Quade inclined his head. “It was very good,” he told her in all honesty.
“I know what that means.” Aggie took her pad out of her pants pocket. “Act needs work,” she said aloud and wrote down. She then tucked the pad away again with a broad wink toward MacKenzie and rose to her feet. “C’mon, let’s blow this Popsicle stand. I’ve got fifty dollars burning a hole in my pocket and I want to feed my support group.”
Quade glanced at his watch and then at MacKenzie. The younger woman looked rather tired in his opinion. “It’s kind of late, Aggie.”
“Only in England,” she declared, slipping her arm through his and urging him toward the door. She beckoned for MacKenzie to keep up.
There was no arguing with her.
Chapter Eleven
There was a tiny Chinese restaurant just two blocks from the club. Located between a florist and a shoe-repair shop, it was often overlooked. Which made it, according to Aggie, a secret piece of heaven.
The food certainly was worth the extra effort in finding it. The ambiance was more on a par with eating in someone’s kitchen than a restaurant. But that gave Mandarin Rose the extra attraction of treating its patrons like family.
Distant family, MacKenzie noted, because there was somewhat of a language barrier. But that was overcome with gestures and pointing to things on the red-rimmed, worn, gold-lettered menu.
By the time the fortune cookies arrived, MacKenzie felt as if she were going to explode. She dubiously eyed the small plate with its three fortune cookies. She sincerely doubted that there was enough room inside of her to consume even that tiny amount of sugar and dough.
“Ever notice that when the three of us get together, we wind up eating?” she commented as Aggie placed her newly acquired fifty on top of the bill.
The older woman’s hand went up like a police-woman stopping traffic. “Wait, there’s a joke in there somewhere.” As the lone waitress withdrew with the tray, Aggie whipped out her pad and began to scribble the words down.
“No,” MacKenzie countered, “there are calories in there everywhere and I need to watch what I eat. I’m just five foot three and I can balloon up in the blink of an eye.” She glanced down at her waist. While she still could, she thought ruefully. “I can’t afford to gain any more weight.”
With a laugh, Aggie tucked her pad back in her purse. Her brilliant blue eyes slid to the side, taking in the all-but-silent member of their party. “What do you think, Quade? Think she’s in danger of being too heavy?”
Quade shrugged as if he hadn’t been giving the matter any thought. As if he hadn’t been subconsciously studying MacKenzie’s trim, athletic body every time she approached or was near him. “She’s fine just as she is.”
The simple, offhanded comment surprised MacKenzie. More than that, it warmed her. She came from a world where compliments were as common as leaves on a tree. They were far too plentiful and usually far too empty. But Quade was incredibly sparing in his comments and a kind observation, well, that was just about worth its weight in gold.
MacKenzie hugged the words to her, even as she silently upbraided herself for being so adolescent.
But she did it anyway.
“Go on, choose your fortune,” Aggie urged, gesturing to the plate that still remained on the table.
After a beat, MacKenzie selected one. She cracked it open and extracted the small rectangular wisp of paper.
“Well, what does it say?” Aggie urged.
“Love will find you.” She crumpled it up and tossed it back onto the plate. She wondered if Dakota was back in the small kitchen, stuffing fortune cookies. “Very original.”
“Doesn’t have to be original,” Aggie pointed out, opening her own. “It just has to be.”
MacKenzie had given up on that concept. If love existed, it was entirely out of her realm. “What’s yours say?”
“Success is within your reach.” Aggie’s eyes gleamed. “I like the sound of that.” And then she looked at Quade. “Your turn, Quade.”
He picked up the remaining one and broke it open with his thumb and forefinger. And then he laughed shortly, dropping it back onto the plate.
“Doesn’t look as if there’s much originality in the fortune cookie business.”
Curious, MacKenzie picked up the fortune he’d discarded and read, “Love will find you.” Same as hers. Now she really was tempted to see if Dakota had sneaked into the back. She placed his fortune beside her own. “You’re right. They need a new writer.”
A smug smile curved the edges of Aggie’s mouth as she looked from one dinner companion to the next. She said nothing.
MacKenzie felt the nesting instinct taking hold of her a good six months earlier than it should have. From what she’d heard, women in their ninth month were suddenly seized with the desire to straighten, to clean. To put rooms, if not life itself, in order.
It didn’t usually hit a woman in the beginning of her third month. But then, women didn’t usually get pregnant when they were on birth-control pills. She figured that put her in a class all by herself.
Any spare moment she had that didn’t directly involve her job was spent being incredibly domestic. Her own apartment was quickly rendered spotless, as was her office. Needing to find an outlet for the charged energy she suddenly possessed now that her fatigue had mysteriously evaporated, MacKenzie had moved on to taming the chaotic state of Dakota’s dressing room. She would have gone on to tidy up the station’s program director’s suite had she been allowed inside.
With nothing left for her to organize, catalog or clean, MacKenzie turned her attention toward things culinary.
As with everything else she did, she went a little overboard.
Her latest attack had struck after she’d come home from work Friday afternoon with bulging grocery bags. The ingredients for oatmeal cookies were on the bottom. She threw herself into the venture and wound up baking enough cookies to satisfy a murder of scavenging crows.
And if she didn’t get rid of at least some of them, she thought, looking critically at the grand outcome, odds were she was going to turn into the Goodyear blimp by Monday morning.
Aggie wasn’t in when MacKenzie knocked on the woman’s door. With a sigh, she took her offering to Quade’s apartment. A glance toward his parking space told her that he was in. Or at least, that his car had been left in its place. She knew that some mornings he opted to catch the bus rather than fight traffic.
She rang his bell, thinking she’d probably get the same response she’d gotten at Aggie’s. Loneliness sprang up out of nowhere even before her hand left the doorbell.
When the door opened, MacKenzie was more surprised to see him than he was to see her.
Quade eyed the enormous pile of oatmeal cookies. It was precariously held in place with clear plastic wrap. One wrong move, he judged, and it was all going to land on the floor.
“Knock over a group of Girl Scouts?”
Quade opened his door wider. At this point, he knew better than to expect her to leave if he just held the door ajar long enough. He’d come to learn MacKenzie Ryan was like smoke. She always found a way to infiltrate his space. He figured there was no point in fighting the matter. He might as well save his energy and use it where it counted.
He found the rueful flush that raced across her cheeks captivating. “No, I just got carried away baking.”
Closing the door behind her, he shook his head. “You do that a lot, don’t you?”
She turned, looking at him over her shoulder. “Bake? No, I just—”
His laugh cut her short. “No, I meant get carried away.”
She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Sometimes,” she allowed.
Most times, she added silently. She set down the teeming plate on the coffee table and then looked around for the first time since she’d walked in. Not a single box had been cleared away or even opened since she’d last been there.
She turned to glance at him. Her palms began to itch. “You h
aven’t unpacked yet.”
He looked at the tall, sealed cartons as if they comprised the enemy. And, in a way, they did. They held his past in them. A past in which he’d been happy, but that hurt too much to revisit. He was working on constructing barriers strong enough to withstand the assault.
“I’ll get to it.”
“Thinking of leaving?” she guessed.
MacKenzie realized that she didn’t like the taste of the words she uttered. It force her to admit that she liked having Quade next door, liked looking to see if his car was parked in his spot when she arrived home each day.
Liked anticipating the possibility of running into him.
His tone was dismissive, meant to call an end to any further discussion of the subject. “No, I just don’t like to unpack, that’s all.”
She turned toward the closest box, taking hold of the edge of the masking tape. Her nesting instinct had gone into high gear at the sight of the boxes. There was no reason not to help him unpack. It would be doing them both a favor.
“Well, if that’s all—” she gave the tape a tug and it began to come loose “—I’m pretty good at—”
“No.” It was an order, not a request, sharply given. He crossed to her and put his hand on top of hers, stopping her from ripping the tape completely off. “Leave that alone.”
She looked at him, uncertain at what had set him off like that. She certainly hadn’t intended on sounding as if she were being disrespectful. Still, she thought he’d just gone off the deep end there.
“I wasn’t going to sell it on eBay. I was just trying to help,” she told him. “My mother used to hate to unpack groceries when she came home from the store, so I always did it.”
The woman really did have an answer for everything, he thought darkly. “These aren’t groceries.”
“No, they’re not.” She stood by the box, waiting him out. No man liked to unpack. “I could still figure out where the contents went if you gave me a general hint.”
He blew out a breath, dragging his hand through his hair. Damn, he’d overreacted. But it was hard not to. Every time he thought the wound was healing, the scab felt as if it were being pulled off again and he went back to square one.
He pressed his lips together. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”
MacKenzie’s hand flew up to her chest as she looked at him in mock, wide-eyed wonder. “Wow, first a compliment the other night, now an apology, I should circle this week on my calendar.”
He scowled at her. “I’m not exactly good with people.”
“All the more reason to circle the week,” she told him cheerfully. “You’re a lot more communicative now than when I first met you. You’re making progress, Quade.” She patted his cheek. There was just the barest hint of a five o’clock shadow moving across it. Something warm and excited rippled through her before she could prevent it. “Baby steps.”
He didn’t want to be making any progress, baby steps or otherwise.
What he wanted was to be left alone, but no one was listening.
Still, he supposed it wasn’t MacKenzie’s fault. In that scrambled head of hers, she was trying to do what she thought was right.
“Whatever,” he murmured.
She unwrapped the plate she’d brought, picked up the top cookie and held it out to him. “Here, have a cookie.” When he took it almost grudgingly, she added, “And let me help.”
He could only shake his head. “You don’t give up, do you?”
The expression in her eyes was earnest, despite the smile on her lips. “Never get anywhere by giving up.”
It sounded like a slogan someone should have sewn on some kind of a banner. Absently, he took a bite out of the cookie she’d given him and felt an explosion of taste on his tongue. Sweet, tantalizing.
Like she had been when he’d kissed her.
Needs moved forward within him like an army making its way toward the line of battle.
He frowned as he looked from the cartons back to her. She seemed so damn eager, you’d think she was a child, looking for a prize inside of a Cracker Jack box. “If I let you do one box, will that satisfy you?”
She began to protest that she wasn’t doing it out of some need that had to be satisfied, but then realized that, in a way, she was. His boxes had become her challenge. She meant either to unpack them or have him do it himself. Either way, the cardboard had to go.
“It would be a start,” she allowed slowly.
He should have found that suspect, but he didn’t. Muttering something unintelligible under his breath, he gestured toward the collection of boxes with barely suppressed exasperation.
“All right, pick one.”
With a small laugh of triumph, MacKenzie chose the one she’d already begun. When she ripped off the tape, she parted the flaps and took out the first thing that had been packed on top. A framed photograph from the feel of it.
Taking off the tissue paper that had been wrapped tightly around it, she paused to look at the smiling blonde in the photograph. Sister? Girlfriend? More?
“Quade?”
His mouth full of his second cookie, he could only emit a sound. “Mmm?”
Holding the photograph up, she turned it so that he could see. “Who is this?”
She saw the tint of Quade’s skin fade into shades of gray.
It felt as if there were lead inside of his chest instead of a heart that was supposed to keep him functioning. He put down the box he’d just picked up and strode across the room.
“My wife,” he told her, taking the frame out of her hands.
MacKenzie felt as if someone had punched her. The intensity she experienced was a rude awakening to just how much she’d allowed herself to be drawn to him in an incredibly short period of time.
His answer was her cue to go. To quietly bow out, leave him to his boxes, his memories and his thoughts and look to her own survival. She was pregnant, about to begin one hell of a new adventure in her life. This was not a time to fall for another man.
Especially not a married one.
Been there, done that.
But for some unfathomable reason, she couldn’t make herself leave. “Are you separated?” she heard herself asking, damning the hope inside of her. That was what Jeff had told her he was before he’d gone back to his wife. He was separated. Not separated enough.
“Yes,” Quade replied, his voice hollow and echoing in his head. “Permanently.”
The solemnity of his tone threw her. Was he still carrying a torch for the woman? Was that why there was such sorrow in his eyes? “You’re divorced?”
Funny, it took courage to say it, even after all this time. Courage because the word sliced him into a hundred pieces. “No, widowed, actually. She died eighteen months ago.”
Envy, jealousy and fledgling anger all vanished into thin air. Sympathy flooded the space they left behind. “Oh, Quade, I’m so sorry.”
But even as she uttered the words, there was a small trickle of relief flowing through her. Relief that had nothing to do with the fact that he was widowed or technically available, and everything to do with the fact that once he had loved a woman enough to want to make her his exclusively.
It made him human. And as vulnerable as she felt.
The soft, disparaging laugh caught her attention. She looked at him, curious.
His eyes met hers, but he couldn’t believe that he was opening up to her. “Want to hear the ironic part? Ellen died of leukemia. The exact disease I was oh-so-busy trying to find a cure for.” His voice mocked his efforts. There were times he felt that it was all rather futile. Like a dog chasing its own tail.
He raised his eyes to look at her again. “Quite a kick in the pants, don’t you think?”
She wanted to hug him, to hold him. To tell him how sorry she was that he had been hurt. That he was hurting. She could almost feel his pain, could feel the loneliness undulating through her.
It wasn’t all that different from
the loneliness she felt herself. “I don’t know what to think.”
He looked at her in surprise. His mouth curved slightly. “Well, that’s a first.”
MacKenzie knew what he was doing, trying to divert her attention. She wouldn’t allow herself to get sidetracked. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” she murmured. “Losing someone.”
“Damn straight it does.” Something in MacKenzie’s voice caught his attention, which was a first for him, he supposed. He normally wasn’t in tune to other people’s feelings.
“Did you lose someone?” he asked.
Maybe it would anger him, she thought, having his situation compared to hers. “In a manner of speaking,” she replied slowly. “He didn’t die. He just went back to the wife I never knew he had, wearing my heart on his sleeve.”
“Oh.” He tried to think of what he could say by way of comfort, but nothing came to mind. He wasn’t any good at this kind of thing. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, so am I,” MacKenzie said in a small voice, thinking of the baby she was carrying.
The baby she should have found a way to prevent.
But now that it was a part of her, a child waiting to happen, she couldn’t bring herself just to sweep it out of her life, to white it out like a mistake on a page.
But what kind of a life was she going to give it? It was so hard for a child with only one parent. And Jeff was never going to want to be a part of his or her life. That was going to be painful.
She already hurt for the baby she hadn’t even held in her arms yet.
Quade saw the tears shimmering in her eyes. Something twisted inside of him, stirring emotions he wanted to keep banked down.
What he wanted didn’t seem to matter here.
“You loved him a lot.”
It wasn’t really a question, but she answered him anyway.
“Yes, I did.” Her mouth curved in self-deprecation. “More of that misguided enthusiasm you commented on the other day.” That was always her failing, she thought. She moved before her mind caught up to the rest of her. “I just jumped right in with both feet, never noticing the signs.”
“Signs?”
She’s Having a Baby Page 13