Читать книгу Lucky - Jennifer Greene - Страница 11

K asey pulled into her mother’s driveway, thankful she’d made it across town in record time. She had no time for a visit, not today, but she was too worried to postpone it.

Quickly she freed Tess from the car seat, then stole a few more moments to kiss her daughter’s cheek, then her forehead, then her chin. “How do you like the day, snookums? Feel the breeze? See the leaves just starting to change color?”

Once she scooped up Tess, she grabbed the five tons of baby paraphernalia it took to travel with a six-week-old infant. Mentally she was already scolding herself. How could anything be wrong on a fabulous day like this? The afternoon sun was brilliant. The wind had the tickle of fall. And assuming she did need advice, her mom—much as she loved her—was not usually a source of reassurance. Still, for the kind of worries she’d been plagued with, her mother was the only person she could turn to.

“Finally you’re here.”

Kasey jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice and whirled around. Ellen Markowitz clapped the screen door open and hustled down the porch steps, wiping her hands with a dish towel.

Kasey got the towel.

Grandma got the baby.

“I haven’t seen you in two whole weeks!” Ellen crooned to the baby. “But look at how she’s smothered you. Forty-seven blankets, and here it’s almost sixty degrees. And you’ve grown so much in two weeks! She knows I don’t like to drop by if Graham could be around. He’s so busy and I don’t want to be an interfering in-law, but you’d think my own daughter could find a minute to see me more often.”

“Mom…” It was probably useless trying to get a word in, but Kasey made a first try.

“Oh, yes. You.” Ellen turned around, smacked a fast kiss on her daughter’s cheek. “Come in, we’ll have tea—but we have to be quiet. Your dad’s home. He hurt his ankle yesterday. Right now he’s napping in the den and I’d just as soon not wake him up.”

Kasey skipped a step. She loved her dad. But a sick Stan Markowitz was not a pretty sight. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have called.” She added quickly, “If you think the noise of the baby will bother him, would you rather I came back a different day?”

“Of course not. I want you right here, right now. We’ll just be quiet. And now that I’ve got my hands on my darling, there’s no way you’re taking off with her this fast. Lord, Kasey. I swear that she’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.”

“You think?”

There. Her mom’s praise for the baby immediately soothed Kasey like salve for a burn. She wanted to shake herself. She’d never been the high-strung type; she’d always easily gone with the flow and tended to be a hard-core life-lover. It was just…Tess was her miracle baby. And she was a lot older than the usual first-time mom. Maybe her worries were crazy, but she just couldn’t seem to feel confident in this new-mom job.

Everything about the working-class neighborhood was as familiar as an old slipper. The houses were older, all with front porches and huge shade trees, but the edges showed signs of financial struggling. A dead car sat in one backyard; the sidewalks had weedy cracks; the curtains sagged in Mr. Harwoljj’s front window.

Inside her mom’s house, it was too hot. Whether summer or winter, Ellen liked her house five degrees cozier than anyone else. This year, the living room walls were a dark aqua, the couch and carpet a neutral taupe. Ellen had read all about color coordinating. The curtains had a strip of aqua, the couch pillows were a taupe and aqua print; and the orange throw that everyone used to curl up with was banished to an upstairs closet because it didn’t go with the current décor.

Kasey tiptoed behind her mother—and was hit with déjà vu. She remembered tiptoeing past the den when her dad had been sick before. In the narrow hall, the smell of Charlie perfume wafted from the bathroom, strong enough to bring on a sneeze. The kitchen was the long, skinny room at the back of the house—the only room that really mattered, because it was where the family had always eaten, fought, argued, and through thick and thin, come together.

“You’re making the tea,” Ellen ordered.

Like this needed saying? Kasey watched her mom shed Tess’s blankets, coo and tickle and examine the baby. Ellen never changed. In an era when women didn’t do middle age anymore, Ellen had embraced getting older as if she’d won a prize. She always looked tired, always reported a new ache. As a child, Kasey had no way to understand that martyrdom was a kind of comfort to her mother—even if it wasn’t a healthy one.

“So…how are the hemorrhoids?”

Kasey blinked. “Somehow I thought we might start out with ‘Hi, how are you,’ before we got into the prying questions.”

“You had a baby. You have hemorrhoids. One follows the other like night follows day, but all right, we won’t talk about anything that isn’t nice-nice. You always were a happy-go-lucky dreamer, wanting pies in the sky that could never be. I’d lost hope you’d ever marry. You were so lucky to find Graham.”

“Mom.” Kasey didn’t have to struggle for patience. No matter what she’d done as a daughter, to Ellen, it was never enough. Sometimes her mother’s belittling criticism hurt, but today was the opposite. If she could count on anyone in the universe to point out a problem or a fault, it was her mom. “I have to give a dinner party tonight, so I can’t stay more than an hour, and there are some things I need to talk to you about—”

“So go on, make the tea and talk. But at least give me enough time to rock my baby.”

The white rocker had been set up in the kitchen clearly for this visit. Kasey’s gaze softened as she watched the two. She’d nursed Tess before coming over, so the baby was likely to be good for a couple more hours. Soft eyelashes lay on the baby’s cheek like silken threads. There was a small tuft of blond hair on the top of her head now—not enough to put a bow—but enough to make her look like a miniature punk rocker.

“Kasey…” For one brief moment, her mother forgot to be critical. “She really is beautiful. Like a Gerber baby. Beyond beautiful. She takes my breath.”

“Mine, too.” Kasey knew where everything was. Tea was in the white cupboard over the stove, sugar in her great-grandma’s porcelain bowl, and the half-and-half stored in the second shelf of the old fridge.

“All your friends from the neighborhood come to see her? Your friends from work? Everybody see how nice you’re living in Grosse Pointe, the house and everything?”

“Well…they’ve all called.” Kasey knew what her mom wanted to hear. That all her friends were envious—especially those from the old neighborhood. “Very few have stopped over, but it’s a long drive. And I think they may be a little uncomfortable—”

“Well, of course they are. They’re jealous of how lucky you are,” Ellen said complacently.

Kasey didn’t buy jealousy as the reason, but the truth was, she’d felt confused when her friends started severing contact. She’d never thought marrying someone of a “different class” would matter—not to real friends—yet the old habits of doing lunch and girl-shopping had disappeared. At first Kasey had been so busy preparing for the baby that it didn’t matter, yet it was disconcerting to go from a gaggle of friends to such sudden isolation. That wasn’t, though, what her mother wanted to hear. “Lots of people sent presents for the baby.”

“I’m sure they did. Your Aunt Lorna send something good?”

“Yeah, something wonderful.” Kasey couldn’t remember what, but she wasn’t about to get her Aunt Lorna in trouble. Finally, she had the tea steeped and poured and could sit down. She motioned to Tess. “Mom, do you think she looks fat enough?”

“You still breast-feeding her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then it’s always hard to be sure she’s getting enough milk. But for now, she couldn’t look healthier. You should be giving her a supplemental bottle now and then, though, so if you get sick, she won’t be so dependent on you. Is she sleeping all night?”

“No. But three nights ago, she went six hours.” Six blissful, uninterrupted hours. Maybe that’s why she’d been so oddly fearful and worried about the baby. Because too little sleep was making her batty.

Ellen adjusted the baby on her shoulder. “Bring me a cookie, Kase. The gingersnaps. Maybe you could try her with a little rice cereal. Like at dinner. See if that’ll hold her, make her sleep longer at night.”

“Mom…”

Ellen heard the start of the next question, and cocked her head impatiently when Kasey didn’t immediately follow through. But it was as if the fear and worries of the last weeks were suddenly bubbling to the surface like trapped air in a giant ocean. She’d loved being a mom every second since the baby was born—even the tired, cranky parts. But she felt so constantly unsure. Nothing she’d done in her life had prepared her for this level of terror. And it was as if, finally being in her mom’s kitchen, under her mom’s critical scrutiny, Kasey could finally let the fear seep out that had been prowling in the closet of her heart for weeks now. “Does she seem…normal…to you?”

Ellen’s jaw dropped. “You’re worried Tess isn’t normal? What are you, blind?”

“But she’s so good.”

“You’re lucky beyond belief, yet you’re complaining?”

“Not complaining. At all. It’s just…” All the rest of her screwy worries came out in a gush. “She barely seems to cry. When she’s awake, she just lays in my arms like an angel, or in the baby carrier, happy. I put her in one of the cribs, she’s happy there. Wherever I put her, she doesn’t seem to move.”

“So where is the bad news in this? She’s just a month old, you thought she would be doing cartwheels by now?”

There. She was finally able to laugh. “I guess I just thought she’d move around a little more. I was afraid I was doing something wrong.”

“Well, of course you’re doing things wrong. You know nothing. I don’t care how old you are, you’re still a new mother, and first-time mothers never know anything—that’s why you’ve got women in the family to ask advice from. Like me. Oh, you darling, I hope you keep those beautiful blue eyes!” Ellen snoozled the baby’s cheek, but then suddenly braced as they both heard a plaintive “ELLEN!” from the den.

“I’ll go see what he wants,” Kasey said immediately. As she hustled down the hall, she could hear Stan revving up the language, the kind of swearing that made her squirm when she was a kid—not because his temper was directed at her but because it was directed at her mother.

The instant she showed her face in the den, though, her dad’s bark turned into an instant smile. “I didn’t know you were here, sunshine! Come on, gimme a hug, I’ve missed you so much….” And then, “Damn it, your mother knows I can hardly walk with this ankle, and here I was calling and calling—”

Swiftly Kasey rushed to play peacemaker. “What can I do to help? Do you want a drink? A snack?”

“I need ice for my ankle. And a little nip. And the TV— I can’t find the remote—”

“I’ll fix it all, Dad, and in the meantime tell me all about what happened to your ankle.”

Kasey charged around, well aware that the time was clicking away, that Tess would be hungry soon and she had a dinner party for sixteen to prepare for. Still, it wasn’t that easy to escape the old daughter roles—placating her dad, and then hearing out her mother’s stream of advice and criticism.

“You’re pale, what is this, no makeup? You know how washed-out you look without foundation. It’s a mistake too many new mothers make, Kasey, letting themselves go. Marriages don’t survive by accident. They take work. And so do men.”

Kasey washed the tea dishes, brought a fresh ice bag for her dad, changed Tess. Graham had gotten her parents a new television, the new couch in the living room, bought them a satellite dish. To Ellen and Stan both, he was a god.

“I still don’t know what he saw in you,” Ellen said frankly.

“Hey! Thanks a ton!”

“I wasn’t trying to be cruel, Kasey. But you surely realize there’s something odd in your relationship? I know you’re wonderful because you’re my daughter, but Graham was rich and smart and should easily have been able to pick a woman from his own circles. He had to see something in you that he couldn’t get elsewhere. And that doesn’t have to be bad—but it could be. No one is this lucky without having to pay a price. Don’t blow it.”

“Mom, I love him. We’re happy. There’s nothing to blow.”

“So go home. Put on makeup. Make yourself pretty. Sexy. And do something with that hair.” Both of them heard Stan yell for Ellen from the den, and Ellen got that worn-out look in her eyes again.

Kasey left with that “Don’t blow it” still ringing in her ears. It took a full hour to drive home, primarily because I-94 turned into a gladiator den, and as if sensing her nerves, Tess started fussing.

Kasey murmured the instinctive mom there-there mantra, but Ellen’s rantings were still smarting in her mind. She’d known for years why her mother carried such antiquated values about women. Her grandmother had been divorced and struggled, near desperation financially sometimes, to raise three daughters. Ellen had gone into her own marriage with a terror of divorce. She’d always catered to Stan, waiting on him, jumping for his every wish, running to avoid his anger.

Ellen had relentlessly raised Kasey to believe that accommodating and appeasing a man were critical keys to a woman’s survival. Kasey got the shivers when she thought about following in her mother’s footsteps—that was never, ever, how she wanted to live.

Yet she did try to please Graham. That wasn’t being a doormat, was it? Didn’t every woman want to please the man she loved? Give up things, cater, try to show her love in ways that made him happy?

Which reminded her of the dinner coming up tonight. As she turned off the expressway, she gnawed on a thumbnail. Technically the dinner was just a neighborhood gathering, yet she sensed it was important to Graham.

He wanted their life to return to normal, to start entertaining and doing business functions together the way they had before the baby. Life wouldn’t end if this dinner didn’t turn out perfectly, but Kasey still felt uneasy. Their marriage had changed the minute Tess was born. She’d sworn that she wouldn’t let Graham feel neglected…but of course he did.

Tonight was a chance to make it up to him.

Kasey had been looking forward to the evening, yet that flash of uneasiness made her shiver again. She shook her head, laughing at herself loud enough to make Tess suddenly chortle from her infant seat. “Yeah, love bug, Mommy’s just being silly, huh? Our whole world couldn’t be better, and here I’m seeing shadows in the corners. How goofy can you get!”

At six-thirty the lobby of the weekly newspaper office was deserted. One lonely fluorescent light illuminated the hall, but the central office was as quiet as a tomb. During the day, phones and printers and faxes and people yelling made for a noisy bedlam. At this hour, the place looked like the aftermath of a riot, with wastebaskets overflowing with half-dead doughnut parts and reams of coffee cups, and the floor littered with paper and clips and everything else.

Jake sat at the far desk—his coat on, because he’d intended to leave some time ago. But he got studying a medical tome, and ended up concentrating so hard he never heard his boss approach his desk.

Barney couldn’t walk or talk without an unlit cigar chomped between his teeth. Wearing boots, he was conceivably five-four and had to weigh a good 250. The chin was grizzly with whiskers by five o’clock; the breath invariably smelled of old coffee, and the narrow eyes had a born-mean glow. He was so ornery that he couldn’t hire reporters fast enough to keep up with their quitting, and when he parked in front of Jake’s desk, he clearly had his bristles up.

“What the hell is this? Six o’clock, and you already got your coat on? You got here when?”

“Six o’clock this morning,” Jake answered.

“So. Twelve hours, and you think you can just go home. Knowing what I pay you for overtime?”

Barney hadn’t paid overtime in his life. What he did pay for a functional eight hours made slave wages sound good. “I’m leaving in ten. My dad needs me to take him to a neighborhood dinner thing. Until my mother can go with him, I’m the self-elected volunteer.”

“Like I asked you about your private life.” Barney took out his half-bitten cigar, only to stick it in the other side of his mouth. “So when you gonna tell me what the hell you’re working on so late these last weeks?”

“Nothing.”

Barney purposefully blocked the egress to the door—not hard to do when your stomach took up an entire aisle. “It’s something about kids. Babies. You got books and articles in here to the ceiling on medical crap. Somebody assign you a story I don’t know about?”

“No.” Jake marked the spot in the book he’d been reading, and carefully closed the tome.

“You are writing a story, aren’t you?” It was difficult to evaluate Barney’s expressions, but the sudden twist in his mouth was kin to a smile.

“I’m looking into an idea, but there’s nothing to tell you until I’m sure I’ve got something.”

That was all it took to make Barney start crowing. “Did I tell you you’d get into this job or what? Two years ago you walked in here with your hands shaking. Eyes looked like your best friend was a ghost.”

“Come on, now. You know I’ve heard these compliments before.”

“You told me you were a drunk. Couldn’t promise me you’d last a week. I know you secretly thought you were gonna bite the bullet, now, didn’t you, dimwit?”

Jake sighed. He refused to get embroiled in this conversation. Not again.

“But I told you you’d get your life back. And that you wouldn’t be happy just pushing out legal articles from the back desk, either. I wasn’t sure—hell, you were a lawyer, and who the hell can trust those dregs of the earth? But I still saw something in you. You picked up the writing bug, admit it.”

“I wouldn’t choose to write if it were the last profession on earth.” And Jake wouldn’t give Barney the satisfaction of hearing otherwise.

Barney ignored this, just squinched up his face so his eyes got smaller than beads. “So the story’s about kids, babies. Abuse?”

“No.”

“Not gang crap. I’m tired of that bullshit.”

“No. It’s about legal stuff. The stuff you hired me to look at.”

“Ah. Some kind of lawsuit?”

Jake buttoned his jacket, stood up. Barney didn’t budge. Jake sighed. “It’s about an epidemic of malpractice lawsuits involving newborns in the last three years. All involving good hospitals, and not just good doctors, but the best doctors in the city. Which is why I got interested. It’s a puzzle.”

Barney got a feral gleam in his eye. He’d never made it to the top, never would, barely had the talent to keep a weekly newspaper together. But that didn’t mean he didn’t hunger for more. “What’s wrong with the babies?”

Jake shook his head. “There’s no point going into it until I’m sure I’ve got a story.”

“God, you’re annoying.” Barney straightened up to his full five foot four. “All right, keep your story secret for now. But just so you know—if you quit me and go back to lawyering, I’ll cut you in the street like a dead dog.”

“I’m not going back to being a lawyer.” Jake didn’t have to swear it.

Barney nodded. “Of course not. Why would you go back to making a hundred, a hundred grand and a half every year, for a job that pays a little more than minimum wage? And have to give up a boss like me besides?”

“If I were only gay, we could be lovers,” Jake assured him, which—thank God—was enough to send Barney cackling back to his office.

Still Jake lingered, knowing how much his dad wanted to attend this dinner, not wanting to be late…but really not wanting to go anywhere near the Crandalls.

Kasey was the problem. Jake had no intention of going near her, not in any personal way. Once he’d identified her as forbidden, that issue became easy. He’d shoot himself before going near a married woman—so that solved that.

But four days ago he’d come across another medical lawsuit stemming from the obstetrics department in Randolph Hospital. The hospital where she’d had her baby. Just weeks ago.

“Kasey, where are you?”

Hearing Graham’s exasperated call, Kasey quickly patted the sleeping baby’s rump one last time, checked that the baby monitor was on, and then closed the door to the nursery. In the master bedroom, Graham was fighting with his favorite burgundy-and-blue striped tie. The tie was winning. It always did. With a chuckle, she stepped under her husband’s chin and took over.

“It’s almost eight. Company’s almost due. And then the tie got mean.”

“I can see that,” Kasey said. “Damn tie.”

“That’s what I said,” Graham said, still sounding aggrieved, yet out of nowhere he suddenly handed her a small narrow box.

“What’s this?”

“Just a little present. Finally, our lives are going back to normal as of tonight.”

Kasey saw the familiar gleam of desire in Graham’s eyes, and felt her heart sink. Graham knew she’d had her six-week checkup and the doctor had okayed sex again—and she’d always loved her husband’s ardent lovemaking. It was just…she was so beat. Between the doctor appointment and the visit with her mom and night feedings, she was drooping on the inside, and the dinner party hadn’t even started.

“Come on, love. Open the box.”

She did—and found a heavy chain of diamonds. “Good heavens, Graham!”

“You like it?” Obviously pleased at her shocked expression, he stepped behind her and hooked the chain. In the bureau mirror she could see herself—wearing a black dress, to please him. Her fingers touched the stones at her neck. Truthfully, the setting was huge and heavy and didn’t suit her—but how ungrateful could a woman be? They were diamonds.

“What an incredible surprise! I’m overwhelmed!”

“Good.” He dropped a kiss on her neck, clearly approving the dress, her swept-up hair, his choice of jewels. “It’s because you never ask, Kasey, that I love giving you things. And finally, tonight, I’ve got my wife back.”

God knew, she hoped he’d feel that way. It was increasingly troubling to her that Graham still hadn’t bonded with the baby and seemed to resent every minute Kasey spent with Tess. Tonight, though, she really hoped to turn that around.

When the doorbell rang, she went downstairs to greet the first guest. The Bartholomews arrived first, then the Fields and Mauriers. Although Kasey knew the neighborhood crowd now, her throat initially dried up as if she’d swallowed a cup of sand. There wasn’t an ugly woman in the group—or anyone who had less than a bachelor’s degree. Kasey always had the sensation that she didn’t belong here, never had, never would. No matter how wonderful the women had been to her, they just weren’t her brand of normal. They never got zits. Nobody’s hair ever had a dark root or a split end. She couldn’t imagine them suffering from gas, or a tampon leak, or even throwing up in an embarrassing situation.

Yet that first terrorizing reaction faded after a few minutes, as it often did.

She liked them. Really liked them. Kay and Mary Ellen ran their own businesses; Willa taught at U of D. Binky was too fast-lane for Kasey and always would be, but Karen—Bud Maurier’s wife—had been a mentor and friend from the day she’d moved into the neighborhood. Besides. They all knew by now that she had hopeless taste in clothes, and she’d been frank about her blue-collar background. When she first married Graham, she’d just presumed that the Grosse Pointe neighborhood would be a nest of snobs, and she couldn’t have been more wrong. Naturally there were a few elitists, but not many. From the beginning, they’d taken her in as if she were a fellow sister.

They did tonight, too. And she felt a little easier because she was dressed the way she was supposed to be—thanks to Graham. Bud Maurier gave her a kiss and made her laugh. She was flying around pretty high, still greeting guests. Only right after Jim and Chloe Cranston came the gentle, frail Joe McGraw—accompanied by his son, Jake.

Her heart oddly tripped when she shook Jake’s hand and welcomed him. “I’m so glad you came,” she said, as if he were any other guest, yet she found her hand clasping his for a second longer, her gaze oddly captivated by his.

He wasn’t any other guest. She remembered him, from the night at the hospital, and he’d stopped to help her. Since then she’d heard more gossip about him from the neighborhood women, who’d slung stories about his wild years and drinking. It wasn’t as if he’d dwelled in her mind—there’d been nothing in her mind for a month but her baby. But now, those deep, old, sexy eyes seemed to touch her. The tip of his smile. The way he was alone, even as he was helping his father join the gathering.

Of course, that odd moment passed, and then she was running nonstop. The pressure was on. She was determined to show Graham that she could easily put on a dinner the way she used to—that the baby wasn’t going to inhibit them from resuming the social life he valued so much. She could have hired a baby-sitter for Tess and extra household help, but she’d always coped alone before.

Dinner was served at nine. The problem with making everything look effortless was that it took so much effort. Graham did like things just-so. The housekeeper, Gladys, had helped clean, but Kasey polished the sterling icers and water goblets herself, created centerpieces with cranberry candles and fresh flowers. She’d done the new baby potatoes in a clay pot, marinated the London broil with her own original sauce, made a twelve-egg sponge cake from scratch. Now she brought dishes, kissed guests, served the fresh shrimp, scooped the quiet ones into conversations, until finally, everyone was sitting down and digging in.

“Kasey, this is the most fabulous London broil I’ve ever had.”

“Thanks.” Trust Bud to relax her with a compliment, and Karen to add to it.

“You’re going to give me the recipe for the sauce?”

She chuckled. “I’ve never had a recipe. I just made it up years ago, and then somehow it keeps evolving on its own.”

“But it’s always better,” Graham said from across the table. “The way Kasey cooks, it’s a miracle I’m not three hundred pounds.”

“How’s your daughter? Doing all right at school?” someone asked him.

“Laura’s just fine—supposed to come home next weekend.”

“Has she seen the baby yet?”

“No. She was just getting settled in at U of M, starting classes….”

Kasey kept checking the guests, making sure no one needed something. Yet every time she glanced at Jake, his gaze already seemed to be waiting for her, already studying her in a way that made her pulse rush. It wasn’t a bad feeling. Just a little unnerving. Suddenly she was conscious of her flyaway hair and the pretentious black dress and how flushed her cheeks were from running.

“I can’t imagine how you managed all this with a new baby,” Karen said.

“Oh, Tess is no trouble, is she, Graham?” But when Kasey looked at her husband, he’d clearly been sucked into a conversation with Peter Felding. Cripes. Not Peter. The two men were friends, but Graham would definitely turn cranky if the two started arguing politics. She pushed back her chair. “If you’ll all just relax a few minutes, I’ll bring in dessert.”

“Let me help, Kasey,” Karen insisted.

“No, no, honest, it’s no trouble. Everyone just put your feet up.”

With a smile, Kasey pushed the swinging door into the kitchen. Please let it keep going so well went the mantra in her head.

And it was going good, she thought. If her head weren’t pounding, the night would be almost perfect. And she did have to keep hustling. Fresh coffee had to be made—and not ordinary coffee, but fresh ground beans, with a pinch of salt and egg shells added to the ground for richness. Then the foot-tall sponge cake with the marshmallow frosting needed fresh cherries for a garnish. And then dessert dishes—where had she put the German china ones that were Graham’s grandmother’s?

She was just carving the sponge cake when a piece slid. It was right there. Sitting politely on the spatula, waiting to be transferred to the heirloom plate when, blast it, the slice of cake took off. Went flying through the air. Instinctively she grabbed for it. And caught it. Which meant that the marshmallow frosting and sponge cake were suddenly squished all over her hands—what didn’t gush all over her black dress and the floor.

At that precise moment, the kitchen door opened.

“Uh-oh.”

The masculine voice was filled with humor…Jake McGraw, she saw, the instant she looked up with frantic eyes. “I couldn’t imagine how you could do it all alone. Bring in coffee and dessert both. I was going to volunteer to help, but man, now that I’ve seen that cake…personally, I wouldn’t be wasting anything that looks that terrific on company.”

For some crazy reason, she found herself relaxing for the first time all day. “It’s good,” she said. “But not quite so good when eaten off a black dress.”

“You got some on the fancy necklace, too.”

“Oh no, oh no—”

“Let’s see. Quit fussing. Nothing’s that bad.”

“They’ll all be waiting for dessert—”

“They’re all stuffed like pigs and having a good time shooting the breeze. Tip your head up.” He grabbed a napkin and rubbed it on the necklace. Dipped the napkin in sink water, then rubbed the necklace a second time. He was standing so close she could see the cleft in his chin, smell his brand of soap, see his thick brown hair under the kitchen light, so dark and walnut-rich with that hint of cinnamon. Then he stepped back to take a critical look. “Well, it may still be sticky, but it doesn’t look like a meringue necklace anymore. Turned back into diamonds.” His eyes met hers, sexy and mysterious and darker than whiskey. “That necklace looks heavier than lead.”

“It is. To be honest, I’ve never been much of the jewelry type.” She added hastily, “Not that I don’t love it. But the fear of losing it scares the wits out of me.”

“Well, having to cut your fancy cake would generally scare the wits out of me. But I’m here, so you might as well put me to work. Besides, then you can blame it on me if anything else spills.”

“I will, you know.”

“You will what?”

“Blame any and all spills on you.” How goofy was this? Teasing as if she’d known him for years. Yet he didn’t seem like a stranger. He seemed…different. The way she’d always felt different, not one to easily fit in.

Maybe he had alcoholism and major mistakes in his personal closet, but Kasey couldn’t see it to look at him. He was obviously a caring son—caring enough to chauffeur his dad to events that he didn’t necessarily want to attend himself. And she loved the intelligence, the experience, the depth in his eyes. Yeah, she could see a trace of bad boy in his posture, in his lazy, lanky way of moving, in the kindling way he looked at a woman…but there was nothing to scare her from liking him.

The kindling potential nagged at her a bit, but not much. She was too old to pretend it wasn’t there—too old to need to. She loved Graham. It was just nice to talk to someone who just seemed to like her…. someone where she didn’t feel as if she had to be ON all the time, striving to prove herself.

“Did you really come in here just to help me?” she asked Jake curiously.

“Yeah, basically. I kept thinking someone else was going to volunteer—because for damn sure, I’m not great shakes helping in a kitchen. But you’ve been running a hundred miles an hour alone, as far as I could see.”

“It isn’t really running. I like cooking—”

“Yeah. So your husband keeps saying. Anyway, I also thought you’d probably been warned against me. Right?”

Again, those shrewd dark eyes met hers, held hers. She had the sensation of a thirsty man taking a sip of a long, slow drink. “Right,” she admitted.

“So I thought I’d better let you know—probably everything you heard was true. If my being in the kitchen with you could be a problem, just say the word and I’ll leave.”

“Hey, you just offered to help and already you’re trying to get out of it? Fat chance.” But she had to add more quietly, “Just for the record, though, I don’t need anyone else’s opinion to figure out who I want as a friend.”

He started dealing pieces of cake to plates faster than a Las Vegas hustler, but he cocked his head toward the window. “Look out at the driveway.”

She did, and saw the obvious crowd of cars belonging to all the guests.

“See the Beemers and Lexi and Mercedes and so on? And then do you see the eight-year-old Honda Civic?”

“Sure.”

“Well, the Civic’s mine.”

“Ah. That’s what you did wrong, huh? Have an old car?”

He sighed. “Obviously you haven’t lived here long enough to understand the difference between the mortal sins and the venial ones. You can kill and cheat and steal and all, but if you live in Car Town, you care about your wheels or you’re nobody.”

“This is a revelation,” she assured him.

Another sneaky, crooked grin, but it didn’t last. “Yeah, well, I got another sin. A bigger one. I left Grosse Pointe a couple years ago after a nasty divorce—and I didn’t try to come back. You can sin all you want here. But once you’ve cleaned up your act, you’re supposed to come back to the lifestyle. Nobody’ll forgive you for not wanting to be a Grosse Pointer again.”

“Sheesh, no one ever mentioned these rules before. Wait a sec—”

She wagged a finger at him, then hustled a tray with the fresh coffee and demitasses into the dining room, telling the group that dessert was on its way. “Okay now,” she said on returning. “You refused to come back to the lifestyle. Which means…?”

“Which means that I used to be a high-paid corporate lawyer. Not anymore. I took a job with a newspaper—not because I knew anything about newspaper work—but because that was the only place that would hire me at the time. Truthfully, the paper didn’t want me either, but they had a hole in their staff—they needed somebody who could wade through legal jargon and convert it to something human beings could understand. That’s what I started out doing—for which they were paying me pigeon feed.”

“Yet you’ve stuck with it?”

“Yeah, in spite of the pigeon-feed wages.” Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure why. In the beginning, I was just happy to be holding a job. I needed to prove myself. Prove that I could stay sober. That I wouldn’t fold. For a long time, that’s all I was looking for—something to do that didn’t stress any seams.”

Kasey couldn’t fathom why he was sharing all this personal history, but she sensed he was determined to be honest—determined not to put himself in a good light, for that matter. Whatever his motivation, she was interested. “It’d seem to me that you’ve proven your share if you’ve stuck it out for two years.”

“Yeah. I didn’t expect to like it. But I also thought the job was going to be no challenge, no risk…and somewhere along the way, it started to get interesting. The newspaper’s owned by a character named Barney Mendenhall. He’s an overbearing bully and a real tyrant.”

“Something in your voice tells me he’s a good friend.”

“That’s the problem. He is. He took a chance on me when everyone else was fed up, which is a real hard thing to forgive him for. And then the damn man kept telling me that writing stories would get in my blood, that one of these days I’d find a story I’d need to write, and then he’d own me, heart and soul.”

Fascinated now, she started to ask another question. Only, damn, Jake had finished loading up another tray of desserts, so she had to quit talking and ferry it into the dining room. “Sponge cake,” she announced to the group. “But in case anyone isn’t fond of that, I’m bringing in a fruit bowl next.”

She raced back into the kitchen. “So? Was your boss right? Have you found a story you can’t let go of?”

He’d been working like hired help, putting stuff on plates and wiping up. But now he looked at her in a way that made her pulse still. A quiet look. The way a man looked at a woman when he was through with the bullshit. “Yeah, I have. I’ve been looking into some malpractice cases affecting some of the local hospitals. Kasey, I have to ask you something…”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“Just tell me straight. Is your baby okay?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your baby. She’s totally okay, right?”

Kasey felt as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of her lungs. There was nothing in Jake’s quiet, gentle eyes to cause such panic, yet it was there, slamming in her heartbeat, drying up her throat. It was as if he’d known how secretly she’d been worried about the baby. “Tess? Tess couldn’t be more perfect. She’s beautiful and healthy and the whole world keeps telling me how lucky I am. And, God, I couldn’t love her more than my life. Why on earth are you asking? What made you—?”

When Jake first asked the question, she’d just opened the door to the dining room, carrying a tray with the fruit bowl and small bowls—but now she heard the baby’s faint wail from upstairs.

She forgot Jake, forgot the question, forgot everything. The baby monitor was right next to Graham. It should have gone off if the baby had made any sound—but right then, the monitor wasn’t the issue, simply Tess. The baby never cried unless there was something wrong. Kasey plunked the tray on the dining room table, gracelessly enough to make a clatter. She saw Graham shoot her a dark frown, but he probably hadn’t heard the baby’s cry. “Everyone help yourself to the desserts, okay? Don’t wait—I just heard the princess, so I’m going to run upstairs and make sure she’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

The instant she was out of sight, she shot upstairs to the baby’s room. The jeweled nightlight illuminated the crib. Her heart didn’t stop slamming until she scooped up the baby and snuggled her close. “Are you hungry, sweetheart? Wet?”

Yet the answer to Tess’s distress was much simpler than that. A burp erupted from the rosebud lips, and that was it, the end of the fretful tears. Still, Kasey patted and rubbed and cuddled, unwilling to put the baby down, unwilling to leave her. She’d felt better after talking to her mother, but now Jake had aroused her worry level again. It was dumb. Just new-mother jitters. Anyone with a brain could see Tess was the most beautiful baby in the universe. There wasn’t a single sign of illness.

What could her maternal instincts possibly be worth? She had no experience at all with newborns.

“You want to go back to sleep, dumpling? Or go join the party?”

The baby would have lain contentedly in the crib, but she also didn’t look remotely sleepy, so Kasey voted to carry her downstairs. When she ambled into the dining room, she had to chuckle for the chorus of “Oh, you brought the darling!” and “Let’s see her!”

Several minutes passed before she happened to glance up—and catch Graham looking rigid as stone and glaring at her.

“What’s wrong?” she mouthed silently.

But then she realized that others might have noticed his tight mood—in fact, Jake was looking directly at Graham. This was obviously not an appropriate time to try and talk to him.

An hour and a half later, the company was gone, the lights turned off, and the door closed on the disaster in the kitchen. Kasey checked on the sleeping baby one last time before walking into the master bedroom.

Graham was already there, standing at the window. At a glance, Kasey could see his shoes were already neatly lined in the closet, his cuff links and tie on the bureau, his shirt already sent down the laundry chute. Sometimes she teased him that he was so anal he’d line up Campbell’s soup cans by the label—but tonight that kind of joke didn’t seem wise.

“The dinner went pretty well, don’t you think?” she asked lightly. She slipped off her shoes and dress inside her walk-in closet.

“Fine.” His voice was shorter than a bite.

“I couldn’t love the necklace more, Graham. I thought Karen was going to rip it off my neck. Everyone noticed. It was so generous of you.”

He didn’t respond.

She scooped on a nightgown, shooting him worried looks in the mirror as she carefully undid the necklace. Her fingers were unsteady. She’d never seen Graham in a temper, but she knew when he was unhappy with her. She hated confrontations, never seemed to know what to do, what to say.

From under the nightgown she peeled off her panties. When she caught her reflection in the mirror—the still baby-pudgy tummy, the wreath-sized circles under her eyes, the wild hair—she moved away from the mirror. Her stomach was starting to churn.

“Graham,” she said carefully, “I know you’re annoyed with me, but honestly, I don’t know why—”

“I’ll tell you why! Can’t we have one night without the baby taking center stage!” His change clattered on the bureau. Then he stalked over to the bedside light and snapped it off.

In the darkness, Kasey frowned. This was about Tess? He was mad somehow about Tess? “I only brought her downstairs because she was crying—”

“And if you’d hired a nanny—the way I’ve urged you to, over and over—you wouldn’t have had to interrupt the dinner party. For that matter, if we just had an in-house nanny, you wouldn’t be so tired in the evenings, because of having to jump up every time the baby lets out the slightest cry.”

Silently she slipped under the covers—as if being quiet might help make her more invisible. “I don’t see how I was creating a problem or interrupting the dinner party. Everyone seemed delighted that I brought Tess down—”

“Well, of course they’d say that. It’s not the point. The point is that both of us deserve free time—time to be with other adults, children not included or always interrupting. I want my wife back, Kasey.”

“Oh, Graham. You have me.” She understood now. Hadn’t she warned herself about this a zillion times? He was jealous of the baby. The problem was in all the parenting books. Men wanted to be Number One in their mate’s eyes.

“I want our life back the way it was. I want time with you where your mind isn’t always on the baby.”

“Oh, Graham…”

In the darkness, he grabbed her, tugging her close. Her instinct was not just to respond, but to respond with extra warmth and giving. And any other time, his urgent forcefulness would have ignited her own passion.

But tonight…they hadn’t made love since the baby was born. And no matter what the doctor said, she remembered long painful hours of labor and was afraid that sex would hurt this first time. On top of that, she felt trembly and tense because of their argument. His mouth claimed hers roughly, possibly because he was still a little mad. It wasn’t as if she were afraid. That thought was crazy. But…

She couldn’t catch the mood.

His entry hurt. Really hurt. Exactly what she’d been afraid of. And although she knew Graham meant to come across as ardent and passionate, she couldn’t shake the distressing, achy feeling that he was oblivious to anything but what he wanted. The more he pushed, the more she burned, until she couldn’t help but cry out.

“That’s it, darling. Take me. All of me.”

She heard his words. And inside her head, she kept telling herself, all right, all right, this’ll be over in a minute, and everything’ll be different tomorrow. She understood better now, that he was having a difficult time relating to Tess and that their marriage needed more one-on-one time.

It was up to her to make this better. To make their marriage like it had been before.

She just had to try harder.