

  He didn’t have to answer. She knew.

  “That’s why you were so good with Janie. You’d been through it before.”

  He took her hand. “I didn’t know about your situation. Not that it had gotten so dire, anyway. I’m so goddam sorry about all of it.”

  Hallie squeezed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t start crying. Or vomiting. Or both. He remained quiet allowing her to process the information and absorb the blow.

  “I filed for divorce as soon as Nicole was back on her feet.”

  “And the baby?”

  Something flashed in his gray eyes. She recognized it immediately. She’d always been able to read him like a ten-cent novel. Baz had fallen for the child.

  “His name is Robert.”

  Robert. He was undoubtedly beautiful. All babies were beautiful.

  “He’s in L.A. with Nicole. I hired a nurse and then a nanny.”

  Of course he did. Baz was nothing if not responsible.

  “Nicole’s still worried about Jimmy Dinari. He wants the baby.”

  “Are they in danger?”

  “The condo’s got a state-of-the-ar security system. On top of that, my name is on Robert’s birth certificate. Legally that makes him my son.”

  The woman was still living in Baz’s home. Her baby was legally his.

  “But he’s the mobster’s biological son?”

  “That’s what Nicole says.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  He hesitated an instant too long.

  “Is he yours?”

  She could tell she’d shocked him.

  “No. Absolutely not.” But he’d answered just a split second too quickly.

  “But it’s possible, right?”

  The gray eyes were pools of misery. She knew he wanted to spare her this most excruciating detail.

  He didn’t have to answer. Of course he’d slept with her. Women escaped reality with ice cream and romance novels. Men had sex.

  This couldn’t be happening. She’d been so ecstatic just minutes ago. How had the bubble burst so quickly? It wasn’t quick, she reminded herself.

  She’d known there was another shoe to drop. She just hadn’t realized it was going to kick the hell out of her heart. She did the only thing she could do.

  “You can’t leave that young woman and the baby alone in L.A., Baz. They are your responsibility.”

  “Hallie. I love you.”

  “That’s beside the point. You spent twenty years denying your dad and siblings. Are you going to spend the next twenty denying your connection to this young woman and her child? Would you deprive her of a husband and him of a father? They are your family now. Not me.”

  He grabbed her hands and squeezed. “You’re my family, Hallie. You.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no way I could be happy knowing you’ve left a child, Baz. You know I’m right. You wouldn’t be happy, either. Not in the long run.”

  His hands moved to her shoulders, and he enclosed her in his arms. She could feel his heart beating fast, much faster than Molly’s tom-tom.

  “Don’t even think about breaking up with me. You’re mine. We’re meant to be together. You know it, too.

  You feel it.”

  She felt numb. For once she wasn’t distracted by Baz’s masculine scent or the strength in his arms.

  She wasn’t even hungry anymore. Or tired.

  It was like she had died.

  The phone rang. Automatically she started toward it. “Don’t,” he barked, hoarsely. “Whoever it is can wait.”

  She looked into his eyes and saw something she’d never seen there before. Panic. She heard herself speak. “It might be an emergency.”

  He grabbed the phone off the wall. “Dr. Outlaw.”

  He hung up and stood for a moment, with his head bent. A strong, confident man reduced to despair. Tears pricked the backs of Hallie’s eyes.

  “That was Lucy. They just got a call from a Miami Hospital. It’s my dad. He had a heart attack on the boat.”

  Fear broke through the numbness and twisted Hallie’s heart. “Is he okay?”

  “He needs an emergency bypass. Cam and Lucy are heading down there on the first plane out of Bangor. I’ve got to drive them to the airport.” He paused.

  The news had shaken him, badly. This was his dad. His family. She made a quick decision. “You have to go with them. I’ll drive you all to the airport.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I can handle the practice alone for a few days.”

  She hurried to her room and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt. “I’ll stay in the house with Asia and help her with Daisy.”

  “No. I won’t leave while things are unresolved between us.”

  His tanned face was the color of rice paper.

  “You’ve missed twenty years with him, Baz. You need to be there now. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  “But you won’t marry me, will you? You’ve made your decision on that.” His face twisted into a dark scowl. “Don’t you ever get tired of being a martyr?”

  “I’m not a martyr. I can see just see more clearly because I’m on the outside. You can’t abandon that boy. Let’s get over to the house and pick up your things.”

  Baz drove the thirty miles to Bangor on automatic pilot. The sleet had stopped, and the salt trucks had been out. That was one thing about Maine; they had too much snow, but they knew how to handle it.

  The flight wouldn’t leave for another four hours, but they couldn’t afford to miss it. As it was they’d
get there in the middle of the surgery. His gut clenched. He needed to be there. Hallie was right about this. She was wrong about the other, though.

  Dead wrong. She was his woman, not Nicole.

  But she did have a point about Robert and he knew it.

  And Robert was the part that hurt her most.

  She might never admit it but he knew. He’d enabled

  another woman to have a healthy child while Hallie’s time clock was running out. She’d never forgive him, and he didn’t really blame her.

  ****

  Hallie returned to Eden, cleaned up her kitchen, and packed up a few clothes. She’d have given a lot to be allowed to stay in her own place for the next few days, but Asia could use some help with Daisy, and, in any case, the housekeeper was nervous about being the sole adult in the house. Hallie knew, too,

  Asia was worried sick about her boss.

  Hallie was worried sick, too.

  After the clinic closed, Hallie joined Asia and Daisy for supper. The pork chops were undoubtedly delicious. Asia was a superb cook, but, once again, Hallie couldn’t eat much of anything and Asia noticed.

  “Off your feed, tonight?”

  “I’m worried about Jesse,” she said, after Daisy had left to read a child’s version of Charlotte’s Web to Wilbur. It was on the approved list because the pig was one of the heroes and he didn’t die.

  “You sure that’s all that’s on your mind?”

  Hallie’s heart hurt so badly. She wished she could confide in the older woman. Asia had a lot of common sense and a ton of experience with the Outlaw family. It would be a relief to share the burden of her new knowledge with someone, but it wouldn’t be fair. Asia’s first loyalty was to the Outlaws, including the Prodigal Son.

  “Couldn’t help but notice that new sparkler,” Asia said.

  Good grief. She’d forgotten all about the dancing emeralds. It was a beautiful ring, and she’d be sorry to lose it, but it was just a ring. Her heart convulsed as she thought about the future without Baz.

  “Baz gave it to you, didn’t he?”

  “He did.”