Читать книгу For Their Baby - Kathleen O'Brien - Страница 10

DAVID SAT in the waiting room of the obstetrician’s office, surrounded by pregnant women, hyperkinetic toddlers and hovering husbands. He hadn’t ever been so uncomfortable in his life.

It might as well have been tattooed across his forehead: I don’t belong here.

He flipped through the newspapers he’d found on the magazine table and tried to remember who was running in the upcoming special elections. But real life, or what he used to call real life a week ago, seemed remote. Kitty’s announcement had blasted him into an alternate dimension. He still met clients, took depositions, researched case law, but it all had the muted, out-of-focus quality of something seen through dirty glass.

And yet, this “baby” and “fatherhood” world didn’t seem real, either. That left him…nowhere. Suspended in some murky, slow-motion half-life.

He wondered if things would snap back into clarity when the results of the paternity test came through.

Or would life just get weirder still?

He glanced at the closed door through which the nurse had escorted Kitty at least forty-five minutes ago. Their cheek swabs had been done earlier, when they first got to the office. Now the CVS test was supposed to take no more than half an hour. Had something gone wrong?

He stood. He paced to the check-in window to see if he could glimpse anything going on down the halls. He couldn’t.

When he turned back, he saw that a little kid with a runny nose had stolen his chair. In the far corner, a woman who had to be about eleven months pregnant inexplicably burst into tears, and her husband knelt in front of her, apologizing and chafing her hands.

God. This was the waiting room of one of the most respected and most expensive obstetricians in San Francisco. David could only imagine what it must be like at a free clinic. No wonder Kitty had been so adamant that she wouldn’t go to a cut-rate place.

He checked his watch. Fifty minutes.

And then, suddenly, Kitty came through the door. For a second, her small, oval face was pale and oddly woebegone under the chaos of green curls—and then she spotted him. Instantly she rearranged her features into the feisty, chin-up expression he knew best.

But all the pride in the world couldn’t put the color back into her cheeks.

“Everything go okay?” He had already paid, days ago, so they had nothing to do but leave. He fought the urge to put his arm around her shoulders. She might be pale, but he knew she’d rather collapse on the carpet than admit any weakness.

“It was fine.”

They walked a few feet, and she stumbled over a board book some brat had left by the door. She reached out and used the wall to steady herself.

“How about if you wait here,” he said, “and I’ll bring my car around?”

“No, thanks.” The door to the obstetrician’s suite opened just a little way from the elevator, and she punched the down button quickly. “I’m all right. They said to take it easy, but no one said I needed a wheel-chair and a keeper.”

He wanted to ask her again how the test had gone, but the stiffness in her shoulders told him she wasn’t in the mood to discuss it. At least not with him. Once again that surreal detachment swamped him. How was it possible that he might be having a baby with this woman who wouldn’t even talk to him?

She spent the ride down adjusting the folds of her cloth purse to avoid making eye contact, as if he were some disreputable stranger who had crowded her and might ask for a handout.

He tightened his jaw and backed away to lean against the farthest wall of the glass elevator. Fine. If she didn’t want to talk, he knew how to be silent. He put his hands in his pockets and pretended to watch the luxuriant fern and ivy of the atrium slide by.

When they reached the ground floor, though, and the doors slid soundlessly open to release them, he saw her hesitate, her fingers tightening on the shoulder strap of her purse. And then it hit him. How had she gotten here this morning? And how was she going to get back? Her hotel was halfway across San Francisco, and he had no idea whether she could afford a cab.

Damn it. He should have picked her up. Or at least sent a cab to get her. He’d promised he’d handle the cost of this test—all the costs. But he hadn’t even thought about transportation. Obviously, he’d been spending way too much time in ivory-tower lawyerland. And she probably despised him for that, probably assumed he had been born to the cushy life and had always been smugly oblivious of details like this.

Ha. If she only knew.

“I hope you’ll let me give you a lift back to the hotel.” He smiled, working at sounding politely professional. Nothing judgmental, patronizing or overly familiar.

He seemed, thank God, to have hit the correct tone. She didn’t smile, exactly, but her face wasn’t as gray and hard as it had been upstairs. A little color had come back into her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I’m fine.”

“I’d like to.” He thought fast. “And it wouldn’t be out of my way. I have to meet a client over in that part of town, and—”

“No, really. Thanks, but I’m fine.” She pushed a curl out of her forehead with a tense hand.

Had a hint of chill returned to her voice? Had she taken “that part of town” as an insult? He hadn’t meant it as one. Her hotel had obviously been chosen to get maximum clean-and-respectable points for minimum price, which seemed like common sense to him.

He wasn’t a silver-spoon snob; but of course she didn’t know that. All she knew of him was the luxury cottage at the Bahamas, the overdecorated office in Union Square and maybe a glimpse of the Victorian house he’d just bought in the Marina district, which looked okay from the outside but was crumbling to bits on the inside, like a facade for a film set. That moldering interior was partly why his housekeeper stone-walled anyone who came knocking at the door.

Someday, he’d have to tell Kitty about the two-job, Ramen noodle years of law school. And the loans that had crippled him financially for a decade. And how, now that he’d been fool enough to buy that fading lady of a house, he would have to restore it, plank by plank, with his own time and sweat.

Someday. Yeah. If the test came back with his name on it, and they actually had a someday.

Right now, though, he had to get her into the car and back to her hotel so that she could rest. She had dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there ten minutes ago.

“Kitty, I—”

She shook her head firmly. “I’m not going straight back to the hotel, anyhow. I have an errand to run first. I’m fine with the bus.”

The bus? A half-hour standing in the cold, waiting for it to rumble by, followed by two hours of bumping and jostling, hanging onto a ceiling strap and nosing the next guy’s armpit?

“Can’t the errand wait? You really should take it easy and—” But she was already shaking her head again, so he tried another tack. “Tell you what. I’ll take you to do the errand, whatever it is, then drop you back at the hotel. I guarantee we’ll get it all done before the right bus even shows up.”

He almost had her. Though she probably didn’t know it, a tiny worry line had formed between her eyebrows. He could practically see her willpower fading as she glanced uncertainly toward the front doors. He knew very little about her, but he knew, from the quick bar-side chitchat, customer to bartender, that she was from Virginia.

He would have known, even if she hadn’t told him. Her accent, with its soft I’s and almost inaudible G’s, spoke of a childhood spent playing under the magnolia trees of the Deep South, not on the foggy hillsides of northern California.

Besides, even natives occasionally found the public transit system daunting.

“Kitty.” He put his hand on her shoulder—and almost pulled it away again, shocked to find that his palm instantly recognized the exact shape of the curve, the exact feel of the warm, satiny, sun-bronzed skin. “Let me help. You look done in, and that can’t be good for you—or the baby.”

He wondered whether she’d say something snarky, something about how charming it was that he suddenly gave a damn about the baby, but she didn’t. Maybe she was too tired.

She nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

She stood somberly by his side, without chitchat, as he gave his ticket to the medical complex valet. When the car came, she settled herself gingerly, and leaned her forehead against the window for a few seconds, with her eyes closed.

As he pulled out onto the street, she finally spoke.

“The errand is…well, I have to go buy and pick up the uniform for my new job. It’s near my hotel, though, so it’s not far out of the way.”

She had taken a job? Here, in San Francisco? Thank God he was accustomed to controlling his face in court, so he didn’t let his shock show. But…surely she wasn’t planning to stay here long enough to need a job!

And that’s when he realized that, despite everything, he had continued to believe that this whole mess might go away soon.

That she might go away soon.

He tried to relax his hands on the wheel. “Where’s the job?”

“At the Bull’s Eye,” she said. Her chin tilted up maybe an eighth of an inch. “Weekend bartender.”

The silence that followed the statement was loaded, like a gun. A hundred incredulous phrases leapt to the tip of his tongue, and though he somehow bit them back, she obviously guessed at every one. She didn’t look at him, but the muscles in her body seemed coiled, ready to strike if he dared to criticize.

But a bartender? Damn it, a bartender? On her feet, in the middle of the night, in that neighborhood? As fragile as she looked? She’d lost ten pounds since the Bahamas—ten pounds she didn’t have to spare. Did she really think the Bull’s Eye was any place for a pregnant woman? Hadn’t she had enough of groping drunks to last her a lifetime?

Something hot and tight moved through his chest, and he found his fingers clenching the wheel in spite of his best efforts.

He knew how any of those questions would sound. Controlling. Patronizing. Snobbish. The mother of my child, a bartender?

He could hear her comeback now. Guess you should have thought of that, jackass, before you slept with a bartender.

He turned right onto Market, his tires complaining as he took the corner a little sharply. He eased back on the gas and forced himself to take a breath. Regroup, he ordered himself. This wasn’t about snobbery, but he’d be damned if he knew what it was about.

He had no say over where she worked. And whose fault was that? His own. He was the one who had dictated the rules here. He had rejected any official investment in Kitty, her life or her unborn child, until and unless the tests proved the baby was his.

So what was this sudden overprotective reaction all about? Why did he care what she did to earn a few bucks while she waited for the test results?

Because—

Because the whole thing was impossible, that was why. Insane. She was nothing to him today, but tomorrow they might be as intimately connected as two people could be. Nothing in between. Either she was a lying nutjob who would vanish like a bad smell, or she was the mother of his child, who would change his world forever.

And he couldn’t do anything but wait to see which way the coin fell.

This shouldn’t have happened. They’d had one sexy, rather sweet night together, the way millions of people the world over did all the time. They’d both been trying to drown some sorrows, forget some ghosts. Neither of them had dreamed they might be stepping into this kind of trap.

So what the hell was he supposed to say? What the hell was he supposed to feel?

The silence stretched on, but eventually grew less tense as she seemed to realize he wasn’t going to lecture her. She gave him directions as needed, and by the time they reached the Bull’s Eye, David felt back in at least some semblance of control.

He parked near the door—it was far too early for a crowd, even in this neighborhood. He turned off the engine and swiveled toward her. She looked pale, as if the wordless emotional standoff that had just passed between them had taken its own kind of toll.

He offered a smile as a truce. “Would you like me to come in with you?”

She shook her head. “I won’t be a minute.”

She was as good as her word. Less than sixty seconds later, she emerged from the small, dark, brown-planked building, hugging a white plastic sack to her chest. Her face was bent over the sack, and she walked so quickly he wondered if she was running from someone.

Had her new boss given her a hard time?

She pulled open the door and lurched in.

“Is everything okay?” He couldn’t see her expression. Ducked down like this, her face was hidden by a cascade of springy green curls. “Did you get your uniform?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded odd. Was she crying?

“Kitty—”

“Please,” she said in that same muffled strangeness. “Could you take me home now?”

“Of course.” He started the car and pulled back onto the main drag. She still hugged that bag, wrapping her arms around it as if it were a life raft.

He tried to think of something to say, but failed. He had an insane urge to tell her that if she hated the idea of taking that bartending job, she didn’t have to do it. He’d help out, financially. Hell, even if the baby wasn’t his, he would help. He didn’t want her to have to serve drinks in that greasy, half-rotted dump.

But he couldn’t say any of that. He had no idea what he could say. He’d never felt so wrong-footed in his entire life. Thank God her hotel was only three blocks from here. All he had to do was get there without saying or doing anything to upset her more.

From the moment they’d met at the doctor’s office, he’d seen that she was angry with him, desperately angry at being forced to submit to the test. What he saw as common sense, she saw as a monstrous personal insult.

Or perhaps a cowardly attempt to dodge responsibility.

That, he realized, wasn’t entirely untrue. He’d never pretended to be a saint. He didn’t want to be a father, not now, not like this. He didn’t want to bring his first child into the world…like this. So, yes, damn it, he did want a way out of this impossible situation. If by some miracle the baby wasn’t his, what a get-out-of-jail-free card that would be.

For him.

But… He glanced at Kitty’s huddled body and her trembling fingers. What about for her? The baby wasn’t going to go away just because David found out it wasn’t his. What would she do then? If he wasn’t the father, and she knew it, why would she have come to him in the first place?

Because she had nowhere else to go. No other safety net below her, ready to catch her fall.

“The lab has promised to expedite the results,” he began awkwardly. She made a strange sound he couldn’t identify, and he wondered if she thought expedite was pompous and absurd. Hell, this was like trying to have a conversation with someone from another planet. You didn’t know what the simplest words meant to them.

“They’ve promised an answer by Wednesday,” he soldiered on. “So I’ll call you as soon as—”

She waved her hand toward him, making another peculiar noise. She fumbled with the bag.

“Kitty, look,” he said, frustrated, but starting to get worried. Why wouldn’t she tell him what was wrong? “I know this is rough on you, but I want you to know that, no matter—”

And then, with one final, strangled moan, she opened the bag and promptly vomited all over her brand-new bartender’s uniform.

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY AFTERNOON was crisp and windy, the blue sky filled with long scalloped rows of clouds that looked like fish scales. It would have been a great day to feel healthy, rested and free.

Instead, Kitty felt sick, exhausted and trapped.

It was only the second day of her job selling puppets at Punch and Judy—the retail job she’d taken at the wharf because the bartending gig didn’t offer enough hours. And already her patience meter was sagging toward Empty.

She had hoped this store, which sold gorgeous, quirky hand puppets, might be less boring than other retail jobs she’d had in the past. But the novelty had worn off quickly—about the time she realized the customers expected her to perform full puppet plays, complete with voices and dancing about, for their spoiled, impossible-to-please children.

This particular family, who had asked her to bring down every dragon puppet in the store, was really getting on her nerves. The parents kept backing into the corner to continue what looked like The Neverending Fight, counting on her to keep their seven-year-old son entertained enough that he didn’t overhear.

A losing battle. She’d seen too many little kids like this as she toiled at her various service jobs. She’d even been a little kid like this. And they always heard. They always knew.

What was worse, the family’s stop at the puppet store was probably just a ruse. At the last minute, the parents would undoubtedly refuse to buy, with some lame excuse like their luggage being overstuffed already.

The kid would go home empty-handed. That was rough, because, for once, this little boy wasn’t a brat. And he really, really liked the green dragon with crystal-teardrop scales and the red felt fire trailing from its nostrils. It cost about fifty dollars, and she wanted to warn him before he got his hopes up.

She glanced over at the dad. Good-looking guy, until you got to the smug face. And doing well for himself. Haircut, two hundred dollars. Sweater tied around the hips, five hundred dollars. Hips? Well, clearly, in his estimation, priceless. He’d just informed Mommy that he had janitors in his office who took better care of themselves than she did.

He caught Kitty looking at him, and lowered his voice. Right. God forbid anyone should think there was trouble in Yuppie Paradise.

Hypocrite.

She pulled off the puppet and wiped her hair back from her face, which felt suddenly sweaty. Aw, please, she thought, tightening her stomach. No vomiting now, not on this fifty-dollar dragon.

And all at once she’d had enough. She plucked one of the crystals from the dragon’s tail and turned to the dad again. “Oh, look. There’s a little damage to the scales here. I don’t know if that bothers you, but it does mean I could offer a pretty good discount.”

A discount she’d have to cover out of her own pocket, unfortunately. But the kid’s face was so hopeful, and she couldn’t stand it. She could make up the difference in her own budget by bringing a bag lunch the next week or two.

And maybe a few peanut-butter sandwich dinners.

She thrust the puppet out a bit farther to show the dad. “It’s only a tiny flaw. I’m sure your son would still love it.”

She turned to the boy. “I bet your dad does a great dragon voice, doesn’t he?”

The boy nodded. “Daddy, do your dragon voice! I’ll be Sir Galahad, and we can fight.”

The cheapskate was still considering saying no. His wife put her hand on his arm and said hesitantly, “Honey, surely we—”

He brushed her hand away. “How big a discount?”

Kitty smiled placidly. “I think it’s fifty percent. When there’s damage.”

The little boy squeezed his hands together so tightly the blood flow stopped, and his fingers were as white as marble. Kitty glanced down at him, then up at the dad with a smile that said she knew he was a great father who wouldn’t dream of breaking his kid’s heart.

With a low murmur of irritation, the man finally dug out his wallet. Kitty took a deep breath of relief.

She kept up a running chatter, to keep Dragon Dad in a good mood so that he wouldn’t take his frustration out on the family later. When they left, she pulled out her phone and calculated what her half of the dragon would be, including the tax, then took her wallet out with a sigh.

She was so focused that it wasn’t until she’d slipped her cash into the register that she noticed David Gerard standing on the other side of the store.

Her heart stumbled slightly. Now that was a sight that qualified as priceless. Muscled grace from head to toe. His thick, golden hair wind-tousled, a suit made for winning cases and breaking hearts, not necessarily in that order.

He was watching her with a dark, unreadable gaze. She flushed, wondering how much he’d seen. Did he think she’d really been flirting with that jerk? Had he seen her rip off the crystal? She’d have to explain. She didn’t need any more black marks against her in his mind.

And then her breath caught. She forgot about the little boy, the dad and the dragon, all in one swoop. Because she knew why David was here.

Though it was two days early, only one thing could have brought him all the way out here.

The test results were in.

She didn’t move from behind the register. She couldn’t. Her legs didn’t seem connected to her brain. She held on to the counter, just in case the legs gave out entirely.

She’d pictured this moment a hundred times. She’d known what the test results would be, of course, so she’d never felt any anxiety—only an eagerness to be vindicated.

She’d imagined how satisfying it would be to see his face once he understood what a bastard he’d been. How ego-soothing to listen to him try to find the words to apologize.

What she hadn’t realized was how intimate this moment would be.

The moment they looked at each other, not as adversaries in some paternity chess game, but as parents. As two people who, whatever else they might become, would be “Mommy and Daddy” to the child she carried inside her now. She didn’t want to be enemies. For her baby’s sake she wanted peace in whatever kind of family they formed. But, if not enemies…what were they?

The current sizzled across the store, connecting them like a glowing thread of awareness. He moved, then, but slowly, as if walking through a dream. By the time he reached the cash register, she felt her nerve endings spark painfully. Her mouth was dry, and it hurt to swallow.

He stopped only when the counter got in the way. “Can we talk? Outside?”

She shook her head. “My replacement will be here in a few minutes, but I can’t leave till she arrives.”

He frowned. “Kitty, we have to talk.”

She wondered what he expected her to do. Quit? For a minute he reminded her of the dragon dad, who expected everything in the world to run on his schedule.

“So talk. There’s no one in here but us. The puppets aren’t going to repeat anything they hear.”

Her voice sounded rougher than she intended it to. But she didn’t know what to do, what to say, and her voice wasn’t fully under her control. No part of her was. She still clutched the counter as if her knees might fail her at any minute.

She wasn’t exactly a pro at situations like this. If her voice sounded tough, so be it. One thing was certain—she’d rather sound like an unforgiving bitch than a breathless beggar.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll talk here. If that’s the way you want it.”

Want it? Want really didn’t come into this, but she let that go. “I take it you’ve received the test results.”

He nodded. “It’s conclusive. The baby is mine.”

She waited. Strangely, now that the moment had come, she no longer felt the slightest urge to say “I told you so.”

She was still angry, of course. Still hurt, still frightened. But she recognized his expression. That unique mixture of shock and dismay, and under it all, that blind, gutsy determination to find a way to face the unfaceable. It was exactly what she’d seen in the mirror the day she found out.

For the moment, anyhow, that expression bound them together, made them teammates in this dangerous game. So she didn’t say she’d told him from the start that of course the baby was his.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply.

She lifted her chin. “Sorry it’s yours?”

“Sorry I didn’t believe you.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And sorry that we’ve found ourselves in this situation. I know it’s just as hard for you as it is for me.”

That made her smile, and he understood the wry reaction instantly. He shook his head at his own stupidity. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. Of course it’s harder, much harder, for you. It’s your body that’s changing. Your life that’s completely disrupted—”

“My uniforms that need to be dry-cleaned.”

“Yes.”

Their gazes met. A welcome moment of harmony. It felt like an oasis in the desert of this difficult journey. Neither of them spoke right away, as if they were both afraid another word would make the feeling break like a mirage.

“Kitty—”

She held up her hand. “No, it’s all right, David. I know it’s hard to accept. Hard to believe. And you’ve got a lot of things to consider. I’m sure you’ll want to talk to your lawyer before you—”

“No.”

She stopped cold. “No?”

“No. I don’t need to talk to Colby. I don’t want Colby’s advice. I know what I want to do.”

She held her breath.

“I want to marry you.”