Baby In A Basket

by Helen R. Myers

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, it’s not as if they’d be shown in New Hope. They’re very deep, very metaphorical art films.”

  “Ah.”

  “We met at the airport. The heel of my shoe got stuck in a sidewalk crack just in front of his limo. Isn’t that incredible?”

  “I’m blown away. Then you realized you were pregnant?”

  She shook her head while admiring a perfect coral fingernail. “Not for a few weeks. You know...when something that’s supposed to happen didn’t happen?”

  That had Mitch starting to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. If the air conditioner wasn’t set at near-arctic temperatures, he would have broken out in a sweat beneath his mustache. “Uh, wait a minute. Didn’t you say you’d already met Hugo by then? Are you saying you and he didn’t...”

  “We did. Are you kidding? Mitch, I’m trying to explain—this was sheer destiny. But Hugo’s enormously disciplined,” she added, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “We always practiced safe sex.”

  Strike two. Mitch massaged the pain that was threatening to crack open the back of his skull. “I see.”

  “I’ll tell you what a great guy he is, when I told him about my condition, he sent me to his beach house in the Carolinas. He paid for the hospital and everything.”

  Mitch narrowed his eyes, not caring if the guy provided her with a pedicurist every week. “Whose name is listed as the father on the birth certificate?”

  “Yours.”

  It was amazing how quickly the pain began to ease. “And what’s Mary’s real name?”

  “Mary?” Savannah gave him a strange look. “You call her Mary?”

  “I had to call her something. I liked Mary. It suited her. It suits the town where she’s going to grow up,” he added meaningfully.

  For the first time a softness stole into Savannah’s heavily mascaraed eyes. “I had them put Shawna Mary McCord on the birth certificate. I remembered your middle name was Sean, and Mary seemed a sweet name for a good girl.” Her gaze held Mitch’s. “I want her to be a good girl, Mitch.”

  The emotion building in his chest kept him from answering right away. She’d spoken of destiny, and if Mary’s name didn’t reflect just that, he didn’t know what to believe in anymore.

  “Thanks,” he began, his voice thick. “Um, you didn’t want your parents to know about her?”

  “They’re gone. I have an aunt somewhere in Kansas, but we’ve never kept in touch. No, she’s better off with you. You’re glad now that you have her? I was right?”

  “She’s changed my life.”

  Savannah began to say something else and then made a negative gesture. “Don’t tell me about her. It’s better to make a clean break.”

  “You’re back with Hugo? You’re okay?”

  “Better than okay. We’re getting married next week. He’s starring me in his next film. His stipulation was that my focus is wholly on my work...and him, of course.”

  “Of course.” He had a feeling he wouldn’t like this Hanover guy, but Savannah was old enough to make her own choices. “Something still confuses me about all this,” he said, thinking of the past few weeks. “Why did you try to scare off my detective and make him think you were being protected by some hoods?”

  “Hugo is the jealous type. If he found out that we were having this conversation, he would come unglued.”

  “Sounds like a healthy relationship.”

  “He’s older. He’s afraid he may be losing his virility and, therefore, me, to a younger man. I had to get rid of your private eye so I could handle things on my own timetable. Here...” She rose and went for her purse. “I have something for you.”

  She pulled out a thick, white envelope and handed it to him.

  Wary again, Mitch asked, “What’s this?”

  “I’m relinquishing custody of her. There are two copies, one for each of us. Mine’s already signed and notarized. On my way up here, I stopped by the concierge’s desk. He told me that they have a notary who can witness your signature right away. Do me a favor and go have that done. I’ll wait for you here if you don’t mind. The last thing I need is someone recognizing me.”

  Maybe drama was the right field for Savannah, after all. But to be fair he felt an incredible relief, too. Everything he’d wanted, hoped for, was now in his grasp. He thought of Jenny and yearned to phone her this second with the news. Soon, though, he promised himself. Soon.

  He snatched up his jacket. “I’ll be right back,” he said, heading for the door.

  Jenny hummed as she entered the kitchen. “I’m home!”

  “What on earth do you have there?” her grandmother asked, turning from the sink. In her hand she held the kettle for afternoon tea.

  “The newest version of the rubber ducky. Isn’t it adorable?”

  “A bit large, I’d say. Which one of you is it for?”

  “One of these days I’m going to sign you up for amateur night at a comedy club, Gran. See if I don’t.” Detouring to kiss her on the cheek to assure her that she didn’t mind the teasing one bit, Jenny added, “Put enough water on for me, too. I could use a cup. How’s the baby?”

  “Fine. I don’t know about her father, though. Did he say something about a schedule change to you?”

  Jenny paused midway to the table. “Why?”

  “He phoned a few minutes ago. He gave me a number but said he had to go out and that he would call you back.”

  “Let me see.” She put the package on the counter by the phone and looked up at the message board. “That’s a California area code. I recognize it from a number he’s given me before. Oh, no! Don’t tell me something’s going to delay him.” She reached for the phone.

  “Hold on there! He said he would call you back!” her grandmother declared.

  “Maybe I’ll catch him as he’s coming in. I’d like to know what’s going on before I start dinner and end up ruining everything.”

  She punched in the numbers. Seconds later, after only one ring, a man answered. Hearing the hotel name sent Jenny’s heart dropping like a battleship anchor. “Mitchell McCord’s room, please,” she said, wondering what could have gone wrong to make him register in a hotel. He was supposed to be on his way home! Of course, she reminded herself, as long as he was all right, nothing else mat—

  “Hello?”

  The female voice threw her off for an instant. Had she been connected to the wrong room? “Excuse me,” she said, feeling a bit awkward. “I’m trying to get—Is Mitch McCord there?”

  The woman hesitated. “This is his room, but...he’s unavailable at the moment. Can I take a message?”

  Unavailable! Whether she wanted them to or not, a number of images flashed before her mind’s eye.

  “Who is this?” she demanded.

  “Who’s this?” the woman replied with an even haughtier tone to her voice.

  Jenny froze. She knew that voice, had heard far too many commercials not to recognize its distinct intonation.

  Oh, God. “Savannah,” she whispered.

  Chapter Ten

  “I’ve got it,” Mitch said as he let himself into his room. He could barely restrain his enthusiasm, now that the full impact and meaning of the documents had begun to set in. It took something like Savannah’s troubled expression, as she stood by the telephone, to check his euphoria.

  “Good,” she murmured, crossing to get her purse and sunglasses. “That’s good.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  At first it didn’t look as if she was going to tell him. She bit her lower lip and her gaze kept shifting back to the phone. Finally, with a sigh she said, “Who did you tell about me?”

  Mitch wasn’t sure what she was driving at. “You mean, about that night?”

  “Whatever. Who, besides that detective, knows you and I have a history?”

  “Jenny.” The expression on her face had him glancing at the phone, too. “Why?”

  “I think that was her just now.”

  �
��She called?”

  “A woman called. She said my name and hung up.” Savannah lifted a finely plucked eyebrow. “It seems as if I’ve created another complication for you.”

  She could say that again. Mitch almost groaned as he thought of what Jenny must be thinking. Damn, why hadn’t she waited for him to call her as he’d asked?

  “Jenny.” He sighed.

  “You’re in love with her.”

  It wasn’t a question and Mitch didn’t have to do any deep soul-searching for an answer. “Yeah. She’s been my neighbor since we were kids, and she’s been an angel with Mary. She’s too darned good for me, but I’m tired of trying to be noble and let some decent guy have a chance with her.”

  Savannah’s expression turned skeptical. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re decent enough.” She gestured toward the phone. “Is there anything I can do to smooth things out?”

  “I’ll call her right back. It’ll be all right.” He handed her a copy of the release. “I really appreciate this, Savannah. And I hope you get everything you’re looking for.”

  “I will.” She studied him for a long moment before leaning forward and kissing his cheek. “Have a good life, Mitch.”

  As soon as he shut the door behind her, he lunged for the phone and dialed Jenny’s number from memory. He cleared his throat on the first ring. On the second, he sat down and ran his damp palm along his thigh. By the fifth ring he had to stand again.

  After eight rings, he hung up and dialed Jenny’s business number. If she was there, she wouldn’t fail to answer it, or else her answering machine would pick up. On the third ring, the machine began its tape. Then it cut off and he was left with dead air.

  He couldn’t believe it. Convinced something must have malfunctioned, he dialed again and got a busy signal.

  No accident, pal. She’s taken the phone off the hook.

  He dialed the first number again. Now that one had a busy signal, too.

  “Damn,” he groaned, hanging up and burying his head in his hands. “What have you done, McCord?”

  “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” Jenny’s grandmother turned away from the oddly positioned phone when Jenny returned from the office where she’d just taken care of the second line.

  “Fine. I won’t.” Jenny didn’t want to talk anyway. She was too hurt, too furious to speak intelligently.

  Of course, her grandmother didn’t mean what she’d said. Jenny knew that as soon as she signaled she’d changed her mind about the tea and reached for the bottle of wine chilling in the refrigerator.

  “All right, tell me.”

  The neck of the bottle had a heavy foil wrapper and the cork looked as if it needed a neurosurgeon to remove it. Jenny all but-ripped the drawers out of the cabinets looking for the bottle opener.

  “What? You’re going to punish me, too?”

  That reached her, and the fight went out of Jenny as if she’d just inadvertently hit the vacuum button. She slumped against the counter.

  “Gran...he’s in a hotel room with another woman!”

  “Not just any woman. Savannah.”

  There was no doubt about the mockery in her grandmother’s voice. It was gentle. Her ancient eyes held a life full of wisdom and compassion. But the rebuke was there nonetheless.

  “You think I’m overreacting. You think I should let him explain.”

  “Certainly not. It’s written in granite somewhere that men are a subspecies. I think we should draw and quarter him the minute he gets home, and in the years to come we’ll tell his baby girl and everyone else who’s interested that he was abducted by aliens.”

  Jenny resumed her search for the opener. Finding it, she slammed the drawer shut with enough velocity that she knew it would leave a bruise on her hip and made her belatedly worry about waking Mary. When no cry from the next room sounded, she exhaled and proceeded to open the bottle.

  “You don’t get it. Hearing her voice—”

  “You’re so sure it was her?”

  “Gran. Remember the year you took me to the state fair in Dallas and walked me through the livestock pavilion? Remember that heifer that chose the worst possible moments to realize ‘I am woman hear me roar’? Well, Savannah is about that difficult to forget.”

  “All right, so it was her. Does that mean there is no explanation?”

  “I know there’s an explanation. He’s never stopped his own search. He didn’t let a third party, an attorney, handle things for him, and this is the result.”

  “I suppose this means you don’t want tea?” At Jenny’s dark look, her grandmother busied herself with pouring out the extra water and choosing a mug.

  For her part, Jenny, inexperienced in wine opening, broke an already short nail in getting the protective covering off the neck, and then shredded the cork. By the time she poured herself a glass of the Chardonnay, the contents of her glass looked as if she’d been sitting beneath a bug light for an hour.

  “Does it taste as bad as it looks?” her grandmother asked, after Jenny took the first, then second sip.

  “Not if you drink around the flotilla”

  Her grandmother stared down into her mug and dunked the tea bag up and down. “I think we should talk.”

  “There’s nothing to say. As a matter of fact, you should be thrilled. You were right. I was wrong. Mr. Friendly Skies is alive and well and having a lovely layover in L.A. while I take care of his love child. ”

  “You could be right.”

  “You bet.”

  “Or you could be desperately wrong.”

  A mustard seed-size speck of cork lodged in her throat. Although she gagged until she must have turned two shades of blue, Jenny would have swallowed a whole case of Chardonnay corks before admitting it was anything more than getting wine in the wrong pipe. “Don’t you think it’s time I take off those rose-colored glasses you were talking about? Okay...so I thought trust and good intentions were all that’s needed to prove a point. So I believed that in the end, he would finally see me for who I am, I-love me. Hey, I’m more than willing to say, I’ve got the picture now.”

  “Yes, but since when am I the one who argues for reason and patience and you’re the one who jumps to conclusions?”

  Good question. But Jenny had a good answer. “Since I realized that I’m tired, Gran. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I’ll grant you that’s nothing in this day and age for a single woman to worry about, but considering how long I’ve invested being nuts about one guy, it’s crippling.”

  Her grandmother nodded. “Then I won’t say anything more. I won’t even try to hug you, because I know how sensitive you are when you get this way.”

  “And don’t put those phones back on, either.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it. But I am cooking dinner for us. And then you’re going to have a lovely long bath and relax.”

  “I just want to curl into a knot in my room and be alone, Gran.”

  Although her grandmother agreed, the baby roused and uttered one brief whimper in her usual good-natured way to announce she was ready for attention.

  “Later,” Jenny said with a sigh as she put the glass down. “Right now I have commitments.”

  He landed in Dallas at the last moments of sunset. A miracle by any way he calculated it, considering the calls, negotiations and pleas he’d gone through to achieve the feat. And by the time Mitch was heading for New Hope, his stomach was burning as if he had two ulcers growing there.

  When he pulled into his driveway, he half expected to see Jenny’s place pitch-dark and the doors boarded against him. He was almost relieved to see Fiona pluck off the day’s tired and wilting flowers and sweep off the steps and walkway.

  Leaving his things in the car, save the armful of flowers and the fluffy white teddy bear he’d snatched up upon his arrival at the terminal, he took long, determined strides across the lawn. “Fiona.”

  She raised the broom like a sentry’s lance across her body. But her wise, round face held surp
rising satisfaction. “Well, well. You made good time.”

  At his approach, she shifted to where her back was to the floodlights, so he lost the ability to tell her true mood. However, he was sure of at least a bit of sarcasm in her voice. Did that mean she was going to fight him when he tried to get inside? He hoped not. He’d come here to mend their relationship, not to tear them completely apart.

  “I got here as fast as I could.”

  “To apologize?”

  “No, ma’am.” At least not about what she thought. “To explain. Two different things.”

  Fiona remained silent for a moment, as if debating his words, and not caring whether he liked it or not. “She’s upset, Mitchell. Do you think she has a right to be?”

  “Yes...and no. I think I can make her understand. Is she inside with the baby?”

  Once again Fiona hesitated. Finally, she tipped her head toward the door. “Upstairs. Second door on your left. Don’t you tell her I told you. I have my reputation to protect.”

  He grinned, beginning to feel some of the tension inside him relax. On impulse he tugged a rose out of the bouquet and offered it to her. “Here. I’ll keep her busy so she doesn’t notice that one is missing,” he said, and added a kiss on her cheek for good measure.

  As he started up the steps, he got a swat on his butt. “Hey!”

  “That’s for scaring the pink out of my hair and my little girl’s cheeks!” she snapped, pointing the rose at him. But just as quickly a twinkle came into her eyes. “Go on now. You’ve kept her waiting long enough!”

  He figured that if he spent the rest of his life trying, he would never figure out women. He did, however, have a hunch that he would find the attempt entertaining, especially since he would be outnumbered. For a while, he amended with a secret grin.

  Inside he moved faster, taking the stairs two at a time. He heard the water splashing before he reached the top, and thought she must be elbow deep in giving the baby a bath.