Angel's Baby

by Pamela Browning

  “Of course not.”

  “As to those duties, perhaps I should perform some of them repeatedly.”

  “You already have.”

  “I mean, we want to conceive a baby. So it makes sense to perform the necessary tasks often, don’t you think?”

  “The optimum interval between ‘tasks’ is forty-eight hours if we wish to achieve maximum results,” she said, although she already knew that somewhere inside her, sperm had met egg and cells were dividing, creating a baby—her baby.

  Stuart slid his hands up under her hair and guided her head toward his. “I’m not interested in intervals—optimum or otherwise,” he said slowly, the words a mere whisper, and then he kissed her.

  We wouldn’t have to do this, Angel thought to herself as she succumbed, but it’s so much fun. And then she was lost in sensation, in feeling. It seemed almost too much to hope for that they would be able to sustain the sexual excitement they’d found on their honeymoon. Maybe it had been a fluke; somehow those hours in the Kapok Tree Resort Hotel seemed unreal. She pretended for a few seconds—only a few—that this man, who still seemed to so ardently desire her, wanted more than a baby, that he actually wanted her for herself.

  It’s too dangerous to think that way, she thought, and then, reveling in the satiny texture of his skin against hers, she was unable to think at all.

  Chapter Seven

  It took Angel ten days to decide that she was definitely pregnant.

  For one thing, her breasts had become sore and her nipples swollen. For another, she couldn’t stand the smell of butter or bacon or salad dressing. When she cooked, she had to keep running to the open kitchen door to get a breath of fresh air. She was ecstatic about her symptoms. But she didn’t mention them to Stuart.

  He seemed to notice every time she bolted for the outdoors; these days, Stuart noticed everything about her. “Is something wrong?” he’d say. “Are you looking for something out there in the banyan tree?”

  “Caloosa,” she’d say. “The mockingbirds were chasing her again today, and I haven’t seen her since.” Or she’d say, “The sunset is so lovely that I had to come out to take a look.”

  Whereupon Stuart would say, “I’ll look for Caloosa. Want to come with me?” Or “The sunset’s prettier on the beach. Let’s walk down and watch it.”

  No matter how she felt, Angel could never say no to Stuart’s requests. She had lived alone on the island for so long that she’d thought she liked being alone. Now, here was Stuart, always around, always wanting her company for something or other. She’d be on her way to the meadow to spend time with her bees, and Stuart would come along and suggest something that sounded too good to pass up.

  They hiked. They explored the limestone caves on the north shore. They made love.

  He was good company, which was why she usually stopped what she was doing and joined him. For the first time in years, she was having fun.

  How could she not have fun, when he made every activity so exciting? Swimming, for instance. She loved to swim, and she swam every day. But swimming with Stuart was much more interesting than swimming by herself.

  One day he found an extra snorkel in the closet and asked her to come out to the reef with him.

  “I can’t,” she told him. “I have work to do. There are larvae I’m keeping an eye on over in the east meadow.”

  “You’re keeping an eye on larvae? Why? They’re not going anywhere anytime soon, are they?”

  “Of course not, Stuart, larvae don’t go much of anywhere, ever. I’m waiting to see—”

  He pulled her into his arms, something he did more and more often these days. “I’m waiting to see that big bad moray eel, and I don’t know where to find him. I’ve forgotten where you said to look.”

  “I said not to look, if you’ll remember correctly. Big bad moray eels aren’t something you want to stir up.”

  “How will I know where he is if you don’t come along to steer me away from him?” he was wheedling now, sliding his hands up her backbone and tunneling them through her hair. He smiled at her—it was a sunny smile full of pleasure—and she could hardly deny him anything when he turned on all the charm.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll get my swimsuit.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Stuart said. “There’s no one to see us. We could run around this island without clothes all the time.”

  “Until you sit on your first sandspur,” she retorted, but she didn’t get her swimsuit after all.

  Stuart grabbed her hand and, pulling her along with him, kept her laughing all the way to the beach. Once they got there, he helped her out of her clothes, and she pulled his shirt over his head and peeled his jeans down his thighs.

  “You look like Eve in the Garden of Eden,” he said in a tone of reverence when they stood naked in the bright sunlight. “You look like Venus rising from the sea.”

  “You look like a Greek statue,” she said, unable to think of any other comparisons. One thing she knew was that he looked as if he really liked what he saw as his eyes raked her figure, lingering on what he claimed to consider her finer attributes.

  “Our baby will be beautiful. I hope it looks exactly like you,” he said, and she demurred until he silenced her with a light kiss on her lips.

  He drew her closer. “Maybe we don’t want to swim after all. Maybe we want to take the time to enjoy being together...like this...you and me...”

  He kissed her again, more deeply now, but she was still in a playful mood, and pulled away, laughing. “You’ll have to catch me first,” she said as she started to run. Her feet skimmed like lightning over the warm sand, and Stuart raced after her. When she realized that she was going to be caught and perhaps even tackled, she neatly sidestepped him and bounded into the water, falling to her knees amid the frothy waves.

  “Caught you,” Stuart said, leaping in after her. She had to cling to him to keep from going under, and he kissed her, his lips cool and salty against hers.

  “We forgot the snorkels,” she said after a while.

  “Who wants to come up for air?”

  “We can’t keep on doing what we’re doing,” she said as another wave washed over them.

  “Why not? Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster did in that movie—what was its title?”

  “From Here to Eternity,” she said, sliding her legs around his until the two of them were entwined.

  “When we make a movie, we’ll call it From Here to Maternity,” Stuart said.

  “Spare me the silly puns,” she said, because her mind was trying to figure out if this was an utterly romantic episode or if it was merely a throwback to some primeval animal instinct from the time when animals crawled out of the ocean and started to live on land. As she was thinking, as she was kissing him, Stuart pressed his hardness against her thigh.

  “If you’re going to do that, you might as well do it where it would do some good,” she said, and then she kissed him the way she knew he liked to be kissed, deeply and with feeling. It wasn’t hard to enjoy this, not with the sea wrapped around them like silk and their own bodies primed for the exquisite pleasure that they had come to expect when they came together.

  Angel hadn’t expected to like lovemaking so much. But she did. And she liked it more and more each time. Stuart was a master of lovemaking; he played her body like a virtuoso. As the days flew by and her body started changing, albeit subtly, Angel became even more sensitive. Stuart’s cool hands soothed her hot breasts, and orgasms, which she now experienced with regularity, made her nausea go away. She had not yet reached the point where she went to Stuart and by look or by touch suggested making love whenever she felt sick to her stomach, but she thought she might. She wondered how he would react if she made the first move. So far, she’d never summoned enough nerve. The way Howard had reacted to the increased libido of her first pregnancy was never far from her mind.

  Angel loved being pregnant, feeling pregnant, knowing that her body was harboring a
new little life. But as soon as he knew she was pregnant, Stuart would leave. More and more, she thought about his leaving with dismay.

  When Stuart was gone, who would she talk to at breakfast? Since the first few days of their marriage, Angel made coffee in the morning and spread guava jelly on toast, Stuart cooked eggs or cut up a few of their homegrown mangoes to put in their cereal, and they ate companionably at the porch table. If Stuart were gone, who would beat her at rummy? Who would read her humorous fillers out of Reader’s Digest as she trailed a bit of yarn across the floor for Caloosa to chase?

  When Stuart was gone, who would make love to her and murmur complimentary things in her ear? Who would make her feel like a woman, something she hadn’t felt for years?

  Even though in her heart she was sure that she carried a baby inside her, Angel didn’t give Stuart a clue. She couldn’t, because then he would leave. As the days passed, as she began to be filled with remorse at her own duplicity, she knew she was emotionally unprepared to share her suspicions—no, her certain knowledge—that she was pregnant.

  And then Stuart received a letter.

  * * *

  IT ARRIVED via the mail boat, courtesy of Toby, who was showing an uncommon interest in them. Before Stuart had come to the island, Toby used to toss the mail on the dock without a word; now he’d linger, looking hopefully up the hill at the bungalow until Stuart appeared to talk with him. What they talked about, Angel didn’t know.

  As luck would have it, Angel happened to be down at the dock on the day Stuart’s letter came.

  “Yo, Stuart,” Toby said as he tossed a line to Stuart on the dock. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Angel, who had walked down to the dock with Stuart and was sitting with her feet dangling over the side, looked up in surprise.

  Stuart took the envelope and glanced at the return address. An expression of foreboding flickered across his features.

  “Something from your family?” Angel said brightly, jumping to her feet so that she could read the return address over his shoulder.

  Stuart merely nodded and stuck the envelope in his pocket. Angel thought that if she’d received a letter from a family member, she’d have opened it on the spot, especially if she was on the first leg of a long journey, as Stuart claimed he was.

  Stuart and Toby got into a conversation about the Florida Marlins and how their season was going, an affable exchange that ended when Toby said he had to get back to Key West. As Toby guided the boat toward the cut in the reef, Stuart started back up the dock.

  “Wait for me, I’ll walk with you,” Angel said, but instead of the welcoming expression she’d learned to expect from Stuart, all she got was a stony look.

  On the way up the path, Angel searched through her own mail and found nothing of interest. Stuart took the newly arrived envelope from his pocket and stared at it for a long time.

  “Anything wrong?” she asked.

  “No. My brother doesn’t write often, that’s all.”

  Angel flopped down on a porch chair. “That’s too bad. If I were lucky enough to have a brother, I’d want to keep in touch.”

  “An only child tends to overestimate the joy of having siblings,” he said, and she glanced at him to see him scowling uncharacteristically. He still hadn’t opened the letter.

  “I think it would be wonderful to have a family. Now that my mother’s gone, there’s no one.”

  “Maybe you should consider yourself lucky,” he said.

  “How can you say that? If I’d had someone—” Angel stopped herself short. She’d been about to say that if she’d felt closely connected to someone, perhaps to family members, she wouldn’t have thought up this crazy scheme to have a baby. She couldn’t, in all honesty, say the words. But then, why this sudden compunction about honesty? She certainly hadn’t been completely honest with him. He had no idea, she was sure, that she was having symptoms of pregnancy.

  “You wouldn’t want a brother like my brother Fitz,” he said.

  “Is he that bad?”

  “Bad?” he said slowly. “I don’t think bad is the word for Fitz.”

  “How would you describe him?”

  “I wouldn’t bother. I’m trying to put that part of my life behind me,” he said.

  “You don’t intend to return to your family firm after your leave of absence?”

  “I have other things in mind,” he said. He folded the envelope, stared at it for a few seconds, and stuffed it deep in his back pocket. He still hadn’t opened it. He focused his eyes on her. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  His tone of dismissal hurt. Usually he was eager to spend time with her.

  “I’ll be out in the field. Do you still want to dig around in the oyster shells on the Indian midden this afternoon?”

  “Some other time,” he said. He threw himself down on a chair and sat staring out at a butterfly hovering over the planting of Turk’s caps outside the porch screen.

  After a moment, Angel went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of cold water from the bottle in the refrigerator, and thought about asking Stuart if he wanted some. A glance through the doorway showed her that he was still sitting there, his expression thoughtful, and she decided against it.

  “I’ll be back in time to stir-fry vegetables for dinner,” she called to him, but he gave no sign that he heard her, and she let herself out of the house quietly.

  Stuart had never been so uncommunicative, and she knew it was all because of the letter from Fitz.

  For the first time, she was curious about Stuart’s family and the lack of affection in his voice whenever he mentioned them, which was seldom. Maybe if she took it easy, she’d find out more. It wasn’t for herself that she needed to know about Stuart’s elusive family, she assured herself as she swung along the crooked path to the east meadow. It was for the baby, who would be born an Adams.

  * * *

  WHEN HE WAS SURE that Angel had left the house, Stuart opened the letter from his brother.

  Dear Mr. Adams,Thank you for your donation to the Sailors’ Home. As you know, your generous gift will help many fine sailors who have contributed so much to this nation’s success. Our mission in Boston continues to support many sailors who otherwise would have no home, and we plan to start construction on our facility on Nantucket this summer. If you’re ever in the area, please stop by our Boston office so that we can thank you for your donation in person.Very truly yours,H. Fitzroy Adams Chairman of the Board New England Maritime Charitable Trust

  Stuart’s lip curled in derision as he crumpled the letter in his fist. A form letter from his own brother! What a joke.

  Not that he had expected a personal communication from Fitz. He hadn’t heard from his brother in almost two years. Not since Fitz had deserted him when he needed him most.

  But what was the point of thinking about it? Fitz had gone his way after the incident on Nantucket, and Stuart had gone his. Fitz seemed eager to distance himself from Stuart; maybe he feared that Stuart’s disgrace would stain his own reputation. Since that terrible night, Fitz had reportedly given up drinking and ostentatiously devoted himself to good works.

  Fitz had even married and was now the father of a baby girl Stuart had never seen. Nor had he met Fitz’s wife, Jeanne. When he was still living in Boston, Stuart had read about their wedding in the papers; it had been a big social event in Newport to which Stuart wasn’t even invited. When he saw the announcement of their baby’s birth a year later, Stuart had realized that Fitz had attained the life that he, Stuart, had always dreamed about.

  That life was closed to him now. Who would want to plan a life with him after what he’d done? No one, that’s who. With other avenues closed to him, shunned by his family and friends, he had thought his arrangement with Angel was the best way to marry and conceive a child who would carry on his name.

  Too bad he couldn’t send a clipping about his wedding to Fitz:

  Adams-McCabe Nuptials, the headline would read.

>   Stuart Adams of Boston and Nantucket, scion of a prominent Massachusetts family whose forebears arrived in America on the Mayflower, recently wed Angel McCabe, a bee researcher from Halos Island, Florida. The bride, whose mother is dead and whose father is nowhere around, wore a wrinkled white linen dress and carried a bouquet of wilting hibiscus. The groom’s replies were barely audible in the church, which was deserted by everyone but three children, a Popsicle man and, of course, the wedding party.

  The rotund maid of honor was stricken with an attack of hiccups as soon as the bride said her first “I do.” The toothless custodian, who acted as best man, dropped the ring, which the bride didn’t want to wear anyway.

  After the wedding and a short reception at a local restaurant, the couple honeymooned briefly in Key West, where they discovered that they were unusually compatible sexually.

  Mr. and Mrs. Adams will reside on Halos Island, an isolated atoll off the Florida coast. They expect their first child soon.

  Stuart grinned to himself. That little news item would certainly upset Fitz and all the other Adamses who had avoided him ever since his guilty plea to a charge of manslaughter. Members of their family were supposed to live circumspect lives, stay out of trouble with the law, marry well and procreate. So far, Stuart had managed to do none of those things.

  Except procreate, possibly. Angel could be pregnant already with a new little Adams. Stuart could picture the baby in his mind; it would be a roly-poly little elf, with his eyes and Angel’s coloring. He or she would be a wonderful baby, he was sure of it.

  He might not be able to send Fitz a wedding announcement, but Stuart would certainly see to it that he got a birth announcement, and maybe he’d even send along a copy of the personals ad that had brought him to Angel. He only wished he could see a photo of Fitz’s face when he saw them.

  Cheered by the thought of Fitz’s almost certain consternation, Stuart began to feel much more optimistic. He wished he hadn’t told Angel that he didn’t want to explore the Indian midden today.