First Comes Baby

by Janice Kay Johnson

  After telling him she’d had a baby girl, she had said tentatively, “Would you mind if I name her Lydia?”

  There’d been a moment of silence. Then he said, in a thick, unfamiliar voice, “I can’t think of anything that would mean more to me. And her.”

  “We thought Lydia Ellen. Ellen after Caleb’s mom.”

  “That’s a beautiful name.”

  Tears burned in her own eyes. “It is, isn’t it? Oh, Dad. Do you want us to come by your house on our way home?”

  “On your way? Last I knew, Shoreline wasn’t on the way to the Fauntleroy ferry. No. If they aren’t keeping you overnight at the hospital, I’ll come over in the morning to see her, if that’s okay with you and Caleb.”

  She sniffed. “Of course it is!”

  Now, waiting in the ferry line, she watched Caleb watching their daughter sleep.

  “She’s so small,” he murmured.

  “Eight pounds three ounces isn’t small as newborns go.”

  “No, but… Look at her! Damn it, I wish they’d kept you overnight. What if something goes wrong?”

  Laurel was scared herself. Not so much that something would go wrong as that she wouldn’t know what to do in normal situations. If Lydia couldn’t latch on to her breast, or cried for no obvious reason, or…

  No. Other new parents managed.

  “Lydia is fine,” she said stoutly. “She’s nursing, she’s not jaundiced, she’s got a healthy cry. Why would anything go wrong?”

  His fist bounced on the steering wheel. “It won’t. I know it won’t. I just don’t think they know it’s safe. It wasn’t doctors who decided newborns didn’t need to stay an extra day, it was the insurance companies.”

  Amused and touched, Laurel said, “Caleb. We’re okay. Really.”

  “So you say,” he growled, then shot a chagrined look toward the rear-facing car seat. Voice hushed, he asked, “Did I wake her up?”

  “I don’t think a cherry bomb going off under the car would wake her up.”

  Laurel was exhausted, but also full of this amazing love. It made her feel she could do anything for this tiny being born of her body, that she would do anything to keep her safe.

  Imagine. She could so easily not have had Lydia.

  It was funny, but she hadn’t thought about Matt Baker as potential-father-of-her-baby in a long time. She’d had dinner a couple of times with Matt and Sheila while Caleb was away on trips, but even then she hadn’t asked herself, What if Matt and not Caleb was the father?

  She simply could no longer envision not having her baby with Caleb. She wouldn’t have Lydia. She’d have…some other baby, with a different genetic makeup. Of course she would have loved that baby just as much. At least, she guessed she would have, although right now she instinctively rejected the idea of not having Lydia.

  Because she was part Caleb’s? Laurel stole a look at him. Despite her exhaustion, despite her soreness, she melted inside at how handsome he was, at thinking, We’re blended together in Lydia.

  If she’d been impregnated with Matt Baker’s sperm, probably Meg would have been her labor coach. And right now, either Meg or her dad would be driving her home. Maybe she and Lydia—no, the other baby she’d have had instead—would be going to stay for a few days at her father’s house. He wouldn’t have let her go home alone.

  But even that—even her father’s care, which had been all she’d ever needed—wouldn’t have been the same as Caleb’s. She simply couldn’t imagine setting off on this adventure without him.

  She must have let out a sound, because he turned his head and his electrifying blue eyes caught her gaze.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.

  “That I’m glad you’re Lydia’s father. You and not…”

  “I still can’t believe you asked Matt Baker.”

  “I told you why I did.”

  “And it still ticks me off. Do you know how I would have felt if I’d gotten back from a trip and it had been too late? You were already pregnant?”

  The rough emotion in his voice was new to her. “No,” Laurel admitted, nearly inaudibly. “How would you have felt?”

  He turned his face from hers and looked straight ahead through the windshield, his fingers flexing on the steering wheel. She doubted he saw the cars disgorging from the ferry and speeding, one after the other, past them up and up the hill.

  “Betrayed.”

  Laurel gaped at him.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve never given me any reason to think…” He swallowed. “If you’d fallen in love, that would have been one thing. But Baker? Weren’t we better friends than that, Laurel?”

  Not wanting to admit too much, she said, “Yes. Maybe too good. You know? Asking something like this is emotionally loaded. Matt felt…safe.”

  He looked at her at last. “Yeah, I get that. It just hit me today. Lydia might not have been mine.”

  At the beginning of the line, cars were starting to board the ferry.

  “It hit me, too. But Lydia wouldn’t have been Lydia. She only exists because we did this together.”

  Caleb looked back between the seats, and his voice softened. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? That somehow we created her.”

  Laurel nodded, remembering the night he had handed her that plastic syringe, his cheeks flushed, and fled. Maybe it had been standing on her head that had done it.

  Not the kind of memory most women had of the night their baby had been conceived.

  “Thank you, Caleb.” Her voice cracked. “For everything.” She laid a hand over his on the steering wheel, feeling the tension and strength that belied the laid-back charm he projected most of the time.

  As if instinctively, his hand turned to grip hers. “What are you thanking me for? I’m the one who feels so damn lucky right now…” He had to clear his throat.

  A horn sounded behind them, and they both jerked.

  Laurel snatched back her hand and Caleb muttered something under his breath, then put the car into gear to start after the pickup ahead of him.

  A minute later, they bumped onto the ferry deck and parked where the orange-vested worker waved them.

  The clanking sound of other vehicles driving on penetrated Lydia’s sleep. She moved restlessly. At the deep sound of the ferry horn, she began to cry and thrash.

  “I guess she wouldn’t sleep through a cherry bomb after all.” Laurel got out, opened the back door and unbuckled Lydia, lifting her from the car seat. “Are you hungry, sweetie?”

  At the hospital, she hadn’t been the least self-conscious about nursing in front of Caleb, but suddenly she was. He was so close here in the front seat that she could see the dark bristles on his chin. Which meant he’d get a bird’s-eye view.

  She hesitated, Lydia squalled, and after a moment Laurel inserted her hand under her shirt and unhooked one cup of her nursing bra, then cradled Lydia and lifted the hem only as much as she absolutely had to. Caleb, she saw out of the corner of her eye, was looking straight ahead, his cheeks dusky. She wasn’t the only one who felt awkward.

  For a moment Lydia struggled, letting out thin, frustrated cries, before she finally latched on and began to suck. It felt odd, almost sexual, and Laurel recalled reading that the tugging did cause the uterus to contract so maybe that made sense.

  The car was awfully quiet, Laurel painfully conscious of the man beside her pretending not to notice what she was doing. To fill the silence, she ventured, “I hope she sleeps when we get home. I could really use a nap.”

  Caleb glanced at her, careful to avoid letting his gaze go lower than her face. “Even if she doesn’t, I’ll take care of her so you can get some sleep. The couple of hours at the hospital doesn’t make up for last night.”

  “No.” Laurel stroked the fine dark hair on her daughter’s head. “I think she’s going to have your coloring.”

  “Blue eyes can change.”

  “But hers are as vivid a blue as yours. You could tell right away tha
t Alex’s were going to be dark.” They had been a murky blue, she’d noticed, which made sense considering Nadia’s rich brown eyes and Darren’s hazel ones.

  “Her nose is yours.”

  She gazed fondly down. “How can you tell? It’s a button right now.”

  “No, it’s just miniature.” His gaze, too, had lowered to their small, greedy daughter—and perilously near to the white swell of her breast.

  Her cheeks felt warm. “Everything about her is miniature. I love her fingers.”

  One of Lydia’s hands waved in the air, the tiny fingers curling and uncurling.

  Laurel burped Lydia, then switched her to the other breast. A couple walked by the car, single file, both glancing in then averting their faces. Embarrassed, Laurel told herself to get over it. She’d have to breast-feed in plenty of public places in the months to come. Other women did.

  She just wished she wasn’t so buxom. Her breasts had been inconvenient before, but now they felt enormous. “Oh, you’re built for this!” one of the nurses at the birthing center had told her in a repulsively perky voice, as though bestowing the ultimate compliment. Great. How was she supposed to nurse discreetly when she had so much to hide?

  She was relieved when Lydia slipped from her nipple, mouth slack, boneless and relaxed in sleep.

  “I’ll take her,” Caleb murmured, and Laurel was able to adjust her clothing while he restored Lydia to her car seat.

  The drive to his house was short from the ferry dock. Laurel settled her baby into the bassinet, then showered and climbed into bed. She’d meant to call Nadia before she slept, but Caleb had earlier, and…she was so tired! Tomorrow, she thought. Her lids were heavy from the moment she lay back. Her body felt battered. Ah, sleep…

  THE NEXT DAY, first Laurel’s dad and sister and then Caleb’s parents came to see Lydia. Caleb expected the visit with his parents to be awkward for Laurel in particular, considering how much they’d disapproved of him choosing to father her baby, but Lydia herself erased what otherwise might have been a stiff greeting.

  “Oh, let me see her!” Ellen Manes cried even as she was getting out of the car. Inside, Laurel laid Lydia in her grandmother’s arms. After a long moment of gazing down at the baby, Caleb’s mother looked up with tears in her eyes. “Oh, she’s lovely!”

  “She is, isn’t she?” Laurel agreed fondly. “I think she has Caleb’s eyes.”

  His mother nodded. “Even the shape of them.”

  His father admired Lydia, as well, Caleb watching in amusement.

  Ellen said, “Laurel, we want to apologize for not being supportive from the beginning. I suppose we’ve been old-fashioned, feeling Caleb should be married to the mother of his baby.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I know this isn’t what you hoped for. But I’m so grateful to Caleb for agreeing to do this. He’s my closest friend, and I can’t imagine anyone else as Lydia’s dad.”

  “Oh, my dear.” His mother hugged Laurel with her free arm.

  His father gave a gruff nod.

  And that was that.

  After the first rush of visitors, Caleb and Laurel fell into a pattern that felt so natural, he began to believe it had been predestined. Maybe it had—mom and dad shaping their lives around the rhythm of an infant’s schedule for sleeping and eating.

  They talked about Caleb giving her a bottle occasionally, but Laurel didn’t want to hurry. “Breast milk is important. And it’s not as if I have anything else to do.”

  Caleb didn’t go anywhere for the first week, and was away no more than eight hours at a time for the next couple. When Sunset magazine decided to feature the shopping district surrounding his new San Francisco store and wanted to interview him, he made a few comments on the phone and then told them to talk to his manager. He was too fascinated by his newborn daughter, and by her mother, to fly to California.

  He now knew exactly what Darren had meant. He was madly in love with Lydia, and could sit by the hour holding her against his chest without feeling a trace of the usual boredom and restlessness that had made him ambitious and footloose. He couldn’t imagine going weeks at a time without seeing her.

  Rocking her now while Lydia napped, Caleb pressed a kiss down on his daughter’s downy head and inhaled her scent.

  Hell, he couldn’t imagine going days at a time. He didn’t want to be a long-distance father. He’d been crazy to agree to something like that. Then, the idea had been abstract. Now, it was concrete, embodied in the small body of his daughter and in her big, puzzled eyes, her pursed lips and hearty burps. He could hardly wait until she smiled at him. Said, “Daddy.”

  What if he missed some milestone? Had to learn his Lydia had taken her first step in an e-mail from Laurel?

  He broke out in a cold sweat every time he thought about Laurel taking Lydia home, him relegated to a visitor.

  His fear of exactly that kept him from advancing his campaign too aggressively. That, and the fact that Laurel was utterly engrossed in the baby and therefore oblivious to him except in his role as daddy.

  He could tell partly because she’d gotten so much more comfortable nursing around him. It apparently hadn’t occurred to her that the sight was incredibly erotic to him. At first he’d tried not looking, but how could he help himself?

  Big breasts had never been especially important to him in choosing a lover. In fact, he wasn’t sure he was drawn to any particular physical type. He’d had girlfriends who were lean and athletic, lush and curvaceous, slight and delicate. With each woman, he’d been attracted by something different: a laugh, an unexpected way of looking at the world, a hip-swaying walk.

  With Laurel, the package was incredibly complex. He’d always liked the way she thought, dreamed and schemed. He liked the shifting color of her eyes, her long toes and fingers, her hourglass figure. He’d teased her back in college that her face was so gentle and round, no one would ever guess what a shark she’d be in the courtroom.

  “You mean,” she’d sighed, “I seem to have no cheekbones.”

  “You have them,” he had assured her. “They’re just, ah…” The pillow hit him just as he finished the sentence. “Well-padded.”

  That was one of the many contradictions about her that had intrigued him from the beginning, and kept him from ever feeling that he knew her inside and out. He wasn’t sure he ever would. Which was fine. Surprises, maybe even a few secrets, were good for a relationship.

  He just wished she wasn’t keeping such a big one. Caleb couldn’t imagine keeping from her one of the defining experiences of his life.

  You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand.

  The memory of her voice, flat and even angry, still took him aback. Even pissed him off. It made him hold back.

  If she felt the same way about him that he did about her, she couldn’t say that. And if she didn’t feel the same…

  He swore under his breath. He couldn’t deal with it. He just couldn’t. Not now. She and Lydia were his life. If Laurel was incapable of loving him, he’d made a colossal mistake by getting in so deep.

  No! Caleb told himself sharply. Laurel might be damaged, but wounds healed. He sometimes wondered if hers had, and she just hadn’t noticed. She wasn’t letting herself believe in the possibility of love and marriage. He had to make her see it could work.

  In the meantime, he’d suffer in silence when his infant daughter’s mouth slipped from her mother’s nipple to reveal the dark areola and puckered center on a breast that would overflow a man’s hand.

  Sometime while he brooded—and had lustful thoughts about her mom—Lydia had fallen asleep, her small body going slack and her head lolling against his shoulder. He eased the rocking chair to a stop and stood, carrying her to Laurel’s room.

  The door stood half open, the interior dim with the blinds drawn. He walked in as soundlessly as possible and laid Lydia gently down on her back in the bassinet, pulling her quilt up to her chin. She never even twitched.

  After a moment, he lifted his
head and looked at Laurel, sound asleep facing him. Her face was utterly relaxed, her mouth curved as if her dreams were happy ones. A strand of hair lay across her cheek and mouth, sticking to her lip, and his hand itched to smooth it behind her ear. Instead, he curled his fingers and turned away, feeling like a Peeping Tom.

  She came downstairs a while later without Lydia. Caleb had been reading in the living room, having put a bean soup to bubble on the stove. He looked up in surprise.

  “Did she wake up already?”

  “No, I did. How long has she been down?”

  He glanced at his watch. “An hour. Hey, maybe we can eat dinner for once without interruption.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Laurel plopped on the couch beside him. “She senses the moment serving spoon touches food.”

  He laughed as much at her fond tone as at the idea. “Figures we spawned a kid who resents anything that distracts her parents.”

  Laurel chuckled, a comfortable sound, and gazed dreamily at the dark window. “We’ll have to go Christmas shopping someday, you know.”

  “And wrap everything, so we can unwrap it for her?”

  “Of course.”

  He grinned at her, then took a chance by nudging her head away from the sofa back so that he could wrap his arm around her. Instead of stiffening, as she sometimes did, she reacted by snuggling against him.

  “Do you ever feel as if there’s no past and the future is hazy?” she asked unexpectedly.

  He knew what she was saying. It was exactly what he had been thinking earlier, that right now was all that mattered. But something in him also rebelled. He’d be glad if the past as a barrier vanished, but by God, Caleb wanted a future.

  With her and Lydia.

  He said nothing for a moment. “It does seem as if there couldn’t have been a time without her.”

  Laurel made a humming sound. “That’s it exactly. A world without Lydia… Unthinkable.” She shivered. “How do parents bear it when…”

  He covered her mouth. “Don’t say it. Nothing will happen to her.”

  She took his hand from her mouth and squeezed it. “I know. I should never have even let a thought like that cross my mind. I’ll be good. I swear.”