Baby, Oh Baby! (33 page)

Susanna's eyes grew suspiciously moist. "Oh, dear,, I'm about to puddle up again." She picked up her cup. "I better get busy and drink my tea before Madeline gets; up from her nap."

A few sips later, she handed over her cup. Annie cradled it in her palm, swirled it clockwise three times, then carefully turned it upside down on a saucer. She silently counted to seven, then set it right side up and peered inside.

Susanna leaned close. "What do you see?"

Annie gazed at the wet leaves. Oh, dear—her grand-, mother had always cautioned her about giving people bad news, and Susanna's leaves did not bode well. She hesitated.

"Tell me." Susanna's voice was soft but firm. "I want to know."

Annie drew a steadying breath, and began with the tea leaves nearest the handle. "Something precious is slipping away. Something—someone—is trying to take it from you."

"My marriage?" Susanna whispered.

Annie turned the cup. ``It has to do with love, and it's very close to your heart"

Susanna's eyes were large, her voice just above a whisper. "Is Tom being unfaithful'

Annie peered into the cup. "You still have loyalty in love-but there's a turn ahead. If you don't do something to change the course of events, you will lose it."

"What can I do?"

Annie frowned down at the leaves. "The symbol for war is in your sphere. You'll need to wage a battle. You'll have to fight to keep the one you love.

"Fight?" Susanna's expression fell. "I don't know how to fight."

"Well, you need to learn." Annie stared into the teacup. "You'll have to fight to keep love loyal. The message is there, as plain as day."

"But I don't know how!" The older woman's lovely face was drawn, her eyes distressed. "Conflict upsets me. I was raised to be polite, to get along with people, and it's just too ingrained. Besides, every time I've ever disagreed with Tom, he just walks out. It makes me feel so bad that I always give in."

"Maybe you're not supposed to fight with Tom. Maybe you're supposed to fight for him. I see the letter K. Annie looked from the cup to Susanna. "Do you know anyone whose name starts with a K?"

Susanna's face grew pale. "My Lord. This is eerie."

"I take it that's a yes."

Susanna nodded. "Kelly. She's an attorney. I've suspected for several months that she's after Tom."

"The leaves show that your intuition is very strong in this matter."

"What am I supposed to do?"

Annie continued to gaze at the cup. "Follow your intuition."

"Are there any clues? What am I supposed to fight with?"

Annie turned her palms up. "I'm sorry. The leaves don't give the answers. They just help point the way."

Susanna's eyes were pleading. "Is there anything else? Anything that might indicate what I'm supposed to do?"

"I don't see anything else. I'm sorry." A thought struck her. "Wait! There's one trick my grandmother used once. She said that sometimes there's a clue for the reader in the saucer."

She picked up the saucer she'd drained the teacup into and gazed at it.

Susanna leaned forward. "What do you see?"

Annie stared at the leaves matted on the side of the saucer. "A claw."

"What does that mean? That I'm supposed to scratch her eyes out?" Susanna gave a wan smile. "Can't you just see mean a catfight?"

Annie grinned at the idea of the refined, ladylike Susanna in a knockdown, drag-out brawl. She shook her head. "The saucer is meant to aid the reader, so this message is for me. It's supposed to help me guide you." Annie closed her eyes for a moment and let her mind drift. A claw. A scratch. She let her thoughts free-associate, until an image formed, an image circled in light. She abruptly opened her eyes.

"I've got it! Come with me." Her chair screeched on the wooden floor as she rose from the table and headed back to the living room. Once again she reached for the key on top of the tall apothecary case, and once again she unlocked the glass doors. She pulled out a small, rusted tin can, no bigger than a quarter, and handed it to Susanna, then carefully relocked the case.

The older woman held the tin at arm's length to read the tiny label. "Itching powder?"

Annie nodded. "Grandma's mother gave this to her on her wedding day. She said that if Grandpa ever got an itch to wander, she should give him something to scratch.,

Susanna laughed. "How very appropriate. But what am I supposed to do with it?"

Annie shrugged. "I don't have a clue. I only know you're supposed to have it."

Susanna closed her hand around it. "Maybe it's a good-luck charm. A reminder to follow my intuition."

"And to have the courage to fight for what you love," Annie added.

"Sounds like a reminder you could use, too." Susanna smiled at her as the two strolled back to the kitchen. "I'll call Jake as soon as I get back to Tulsa. I'll tell him you two need some time together as a couple, and I'll insist that he let me have Madeline for the weekend. That way you two will have some time alone."

The thought made Annie's heart race. She watched Susanna pick up her purse and slip the tin of itching powder inside. "What should I do once I get him alone?" Annie asked.

Susanna pulled the purse on her shoulder and grinned. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

Chapter Eighteen

Tom plopped his glass down hard two mornings later sloshing his orange juice on the green linen place mat He frowned across the breakfast table at Susanna. "I wit not sit down to dinner with that—that hussy!"

Susanna adjusted the sash on her silk robe. "Annie isn't a hussy. She's a perfectly lovely young woman She and Jake are going to be in Tulsa this weekend, ate it would be a nice gesture for us to invite them to dinner."

"She's a hussy in my book."

"Tom, we've been. all over this. She's done nothin wrong."

"Oh, no? She hoodwinked Jake into marrying her less than a month after they met."

"That was Jake's idea."

"Hogwash. He has better sense than that. At least. thought he did." Tom swilled his juice, looking like he wished it were bourbon.

Susanna leaned forward. "You're letting this ruin your relationship with Jake. Annie is his wife now. If you met her and gave her half a chance, I'm sure you'd like her."

Tom's lip curled in a snarl. "I wouldn't like her if you told me she was Mother Teresa reincarnated."

"Tom, just listen to yourself. You're being completely unreasonable."

"I can't just sit by and watch this woman try to take Rachel's place."

"She's not trying to take anyone's place."

"What's the matter with you?" Tom leaned forward and glowered. "Has that shrink and those damned pills you're taking addled your brain so much that you've forgotten your own daughter?"

The venom in his voice hurt even more than the words. Susanna rose from the table, picked up her cup, and calmly strode to the coffeemaker on the counter. "This isn't about forgetting, Tom. This is about letting go and letting life go on." Susanne lifted the pot from the burner. "It's interesting that you'd mention my 'shrink,' as you call him, because he says this unreasonable anger of yours is fear in disguise. Fear of facing your own mortality." She splashed some coffee into the cup. "He thinks you're scared to die."

"He's full of bull."

Susanna moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of skim milk. She carefully poured some into her cup. "You know, maybe he is wrong. I don't think you're afraid to die. I think you're afraid to live."

Tom's eyes jerked up to hers, his expression first surprised, then wary. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She moved back to the table and sat down opposite him. "You won't be betraying Rachel, Tom, if you're happy again. If we're happy again."

He raked a hand through his hair and blew out a harsh sigh. "Happy? What the hell is that? I don't think I even remember what it feels like. So much has changed."

Susanna placed her hand on his. Her eyes searched his face. "One thing hasn't. I still love you, Tom."

She needed, desperately needed, to hear him say that he loved her, too. She waited, then waited some more. The words didn't come. The only thing that stirred was the ceiling fan overhead. The silence grew thick and threatening, darkening the sun-filled breakfast room like an ominous thundercloud.

Tom gazed at her, his eyes troubled. "Susanna ..."

Suddenly she knew he was about to say something that would change their lives forever—something like "I want to leave" or "there's someone else" or "I don't love you anymore." She knew, deep and instinctively, that if the words were spoken, their marriage would be over.

She couldn't let him say it, whatever it was. "Oh, Tom, let's get out of here for a while." Her words tumbled out like water over rapids, rushed and jumbled. "Maybe we could take trip to Europe, or go to Hawaii for a week, or .....

"I told you before. I don't have time for that. My schedule is full."

Susanna picked up her spoon and vigorously stirred her coffee. "Well, the national corporate attorney's convention is coming up soon. I can go with you to that."

Tom stared straight into his juice glass. "You wouldn't enjoy it, Susanna. I'm on the conference committee this year. I've got something scheduled just about around the clock."

"Oh, I'll find plenty to do. After all, it's in New Orleans. While you're in meetings, I'll go see the sights with the other wives."

Jake cleared his throat. "I don't think very many spouses are going this year. You shouldn't plan on it."

Until Rachel's death, Susanna had always gone to the convention with him. She'd become good friends with the wives of other attorneys who always went, too.

Oh, dear Lord—that look was back in his eye. He was trying to get up the nerve to say something, something she didn't want to hear. She rose from the table, her cup in her hand, and quickly changed the subject.

"Well, about this weekend ... I won't ask Jake and Annie to dinner. But I've already offered to keep the baby Saturday night."

Tom's eyes followed her as she flitted to the sink and poured her newly poured coffee down the drain. He sighed, then pushed back his chair. "Do what you want. I'm playing in the legal association's annual corporate cup golf tournament this weekend, so I won't be around much."

I hadn't thought you would be. Susanna seized on the topic, eager to keep the conversation on neutral ground. "You and Jake played in that last year, didn't you?"

Tom brow knit in a displeased frown. "Yeah. And he should be playing in it this year, too. Our firm is one of the sponsors. I couldn't believe the lame-ass reason he gave for not participating, either. He said weekends were for his family." Tom shook his head, his expression full of disgust. "We're his family, damn it! I tell you, this woman is brainwashing him. Hell, the other day he said he'd like to start taking on some different types of cases—consumer cases, children's advocacy cases." Tom shook his head. "He's not the person I used to know."

Neither are you. Susanna thought. Neither am I. Rachel's death has turned us all into strangers.

Tom glanced at the clock on the kitchen microwave and sighed. "I'd better get dressed and get to the office."

Susanna watched him head for the stairs, relief and fear mingling in her heart. She'd managed to avert disaster this morning, but how long could she keep him from speaking the awful, fateful words that would end their marriage?

Annie's words floated through her mind: You'll have to wage a battle. You'll have to fight to keep the one you love.

Tom was drifting away—she could see it, she could feel it. She had do something to turn the tide, and she had to do it soon. Somehow, some way, she had to find a way to pull, him back before he'd drifted beyond reach.

"This is so much fun!" Annie's face flushed with excitement as the roller coaster roared into its final turn at the Tulsa County fairgrounds on Saturday.

It sure is, Jake thought, tightening his arm around her. The ride gave him the perfect excuse to touch her, to inhale the scent of her perfume, to feel her hair brush across his skin. A wave of regret washed over him as the ride squeaked to a halt.

"Let's do it again!"

Jake had been thinking the exact same thing ever since the night they'd made love, but it wasn't a roller-coaster ride he'd had in mind. The memory of making love to Annie was torturing him, taunting his thoughts morning, noon and night. .

Especially at night—and especially at Annie's house. It was excruciating, lying in the guest room down the hall from her, just yards from the bed where they'd given and taken such pleasure in' each other. It killed him, knowing that she was lying alone under that crazy covered-wagon canopy, that all he had to do was walk down the hall.

He'd made the logical decision, he told himself over and over. He'd been absolutely right, insisting that their relationship go back to the platonic stage. After all, continued physical involvement would eventually create the type of gut-wrenching divorce experience they both wanted to avoid. And yet, all the logic in the world couldn't keep him from wanting Annie, and all the arguments his lawyer's brain could invent couldn't keep a creeping tenderness from winding into his heart, twisting and binding little bits of her to him, like the tendrils of a vine.

The chemistry between them was strong and combustible, and over the last few weekends, he'd done his best to avoid being alone with her. When he was at the ranch, he went to his bedroom immediately after putting the baby to bed, using the excuse that he had work to do. But instead of studying the piles of legal briefs he brought with him every weekend, he'd sit and listen to the sounds of the night, listen and remember, replaying the sweet way she'd tasted and smelled and felt.

Later, as the night drew on, he'd listen to the sounds of Annie moving through the house, getting ready for bed. He'd hear the shower running, and imagine her taking off her clothes. In his mind's eye he'd see the swell of her breasts, the curve of her-waist, the erotic surprise of her red-gold curls. He'd envision her stepping into the water, envision the wet spray splashing over her smooth, fair, naked skin. She'd torment him with her mere proximity until he was in a white-hot lather.