Maybe Baby
Page 28
He was quiet a long moment during which time Delaney tried to anticipate every reaction from his wanting nothing to do with her to wanting everything to do with Emily.
Finally, he said, facing her but looking down at the floor. “What if I want the package?” His eyes rose to hers. “What if I want you both?”
Delaney’s hands rose to cover her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears. She’d never wept so much in her life. And for so many different reasons.
“Do you mean that?” she asked, her voice a near whisper.
“Delaney…” He took one of her hands in his. “I’ve wanted you from the very first time I saw you.”
She put on a doubtful expression. “You don’t even remember the first—”
“I was on my boat, and you were walking on the dock,” he said, giving her a small but serious smile. “I remember every minute. And Delaney, I believe I’ve been in love with you every minute since that morning too.”
Tears of joy spilled over her cheeks. “Oh Jack…Even after all this? After all I’ve done?”
He looked down at her hand. “Even after finding out you’re a liar and a cheat…”
She looked at him, mortified, until he raised those warm golden eyes to her face and she saw the laughter in them.
She smiled. “Jack, you don’t know how much this means to me. I’ve been so—”
“Afraid,” he supplied again, this time with a smile. “I know. But those days are over.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m not afraid anymore, Jack. I’m in love.”
Epilogue
Sam walked into the diner with an extra spring in his step that morning. Frost was on the windows but it was warm inside, and smelled of coffee and fresh doughnuts.
“Boys,” he said, taking off his cap and tossing it onto the table in front of Norman. Joe and Marvin looked up while Norman took the hat from over the sugar dispenser. “Have I got some news for you.”
“Not like I got for you,” Marvin said. “Turns out Betty down at the laundrymat’s mother is going to Florida. She met some man on that Internet thing and is going to meet him.” He gloated as Norman and Joe reacted to the news. “Can you beat that?”
Sam nodded his head. “Yes, sir, I can. What I got’s better even than that. And I got it from the horse’s mouth. Most of it, anyway.”
“Which horse is that, Sam?” Joe asked, scratching his grizzled gray head.
“Jack Shepard.” He sat smugly in his seat as Lois deposited a fresh mug of coffee in front of him.
“Jack? What’s he done now, the rascal?” Lois asked, tucking her tray against one hip and leaning a hand on the back of Marvin’s chair.
The morning was cold, so the diner was full of people warming up before hitting the road, or the water, as the case may be.
Sam took a deep breath, enjoying the moment of anticipation.
“Well, I’ll tell you.” He paused, making them wait. It was all in the delivery, he thought. You had to dole fresh news like this out just right, for maximum impact. “Jack Shepard is getting married.”
“What?” It seemed to be a collective gasp. So many people said it Sam couldn’t tell whom to answer. Instead he smiled at the group before him, as well as at the faces from other tables that had turned toward him upon hearing what he’d said.
“That’s right. You heard me right. Jack Shepard’s getting married, and it’s a free cup of coffee for anyone who guesses who he’s marrying.”
Eyebrows rose all around the room.
“That Lisa Jacobson?” Norman ventured.
Sam shook his head.
“That New York girl, Kim whatshername,” Joe said. “From the clinic.”
Sam shook his head again and looked at Marvin. “Marvin? Any guesses?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Sam.” Marvin pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose.
“Nurse Knecht!” someone called from a neighboring table, and the whole place laughed.
Sam looked over and saw the impish face of Maggie Coleman. “Good guess, Maggie,” he said, chuckling, “but I’m afraid you’re wrong too.”
“Well who is it then?” Norman asked.
“Jack’s marrying the doctor,” Sam said triumphantly.
The rest of the room burst into excited murmurs, but Norman’s brow creased, and he leaned across the table toward Sam. “Jack’s marrying Doc Jacobson?”
Sam sighed. “No, Norman, the pretty young female doctor. Dr. Poole.”
“Ohhhh.” Norman sat back, enlightened. Then frowned again. “But she’s already married!”
“Well now, maybe she is and maybe she isn’t,” Sam said cryptically. He pulled a napkin from the black-and-chrome dispenser and wiped a drip of coffee off the table in front of him.
“She getting a divorce?” Marvin asked.
Sam shook his head and wadded up the napkin. Throwing it into the ashtray, he said, “Nope.”
“Then how can she be getting married?” Joe asked.
He picked up his coffee. “Turns out she’s never been married,” Sam said, relishing the even louder murmurs of the crowd.
“Why that’s wonderful!” Norman said. “Then she can marry Jack without worrying about it.”
“That is the truth, but that ain’t the best of it.” Sam sat back and blew on his hot coffee.
“I didn’t even know they was dating,” Joe said, scratching his head again. “I know he flirted a lot with her, but hell, he’s near about flirted with me.”
General laughter accompanied this statement, as people from neighboring tables turned openly to listen to Sam.
They could wait, Sam figured. He sipped his coffee, then said, “Lois, I think I need a doughnut or two to go with this cuppa joe.”
“Sam,” Lois said with a resolute shake of her head, “I ain’t leaving until you tell me what’s better than Jack Shepard getting married to the doctor who’s never been married even though she said she was married.”
Marvin pulled off his glasses, grabbed a napkin, and began cleaning them. “Why would she say she was married when she wasn’t?” he asked.
“The kid,” Joe said, nodding sagely.
“That’s right.” Sam looked at Joe, who beamed at having been correct.
“So Jack’s gonna adopt the kid prob’ly, right?” Marvin asked. He placed his glasses back on his face, moon-eyed once again as he looked at Sam. “That’d sure make his aunt Linda happy, wouldn’t it, Sam?”
“That it would have Marvin, but the truth made her even happier. You see Jack,” Sam said, pausing a moment to sip his coffee and luxuriate in the anticipation of their reaction to his next bit of news, “is the father of that baby.”
“What—you mean—now how can that be?” Joe said. “She only just got here with that baby a couple months ago.”
Sam smiled enigmatically and the crowd hushed, awaiting his next words.
“She got here last spring,” Sam said, “a year ago, for a weekend. I remember seeing her hanging about. Seems to me she bought some things at the hardware store. Stuff for Jack’s boat, I believe. I remember thinking at the time, who is that pretty girl and why is she buying stuff for a boat? Then I saw her and Jack on his boat.”
“You did?” Norman looked at him as if he’d performed some sort of miracle.
“Yep, I did. I saw them on that boat,” Sam said, satisfied with the expressions of admiration on the faces of those around him. He always, always came up with the best gossip. Even if he had to embellish it a little bit. “They looked just as romantic as can be, and I thought to myself, those two look good together. Like they belong together, you know? That’s what I thought to myself. And I’ll bet you that’s where that little baby was conceived…”
“You mean Jack Shepard is the natural father of that baby?” Lois asked.
Sam looked up at her, a twinkle in his eye. “That’s exactly what I mean. Course they’re selling the boat now.”
“No way.” Lois was openly skeptical.
“I do,” Norman said.
Sam returned his attention to the appreciative. “Well, then, I’ll tell you. Because they’re buying the Shepard place. Jack’s buying it from his old man, and they’re going to live in it. He and his pretty doctor wife and baby.”
“Well, that’s just wonderful,” Norman said again, grinning at Sam and then Joe and then Marvin. “Ain’t that wonderful?”
“Sure, it is,” Sam said. “Finally made that old sourpuss Kevin Shepard happy, too. See he’d been after Jack to buy the place. So Jack and his gal are going to live there and—”
He was about to tack on some wonderful, if fictional, details about what they planned to do to the house and the new car Jack was getting soon and then he was going to speculate about the fact that maybe—it was possible, after all—the pretty doc might even be pregnant again, when the happy couple themselves appeared.
He saw them first through the plate-glass window, walking across the green toward the diner. They were holding hands, and Jack held the baby, bundled up in a big pink baby parka against the cold.
“And what, Sam?” Norman asked.
Sam nodded toward the door. “And here they come.”
The bells on the door jangled, and in walked Jack and the young doctor.
The place fell into a dead silence.
Jack’s steps slowed as he entered, and the doctor stopped in her tracks as all eyes came to rest on them. Then after a second, a lone pair of hands started clapping. They were quickly joined by all the others in the room, and Sam immediately stood up. Even he couldn’t stop the grin on his face.
Soon Jack and the pretty doc, looking nothing less than startled, were staring into the face of a standing ovation. Then the baby started clapping her little mittened hands together, and the crowd laughed.
Jack smiled first and put his arm around the doctor’s shoulders. She looked up at him, then back at the crowd and gave a tentative little smile.
That’s when the congratulations started and before long the couple was swarmed by well-wishers.
Sam smiled with satisfaction. His work here was done. For today anyway.
“Lois,” he said, turning toward the waitress beside him. “How ’bout them doughnuts now?”
About the Author
ELAINE FOX grew up in Maryland in a family of avid readers and talented writers. After receiving her B.A. in English, she spent several years working in academic and corporate environments before deciding to pursue her dream of writing a book. Fox is now the USA Today bestselling author of twelve contemporary and historical romances and three anthologies. She lives in Virginia, where she is currently at work on her next book.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MAYBE BABY. Copyright © 2001 by Elaine McShulskis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780061974861
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