Until the heroine discovered his deceit and the story became a romp as she did all in her power to encourage him to marry her, insisting that she loved him so much that when he was close to death, they would leap off the Golden Gate Bridge hand in hand.
He finally confessed his trickery, she admitted to her ruse, and they went their separate ways, angry with each other’s machinations.
He looked at the phone as though wanting to call her, and she was preoccupied at a board meeting, thinking of him. Their relationship was about to resolve itself when Max woke up with a vengeance. He didn’t want his bottle or the pacifier or to be held.
“I’ll take him outside and wait for you,” Connor whispered as everyone in the theater looked their way.
“No, I’ll come with you,” she insisted, gathering up their things.
“No, stay.”
“No. We’re in this together.”
“So, what do you think happened?” Connor asked as they walked home, Max now happy to be outdoors and exclaiming at the stars.
“He apologized abjectly,” she speculated, “and promised to give her whatever she wanted if she married him.”
“I think he made her promise to work less and enjoy life more,” he countered, “and if she agreed, he asked her to marry him.”
She stopped indignantly in her tracks. “He lied about dying! That’s awful!”
“That’s true.” He moved on and she followed. “But he wanted to get to know her, and it was the only way he could get her to slow down enough to accomplish that, to let her get to know him. She was working day and night, completely oblivious to her life. It was more like she was dying.”
She thought that over. “I guess we’re going to have to agree to be split along gender lines on this one.”
“Love scene was good, though,” he said, catching Max’s hand as he banged it against his face.
She made a scornful sound. “You can’t make love in a bathtub.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You most certainly can.”
Now she raised an eyebrow. “You’ve done it?”
“Yes.” He said it firmly.
“And you didn’t freeze or drown?”
“Obviously not. I’m still here.”
“Mmm.” She wandered on beside him, her hands in her pockets. “I always thought it was something they just did in the movies so great bodies could be shown almost naked. I mean, I can understand a hot tub, but with a bathtub, you’ve got faucets and drain plugs. I don’t see…”
He hooked his free arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Well, you will,” he said, “once you’ve had a little field experience.”
“WELL, I’LL BE DARNED,” Shelly said breathlessly just before midnight when she lay atop Connor’s body in the old ball and claw bathtub off her bedroom. Max slept in the carrier in her bedroom beyond the open bathroom door.
They’d just made love in a confined but deliciously powerful way, the experience heightened by the lap of French-lavender-scented water against their bodies and the flickering light of a single candle on a small shelf.
Connor sat up and turned her so that she sat between his knees. “Tuck your feet in,” he advised, then reached out with his long foot to turn on the hot water.
She felt it work its way through their now-tepid suds, warming the water around them. She leaned back against him with a sigh of contentment. He scooped up a dollop of suds with his index finger and dropped it on her nose.
“Now I’m going to smell like a girl,” he complained on a teasing note. She noticed that, despite the complaint, he didn’t seem inclined to move out of the scented water.
“Dean’ll spritz some manly stuff on you if you stop at the barbershop.”
“I go to work two hours before he opens.”
“Whine, whine,” she said, flicking water behind her and into his face. “If you didn’t want to do this, you should have just said so.”
“Hey!” He pinched her hip. “You should have warned me that you were putting stuff in the water.”
She leaned sideways to turn and look at him. He was sexily disheveled, the tips of his hair wet, the effects of their lovemaking still in his eyes. “You were in here with me when I did it!” she reminded him. “Remember? You had my shirt in your hand and I asked you to give me a minute so I could—”
“I was distracted, okay?” he interrupted with a grin. “And I was just trying to contribute to your collective life experience.”
“You were trying to seduce me.”
“Didn’t I just say that?”
She slapped the water to splash him and, as he moved to retaliate, water sloshed out of the tub and extinguished the candle.
They lay back, laughing, then made love again in the dark.
“LOUISE IS COMING on Wednesday,” Nathan told Shelly and Connor on Monday afternoon. Shelly had closed the coffee shop and walked with Max to the medical center to pick up Connor. Nathan was on call tonight. “I talked to Luke this morning and he still has nothing on Max’s mother. I don’t think we’ll be able to stall CFS any longer.”
Shelly felt her stomach tighten and her throat close.
She hated the thought of giving up the baby. She looked down at his wide-eyed, pink-cheeked little face staring into hers and felt tears bite her eyes.
“I’m going to ask her if I can keep him,” she said, avoiding Connor’s eyes. “Do you think that could happen?”
Nathan looked uncertain. “They have a long list of couples waiting to adopt. Couples who’ve been interviewed and checked out. I don’t know, Shelly. And I’m not sure they can make him available for adoption until they know what’s happened to his mother.”
“What about my keeping him as a foster parent?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure Louise can give you all the details, though.”
“Okay.” She turned to Connor, heavyhearted. After the wonderful weekend they’d shared, she felt real concern today over what to do about their relationship. It had been on her mind all day. “You ready to go?”
He’d changed out of his lab coat, and wore a dark blue parka over jeans and a sweatshirt. She expected him to be angry because she was discussing the possibility of adopting Max without having talked it over with him, without accepting or rejecting his suggestion that they get married.
Instead, he looked curiously detached, as though not caring one way or the other. After what they’d shared over the weekend, she was sure it had to be an act. At least, she hoped it was.
CONNOR WANTED TO RANT. He had an overwhelming urge to shout and throw things. He wanted to grab Shelly and shake her until the fog she lived under disappeared.
But he was beginning to think that wasn’t going to happen. If their weekend of lovemaking hadn’t convinced her that they were made for each other, he didn’t know what could. The trouble was, it had convinced him. He forced himself to stay calm until he could figure out what to do about it.
He took the carrier with Max in it from Shelly as they walked home. She tucked her hand in his free arm.
“If I accepted your proposal now,” she said, “you’d think it was because I wanted Max. I’ve been thinking about this all day. I don’t believe we should decide anything about us until we know what’s going to happen with him.”
His calm slipped, but he struggled to hold on to it. “I think it would help you to get Max if we were married,” he said. “But what I feel for you has nothing to do with him.”
“But you’d question my feelings.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he insisted as they stopped at the corner of Orchard, waiting for a pickup truck to pass. “You’re questioning your feelings. And you’re trying to blame it on me.”
The truck passed, but they remained on the corner as their argument continued.
“I’m not blaming anything on you!” she replied a little hotly. “I just don’t think we can leap into anything on five days’ acquaintance with a baby involved. You want to make it happen because you
want the family Lisa wouldn’t give you.”
“And you don’t want it,” he snapped back, “because if your parents didn’t do it first, or it isn’t okayed by the people of Jester, you don’t know what to do about anything!”
She stared at him in hurt surprise as his words circled them on the early evening air. A block behind them, light traffic passed on Main Street, people greeted each other, a horn honked and somewhere a dog barked. But on the corner of Lottery Lane and Orchard Street, war had broken out.
Connor might have taken the words back given the chance, but he knew they’d have to be said sometime if he was ever going to have a life with Shelly. He expelled a sigh, ran a hand over his face and caught her arm. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll finish this at home.”
In the living room, he took Max out of the carrier and put him on a throw on the floor while Shelly went to the refrigerator for a bottle. She was back with it in a few minutes.
He was still building a fire when she came to stand over him.
“Were you implying that I’m unable to make up my own mind?” she demanded.
“Yeah,” he replied, touching a match to the kindling and twisted paper and watching to see if it would take.
He half expected the tennis shoe he could see out of the corner of his right eye to boot him right into the fireplace. But she paced around to his other side instead.
“And what in the hell makes you think you know that much about me after less than a week? You’re just judgmental and opinionated! And egotistical! My first impression of you was right on!”
The flame licked at the firewood and finally caught. He pushed himself to his feet, repositioned the fireplace screen, then turned to her, braced to do battle.
She stood just a few feet from him, apparently girded to do the same. If the strength in her body could match the fire in her eyes, he suspected he’d be in danger of serious injury.
“Think about it,” he said, making himself keep his voice down. He glanced at the playpen and saw that Max was sitting up straight, bottle in hand, watching them. He wished circumstances were different so they could focus on that little victory together. But they weren’t. “Think about your arguments for not getting involved. You work all the time, and you want to be free to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by your winnings.”
“And?” she asked imperiously.
“And they’re diametrically opposed arguments,” he said. “You claim that you work all the time, so I can’t lay claim to your regular time, and you claim that you want to be free to take off on a moment’s notice, so I can’t lay claim to your free time. You don’t want to give me anything. You want to stay all alone making stew and waiting tables because that’s what your parents always did and that’s what makes you comfortable.”
“I want Max!”
“Sure you do, because he’s a way to have a child without actually having to let anyone else into your life—except the baby. It’s perfect.”
“You’re just angry,” she fired back, “because it’s possible I’d be able to get him without involving you!” Her eyes filled with tears, probably more anger than grief, as she went on. “You wedged your way into my life thinking I wouldn’t be able to get him without you and you’d finally have your family. You thought poor, incompetent Shelly wouldn’t be able to manage without you, but I can. I can!”
It amazed him how quickly their argument had deteriorated. He could only imagine she felt as wounded as he did and there was nothing to be gained by prolonging it.
And by all indications, there was nothing to be gained by his staying.
He grabbed the jacket he’d tossed over the back of the sofa. “You’re absolutely right,” he said quietly. “You’ve learned to cope with Max very well. You don’t need me anymore.” He jammed his hands into his pocket and connected in the right one with the pacifier that often ended up there. He took it out and handed it to her.
She frowned darkly at him, then came forward and snatched it from him.
“If he cries during the night, you now know all the tricks I know. If he does get sick or hurt, you know how to reach me.” He went to the blanket and squatted down to plant a kiss on the baby’s head. A pudgy little fist dropped the bottle and reached for him. He squeezed the tiny fingers, then headed for the door.
“Connor!” she called as he pulled it open.
He turned coolly, waiting, secretly hoping she would fling herself at him and tell him she hadn’t meant any of it.
She hesitated, opened her mouth, closed it, took a step forward then stopped. “Thank you for your help,” she said finally, stiffly.
“Sure,” he replied in the same tone, and left.
Later, holding the baby on her hip, Shelly stirred soup and tried to figure out what had happened. Not that it required much investigation. They’d yelled and screamed at each other, hurled accusations, then told each other they weren’t needed, that’s what happened.
Well. Not exactly. She’d told him she didn’t need him. He’d told her she was unable to make any serious decisions in her life.
“Well, that’s just not true!” she told Max as she ladled soup into a mug. He reached for the ladle and she held it out of his reach, getting soup all over the counter. She didn’t let herself think about how much easier it was to get dinner when Connor was entertaining Max.
She put him in the carrier on the table and endured his screaming while she wiped up the mess, turned off the burner and tried to eat her soup. She put a few Cheerios in Max’s hand, hoping they’d entertain him, but he simply threw them.
She gave up after she’d eaten half the soup, then played with Max on the floor near the fire, telling herself it was just as well. Connor had created turmoil in her life from the moment she’d met him anyway, and the Duprees always worked hard but strove for a quiet life.
Quiet lives, a little voice told her, required little decision making.
She ignored the voice and rolled the large ball at Max, who gave it a sharp, uncoordinated smack that struck the pot of flowers she’d bought herself the day she deposited her lottery winnings. The vase broke and spewed flowers and water all over.
Curiously, it didn’t seem to matter.
Max, startled by the noise, began to cry. She sat with him in the rocker until he went to sleep. She placed him on the sofa while she cleaned up the mess, then put him down in the crib upstairs and prepared for bed.
Then she remembered that she hadn’t turned off the lights and locked up. She’d grown accustomed to Connor doing that.
She fought the surge of tears in her throat and her eyes, cleared her throat, swallowed, then went downstairs to take care of the details she’d always done herself before anyway.
When she climbed into bed, she lay on her back the way she used to sleep, rather than on her side, curled into Connor. A minute later she couldn’t remember why she’d ever thought that comfortable, and turned onto her side. Her nose landed on the edge of the pillow Connor had used last night and caught a whiff of French lavender.
She burst into tears, pulled the pillow to her and sobbed into it.
Chapter Ten
“I thought I heard something up here,” Nathan said, standing in the doorway of the storage room in a thick sweater and jeans. “What are you doing? I thought you left with Shelly and the baby?”
Nathan, who’d gone home for dinner when Connor returned to the medical center, was obviously back to work on the books, judging by the folder under his arm. Connor reclined on his cot with an old Sports Illustrated.
“We had a parting of the ways,” Connor replied. “Why don’t you go home to Vickie. I’ll be here tonight anyway, so I’ll take call.”
Nathan came to sit on a stack of boxes facing him. “What do you mean, a parting of the ways? Over her wanting the baby?”
“No.” Connor closed the magazine, swung his legs over the side of the cot and sat up. “Over her not wanting me.”
“Oh,” Nathan said grimly. “Ar
e you sure, though? Vickie said when she delivered the playpen, she thought Shelly looked like she had a crush on you.”
Crush. Connor smiled, remembering the word he’d once used. It was pretty small compared to what he felt now.
“If she did,” he said, “she’s gotten over it.”
“You know…” Nathan stared at the floor as though thinking how to frame what he had to say. He used to do that in medical school, Connor remembered. Take a while to put his thoughts together, then come out with a beautifully organized argument for his position, whatever it was. “Shelly’s parents were the salt of the earth, but that girl had no childhood. She was always working. She never had a boyfriend because she worked weekends, and when she went away to school, she had to come back because her mother got sick. She probably wouldn’t know what to do with fun if it ran over her.”
Connor nodded. “Yeah. She told me all that. She thinks I care about her only because she has Max and it’s my chance to get the family Lisa wouldn’t give me.”
“Is it?”
“No.” That was honest. “Though I rushed her, I guess, because I know I love her. And I’d like to have her for myself. So I guess that is selfish after all.”
“Of course it’s not selfish. Love wants to claim! That’s the way it works. I think you probably represent everything she’s ever dreamed of during the long hours she’s spent in that kitchen at the coffee shop, and she’s probably afraid to trust that you’re real. And now she’s got all this money she isn’t sure what to do with, and she isn’t sure she deserves that when her parents struggled their whole lives. I think she’s just a sweet, smart girl in an unfamiliar situation and she’s panicking.”
Frankly, Connor was weary of trying to figure out what was happening with Shelly. “You think she’ll be able to get Max?”
“I really don’t know. I’ll vouch for her, of course, but while Louise gave us some slack this week, she’s usually a stickler for doing things by the book.”
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