She's Having a Baby (10 page)

“I know. He already called. Sounds very excited.” She heard what sounded like a suppressed sigh on the other end of the line. She would have thought that Quade would be happy about this. “Something wrong?”

He was about to say no. It wasn't as if he were even remotely accustomed to sharing his feelings about things, especially things that bothered him. But in a way, he supposed she was involved in this.

“Petrocelli wants me to give the keynote speech at the fund-raiser.”

“Excellent.”

He could almost hear her beaming. The woman probably gave speeches in her sleep.

“Not so excellent,” he told her. “I don't know the first thing about giving a speech, keynote or otherwise.” If he had anything noteworthy to say about the research he was doing, he put it in writing to share with other researchers. He'd never once gotten up in front of a group to talk about the small headway he was making or about the numerous setbacks he'd endured.

“But you know about your work, don't you? Just talk about that,” MacKenzie suggested.

She heard a small, dry laugh. The sound rippled along her skin. She pressed the receiver closer to her ear.

“And put everyone to sleep?”

“It won't be as bad as all that,” she assured him. She'd never met anyone as self-effacing as Quade was. “Tell you what—you can practice on me if you like. And maybe I can help you keep the speech from turning into the next big cure for insomnia,” she teased. She hesitated for a moment, not wanting to throw another wrench into the works, especially since he'd been the one to call her, but she might as well make the arrangements now. If she didn't, she'd only have to seek him out later. “By the way, Dakota would like to meet you.”

For a man whose chief goal in life was to be left in peace, he was certainly drawing an incredible amount of fire. “Excuse me?”

“Dakota's always been a people person and she likes meeting the people who are involved in a cause when she gives her name to it.”

He could understand that. What he didn't understand was what the star of
…And Now a Word from Dakota
wanted with him. Other than drawing a salary for his work, he hardly figured into this. “Isn't she meeting with Petrocelli?”

“Yes, but you're the one who first brought this to light.”

Quade paused. He tried to remember how all of this had originally unfolded. “I mentioned it to you over dinner. I was just making conversation and nothing else came to mind.” And let this be a lesson to him, he thought. From now on, he was going to limit his conversations to simple one-word answers, nothing more.

“You can tell her all that when you meet her,” MacKenzie told him cheerfully. “It'll just be for a few minutes,” she assured him. “Relax, I've never known Dakota to bite.” She laughed and he tried to block the sound, but it was too late. It worked its way into his system, unearthing the same response he'd had to her the other day. When he'd kissed her. “And even if she did, I'm sure you've got something down at Wiley Memorial that covers that.”

He sighed. He didn't have to be a war veteran to know when he was outflanked. Quade had no doubt that MacKenzie would go on talking until he surrendered.

“There's no way out of this, is there?” Even as he asked, he already knew the answer.

“Well, she's not the Queen of England—she can't command you to come, but it would be a nice thing if you did.”

He wasn't interested in being nice, just in being left alone. But even he knew that you got more things with honey than you did with vinegar and, right now, Wiley Memorial needed all the honey it could find.

Still, he felt it was only fair to warn the woman who had put herself out on a limb for him. “You said she was a people person. I'm not. I'm a loner. I do best when I'm left alone.”

“Later,” MacKenzie promised, “when this fund-raiser is behind you and Wiley Memorial is back on its way to thriving, you can go back to being a loner. Right now, I'm afraid that your company needs you,” she quipped.

MacKenzie was right. Much as he didn't want to, Quade had no choice but to agree with her. “So when do you want to set up the meeting?”

“As soon as possible. Petrocelli is coming by on Wednesday. Why don't you come by the set tomorrow? One o'clock's a good time.”

“Why don't I just come with Petrocelli?” he asked. That way, he wouldn't have to say too much. Petrocelli was the kind of man who took over a room whenever he entered. It wasn't in his nature not to.

“Because she wants to meet you first.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?” she lied.

She knew exactly why Dakota wanted to meet him separately. It had to do with the damn cameo. Dakota
was convinced it held some kind of magical power and she was fixating on the fact that Quade had turned up a day after MacKenzie had begun wearing the necklace.

But since Dakota was going out of her way to arrange for the fund-raiser, the least MacKenzie could do was go along with this.

However, saying any of this to Quade was a guarantee that the man would head for the nearest mountain range and hide there.

“Who knows” was definitely the safer route to go.

 

MacKenzie was right, Quade thought, walking out of Dakota Delaney's dressing room the following day. The hostess was a vivacious, outgoing woman who didn't seem jaded by either her fame or her lavish upbringing.

The meeting MacKenzie had arranged had lasted twenty minutes. Twenty minutes that were filled with hot-and cold-running people, an endless stream of interruptions and dozens of last-minute details that had to be attended to before Dakota went on the air that afternoon. With MacKenzie at her side, the woman multitasked and never missed a beat of the conversation between them.

His own head was spinning.

It was utter and total chaos within the small room and he had no idea how either Dakota or MacKenzie functioned. To his surprise, and despite his efforts to remain polite but distant, he'd found himself liking the woman.

And liking MacKenzie even more.

The latter really troubled him.

Her ever-present clipboard in her hand, MacKenzie
was quick to follow Quade out into the hallway after the short interview was over.

She beamed as she caught up to him. “Didn't I tell you she was great?”

He nodded. It wasn't in him to voice the kind of enthusiastic rhetoric the way she did. “For someone in the TV industry, she's very nice.” And then he paused, unable to repress the question any longer. “How do you stand it?”

“What, Dakota being nice? I put up with it as best I can,” MacKenzie deadpanned.

“No, working in that kind of environment.” He jerked a thumb back at the dressing room to get his meaning across. A tall, thin makeup artist was just rushing into the room Quade had vacated moments ago. “I couldn't hear myself think.”

She shrugged. “Fortunately, I seem to be able to think louder than you do. Silence makes me edgy.”

He looked at her a long moment. “I guess we're really opposites.”

“I guess so,” she agreed. And they seemed to be. In so many different ways.

So why do I want to kiss you again so much?
he wondered.
Why do I want you to kiss me? And why the hell does my brain feel like scrambled eggs every time I'm around you?

“I'd better get back to the lab,” Quade murmured.

She nodded. There were places she had to be, as well, instead of here, basking in the shadow he cast. “I'll be in touch.”

“I'm sure you will be,” he said, turning on his heel.
The fact that she would be invading his life again and soon didn't bother Quade nearly as much as he thought it should.

Which bothered him.

S
tumbling through the maze of small tables scattered about the floor of the dimly lit club known as the Laugh-Inn, Quade lowered his head and growled against MacKenzie's ear, “Haven't they paid their electricity bill?”

She tried not to let the feel of his breath along her skin scramble her synapses any more than they already were. His warm breath, which was raising goose bumps along her flesh, was nothing more than exhaled air from a fellow mammal.

It didn't help.

Perhaps because she'd been kissed by this particular mammal, or because the man looked like the dream fantasy of every woman with a pulse. Package that dream fantasy with considerable brain power and you had the perfect male.

Almost.

What kept Quade from attaining the title of perfect male, in her estimation, was his brooding manner. Granted, a great many women out there wanted to experience life with James Dean. They were the same ones who loved the idea of having a “bad boy” they could try to reform, but she wasn't among them. Bad boys belonged in corners, facing the wall, not as one's life partner.

Not that she was contemplating getting a partner, she reminded herself as she stepped around a table occupied by a couple kissing each other into oblivion. At this point in her life, she just wanted to get through her day without any major mishaps and then crash into bed at night.

This evening's crash had been temporarily postponed because she and Quade had been commandeered to lend moral support to Aggie.

As good as her word, Aggie was trying out her newly synthesized “act” at the Laugh-Inn. The woman had lain in wait for each of them last night, springing out the moment they'd separately emerged from their cars. She'd tendered a verbal invitation along with a plea to come and cheer her on tonight.

It was hard turning down someone who looked like your grandmother in need, MacKenzie thought. But if anyone could have turned Aggie down, she figured Quade would be the one to do it. Yet here he was. Scowling, but here.

He'd even gone so far as to offer to drive. She'd accepted without even thinking about it.

She drew in her breath as she felt his hand against
her back, guiding her. Warmth flooded her. When had they cut off the air to the place?

MacKenzie forced herself to focus on the question he'd growled and not on the effect he was having on her. “I think it's because they don't want you to notice that the walls need painting and the tables could stand a restaining.”

Now, rather than walking behind her, he was next to her. And giving her that look that could have easily X-rayed her entire body. “You noticed.”

She shrugged. “It's the domestic side of me.”

She had almost made a comment about a nesting instinct taking over, but stopped herself just in time. It was the kind of comment that would immediately send a man running for the hills, eager to put miles between himself and the female who uttered it.

But the urge for nesting had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the baby inside of her.

“This table okay?” the waitress who had been leading the way asked. She didn't bother to wait for a reply, but abruptly walked away in response to someone gesturing for her at a nearby table.

“I guess she really didn't want an answer to that,” MacKenzie commented. About to sit down, she was surprised when Quade pulled out the chair for her, then helped her in. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Quade slid into his own chair and faced the stage. “Don't look so surprised. I wasn't about to pull it out from under you.”

“I know that—it's just that chivalry is so rare these days.”

“Maybe it shouldn't be,” he said gruffly, looking around as his eyes grew accustomed to his surroundings.

The dimly lit room had approximately fifteen tables in it, most for two, some for three and one long one that accommodated eight in the rear of the small room. Seven people were spread out around it now. Obviously the family and/or friends of one of the performers risking mental castration tonight, Quade thought darkly. He settled in, prepared to make the best of it. Hoping it wouldn't last too long.

MacKenzie had come reluctantly. Not because she didn't want to be supportive, but because she hated that queasy, unsettled feeling that came over her by proxy. The one she was sure was shared by police personnel assigned to the bomb squad. She'd been in the entertainment business for more than a handful of years now and yet, each time she was privy to a performer's debut, she felt as if she were channeling their nervousness through her own body. Her palms grew sweaty.

There were times when her ability to empathize really was challenging.

Quade brushed against her hand as he reached for the single-paged, slightly stained menu in front of the candle. Surprised, he looked at her. If anything, the club was overly warm. “Your hands as cold as ice.”

“Nerves.”

“Why? You're not going on.”

“I know. I just get nervous for performers,” she confessed. “Especially if I know them.”

“You didn't have to come,” he pointed out matter-
of-factly. Nothing on the menu moved him. He set it down again.

She wondered if things were always completely black-and-white in his world. She would have liked to think not. “Nothing worse than going on without a friendly face in the audience.”

It still made no sense to him. “I would have been here.”

“Well, I couldn't have been sure of that and, besides, I wouldn't exactly call your face friendly.” She touched it before she could think out her action. A zap of electricity telegraphed itself to her. More nerves, but of a different variety. She needed a long vacation, she decided. Alone. “At least,” MacKenzie amended, not wanting to insult him, “not most of the time.”

The waitress appeared before Quade answered her. With one hip jutting up higher than the other, the young woman's stance was expectant as she looked from MacKenzie's face to Quade's.

“So? What'll it be?” Her tone told them to make it snappy, that she had better things to do than stand in front of a table, waiting for the occupants' order. “There's a two-drink minimum.”

Out of habit, MacKenzie began to order a white wine. She stopped herself at the last moment. Although her mother's generation had never had the no-alcohol rule and had produced healthy babies, she was not about to take any chances on her future child's welfare. Besides, she had already given up her life-affirming cup of coffee in the morning. Giving up alcohol for the next eight months was far less of a challenge.

“I'll have a ginger ale,” she told the waitress.

The brassy blonde tugged on one of the three earrings she wore in her right earlobe and stared at MacKenzie as if she were some kind of freak of nature. “You one of those Pennsylvania Dutch type people?”

A note of annoyance entered MacKenzie's voice. She was hot, tired and nervous. She didn't need attitude. “No, I'm not Amish. I just like ginger ale.”

“Make that two,” Quade said, drawing the woman's scornful look away from MacKenzie.

“You want a ginger ale, too?”

“That's what I said.” His voice was low, steely and not to be trifled with.

Shrugging, the waitress tugged back the neckline that had slipped off her shoulder and then sauntered away. “Customer's always right,” she muttered in a tone that said she believed just the opposite.

Why Quade's simple gestured affected MacKenzie so, she couldn't say. There was a warmth in the center of her belly that hadn't been there before. She leaned in toward him in order to be heard above the din. “You didn't have to do that.”

Gratitude slid off him like rain down a windowpane. He preferred being without it. “I didn't like her condescending attitude. You've got a right to order anything you want.”

Still, she had a feeling he would have preferred something stronger, at least a beer. All the men she'd ever known had preferred beer to soft drinks. “Do you even like ginger ale?”

He shrugged away the question. “I didn't come here because I needed to drink.”

That part of his life was behind him. There were no answers in the bottom of a bottle. He'd learned that the hard way after he'd almost drowned in one. He had no desire to return to the scene of the crime. It took more courage facing life sober and he'd never liked thinking of himself as a coward.

“I came here because Aggie asked me to come,” he told MacKenzie. “Since there's a two-drink minimum, I have to order. But there's no rule that says I have to order what a waitress with the upbringing of a disaffected orangutan thinks I should order.”

MacKenzie was grinning at him. And her smile did a great deal more to light up the place than the meager floating candles in the center of each table. He had to mentally pull back before he was completely drawn in to the woman.

“What?”

“That's probably the most you've said at one time since I've met you.”

“It probably is,” he agreed.

The waitress returned with their ginger ales. She disdainfully placed a glass in front of each of them, then sullenly withdrew as someone else called to get her attention.

“Keep your shirt on—they don't pay me to hurry,” she barked.

They obviously didn't pay her to be polite, either, MacKenzie thought. She took a sip and then looked at Quade. “Think Aggie will be any good?”

His mind immediately turned toward Aggie. “God, I hope so.”

It would be hard enough to sit through this if the woman was good. If she was bad, it would be utter torture. Especially if she asked his opinion. He'd never been able to lie, even under the best of circumstances. The only time he'd actually tried was to tell Ellen she was going to get well.

He looked so solemn for a moment, MacKenzie strove to change the subject. “Dakota got in contact with Mr. Petrocelli.”

She saw mild interest enter his eyes as he watched her. The atmosphere within the club smelled faintly of cheap liquor and the scent of fear emanating from the people clustered just off stage right, waiting to come out and meet either life-affirming laughter or soul-robbing silence. None of this could seem even remotely romantic and yet, with the small candles flickering on each table and the low murmur of voices in the background, that was exactly what it was to her. Romantic.

Or maybe it had to do with the man sitting opposite her at a table hardly large enough for two. With every movement, every shift on her seat, she felt her leg brush against his. Felt something akin to a current passing through her, putting her on notice. Making her alert.

She had a hard time concentrating on where she was, on who she was. It had to be the pregnancy that made her feel strongly toward him. And yet, a small part of her rejoiced over her reaction to Quade. Rejoiced because a very large part of her had thought that after her breakup with Jeff, she had ceased to feel anything at all. And that had made her very afraid. She took another drink of her ginger ale. How had life gotten so very complicated?

She realized that Quade was waiting for her to follow up the statement that now seemed to be flapping madly in the wind, unaccompanied by more words.

“And?” he finally prodded.

“They agreed on a date. She's free for an evening the night of the twenty-eighth. It's a Saturday,” she added in case he didn't know.

Quade felt like a man who had just been led into a windowless room and had the door slam shut behind him. “That's in two and a half weeks.”

“Too soon?” she guessed. It wasn't really a guess. She'd seen stage fright before, even when it was as well masked as this. There was a slight flare to his sculpted nose, a discomfort around the eyes.

He leveled with her, although he didn't ordinarily share his thoughts with people. “To find a tux, no. To write a speech, yes.”

She placed her hand over his in silent camaraderie. “You'll do a great job.”

She sounded a hell of a lot more confident about it than he did. He knew better but was reasonably sure that to say so would only pull him into a lengthy discussion, one which he knew he hadn't a prayer of winning.

For one thing, her mouth moved a great deal faster than his did.

He didn't even bother making the attempt.

The next moment, a haggard-looking man came out and crossed to the lone microphone standing forlornly in the center of the stage.

A small drumroll accompanied him and a guitarist, the owner's son, sat to the right of the man's drum set.

The drumroll effectively sliced through the residual conversation until silence eventually followed.

MacKenzie doubted she'd ever seen a more forced smile than the one beneath the emcee's rather matted mustache.

“Hi, I'm Henderson Ames, the emcee and the owner of the club. Most of you know me as Henny.” Not a single murmur greeted the statement. “I see a lot of faces I recognize and a few new ones.”

The owner seemed to be looking in their direction, but MacKenzie couldn't be sure. Their table was two rows back from the front and Ames was cut off by the glare of a single, lonely spotlight.

“You all know the drill by now. We've got a handful of would-be comics, some repeaters. They'll all compete against each other. If you think that the next Robin Williams or Whoopi Goldberg is among them, show me by your applause. The winner gets the handsome prize of fifty bucks.” Someone in the audience groaned. “Hey, it buys a meal or two. Am I right?” He beckoned for an answer and there were murmurs of agreement. The man smiled broadly again, reminding MacKenzie of a snake in a fabled children's movie. “So, without any further delay, let's bring out our first performer. Stoker Michaels.”

He backed away as the man he had just introduced took the stage. MacKenzie noticed that the latter's hand trembled ever so slightly as he took hold of the microphone.

She could feel her stomach pitching.