Читать книгу Excuse Me? Whose Baby?: Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby! - Jacqueline Diamond, Isabel Sharpe - Страница 15

A WARM GLOW enveloped Dex. Annie’s first word!

True, she’d apparently been requesting more violence, which wasn’t desirable, but she’d spoken. The person inside the cute little shape had communicated directly with them.

It was only a small step to more words, then short sentences. Soon a torrent of speech would spew forth insight into her daughter’s mind and emerging personality.

It’s a miracle.

Dex hugged the baby. How could she give her up?

Her throat clogged as she regarded the three faces watching her or, rather, watching Annie. Rocky’s, pale but delighted. Grace’s, sternly protective. And Jim’s, the handsome features transformed by tenderness.

Was he right? Did their daughter belong here rather than with some adoptive family?

But if Annie were here, Dex wouldn’t be able to stay away. She’d be underfoot, watching from close by as Jim married and as his new wife, no doubt a shining example of all that was nurturing, gave Annie the love and support that Dex couldn’t.

It would break her heart. Dex yearned to be that perfect woman, but she didn’t have it in her. Her fumbling attempts might fool other adults, but they would leave Annie’s needs unmet. And Jim’s, too.

Dex knew even less about relationships than about mothering. None of her boyfriends had lasted long, for reasons that eluded her.

In addition to not understanding men, she didn’t understand herself. She didn’t know, for instance, why Jim had scared her so much on their terrific night together that she’d lied to him about moving away.

She also didn’t understand why he’d forgotten her so quickly and proposed to someone else. It was all too confusing, a swamp into which she would sink forever if she weren’t careful.

Life for Dex was safest alone. And Annie would be safest with a new family. No matter how perfect Jim’s bride-to-be was, surely she would resent being forced to raise another woman’s child.

“I’ll keep a journal about her first words,” Dex said. “So her adoptive parents will have a record of them.”

“Adoptive parents?” said Grace.

“Dex and I disagree on the subject,” Jim told her. He gave no hint that it was out of place for a maid to question her employer’s child-rearing plans.

“They could live here,” Rocky suggested. “It’s big enough.”

“Live here?” Grace echoed in amazement. “What, a pair of adoptive parents move into the baby’s father’s mansion? You’ve been watching too many daytime talk shows!”

“I never watch daytime talk shows,” Rocky replied stiffly. “And I refuse to be taunted into another fight.”

“Because you’d lose,” said Grace.

Jim held up his hands. “Rocky, how’s dinner coming along? Grace, I believe you’ve got liberty call.”

The maid stood her ground for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you, sir. See you at Colors on Monday, if not before.”

“Good night, Grace.”

Dex watched the maid depart through the French doors. After she was gone, Rocky headed for the kitchen.

“What’s liberty call?” Dex shifted the baby onto her hip.

“Free time. It means she’s off duty,” Jim explained.

“And what’s Colors?”

“That’s when we raise the flag. Eight a.m. on weekdays,” he said.

Dex wondered how the future Mrs. Bonderoff would enjoy living on a Marine base. On the other hand, maybe the future Mrs. Bonderoff was a Marine.

“Make yourself comfortable. Dinner should be ready soon.” Jim gestured toward a couch.

“Thanks.” Dex placed Annie on the floor and sat down. The baby crawled to a bookcase and examined the book spines.

“I think you mentioned that you’re a doctoral candidate?” Jim relaxed into an armchair.

“Working on my dissertation,” she said.

“Feel free to bring your materials here,” he said. “I’ve got several computers in the house. You’re welcome to use one.”

“I’m working on my dissertation slowly,” she clarified.

Annie crawled toward the open French doors. Outside, a man’s slim figure materialized, closed the doors and vanished. Dex couldn’t see his features clearly, but got the impression of a sensitive mouth and large, sad eyes. “Who’s that?”

“Kip, the gardener,” Jim said. “He used to be full of bravado, a real rock-’em-sock-’em type. Then he nearly died in a helicopter accident. The brain injuries changed his personality.”

“How come your whole staff is Marines?” Dex asked.

“They’re my buddies.” Leaning back, Jim laced his fingers behind his head. “I was a real rabble-rouser when I got out of high school. Surfing wasn’t enough of an adventure for me, so I enlisted.”

“You postponed college?” Dex asked.

“Not exactly. I took some courses while I was in the service, in the computer field, but I never got a degree,” Jim said. “Not unless you count my honorary Ph.D.”

Dex supposed that wasn’t unusual in his field. She’d heard that Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard. “So when you left the service, your friends came with you?”

“Not right away,” Jim said. “I mustered out ten years ago, when I was twenty-four. When I was twenty-eight, Rocky lost a leg in an amphibious assault. He wasn’t adjusting well to civilian life, so a year later, when I was planning to build this house, I asked if he would manage it for me.”

Come to think of it, Rocky did have a slight limp. No wonder Grace kept besting him.

“What about Grace?” she asked.

“She left the service four years ago, suffering from clinical depression,” Jim said. “It’s a chemical disorder. Under my employee health plan, she got the right treatment, and now she’s fine.”

“How long has Kip been here?”

“He came right after Grace,” Jim said. “His doctors thought gardening would provide a stress-free environment, and it seems to be working. I think he’s lonely, though.”

It was an unusual household. Dex approved of Jim’s loyalty to his friends, but she wasn’t certain how this eccentric crew might affect Annie. She wanted her daughter to have the perfect home.

Rocky appeared in the doorway. “Dinner is served,” he announced.

Dex and Jim went into the formal dining room. In one corner, a playpen filled with toys awaited Annie, and she slipped happily into place.

The long table was set with white linen, bone china and silver service. In the center, candles had been lit. Serving dishes lined a sideboard, offering T-bone steaks, glazed carrots, parsleyed potatoes and Caesar salad.

“Great!” Dex said. “Rocky, you’re a gem.”

The large man blushed. “I like cooking.”

Dex was about to ask who the third place setting was for when Rocky helped himself to a plate and got into line first. Obviously, he was in the habit of dining with Jim.

“What about Kip and Grace?” she asked, falling into place behind him.

“Kip’s too shy to eat in company.” Jim stood close behind her. Dex could feel his warmth radiating against her bottom, and recalled that that had been one of the positions they’d experimented with during their night together. “Grace prefers canned beans and fruit to Rocky’s cooking, or so she claims.”

“Perverse woman,” grumbled the butler as he piled potatoes alongside his steak. “When she wasn’t barking orders at the troops, she used to be quiet and polite. I thought that was her real personality, and it suited me fine. I didn’t know she was depressed.”

“It’s lucky Jim came along,” Dex said. “She must have felt miserable.”

“I wish she was still depressed,” Rocky grumbled. “She didn’t give me so much trouble.”

Jim sat at the head of the table, with Rocky and Dex on either side. As the meal passed in general conversation, she was intrigued to hear that Jim’s stock had shot through the roof, thanks to some new computer chip.

What was the man going to do with even more money? Buy a few new cars, build another mansion, plan the most fabulous wedding of the decade?

She didn’t envy his bride. Dex hated pomp and ceremony. When she got married, she wanted a quiet service with friends and family.

What was she thinking? Of course she envied his bride. Not because Dex wanted to marry Jim, but because she wished she were the type of woman who could.

Being this close to him was agony. She kept wanting to touch his closely shaved cheeks and rumple his sun-streaked hair.

And she kept remembering how much she’d wanted to make love to him on a thick, soft carpet piled with cushions. She could think of so many creative positions, but her carpet was too short and scratchy.

He’d suggested they go to his house and mentioned that he had the ideal carpet in his bedroom. Under no circumstances, she told herself now, would she ever enter that bedroom.

“Looks like Annie’s ready for bed,” Jim said.

Dex gave a little jump. “Excuse me?”

“The baby’s yawning,” said Rocky. “I can take her upstairs.”

“No, thank you.” Dex wanted to enjoy every minute of the scant time she had with her daughter.

“We’ll take care of her,” Jim told the butler. “Go relax.”

“I am relaxed.” He eyed the child wistfully. “My youngest sister has a baby not much older than Annie. She should sleep on her back, you know, without a pillow.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

After he left, Dex said, “You mentioned that Kip is lonely. I think Rocky is, too.”

“He’d like to have a family of his own,” Jim said. “He got the idea, when he lost his leg, that women wouldn’t be interested in him. I can’t talk him into going to a singles mixer or a dating service. He’s sure he’d be a complete failure.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dex said.

“I think so, too.” Jim scooped up his daughter from the playpen and lifted her to his shoulder. The movement was surprisingly natural, considering that he’d had little experience with babies until this afternoon.

He was a born father, Dex thought with a twinge of guilt as she followed the pair out of the dining room and up a central curving staircase. But Annie needed a mother, too. A real mother who would love her, not merely tolerate her.

Dex needed to know more about Jim’s almost-fiancée. She supposed she could ask him some discreet questions, but it hurt too much to think about the woman.

At the top of the stairs, they emerged into a central court around which opened a number of doors. Dex felt as if she were in a hotel.

Jim headed for the door next to Dex’s. Rocky had pointed it out earlier as Annie’s room, but she hadn’t gone in.

Now she followed the millionaire into an airy chamber with pale yellow flowered wallpaper, canary-and-tan stripes around the upper moldings and a lacy canopy bed. A crib, which must have been delivered that afternoon, stood against the near wall, across from a rocking chair.

At the far end of the room, Dex could see the twilit sky through glass doors. Beyond them lay a rounded balcony edged by a wrought-iron railing.

“This looks as if it had been deliberately decorated for a little girl,” she said.

“It was.” Jim laid Annie on a changing table. “I’ve always wanted children. Now, how do you work this diaper thing?”

Dex showed him. Every time their hands touched, she had to fight down rebellious fantasies.

She imagined that the carpet in his room was tan, as in here. The pile felt thick beneath her feet. If only the two of them could sink into it, could feel it against their skin.

Nearby, Jim’s breathing sped up. Was he thinking the same thing?

That night at the faculty party, they’d found themselves operating on the same wavelength. Noticing the brightness of the stars at the same time. Leaning toward each other as if they’d planned it. Dancing as if they were a team.

It was amazing, considering how different they were. And how incompatible.

I don’t even know what I’m doing here, Dex thought, and inched away. She didn’t belong with a sleekly sophisticated man who made millions in the wink of an eye, or in a mansion that might have been designed for a glittery home tour.

Her parents were bookish people, their house efficiently small and filled with well-organized paper clutter. They couldn’t understand why anyone would waste time on appearances. They weren’t impressed by designer labels or by the nouveau-riche club crowd in their Florida town, either.

Their ideal woman was Dex’s sister, Brianna. The editor of a literary magazine, she was married to an investigative journalist and lived in a small apartment in New York’s SoHo district. They lacked much money and didn’t want kids, but they were the darlings of the intellectual set.

“How’s this?” Jim hoisted their daughter aloft. A pink nightgown covered her neatly diapered body to her evident pleasure.

“Beautiful.” Dex inhaled the scent of baby powder and innocence.

Jim placed Annie into the crib on her back, as Rocky had instructed. The only jarring note was the quilt, which had a geometric design worked in black, purple and white. “Dr. Saldivar’s taste in baby decor was a bit different from mine,” he said, noticing her reaction. “I’ll have Grace pick up something more appropriate tomorrow.”

“There’s no sense investing a lot of money,” Dex told him. “Annie isn’t staying.”

They faced each other from opposite ends of the crib. She could feel Jim seeking the right words, the right tone to change her mind.

“Why are you so determined to put her up for adoption?” Apparently he’d decided on the direct approach.

Because if I can’t be her mother, I never want to see her again. It would break my heart.

She didn’t say so, because she didn’t expect Jim to kowtow to her feelings. He was the most powerful person in this town, and she was, if anything, the most powerless.

Dex struggled to find a more rational reason for her position. In what she hoped was a logical tone, she said, “You’ve got to see how hard it will be for her when people find out about her background. The gossip. The teasing.”

“No one has to know her background,” Jim said.

“The town gossips will want to know who the mother is. And plenty of people have seen Annie with Dr. Saldivar over the last nine months,” Dex said. “Whether they learn the truth or imagine some affair between you and the good doctor, it’ll still be a mess.”

“People may talk,” he conceded. “But…” Instead of completing his thought, he said, “Come here. I want to show you something.” Jim walked to the glass doors, unlatched the slide lock from overhead and opened them. Cautiously, Dex followed him onto the small balcony and into a cooling breeze.

Below them spread the town of Clair De Lune. From this height, she could see the triangular Bonderoff Visionary Technologies plant on the left and beyond a sprawl of high ground to her right, the campus of De Lune University.

Directly ahead, sloping downward toward the distant freeway, lay the town itself. She scanned tree-shrouded neighborhoods, shops, city hall, even the twelve-storey structure where she and Jim had met Annie this afternoon.

“It’s quite a view,” she admitted.

“The view is as much symbolic as it is literal,” Jim said. “I don’t mean to brag, but in a lot of ways I control this town. The mayor consults me about ordinances that would affect businesses. The Chamber of Commerce uses my name to encourage new industries to come to town.”

None of this was news to Dex. “So?”

“Exactly how hard do you think people are going to ride my daughter?” Jim asked.

He had a point, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “Kids can be cruel,” Dex said. “And I don’t want her spoiled, either.”

“You’re making excuses. There’s some other reason you want her to be adopted.”

He was too perceptive, she thought with a flare of alarm. She dreaded having Jim see how vulnerable she was, how much she yearned for things she wasn’t emotionally capable of handling.

“I don’t think I’m cut out to be a mother,” she said as casually as she could. “Lots of women aren’t.”

“But I’m cut out to be a father,” he said.

“It isn’t enough!”

“You want to keep me at arm’s length because we spent a night together, don’t you?” he pressed. “If I were a total stranger with no memories attached, you wouldn’t be so opposed to my keeping her, would you?”

Although she supposed that did make a difference, it wasn’t the real problem. “I don’t hold anything against you,” Dex said.

“There’s no reason you should,” Jim reminded her. “You’re the one who said you were going away.”

“We aren’t suited to each other,” she said. “I accept that.”

“So do I.”

“At least we agree on something.”

He touched her shoulder. Prickles of fire ran across her skin. “Dex, whatever I did to annoy you, please forgive me. Our daughter’s future is too important to throw away.”

She lowered her face, blinking back an unexpected sheen of moisture. “There’s more to happiness than a fancy house and a view from the balcony. There’s love and understanding and emotional support.”

“And I’m going to give them to her,” Jim said.

But if she’s like me, she’ll know from the start that she doesn’t belong here.

Dex had to trust her instincts. This house, and this man, filled her with such panic that she couldn’t bear to leave her baby here. “Whether you agree or not, Annie’s a miniature version of me. Anyone can see it,” she said. “She won’t fit in. And the other kids’ digs and snubs will hurt more than you’ll ever know.”

“Annie’s half me,” Jim said quietly. “She will fit in. She’ll love it here. Please listen…”

His grip on Dex’s shoulder tightened just as she swung around to go inside. The contact threw her off balance, and she stumbled against him.

Instinctively, Dex threw up her hands and braced herself against his chest. She’d forgotten how clearly defined his muscles were, how solid he was and how secure she felt in his grasp, as if nothing could uproot her.

Jim’s arms wrapped around her, and her chin lifted instinctively. His mouth closed over hers, tasting of wine and sultry longing.

Dex indulged herself by cupping his cheek in her palm and then ruffling his hair. Jim guided her inside the house, away from public view, then kissed her more deeply.

The sudden cessation of wind and the flick of his tongue sent heat flooding through her. Pulled tightly against him, Dex discovered that he was completely aroused and experienced the same rush of abandon as on the night of the party.

Feeling his hand move beneath her sweater and touch her bare waist, she ached for him to reach her breasts. His hard, fast breathing matched her own. Dex knew they ought to stop. But not yet.

A happy gurgling caught her attention. The baby! She glanced over and saw Annie standing in her crib, watching them.

“More,” said the baby.

Dex didn’t know whether to laugh or blush. Jim burst into a deep chuckle. “She’s got that right,” he said.

“No.” With a sigh, she moved away. “We can’t do that. You’re practically a married man.”

“I’m not even engaged,” Jim said. “But even though Nancy hasn’t made a decision yet, I do owe her my loyalty.”

She was glad to hear that, despite being the town’s best-known playboy, he had scruples. “In any case,” Dex added for good measure, “we both agree that we’re incompatible.”

“Not in bed,” he pointed out.

“We already have one child,” she said. “Isn’t that enough trouble for one relationship?”

Besides, now that she was regarding this tall, strong-featured man from a slight distance, she remembered all the reasons he intimidated her. And all the reasons she had no intention of showing it.

“I agree, the situation’s complicated.” Jim ran one hand through his hair. “You’re right, I suppose. We need to keep things platonic.”

Although he didn’t look happy about it, he withdrew. Dex stood motionless until she heard the door to the master bedroom close.

“Da da,” said Annie conversationally.

Dex scooped the baby from the crib and sat in the rocking chair, cradling her daughter. She couldn’t believe she’d kissed Jim Bonderoff. If Annie hadn’t interrupted, they might have…

She rocked slowly. Why did she nearly lose control around the man? No doubt he had that effect on a lot of women. She could understand why, but that was no excuse for her own weakness.

It wouldn’t happen again. At least, she didn’t think so.

The chair moved smoothly, lulling both the baby and Dex. She discovered she was crooning a lullaby. She couldn’t identify the song at first, until she came to the chorus. “Hi Lili, Hi Lo.”

It was the theme from an old Leslie Caron movie, Lili. When she was a child, Dex had watched it on TV with her mother, who mentioned having seen it years earlier.

The theme song had sounded familiar then, and it had burst forth while Dex was rocking her baby. There was only one possible explanation. Her own mother must have sung it to her as a child.

How odd. Sarah Fenton wasn’t the sort of woman one pictured singing to a baby. She wore her frizzy hair cut so short it was almost a buzz cut, and smiled only fleetingly. Her tastes in entertainment ran to Wagner operas and Russian ballet, and whatever tenderness she’d shown had vanished by her children’s teen years.

Dex rocked the baby some more and sang some more and wished that, unlike her mother, she could nourish these gentle feelings forever. But history had a way of repeating itself.