Partners In Parenthood

by Raina Lynn

  Don’t read too much into it. Just strive for normalcy. Still, she tucked the memory away and savored it.

  As Jill’s due date came and went, her blood pressure skyrocketed. Dr. Gray allowed her on her feet long enough to shop for groceries and to cook—but not on the same day. Then it was back to the couch or bed.

  Mason left for the paper at four-thirty every morning, leaving her with no one to talk to until he returned about six at night. Today was Sunday, and he normally stayed home, but a problem at the paper had taken him down there just after breakfast.

  Alone and bored out of her skull, she succumbed to the nesting instinct and fudged a little on Dr. Gray’s orders. The arrival of her belongings meant Mason’s apartment held two households. The larger things like her furniture went into storage. At first she’d hoped Mason could use her bed, but it wouldn’t fit in the small second bedroom and he was stuck on the sofa bed. Boxes and bags were stacked everywhere. What should have been a comfortable living space for two felt more like a rat maze. With his work schedule and her restrictions, neither could do much about it. Not being able to settle in had created one more aggravation that they didn’t need.

  Mentally, she’d long since developed a plan of attack. Today would be the day, starting with cleaning out the boxes from the closet shelves to condense some of Mason’s belongings. She and the baby needed space, and Jill had to find some. One large box had assorted journalism awards and half a dozen school yearbooks. All were covered with archeological layers of dust. Absently, she decided it might be fun to go through them one day. No time now, though.

  Mason might have an old, beat-up stereo for his office, but the unit in his home was enough to make any music nut salivate with envy. After programming in a station she doubted the equipment had ever deigned to consider, she cranked up the volume. Diamond Rio blasted into the room, and she got to work.

  Three hours later, she noticed the flashing light on the answering machine in the dining room. “Well, when one plays it loud, one misses things, I guess.” Curious, she punched the button.

  “Hi, Mason,” came a tentative but far-too-seductive female voice. “It’s me.” After an uncomfortable pause, Jill thought she heard the woman swallow.

  “You know how I hate leaving messages on your machine, but I need to talk to you. Call me back as soon as you can, sweetheart. We need to discuss some things.”

  Karen! The competition had a voice. Jill gasped as overpowering jealousy wrapped itself around her like a snake.

  “This is going to be great. I promise. Love you. Bye.”

  Jill’s hackles came up, and she glared at the machine. The moment the tape finished, she hit rewind and listened to it again. Hearing the words the second time wasn’t any easier. Nor was it the third or the fourth. With each replay, she studied the nuances, dissected the overt sexuality.

  “I’m going to lose him.” She went back to the kitchen, snatched the celery out of the crisper and tore off a couple of stalks. “You never had him to begin with, you idiot, and now you’re talking to yourself. Way to go!”

  Fresh waves of helpless heartache assailed her. Marriage to Donald had been bad enough. But he hadn’t cared about any of the women he’d slept with. They were just conquests.

  Mason was different. He’d loved Karen. Denials aside, did he still?

  Jill slammed the celery onto the cutting board and chopped the daylights out of it.

  Chapter 9

  By the time Mason walked into the apartment, the rich aroma of fried chicken and marinated vegetables filled the air. He dropped an overfilled leather satchel and his briefcase on the dining room table and inhaled appreciatively. Then he frowned. “How long have you been out of bed?”

  “All afternoon.” Deliberately, she avoided looking at him. Her mind’s eye held a perfect picture of the answering machine.

  “Dr. Gray said no more than two hours.” For a moment he appeared to debate whether or not to give her a hug, but his natural reserve won out and she remained hugless. “Jill, why don’t I finish dinner?”

  “I’m fine.” Glancing up at him, she saw stress lines carved into the corners of his sensual mouth and across his brow. “Bradshaw, instead of cooking, why don’t you go for a run and unwind? From the looks of you, today was a real witch.”

  Mason often did serious road work if a workday had been particularly ugly. Then he came home and ate everything in sight. It amazed her the little things one learned about a person in a couple of weeks of living under the same roof.

  Mason’s tension seemed to ease. “You’re right. I went in to figure out a cash flow problem and found a worse mess than I imagined.” He wandered into the dining room and saw the blinking light on the machine.

  A knot lodged itself painfully in Jill’s throat. Like a masochistic moth drawn to the flame, she moved to where she could watch his face. Involuntarily, her fingers came to rest over their child.

  Karen’s seductive voice filled the air once more, and Jill felt the already insurmountable gulf between her and Mason widen. Mason dropped one hand low on his hip. Every muscle in his body knotted up. When the message ended, he made no attempt to save it. Instead, he stared at the machine, strong but unidentifiable emotion in his eyes. Was it longing? Regret? Anger? Passionately, she wished she knew him well enough to tell.

  Afraid of what he might read in her own expression, Jill turned back to the stove and flipped a piece of chicken. In the process, she splattered a drop of hot oil onto her arm. She shrieked more from surprise than pain, then turned on the cold water and stuck her wrist under it.

  “How badly are you burned?” he demanded, suddenly hovering behind her.

  “Chill, Bradshaw. It’s just a wimpy little kitchen owie.” His worried gaze zeroed in on the dime-sized red mark, but she’d have preferred to know his reaction to the phone call.

  “I’ll get the salve and a bandage.” Within moments, he returned with the first-aid kit. “It was pretty obvious who the message was from. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Do we need to?” she snapped. “I thought she was part of your past.” Snatching an ice cube from the freezer for the bum, Jill turned her back on him. She wanted to apologize for coming across like a first-class bitch, but couldn’t bring herself to be that vulnerable. A lot of time had passed since Mason’s divorce. Had he come to a place where he could forgive his ex-wife? Would he be with her now if there were no baby? Did he feel trapped, only his integrity keeping him from the woman he loved?

  “Karen’s calls aren’t new, Jill. She craves attention and whatever is just out of reach. After I divorced her, I became the thing she can’t have. That made me very attractive. If I ignore her long enough, she’ll eventually lose interest and leave me alone. It’s working. This is the first call in months.”

  The pragmatic response should have pleased her, but it didn’t. Hating to think she was so petty as to blame him for a phone call he had no control over, she forced herself to calm down. “You could call her back and tell her you’re married. That ought to make her quit.”

  He shook his head. “Our lives are none of her business, and I have nothing to say to her.”

  Our lives. The sound of that warmed her, tempting her to snuggle into his embrace, but he didn’t seem inclined to offer one. She turned back to the chicken and put the golden brown pieces on a plate. “What’s in the satchel?”

  “Payroll, if you’re interested. I figured you could work on it stretched out on the bed. Might beat daytime TV.”

  The knot in her stomach uncurled a little. “You brought me something to do?”

  He nodded, then looked sheepish. “Actually, I really need your help. After what I found today, I’m firing the new bookkeeper. I brought hard-copy printouts of everything she’s done since you left.”

  Jill smiled at him. “So we’re back in the saddle?” With her doing the books, they had familiar ground to stand on. “I’ll need the computer to—”

  “It’s in the trunk.”<
br />
  He needed her! She’d have preferred it to be personal, but she could live with business for starters.

  As it turned out, he’d even thought to buy a keyboard extension cable so she could work from the bed. Having a constructive project to do eased some of the depression and gave her mind something productive to chew on. She actually caught herself humming along to the stereo as she untangled the disaster her replacement had created.

  The sleeping arrangements didn’t change, and Jill had begun to wonder if she’d made a mistake. Mason never again indicated an interest in sharing a bed with her, and she had too much pride to ask. She was afraid that if she did, he’d oblige just to be agreeable, not because that’s where he wanted to be. With each passing day, fewer of his clothes hung in the master bedroom closet.

  A week and a half overdue, her joke about running two miles with him in the morning sounded more and more attractive. Each day, Mason called home mid-morning and mid-afternoon to check on her. Vicki often arrived with a brown bag and ate lunch with her, helping to keep her mind off her myriad physical discomforts.

  “That baby is sure happy where she is,” Vicki observed. “Has Dr. Gray mentioned when he’s going to induce labor?”

  “He told me this morning that he’ll boot her out day after tomorrow.” Jill took a bite of her sandwich. For some reason she just didn’t want food today. “In the meantime, I’m going back to my regular activities. Maybe it’ll hurry things along.”

  Vicki laughed. “Your feet will swell up like footballs.”

  “Tough. Give me laundry, or give me labor, but this little fat girl is getting off the couch.”

  Two hours later, she had five boxes unpacked and the living room floor covered with piles of dirty clothes. The doorbell rang. “Of course,” she muttered. “Company never shows up when a place is clean.”

  The bell rang again as she reached for the knob. The moment Jill pulled it open, she forgot about her housekeeping. Her jaw hung slack, and she couldn’t believe what her brain said her eyes were seeing.

  A woman who looked like she’d just stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine stood on the porch. Her hair was only a shade darker than Jill’s own tawny curls, but the dramatic, fluffy mane hung well below her shoulders and was glorious enough to give Reba McEntire fits. Unnerved, Jill felt like she stood face to face with a long-lost sister, a beauty queen from a family of frogs. She’d always considered herself passably attractive, her short curls sassy and distinctive. Now, she just felt plain—plain and decidedly fat.

  Whoever the woman was, she stared back at Jill with equal shock. “Pardon me,” she said. “I’m looking for Mason Bradshaw.”

  It took a minute for Jill to find her voice. “He’s not here.”

  The other woman seemed to be experiencing the same trouble. “Then I do have the right apartment?”

  Jill nodded. “Who are you?”

  “Karen.” She delicately cleared her throat. “Karen Bradshaw.”

  Feeling faint, Jill leaned on the doorjamb for support. “Who are you?” Karen asked.

  “His wife.”

  Karen actually recoiled, her lips moving around a wordless denial. If Jill had slugged her with a baseball bat, the effect couldn’t have been more dramatic.

  Suddenly Jill understood Mason’s shocked expression his first day at the paper, and all the startled ones later when she’d come upon him unexpectedly. Her observations about the Bride of Frankenstein hadn’t been that far off the mark.

  She swallowed hard as another truth settled into the pit of her stomach. The night he’d made love to her, he hadn’t found consolation in another woman’s arms; he’d found a substitute. No, she decided, there was more to it than that. He’d found as close to a duplicate as was humanly possible. She trembled as anger blasted through her.

  I knew he didn’t love me, but I always believed it was me he made love to that night. Not even Donald at his worst had made her feel so insignificant or unloved.

  Holding her head up, she carefully pulled her tattered pieces together into a semblance of normalcy. She couldn’t afford to fall apart, not now. “Karen, I thought you lived in Los Angeles.”

  “I did.”

  Jill would have preferred the woman to answer the unspoken question. What are you doing in Stafford, Washington?

  The silence crackled with confusion and tension.

  Karen cocked her head, her incredible hair swinging heavily over one shoulder. “Tell me again. You’re Mason’s what?”

  Jill lifted her chin. “His wife.”

  “My God,” she breathed. Her gaze wandered to Jill’s belly. “He can’t have....” She lifted her eyes again, a slight frown creasing her perfect brow. “You can’t be.”

  Saying anything would have been like giving information to the enemy, so Jill kept her mouth shut.

  “When?”

  Jill felt an old-fashioned blush stain her face. What was she going to do? Tell the ex-wife of the man she adored that he’d found himself the star in a shotgun wedding less than a month ago? “Maybe you need to take that up with Mason. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She moved to shut the door.

  An increased attentiveness in Karen’s expression told her the woman wanted to say something else, but Jill didn’t want to hear it—not until she’d had the chance to absorb the latest disaster.

  In shock, she closed the door, then dropped onto the couch next to a pile of Mason’s socks. What had she walked into the night she’d come here nine months ago?

  Even then, it wasn’t me he wanted. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, silent tears streaming down her face. In the distance, she heard an engine start, then a car back away from the building. Karen was leaving.

  “Mason is a good man,” she whispered into the silence. “Give him a chance to explain.”

  But how do you know he’s a good man? taunted insidious whispers in her head. What kind of man marries a woman who looks like the unattractive fraternal twin of his elegant ex-wife? Jill shuddered.

  With the baby’s birth imminent, she needed answers to questions she’d tried not to think about. What exactly did he feel for her? What about his family? Did he have one? Did he have brothers and sisters? Were his parents still living? He hadn’t mentioned wanting to let anyone outside Stafford know he’d remarried, so she had assumed not. Then again, this new twist had never occurred to her, either.

  How could she find out? Could she believe anything he said? Jill shook her head. “Stop,” she told herself. You’re borrowing trouble as fast as you can grab it. When he gets home, talk to him. See what he says.” She rose to her feet, her legs not as sturdy as she would have liked. “Above all, stop being a wuss.”

  More than an hour passed as Jill puttered through the apartment, trying to clean. But all she accomplished was to wander from place to place, watching her feet swell. Endless questions swirled through her mind.

  The doorbell rang again. A feeling of dread came over her as she answered it. Even suspecting who she might find didn’t lessen the impact of Karen’s presence. The woman’s eyes glistened with purpose. Apparently, she’d been able to recover from the shock better than Jill had. Then again, Karen didn’t have raging pregnancy hormones and a case of marital insecurity big enough to register on the Richter scale.

  “Yes?” Jill tried to match the woman’s self-assured poise. She noticed the red, designer suit Karen wore, the matching heels. Just your everyday power suit.

  “May I come in?”

  “You must be kidding.”

  Karen’s gaze dipped, giving the impression that perhaps what looked unshakable was only a facade. “No, I’d truly like to talk to you. I need to know what’s going on.”

  The strain of being on her feet too long, plus the stress, had begun to exact a heavy toll on Jill. She wanted nothing more than to put her feet up and rest. She didn’t feel right. No, more than that. She felt indefinably strange. She wished passionately she hadn’t opened the door.

  “I
s Mason home yet?” Karen asked when Jill didn’t immediately ask her in.

  “No, and I don’t know when to expect him.”

  “Oh.” She chewed on the edge of her lip, giving the impression of a little lamb lost. “May I please come in? I promise not to bother you long. I’m just so confused.”

  “I can understand that,” Jill said drily. Detached, she watched herself open the door wider in invitation.

  Karen smiled in relief and swept inside. “He remarried?” Her big brown eyes glistened with moisture. “I don’t understand this at all. Are you sure he’s not home?”

  Jill made an irritated noise low in her throat. “If he was, believe me, I’d have dragged him into the living room the first time you were here.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” Karen couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Jill’s abdomen. “When are you due?”

  For once, Jill’s wit deserted her. The answer held more potential for conflict than she could handle. Worse, she didn’t want to get into anything that smacked of fighting over a man. “I’m as overdue as doctors allow these days.”

  “That means....”

  Jill watched thoughts play behind Karen’s eyes as the woman backtracked through the calendar.

  “That bastard,” Karen whispered, breathless. When she looked up again, the fire and hate in her eyes made Jill brace for attack. But Karen seemed to conquer it and the moment passed. “What did you two do—have a quicky wedding the second he was free?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Evidence of more thoughts rippled across Karen’s expressive face. “The last time I spoke with him, he didn’t say anything.”

  “When was that?” Jill asked.

  A probing glint sharpened her rival’s expression. “Not long ago.” She seemed to be analyzing the conversation, weighing her response against whatever conclusion she’d drawn. “I think I’ve been played for a fool.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded, deliberately flinging her hair behind her shoulders. “About three months ago, he finally began listening to reason. Or so I thought. I offered to quit my job and move to Stafford so we could work through our differences.”