Читать книгу The Mummy Miracle - Lilian Darcy, Lilian Darcy - Страница 7

“Shh-sh,” Dev crooned, bouncing the baby gently against his shoulder. “Shh-sh.”

It did no good. His rhythmic sway and soothing sounds had had more success with baby Lucy today than they were having now with his own child, in his own house. He’d heard her screaming as he came up the front path, and the sitter had met him at the door, looking harassed and more than ready to go home.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Browne, she just won’t settle.”

He’d taken the baby, paid the sitter, tried everything he knew in the hour since, but DJ was still crying. He knew from experience—over two months of it, since she’d come home from the hospital—that she would settle eventually, that it wasn’t anything serious or horrible, just colic, but it wasn’t fun to hear her crying and to feel so helpless.

Dev didn’t do helpless.

He’d sent his parents off to their vacation condo in Florida three weeks ago with a sigh of relief. Both the Brownes and the Palmers were acting way too protective of everyone involved, since his and Jodie’s accident nine months ago. He often suspected that the Palmers would take DJ from him completely, if they could. Maybe he should take them up on that, relinquish custody and go back to New York.

But his heart rebelled at this idea, the way it often rebelled at the suffocating level of Palmer helpfulness. Jodie’s mother and her two sisters here in Leighville seized on his need for babysitting too eagerly, he felt, trading on their combined experience of child-raising and his own helplessness. His parents had been taking a hand at it, too, but seemed suspicious that he was somehow being exploited, that Jodie had trapped him into this situation.

Which was ridiculous, since she didn’t even know about it.

Today, despite his misgivings about the attitudes of both Palmers and Brownes, he could have done with some family help, but it wasn’t possible, the way things stood. He was supposed to keep the baby safely away from the Palmer house.

Keep her away until Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, when Jodie had her appointment with doctors and therapists and counselors.

Zero hour.

His stomach kicked.

How did you prepare for something like that? He and the Palmers had been politely fighting about it for several weeks. The Palmers thought she still wasn’t ready, while Dev couldn’t handle the covering up, the distortions, the silence, even though he often dreaded what might happen once Jodie knew.

Doctor-patient ethics had become more of a concern with every step forward in Jodie’s difficult recovery. There was an insistence now that she had the right to be told, and that she was strong enough, so the moment of revelation had been fixed for ten o’clock Tuesday morning.

What would she want? Where would he fit? Would she understand how much he loved this baby girl, this surprise package in both their lives? He felt an increasing need to know how it would all pan out—he hated uncertainty, and not knowing where he stood—but there was a lot to get through first. For a start, how did you say it?

Jodie, you need to know at this point that while you were in the coma state …

DJ wailed and shuddered in his ear, but maybe it was easing now. Was she too hot? Dev preferred open windows and the chance of a breeze to the shut-in feeling of an air-conditioned cocoon, but what would be best for the baby? He rocked her a little harder and she seemed to relax into his shoulder, her sweet, milky breath soft on his neck.

He loved her more than he’d imagined possible, and he had no idea what this was going to mean, once Jodie was told.

“Stop crying, sweetheart. That’s right. Settle down, it’s okay. Is your tummy still hurting? Not so much now, hey? Not so much …”

How did this happen to me?

Nine months ago he’d been enjoying a hot fling, ground rules fully in place, with a warm, funny and surprisingly gutsy woman, who’d turned his temporary return to Southern Ohio from an act of duty into an unexpected pleasure.

Thanks to Jodie, he’d stopped seeing a slow-paced backwater town and started seeing the beauty of the changing landscape in the fall. Instead of feeling the suffocation of routine, he’d felt the sinewy strength of family ties. He’d rediscovered the pleasure of a good laugh, of collecting the morning newspaper from the front yard while the grass was wet with dew, of hearing rain or birdsong outside his window instead of city noise.

But it was just an interlude. They both knew it. He’d said it to her direct, because he didn’t want the risk of her getting hurt.

Even after the accident, he’d at first only planned to stay until his leg was put back together and healed. Jodie had family here. She wouldn’t be on her own, whether she stayed in a coma state or made a full recovery. He didn’t belong at her bedside, keeping vigil, the way her parents and sisters had.

But then …

DJ went through another spasm of pain and stiffened and screamed harder in his arms. “Ah, sweetheart, ah, honey-girl, it’ll stop soon.” He rocked her and massaged her little gut with the pad of his thumb.

How did this happen to me?

And what would change, come Tuesday?

Everything.

“Everything, baby girl,” he murmured. Hell, he was so scared about it!

The knock at his front door startled him a few minutes later, the brass rapper hitting the plate unevenly, a couple of strong, jerky taps and then a weaker one. With DJ still in his arms, her crying beginning to settle to a kind of shuddery grumble, he went to see who was there, and when he saw Jodie standing there, he knew he didn’t have until ten o’clock Tuesday anymore.

Zero hour was now.

The baby wasn’t Lucy.

Jodie worked that out in around forty seconds, as she and Dev both stood frozen on either side of the threshold.

The baby wasn’t Lucy, because Lucy belonged to Maddy and John, and had gone home with them to Cincinnati, and was smaller and newer than this little thing.

This little thing clearly belonged to Dev, and explained exactly why his crooning and shushing and swaying on Mom and Dad’s back deck had been so effective earlier today. He’d had practice. Recent practice, and a lot of it.

“You’d better come in,” he said heavily, after standing there in what appeared to be a frozen moment of shock. Jodie was pretty shocked herself. “I think she’s going to sleep,” he added. “You’re not catching her at the best time. I wish you could see her smiling, the way she’s been doing the past month.”

“It’s a girl?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“I … uh … I call her DJ.”

“DJ,” she echoed blankly. He called her DJ. But it wasn’t her name?

“You look like you need to sit. Shoot, of course you need to sit.”

“Yes. I do.” She hadn’t realized it herself until now, despite her shaky hand on the heavy door knocker, but, yes, her legs had turned pretty shaky, too, and the frame wasn’t giving enough support. She had no idea what was happening, here.

Dev had a baby.

He absolutely, one hundred percent had … a … baby.

He had a cloth thrown over his shoulder to catch the spit-up, and a hand cradling the baby’s little diaper-padded butt as if it grew there, and a puffy rectangle of baby quilt in the middle of the floor, with a baby gym arched over it, like the one Maddy and John had brought to Mom and Dad’s today for Lucy, even though their three-week-old infant could hardly be expected to play with such a thing.

This baby was definitely older. Dev had just mentioned she’d been smiling for the past month, and Jodie had enough nieces and nephews, thanks to all of Elin and Lisa’s kids, that she knew when smiling happened—six weeks or so. This baby, small though she was, had to be getting on for about ten weeks old.

Do the math, Jodie, do the math. Nine months plus two and a half equals almost a year. When you were busy “getting the old crush out of your system,” last fall, the mother of Dev’s baby must already have been pregnant….

But where was the mother now? Who was the mother?

“Here. Sit here,” Dev said, after she’d made her way inside. It was a pretty house, but the décor was too frilly and fussy for a man like Dev, with lace and florals and porcelain knickknacks everywhere. His mother’s taste. “I’ll take the frame. Do you want coffee, or something?”

“No. I—No, I’m fine.”

“Look, it’s obvious we need to talk. Let me get you something.”

“Is—? Who else is around?”

“No one. My parents are in Florida. They have a condo there. I made them go.”

“You made them?”

“Don’t you sometimes feel … haven’t you felt, these past few weeks, as if sometimes there’s just too much family?”

“Ohh, yeah!”

That she could relate to.

But the baby …

DJ had fallen asleep on Dev’s shoulder. “Hang on a sec,” he muttered, and picked up a roomy piece of cloth that turned out to be a baby sling. He draped it across his shoulder, tucked the baby inside and stood there, still swaying gently. “If I put her down now, she’ll just wake up again,” he explained. “She needs to go a little deeper before it’s safe.”

“You’re very good at it.”

“Yeah … not really. I’m getting there. I have a who-o-ole heap of help.”

A heavy silence fell, during which the obvious reference to DJ’s mother wasn’t made.

Dev said nothing about her.

Jodie didn’t want to ask.

“She’s adorable,” she said instead, feeling woolly and wooden about it, wondering if she should be angry. Or hurt. Or just cheerful. Wow, you have a baby, congratulations. You said you didn’t want kids, but whoever the mom is obviously didn’t get the memo.

Unless of course …

Well, accidents happened. Baby-producing accidents, as well as ones that break legs in three places and put people into comas and necessitate the removal of spleens. Dev and some unknown woman had had a contraceptive “oops” roughly eleven months ago, and here was a baby, and her mom had probably just run to the store for diapers and milk. She and Jodie would meet each other any minute now.

“I can’t take this in,” she blurted.

“I don’t blame you. Jodie, this was all set up for Tuesday. Does your family know you’re here? They couldn’t!”

“Oh, my family … Didn’t you just ask me if I felt there was too much family? Well, there is! I said I was going for a walk and I didn’t need company. I just told them around the block, and that if I wasn’t back in forty-five minutes, send a search party. Coming here was an impulse.”

“I’d better call your folks.” He rocked the baby in his arms instinctively.

“It hasn’t been forty-five minutes.”

“You’re going to be here for a while.” He’d already picked up the phone and hit speed dial, as if the matter was urgent.

He has my parents on speed dial, she registered. But she liked his directness, the decisive way he moved. It was reassuring, somehow. Dependable.

He spoke a moment later. “Hi, Barb?” Barb was Mom. “Just letting you know, Jodie’s here…. Nope, not my idea … No choice, at this point … I can’t argue it now, you have to trust me…. Of course I will … No. Just me. Please … Yep, okay, talk soon.”

“What was that about, Dev?” She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. The walk had tired her more than she wanted.

“We’ve both said it. Too much family.”

“Right.”

“First, tell me why you came. I mean, what made you think—? What gave you the idea—?” He broke off and swore beneath his breath. “Just tell me what made you come.”

His difficulty in finding the right words made her flounder a little, and struggle for words herself. “I wanted to ask you … or to thank you, too, for coming to see me in the hospital those times.”

“Just that?” He sounded cautious, looked watchful, as if waiting for a heck of a lot more.

“Well, and for—I don’t know if I’m even the reason for this, or even part of the reason, but … not going back to New York when you planned.”

“Hell, of course I wasn’t going back to New York!”

She looked at him blankly and he understood something—something that she didn’t understand at all, but she could see the dawn of realization in his face, while her body stopped belonging to her and belonged … somewhere else, to someone else.

It was a familiar feeling. Just the accident and her slow recovery? Or something more?

He was muttering under his breath. Curse words, some of them. And coaching. He was coaching himself. He sat down suddenly, in the armchair just across from the couch, with the sling-wrapped baby cradled in his arms, as if his legs had drained of their strength just like Jodie’s had.

“Pretend I’ve just been in a coma for nearly nine months, Devlin,” she said slowly. “Tell me anything you think I might not know. Pretend my family has a habit of shielding me from the most pointless things. And from the serious things, too. And tell me even the things you think I already do know. What did you mean, set up for Tuesday? What did you mean, no choice at this point? And this might be totally off-topic, but how is there a baby? And where is her mom?”