Maybe Baby

by Elaine Fox

  “Has nothing to do with life in Harp Cove. I can’t tell you, though, how nice it is for me finally to have someone here who understands the way they do things in other places. And why. Maybe between the two of us, we can give Harp Cove a little reality check every once in a while.”

  Delaney laughed. Boy, did she have a reality check for them. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve always found people are pretty resistant to change.”

  “No kidding. But I guess if you already know that, you should do all right here. Listen, I’ll have to get you that syllabus once I unearth it. But like I said, it’s really basic stuff and there are materials at the school from last year all ready to use. Jack can help you with that.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yes. The first class you’ll be teaching is his football team, just before school starts.”

  Chapter 6

  Delaney pulled into the drive, up to the open wrought-iron gate with its ornately curved “S,” and stopped the car. In the middle of the wide lawn beyond the gate an American flag on a tall pole snapped in the brisk ocean breeze. Glancing in the rearview mirror Delaney couldn’t help but smile at her daughter in the car seat behind her, despite the trepidation beating in her breast.

  Emily’s eyes were bright in her creamy pink face, taking in the world around her as she gurgled happy sounds into the cool morning air. Gnawing on two saliva-covered fingers with a sublime smile, Emily had no idea she would soon be in the company of her father.

  “This is it, Em,” Delaney said, gazing back out the front windshield.

  Across the expansive lawn to the left stood a large stone house. To the right and just behind stood the little stone cottage that was to be hers. Beyond them both sparkled the sea.

  “So close,” she murmured, shifting her eyes from the house to the cottage.

  The driveway ran along the edge of a wood, then curved in a semicircle in front of the larger stone house. A side drive cut straight back to her cottage and branched off to a service entrance behind the main house.

  “So close.” She took a deep breath.

  He was probably down there, she thought. Waiting for her and her truck full of belongings to show up. She glanced at the clock on the dash. The truck from the storage place wasn’t due for another twenty minutes, however, and she was not sure she wanted to arrive with that much time to spend in conversation with Jack Shepard.

  Not that it would be as dangerous as yesterday’s conversation. Last night she’d sat down and hammered out some details about her husband, “Jim,” though she did wish she’d called him “Joe.” For some reason the name “Joe” seemed more real to her than “Jim” did, more like someone she would have married. Which was silly, of course, because they were just names. But still, Joe sounded like a regular guy whereas Jim sounded a little yuppie. Why had she changed it? She couldn’t remember.

  In any case, reconciling herself to “Jim,” she’d quizzed herself about him as if she were preparing for a play.

  What does your husband do, Dr. Poole? He’s a young, up-and-coming lawyer in D.C. Unfortunately, he couldn’t possibly find a job that would do his career any good in Harp Cove. So for the moment we’re living apart.

  After all, she’d thought, who would blame a man for not giving up his career to follow his wife? Certainly no one in this town.

  Does he plan to come on weekends? No…(sad shake of the head)…not at first because he’s in the middle of a really important case right now. We’re going to have to go a couple months without seeing each other.

  What a shame. Won’t this be hard on your marriage? Depending on who asked, Delaney would either say she hoped not or she would confide that in fact they’d been having some trouble anyway, and they both thought that time and distance might do them some good.

  This would be perfect, Delaney had decided, especially if those gossips at the diner ever got hold of the information. Because eventually she’d be divorcing old “Jim Poole” and setting up the marriage like this to begin with would ensure it all made sense.

  And it had to make sense, especially to Jack.

  In addition, she’d decided, she needed to talk about him a lot, her Jim. To make him more real not just to herself, but to Jack. Bringing him up in conversation should be natural, the way couples always spoke in terms of “we.” She should talk about what “Jim thinks” and frequently add what “Jim says” to the topic at hand.

  “My husband really wanted a larger house,” she said out loud, testing the words on her lips, “but since he wasn’t to be joining me anytime soon, I decided to go with this place.” She nodded to herself. Yes, that kind of thing.

  She took her foot off the brake and eased the car forward. She could do this. She could have an imaginary husband.

  The day was incredible, with the sky a deep, cloudless blue and the sun splintering on the water. She couldn’t have asked for a better one, really. If it weren’t for the Jack Shepard problem, she thought wistfully, she’d be ecstatic about moving into this idyllic little house.

  She tried to look at it with the enthusiasm she would have had, had she not known that disaster lived right next door. She might have thought about putting up window boxes and filling that old half barrel next to the drive with petunias. She might have contemplated getting a hammock for the backyard, and a set of furniture for the patio. She might have thought about the friends she’d make and the parties she’d have out here, overlooking the sea.

  But all she could think about now was Jack Shepard.

  So she would live here a few weeks, maybe a couple months if she had to, she told herself. Then she would come up with some reason she had to move. An allergy of Emily’s, or a phobia of hers about living in such relative seclusion. She scoffed at the thought—the place wasn’t nearly secluded enough. Or she could say she thought her husband might be coming so she’d need a larger place, then his arrival could fall through at the last minute.

  She pulled up next to the house and spent a moment regarding it sadly—it might have been so perfect—when a movement in the rearview mirror told her Jack had emerged from his house.

  She gathered her purse and the diaper bag and got out of the car. The salt-stung breeze whipped her hair around her face as she rounded the hood. She was careful to keep her eyes on Emily in the backseat so Jack wouldn’t know she’d seen him.

  The sun was warm on her back, but not nearly so warm as the sensation of Jack’s gaze. God, she thought, hefting Emily up and out, he was probably looking at her butt and thinking pregnancy had done nothing for her figure. Then, feeling disloyal, she clutched Emily to her chest and gave her a big smacking kiss on the cheek.

  So what if she had hips now, she thought. Emily was worth every pound and more, something someone like Jack Shepard would never understand.

  One little fist grabbed a handful of Delaney’s hair, and she was prying at the tiny fingers to extricate it when she felt Jack relieve her of the diaper bag.

  She turned swiftly, as if surprised, and gave him a smile. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Expecting someone else?” His hair ruffled in the breeze, and she had a sudden picture in her mind of how he would look in high seas on the deck of his boat.

  She gazed up at him, feeling small, and tried to stop remembering how he’d lifted her up on that beach with no effort at all and held her body close to his. She’d forgotten he was so tall.

  Joe would’ve been tall, she thought. Jim, in her mind, was thin and somewhat short. Someone she’d feel bigger than.

  No, she’d make “Jim” tall. And handsome…ridiculously handsome, she added as she took in Jack’s sun-warmed skin and dropped her eyes to his muscular forearms.

  “No, of course not.” She closed the car door. “But for a second I automatically thought it was my husband. He usually carries that stuff for me. But since Jim couldn’t make it, that was impossible. Of course. In fact I wasn’t expecting you either. You really don’t have to do this, you know.”

  Jack glanced
into the empty backseat of the car. “Yes, I can see you really don’t have much stuff.”

  She laughed and peeled another lock of hair from Emily’s fingers. She should have pulled her hair back in a ponytail, as she usually did. But she hadn’t—and why? Because of Jack, she admitted with disgust. Because she hadn’t wanted him to notice that the baby might not have done her figure any favors.

  She glanced at her watch. “Actually, the truck’s due any minute. The storage place said they’d bring it out for a pretty reasonable fee, so I went ahead and paid it. They should be able to unload it too, so if you have something else to do…”

  “Trying to get rid of me?” He was still smiling, but his eyes narrowed, perhaps against the sun.

  “No!” She laughed. Shrilly. “Why would you think that?”

  As soon as the words were past her lips she wanted to shove them back down her throat and clap her hand over her mouth. Idiot, she cursed herself. Stupid, stupid idiot.

  He leaned one hip against the side of the car. “Well, for one thing, our meeting again and living so close is bound to be awkward, at least at first. Don’t you think so?”

  It didn’t seem awkward for him, she thought sourly. He appeared as calm as a funeral director.

  “Yes, yes I do.” She took a deep breath. “Listen, Jack, since you brought it up, I want to apologize for that, for what happened that night on the beach. I should have been…more forthcoming, I suppose. It was a foolish thing to do and—and I regret it now.”

  He paused a long moment, studying her, before he laughed lightly. “Yes, I suppose you would.” He shifted the diaper bag on his shoulder and looked away. “I didn’t, not until you told me about your husband. I guess I’ve never been an adulterer before.”

  The comment took her by surprise and her eyes shot to his. A blush of shame for her own “adultery” crept over her. “Yes, I can see where you might be reluctant to add to what I hear is already an extensive résumé.” She straightened her shoulders and lifted Emily higher on her hip.

  The look of surprise on his face was momentarily gratifying, then almost instantly mortifying. She’d never said anything so mean in her life. Not to mention antagonizing. Even if she cared nothing for his feelings, drawing battle lines at this stage in the game was a bad idea.

  She shook her head, pulling more of her hair from Emily’s fingers. “Listen, I’m sorry—”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Look, let’s just forget it, okay?”

  He lifted his hands in surrender. “Forgotten already.”

  She looked him dead in the eye. “No, I mean all of it. That weekend I was here, that night on the beach, all of it. I know what’s done is done, and I’m really not trying to sweep anything under the rug, but if we don’t forget about it, every meeting we have will be strained like this one. And I don’t think either one of us wants to live that way.”

  He pushed his hands into his pockets, the pale pink strap of the diaper bag incongruous against his olive drab tee shirt.

  His face was somber, his eyes soft. “No,” he said slowly, “I definitely don’t want to live that way.”

  She thought he was about to say something else, when the storage truck pulled into the drive and their attentions were diverted. When she glanced back at him, Jack had already turned away.

  The last thing Jack planned to do was sweep anything under the rug. Even if he’d been inclined to do it, he knew from months of experience that he was incapable of “forgetting all about” anything when it came to Delaney Poole.

  Besides, he’d sat up the last two nights thinking about her and her sudden husband. Why wouldn’t she have mentioned him at least once that weekend she was up last year? They’d had several conversations before that night on the beach and he was sure he would have remembered the mention of a husband. Her finger had been ring-free, too. Free of the indentation or tan line that a normally beringed finger frequently had as well. He knew. He had trained himself to notice such things.

  Of course, that could be because they’d been separated a while, but to show up now, shocked to see him and suddenly aware of her vows…well, it pieced together in an odd way, he thought.

  Plus, there was the baby.

  Certainly there was no better reason to claim you were married, even if perhaps you weren’t, than a child. Maybe she’d never been married, he’d thought, and she worried about being a single mother in a small town. He had to admit she might be regarded differently by the general population if it were known she hadn’t married the baby’s father; but it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t have been able to do her job. People would have gotten over it eventually, just as they did every other scandal that came along.

  Then again, maybe her one-night stand with him wasn’t so unusual. Maybe she slept around and didn’t know who the father was.

  Hell, if he hadn’t used a condom that night, he might have thought he could be the father. But he had and he wasn’t and the kid was too young anyway. Just four months, his buddy Kim at the clinic had told him. The math didn’t compute.

  An hour later, Jack bent low to pick up the bottom end of a bookshelf that one of the movers tilted to lift.

  “Where’s it going?” he asked, as they shuffled from the gaping back end of the truck.

  The mover—a guy named Ross who lived next door to Kevin—shrugged, looking slantwise behind him. “Upstairs, I guess. The master bedroom.”

  Jack grimaced for no one’s benefit but his own. The master bedroom. Where Delaney and her husband would sleep.

  They paused at the door while Manny, the other mover, trotted out for another armload of boxes. Jack squinted into the dark hallway beyond, but Delaney was nowhere in sight. Tending to the kid, most likely.

  Despite his doubts about her sudden marital status, he had to admit she was doing an admirable job of trying to sell the idea. If she brought up her blasted husband one more time, he was going to break something, he was sure of it. Preferably something cheap and replaceable, but he couldn’t be responsible. Everything was “Jim says this” and “my husband thinks that” until he was sure he was going to lose his mind. Blah blah blah blah blah.

  If he existed, why the hell wasn’t Jim here schlepping this hundred-pound bookcase up the narrow stairs of a carriage house, Jack wanted to know. What sort of husband was he if he shipped his wife and infant daughter off hundreds of miles without lifting a finger to help? Delaney hadn’t even seemed that sure she could afford to pay the movers to stay and help. What kind of a lawyer was this guy? The broke kind?

  Then again, doctors weren’t usually so impoverished either, so what did he know.

  “Wait.”

  The sound of Delaney’s voice caused Jack and Ross to stop their crablike manipulations just short of the steps. Jack lowered his end of the shelf to the floor.

  “I’m sorry.” She smiled, her sky-blue eyes friendly and apologetic for Ross. “I’d like that shelf in the living room, not upstairs. I guess I should have marked things better.”

  Ross grinned back at her like a lovestruck idiot. “No problem. Wherever you want it, we aim to please.”

  Jack aimed to do a little more than that. He aimed to get to the bottom of things with Mrs. Poole.

  Delaney’s eyes sidled over to Jack, and he caught the faint hint of a blush on her cheeks. Interesting, he thought. What was she thinking?

  They maneuvered the thing into the living room and, with a self-conscious half bow as he passed Delaney, Ross hopped right back outside in his continuing effort to please.

  “So, what do you think of the place?” Jack asked, as Delaney started to leave. He leaned one arm along the mantel.

  Delaney turned back, slim fingers tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

  His eyes scanned the room as if pointing out his favorite details, from the exposed-beam ceiling to the white walls and dark wood trim around the windows. “This was the first room I did. We had to dig the fireplace here out from under layers
of plaster. It works now.”

  Her eyes dwelled on the grate behind his left leg. “I love it,” she said. Sincerely, he thought. She raised her eyes to his, all politeness. “You’ve done a nice job.”

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty little place. Not much room, though, if your husband ever decides to come up.”

  Jet lashes framing sky-blue eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘if’?”

  He shrugged, meeting her eyes squarely. “I don’t know. It just seems up in the air right now. Or am I wrong? Do you guys have a date when he’ll be coming?”

  The faint blush stole across her cheeks again, and he wondered once more about the possibility of little Emily having no father.

  She sure looked pretty when she blushed, though, he thought, and had the illicit idea that her color was probably high that night they’d made love on the beach. Did she think of that night every time she looked at him too? Did she remember the details as vividly as he did? If he were the blushing kind he’d be beet red every time she entered a room, he thought. Hell, every time she entered his thoughts, which was far too often.

  “No, actually, we don’t. But he will be coming.” She turned again to leave, then stopped and turned to face him. “You know, I don’t appreciate your…insinuations.” Her tone was brittle.

  He raised his hand, one elbow still resting on the mantel. “Hey, I didn’t mean to insinuate anything.”

  She pinned him with those pale eyes, one brow raised. “Didn’t you? I thought we agreed not to talk about this.”

  “We didn’t say anything about not talking about your husband. Just that night. And have I said anything about that night?”

  She glanced behind her as Ross and Manny tromped upstairs with armloads of boxes.

  “You’re saying it now,” she said quietly, looking back at him, her eyes intent.

  He met her gaze and held it. “No I’m not. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to talk about that night either.”

  She glared at him, and he laughed.

  “Fine, forget I said anything,” he said finally. “Should we make your husband off-limits too?”