The Baby Bump Read online

  His parents valued their reputations, their status. For damn sure, Dumbo Steve did.

  Not him. It hurt. That Ginger didn’t know him better than that by now. And all week, he made a point of choosing attire that reflected his true personality. Frayed chinos. Shirts dug out of the back of his closet, the ones where you could see threads in the collar—if anyone looked, but why would they? They were soft as butter, old friends, still had plenty of wear in them.

  He saved on shaving cream for seven whole days, too.

  He saw Ginger all week, because that’s how it was in a small town. You had to be careful about having a fight, because you couldn’t avoid running into anyone for long—like at the bank window, in line at the grocery store, driving into a gas station just as she finished filling her gas tank.

  They waved.

  He fumed. He’d get around to talking to her again. As soon as he figured out what to say—and really, that wasn’t particularly tough. It was true, he carried a pager.

  True, he lived with interruptions all the time.

  But in his heart, his life, he believed that family came first. If a patient was in a car accident, yeah, he’d let that interrupt breakfast. But if someone he loved needed him, then that mattered more than a patient calling for allergy medicine. It was about balance. The balance his parents never had. The balance her ex wouldn’t understand if it bit him in the butt.

  By the following Tuesday, Ike had finally simmered down. He even let a few of her comments leak through his rock head. She’d admitted wanting him. She’d just said she couldn’t have what she wanted.

  How come he hadn’t remembered she’d said that before? That he could handle. Midmorning Tuesday, between patients, he put in a quick call to Sarah.

  She answered, sounding crabby and tired—the way she always did. “How’re the kids?” he asked first.

  “They’re for sale. The youngest is cheapest. But you can name your price.”

  He laughed. “That little squirt’s my favorite, you know. I take it you’re having a time-out kind of morning?”

  “Yeah. I used to give a time-out to the kids. Now I give myself a time-out, sit on the porch with a cup of coffee, let them tear up the house while I get a break.”

  “Good thinking.” He cleared his throat. “Sarah, I called because I need to ask you a favor.”

  “You know I owe you the moon. Whatever it is, it’s a yes.”

  “Well, I have an idea. But to make it work, I need someone—not me—to gang up on Ginger. Would you be willing to bully her for a good cause? Seriously ruffle her feathers?”

  “Are you kidding, Doc? That’ll probably be the most fun I’ll have this week.”

  That was exactly what Ike hoped she’d say. And for the first time since the quarrel with Ginger, he felt his spirits lift. Not soar, but lift.

  You couldn’t win a war—or woo a woman—without weapons. He’d forgotten what a fighter she was. But then, maybe she didn’t realize that he was a fighter himself—especially when it came to someone he loved.

  * * *

  Ginger thought she heard the back door slam, but Gramps and Cornelius were at the senior center for the whole morning. She’d used the promise of quiet to turn the dining room into a temporary office. The house had two offices and a library, all of which had desks, but none with a space as big as the dining room table.

  Since that dreadful morning with Ike, she’d buried herself in paper, all tidily organized in heaps. There were piles of tax records, expense records and agricultural resources on tea. The next group had lists of historical buyers. Tea tasters. (Who knew there was a degree in tea tasting from certain universities?) Then came the corral of folders. A folder for investment

  strategies, another for monthly spreadsheets, cost basis, market graphs, profit and loss projections.

  At the moment, she was pretty close to crying—not because she was overwhelmed. She’d worked in hospital administration, so she knew how to develop projections and put a plan together. It was just that the dynamics of an agricultural enterprise were worlds different from a hospital setup.

  Besides which, she needed to know everything all at once.

  She had a clear goal, had figured it out the morning they’d argued. There was no thinking about Ike until her life crises were fixed—which meant that she needed to create a business plan to take to the bank. She needed a presentation that would knock Lydia Trellace’s socks off. She needed the numbers to be true, the ideas defensible—a plan that she could defend up one side and down the other.

  And she’d been studying all these files of information for days. She just didn’t have a plan together yet.

  A thud and a swear word in the kitchen made her jerk her head up. A clatter of pans followed.

  “Who’s there?” Ginger rose to her feet in a scatter of paper.

  “Who do you think’s here? How many people do you have cooking in your kitchen, anyway?”

  Ginger immediately relaxed. She’d have known Sarah’s surly voice anywhere, even if she rarely saw the woman. She searched through the heaps of paper on the dining room table, found one of her empty teacups and carted it into the kitchen.

  Sarah glanced up, but continued banging and clattering and slamming.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you for ages how much I appreciate your cooking. You’re so good. I’ve loved everything. So has my grandfather.”

  “Huh. No surprise there. I told you I could cook.”

  “Um...smells good in here already.”

  “Not likely. I haven’t opened a single package yet.”

  It was like trying to talk to a porcupine. Yet Ginger liked her...possibly because she could be a wee bit like a porcupine herself sometimes. “I’ve been leaving you fresh flowers from the garden and some cash. Somehow you always leave the cash.”

  “Should be obvious. I’m no one’s charity case. And I’m paying off my debt to the doc. I didn’t ask for anything more than that.” Sarah shot her a look.

  It was the only look she ever gave her. Annoyed. Roll the eyes, couldn’t believe how stupid others were in the universe, generically disgusted. Today she was wearing dark gray twills and a steel-gray sweater. The clothes washed out her face, but they certainly suited her personality.

  Then she turned around, and started slamming things on the counter—including a menacingly sized knife. “Could be,” she said spritely, “that I thought it was about time someone told you a thing or two. Since you appear to be dumb as a rock, bless your heart.”

  Ginger blinked. “Um, you’re offering me advice?”

  “Advice you shouldn’t need.” Sarah took some round steak from the refrigerator and started beating it with a mallet. It seemed an ideal occupation for her. “Way I hear it, you got to do something about the farm. Got to do something about your grandpa. Got to do something about the young ’un in your belly. And you got Amos Hawthorne in a snit, which seems something you’re unusually good at. So...”

  “So?”

  “So, where were you raised, girl? You’re in South Carolina. When you want Southerners to do something, you feed ’em. That’s how it’s done. How it was always done. How it always will be done.”

  “You mean like...have a party?” Ginger couldn’t fathom the idea—much less the cost of feeding a large number of people.

  “I don’t mean an ordinary party. I mean a tea party. Don’t you know nothing about your own upbringing? You treat people like dirt, they act like dirt. You treat people like you care about them, they care back. Can’t very well be mean to you if you put on all your manners and Southern charm for them.” Sarah stopped pounding. “Assuming you have charm. I haven’t seen any of it, myself.”

  Ginger was thinking. “It’s not a bad idea. But honestly, I don’t see how I could afford to...”

  Sarah snor
ted. Finished pounding the round steak, and started cutting up potatoes as she’d had experience with a machete in a war. “I know you’re a college girl, so I try to forgive your ignorance sometimes, but I swear it’s a challenge. Everything isn’t about money. You do the tea. Jed, now, his wife makes the best lemon meringue pie you ever ate. The Feinsteins that run the deli, they can make finger sandwiches to die for. Not free. Not them, they wouldn’t do nothing for free. But you could think of something you could do in trade—like stock their restaurant with your best teas for a while. And then there’s Ruby.”

  “You mean Ike’s Ruby?”

  “I know. She dresses a little floozylike. All that color and makeup. But honey, she could straighten out the Middle East if anyone ever had the brains to give her the job. You got all those fancy teapots and containers all over the house. You could put on a party like no one’s ever seen. Ruby’d know how to do the decorations, the invitations, how things should look. You’d just have to ask her.”

  Ginger kept thinking she already had too much on her plate without adding another responsibility. “I love the idea. I really do. People have been great to our family over the years, and just as wonderful since I’ve come home. But...I can’t see how to throw a party just to ask people for help, or for money—”

  “Thank the Lord your grandmother never heard you say that.” Sarah put butter in a huge cast-iron frying pan, waited until the butter was spitting hot, then dumped in the potatoes with the same violence with which she did everything else. “You don’t ask for anything at the party. You never mention money. You just do the party and be a hostess. They’ll be waiting for you to ask for money, because they know you need it. But you don’t. You just smile and make ’em feel welcome and be gracious.”

  “Gracious,” Ginger echoed.

  “You don’t have more than a bump, but I’d still go buy a maternity top, because you’ll look more helpless. This isn’t a time to look strong. This is a time to look delicate. You buy it in a color that’s light and soft. You know. Something that’s nothing like you. Something a sweet woman might wear.”

  Ginger leaned an elbow on a counter. “Is it some kind of challenge for you? To insult me every few minutes?”

  “Challenge? It’s no challenge. You’re as easy to insult as anybody I ever met. Course, I don’t enjoy insulting just anybody.”

  Ginger got it. That Sarah was giving her a compliment—an exceptionally back-door compliment—but an expression of friendship nonetheless. She shook her head. “Would you mind my giving you a hug?”

  Sarah recoiled. “I got work to do here. Kids waiting for me at home. No time for any more talking.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m going back to work, too. But...if you want to bring your kids with you, I just want to say they’d be welcome here. Lots of yard to run around in. A lot of steps to run up and down and make a lot of noise. Wouldn’t bother anyone here.”

  Sarah responded with an impatient, “Hmmph.” Ginger figured that was the nicest thing she’d said so far in the whole discussion, and headed back to the dining room and her business headaches.

  But Sarah’s tea party idea hung in her mind, took frame and shape until she couldn’t let it go. It was a good idea. Her first instinct was to run it by Ike...but she quelled that impulse.

  Ike had helped her more than enough.

  Chapter Twelve

  Two afternoons later, when Ike pulled into the Gautier driveway, he told himself he’d waited as long as he possibly could. He never failed to check on Cashner less than twice a week. And Sarah had related how Ginger had bought the tea party idea, so naturally he wanted to see how the plans were coming along.

  Besides—if he waited any longer to see her, he was likely to go out of his mind.

  Above him, a pitiful excuse for a sun had finally shown up—he wasn’t complaining. In the rainy season any sun was better than none. Still, it was cool as he hiked up the porch steps, did his brisk double rap on the front door, and poked his head in. “It’s just me. Ike. Checking in.”

  The time was going on four. He’d wanted to come earlier, but a young man with a bad burn had taken a major bite from the afternoon.

  Cashner called out a greeting from his bedroom in the back, where Ike found the boys sipping sweet tea and swearing over a canasta game. The small bedroom TV had a court show on, but both men could talk over it. “It’s a horrible thing when a grown man has to hide in his bedroom. We’ve lost control of the house, Ike. The shame is almost more than either of us can handle.”

  “Oh, the pitiful goings-on around here.” Cornelius picked up the song, accidentally filching a card from the pile as Ike pulled out his blood pressure kit.

  “What’s so terrible?” Ike said nothing about the cheating. They both did it, every game; it seemed to be their favorite part of playing together.

  “It’s all about the party next week on Tuesday. Ginger’s got the whole household in an uproar.”

  “What party?” Ike asked in his most innocent voice.

  “The big party. I think I first heard it was a tea party, but then I heard it was potluck. Doesn’t matter to either of us what it is. The problem is, she’s cleaning everything. It’s not normal. If you sit down anywhere, she’ll be scrubbing you with bleach or assaulting you with a vacuum. It’s a bad thing when a man can’t find peace in his own house. And she wants me to wear a bow tie.”

  “Oh, no. Not that.”

  Cashner whispered, “She’s having more fun than I’ve seen her in a long while. Not the worst thing, having to dress up. But don’t tell her I said so.”

  He checked Cashner’s blood pressure, pulse, the sore right shoulder, made sure the sweet tea wasn’t spiked, glanced at the medicines to make sure they were being taken. All that took no longer than two shakes of a lamb’s tail, and then he was free to track down his redhead.

  He found her in the middle of the living room, in a cyclone of a mess.

  The Gautier living room was long enough to bowl in, but the kind of place that a kid—especially a boy—was terrified of. All the wall space was taken up with china cabinets and sideboards and casework furniture and breakfronts. Ike couldn’t remember the proper furniture names, but basically all the pieces had glass fronts, for the purpose of displaying tea stuff. There were at least a hundred zillion teapots, and even more zillions of little bitty cups and saucers.

  It looked to Ike as if a man could break things if he failed to tiptoe...and Ginger had all the glass doors open. Card tables were being set out, and were covered with all those millions of teapots and zillions of the cups and saucers and paraphernalia.

  He hesitated in the doorway, thinking that an elephant would be stupid to risk walking any closer.

  Besides, he wanted a look at her before she spotted him.

  Temporarily, she was on her hands and knees, her head almost buried in the lowest shelf of some kind of credenza. She’d scooched her hair back at some point, but strands and curls had done a jailbreak and were tumbling every which way. She’d lost her shoes; her socks were the color of dust, and she was wearing an astoundingly large Clemson University tee—so big Ike figured the garment had room for triplets in the ninth month. Not the sexiest attire he’d ever seen, but it struck him that way.

  It was her, of course. She could cover herself from head to toe. She could dye her hair purple. Paint her face in tiger stripes. Wouldn’t matter. His blood started sizzling, just from looking at her.

  “Hey, Red. Got a minute?”

  Her head popped out, swiveled toward the sound of his voice. A brilliant smile of welcome greeted him first...but faster than a snap, the smile dimmed to cordial. The tilt of her head, her sudden careful posture reflected that she wasn’t as easy with him as she’d been before. Now there was wariness, defensiveness. Pride.

  He knew damn well he’d caused the change.
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br />   “To be honest, I really don’t have time,” she said. “You must have heard about the upcoming tea party—not just because you got an invitation, but because your Ruby’s been a godsend at doing a lot of the organizing.”

  “Yup. I’ve been hearing about it somewhere around sixty times a day. Ruby was beyond thrilled that you included her in the whole arranging.” It helped, Ike mused, that so many people had gotten involved. Hopefully she’d never guessed that he’d sneaked the idea to Sarah behind her back. He motioned around the room. “So...what’s all this about?”

  She sighed. “The whole idea of giving a tea party was about inviting the community to see what the Gautier Tea Plantation is about. You can’t give a serious tea party without serving it with the appropriate china. We have a museum-worthy collection here. But—I don’t know how—somehow it all got mixed up. The pattern of teapot should be with its matching service pieces. Instead, they’re all over the sam hill place.”

  He didn’t give a damn about china patterns, but she was talking to him. Naturally talking, the way she had before. “Could you use some unskilled labor?”

  She looked at him, and then laughed. “I wouldn’t mind some help, but honestly, Ike, I don’t think you could handle this.”

  He didn’t bristle. Didn’t take offense. Ginger had ways of putting him down that no other woman ever had, but hey. He had tough skin. “Try me,” he said.

  She chuckled again, then lifted her hands in a give-in gesture. “You can try, if you really want to. But it’s okay to cry uncle and beg off when you’ve had enough.”

  He’d do that—cry uncle—on the day it rained moonbeams. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”

  “Okay. You asked. The china just has to be matched...the teapot with the same pattern service pieces. Each pattern is different, see?” She lifted one to illustrate. “This is called Old English Rose, dates back to nineteen forty. This one is Rose Chinz and this one’s Pansy. You can tell them apart, either by looking at the flowers—you know roses from pansies, right? But there’s also a signed label on the bottom of each piece.”