Читать книгу Beauty and the Baby - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 10

T he parking lot was deserted, except for Carson’s beat-up pickup truck. His other car, a sedan, was housed in his garage at home. Right beside the classic Buick Skylark he had been lovingly restoring for the past three years. Lori had a hunch that working on the car was what kept him sane.

Everyone needed something, she mused.

Parking beside the truck, Lori got out and crossed to the rear entrance. Curiosity piqued, she let herself into the building and walked down the short hallway to the back office. Light was pooling out into the room onto the floor outside, beckoning to her.

For a moment, she stood in the doorway, watching him, trying to be impartial. Carson was really a very good-looking man, she thought. Handsomer, actually, than Kurt had been. There was a maturity about him, a steadfastness that marked his features. It was a plateau that Kurt hadn’t reached yet.

What Carson needed, she decided, was a life. A life that went beyond these trouble-filled walls. Contrast was always a good thing.

Right now, he looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. A weight he guarded jealously. Carson O’Neill wasn’t a man who shared responsibility or had ever learned how to delegate. He thought he had to do it all in order for it to be done right.

Carson glanced up. He’d thought he felt someone looking at him, but he hadn’t expected it to be Lori. If he was surprised to see her standing there, he made sure he didn’t show it. He let the papers he was shuffling through sit quietly on the desk.

“Can’t seem to get rid of you, can I?” And then he realized how late it was. How did she get in after hours? It was late. “I thought I locked up.”

“You did. I have keys, remember?” She held them up and jingled the set for his benefit before slipping them back into her purse.

He laughed shortly. “That’ll teach me to hand out keys indiscriminately.”

“You really are in a mood tonight, aren’t you?” She noted that he wasn’t smiling and there was an edge to his words.

Carson laced his fingers together as he leaned back in his chair and rocked, looking at the stack of bills that never seemed to go away, never seemed to get smaller. It felt as if he had come full circle in his life, except that this time, he was hunting for funds at work instead of in his private life.

“Looking for money that isn’t there always does that to me.”

She crossed to his desk and picked up the last paper in his in-box. It was from the electric company. The one beneath it was for the phones. Both were past due. She had a feeling they weren’t the only ones.

Dropping the papers, Lori raised her eyes to his. “Trouble keeping the wolf away from the door?”

He shook his head. Times were tight. People picked and chose their charities carefully. St. Augustine’s had no name and wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list. If it closed its doors, no one would notice. No one except the kids who needed it most.

Carson sighed. “It’s beyond trouble. More like a major disaster.” He glanced at the figures on the computer monitor again. They didn’t get any better no matter how many times he looked at them. “I’m trying to meet 2003 prices with a 1950s budget.”

Her heart went out to him. He was one of the good guys no matter what kind of face he tried to present to the world. But she was a firm believer in it always being darkest before the dawn. Somehow, he’d find the money to make it through one more month. And then another, and another. He had before.

Lori smiled at him. “I think this is the part where Mickey Rooney jumps up on a table and shouts, ‘Hey kids, let’s save the old place by putting on a show.’”

The funny thing was, Carson understood what she was talking about. She’d made him watch one of those old movies once. It was while Kurt was still alive. His brother was out of town on some get-rich-quick venture and he’d come down with the flu. This was right after he’d taken over at the center and Jaclyn had walked out on him. Lori had come by with chicken soup she’d made from scratch and a sack of videotapes to entertain him despite his protests to the contrary. It was around then that he’d begun to seriously envy his brother.

But he scowled now. He needed a miracle, not an old movie grounded in fantasy. “People really watched films like that in the old days?”

She nodded. “Ate them up.”

He pushed himself away from the desk, wishing he could push himself away from the bills as easily. “Well, there’s no one to put on a show here.”

Lori had felt tired until she’d walked in. Now, one thought was forming into one hell of an idea. “No, but there could be a fund-raiser.”

“What?” She was babbling, he thought. Fund-raisers were for fashionable causes backed by wealthy foundations and people blessed with too much money and too much time on their hands.

Lori’s mind was racing. There was Sherry’s fiancé, not to mention the man who had returned into Joanna’s life. Both were well-connected billionaires in their own right. It could work.

Her grin was almost blinding. It matched the sparkle in her eyes as she turned them on him. He had trouble keeping his mind on the situation.

“I know a few people who know a few people who have more money than God.” Maybe it was time she got together with the ladies of the Mom Squad again, Lori thought. She’d been the one who had baptized the group, the one who had been instrumental in bringing them all together for mutual support in the first place. Maybe it was time to spread some of that support around. “From what I hear, they’re always up for worthy causes.”

Even so, that did him no good. “And probably get hit up by them every other minute of their lives.”

She looked at him fondly. No one would ever accuse Carson of being a rampaging optimist. “Which is why having the inside track is a good thing.”

He looked at her skeptically. “And you have the inside track.”

He didn’t believe her. What else was new? She had a feeling that if he ever traced his family tree, he would find that his lineage went back to the original Doubting Thomas.

“Anymore ‘inside,’ she told him, “and it might have to be surgically removed.”

“What the hell do they put in those prenatal vitamins of yours?” She was dreaming, pure and simple. And wasting his time with pipe dreams. Miracles didn’t happen to people like him.

She’d made up her mind about this and she wasn’t about to allow him to rain on her parade. “Energy.”

He laughed, shaking his head. Watching her as she moved about his broom closet of an office. “Like you need some.”

Her eyes laughed at him. The man was never satisfied. She’d be satisfied just removing the furrow from between his brows. “This afternoon you were complaining I looked tired.” She grinned. “There is just no pleasing you, is there?”

She had a way of lighting up a room, he thought, even when he wanted nothing else than to stay in the dark. “You don’t have to please me, Lori—”

Lori came around to his side of the desk and then sat down on top of it. She looked down on Carson, her eyes teasing him. “No, but I’d like to try. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.”

“Why?”

His eyes looked so serious. Her grin softened into a smile. “Because you deserve to be happy.”

He lifted his shoulders, shrugging carelessly. “Not according to my ex-wife.”

“What does she know?” Lori scoffed. She’d never really liked Jaclyn. The woman had turned out to be a self-serving gold digger, pushing Carson to get further along in his career not for his benefit, but for hers. “If she knew anything, she wouldn’t be your ex-wife, she’d still be your wife.”

The assertion embarrassed him. He didn’t know how to handle compliments. He never had. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

She’d almost forgotten. “I came to see if I could find Angela’s phone number.”

More than a hundred and seventy kids came to the center during the week. He was drawing a blank. “Angela?”

“The tall, thin girl who’s so good at basketball. Brunette, dark brown eyes. Laughs like a blue jay,” she prompted.

The last struck a chord. “Oh, right.” And then he looked at her. He couldn’t think of a more unlikely coupling. “Why do you want her number?”

She debated just how much she should tell him. “I want to see how she’s doing.”

“Why? Can’t find anyone your own age to play with?” Carson studied her face in the dim light. “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t read her expression any more than he could read Japanese. “Why would you want to see how she’s doing?” Instincts told him not to drop the matter. “Something wrong?”

Lori didn’t want to break a confidence. “It could be.”

The expression on Carson’s face told her she’d lost all chance of leaving the building with the phone number without giving him some sort of an explanation. She hadn’t promised Angela not to tell anyone, but it had been implied. Still, Carson had a good heart, despite his tough, blustery manner and he’d been running this center for a while now. He had a right to know what was going on. Besides, he might be able to offer some insight into how to handle the situation.

Lori bit her lower lip. “She thinks she might be pregnant.”

The news stunned him. He stared at Lori blankly, wondering if he’d heard right. “She’s only, what, thirteen?”

“Fifteen,” Lori corrected, although she could see how he’d make the mistake. Angela had a baby face that made her look younger than she was.

Thirteen, fifteen, there hardly seemed a difference. “A baby.”

She knew how Carson felt. But it was a sad fact of life. “Babies have been having babies for a long time now.”

Carson scrubbed his hand over his face. Damn it, the center was supposed to prevent this kind of thing. The kids were supposed to use up their energy on sports, not sex. “How do you figure into this?”

“I found her crying in the back of the locker area today and got her to talk to me.”

Lori had that kind of knack, he thought, the kind that made people open up to her, even hard cases. At times even he had trouble keeping his own counsel around her. “Does her mother know?”

She shook her head. “I think Angela’s afraid of her mother.”

“I’d be afraid of my mother if I was pregnant at fifteen.”

She laughed. “If you were pregnant at fifteen, it would have made all the scientific journals.” Her grin broadened and she was relieved to be able to have something to laugh at. “If you were pregnant at any age, it would have made the scientific journals.”

Carson gave her a dry look. “Very funny.” Maybe it would do Angela some good to talk to Lori, he reasoned. Girls in trouble tended to do drastic things. Minimizing his current program, Carson typed in something on his keyboard and brought up a directory. He scrolled down the screen. “Here it is, Angela Coleman.” Taking an index card, he jotted down the phone number for Lori, then handed it to her.

She looked at the single line, then held the card out to him. “How about the address?”

“Oh no, I don’t want you driving there in your condition.” When she turned to look at the screen, he shut the program.

She frowned at his screensaver. “The DMV have a ban on pregnant women?”

She was going to fight him on this, he just knew it. The woman didn’t have the sense of a flea. “Lori, it’s not the safest neighborhood.” He shouldn’t have to tell her that.

“Angela lives there.”

There were times he just wanted to take Lori by the shoulders and shake her. Because there were times that her Pollyanna attitude could put her in serious jeopardy. It was bad enough that she traveled here to work. He didn’t want her taking unnecessary chances by pressing her luck. “There’s nothing I can do about that. There is something I can do about you, though.”

She knew he meant well, but good intentions still didn’t give him the right to order her around. “Slavery went out a hundred and thirty-seven years ago, Carson. You don’t own me.”

He rose from his chair and looked down at her. “No, but I’m bigger.”

Lori wiggled off the desk. And met him toe to toe, raising her chin defiantly. “Plan to stuff me into a box?”

Damn but her chin did present a tempting target. So did her lips. The thought shook him and he blocked it almost immediately. But not soon enough to erase it or its effect on him.

“If I have to.”

And then her expression softened. He couldn’t tell if she’d been putting him on or not. Or was doing so now. “In your own twisted little way, you care about me, don’t you?”

“Don’t overanalyze everything.” He didn’t want this going any further. “You’re carrying around my niece or nephew in there, that gives me the right to tell you not to be an idiot.”

“You do have a way with words.” Lori looked at him for a long moment. Others might buy into his gruff routine, but she didn’t. She’d seen something else in his eyes. A man who didn’t know how to connect. Even though he sorely needed to. “You miss her a lot, don’t you?”

Now what the hell was she talking about? It was getting late and he was in no mood for this. “Who?” he snapped.

“Sandy.”

The mention of his now five-year-old daughter took some of the fire out of him. He let his guard down an inch. There was no shame in admitting his feelings about the little girl. “Don’t get to see her nearly enough.”

That was because he spent nearly every waking minute here, she thought. “Why don’t you take tomorrow off? I’ll cover for you. Go see your daughter.”

It wasn’t nearly that simple. “I’ve got limited visitation rights,” he ground out.

She’d forgotten about that. He’d told her about it during the only time she had ever seen him intoxicated. The terms of the divorce had just been worked out. Jaclyn in her wrath had hit him where she knew it would hurt the most. She’d used their daughter as a tool to get back at him.