Marriage by Contract

by Sandra Steffen

  Bethany was at a complete and utter loss for words. Tony was having no such problem. “If I didn’t have to be back at the office in fifteen minutes, I’d show you what I mean.”

  Her smile was real now. So was the slight shake of her head. “Is that a fact?”

  He nodded, his hands settling on his hips. “I have a feeling Mrs. Donahue will think twice before she uses that particular tone while referring to a birth mother, don’t you?”

  He kissed her goodbye quickly, telling her not to overdo, and walked out the door. Beth was left standing in the doorway, her fingers pressed to her lips, wondering how he did it, how he made her want him with just a look and a masculine half smile and a kiss that was barely a kiss at all.

  Turning around, she realized that he’d done something else, too. He’d evaded an issue that was going to have to be raised one of these days.

  He had reached for a condom two nights ago, and he had sounded defensive with Mrs. Donahue today. Beth suspected that he hadn’t come to terms with her infertility. She couldn’t blame him, really. He’d only known about it for a matter of days. It had taken her seven years to accept. Barry never had.

  Tony isn’t Barry.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered it out loud.

  Barry had hurt her in nearly every emotional way, making her feel guilty for something that wasn’t her fault, then casually throwing her away. But she was right. Tony wasn’t Barry. Barry never would have married her if he’d known she couldn’t give him children. And he certainly wouldn’t have told her she was special because she’d defended Annie Moore. But then, Barry hadn’t been there the night Christopher had been born. She and Tony had both seen how brave Annie was that night. Until her dying day, Beth would always remember the expression on Annie’s thin face when she’d asked Beth to take care of Christopher.

  She could only imagine what that young girl had been through in her short life. Hugging her arms close to her body, Beth turned around. Remembering the tears that had streaked the girl’s face and the pain that had racked her thin body, Beth prayed that Annie Moore was safe, wherever she was.

  * * *

  It was late morning by the time Annie found the house she was looking for. A customer who’d come into the truck stop had called this part of town the Downs. For good reason. Most of the houses were close together and run-down, but the one she was looking at was worse than the rest. Paint peeled from the wood siding and the roof had a sag that made the whole place look tired. The yard wasn’t much better, but the cats stretched out in the patches of sun didn’t seem to mind.

  A woman wearing men’s trousers and a straw hat was cutting flowers near a rotting porch. Taking a few tentative steps on the dirt driveway, Annie called, “Are you the lady with the room to rent?”

  The woman turned stiffly and studied her through the oldest-looking eyes Annie had ever seen. “Will be in a coupla weeks. You lookin’ to rent a room?”

  “If the price is right.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Annie Moore.”

  “Where are you stayin’ now?”

  Annie hesitated, measuring her answer. “With…with a friend.”

  The woman’s beady stare made her nervous, but Annie set her chin, clamped her lips together and looked her right in the eye, anyway. When she turned eighteen she was never going to lie again. Then she’d be safe, and nobody could send her back to that town or that life ever again.

  A breeze picked its way around overgrown bushes, ruffling her T-shirt and hair. She took a deep breath and barely stopped herself from moaning out loud. The place looked like a junkyard, but it smelled like heaven.

  With a considerable amount of effort, the woman rose to her feet. “Folks `round here call me Crazy Cora. But I prefer Cora if it’s all the same to you. Yer welcome to look around, and I’d be more’n happy to show you the room, but I b’lieve my coffee is perked and the biscuits are prob’ly cool enough to eat. You can join me if you wanta.”

  “I ate before I came.” Another lie, but Annie didn’t have much except her pride.

  Without missing a beat, Cora said, “Never know’d that to stop a young person from eating again. But suit yourself.”

  Cora led the way to the back of the house, where an addition jutted out from the main structure. It might have been newer than the rest of the house, but it wasn’t in any better shape.

  Taking a key from the deep pocket in her overalls, Cora unlocked the door. “The guy who was rentin’ this room took off without a word a coupla weeks ago. His rent’s due and his lease is almost up. It don’t look like much right now, but cleaned up, it ain’t a bad room.”

  After following Cora inside, Annie had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior. A weaker person would have turned around and hightailed it out of there right then, but Annie Moore wasn’t weak. She took a few steps farther into the room. A torn shade hung from the only window, a dilapidated sofa crouched nearby. There was a dirty stove and an old-fashioned refrigerator in one corner, a narrow bed in another. A metal table and three vinyl chairs took up most of the middle of the room; papers and ratty clothes were strewn over the floor. There was a closet, and a bathroom that had all the essentials, even if the porcelain was chipped and stained.

  “How much you asking for rent?”

  Cora eyed her in that way that made Annie nervous. Then, out of the blue, she started to hum. It was a little unnerving, but not a bad tune. She named a price that was cheaper than Annie had expected, making her wonder if the woman might have been a little crazy, after all.

  “‘Course, with that price, I’d expect you to clean the place up. And you’d hafta give me a reference. You sure you’re old enough to be out on your own?”

  Annie crossed her thin arms and felt a smile starting somewhere deep inside. Things were going to work out, she just knew they were. Without looking at Cora, she said, “I’m older than I look.”

  “It’s a good thing, because ya look about fourteen.”

  Imagining what the dismal room would look like with a little spit and polish, Annie absently said, “Sometimes I feel ancient. Thirty-five, at least.”

  That got a cackle out of Cora. “Ain’t that a coincidence. That’s exactly how old I feel. Come on. You can write down the name and number of your reference and test my biscuits at the same time.”

  Annie wasn’t sure how it happened, but fifteen minutes later she was sitting at an old wooden table between two cats, munching on homemade biscuits and real honey. Cora was cutting up vegetables for her stew, talking about everything from her cats to the patch of garden she had out back. “I know this place don’t look like much, but it’s home. Most people only see what’s on the outside. They think I’m old and senile.” She made the last word sound like two words instead of one, like sea nile. “I ain’t crazy. And I’m younger’n I look.”

  Annie thought that was a good thing, because Cora looked older than dirt. Her hands were gnarled, her face wrinkled, her stringy hair the color of dirty steel.

  “This your first trip to Colorado?”

  “I’ve been here almost a year.”

  “Got family in these parts?” Cora asked without looking up from the pot she was stirring on the stove.

  “No. I mean yes,” Annie said softly. “I have a baby boy.”

  “I had a little boy once.”

  Annie stopped chewing and turned her head. “Where is he now?”

  Cora was humming again. When it became apparent that either she hadn’t heard Annie’s question or just plain didn’t feel like answering, Annie stood and headed for the door. The quavering old voice behind her stopped her in her tracks.

  “You don’t hafta go. This here stew will be done in an hour. You can stay and have some with me if you want. Ya can stay longer than that if you need ta.”

  Annie eyed the room’s rustic interior and swiped at her eyes. Must have been a delayed reaction to the onions Cora had put in the stew. Suddenly, Annie felt bone
tired. It reminded her of how she’d felt a few nights ago sitting in a meadow on the other side of Grand Springs, watching as lights came on in Dr. Petrocelli’s house. A yearning so powerful she’d barely been able to fight it had nearly sent her crawling to Beth’s door and asking—begging—her to take care of her the way she was taking care of Christopher.

  Shaking her head to clear it, Annie said, “Thanks, Cora, but I can’t. I’ve gotta work this afternoon. I’m saving my money so I can give my baby a good life.”

  “Your mama know about him?”

  Annie’s answer was a snort. Her mother didn’t give a damn about her. Never had. All she cared about was her current boyfriend. Her mother didn’t know about the boy Annie had met after she ran away, and she never would. Annie wasn’t going back there. She’d escaped with her virtue, what there was of it, intact. She shivered at the thought of the greasy, hairy-chested man with a week’s worth of whiskers and a leer that made her skin crawl even now.

  “What’s your baby’s name?”

  “What?” she asked, coming to with a start. “Oh. I named him Christopher. After my sister, Christie.”

  “My boy’s name was Willie. Sweetest li’l boy in the Rockies, and smart, my he was smart.”

  “What happened to him, Cora?”

  For a minute, Annie thought Cora was going to start humming again instead of answering. In a way, she did both, her answer coming to Annie’s ears on what sounded like a song. “He went to live with the angels the winter he turned five.”

  Annie couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

  As if Cora understood all too well, she said, “You take good care of that baby of yours, you hear? Because a baby needs his mama more’n he needs anyone else in this here world.”

  Annie swallowed the lump in her throat and called goodbye. She didn’t expect an answer, and she didn’t receive one. Cora stirred her stew and hummed a tuneless song, lost in whatever world she’d created in her head. It wasn’t surprising that other folks called the woman crazy. Maybe she was. But she was right about one thing. Babies did need their mothers. And Annie Moore was going to be the best mother she could be.

  Things hadn’t gone right from the beginning. Hell, for her and Christie, things had never gone right. But with Christopher, it was going to be different. From the moment she’d faced the fact that she was pregnant, she’d vowed to do everything right for him. It would have worked, too, if Todd hadn’t forced her to get out and gone into labor two-and-a-half months early.

  But that nurse, Bethany Kent, had been there that night, and everything had felt better somehow. Beth had promised to take care of Christopher, and every time Annie had checked up on him, he’d looked better, healthier, stronger than before.

  She’d gone tearing into the bathroom in a panic that time when she’d crept up to the nursery and found him gone, but when she’d overheard two nurses talking about how Beth and Dr. Petrocelli had gotten married, she’d known where to find her baby.

  The house had been easy to locate, the meadow nearby the perfect place to watch from undetected. She’d had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming at the top of her lungs when the doctor and another man almost stumbled upon her. They probably would have found her, too, if that owl hadn’t distracted them. But they hadn’t seen her, and she’d been able to watch her baby from afar, sight unseen.

  She thought about the way Dr. Petrocelli had picked him up, thought about how safe he’d looked in those strong arms. Mostly, she thought about the way Beth had talked to Christopher. The love and sunshine in that voice had carried all the way to Annie’s ears.

  Her heart ached a little bit when she imagined how sad Beth would be when Christopher was gone. But he wasn’t Beth’s kid. He was hers. She’d born the censure of carrying him and the pain of having him. She loved him. Beth and the good doctor were newlyweds. They’d probably have kids of their own someday, but right now they had each other. Hell, they probably had families who got together at Thanksgiving and Christmas and had picnics on the Fourth of July. Christopher was all she had.

  Casting one last look behind her at Cora’s dilapidated house, Annie tucked her hair underneath her baseball cap and headed for the highway where she could hitch a ride back to the truck stop where she worked. She had a job and soon she would have a place to stay. All she needed was a little more money, and a little more time, and she would be ready to bring her baby home.

  Chapter Eight

  “Bethany tells me you’re being considered for a promotion of significant prestige.”

  Tony Petrocelli found himself removing his hand from his pocket and standing up straighter before he nodded at the petite, middle-aged woman wearing a pastel-colored dress and a single strand of pearls. “I’m not so sure about the prestige, Mrs. Bower, but I am being considered for a promotion to head of obstetrics.”

  “Every time you call me Mrs. Bower,” Beth’s mother admonished, placing a perfectly manicured hand on his arm, “you remind me of Winston’s mother, whom I called Mrs. Bower for the first five years of our acquaintance. Please, call me Katherine.”

  Tony did a double take at her wink, then released a deep chuckle. The sound drew several family members’ gazes, as if they weren’t accustomed to sudden bursts of laughter during their family parties. Within seconds, Beth’s sister drew Katherine into conversation, and Beth’s father, Winston Bower III, and her brother-in-law, MacKenzie Nelson, returned to their lawyer talk on the other side of the room.

  Beth had warned him that her family was a little stuffy. Stuffy, hell. They were bona fide snobs. And Katherine ranked at the top of the genteel heap. But she had a sense of humor, dry though it might be, and a haughtiness he wouldn’t have minded pitting against the queen of England, not to mention a smile that reminded him of his new wife.

  Beth entered the room, a sterling silver tray containing fancy little sandwiches in her hands. She graciously offered one to Winston and Mac, smiling at something her father said. It was strange, but Tony sensed love between these family members, just not closeness.

  They were a far cry from the Petrocellis, that was for sure. His family hadn’t been able to wait to meet their soon-to-be adopted son, Christopher. The Bowers had yet to see him. Beth had offered to wake him and bring him down, but Katherine had declined, saying that she couldn’t fathom disturbing a sleeping child. The Bowers were polite, well mannered and well-bred. Now that he’d met them, Tony understood where Beth had acquired her class. He also understood the reason she’d been running on nervous energy these past few days, trying to make everything perfect for tonight. As far as he was concerned, she’d nearly outdone herself. She’d served wine in fluted stemware and had stacked cubes of fine cheese and hors d’oeuvres on gleaming silver and sparkling crystal trays. He’d never seen her looking more elegant. Or nervous.

  Candles flickered on the mantel, threading her auburn hair with gold and honey. A lamp behind her shone through the hem of her ivory-colored dress, delineating the curve of her knee and the edge of a lacy slip. These past few days, Tony had discovered that his wife had a passion for pretty underclothes. He had a passion for removing them.

  It didn’t matter that this marriage started out as a contract, with Tony needing a wife to get a promotion, and Beth needing a husband to adopt Christopher. A connection neither expected was getting stronger, and no one knew where it would take them, but they were both enjoying the ride.

  Beth glanced across the room, sending him a tremulous smile. For a moment, her innermost feelings played across her face, making him doubt that he was the only one who had sex on his mind. Desire roused inside him, and suddenly he thought of one way to chase away her nerves. Something told him the Bowers would look askance at him if he swung his new wife into his arms and carried her upstairs. But it would definitely liven things up.

  Beth shook her head at Tony, doing her best to school her features into a mask of calm. Still, she felt warmed by the expression in his dark eyes, and flu
shed with heat that had nothing to do with the mid-September temperatures outside. Her family had been here for nearly two hours, and she was beginning to believe they might all make it through the evening without incident. She wasn’t surprised that everyone seemed taken with Tony. After all, he was a doctor, which was a fitting profession in their eyes. He was also an incredibly charming man.

  “Beth?”

  The absent way she said “Hmm?” earned her a smile from her sister.

  “I’m sorry to break into your reverie, and I know Mother doesn’t think we should wake a sleeping child, but MacKenzie and I would like to be home before the children go to bed. And I’d really love to see the baby.”

  Beth started to turn toward the doorway that led to the foyer, but was stopped by Janet’s quiet voice. “I know how much work planning an evening such as this requires, and here you’ve done it with a newborn baby in the house. You must be exhausted. May I bring him down?”

  Beth nodded, and Janet walked away, the swish of her skirt as elegant as her demeanor. Janet was two years older than Beth. Their hair was a similar color, but Janet’s was smooth and manageable. She was pretty and bright and nice—the perfect Bower sister. In comparison, Beth had always felt second-rate, especially in their parents’ eyes. Her grades had never been perfect, her choice of careers a mystery to them, her divorce shameful. She hadn’t even been able to get something as simple and basic as motherhood right.

  “Look, everyone. Isn’t he adorable?” Janet called softly, practically floating toward the center of the room with Christopher in her arms.

  Beth smiled just as she did every time she caught a glimpse of that small bundle of joy. Christopher was sucking on his fist. Honestly, she couldn’t have felt more pride burgeoning inside her if he had been negotiating world peace. In that instant she realized that there was no wrong way to become a mother. It didn’t matter that her baby hadn’t grown beneath her heart. This special child had grown within it.

  She glanced at her family and was pleased to see them smiling their approval.