Whose Baby?

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Swearing under his breath, Adam rose to his feet and then froze when Lynn made a soft sound and burrowed deeper in the pillow and quilts. When she settled down, he went quietly to the window.

  Jennifer, forgive me.

  No! There was nothing to forgive. He’d married for Rose’s sake, for Shelly’s, and he owed it to them, to himself, to Lynn, to make this marriage real and lasting. Jennifer would understand.

  He wouldn’t let himself think even for a moment that this lovemaking had been more honest than anything he’d ever shared with Jennifer.

  Lynn’s shyness, her obvious astonishment at her effect on him and even at her own physical response, had touched him. He was flattered, maybe, by the implication that she’d never found such pleasure with her worthless husband, that only he, Adam, had the power to awaken her sexuality.

  Jennifer and he had been good in bed together. Brazen, she’d loved to flaunt her delicate, perfect body. Shy was a foreign word to his Jenny. That didn’t make her response to him any less meaningful.

  Staring out at the soft yellow glow of street lamps, able to hear the muffled beat of the surf though the window was shut, Adam wished like hell that he could be as casual about sex as men he overheard talking in the locker room of his health club. Half of them were getting it on the side even though they were married, he’d learned. It meant nothing—a little fun, an itch scratched.

  Adam didn’t want to have an affair. All he asked was that he be able to make love to his wife without feeling as if he was cheating on Jennifer, without this constant, tearing remembrance that she’d lost everything, that all he could do in return was prove that his love was enduring.

  Maybe he hadn’t been ready to test himself by bedding Lynn.

  Flattening his hands on the cold glass, Adam grimaced. Too late, he reminded himself. There was no way in hell he could tell her in the morning that this had been a mistake, that maybe they should keep their relationship platonic. He owed her better than that kind of hurt.

  And the truth was, he didn’t want to go back. He wanted to see Lynn’s eyes flutter open in the morning, see the dawning awareness, the pretty pink blush. He wanted to kiss her and make love to her in the soft light, taste her sweetness before breakfast.

  He wanted to make a habit of sleeping with his wife, in every sense of the word.

  Forgive me, Jenny.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “WHY IS DADDY SMILING at you like that?” Rose whispered loudly. She stared at her father with deep suspicion.

  As a family, they were strolling the beach for goodies tossed up by this week’s storm. High tide had left a string of slippery, stinking seaweed and a long curving line of smooth small stones and broken shells, among which treasures might be found. Walking ahead with Shelly, Adam was relaxed and handsome in jeans and a cream-colored Irish fisherman’s sweater that added bulk to his shoulders. A breeze off the ocean ruffled his dark hair.

  They were all supposed to have their heads bowed as they searched for bright bits of agate or perfect shells, although heaven knows, after living here for three years, Lynn didn’t need even one more sand dollar or stone, however pretty. Adam couldn’t be too serious about the hunt, either, because when Shelly crouched to poke at wet stones, he had directed a wicked and very sexy grin at Lynn.

  Little girls weren’t supposed to understand that the kind of smile he’d just given Mommy was something to make every smart woman wary. Rose’s knowledge was apparently instinctive.

  Adam and Lynn had been married for six weeks now. The girls were only beginning to notice that something was different between their parents. Rose had looked thoughtful a few times, but was easily distracted.

  Lynn figured she’d try again. “Maybe Shelly found something good,” she suggested, knowing perfectly well, and with secret pleasure, that he wasn’t nearly as interested in a polished agate as he was in stealing a kiss when Rose and Shelly became preoccupied.

  Bouncing back up, Shelly skipped beside Adam. Her small hand was in his; every so often he swung her over a log or rock protruding from the gravelly beach, to her delight. “Daddy is strong,” she had declared happily, preferring him as a companion on this walk.

  Her eagerness to walk with Daddy would have hurt, if immediately afterward Rose hadn’t slipped her hand confidingly into Lynn’s and said softly, “I don’t like it when Daddy swings me like that.”

  Rose had a gift for such moments. Lynn couldn’t quite decide whether Rose really was afraid when Daddy swung her, or whether her empathy was already developed to the point where she sensed her new mommy’s distress. Surely at only three, she couldn’t be mature enough to understand other people’s feelings! Yet she seemed extraordinarily sensitive to mood, and despite the fact that she’d been given almost anything material she’d ever wanted, Rose was shyly grateful for small things that Shelly would have taken for granted.

  Perhaps she wasn’t as smart as Shelly and would never be the leader, but she knew instinctively how to be a friend. Lynn worried only that, growing up, she might hide feelings or depression or anger because she didn’t want to upset anyone else. As the two girls became old enough to understand, what effect would the switch in the hospital have on them? Lynn had read about one of the best-known cases, where the child had ended up with big problems. Would the same thing happen with Shelly or Rose? Feelings of resentment or insecurity would be natural, surely.

  Of course, she thought in rueful amusement, Shelly wouldn’t be able to keep them to herself. Already, she talked through everything. She was utterly incapable of keeping a secret.

  Rose, however, was another matter.

  Lynn breathed in the salt-laden air and gazed out at the broken surf and the curve of the earth far beyond.

  When she glanced back, she found Rose’s gaze wide and inquiring. “How come Daddy went to bed with you last night?” she asked innocently.

  Lynn gulped. Oh, dear. The kids hadn’t actually caught them in bed together yet, and she hadn’t been able to think of a way to casually say, Your daddy and I are going to sleep together from now on.

  “I saw him come out in his ’jamas,” Rose continued. “He only wears his bottoms, you know.”

  Lynn knew.

  “He says the top wraps him up like a mummy ’cuz he rolls and rolls and rolls when he sleeps.”

  Lynn smiled down at her daughter. “That happens to my nightie sometimes, too.”

  Rose’s forehead crinkled. “What’s a mummy? Is it like you? Only, you’re not all wrapped up.”

  Lynn explained that a long, long time ago, before her grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents were born, Egyptians had wrapped dead people in linen bandages before putting them in a tomb.

  Rose’s face brightened. “I ’member this boy at my school! He came to the Halloween party with toilet paper around him.” She gestured. “Like that. He was a big kid. Was he a mummy?”

  “Well, pretending to be one,” Lynn conceded. “He probably thought it would be a scary costume.”

  “He wasn’t dead,” Rose said earnestly. “Kids kept ripping his toilet paper. He got raggedy.”

  “That’s what happens to costumes at a party, if you’re having enough fun.” Lynn glimpsed something bright ahead, just poking out of the sand. She steered Rose toward it.

  Rose pounced. “Mommy, look!”

  It was a whole bottle that Rose pried out of dried seaweed. Probably a beer bottle, but the shape was unusual, the glass roughened by sand and salt water.

  Lynn squatted beside Rose, who was wiping sand and crusty seaweed from her find. “What do you think, is there a genie in it?”

  Aladdin was one of Rose’s favorite movies.

  “No.” With one eye, Rose peered inside. “It’s empty. The top must’ve falled off, and he got out. Maybe he doesn’t have to give wishes no more.”

  “No more wishes?” Lynn’s gaze went to her husband’s broad back and dark head, bent as he listened to Shelly chatter. “What a terrible thought!”<
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  “Genies get tired of doing wishes, you know,” Rose continued importantly. “Sometimes they need a ’cation.”

  “A vacation?” Lynn pretended to think. “I suppose they do.”

  “Daddy said maybe we could all go on ’cation sometime. He said maybe Hawaii. It’s got beaches, he says. But you got beaches here, too.”

  “The ones in Hawaii are made of silky, golden sand instead of rocks. And the sun shines there lots more than it does here. Everywhere there are big colorful flowers and waterfalls tumbling into pools, and whales right offshore.”

  And Adam wanted to take her? It could be a sort of honeymoon, to make up for the one they hadn’t had.

  Shelly suddenly crowed in delight. Face alight, she pointed into the foamy fingers of the waves. “Lookit! There’s one a’ those glass balls!” Hopping up and down with excitement, she exclaimed, “An’ it’s a big one!”

  “Don’t you have sharp eyes.” Adam lifted her onto his shoulders. “Okay, punkin, let’s go get it.”

  Rose and Lynn followed them across the wet gravel left by a receding tide. Sure enough, the Japanese float bobbed into sight and then vanished as a wave broke over it.

  “Shoot, it’s getting away,” Adam said, pausing at the water’s edge.

  “Catch it, Daddy!” His daughter bounced even harder and grabbed his hair. “Don’t let it get away!”

  He looked ruefully down at his running shoes and jeans, then plunged into the ankle-deep foam. “Ah! It’s freezing!”

  Knee-deep before he could get his hands on the glass fisherman’s float, Adam grabbed it, swore and dropped it back into the water.

  A mother’s anxiety seized Lynn, who watched with an eagle eye. He should have left Shelly behind. What if she fell off? What if an extra big breaker should knock him down?

  A wave did surge in, soaking him to his thighs. Shelly seemed to have a grip on his hair as she kept bouncing and cheering him on.

  “It’s going away again, Daddy! Those ol’ crabs won’t hurt you. You better get it, ’cuz it’s mine and I saw it first.”

  Gingerly he picked it up again and waded toward shore. One more cold wave washed up to his knees, and then he was squelching triumphantly up above the foaming edge of the surf, his teeth a flash of white as he grinned like a conqueror mounting the ramparts.

  “What is it?” Rose asked dubiously, as he set it down and they all hunkered in for a look.

  A foot in diameter, the green glass fisherman’s float still had the twine net encasing it. Tiny pale crabs scuttled all over it.

  Lynn explained that it had floated all the way from Japan, where fishermen used glass floats still instead of plastic ones to anchor their nets. She helped evict the crabs.

  “I bet somebody’d buy it, huh, Mom?” Shelly asked.

  “I’m sure they would, but maybe you’d like to keep it.” Two months ago, she’d have been grateful for the extra cash it would have brought, Lynn thought wryly. “To remember today by.”

  “Can I?”

  “Yep.” Adam smiled at her. “If not for your sharp eyes, we never would have seen it.” His gaze touched Rose as if by accident, and then he lifted a brow at Lynn. “Do you find these often?”

  “Hardly ever anymore,” she admitted. “But see what Rose found?” She pulled the bottle from her coat pocket. “It’s empty, so we figure the genie must be taking a vacation. In Hawaii.”

  Shelly stared covetously at the bottle. “I bet a genie did live in it. Do you think he’ll come back?”

  “Who knows?” Lynn let it slip back into her pocket. “You both found treasures today, didn’t you?”

  On the way home Shelly and Rose ran ahead. Adam had to lug the big glass float. He paused once, when the girls found a tidal pool, to snatch a quick kiss, his lips cold but stirring warmth in her.

  Shelly’s piercing voice penetrated Lynn’s euphoria. “Daddy’s kissin’ Mommy! Look, Rose. How come he’s kissin’ Mommy?”

  Adam drew back. “It would seem I’m making a public demonstration of my affections.”

  “He kisses me,” Rose declared.

  “Not like that,” Shelly said in a tone of horrified fascination. “Not on the lips!”

  Facing the girls, his free arm looped around Lynn’s waist, Adam said, “I like kissing Mommy, too. Mommies and Daddies do kiss on the lips.”

  “Eew.” Shelly made a troll face.

  “Trust me,” Adam said with amusement, “you’ll understand someday.”

  “What if a boy at preschool wants to kiss me on the lips?” Rose asked seriously.

  “You pop him in the nose,” he suggested.

  The girls burst into giggles and scrambled onto a long log washed in by the sea and half-buried on the beach so that it made a perfect balance beam for three-year-olds. They could fall without hurting themselves.

  “Rose already asked why you were sleeping with me,” Lynn said, as she and Adam paralleled the girls’ path.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. She got distracted. You told her you don’t wear pajama tops because they end up wound around you like a mummy’s wrapping, and so I had to explain that a mummy is not like me.”

  He laughed, creasing his cheeks and warming the cool planes of his face. The fluttering in her chest Lynn felt at the sight of him was becoming familiar. She’d married this man in cold blood, and now she was feeling everything she had when she’d imagined herself in love with Brian.

  Everything, she admitted silently, and more.

  In comparison, what she’d felt for Brian had been…a crush. A girlish stage that would have passed if they hadn’t rushed into marriage. If only she hadn’t been so inexperienced, so socially inept, she would have known whether her feelings for him were special or not.

  Was she fooling herself again, just because…well, because she so enjoyed making love with Adam? Lynn stole a sidelong glance at the man striding beside her, looking astonishingly carefree for the buttoned-down, austere stockbroker he was. She had fallen in love awfully fast, hadn’t she?

  But in her heart she knew better. She had begun the tumble a long time ago. That day in the hospital, probably, when she’d seen how much he adored his Rosebud. When she realized he felt all the same conflicts she did. Every kindness he’d given her since, every smile at the girls, every willing boost onto a kitchen chair, every game played, every grave answer to a silly question, had polished the slide down which she rocketed. How could she help it? Despite his doubts, Adam was a wonderful father. Beneath his usual rigid courtesy and occasional bluntness, he was a marshmallow. Nothing was too good for Shelly and Rose. Or her, now that he felt an obligation to her. He was chivalrous, sexy and determined to do the right thing.

  What’s not to love? she asked herself frivolously.

  Her feelings were anything but. She knew how lucky she was. Adam would be a good husband if it killed him. His moral standards wouldn’t let him look at another woman, even if he didn’t love his wife. But it wasn’t just that. They could be happy together; these past two weeks demonstrated that. She was sure he was contented, at least.

  All she had to do was keep her mouth shut. He must never, never know that this marriage was no longer one of convenience and friendship for her. He’d only feel uncomfortable, perhaps even obliged to make up some pretty lies to reciprocate. She couldn’t bear that.

  Be grateful for what you have, Lynn told herself. Why spoil it by wishing for more? If Adam came to love her in return, well, it would happen. Perhaps slowly, but heartfelt emotions couldn’t be forced, shouldn’t be pretended. She would never want that.

  She had lived her entire life appreciating what she had and not hoping for too much. She could go on that way.

  What she wasn’t sure she could do was bear the regular separation from Adam. Although she hadn’t yet said aloud, I will sell the bookstore, the idea had taken root and was settling in. Owning her own bookstore had been a lifelong dream, and she loved every moment of it. Working for some
one else, even in a wonderful store like Powell’s in Portland, would never bring her the same joy.

  And oh, how she’d miss Otter Beach! The sound of the surf and the bark of sea lions out on the stack, the tangy air, the fresh breeze and the fog that rolled in off the ocean on hot days. How shall I list the ways! she thought. The crunch and slide of walking on the gravelly beach and the shoot of spray through the blowhole. The vendors along the boardwalk, the tourists and even the traffic on the brick streets. To her mental list she hastened to add her garden, and her new refrigerator and her rickety back steps she would decorate with potted geraniums come summer.

  This was home, the first and only home she’d ever made for herself. But today was…she mentally ticked off days on her fingers…the tenth of February. Always, by the middle of April, she had gone back to her summer schedule, having the store open Tuesday through Sunday. Just over two months away.

  That would mean two more days a week when she had to be here, and Adam had to be in Portland. Could she afford to hire someone to cover at least one day? Would she and Adam split the girls up? Or alternate who got to keep them? After only two weeks, she’d become accustomed to sleeping with him: to being able to tuck her cold feet beneath his calf, to the sound of him breathing beside her at night, to that exhilarating, sexy glint in his eyes when he wanted her.

  Before Adam and Rose, she had loved her life here. Shelly and the bookstore were enough. Now they weren’t. It was that simple.

  Soon, she told herself, she had to start looking for a buyer.

  Lynn wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t told Adam about her plans. Some residual caution held her back. Be sure, her fearful inner self whispered.

  But she was sure. Not that he would ever love her, but that she did love him. And both her daughters. She was spread too thin. She had a family now, a real family, and they had to come first.

  She would definitely look for a buyer. But when Adam wrapped an arm around her and steered her away from the breaking surf and toward the stairs that led up to the boardwalk and the town, she didn’t say, “Adam, I have something to tell you.”