by Anna Adams
Ian nodded, but being under the community microscope made him seem different, on edge, as they got out of the car.
“Sophie,” said a woman in front of the hood. About Sophie’s age, she’d paused with one little girl on her hip and another child, mostly hidden in a mound of lacy blankets in a big stroller. She had her hands full, maneuvering her family while her husband studied Ian.
“Lisa?” Sophie said the name almost before she remembered the energetic young cheerleader who’d been a peripheral kind of friend. Sophie’d talked her through high-school chemistry. Lisa had taught Sophie how to apply eye shadow without looking as if she wanted to audition for clown school. “Lisa,” Sophie said again.
“I heard you were back.” Lisa pressed her cheek to her older daughter’s silky black hair while the man at her side took the stroller. “Dee’s in Molly’s kindergarten class.”
“I’m so glad to see you.” Sophie remembered Ian and went around the back of the car to his side. “This is my…” The word stuck in her throat, but she forced it out on the second try. “My husband, Ian Ridley. Ian, this is Lisa Conroy.”
“Detner,” Lisa corrected. “And this is my husband, Dave. Sophie and I were in school together. She saved me in chemistry.”
“You made me socially acceptable,” Sophie said with a laugh.
Both men chuckled vaguely and nodded at each other, obviously sharing the notion that women’s talk could be enigmatic. But they shook hands, and Sophie warmed to Dave’s friendly smile. He was the first man in Bardill’s Ridge to treat Ian as a possible friend rather than a womanizer.
“Nice to meet you both,” he said.
“Were you in Sophie’s class, too?” Ian asked.
The other man shook his head. “I’m a civil engineer. I came to work on a public dam project that fell through, but I met Lisa and never left. I work with the road commission in town.”
“Is it true you’re staying?” Lisa asked Sophie. “I thought you’d never come back here for longer than a visit.”
Sophie hesitated. A public pledge squeezed her into the commitment she’d made. She swallowed, forcing a smile. “You know how marriage changes the way you look at your life. I’m ready to settle down, and Gran’s ready to let one of us help at The Mom’s Place. The time’s right.” She turned to her friend’s baby in the stroller, avoiding Ian’s gaze. She didn’t really want to know what he thought of her little speech. “Boy or girl?” She looked up at Dee in Lisa’s arms. “A brother or sister?”
“That’s Tommy,” the little girl said, and then buried her face in Lisa’s neck.
Laughing, Lisa twitched the blanket back to show off her son. Sophie and Ian voiced appropriate approval over a boy whose head looked enormous to a pregnant woman. Fortunately his wide, gummy smile made up for it.
Her own baby was going to make all the changes she’d made to her life worth it, but she hated having to force them down Ian’s throat, too.
After a phone-number swap, Lisa and Dave moved on with their children, and Sophie turned Ian toward Ritz’s Food and Sundry with a touch on his forearm.
“Can you see us crowing over ours?” she asked. It was hard to imagine, hard to believe unequivocally that they’d be together that long.
“I noticed you didn’t mention him.”
“Her,” Sophie said. “The mother always knows.”
“Not if she doesn’t let the ultrasound technician tell her.”
“I always know.” She was actually about fifty-fifty, but Ian was so smug with his unapologetic yen for a boy.
“You know I don’t care which we have,” he said, as if reading her mind.
“Seriously?” For some reason it mattered. A man couldn’t help what he wanted, but her only interest was in having a healthy child. She just thought of the baby as a girl.
“Seriously.” He surprised her, flattening his hand against her stomach as he followed her onto the sidewalk. “You’re not ashamed of your pregnancy?”
“Never,” she said staunchly. “But isn’t our marriage enough news for now?”
“The marriage is big news,” Ian said, “but I wonder if you’re hedging your bets. Maybe you can get rid of me, and people will just remember a blank spot for my child’s father, some guy they saw on the street…what was his name?”
Sophie stopped, shocked that he didn’t at least know her better than that. “I’m scared.” Why not admit it? “But I’m not a total fake. I thought twice about coming here as a single mom only because I don’t want to be Nita’s daughter, who shamed Ethan with a pregnancy of longer duration than her marriage.”
He searched her gaze. “You worry about the damnedest things. Why do we care what anyone else thinks of us? Even the fine citizens of Bardill’s Ridge.”
She lifted both brows. “When you put it like that…but, Ian, there’s something else. I don’t want you to dislike my mother, and you’re going to if I don’t shut up about her.”
“Your mother didn’t go completely wrong. You were with her part of the time.”
She nodded. “She doesn’t have inherently maternal instincts. But she has loyal friends, and you have to be a good person to manage that, and I love her. I’m trying to tell you she’s not a bad person.”
“I understand.” He took her hand. “We’re blocking traffic.”
“Wait.”
He looked down, a question in his eyes.
“You’ll always be my baby’s father.”
He stared at her, his jaw tight. Finally he kissed her forehead. She caught his sides. The waistband of his jeans scraped against her palms, and she sighed, longing to pull him closer, but he was already moving toward the store.
He pushed open the squeaky screen. The wooden door inside stood wide, letting early-summer night into the store.
“Evening, Sophie,” Mr. Ritz called from his position behind the deli slicer.
“Hey. Good to see you. Mr. Ritz, this is my husband, Ian.”
“Hello,” Ian said. The wind had whipped his curls into a frenzy. It had been a while since he’d had his usual short haircut.
“Nice to meet you. Of course I’ve heard the rumors about you two moving in up at the baby farm.”
“Well, Gran’s finally retiring,” Sophie said.
“Hard to believe.”
“Isn’t it?” She cruised to the vegetable bins while Ian disappeared down one of the aisles of metal racks. She tucked greens and tomatoes and a selection of fruit into clear plastic bags before she found Ian studying the canned green beans.
“We’re not eating that.” She tapped the can that appeared to have hypnotized him. “We can get fresh.”
“You’re a lot like your gran, aren’t you?”
She tried to read his expression. “Are you laughing at me or insulting me? Don’t you like Gran?”
“She’s great, but she’s pushy. You both think you know best, and you don’t like input.” He pushed the can back onto the shelf. His arm brushed hers and she tried not to shiver. Even with such minor contact, she felt his strength, and she wanted her share of it. “You even have to approve the green beans,” he said.
She smiled, still uncertain. “I am right about them. Let’s come back to the farmers’ market tomorrow.”
He took the fruit and vegetables she’d selected and began to head for the cash register with her. “You don’t want to buy all this tomorrow?”
“I only got enough for a salad for lunch.” She wavered a second and then gave in to the urge to stroke the bright red flesh of the tomatoes through the bag. “Or maybe for tonight.”
“After all that pizza?”
“I can taste these tomatoes.”
“It’s the dressing you’re after.”
She almost stepped back. “You watch what I eat?” She made dressing from a recipe Gran had made since her own childhood.
He took her hand again. “How can I help but notice? You all slop it on as if it’s liquid gold.”
She threaded her finge
rs through his, overwhelmed by a sense of shyness and desire that mingled like lightning and thunder. She was working on instincts she never trusted when she was with Ian.
“I’m glad you pay attention.” She smiled. “It feels like a good sign.”
“I want to know you.” His heat and scent invaded her space, replacing her craving for tomatoes with an implacable need for him. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“You didn’t. You make your living as a watcher, and I’m a little fascinated with your methods. I have to observe, too, to know what’s going on with a patient’s body, to make sure her pregnancy progresses normally.”
“I meant at the church. You’ve never let me apologize.”
She unlinked their hands and smoothed his hair away from his forehead. He wouldn’t like knowing she could see his emotions. “It did hurt, but you’ve apologized since.”
“I’m still not sure you understand.” Turning her hand, he pressed his lips to the mound of flesh beneath her thumb. “I’m a bad risk for the kind of marriage you need, but I should have told you, instead of Jock.”
“Now who thinks he knows best?” Each beat of her heart seemed to pulse in the back of her throat. “Let’s both hope you’re wrong.”
“DAMN IT. Stupid, flipping flowers.” These blooms were determined to cling to their stems. Ian glanced at the cabin up the hill, inadvertently pointing his penlight at the window where Sophie was washing dishes again.
It did hurt, she’d said, and he’d felt guilty, so here he was in the dark, collecting posies.
He straightened from the poisonous-smelling daisies and found honeysuckle wrapping itself around the wide, chunky trunk of an oak tree. With his small light, he could hardly see the topography. He took a hesitant step onto sloping ground and slid down a deeper ravine than he expected. The wet grass clung to his clothes and his arms. Swearing again at the honeysuckle, he took out his knife and sawed off a few strands.
Lifting his fist full of wildflowers, he inspected them with his light. Not too impressive, but Sophie might appreciate the effort. He closed his knife before he tried to climb the slippery hill. Better to avoid a homemade appendectomy.
At the house, he wiped the mud and grass off his feet on the edge of a porch step. Seeing his bedraggled bouquet in real light, he considered tossing it back to nature.
But he couldn’t kill the wildflowers for nothing. He went inside and found Sophie waiting in the kitchen doorway.
“What were you doing out there?” In the dim hall light, she switched her gaze between him and the ratty flowers, and then she blinked with unfeigned amazement. When she was off balance like this, he believed she might come to need him some day.
“Oh,” she said.
“I know.” They were pretty bad, and his man-handling had loosed a sharp smell that battled with the sweet honeysuckle fragrance. “I should have bought some in town.”
“No.” She straightened her shoulders, regaining her bearing. “I like the natural look.” With quick footsteps, she moved to him. “I saw your light and thought you were securing the premises or something.” A soft smile belied her defensive posture of the past several months, and she took his offering. “Maybe a bodyguard needs practice.”
She hugged the bunch of flowers to her chest as if she actually wanted them. Her happiness made him strangely self-conscious.
“I tracked in some mud.” He kicked off his shoes. “But I’ll clean it up. Do you have everything you’ll need in your room tonight? Do you need me to carry anything else upstairs?”
“I’m not an invalid. My family must be rubbing off on you.” She headed back to the kitchen.
He grinned. “No, but your dad’s threats scared me.” He wouldn’t have made the joke before she’d taken his flowers. Were they making progress again?
The kitchen floor was cold beneath his sock-shod feet. She bent to hoist a vase from one of the packing boxes, and he discovered he liked the curves her pregnancy had added. Feeling like a voyeur, he crossed to the sink.
“Found it.” She brandished the glass container like a trophy. “Thanks again, Ian. This place needs fresh flowers.”
“Let me just add one more thing about that night in the church.” Her acceptance, when he’d half expected laughter, must have greased his tongue. “I never meant for you to find out I had any doubts because I knew I’d get over them.”
She started to look annoyed, and he wished he’d kept his yap shut.
“I can work with the truth, but I felt like an idiot because I believed in you. And when a guy makes me feel idiotic, I don’t want to be around him.”
“It was never my intention,” he said, stiff again.
“I see that now.”
“Marriage is going to be work.”
Her eyes asked if he’d just figured that out, and now he felt like the idiot. Unlike her, however, he didn’t have an urge to run.
“I like hard work,” he said.
“Me, too.” Sophie glanced at the clock ticking on the wall behind his head. “Speaking of which, I’d better get to bed so I’ll wake up in time to meet Gran at the office.”
“Good night.” Letting her climb the stairs alone was going to be difficult. He belonged up there in his wife’s bed, lying next to her, learning the changes their growing child was making to her body.
“Night.” Faint color blotched Sophie’s cheeks. It didn’t feel normal to her, either. “I’m sorry I have to start this way, but I want to be sure we’re making actual decisions for the right reasons.”
She wanted honesty? Looking at her, wanting her, he had some to offer. “Learning to be apart now that we’re married is ridiculous, but I’m willing to do what you need.”
She tiptoed to kiss his cheek. “This isn’t what I want.” Her voice dropped into a husky tone he knew too well. It was persuading him he didn’t want to do what he knew was best for her.
Taking her shoulders, he eased away. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Okay.” Her voice sounded smaller.
He wanted to explain, but how many times could he beg one woman to slice him with the cold edge of rejection? He concentrated on wetting a stretch of paper towel to clean the mud he’d tracked into the front hall. Sophie climbed the stairs. Once he heard her walking overhead, he breathed a sigh of relief.
IT HAD BEEN AFTER DARK when Greta decided to go to the office for a few minutes, instead of heading straight home from Sophie’s cabin. She wanted to put together a few files, some notes for Sophie’s first day.
Leah, her receptionist, had already left when Greta had unlocked her office. She’d called home but had to leave a message when Seth didn’t answer. Sometimes he went over to the Train Depot Café for dinner if she was late.
Knowing his meal was provided, she buckled down to work. Her procedures for prenatal care brought to mind some guidelines she’d put together for nutrition. The nutrition handouts reminded her she’d set up two files, one for the women, one for her adolescent patients. And so it went. Each item she wanted to discuss with Sophie in the morning made her think of another subject she needed to cover.
Setting a stack of files on the corner of her desk, she nudged the clock her grandson Zach had sent her from Monte Carlo when his Navy ship had taken port in the Mediterranean. She grabbed at the timepiece and couldn’t help noticing the spread of its old-fashioned hands. “Oh, no.” She twisted her watch. It also read 11:17 p.m.
She grabbed the phone. Guilt seemed to thicken her fingers, making them too clumsy to dial. After three rings Seth picked up the receiver on his end.
“Were you asleep?” she asked. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been planning for tomorrow and forgot the time.”
“I’m not asleep. Why would I be asleep before my wife comes home? You do plan to come home tonight?”
His resentment was obvious. Greta’s first instinct was self-defense. “I have to provide Sophie with the information she’ll need to take over. You know that. I’ll only be this busy for
a few more weeks at most.”
“I don’t believe you anymore, Greta. I can’t even imagine you believe yourself. Your heart and soul are buried in the brick and mortar up there.” She smiled as he paused to take a breath. He sounded a little annoyed, but he did understand. “You bring home the leavings you think are good enough for me. Distracted conversation. An occasional meal a man couldn’t buy in the best restaurant in the biggest city. But I don’t give a damn about the leavings.”
He didn’t understand. “Seth, you’re upset.” She couldn’t believe it. The heck with defending herself. She’d somehow hurt her husband. “I’m trying to do what you’ve asked me to. The sooner I turn over this information, the sooner we’ll have time to ourselves.”
“Greta, I’m going to bed now. Good night.”
“Seth, wait.”
“I’ve waited long enough. Good night.”
“No—I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She grabbed her purse, skewing another stack of files. Tucking the phone beneath her chin, she rummaged for her keys. The receiver clicked in her ear.
He’d hung up on her. What did he mean by that? She hit redial. He picked up right away, but she didn’t let him speak. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You’re insulting me.”
“Good night, Greta.”
“No.” For some reason she needed him to agree she was only doing what he’d asked her to do. “What’s your problem with me preparing for a turnover? Should I just dump the files on Sophie and let her sink or swim?”
“She’s a smart woman.”
He stopped, and she had the feeling he was trying to imply Sophie was the only intelligent woman in this conversation. “How dare you, Seth Calvert? I’m your wife, not your maid. I’m sure you’ve eaten. You’re in a warm, tidy house. You have a soft bed that I made up this morning. I’m working. I don’t have your free time, and I don’t expect you to crack the whip over my head as if you’re scheduling my hours.”
“Work yourself up, woman. You aren’t about to convince me, but as long as you believe you’re doing the right thing, what does it matter? I’m the fool for thinking you can change after fifty-five years of marriage. Now I’m going to bed, and I’d rather you didn’t disturb me again.”
