With a sigh, she started to lay the mail aside when a piece of white paper, printed at the top with Zachary Adams's name and office address, fell from between two envelopes. The handwriting was a neat scrawl, and the message was to her. "Sarah, call Beth G. when you can—not urgent."
What did her friend want? Probably to see if Sarah's frame of mind was any better than it had been during their last conversation. She should have known better than to call Beth simply because she was upset. Like Daniel, Beth was a caretaker, a natural worrier. She would want to be certain that Sarah's distress was only temporary.
Well, she would call Beth tomorrow or Sunday, she decided as she stood up. Right now she had other things to do. "Come on, Katie," she invited, offering her hand to her daughter. "You and I are going to make spaghetti. Doesn't that sound like fun?"
Eating spaghetti was a new experience for Katie. Disdaining the silverware that she hadn't quite mastered, she dug into her dinner with both hands, coating her fingers, her face, her sweater and just about everything else with red sauce. By the time she finished, even her eyebrows and hair were liberally covered.
"Have you ever noticed that the dirtier she gets, the more she enjoys her food?" Sarah asked, staying well out of reach of their daughter's grasping hands.
Daniel looked at her as if he'd forgotten her presence. After a moment's blank stare, his gaze shifted to Katie. "That's nice," he mumbled before slipping back into his thoughts.
"Nice," Sarah repeated, shaking her head. There was definitely something else on his mind. He had come back to the house just as she was setting the table for dinner, and he hadn't spoken more than a dozen words to either of them. He hadn't eaten much dinner, either, and now he thought Katie's mess was nice. She tried again to gain his attention. "I found the message from Zachary."
Again he looked up. "What message?"
"To call Beth." Leaning back, she pulled the folded paper from her jeans pocket and displayed it for him before retucking it. "It was with the mail you took out of your pocket."
"Oh." He looked away again.
With a sigh, Sarah gave up. She got a dish towel from the kitchen counter and began wiping Katie's hands and face. She pulled the soiled sweater over the girls head, then patted her round belly. "Well, at least you got most of it inside you. Let me put something on this so the stains won't set. Then we'll take a bath, okay?"
"Okay."
Sarah took the sweater into the laundry room and was preparing to climb onto the dryer when an upward glance stopped her. Daniel had lowered the shelf so that everything she needed was within easy reach. Even the stain remover at the back of the shelf required no more effort than a tiptoed stretch to reach. After treating the stains on the sweater, she returned to the dining room. "Daniel, thank you," she said, her gratitude genuine.
He looked up from the spaghetti he was aimlessly twirling around his fork. "For what?"
"For moving the shelf in the laundry room so I can reach it." She passed behind him, bending to give him a kiss. "You really are sweet, you know."
"Yeah, sure," he muttered. He was a real sweetheart.
"I'm going to give Katie a bath while you finish eating, all right?" She scooped up their daughter and started toward the stairs. Halfway there, she turned back. "Daniel? We'll talk after she's in bed … won't we?" She tried to sound confident, but a note of uncertainty squeezed in. She had never seen him this way before, and she didn't know how to deal with him.
His sigh was heavy and seemed to shudder through him. "Yes," he said quietly. "We'll talk."
Still not reassured, Sarah took Katie upstairs. They splashed and played through her bath, then Sarah dressed her for bed. "Only one story tonight, sweetheart, okay? Then bedtime. Your daddy and I have some serious talking to do."
Was he tired of her? Did he want her out of his and Katie's lives? Had he decided to take Katie from her? Had he heard something in town that had turned him against her? The questions plagued her through the story of five mischievous puppies and nagged at her when she cleaned the kitchen while Daniel was putting Katie to bed. By the time he came down again, she was about to burst from curiosity and anxiety.
She was standing in front of the fireplace, her hands in her pockets. As slim as she was, dressed in the bulky sweater and jeans, with her short mussed hair, she looked almost boyish to Daniel—like a teenage girl not yet developed. But she wasn't a girl; she was a woman. A woman who was frustrated by, and fearful of, his moodiness. It showed in the concern in her doe's eyes, in her uneasy movements as she rocked on her heels, in the hesitant smile that quivered on her lips. "Well … can we talk now?" she asked him.
He stopped behind the rocker, his big hands gripping the back of the chair. His only answer was a nod.
Sarah waited for him to start, but when he said nothing, she sighed in despair. "Do you want me to leave, Daniel? Is that what's bothering you?"
Her conclusion surprised him into meeting her eyes. "No, of course not."
"Then what is it?"
"Tell me about Tony."
She turned as white as the crocheted collar on her sweater. Even her lips paled, until the only color in her face was her eyes, big and round and filled with the same shock that had rocketed through him six hours ago. "How did you…?" Inside her pocket, her fingers closed around the crinkled note paper. She pulled it out, looked at it, then at Daniel. Beth. Just five days ago her friend had encouraged her to tell Daniel about Tony, had insisted that he had a right to know. But Sarah had never expected her to take steps to ensure that he found out. What had it taken—a brief phone call to Zachary Adams? An unimportant message for Sarah, accompanied by a casual, "Oh, by the way, let me do your client a favor. Tell him to ask Sarah about Tony." That would be enough—no details, no broken confidences. Just a little push in the right direction.
Or maybe Zachary had called her. He'd made his interest in Beth perfectly clear yesterday. Maybe he had called her to talk, to start a friendship, to ask for a date, and had asked for something, anything, that would help their clients settle things. And Beth, out of misplaced concern for Sarah, had given it.
She crumpled the note and threw it into the fireplace. It lay there a moment, untouched, then flared into bright, hot flames that died an instant later. It was like Tony's life. It had burned brightly for thirty-one months; then it had ended, over in an instant.
"Tony was my son. He's dead."
She wanted to sound detached, distant, but the plain, simple words and the lack of emotion conveyed exactly the opposite to Daniel. They hinted at the love, the sorrow, the grief, that she still lived with. That she would always live with. "Tell me about him," he repeated, his voice soft and unsteady.
She considered it for a moment, then her shoulders rose and fell with a weary sigh. Slowly she turned around to face him. "My marriage to Brent wasn't very strong after the first few years, and when I began talking about having a baby, it got worse. He didn't want the responsibility. He didn't want to put someone else first. When I got pregnant, he insisted that I'd done it deliberately, without his consent. I hadn't. I just seem to get pregnant … easily. I thought that after the baby was born, Brent would change his mind about him … but he didn't."
She was quiet for a moment, remembering. With another sigh, she went on. "Tony was a pretty baby. He had blond hair and brown eyes, and he was lively and healthy—or so we thought. Still, Brent didn't seem to care about him. All he could see was that there would be three of us to get by on his salary, for a while at least, instead of just two of us on both salaries. Then, the day we were supposed to leave the hospital, Tony became jaundiced, and the doctors wouldn't let him go home with us. There are a lot of reasons for jaundice. Some aren't too serious … some are."
For the first month or so, she told him, her voice soft and empty, Tony seemed all right, except for the yellowish hue of his skin. He ate normally, gained weight and was alert and active, like any other baby. She had taken a leave of absence to stay home with hi
m, and she'd loved their time together. But Brent had resented him—the cost of his care, the demands he made on their time. He'd even resented Sarah's love for Tony.
The doctors weren't able to make a definite diagnosis right away. Some cases of jaundice resolved themselves within a few months, but when Tony's condition remained unchanged after eight weeks, they did surgery—a liver biopsy and dye studies of the liver and gallbladder. The diagnosis was biliary atresia, obstruction of the biliary system. It was a somewhat rare disease, with only two hopes for correction: surgery or transplant. The dye studies had already ruled out further surgery in Tony's case.
"The average survival rate without a transplant is eighteen months, and they told us that he would be sick most of that time. That was more than Brent was willing to take on. He hadn't wanted a baby in the first place, and he certainly hadn't wanted one who was going to require intensive and expensive care before he died a few months down the line." Sarah knew she sounded hard and cruel, but she didn't care. Brent had been hard and cruel. "So he moved out and filed for divorce. The judge ordered him to pay child support and to help with Tony's care, but he left the state instead. No one had the money or the time or the manpower to track him down."
She looked at Daniel, trying to judge his reaction. Soon she would get to the part about him—and Katie. Would that stunned look on his face remain, or would he be like so many of the others—judging, damning?
"Tony was a sweet baby. He learned to walk and talk, like other kids, but things were hard for him. He tired easily, and he was susceptible to other illnesses. He was in and out of the hospital on a regular basis, and as the disease progressed, he suffered a loss of appetite and hypertension. His abdomen was swollen and distended, and he was puffy looking, and that awful jaundice never went away. His only pleasure in life was reading. He loved to be read to, to look at the pictures. He would lie in my arms for hours at a time with his books."
She didn't realize she was crying until a tear dripped onto her hand. She wiped her cheeks with her palm and continued, her voice still soft, but now filled with emotion, with painful memories. "I never went back to the school. Tony needed constant care, and I couldn't afford a baby-sitter, even if I'd been able to find someone willing to take him. I sold the house, the car, everything I got in the divorce, and the social workers at the hospital helped us get every kind of aid available. It wasn't much, but we got by."
Daniel's hands were gripping the chair back so hard that his fingers turned white. She wanted to go to him, to ease his hands away from the gleaming wood and hold them tightly in her own, but she couldn't. Not until she knew how he would react to the rest of her story.
"I was so tired. There was no one I could turn to for help. When you have a dying child, no one knows what to say, how to act, so they just stay away. I lost touch with almost all of my friends. Finally Beth offered to take care of him for a weekend. She gave me the keys to her apartment, told me to go out and have some fun, if I remembered how. And I met you. Two months later I found out I was pregnant again. I considered having an abortion. I considered giving the baby up for adoption." She risked another look at him. "But I wanted her. I wanted her so much."
The pregnancy had been difficult. Tony's condition had been deteriorating, and she had been exhausted all the time. It had gotten even worse after Katie's birth. Instead of providing around-the-clock care for one child, she now had to care for two. When Tony was hospitalized two months after Katie was born, Sarah hadn't even had the money for a baby-sitter for Katie so she could visit Tony. That was when she'd decided to contact Daniel.
"Why didn't you come to me from the start?" he asked, his voice low and trembling. "When you found out you were pregnant, why didn't you tell me? I could have helped you."
"I know that now." She sat down on the hearth, too tired to stand any longer, and let her head roll forward. When she looked up again, she continued. "But all I knew then was that I had a baby who was dying, and his own father couldn't handle that. Why should I have expected a stranger to care?"
It was a difficult question, one with no answer. "What about a transplant?"
"He was on the list, but no donor ever became available. Do you know what it's like, Daniel, to wait for a transplant? To pray that some other woman's baby will die so that yours can live?" Her voice broke, and the tears flowed freely at last. She covered her face with her hands and cried for Tony, for Katie, for Daniel—for herself.
He released the chair and crossed to her in two strides, lifting her easily into his arms. "It's all right, Sarah," he whispered, carrying her to the rocker, where he cradled her like a baby. "It's all right."
She cried until she was limp from exhaustion, until there were no tears left. Clutching a handful of his shirt, she rested against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. "I loved Katie very much," she whispered. "But she had you. Tony didn't have anybody but me."
"He was lucky to have you." His voice was harsh, thick with emotion, but his hands as they rubbed her were sweetly gentle.
After a long silence, she spoke again. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" he asked in dismay.
"I should have told you sooner. I should have trusted you."
His fingers glided soothingly through her hair. "When did I give you reason to trust me with this? The things I said, the things I thought… I'm the one who owes you an apology. God, Sarah, I am sorry."
She laid her hand over his mouth. "You reached the only conclusions you could with the information you had. That was my fault. But it doesn't matter anymore. I'm glad you know. I'm glad I don't have to keep that part of my life secret anymore."
After another silence, it was Daniel who spoke. "Sarah?"
"Hmm."
"Do you want another baby?"
She looked up into his face. Before her unpleasant experience in town yesterday, she had promised to finish this discussion with him later. Now, apparently, "later" had come. "Yes, I do," she replied softly. "Someday. When the time is right."
Daniel moved, depositing her in the chair and kneeling in front of her, his hands clenched around hers. He spoke in a low, tense rumble. "Make the time right, Sarah. Now."
She stared at him. He was clutching her hands tightly, but she didn't feel the pain. For one long moment she didn't feel anything but a curious emptiness waiting to be filled. "What?" she whispered at last.
"Marry me. Raise my daughter. Have my babies." He swallowed, took a deep breath and asked, "Will you marry me, Sarah?"
"Marry … you?" she echoed, still in a whisper.
"You need me, Sarah, and Katie needs me. We're all happier together than we are apart, because we're meant to be a family—not two people who sleep together, or two people whose only connection is their daughter." He broke off, struggling with the words. He had never said "I love you" to a woman before, but he had never loved before. Now was the time to say it, to acknowledge his love for Sarah—not affection, not desire, but love. But, God help him, when he desperately needed the words, even now, they wouldn't come. "I need you, Sarah."
She searched his face for a moment and found everything she needed to see. He might not use the word love, but he knew its meaning, and in his own gentle, caring way, she was certain that he did love her. "Yes," she agreed softly. "You do need me." Then she smiled the sweetest, dearest smile he'd ever seen. "I would be honored to marry you, Daniel."
October 27
Daniel lay on his back, staring at the ceiling in the firelit room, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Sweat was collecting on his forehead, not from the heat—because in spite of the fire, it was still cool in the bedroom—but from the tension, from the force of will required to lie here perfectly still while Sarah—he clamped his teeth on a groan—was doing perfectly wicked things to his body.
Her small hand moved intimately between his thighs, stroking, caressing his hardness, while at the same time her tongue teased his nipple into a hardness of its own. She laughed softly, ple
ased with the power she held over him, but careful not to abuse it. With barely a twitch of his magnificent muscles, he could turn the tables and demonstrate the same power over her.
She left a damp trail of kisses down his chest, over his flat belly, across his hip. When her mouth touched him with an intimate, open kiss, his control broke, and he reached for her, lifting her up, settling her over his hips. She accepted his smooth, deep intrusion with a smile and a soft, sensuous sound of pure contentment. Leaning over, she brushed her mouth over his. "I love you, Daniel."
His response, as she'd known it would be, was to pull her close, to kiss her hungrily, with all the passion, all the love, he couldn't put into words. His tongue thrust into her mouth with a near-savagery that was tightly controlled, matching the furious pumping rhythm of his hips.
She tried to remain detached, in control, but he was filling her so sweetly, his hands tormenting her so gently, his mouth claiming hers so thoroughly. Uttering a low, helpless moan, she gave in to the sensations spiraling through her belly, gave in to the pure need and matched him, met him. When his body arched, shuddered and emptied its hot sweet flow, her body arched, too, strained by the convulsive tremors that started deep inside and swept through her.
When she collapsed against him, Daniel hardly felt her weight. She was so delicate, he marveled, stroking his fingers through her damp hair, over her slender neck, down her gleaming back. He could lie with her like this forever, their bodies heated and slick and still intimately joined.
Bracing her hands on his chest, she slowly lifted herself until she could gaze into his face. "Daniel … do you really want to marry me?"
Less than four hours had passed since his proposal—it was a little after midnight now, he saw with a glance at the clock—but she looked as if she still couldn't believe it. Well, he still couldn't believe she had said yes, either. "Yes, Sarah, I do."
"You're not just offering me respectability." She made it a statement, but there was a faint questioning note in her voice that pleaded for reassurance.
SOMEBODY'S BABY Page 21
