Bundle of Joy (11 page)

But there was still the matter of the kiss to be disposed of. Charlie spanned her waist with his hands.

Caroline rested her hands on his shoulders.

He bent forward.

She lifted her head.

His mouth was as warm and sensual as she'd remembered.

She tasted as sweet as she had that night in the store.

And it occurred to both of them that this arrangement might be more complicated than they had figured.

iv

The newlyweds took separate cars back to Caroline's place because Charlie's truck was packed with his belongings. Admittedly it had looked a trifle odd when the wedding guests split up into two divisions, each armed with rose petals to toss at the departing bride and groom as they ran to their respective vehicles but why should this be any different. From the very first, nothing about Caroline and Charlie's alliance had been anything approaching normal.

Caroline took the back roads from Rocky Hill to the outer edge of Princeton where her condo was located. The country lanes wove in and out of neighborhoods too new to have lawns or trees or lamp posts, and Caroline experienced a brief stab of regret that the open expanses of wild and free land she'd known as a child would be long gone by the time her own child was old enough to enjoy them. She drove slowly, glancing into her rearview mirror from time to time to make certain Charlie was still behind her. It would be easy to lose him on one of these winding roads that she had followed on her great earring hunt earlier in the evening. She hadn't lost her earrings; she'd lost her nerve.

The thought also occurred to her that she could keep driving all night and eliminate the awkwardness she knew lay ahead of them but she turned right into Princeton Park and Gardens. Each apartment owner was assigned two parking spaces. She took her usual spot and motioned for Charlie to park next to her. How strange it was to see his truck angled beside her sports
car.

Good
grief,
she thought as she swung her legs out of her car,
if you're having trouble adjusting to sharing your parking spaces, what on earth are you going to do with your bed?

Now that was a topic that didn't bear close scrutiny. At least not at that particular moment with Donohue, her new husband, standing next to her.

"The end unit's mine," she said. "Number 15. Make sure you put that number on all of your mail."

"Won't need to," said Donohue. "I'll get my mail at my place."

She nodded, oddly stung.
Get a grip on yourself, Bradley. Why would he sell his house over a temporary arrangement?
"I can help you unload the truck if you like."

"Just open the front door. I'll take care of the rest."

She did as he said, kicking off her shoes in the foyer. It was wonderful to be back home on familiar ground. For a while tonight she'd felt as if she were Alice disappearing through the rabbit hole. Here, surrounded by her Wedgwood and Lalique and English country garden furnishings, she felt anchored. Grounded in reality. Her place. Her things.
Her husband?

"Where do I put my gear?"

She jumped at the sound of Donohue's voice in the doorway. "What do you have there?"

He looked down at the tangle in his arms. "Clothes mostly. CDs. Tapes. That type of thing."

"Leave the tapes and CDs on the hall table. I'll show you where you can put your clothes."

The closet in the guest bedroom had been turned into an elaborate storage area for gowns, palazzo pants, and one-of-a-kind items she absolutely adored. In fact, the entire room functioned strictly as a dressing area for Caroline, a fact that made her feel enormously uncomfortable as Donohue took in his surroundings.

Why on earth hadn't it occurred to her to order a bed for him?

She turned on her heel and hurried back down the hallway to the master bedroom. The closet situation in there wasn't much better. Yves St. Laurent mingled with Chanel. Galanos and Donna Karan were on intimate terms. Not to mention the vintage Balenciaga, 1947 Dior, and the wonderful Courreges mini-dress from the Age of Aquarius.

She gasped in horror as Donohue's huge paw of a hand reached into her closet and shoved her treasures off to one side.

"I don't need a hell of a lot of space," he said, blissfully unaware of the havoc he was causing. "Just room enough for my jeans, a few shirts, and my fishing pole."

The thought of his Levi 501s sharing closet space with her Chanels made her feel light-headed and she sank down onto her watered silk bedspread.

He was next to her in a flash. "You okay?" he asked, crouching down in front of her.

She lowered her head between her knees in the position that was quickly becoming second nature to her and waited for the dizziness to pass. It didn't. Each time she opened her eyes and saw the flash of gold on the ring finger of her left hand, her stomach turned inside out and her life seemed to pass before her eyes.

It took him a few seconds but Charlie finally caught on. Caroline was having an anxiety attack and it was a beaut. As close as he could tell, the anxiety had something to do with her clothes closet. The random daydreams he'd entertained about a
real wedding night vanished. He'd be lucky if he ended up sleeping in the same town with his new wife.

He yanked the offending garments out of the sanctuary of her closet and tossed them over his arm. There had to be a coat closet some place in this museum she called home, he thought as he stormed through the place. A broom closet, maybe, where his stuff could hang without causing any danger to world peace.

"This isn't exactly a walk in the park for me either," he mumbled as he shoved his clothes into a closet off the kitchen that held cleaning supplies, a vacuum cleaner, and a ten-year supply of Ultra Slim-Fast. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if he'd done what some other guy might have done, what Caroline herself had suggested he do. He could've paid lip service to the pregnancy, tossed a few dollars her way, then bailed out until the kid was all pink and cute and wrapped in a pastel blanket. Kids were flexible. They learned how to roll with the punches. Charlie had had more than his share of stepfathers in his day and he hadn't turned out too bad.

But the young Charlie Donohue was still there, lurking behind the scenes ready to strike. The young Charlie remembered how it felt to be on the outside looking in, wanting the one thing he couldn't have: a father who belonged to him alone. Maybe this idea of his to marry Caroline was a stupid one; maybe it wouldn't save the kid one damn bit of pain in the long run. Maybe the kid wouldn't even remember that his parents had been married at all.

But Charlie would and that made all the difference....

"Charles! Did I hear you in the music room? You know you're not supposed to touch anything in there."

Yeah, and so what else is new? You can't touch anything in this stupid house.

Charlie Donohue, ten years old and growing, ducked behind the comforting bulk of the grand piano and waited. He'd been out playing stickball miles away from home and he'd clean forgotten he was wearing his new clothes. Who had time to think about things like keeping your knees clean when you'd finally convinced the guys you weren't a snooty rich kid and you really and truly could play ball with the best of them? Not Charlie! He hadn't been about to let this chance pass him by, not even if it meant incurring his mother's wrath later on.

Now he wasn't so sure he'd made the right choice.

His mother's footsteps clicked across the polished parquet floor then squished into the carpeting. Closer...closer...he could see the expensive suede shoes right there in front of his nose. He pulled back deeper into the shadow cast by the piano and held his breath. A sneeze began working its way up from the soles of his feet and his eyes watered as he struggled to fight it down. If his mother saw what had happened to his new pants and shirt--well, he didn't want to think about it.

Muttering something about children being a trial of the soul, his mom left the room and with her went Charlie's urge to sneeze. Wouldn't that be funny? he thought, crawling out from his hiding spot. Allergic to his own mother! And it could happen, too. He just knew it. He'd bet his electric train set that his latest stepfather was as allergic to Charlie as Charlie was to him. Franklin's lean and ruddy face wrinkled into a network of creases each time he saw Charlie and his voice sounded all puffed up and scratchy the way a grownup's voice always sounded when he had a real bad stuffy nose.

Uncle Franklin was Charlie's second stepfather. Uncle Tony before him hadn't been too bad. At least Uncle Tony had understood that kids liked to get dirty. There'd been a few others in between, men his mom had come real close to marrying but once they met Charlie those men had vanished into the woodwork. Sometimes Charlie thought about his real father but he never could quite bring the picture to life inside his head. His mom never talked about him; all Charlie knew about his dad was what he'd overheard his grandma Donohue whispering about in the kitchen one Christmas. "Such a handsome boy," Grandma had said, "but so selfish. Ran off, he did, at the first sign of trouble...no surprise that he came to a bad end."

Charlie knew what "trouble" meant: a baby.
Him
.
There was something about kids that made grownup men run faster than the Road Runner when that coyote was on his tail.

A streak of mud followed him out from under the piano. The reddish-brown color of clay, the streak striped the ivory carpet in a pattern of dark and light dirt that Charlie knew would get him the whipping of his young life. The way the house looked was everything to his mother, from the perfectly hung silk drapes at the windows to the fancy upholstery on the furniture to the floors that really and truly
did
look like somebody could eat off them.

Now that was a funny thought. Charlie tried to imagine his mom and his latest dad sitting down on the spanking clean kitchen floor while they ate whatever fancy food with the impossible-to-pronounce names they were eating this week. Charlie hated food with fancy names. Once they'd given him something called "pat-tay" and he'd thrown up on his sneakers. They said he'd learn to like it when he grew up but Charlie knew he was never going to like anything with liver in it.
Not ever.
When he grew up, he was going to make sure he ate steak and french fries and hamburgers and corn on the cob every day of his life.

He glanced around at all the shiny glass and silver in the music room. Everything had an invisible "don't touch" sign on it, as if the entire room had been designed with making kids miserable in mind. He'd never live in a house like this when he grew up. His house would be big and sloppy, crammed with dogs and cats and roller skates and baseballs.

And he would never, ever forget how it felt to be a kid. Or how it felt to want a father of his own who really cared about him and not just some man who happened to be married to his mother....

#

Caroline sat on the edge of her bed and listened as her husband shoved baseball mitts and worn-out jeans into her linen closet. Why hadn't they decided to be civilized about this arrangement and keep separate addresses? T
here was something terribly outdated about Donohue's insistence upon actually living together. Being married should have been more than enough to satisfy him but, no. Not Donohue. Only moving into her beautiful home lock, stock, and fishing pole was enough for him.

Gently she cupped her still-flat stomach and sighed. "Seven months and one week left," she said into the perfumed air of her boudoir. "I can do it."

She heard Donohue's footsteps retreating toward the front room. Rising from the bed, she quickly unbuttoned her suit jacket and slipped out of her skirt. A narrow ridge of red flesh remained where the waistband of her skirt had been and she stared at it in the mirror. Apparently there was more truth to the statement she'd made to Sam days ago than even Caroline had imagined: her days in "civilian" clothes were numbered.

She draped the jacket and skirt over the chaise longue by the French doors then retrieved a jade green kimono from the right side of her walk-in closet. Her panty hose felt like a tourniquet. Reaching under her half-slip she began easing them down inch by inch until a noise in the doorway brought her up short.

"Don't stop on my account."

Donohue, still in his wedding finery, was leaning against the jamb, watching.

"How long have you been there?" she asked, sliding the hose off her feet and reaching for the kimono tossed across the bed.

"Not long."

She tied the belt and reached down for the pantyhose. "Will you excuse me?" The last thing she needed was for him to hang around while she put her lingerie in the clothes hamper.

Donohue, however, was not a subtle sort of man. He followed her into the master bath at the near end of the bedroom.

"Decadence is alive and well," he said, whistling low. "Is that a tub or a swimming pool?"

"Garden variety bathtub." She lifted the lid on the built-in clothes hamper and deposited her pantyhose. Everything else would have to wait. "Don't tell me," she said, casting him a look over her shoulder. "You have a shower stall and cold water only at your house."