The Baby Bump Read online

  Ike knew the story had to be upsetting. But from his viewpoint, he was relieved to get the past guy finally out of the closet and in the open. How could he know if he had an enemy, a rival or a saint until Ginger was willing to share what happened? “Okay. So he’s a royal jerk. But if he’s the father, he’s the father. You have every right to financial child support. And I would assume he has every legal right to see the child.”

  Her arms crossed. “Exactly who’s asking these questions? Ike the man...or Ike the doctor?”

  “Damned if I know. All I know is that we need more of those elephants out of your living room. And this is the biggest one. Our being able to talk about your pregnancy. About your situation. Figuring out what those issues mean for you. And for me. And for us.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh what?”

  “I had no idea there was an ‘us,’ Ike.”

  Wow. That stab in the gut felt as real as a knife blade. Which was stupid. She’d come here, fresh from a hurtful relationship, doing a complete start-over of her life. She’d never implied she was looking for a serious relationship in any way. He’d come along; they’d slept together. What was this, the nineteenth century? He had no reason to assume she took the two of them as an exclusive pair.

  He’d have to be stupid to think that way. She wasn’t his girl. His woman. His fiancée. His significant other.

  But damn it. He wanted her to be. All those labels and a few more.

  “Ike, I can see you don’t know what to say. I’m not trying to—”

  “Don’t sweat it.” He knew how that sentence of hers was likely to end. No, she didn’t want to hurt him. Yes, she wanted to give him a kick in the teeth...but she wanted to do it nicely. So he’d say thank you.

  Thankfully, Ruby paged him. “Get down here, Doc. George is here and he’s bleeding all over my desk. And the mother brought the baby and a neighbor’s baby, because there was no other babysitter. And they’re crying all over the place, too.”

  “I have to go downstairs,” he said to Ginger.

  “Of course you do.”

  “Just keep your feet up for a few minutes. This shouldn’t take forever.”

  He wasn’t sure whether she looked more relieved—or he did. But for damn sure that conversation hadn’t gone well, and dealing with screaming kids had to be easier.

  Pansy usually raised a fit if kids were in the place and she wasn’t included, but right then, the turncoat looked perfectly happy leaning her full weight against Ginger’s easy chair.

  Downstairs...well. George was six. An extraordinary hellion. The kid was scrawny, so the other kids made fun of him, and George had seemed to decide in preschool that he was resigned to regularly fight. Besides the ripped shirt, the kid had a face full of dirt, scuffed-up knees, a bruise on his cheek and a scrape cut on the back of his leg. Ike liked the kid from the get-go.

  Virginia Moon, the mom, was one of those mothers who did the Rock. She couldn’t stand still. She was too used to having a baby on the hip or the shoulder, so she automatically seemed to start that rocking motion. “The problem, Doctor, is that I can’t even discipline him for fighting. Because he comes home hurt. And Tom, that’s my husband, he says a boy has to stand up for himself, and that’s just what George is doing, so I should just leave him alone.”

  Ike finished cleaning the scrape-gash on the back of George’s leg, and then plucked out a tray of assorted Band-Aids. The adults got the boring stuff, but the kids could choose from an array of cartoon and hero character bandages. George knew the drill. He knew where the lemon drops were, too, for the kids who did their best to be brave and not cry. Or cry. Whatever. A kid got a lemon drop if he wanted one.

  Then came the problem of addressing tagalong babies. They weren’t just crying to drive George’s mom crazy, in spite of what she said. The one baby—the one that Virginia was caretaking—had an ear infection, so that mom had to be phoned and a script called in to the drugstore. Once the noisy bunch left, Ruby started closing up and Ike took on the aftermath cleanup.

  Ike made it upstairs before five—just before—but as soon as he turned the knob he realized there’d been no need to hurry. Ginger was still curled up in his recliner, with Pansy sleeping at her feet. One of them was snoring excessively. It wasn’t the redhead.

  He stood, just looking at her for a good long while. Late-afternoon light was a pale wash of yellow, making her hair look brushed with pastel fire. She’d dressed extra businesslike for the meeting with the banker, but curled up, her black slacks showed off the soft curve of her hip, and the blue silky blouse showed her throat and the satin swell of her breast. The tidy hair...well, Ginger’s hair was never going to stay sculpted back and tamed for long. Strands and curls were scattered on her cheek, her throat, her forehead.

  There was no sign of the ornery Ginger right now. The fighter. The obstinate, crabby, too-smart-for-her-own-good female who was giving Ike’s heart and life fits.

  She wasn’t everything that was wrong for him now. She was sleeping. He could love her all he wanted and she wasn’t likely to give him a lick of lip.

  Pansy stirred, opened an eye and spotted him. She should have given a noisy howl of greeting and demanded a solid ten of petting and rubbing before going outside. Instead, the damned dog just put her head back down at Ginger’s feet.

  Contrary females seemed to stick together.

  He was just about to push off his shoes, crash on the couch and just plain watch her for a while...when his private cell phone did a song and dance. He punched it fast, hoping the sound wouldn’t wake Ginger, and hustled toward the kitchen, where she wasn’t likely to overhear voices.

  “It’s me,” the caller announced...which meant it was Tucker. Two weeks rarely passed without his older brother checking in, but that was before he’d gotten married.

  “I hope you’re not going to give me an extensive report on the honeymoon,” Ike said. “I’m too young for those kinds of details.”

  “Hey, I gave you the birds and bees talk when you were nine, didn’t I? If I recall, you threatened to throw up. You said the whole thing sounded gross and like nothing you’d ever do.”

  “Sometimes I think it’s a good thing the parents were never home,” Ike said wryly. “I’m pretty sure their lecture on sex would have been a lot more tame. But in the meantime...is your new wife leaving you for me yet? And how are the boys?”

  “The boys are why I’m calling.” Tucker already had a ten-year-old and had inherited an extra ten-year-old boy with his marriage. “I was wondering if you could take them on this weekend. Not the whole weekend. Just Saturday and Saturday night.”

  “You just got home from a honeymoon and now you already need more free time together?”

  “Something like that. She has to do a thing with her parents. Her parents are, shall we say, challenging. If I go with her, it’ll be better. But the boys would be bored beyond sanity—we could drag them, but...” Tucker suddenly paused. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh what?”

  “You usually jump at the chance to corrupt my kid. The chance to corrupt two—and spend the night on Whisper Mountain—would usually get a fast yes out of you. So...something new going on in your private life? Don’t worry about the boys, I can—”

  “Of course I’ll take the boys.”

  “There’s only one little extra problem...”

  “What?”

  “A couple of kittens. It’s pretty obvious to me that cats can stay alone for twenty-four hours, but the boys ganged up on me, claimed they’re too little, the kittens have to come with the deal.”

  “You know I have to bring Pansy. And that Pansy is deathly afraid of cats.”

  “Your dog is deathly afraid of everything. Still. It’s because I raised such a smart younger brother that I knew you’d be able to figure it out. Maybe the gir
l in your life could come along.”

  “What girl?”

  “The one you haven’t told me about. I can’t believe it. Which one of the two hundred single women bringing you casseroles and pecan pies finally wrangled you into a date?”

  “None of them.”

  “I should have guessed you’d have to import. Even in high school, you liked a hot pepper a whole lot more than you went for sugar.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” He suffered Tucker’s hounding him a little longer, without telling him about Ginger, at least nothing more than he’d told his sister. Considering how tight the siblings had always been, he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t in a rush to share everything about her. He had before.

  But Ginger wasn’t like any woman he’d ever had in his life—or his heart—before. She was more precious. The relationship more precarious. His damn heart too unguarded.

  Tucker eventually rang off. When Ike turned around, he found Ginger standing in the doorway. Her feet were bare. She looked as if she’d shoveled her hair, her cheeks had a fresh pinkness, and she was almost smiling.

  “I slept like the dead.”

  “Yeah, it looked like you were out pretty cold.”

  “For more than three hours, for heaven’s sake.”

  He nodded. “It’s the recliner. I swear, it’s some kind of narcotic chair. You turn on the TV, sit in the recliner and that’s it, instant sleep. It’s a guarantee.” And man, he thought, she’d needed that serious nap. She looked like herself again, full of perk and spirit.

  She lifted her arms, did something with her swarm of hair, clipped it somehow—but she was still eyeing him from the doorway. “It sounded as if you were talking to family?”

  “I was. Tucker. Tucker’s the oldest, then me, then Rosemary. Tucker just got married a few months ago, turned into one of those blended families—he’s got two boys now, age ten. And he wanted me to babysit them over the weekend.”

  “Of course you said no.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You might as well know now. I never say no to kids.”

  “I’ll be darned. Who’d have thunk it? That you were a soft touch for kids and dogs and other vulnerable things?”

  “I sense an insult in there somewhere.”

  She grinned, but it was a short one. “I’m going home. My car’s still over by the bank, but it’s a short walk.”

  “You need dinner.”

  “I do,” she agreed, “but thanks to you, I really have to get home. I called my grandfather, and as usual, you were right. That’s getting annoying, Doc. How often you’re right. It’s a very unlikable quality in any man. Anyway...Gramps was over the moon about having a great-grandchild. He was immediately charging off to tell Rachel. My grandmother.”

  Ike winced.

  “Yeah, well...he was happy. No question. Never asked me who the father was, which seems a measure of how far his mind has gone. But honestly, I need to go home, see him face to face, see what’s what.”

  “I understand.” He did understand. He just didn’t want her gone. He hadn’t finished grilling her...and they’d left a serious conversation with thorns still sticking his heart. About how there was no “us.” About his place in her life.

  Or about the place he didn’t have in her life.

  “If you wanted to be a good boy, you’d drive me to my car. But it really won’t kill me to walk three blocks—”

  “Of course I’ll drive you,” he said, only to hear his pager go off.

  She chuckled. “I should have expected that. Well, thanks for saving me, handsome.” She hiked over, lifted up on tiptoe, brushed her lips across his. It wasn’t an ultra long, ultra deep kiss. But it was long enough, deep enough, for her eyes to close, for the sound of a sigh to mingle with tastes and luxurious textures and the sweet, giving shape of her lips. And then she lifted her head.

  She’d called him handsome. And she’d kissed him like a dream. And she smiled at him now with pure mischief.

  And then she left.

  He had to answer his pager. He had to let Pansy out for a serious walk. But for a moment he just stood there, thinking he was never going to survive a relationship with that woman. No way, no how. She messed with his head. There was no rest with her around.

  The whole peaceful, stressless life he’d carved out so carefully—gone in a pffft. The minute he met her. And it was only getting worse.

  * * *

  When Ginger pulled into the drive, she immediately aimed for the kitchen. Earlier that day, she’d left cash and a vase of garden flowers for Sarah. Sara had taken the flowers, left the money and made some kind of cheesy-crusted chicken and a platter of roasted root vegetables. The baking pans were still sitting on the counter, so the boys must have already eaten. She heaped up a plate, grabbed silverware and carried the dinner with her as she searched for Gramps.

  The evening was too cool to sit on the porch, so she figured he must be near the TV. Not. She checked his room, the library, the backyard, the bathroom. Still no Gramps. Worried now, she climbed the stairs to the second story...and finally picked up the vague murmur of conversation coming from a distance.

  The open door to the attic would have been a telling clue, if she’d had reason to believe—in a hundred zillion years—that Gramps could conceivably have climbed all the way from the ground floor to the attic.

  “What are you two doing up here?” She was still carrying her plate, but it was mostly empty now. She set it on a dusty crate, narrowed her eyes at the boys. Both Cornelius and Gramps were settled in rocking chairs, talking like kids in a sandbox. Both rockers had spokes or parts of the seat missing, and likely a generation of dust on top.

  “Sweetheart! I’m so glad you’re home!” Gramps didn’t rise from the chair or even try, just bent forward to accept her greeting kiss and hug.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you two. What possessed you to climb all those stairs?”

  “Well, I admit we’re tuckered.” Cornelius spoke up first. “But Cashner here was all excited at dinner. He recalled there used to be some things in the attic here—”

  “A crib. A toy chest. A wicker basket. I didn’t know what all, but I knew there was a heap of old baby things up here. And we found them. But then we both got tired after all the climbing and decided we’d sit a spell.”

  She turned around. Saw. The attic was lit by skylights and two hanging bald lightbulbs. In midsummer, a massive attic fan helped chase off the heat, but at this time of year, the space was just stifling and dusty. Ginger remembered fearing all the bogeymen up here—the ones waiting to come get her if she dared go to sleep.

  There were no nightmares up here now—just generations of Gautier stuff that no one could seem to throw away. Suitcases and hope chests and steamer trunks. Antique clocks that didn’t run, a Jenny Lind couch missing spokes, lamps missing shades. Every which way Ginger glanced, there was more.

  And abruptly she spotted the bedraggled guitar case. It was her grandmother’s old Gibson. Ginger hadn’t seen it since she was a little girl. She crouched down to open it—when Gramps and Cornelius abruptly yanked her back to the present.

  “Rachel! Come look at these things and see if you can think there’s anything Ginger could use.”

  She straightened, turned to face her grandfather. “It’s me,” she said firmly. “I’m Ginger, Gramps.”

  “Yes, of course.” He looked bewildered for a moment, then resumed his rocking. “Well, Rachel and I were talking earlier, sweetheart. She was thinking that the whole upstairs wing is bigger than the usual house. You and your husband and the baby could redo whatever you wanted, make it into a completely independent apartment if you wanted. There’d be room for the baby. And more babies. And more babies. And then they could grow up with the tea, like Gautiers all do. Be part of the lan
d, their history.” Cashner frowned suddenly. “Forgive me, honey, but I can’t just this minute remember your husband’s name.”

  Ginger pushed a hand through her hair.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter what his name is. It’ll come to me. Anyhow, what do you think of that idea? Cornelius thinks it’s as brilliant as I do.”

  Cornelius nodded from the far rocking chair, where he looked darned close to dozing off. She needed to get them downstairs. Separately. Both looked more frail than the heap of tattered lace hanging from a lamp in the far corner.

  But as her gaze was drawn in that direction, she spotted the cache of baby things stored under a rafter. The crib was wood, and undoubtedly wouldn’t meet today’s safety standards, but beneath it was a toy box, painted with puppies and kittens and baby ducklings. Dirty now, but a true treasure. And the jewel of the lot was buried in the corner—a white wicker basket on wheels, with a crown of organza draping the sides.

  It would have to be cleaned up, repainted, the old organza ripped off and a new mosquito netting sewn on to replace it...but Ginger touched the basket and felt a sudden clutch in her throat. It was so clearly a bed for a cherished baby princess. Her mom had snoozed in this basket, and her grandmother in the generation before that. It was so easy to imagine another baby in there, napping, all cuddled up, surrounded by all the family love and history and treated like the princess she deserved to be.

  Or maybe it’d be a strapping boy this time—it was about time the Gautiers came through with some smart, sturdy boys. The netting might look a little sissy for a boy, unfortunately. But if the basket could just be cleaned and fixed, Ginger could so easily picture pulling the basket wherever she was, from room to room, so that baby would always be with her.

  And just like that, she felt a burst of longing so fierce she could hardly breathe. She wanted the baby more than she wanted her own breath.

  She pictured Ike. So far the only way she was keeping her head above water—barely above water—was on his charity. The cook. The gardener. The one to gallop in—maybe not on a white horse, but definitely with a bloodhound in tow—whenever she had a problem.