Читать книгу The Baby Bond - Lilian Darcy, Lilian Darcy - Страница 8

Chapter One

This, at last, was Loretta’s husband.

Julie had only a few seconds to marshal her first impressions of the man who had been married to her cousin. Tom Callahan was coming toward her across the polished hardwood floor of this spacious and blessedly cool office.

Her very soul ragged with fatigue and stress, she saw that he was tall, dark-haired, golden tanned, denim-clad and somewhere in his early thirties.

And then he had reached her, and taken her hot hands into his cool ones. They looked at each other for a moment, their hands locked together, not yet knowing what to say, how to begin.

Despite the awkwardness, the engulfing pressure of his touch was like a lifeline.

Then carefully, as a tribute to the circumstances of this, their first meeting, he took her into his arms. It didn’t seem odd. On Tuesday, also, at Loretta’s sparsely attended funeral, Julie had found herself being hugged by strangers.

“Julie,” he said eventually. His voice sounded deeper and huskier than it had on the phone yesterday.

“Tom,” she managed to say.

He was strong, athletic. She could feel it in the hard, warm knots of muscle that filled out his upper arms and in the squared pectorals of his chest. She hadn’t expected such a powerfully physical man. It helped a little. Physically, right now, she simply needed the support.

As well, she had begun to realize just how strongly every detail, every attribute of this man would live on in her future. Distractedly, she had already registered that he was one of the best looking men she’d ever met. Now, detail added to detail.

His eyes were as dark and glowing as polished teak. His thick hair was the color of molasses shafted by sunlight. Just a tad untidy and too long on top, it was hair that could make a woman want to reach out and smooth it into place with a caress.

In his arms, she closed her eyes, drew a waft of his mellow male scent into her nostrils and felt the shaking in her limbs, in contrast to his quiet steadiness. He must have felt it also. His arms tightened and he said her name again, with his lips against her hair. She felt the warmth of his breath and heard the thud of his heartbeat.

“It was good of you to come up.” His voice resonated deep in his chest.

“I needed to,” she told him.

It was truer than he could yet know. He would know by the end of their meeting today. On the journey by plane and car from Philadelphia, she’d thought of little else. Tom Callahan’s part-time maintenance man, Don Jarvis, had brought her here from the Albany airport, and she’d barely managed to pass the time of day with the man. Fortunately, having given her his careful condolences about Loretta’s death, Don probably hadn’t expected much in the way of conversation.

Tom let her go at last, slowly, as if to make sure she had the strength to stand up. They stood facing each other, not touching any more but still standing close.

“This is hard,” he said. She could see in the twist of his face how much he meant it.

“It has to be, doesn’t it?” she agreed, her throat tight

“I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you at the airport myself.”

“No, please! I asked you on the phone not to disrupt your schedule.”

“You see, when you called yesterday, I—” He broke off and shook his head, unable to find words, then reached back to wipe a lean hand around the inside of his open collar. “Look,” he began again after a moment, “I’m going to give my assistant, Marcia, the rest of the day off, then we’ll talk. We need to give this some time, and we don’t need interruptions from anyone. I’m so sorry you couldn’t track me down before the funeral.”

“Yes. So am I. I did try.”

“I was on the west coast for a couple of days.”

“And Loretta didn’t seem to have this address and phone number written down anywhere obvious. I looked through her papers a little, but there was a lot of other stuff to do, and—”

“I know you did,” Tom was saying. “And I appreciate it. This must have been a horrific few days for you. Just excuse me for a moment.”

He went to the outer office, and Julie heard the low vibration of his voice as he gave his assistant some instructions.

It gave her time to think, and to feel once more the growing unease that had begun five days ago, just hours after she had learned of Loretta’s death. Why had it taken her nearly four days to find any reference to Tom Callahan’s summer address amongst Loretta’s papers? He was her husband! Yet Tom himself had not seemed surprised that Julie couldn’t track him down.

Something was very wrong. Something didn’t gel.

Tired to the bone after five nights of shredded sleep, she sank into one of the two rust-brown leather armchairs facing the floor-length windows that overlooked Diamond Lake. The cool leather was as soft as cream. At once, the peace and beauty of the place started its healing work. Tom Callahan’s summer retreat stood on its own private island, surrounded by a bright mirror of limpid water, with the folded, forested Adirondack mountains beyond. She understood exactly why he had chosen this place. What she didn’t understand was—

He was back. He set a tray on the small table then pulled up the second armchair and sat down, his long thighs jutting from the leather seat

He’d brought coffee. Two steaming mugs of it. Her stomach rebelled, but she craved something to do with her hands and something to fill her mouth, so she answered his questioning look with, “Yes, thanks. Lots of cream. And some sugar, too, please.” Maybe the sweetness would keep back the nausea that had been rising in her all morning.

“Not watching your weight?” Tom teased carefully, adding a large dollop of cream to her mug.

“Not at the moment.”

He was, though, Tom realized. Not watching her weight, but watching her body. She was beautiful, even handicapped by the fatigue and stress that had put slate-blue shadows beneath her blue eyes and tightened her long, graceful limbs.

Her wheat-blond hair was looped on her head so that a few tendrils fell in long, bouncy curves. He wanted to wind his fingers through them. Her skin was as smooth and warm-hued as ripe apricots, with just the airbrushed hint of dappled gold freckles across her nose. And she had the most incredibly warm, generous mouth he’d ever seen.

Tom shifted and sent a spoonful of sugar fanning across the tray. It didn’t matter. The mess was nothing. It was all contained on the tray. He dug into the sugar bowl and got another, but the clumsy action disturbed him all the same.

He hadn’t thought at all about what Loretta’s cousin would be like. He definitely hadn’t considered the possibility that he might find her in any way attractive. Perhaps the low, emotion-filled music of her voice on the phone yesterday, during their painfully clumsy conversation, should have told him something.

He didn’t want to be attracted to her. He was a free man emotionally, and no one who knew him would question his right to that freedom, but he didn’t want this difficult meeting to get any more complex than it had to be. For both of them, this was about endings, not beginnings. After today, it was doubtful they’d ever need to meet again.

He pushed his physical awareness of her aside, stirred the sugar into her coffee and handed it to her.

Determined to get to the painful heart of this as quickly as possible, he said, “You told me it was a car accident. Was it quick? Was she at the wheel?”

“It was instantaneous, the police told me. For both of them. The car was traveling at over ninety miles an hour.”

“Both of them?” Tom queried automatically, though he wasn’t really surprised. Not if he recalled all those times in the past when he’d thought Loretta was alone and she hadn’t been.

Julie fisted a hand in front of her mouth and cleared her throat. She had no choice but to tell the truth. “There was someone else at the wheel,” she said huskily. “A man.”

The words tasted like cardboard. She had wanted to get all this over quickly, yes, but had expected a little more opportunity to prepare him...and herself. Small talk meant nothing at a time like this, but it had its uses. Tom Callahan, on the other hand, clearly preferred to look things in the face.

Her stomach twisted. A gulp of coffee didn’t help. Made things worse, in fact.

This was Tom’s wife they were talking about. Sure, the marriage had had problems. Loretta herself had admitted that. She’d talked about it in exhaustive, passionate detail. Their separation. Their attempts at reconciliation. The baby they’d both wanted—the baby that hadn’t come, even after infertility treatment.

But despite all of this, Loretta was still Tom’s wife, and as of last week there was every hope of the two of them successfully resuming their marriage. Or so Julie had believed up until last Sunday. Now, she was far from sure.

“His name was Phillip Quinn,” she said, unable to blur the truth with tact. This was a truth you couldn’t blur. “And according to his family, Tom, they were lovers. I’m...so sorry.”

She forced herself to look at him, steeled against what she expected to find—the sight of despair and shock written in the dark good looks of his face. It was hard enough for her to contemplate—hell, it just didn’t make sense! But for him...

Instinctively, she reached out to take his hand, and he let her, until she realized how she was chaf ing it, pulling the tanned skin back and forth across the well-shaped muscles and sinews. Then she practically dropped his hand onto the arm of the chair. In the background came the sound of Don Jarvis starting the motorboat again. She assumed he was taking Tom’s assistant back to shore.

“I’m sorry, too,” Tom said, his voice low and steady. “That two people should die that way. Ninety miles an hour! That’s a heck of a speed to be traveling, and on city streets.”

“But—” Her hands splayed convulsively.

“Did you think it would come as a shock?” he said quietly. “Did you think it would hurt me?”

“Your wife and another man? Of course I—”

“Julie, Loretta was unfaithful to me five years ago. More than once. That’s why—partly why—we split up. Our divorce was a long way from being friendly, and it’s been finalized for three years. I’ve seen her twice since, both times at her insistence, and both times it’s been ugly. She was once a big part of my life, yes, and no one deserves to die that way and that young, but I can’t bleed for Loretta now, and if she did have a lover and was happy with him in the moments before she died, then I’m glad for her. Maybe she was starting to accept it at last.”

Divorced. Tom and Loretta were actually divorced? And Julie knew that Loretta hadn’t accepted it at all. The house, the whole earth seemed to rock, and Tom Callahan’s face, with his teak dark eyes fixed so intently on Julie’s expression, turned a pretty shade of golden yellow then faded altogether.

She felt him grab the hot coffee mug from her limp grip just in time, then she sank into the supportive depth of the chair. Her eyes were closed, her mind whirling.

She didn’t for a moment doubt the truth of his words. They made far too much sense. Divorced for three years. It was why, in the pathological chaos of Loretta’s apartment—the apartment Julie had assumed was Tom’s Philadelphia home, as well—it had taken her so long to find a reference to his Diamond Lake phone number and address. It explained the sense of uneasiness she’d had as she began to sort through Loretta’s things, and the mounting certainty that the whole situation was not as she’d believed it to be.

Loretta had lied. She’d lied big-time. To herself, perhaps, as much as to everyone else.

“A rocky patch,” she had called it. “A temporary separation. We both just needed space. But if I could give Tom a baby. He’s always wanted kids, and I’m so ready to be a mom, Julie. So ready. My career at the cable station means nothing. I just want Tom, and his baby, and to be a family. I know it’s what he wants, too.”

Pacing in her apartment, two months ago, like a caged animal.

“This infertility thing is killing us, Julie, and it’s strangling our marriage. Slowly, like...like a pair of hands just gradually squeezing together, tighter and tighter. We both agreed it was best to take a break over the summer while I started looking for a surrogate mother. That’s why Tom has gone to the lake. We worked out the contract before he left.

“We just couldn’t stand what we were doing to each other, you see. We were both hurting so bad we’d just lash out over nothing, and then realize and cry and apologize and make promises and break them again two days later. The idea of surrogacy and the terms of the contract are about all we’ve agreed on in weeks. Taking a break is the right thing.”

Why had she lied like that? She had changed Julie’s whole life with those lies.

“Julie, are you all right?” Tom’s voice, dark and low, came out of the mist that enveloped her.

She struggled to open her eyes and banish the dizziness in her head. A couple of deep breaths brought control, but her stomach was turning over. The nausea again.

“You look terrible,” he accused, concern etched onto his face.

“Yes... I’m pregnant.” She waited for a reaction, every muscle and nerve ending coiled. She doubted what Loretta had told her on this issue, too. Perhaps Tom did know. But the loaded word didn’t trigger a flash of understanding. Instead, it only deepened his look of concern.

And he didn’t waste any time clucking in sympathy. “I’ll get dry crackers and water,” he said, already on his feet. “Salted potato chips, too. Don’t move, okay? It’ll take just a minute.”

She tried to get up, to say something polite, but he’d already gone. She stayed where she was, fighting hard against the rebellion in her stomach. Over the past few days, it had gotten to be a more and more familiar feeling.

She wondered how Tom had been able to recognize the symptoms and prescribe the remedy so quickly. A week or two ago, Julie herself wouldn’t have had any idea just how desperately a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy could need crackers and chips.

It had to be fatigue, as well, of course, that had made her nausea get so bad so fast. As Loretta’s closest known relative—almost her only known relative—Julie had been the one to make all the arrangements, deal with the practicalities. No close friends of Loretta’s had shown up with offers of assistance, either. Julie had worked alone from early morning until late at night for days.

There was more to do. Loretta’s apartment was still in chaos. It would have been easier to have someone to share the task with, but Loretta’s father had walked out years ago, and her mother—Julie’s aunt Anne—had died when Julie was eighteen. Aunt Anne had outlived her brother, Jim, Julie’s beloved father, by just five years. As for Julie’s mother, Sharon, Loretta’s aunt by marriage...

Well, Mom was very happy these days, so perhaps it wasn’t fair that Julie felt totally brushed aside and unable to ask for help when she needed it. Mom’s second husband was a thirty-seven-year-old would-be actor, still waiting for his big break, and Sharon Gregory was more obsessive than any stage mother in chasing opportunities for him.

She’d kept dad’s last name when she remarried purely so she could describe herself as Matt Kady’s agent without revealing a conflict of interest. And she seemed to hate the fact that Julie, at twenty-three, proved her old enough to have a grown child.

It was this new distance from her mother that had given Julie the final push she needed to leave California and return to Philadelphia, where she’d lived until the age of nine. And that, of course, was how she’d gotten close to Loretta again over the past three months, after they hadn’t seen each other in more than thirteen years.

Gotten close? She was starting to doubt that now.

“Here.”

Tom was back, with a huge glass of iced water, a freshly opened packet of saltine crackers and a package of chips. Strange chips. He apologized for them at once, while Julie was chewing on her first cracker, feeling the salt begin to settle her stomach.

“I’m sorry about these.” He held up the packet. “Unfortunately they’re Bovril flavored.” His expression was so full of pained regret that Julie almost laughed.

“What is Bovril?” she managed faintly, taking them anyway. The saltines weren’t quite salty enough. Maybe the chips would settle the craving.

“It’s this strange brown drink they have in England,” Tom answered, playing the moment for all it was worth. He could see that Julie badly needed a break.

“Hot and sort of beefy,” he went on. “I was there on business last month and... Well, you see, I have this running gag with my brother Liam. I’m on a mission to find the world’s most bizarre snack foods for him to try.” He grinned, as if he hoped to coax a smile from her as well. “He’s sixteen, and comes up here from Philly a lot in summer.”

“And what did he think of these?” Julie asked, her attention caught now.

It felt almost as good to break their fraught conversation with this moment of lightness as it felt to break her nausea with the crackers. He was doing it deliberately, distracting her with nonsense and she was deeply grateful for his perception.

“He hasn’t tried them yet. He’s working up to it with the safer flavors,” Tom explained, deadpan. “So far he’s tackled ketchup, roast turkey with stuffing and pickled onions, if I remember correctly.”

“Oh. Yummy. Pickled onions, huh?”

Yes! There it was! Tom thought. It didn’t last long. Like a shaft of sunset light breaking through piled clouds and then fading, it was there for just a moment, but the effect of it practically knocked his socks off. Wide and radiant, lighting up her whole face, putting a tiny crease on either side of her pert little nose so that he noticed the freckles again and got a vivid image of her as a kid—a tomboy of a kid who caught frogs and climbed trees and whistled through her finger and thumb.

“To be honest,” he admitted, still watching her, “they all taste mainly of salt.”

“Really? Salt is what I want.”

Julie picked up a cracker and took a bite. Her stomach and taste buds, much to her surprise, approved. She decided to take turns. Cracker. Chip. Water. Slowly.

Tom was watching her. Had been for a while, she knew. “You’re having a hard time.”

“Just these past few days.”

“How far along are you?”

“Not far. About six weeks, the way doctors count it. Four weeks from when I, uh, conceived. I only took the test last Friday. Loretta... never knew.”

“Early days, then,” he said. His voice sounded a little strained at the mention of his ex-wife.

“Yes.”

She gave a tight smile. Early days, and the cause of enormous upheaval in her life. A rethinking of everything in almost every waking moment for days. She was already deeply attached to the life that grew inside her. That didn’t make sense, the way things had started out, but it had happened. She knew that she’d become a part of something important, something that mattered more than anything else, and if Tom could not respond to that and give her what she wanted...

“The nausea doesn’t matter,” she told him firmly. “This baby is the most important thing in the world to me, right now.”

She managed to disguise the unnamed threat in her words, and he responded at once.

“That’s great,” he said. His face softened. “Babies are such incredible packages of hope and love and potential, aren’t they? I’m really happy for you, Julie.”

“Mmm.” She dared to smile at him. He understood. It gave her a warm surge of hope. They could work something out, pull the right solution out of this mess.

Then his gaze flicked to her ringless left hand. His smile gave way to a tiny frown, and her stomach churned again. No, she wasn’t married. She didn’t even have a boyfriend. He’d know why soon enough.

“Hey.” He’d seen that she was struggling again. He was bending down, coaxing her to her feet. “Is this okay? I’d like to get you outside for some fresh air. I had my housekeeper leave us lunch. I can bring it out to the balcony. There’s a breeze off the water, and it’s shady and cool.”

“That sounds great.”

He sounded great. So tender, and so concerned. To have someone care about her physical well-being was so unexpected and so wonderful that it threatened to completely break down the nervous tension, which was all that had kept her going since Sunday. She’d been feeling so alone!

He was holding her from behind, his hand curved like a warm velvet cuff around her forearm. The soft chambray of his shirt covered her bare arm. She could feel the heat of his body against her back through the fine fabric of her cream blouse, and for a moment she let herself sway back, surrendering her weight to his support.

For the first time she fully understood the meaning and significance of the child that grew inside her.

Cradling her in the curve of his arm as he led her through the house, Tom felt his unwanted attraction to her surge again. So she was pregnant! It made sense of the way she looked. There was a secret source to her beauty, which couldn’t quite be explained by adding up her features and assets, since it came from deeper inside her. He felt the swollen fullness of one breast against the crook of his arm and knew that soon she would look as ripe as some lavish tropical fruit.

He wondered why she wasn’t married and why she hadn’t even mentioned a man.

A moment later, she retched, pressed her fist to her mouth and fought hard for control.

“Easy. easy,” he soothed her, as if talking to a nervous colt. “Just take it slowly and keep hold of those crackers!”

“You seem to know,...” she paused and chewed desperately, “a lot about this!” Julie got the words out safely.

“So I should,” he answered her. “I’ve got six younger brothers. I spent months of my childhood on cracker patrol.”

“Six?” She knew at once that Tom’s mother must be more heroic than any warrior.

“And one who’s older.”

“And no girls?”

“No girls,” he agreed cheerfully. “After about number four Mom stopped minding. She figured she and Dad just didn’t have the chemistry in that department, and what the heck, she liked boys anyway.”

“I like boys, too,” she said. “I just about was one, as a kid. A classic tomboy, that is.”

“Yeah, I thought you might have been.” he muttered under his breath.

They reached the balcony. Julie hadn’t taken much notice of the route. Mostly, she’d been looking hard at the floor. Hardwood in some places, slate in others. A couple of large, expensive squares of Turkish carpet. Somehow, she hadn’t guessed that he would be quite so well off and so obviously successful.

Now, Tom settled her in a slat-backed wooden patio chair and promised, “I’ll be back with lunch, okay?”

“Okay,” she nodded.

He was right. It felt a lot better out here in the open.

This balcony didn’t face the dock where she’d arrived. Instead, the light dazzled on the water just beyond a crescent of sandy beach and a shelf of vibrant green lawn, edged with colorful plantings of annuals. A cool breeze blew, combing away the heavy heat, teasing her with its fresh breath on her forehead and cheeks.

Tom was back a few minutes later with turkey club sandwiches crammed with filling, plain iced soda water and a huge bunch of sweet green grapes.

“Mom lived on these, too, I seem to recall.” He grinned.

“I’ll try one.”

Julie pulled a grape off its stem and bit down on the taut, satiny skin. At once it burst in her mouth, and she tasted the flood of sweet juice. Heaven! He gave a grin of sympathy and took a bite of sandwich, revealing teeth that were even, pearl-sheened and perfect.

Then suddenly, now that they were settled, the tension was in the air again. They ate in silence for several minutes before Tom spoke at last. “You seemed shocked to hear that Loretta and I were divorced,” he said. “Was she spinning you a line about us planning to get back together?”

“Yes.” Julie wasn’t surprised that he had zeroed right to what concerned them both. There seemed no point in softening the reply.

“How well did you two know each other?” It sounded like an accusation. “How close were you?”

“She saved my life when I was nine.”

And it made her sterile, although neither of us knew that then.

“That’s close,” he agreed slowly.

“It is. Or it was. And I’ve felt that debt to her, felt my gratitude to her ever since, even during the years we didn’t see each other,” Julie said, then found herself telling the story as if she’d known Tom for weeks instead of less than an hour.

“She was sixteen when it happened. Our families were vacationing together at a small ski resort in Vermont. We’d rented a little cabin. Nothing luxurious. We were skating one evening, and I fell. A kid came past and ran right over my left arm with a hockey skate. It tore open an artery—I still have the scar—and about ten minutes later, the big storm they’d been forecasting came down with a bang. They couldn’t get me farther than the little local hospital.

“Nothing could fly in, either. The airport and helipad were both closed for more than forty-eight hours. I’d lost a lot of blood, and they were out of a match for my type. Out of O negative, also, which anyone can take safely. Loretta’s blood was the only match they could find in a hurry. She gave me two pints, one that night and one the next morning. More than was really safe for her, but only just enough to pull me through.

“Two days later she came down with toxic shock syndrome. In all the drama, she’d forgotten she was finishing her period. She got to be more ill than I was, far more ill, Tom. You know what happened to her. You know how badly her tubes and ovaries were scarred.”

“Yes.” He nodded, his face tight. “The doctors told us that was what made it impossible for her to conceive. I didn’t realize, though, that you were involved.”

“Involved? It was my fault.” Her voice rose.

“No.” He shook his head urgently. “That’s way too extreme, Julie.”

“If I’d known.... If my parents had known what it would ultimately cost her to give me that blood...”

“But you didn’t know. How could you?”

“And yet Loretta never once said to me, ‘It’s your fault.’”

“Yes,” Tom agreed quietly. “She did have moments of surprising heroism sometimes.”

“She seemed like a heroine to me then, when I was nine. She told me a couple of months ago that she’d gotten a kick out of the drama—”

“Yes, I can imagine that.” He gave a faint, crooked smile.

“But that doesn’t take away from what she did and what it cost her!” she said angrily.

Tom’s hostility towards his ex-wife was coming through loud and clear, and blood was thicker than water. Just exactly why had Loretta been so desperate that she would lie about the state of her marriage to Tom, anyway? Suddenly, Julie distrusted him.

“She wasn’t spinning me a line,” she told Tom hotly. “She may have lied about your divorce, but she did want you back! You said so yourself.”

“Not exactly. But we’ll let that pass. She wanted me back so badly that she’d taken a lover in order to forget me, is that it?” he questioned.

His reasoning floored her. Yes, how could Loretta have gotten involved with another man at such a time? But she ignored it and attacked.

“So badly that she was prepared to have another woman bear a baby for her just to make you a father. I don’t know what the truth is about your marriage or your divorce, Tom Callahan, but this baby I’m carrying is yours!”