Then Comes Baby

by Helen Brenna

  Natalie scanned the list of what Missy had sold and the amount due each child. “Woo-hoo, Sam! You topped out at a hundred and twenty-five bucks.”

  Sam grinned. “That’s how much I made?”

  “Yep.”

  “What about me?”

  “And me!”

  “Me, too.”

  One by one, she relayed how much each child had made from the sale of their crafts. Galen was the only disappointed one in the crew, but that was to be expected since he’d dragged his feet up until the past week or so. “You’ll do better next time,” Natalie offered.

  “I know,” Galen said. “It’s my own fault.” He’d begun making key chains and wristbands using leather products and had cut and burned his own designs into the smooth tanned surface.

  As the kids filed out of Missy’s store, Missy held Natalie back. “You okay? You look tired.”

  “We’ve been busy.”

  “You need a break.”

  “No, I can’t—”

  “One entire night alone.”

  “I don’t like to be al—”

  “I’m not taking no for an answer.” Missy stuck her head outside and called out to the kids, “Who wants to go camping tonight with me?”

  “You mean sleep in a tent?”

  “Yep.” Missy nodded.

  “Yeah!”

  “Cool!”

  “I’m in!”

  Every single one of the children was excited, even Galen.

  “There. Done.” Missy turned back to Natalie. “Relax tonight. Glass of wine and a movie. A full night’s sleep. Tomorrow, you’ll be a new woman.”

  Knowing Missy wasn’t going to budge, Natalie accepted the fact that she needed a break. After they left Missy, Natalie cashed the check at Mirabelle’s little corner bank and doled out cash to each one of the kids.

  “Let’s go to the candy store!” Chase exclaimed.

  “Totally!” agreed Blake.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want to do with your money?” Natalie asked.

  The kids glanced at each other.

  “You can save or spend, it’s completely up to you, but it might be wise to decide on how much you want to spend before you go to the store. That way you won’t eat into the amount you want to save.”

  There were nods all around, and she took them to Mrs. Miller’s candy store. They’d all agreed to spend no more than five dollars each, except for Sam and Galen. They both swore they were saving every penny of their earnings.

  “How are you doing today, Mrs. Miller?” Natalie said, going to the front counter.

  “I’m good, Natalie.” Mrs. Miller was watching all the kids as they wandered around the store, suspicion clouding her eyes as her gaze settled on Galen.

  “Is it bothering you that I bring the kids here?” Natalie asked.

  “It’s nothing against you, dear,” the woman whispered. “But I did hear a rumor about your older boy causing some trouble.”

  Natalie tried to stay calm, but this prejudice against her kids was bothering her more than she’d expected. “Are you referring to Galen?”

  Mrs. Miller nodded.

  At the mention of his name, Galen moved a little closer to Natalie and seemed to tune into their conversation.

  “Can’t be too careful these days,” Mrs. Miller went on. “Honestly, I’m not sure Mirabelle is the right place for your camp.”

  “Kids!” Natalie called. “Pick out what you want and come on over here and pay for it. It’s time to go.” She leaned toward Mrs. Miller and said softly, “After today, we’ll take our business to the other candy store.” It would be a bit longer of a walk toward the other end of town, but they might be more welcoming.

  As soon as they got outside, Natalie turned to Galen and whispered, “Do you know what Mrs. Miller was talking about?”

  “No.” Galen shook his head. “I swear I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Natalie watched him walking away with the rest of the kids and kept her fingers crossed he was telling the truth.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS?” Standing in the kitchen later that night, Natalie almost dropped the phone. Missy had no sooner collected all the kids for their campout at the state park on the island than her attorney had called to give her the good news. “Someone donated that much to my summer program?”

  “No strings attached,” her attorney said.

  “Who is it?”

  “That particular one was anonymous, but there are several others who’ve promised some fairly substantial amounts.”

  “Why all of a sudden?”

  “Someone, somewhere put in a good word for you.”

  Jamis. He had to be behind this.

  “I thought you’d be more excited.”

  “Oh, I am. This is great. Thanks.” She hung up the phone and glanced out the window toward Jamis’s cabin. Oddly enough, she missed the sound of his voice, his sardonic looks and even his sarcastic comments, and this big house seemed awfully quiet without the children.

  No, you are absolutely not going over there!

  She ran a bath and threw in some scented salt. Next, she lit a candle, turned on some soft music and got ready for a night of blissful peace and quiet.

  JAMIS LAY ON HIS SOFA with Snickers stretched out alongside him. He stared up at the knotty pine ceiling absently petting the dog’s head. Jazz played softly. The only light in the room came from a dim lamp in the corner and a small blaze burning in the stone fireplace. It was exactly the kind of idyllic, quiet night Natalie might intrude upon and ruin. Not that he wanted her to. It just made sense to brace for a possible attack.

  Then again, he hadn’t seen her since that day she’d called him a coward and told him to rot in hell. He still couldn’t believe she’d had that in her. He deserved everything she’d said, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

  A tap sounded on the patio door. Snickers perked up and raced across the room. Then the door slid open. “Hey, Snick.”

  He glanced over to see Natalie patting the dog’s head. She was in a sweatshirt and sweatpants and her hair was wet as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. She smiled uncertainly. “Want some company?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  At first she didn’t say anything. “I’ve been thinking.” She stayed where she was, the door cracked open behind her. “We started off on the wrong footing.”

  “You think?”

  “Can we back up?”

  “Why? What’s the point?”

  “I’ll leave if you really want me to.”

  He hesitated. God help him, but he wanted her to stay. “There’s a bottle of wine up on the counter. Help yourself.”

  She slid the patio door closed, kicked off her flip-flops and went barefoot into the kitchen. He heard her moving from cupboard to cupboard. He would’ve told her where to look for a glass, but there was something comforting about the sounds of someone, another body, a real live person rummaging around in his house.

  A moment later, she came back into the great room, set the bottle of wine on the coffee table and sat on the other half of the oversize sectional sofa. Snickers jumped up next to her and rested his head in her lap. For an instant Jamis imagined her fingers on his head, smoothing back his hair.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “For all those harsh things I said to you the other day when I was angry. About you being on this island. And being a coward.”

  “Everyone has a right to their opinions.”

  “Having them is different than voicing them.”

  “I deserved it, didn’t I?” He shrugged, sloughing it off, though for some reason, her opinion of him was beginning to matter. “If not for that, surely for something else.”

  “I started reading Lock and Load the other night.”

  He said nothing.

  “You’re an amazing writer.” She took a sip of wine. “I couldn’t put the book down for hours, but it was a little like a train wreck.�
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  “That’s life, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t you ever write anything…nice?”

  He just stared at her.

  “Isn’t there enough pain in the world already?”

  “When people read my books, their own pain seems less significant.”

  “So is that why you write?” Disbelief tainted the sound of her voice. “To help people?”

  He sat up, took a sip of wine and cocked his head at her. “I think you know the answer to that question.”

  “Then why do you write?”

  “Because I have to.” He was quiet for a moment. “These stories hit me, take over my mind and it seems the only way to get rid of them is to write them down. I can’t…I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t write.”

  “That sounds as if you don’t enjoy writing.”

  “Most of the time, I do. It can feel good to lose myself for a while. Building worlds and immersing myself in them.” His gaze turned intense. “I like stepping into other people’s lives and knowing what’s going to happen. I like the sense of control. I can stop things from happening. Or make things happen. What I say goes.”

  “Your characters don’t do anything you’re not expecting?”

  “Never.”

  “What about if—”

  “Why did you come over here?”

  “The kids are gone. Camping with Missy Charms for the night.”

  “And you were bored.”

  She looked away. “I don’t like to be alone.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?”

  She shrugged. “I ate dinner, then primped and pampered myself until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Now here I am.”

  All primped and pampered. Her face glowed as if she’d scrubbed it with some mask. If the fresh coat of pink polish was any indication, she’d given herself a manicure and a pedicure. She’d probably even shaved her legs. He closed his eyes against the images of lots of bare skin flashing through his mind.

  Oblivious to his thoughts, she stood and walked around. “I can’t believe you did all the work on this house yourself.”

  “The winters here are quiet. And last a while.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “Two years.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “It’s not such a big deal.” He swung his feet down off the couch and watched her. “I had a lot of time on my hands, and I needed the physical and mental outlet.”

  “Interesting.”

  “What?”

  “Other than these landscapes.” She pointed to a set of four pictures he’d taken of the seasons on Mirabelle. “You have no photographs. Anywhere.”

  “So?”

  “Your children?”

  “It’s…still painful to look at pictures of Caitlin and Justin.”

  Her expression softened. “Nice names.”

  He looked away and gulped down some wine.

  “What about the rest of your family? Your parents?”

  “We’re not very close.” That was putting it mildly.

  “Where do they live?”

  “In Minneapolis.” He refilled his wineglass. There probably wasn’t enough left in the bottle for this turn in the discussion.

  “And they never visit?”

  “Good God, no.”

  “Don’t you keep in touch with them at all? Even with phone calls?”

  “I haven’t talked to my dad in…at least six years. He was in China, arranging some buyout or something and didn’t bother coming to the funeral for his own grandchildren. That’s the last time I saw my mother. She phones occasionally, but all she does is drone on and on about a particular charity drive she’d organized or some society event she and my dad had attended. She’s a cliché.”

  “That’s cruel.”

  Silently, he studied her for a moment. “She was a cruel mother. I have a memory or two of her being relatively attentive when I very young, but for most of my life, she was absent, apathetic or in one way or another disinterested.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? My poor little rich boy childhood can’t possibly be worse than yours.”

  “Strangely enough, sometimes bad attention is better than none. You have no siblings to commiserate with?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think my mother and father ever intended on being parents, and they had no clue what to do with their strange, introverted and grossly shy son who didn’t fit their lifestyle.” He took a sip of wine. “My father couldn’t relate to me, so he didn’t bother, and my mother, quite simply, rejected what she couldn’t understand.”

  “How did you do at school?”

  “Teased, ridiculed. As a nerdy teenager, I disappeared into my stories.”

  “Did you always write?”

  He chuckled. “I wrote my first book when I was eight. It was a short story, only about twenty pages, but by the time I was sixteen, I’d written five complete novels. They weren’t half-bad, either. Sold a couple of them later with a few rewrites. College was actually a relatively peaceful time in my life. Had my first date when I was a junior. That was interesting.”

  “So you were twenty before you had your first date?”

  “You’re too good-hearted to see the truth, but people don’t like me, Natalie. Especially women. At best, I’m strange. At worst an outright asshole. Either way, I’m not a nice person.”

  “That’s not true.” She shook her head, releasing the minty smell of her shampoo. “You’ve just been telling yourself that for so long, you don’t see the Jamis you’ve matured into. The Jamis I’m coming to know is an articulate, confident, fascinating and…handsome man.”

  He wanted to believe her, but the last time he trusted a woman who was attracted to him he not only had his heart broken, Katherine might as well have run it through a shredder, poured gasoline over the remains and tossed a match. “I’m no different today than I was all those years ago.”

  “Then maybe your perception of who you were then is shaded, as well.”

  A truce was one thing, but he didn’t like this turn in the conversation. Or his thoughts. He spun away from her, went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water, hoping to clear his head.

  She studied the landscape photos he’d framed. “Did you take these?”

  He nodded. “Here on Mirabelle.”

  She pointed. “I like the winter picture.”

  He remembered the morning he’d taken that shot. A heavy, wet snow had settled on the trees and rocks. It was difficult to tell the cloudy sky from the ice-covered lake, the lake from the rocks. The world was white.

  She pointed to the storm, lightning and rain, hovering over the water some five miles away while the sun beamed down on Mirabelle. “Is this in the summer?”

  “August three years ago.” Back when he’d still marveled at Mirabelle’s beauty. He walked toward her.

  “I can’t tell spring from fall.”

  “Spring.” He pointed to the one with tall waves crashing against the shore.

  “Is that ice?” she asked, leaning in for a better look.

  “There and there.” He reached over her shoulder, pointed at the waves, and the scent of her skin, clean soap and warmth, distracted him for a moment. “Those chunks are huge, but you can barely see them.” He closed his eyes and breathed her in.

  “So that’s fall, then,” she said, indicating the photo of the ferry loaded down with tourists leaving the island. “Why?”

  He looked down at her profile, curious and beautiful. “I look at that when I need to remind myself that the madness of summer tourist season will eventually end.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, Jamis.”

  “You think I’m kidding?” And that was when he knew that he would feel differently about this fall because this time around she’d be leaving with all those annoying tourists.

  She looked up at him with that wondrously warm smile on her face and stared into his eyes. When she reached out to trail her fin
gers down his cheek, he froze. Her smile slowly dimmed as heat filled her eyes.

  “Natalie, don’t—”

  She wrapped her hands around his neck, reached up and kissed him. Backing him against the wall, she pressed into him. “I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” she murmured.

  He held completely still for a heartbeat, two at most, and then as if a cord finally snapped inside him he drew her into his arms. His answering kiss came hard and fast. There was nothing tentative in his touch. He’d crawled through a four-year desert and she was a cool spring rain waiting for him on the other side.

  Lifting her onto the countertop, he stepped between her legs and bracketed her head with his hands, holding her there, devouring her. Then he trailed his hand along her neck, over her breast and dipped his fingers under her shirt.

  “It’s not enough,” she whispered. “More.”

  He flicked the clasp on her bra and cupped her breast.

  She shuddered and groaned beneath his hand. “More, more, more.” She dragged his shirt up and over his head, than splayed her hands over his chest. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “I want you so badly.”

  When he dragged his hand along her stomach, she pulsed toward him and he inched beneath her waistband. She groaned and shifted, putting his fingertips only inches from her sweet warmth.

  “Touch me.” She pressed his hand lower, and lower still.

  He shuddered at the first feel of her, swollen and wet and wanting him to take her, right then and there. “You feel like…” He sucked in a ragged breath and stopped. Clenching his jaw, he pushed away from her. “I don’t have a right to this,” he whispered. “I don’t have a right to you.”

  She opened her eyes, looked dazed from his touch. She wanted him. He wanted her.

  “Jamis—”

  “Son of a bitch!” He raked his hands through his hair. “All these years alone.” He closed his eyes and turned away. “You make me want to live again.”

  “Is that so bad?” She reached out to caress him.

  “Damn right, it’s bad!” He spun away. “Before you came here, I was fine. Resigned, if not entirely content. You’re here a month or so and you and your kids are messing with me. Making me feel things I haven’t felt in years. Making me hope. Making me dream. Making me…want.” You.