Nobody's Baby but Mine (41 page)

His mother flinched. Annie shook her head and clucked her tongue. Jane gave him a look of utter contempt and swept into the house, taking the tabloid newspaper with her.

The screen door slammed, and Kevin let out a low whistle. “Damn, Bomber, maybe instead of watching all those game films, you should have been reading a few books on female psychology.”

He knew he’d blown it, but he also knew he’d been pushed past the point of reason. They’d publicly humiliated him, making him look like a clown in front of his wife. With a furious glare at all of them, he spun on his heel and stalked away.

Lynn wanted to cry as she watched him disappear. Her heart went out to him, this stubborn oldest son who’d also been her play companion. He was furious with her, and she could only hope she was doing the right thing and that someday he would understand.

She expected Jim to rush after Cal. Instead, he walked the rest of the way to the porch, but he turned to Annie instead of her. Knowing his feelings about her mother, she waited for his customary display of belligerence, only to be surprised.

“Mrs. Glide, I’d like permission to take your daughter for a walk.”

She caught her breath. This was the first time Jim had come to the house since that night two weeks ago when she’d turned him down. In the days that followed, she’d known she’d done the right thing, but at night when her defenses were down, she’d wished it could have been different. Never had she expected him to swallow his pride enough to repeat his performance as the polite suitor.

Annie, however, didn’t seem to find anything odd about it. “You stay in sight of the house,” she warned him.

A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he gave her a stiff nod.

“All right, then.” Her mother’s bony knuckles dug into the small of her back. “You go on now, Amber Lynn; Jim asked you nice and proper. And you be polite, not snippy like you’ve been with me lately.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Lynn moved down off the step, wanting to laugh even as she felt her eyes tear.

Jim’s hand curled around her own. He gazed down at her, and the warm golden flecks in his hazel eyes suddenly reminded her how tender he’d been through her three pregnancies. When she was at her fattest, he’d kissed her belly and told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world. As her hand nestled like a small bird in his larger one, she thought how quick she was to forget the good and remember the bad.

He led her toward the path that curved into the woods. Despite her mother’s words, they were soon out of sight of the house.

“Pretty day,” he said. “A little warm for May.”

“Yes.”

“It’s quiet up here.”

It astonished her that he was still willing to address her as if they’d just met. She rushed to join him in this new place where neither had ever hurt the other. “It’s quiet, but I love it.”

“You ever get lonely?”

“There’s a lot to do.”

“What?”

He turned to gaze at her, and she was struck by the intensity in his expression. He wanted to know how she spent her day! He wanted to listen to her! With a sense of delight, she told him.

“All of us get up early. I like to walk in the woods as soon as the sun’s up, and when I get back, my daughter-in-law—” She faltered, then glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Her name is Jane.”

He frowned, but said nothing. They moved deeper into the woods where rhododendron and mountain laurel stretched on each side of the path, along with clusters of violets, trillium, and a burgundy carpet of galax. A pair of dogwood celebrated with a splash of white blossoms their escape from the fungus that had destroyed so many of the species in the Carolina mountains. Lynn inhaled the rich, moist scent of earth that smelled new.

“Jane has breakfast ready when I’m done walking,” she went on. “My mother wants bacon and eggs, but Jane fixes whole grain pancakes or oatmeal with a little fresh fruit, so Annie is generally trying to pick a fight with her as I’m coming into the kitchen. Jane’s wily, though, and she does a better job of getting her way with Annie than anyone else in my family. When breakfast is over, I listen to music and clean up the kitchen.”

“What kind of music?”

He knew exactly what kind. Over the years he’d switched their various car radios from her classical stations to his country and western hundreds of times. “I love Mozart and Vivaldi, Chopin, Rachmaninoff. My daughter-in-law likes classic rock. Sometimes we dance.”

“You and . . . Jane?”

“She’s developed a passion for Rod Stewart.” Lynn laughed. “If he comes on the radio, she makes me stop whatever I’m doing and dance with her. She’s like that with some of the newer groups, too—ones you’ve never even heard of. Sometimes she has to dance. I don’t think she did much of it when she was growing up.”

“But she— I heard she’s a scientist,” he said cautiously.

“She is. But mostly now she says she just wants to grow her baby.”

Time ticked by as he took that in. “She sounds like an unusual person.”

“She’s wonderful.” And then, impulsively, “Would you like to come back for supper tonight so you can get to know her better?”

“Are you inviting me?” His face registered both surprise and pleasure.

“Yes. Yes, I think I am.”

“All right, then. I’d like that.”

They walked for a while without speaking. The path narrowed, and she moved off it, leading him toward the creek. They’d come here dozens of times when they were kids and sat side by side on an old log that had long since rotted away. Sometimes they’d simply watched the water rush over the mossy rocks, but most of the time, they’d made out. Cal had been conceived not far from here.

He cleared his throat and lowered himself onto the trunk of a yellow buckeye that had fallen along the edge of the creek bed in some forgotten storm. “You were pretty tough on my son back there.”

“I know.” She sat next to him, but not quite touching. “I have a grandchild to protect.”

“I see.”

But she could tell he didn’t see at all. Just weeks ago, his uncertainty might have made him snap at her, but now he seemed more contemplative than irritated. Was he beginning to trust her?

“Do you remember that I told you my marriage was breaking up?”

She felt herself tensing. “I remember.”

“It’s my fault. I just want you to know that if you’re thinking about . . . seeing me.”

“All your fault?”

“Ninety-nine percent. I blamed her for my own shortcomings and didn’t even realize it.” He braced his forearms on his knees and gazed at the rushing water. “For years I let myself believe I’d have become a world-famous epidemiologist if I hadn’t been forced to marry so young, but it wasn’t until after she left me that I figured out I was kidding myself.” He clasped his hands together, those strong, healing hands that had served as the gateway for both birth and death in this county. “I would never have been happy away from these mountains. I like being a country doctor.”

She was touched by the depth of emotion she heard in his voice and thought he might finally have rediscovered a part of himself that he’d lost. “What about her one percent?”

“What?” He turned his head.

“You said you were 99 percent to blame. What about her one percent?”

“Even that wasn’t really her fault.” She didn’t know if it were a trick of the light or a reflection from the water, but his eyes seemed full of compassion. “She didn’t have many advantages when she was growing up, and she never had much formal education. She says I always looked down on her because of it, and she’s probably right—she is about most things—but I think now she might have made it easy for me to look down on her because, even though she’s accomplished more than most people could in two lifetimes, she’s never thought much of herself.”

Her mouth snapped open, but then she shut it. How could she refute what was so patently true?

For a moment she let herself contemplate how far she had come in her life. She saw all the hard work and self-discipline that had been necessary for her to become the woman she’d wanted to be. As if from a distance, she viewed who she was and found she liked what she saw. Why had it taken her so long to accept herself? Jim was right. How could she have expected him to respect her when she didn’t? In her mind that accounted for more than one percent of the blame, and she told Jim so.

He shrugged. “I guess I don’t much care what the number is.” He picked up her hand, which rested on her thigh, and ran his thumb along the ragged edge of one of her fingernails, then up over the ridge of her wedding band. He didn’t look at her, and his voice held a soft, gravelly note that was filled with emotion. “My wife is so much a part of me, she’s like the breath coming into my body. I love her very much.”

His simple, emotion-filled statement shook her, and her words snagged in her throat. “She’s very lucky.”

He lifted his head and gazed at her. She recognized the moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes as tears. In thirty-seven years, she had never once seen her husband cry, not even the day they’d buried Cherry and Jamie.

“Jim . . .” She slipped into his arms and found that old familiar place that God had created just for her out of Jim’s bone and muscle and flesh. Feelings she couldn’t express choked her, making her brain fuzzy, so that the next words she spoke weren’t what she’d intended at all. “You should know I don’t sleep with men on the first date.”

“Is that so?” His voice was husky.

“It’s because I started having sex when I was too young.” She drew away from him, looked down into her lap. “I didn’t want to, but I loved him so much that I didn’t know how to say no.”

She glanced up to see how he’d taken her statement. She didn’t want to throw more guilt in his face; she merely needed him to understand how it had been.

His smile held a hint of sadness, and he brushed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “Did it turn you against sex for life?”

“Oh, no. I was blessed with a wonderful lover. Maybe a little clumsy when he got started, but it didn’t take him long to get it right.” She smiled.

“I’m glad to hear that.” His thumb trailed over her bottom lip. “You should know right now that I don’t have a lot of sexual experience. I’ve only been with one woman.”

“That’s nice.”

He pushed her hair back from her face on one side with his fingers. “Did anybody ever tell you you’re beautiful? A lot messier than my wife but still a traffic-stopper.”

She laughed. “I couldn’t stop traffic if I had a red light in the middle of my forehead.”

“That just goes to show what you know.” He took her hand and drew her to her feet. As his head dipped, she realized he was going to kiss her.

The brush of his lips was gentle and familiar. He kept his body away from hers so only their mouths touched, along with their hands, which were linked at their sides. Their kiss quickly lost its gentleness and grew urgent with passion. It had been so long for them, and there was so much they needed to express that lay beyond words. But she loved his courtship and wanted more time.

He drew back as if he understood and regarded her with glazed eyes. “I—I have to get back to my office. I’m already going to be late for my afternoon appointments. And when we make love, I don’t want to be rushed.”

She felt heavy-limbed and wobbly with anticipation. She tucked her hand in his as they moved back to the path.

“When you come over for dinner, maybe we’ll have some time to talk, and you can tell me about your work.”

A smile of pure pleasure lit his face. “I’d like that.”

She realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked him anything beyond a cursory, “How was your day?” This business of listening to each other was going to have to go both ways.

His smile faded, and his forehead creased. “I don’t suppose I could bring my son along when I come to dinner?”

She hesitated for only a moment before she shook her head. “I’m sorry. My mother wouldn’t allow it.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be taking orders from your mother?”

“Sometimes she has a feeling about how things should go. Right now, she has feelings about who should come to the house and who shouldn’t.”

“And my son isn’t welcome?”

She regarded him unhappily. “I’m afraid not. I hope . . . soon. It’s really in his hands, not Annie’s.”

His jaw set in its familiar stubborn line. “It’s hard to believe you’re letting an old woman who’s half-crazy make decisions about something so important.”

She drew him to a stop and pressed a kiss to the corner of that stubborn jaw. “Maybe she’s not as crazy as you think. After all, she was the one who told me I had to take this walk with you.”

“You wouldn’t have done it otherwise?”

“I don’t know. I have a lot at stake in my life right now, and I don’t want to make a mistake. Sometimes mothers know what’s best for their daughters.” She regarded him levelly. “And their sons.”

He shook his head, and his shoulders slumped in resignation. “All right. I guess I know when I’m in over my head.”

She smiled and had to restrain herself from kissing him again. “We eat early. Six o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”