Tony reached for her hand, one by one twining his fingers with hers. Something about the gesture, the unity of that one small act, sent Beth’s worries far away and brought back the hazy sensuality she’d felt in his arms on the dance floor earlier.
“It’s been quite an evening,” she whispered.
“It’s not over.”
She hummed her answer, her emotions shimmering in her chest in a similar fashion. It had been five weeks since she and Tony had exchanged wedding vows in the old house where he and his sisters had grown up, five weeks since she’d assured herself that she could guard her heart against falling in love. Little by little, Tony was obliterating the lines she’d drawn to protect her heart against heartache. It wasn’t any one thing, but a combination of small things. The sight of Christopher asleep on Tony’s bare chest. The excitement and wonder she’d seen in Tony’s eyes a few nights ago when he’d come back to bed in the wee hours of the morning after delivering a baby. The laughter in his voice, the sounds he made in his sleep, the way he watched her when she was getting dressed.
Her husband wasn’t perfect. There was a side of him he kept hidden. But he gave her free rein to the rest of him. She smiled to herself at the memory of a few of the things he gave her free rein to. Desire uncurled in her belly like the smoke of a wood fire on a cool autumn day.
“What are you thinking about?”
Beth very nearly jumped, but smiled, instead. “Oh, wood smoke, and autumn, and, I suppose, you.”
He took his eyes from the street long enough to look into her eyes. “I like the sound of that.”
“I figured you would.”
The car had pulled into the driveway and had inched its way toward the garage before either of them noticed the extra vehicles parked near the house.
“That’s Gib’s Jeep,” Tony said, throwing the lever into Park.
“And that’s Jenna’s car,” Beth added, pushing her door open.
“Christopher,” they said as their feet hit the sidewalk, impending doom beating in their temples and lengthening their strides.
Chapter Twelve
Tony was the first one through the door, Bethany drawing to a stop two steps behind him. Carmelina glanced up from the romance novel she was reading on her electronic tablet at the kitchen table. Slowly pulling her feet off an adjacent chair, she said, “Have you two seen a ghost or are you just glad to be home?”
“We saw the extra cars outside,” Tony declared.
“And we thought something might have happened,” Beth cut in breathlessly.
“Oh, something’s happened all right.”
“Oh, my God! Christopher!” Beth cried.
“What? No. The baby’s fine. He’s been an angel all night. I can’t exactly say the same for your friends, though.”
As if on cue, Jenna entered the room, her dark eyes flashing, her bangle bracelets jangling as she planted her hands on her hips. “Tony, would you please tell that, that Neanderthal to leave so I can have a moment’s peace?”
Gib limped into the room a few seconds later. “Beth, would you mind telling this short Gypsy here that I have medals bigger than she is and I’ll leave when I’m good and ready?”
“Go,” Jenna taunted.
“After you,” Gib replied around the curl of his lip.
“See what I mean?” Carmelina asked.
Tony spared a glance at Beth, who rolled her eyes expressively before releasing a pent-up breath. Running a finger between his neck and the starched collar of his shirt, Tony asked his sister, “Have they been this way all night?”
“Pretty much. They both stopped in to visit the baby. I tried to referee at first. That went over like a lead balloon, so when I tucked Christopher into his crib after his last feeding, I decided it was safer to stay in here, out of their way. They’ve been pretty quiet this past half hour. I thought they might have kissed and made up.”
Jenna gasped. “I wouldn’t kiss this arrogant jerk if he were the last man on earth.”
Tony recognized the shrewd look in Gib’s eyes. After all, his friend hadn’t won those medals he’d mentioned by being stupid. Tactical maneuvers were Gibson Malone’s specialty. Tactical maneuvers and women, that is. He claimed there wasn’t a woman on the planet he couldn’t lure into bed. Staring at the hostility flashing in Jenna’s exotic brown eyes, Gib obviously realized he had finally met one.
In an effort to defuse the situation, Beth slipped out of her shoes and padded over to Jenna. Before she could say a word, a wolf whistle rent the air. Three pairs of eyes turned to Gib. It seemed to require a considerable amount of effort on his part to tear his gaze from Beth’s bare back, but he lifted his hands and smiled with equal parts innocence and male appreciation. “Sorry. It was a reflex action.”
Bethany shook her head, Tony offered to break Gib’s other ankle, and Jenna sputtered a curse straight out of one of the books in her store, ending the tirade with “Obnoxious swine.”
Gib’s hazel eyes twinkled. “Sweetheart, I thought you said you didn’t care.”
“Oaf.”
“Why don’t you come here and say that?”
Although nobody else spoke the language Jenna used during her next tirade, the translation was universal.
“I love it when a woman talks dirty to me.”
“Fool.”
“Seductress.”
“Ox.”
“Tigress.”
“Jack—”
“I’d love to stick around and see how this ends,” Carmelina declared, tucking a strand of her short dark hair behind her ear. “But I have a husband and four kids who’ll be up early wanting a big Sunday breakfast.”
While the insults were still being flung back and forth behind them, Beth said, “Thanks for staying with Christopher.”
Beth caught a glimpse of Tony in Carmelina’s wink. “Anytime. Let me know how World War III turns out, will you?” Grabbing her purse and her paperback, she hurried out the door.
Beth and Tony had hardly had time to exchange a “what do we do now” sort of look before Jenna clamped her mouth shut and stalked toward the door. Without bothering with a farewell, she flicked her hair behind her shoulders and said, “Tony, your taste in friends concerns me.”
A second later, she was gone.
In the ensuing silence, Beth glanced at the two men in the room. Tony was staring at the door in amazement the way a person might gaze at a violent storm that had somehow passed him by. Gib had a much more serious expression on his face. “Jenna Maria Brigante.” He shook his head. “A woman with three names always spells trouble.”
“Jenna’s very volatile,” Beth murmured softly. “But I’m sure she didn’t mean everything she said.”
Narrowing his eyes and lowering his chin, Gib said, “Oh, she meant what she said, all right. But she failed to mention one thing.”
“What’s that?” Tony asked.
“She wants me.”
Tony recognized the challenge in Gib’s eyes, but the wonder was brand-new. “She could have fooled me, buddy,” he declared.
Gib ambled toward the door, more surefooted than he’d been before the walking cast had been removed, but still not as agile as he used to be. “That’s exactly what she was trying to do. She put a hex on me. She means trouble, all right. It just so happens that she’s the kind of trouble I want to get into. Which way to her mountain cabin? Never mind,” he said, running his hand over the stubble on his chin. “I have a better idea.”
Like Jenna had before him, he left without saying goodbye.
Beth turned in a half circle after he was gone, making a sweeping glance at the quiet room. “Do you think Jenna stands a chance against him?”
Tony’s eyebrows went up a notch at a time, his smile slow in coming, and all male. “If she wanted to, I think she could eat him alive.”
“He called her short.”
“She called him an obnoxious swine.”
Beth smiled. “So she did. Do you really think th
ere’s a chance they might get together?”
“I’d rather think about you and I getting together. If you know what I mean.”
Beth felt her heart tilt as warmth slid all the way to her stomach. “I always know what you mean.”
“That’s what I like about you.”
She would have liked to ask what else he liked about her. Instead, she said, “We overreacted, you know.”
“About Christopher?”
She nodded and he shrugged.
“I think we should talk to Mrs. Donahue about it at the next meeting,” she whispered.
He nodded once with every forward step he took. “That’s not until Monday. This is Saturday night. And I still have to get you out of that dress.”
She met him in the middle of the kitchen, going up on tiptoe to touch her lips to his, her arms gliding around his back, his hands homing in on her zipper as if guided by radar. She kissed his mouth, his cheek, his neck, then took his hand, leading him up the stairs where, like the enchantress he’d called her hours earlier, she—slowly, seductively, wantonly—took him to bed.
* * *
“Rita,” Mrs. Donahue said into an old black telephone that took up one small corner on her cluttered desk, “hold my calls until I finish this session with Dr. and Mrs. Petrocelli.”
Making herself comfortable in her chair, Beth felt a new respect for the way the social worker made sense out of the confusion and interruptions that had occurred every few minutes since she and Tony had arrived at her office. The older woman released a breath that stirred the overpermed bangs sticking out on her forehead. Removing her reading glasses, she looked from Beth to Tony and back again, tapping the business card Beth had given her all the while.
“This detective came right out and told you that someone has seen Annie Moore in Grand Springs?”
Tony’s chair squeaked as he leaned forward and shook his head. “He said someone matching Annie Moore’s description has been seen in Grand Springs.”
“What if it’s Annie?” Beth asked quietly.
Although Beth’s taste tended to run toward pastels and more classic styles, she was beginning to understand why Florence Donahue wore those brightly flowered dresses. They certainly brightened up what was otherwise a dismal room. However, a clown’s clothing couldn’t have detracted from the integrity in her steady gaze.
“If you’re asking me what legal right the birth mother has to Christopher, the answer is none. Her parental rights were terminated in a court of law when she failed to come forward following the publication of the supplemental petition in the Grand Springs Herald. Unlike those tragic cases that made national news headlines a few years ago, Annie Moore hasn’t contacted us, nor has she made her presence or her intentions known in any way, shape or form. Legally, Christopher is no longer her son.”
“And morally?” Beth asked.
Mrs. Donahue adjusted the oversize collar at her neck. “People have been grappling with that issue since King Solomon’s time. Since cutting the child in half wouldn’t work any better now than it would have back then, you have to be the ones to answer that question. What would you do if Annie came back tomorrow and told you she wanted Christopher?”
Beth’s hands flew to her face, and her heart thudded painfully in her chest. What would she do? She would surely die.
“I can’t imagine any reason Annie would have for waiting this long to come forward to claim the child. And she couldn’t take him. Not legally,” Mrs. Donahue pointed out. “Grand Springs has a population of sixty-some thousand people. There must be a hundred girls matching Annie’s description. I don’t believe she’s here.”
“Then, we’re free to adopt him?” Tony asked.
Florence nodded. “I’m filing my report and making my recommendation today.”
Tony came to his feet with a loud whoop, pulling Beth with him on his way up. She laughed out loud when he swung her around, then he moved to the other side of the desk to do the same to Mrs. Donahue, that brightly flowered dress fluttering in the wake of the breeze he created.
“Dr. Petrocelli, please. I have a reputation of sternness and grouchiness to uphold.” Florence’s voice was as clipped as always, but there was no disguising the twinkle in her eyes.
Beth met Tony’s gaze over Mrs. Donahue’s curly head. His eyelids dropped down slightly, his expression changing in the most subtle of ways. Something went warm inside Beth. And she knew. She was in love.
It had been on the tip of her heart for a long time. Love. She’d been afraid of it, and had worried because of it. She shouldn’t have bothered, because with the worry, came the wonder, and with the wonder, blessed joy. She was in love with the man she’d married. It was incredible. Love was incredible. Tony was the most incredible of all.
He could go from aloof to playful in the blink of an eye, from arrogant to daring just as quickly. He was a very virile man and had the reputation to prove it. As far as Beth was concerned, his reputation didn’t do him justice. It didn’t touch upon his gentleness, his curiosity and sense of humor, or his earnestness when she caught him talking to Christopher when he thought she wasn’t listening. It didn’t even come close to the things that made him the man he was, his humanness, his strength of character, his quick temper. He was exactly the kind of man she would have chosen to be the father of her biological children, exactly the kind of man she had been fortuitous enough to have chosen to be a father to Christopher.
“Take care of him for me,” Annie had said before Beth had whisked Christopher upstairs to the neonatal nursery four-and-a-half months ago.
Tears filled Beth’s eyes, blurring her vision, thickening her throat. Smiling tremulously, she offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving for Christopher, and for Tony, and last but not least, for Annie Moore’s strength and bravery to give life to a tiny, innocent, beautiful child.
* * *
It was one of those rare autumn afternoons when the sky was a vivid blue and the air carried the earthy scent of dry leaves. Wood smoke rose from the bonfire Tony and his brother-in-law Rocky had built. What had started as an idea for a simple hot dog roast with a few of Tony’s family members had turned into a full-scale party. Beth was coming to realize that the Petrocellis did everything in a big way.
Tony’s sisters and their husbands and children had arrived en masse, transforming the quiet meadow into a place where voices rang out with raucous laughter and children darted around adults, where marshmallows and hot dogs were roasted side by side and plates were heaped with chips and pickles and brownies and fat chunks of Colby cheese.
Nearly a week had passed since Beth had realized she was in love with Tony, although now that she’d thought about it she realized she’d been falling in love with him almost from the beginning. She hadn’t been able to help it, but she wasn’t sorry. These feelings welling up inside her were intoxicating, heavenly.
“Bethany,” Maria exclaimed, walking over to the fallen log Beth had perched on to feed Christopher, “that baby is growing before my very eyes. His outfit is adorable.”
Beth smoothed her hand down the baby’s powder blue overalls and the butter yellow shirt adorned with ducks and blocks. Christopher was four-and-a-half months old, but because of his premature birth and medical problems early on, he wasn’t as big as other babies his age. Actually, he was closer to the size of an eight-week-old, which was exactly how old he would have been had he not come into this world two-and-a-half months early. As far as his doctors were concerned, he was right on schedule, and Maria was right, he was quickly making up for lost time.
“Isn’t Andreanna’s and Rocky’s news exciting?” Gina exclaimed, joining the little huddle.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Maria declared. “She always said she wanted three children close in age, and Ricky is a year-and-a-half old.”
Bethany shifted Christopher to her shoulder and began to pat his back, listening to the conversation with only one ear. She couldn’t help it, she’d been feeling as
if she were floating on a cloud all week. She was in love, and life was full of mystery and wonder.
“So,” Maria said, “when are you and Tony going to start working on a baby brother or sister for this little tyke?”
Beth’s hand missed a beat against Christopher’s back. She floundered for an answer. A little brother or sister for Christopher?
The sound he made against her shoulder gave her someplace else to look. Tucking him into the curve of one arm in order to give him the rest of his bottle gave her something to do with her hands. Despite those things, Beth was at a complete and utter loss for something to say.
“Nice going,” Maria declared. “Now you’ve gone and embarrassed her.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Yeah, well some people have more class than others, and Beth undoubtedly isn’t used to being grilled about her sex life.”
“I wasn’t grilling her about her sex life. At least I didn’t mean to make it sound that way.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Beth murmured, recovering slightly. “You just caught me off guard, that’s all. Actually, Tony and I haven’t discussed Christopher’s future siblings.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Maria said. “You’re still newlyweds.”
“There’s plenty of time for the two of you to have a baby,” Gina agreed.
Doing her best to cast her sisters-in-law a semblance of a smile, Beth glanced to the right and found Tony watching her from the other side of the fire. He was close enough to have heard Gina and Maria, and must have read the sorrow and disappointment in Beth’s eyes. They faced each other, silent and uncertain, gray smoke curling toward the sky between them. Her heart broke a little at the expression on his face. With great effort, she turned her attention back to the baby that had brought her and Tony together, but the joy and wonder of the past week was gone.
* * *
It was dark. Thankfully everyone had finally left.
After tucking Christopher into bed, Beth strode down the stairs and on into the living room, somehow knowing she’d find Tony on the deck outside. He was leaning over slightly, one knee bent, his forearms resting on the railing, his hands dangling over the edge.
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