Matchmaking Baby

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Suddenly she was anxious to get out of there, to forget the reckless way she had just given herself to him and the trouble she may have gotten herself into by giving her heart to him again.

  “Let’s run back,” Joanie suggested. Anything to use up the adrenaline flowing through her. Anything to keep her from going back into that lighthouse and making wild, passionate love with him all over again.

  Steve grinned, looking just as full of energy and lovemaking potential as she was. “You’re on,” he said.

  They broke into a mad dash up the beach, then across the road to the staff quarters. Joanie wasn’t surprised when Steve caught her just short of her portico, and tugged her into his arms.

  “You forgot one thing,” he said breathlessly as their bodies collided, length to length.

  Her heart raced. “What?” As if she didn’t know. As if Steve would let their evening together end any other way.

  “A kiss good-night.”

  Her lips parted on a groan. Their mouths blended in the space of a heartbeat. He dominated, she surrendered. She asked, he gave. The sound of voices moving down the walk forced them apart.

  Joanie looked up at him, saw the wealth of feeling in his eyes and knew she hadn’t really given him a chance before this. She would now.

  Chapter Eight

  No sooner had Joanie reported to work at the concierge desk at seven the next morning than she realized she’d left in such a rush that she hadn’t given Steve half the instructions she should’ve.

  “I forgot to tell you I promised Emily she could go out and swing this morning after breakfast,” Joanie told him on the phone.

  “We were planning on doing just that.”

  Joanie shivered as the bell captain came in the front door and a blast of cool air hit her. “It’s a bit nippy out this morning. She needs to wear a sweater and a hat. Maybe a windbreaker.”

  “We’ve got it covered,” he reassured her.

  “And be sure she has a balanced breakfast when you take her to the employee cafeteria,” Joanie continued, glancing over her own To Do list for the day. “Fruit, cereal, milk and minced ham or scrambled egg.”

  He laughed. “You’re sounding more and more like a mom.”

  “I can’t help it.” Joanie twisted the telephone cord between her fingers. “I feel responsible for her.” Actually, Joanie wanted to be there when the two of them had breakfast. If they hadn’t all overslept by nearly forty-five minutes and been running late this morning, she would’ve managed it, too.

  “Not to worry,” he soothed. “We’ll see you when you get off.”

  The thought of being together again with Steve and Emily, of being a family, filled her with warmth. Was this what it would be like if she was married to Steve and they had a child of their own? Was this what it would be like if Fiona never came back and she and Steve decided to take care of Emily permanently? Joanie admitted the idea was appealing.

  “Steve?”

  “Yes?”

  “I—” Joanie bit her lip. Even she knew she sounded ridiculous. Nothing bad was going to happen to them. Nothing was going to separate them. Hadn’t the time they’d spent on the beach proved that? Plus, no one had yet come forward to claim Emily. That meant something, too. “Just take good care of her, okay?”

  “You know I will.”

  Joanie looked up to see Phoebe Claterberry heading straight for the concierge desk. “Steve, I’ve got to go.”

  “I’ll talk to you later.” They hung up.

  As she approached the desk, Phoebe asked, “Did the posters and books arrive for the press reception this afternoon?”

  “Yes. I signed for them yesterday. They’ve been put in the old schoolhouse storage room.”

  “Great.” Phoebe smiled. “We’ve got a photographer coming over on the ferry with the kids and their parents who’ve been invited to today’s program. We’re expecting them at two this afternoon. The reception will run till around five, at which point we’ll have a cookout on the beach.”

  Joanie nodded. “Columbia’s got everything under control. We’ll have the kids and their parents fed in plenty of time to make the seven-o’clock ferry back to Charleston.”

  “Do you know if Steve Lantz will be joining us on the beach?”

  Joanie shook her head. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “No problem. I’ll do so when I see him.”

  “You’ve got a number of messages from Dennis Wright. In fact—” Joanie nodded toward the sweeping staircase “—there’s Dennis now.”

  “Phoebe!” Dennis approached, looking as preppy as usual in pressed khaki trousers, loafers and an oxford shirt. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Why didn’t you get back to me?”

  “Well, I meant to, but…”

  “But what?” Dennis replied quietly when she didn’t finish. “I think I have a right to know why you’ve been ducking me since we arrived on Wednesday.” He paused, the hurt he felt apparent. “It’s not as if we get to see each other all the time.”

  “I know, but…” Phoebe began as Steve entered the hotel lobby, Emily in his arms. Phoebe glanced their way and immediately seemed to lose her train of thought. “I had some things to work out,” she said. “I’m sorry, Dennis, but I need to talk to Steve.” She rushed off without a backward glance.

  “Maybe she’s just tired,” Joanie suggested to Dennis.

  “It’s not like her to be so distant,” he insisted with a troubled scowl as he watched Phoebe fuss over Steve and Emily.

  “Maybe she just needs space,” Joanie said, but already her mind was leaping on ahead to other possibilities. Possibilities she was sure Dennis knew nothing about.

  “Maybe,” Dennis said. But he didn’t look convinced. And neither was Joanie. Dennis was right. Something was going on with Phoebe. The question was what.

  No sooner had Dennis left than Joanie walked over to join Steve, Emily and Phoebe. Though still in Steve’s arms, Emily had both hands tangled in the soft cotton fabric of Phoebe’s beach sweater. She was babbling unintelligibly.

  “Well, just so you know you’re welcome to attend the cookout,” Phoebe said. “You can bring Emily, too.”

  “I’ll try and put in an appearance,” Steve promised.

  “Hungee!” Emily announced.

  “In the meantime, I’m off to feed my buddy here.” Steve patted Emily on the back, then grinned at Joanie. “Now what am I supposed to feed the little tyke again?”

  Joanie ran through instructions.

  “Not to worry. I won’t let her s-h-a-m-p-o-o her hair with jam again.” Steve and Emily moved off.

  Phoebe turned to Joanie, musing thoughtfully, “He’s very good with Emily, isn’t he?”

  Joanie nodded. One day Steve would make some lucky child a wonderful father.

  “Listen, I’m sorry Dennis and I put you in the middle of things,” Phoebe continued. “I didn’t mean to make a scene.”

  “But you are deliberately avoiding him,” Joanie said, as she and Phoebe helped themselves to coffee from the cart set up in the room for the conference attendees.

  Phoebe nodded.

  “I suppose it’s safe to assume that the two of you go back quite a ways then,” Joanie said next.

  Sighing, Phoebe nodded again and confided quietly, “We fell in love at a regional conference during our freshman year of college while we were both being trained to work with at-risk youth. Even though we went to different universities, we managed to see each other off and on throughout the year, but it was hard. There were so many weekends we both spent alone that the spring of our sophomore year it became too much for us and we broke up.”

  Phoebe paused, then went on, “I skipped the national conference last year, because I thought it’d be too painful to be around him, knowing how it had been and how it was. But then I saw him again last Christmas, at another mentoring thing, and we talked and it was nice and then we started writing letters and…well, I know from the last couple of letters that Dennis
has sent me that he wants to pick up where we left off before, like nothing ever happened to break us up. But for me it’s not that simple.”

  Phoebe held a hand over her heart. “I just have this feeling, if he ever finds out everything I’ve been doing the past two years, that he’s not going to feel the same way about me. In fact, he’s probably going to be mad as heck at me.”

  “And so this is why you’ve been avoiding Dennis?”

  Phoebe nodded grimly. “Because I’m so confused. Anyway, thanks for listening, Ms. Griffin. It really helped.”

  Joanie watched Phoebe stride off.

  Was it possible, Joanie wondered, that Phoebe was Emily’s baby? Phoebe was about the size of the person in the trench coat, scarf and glasses. Was it possible Phoebe had given birth to Dennis’s child and not told him? Was it possible Phoebe had brought Emily with her to the conference, intending to tell Dennis the two of them had a daughter, but then chickened out at the last moment and in a panic left Emily with Joanie? And used the name Fiona? Phoebe and Fiona. The names were similar in sound.

  Joanie wished she could ask Phoebe outright if this was indeed the case, but she knew she couldn’t. First, all Bride’s Bay guests were entitled to their privacy. Second, Joanie didn’t want anyone else to be the brunt of the wild speculation and innuendo she herself had been the past few days—especially on such a flimsy excuse. If Phoebe was Emily’s mother, it would become apparent by the time the conference ended. If she wasn’t…well, Joanie would just have to keep looking and praying for a resolution that left Emily with a mommy and a daddy, plenty of love and a warm, wonderful home. In the meantime, Joanie decided to keep a keen eye on Phoebe Claterberry and Dennis Wright.

  JOANIE GOT OFF WORK at two and headed straight to her quarters. She walked in the door to find Steve and Emily sprawled on the floor playing with a set of wooden blocks. A college-basketball game was on television.

  She dropped her purse into a chair, shrugged out of her navy blazer with the Bride’s Bay pin above the breast pocket and kicked off her pumps. “Having fun?” It certainly looked as if they were.

  “You bet,” Steve said, grinning, looking handsome and relaxed in a white T-shirt, pine green corduroy shirt, thick sweat socks and jeans. He, too, had kicked off his shoes. Lounging with his back against the sofa, he drew one knee up and braced a forearm on his thigh. “So.” He looked her over, seeming very glad to see her, and Joanie’s heart took an excited leap. “How was your morning?”

  Joanie was glad to see him, too. She smiled, liking the intimate atmosphere. “Busy, which is pretty usual when we have a conference going on.”

  “You look tired.”

  “I am.” Wearily, Joanie sat in the chair beside him.

  He grinned, taking one nylon-clad foot in his hands. “Maybe this’ll help.”

  Joanie drew a shaky breath as his fingers worked their magic, gently massaging her ankle and the arch of her foot. “Feel good?” he asked.

  Joanie nodded. Too good she thought, just as the basketball game cut to a commercial. But not just any commercial, she realized, stiffening reflexively. This was one of Steve’s commercials. And it was a doozy.

  In it, he was naked from the waist up. Shaving cream covered the lower half of his face. With a bevy of scantily clad beauties watching, the Steve on TV leisurely began to shave. The Steve sprawled on Joanie’s floor groaned and looked deeply embarrassed. The Steve on TV looked as if he was enjoying himself immensely.

  And so did the bevy of beauties who were now running their hands over Steve’s shoulders, chest and freshly shaven face.

  Just watching, Joanie was filled with a very potent, if highly irrational, jealousy. This commercial represented everything she’d ended up thinking about him. In it he looked like a man who enjoyed the limitless, varied attention from the opposite sex a man in his celebrity position often received. Was she such a fool not to believe that he, like so many other famous athletes, indulged in such attention privately, as well? She looked over at him, uncertainty rising in her like the tide.

  His massage changed to a grip. He knew what she was thinking and detested it. “Joanie—”

  Suddenly Emily yelled, “Daddy!” and toddled over to the television set. Leaning forward, she began kissing Steve’s face on the screen, When the image faded, she lifted her hand in a wave. “Bye-bye, Daddy!” she shouted.

  “Daddy?” Steve and Joanie echoed in unison, shocked. Surely Emily was wrong. Yet Joanie was acutely aware that Emily had never called anyone Daddy before.

  Emily nodded. She hugged her teddy bear to her chest and pointed to the TV screen. “My Daddy!”

  Steve turned to Joanie, a questioning look on his face as if this proved what he had wanted to believe all along—that Emily was, in fact, their child.

  Joanie felt herself flush warmly. Once again she was forced to defend the indefensible. “Don’t look at me,” Joanie said, arrowing a thumb at her chest. “I didn’t teach her that.”

  “Well, neither did I,” Steve shot back. He levered himself up to sit on the sofa corner next to her chair, then captured her wrist and held it firmly when she would’ve pulled away. “Although,” he continued grimly, “Emily’s assertion does tie in to a certain theory of parentage you and I have already talked about and dismissed-perhaps too soon, I’m now beginning to think.”

  Joanie jerked her wrist from his grip. “There’s no way you’re going to get me to admit to being her mother, because it simply isn’t true.” She lurched to her feet.

  “Then why did she say that just now?” Steve demanded, getting up and following her around the room.

  “How would I know?” Joanie threw up her hands in frustration and whirled to face him. “You were the one who was with her all morning while I worked. Maybe you taught her to call you Daddy.”

  He arched a brow. “For what reason if it’s not true?”

  “To use her to get closer to me, since you know I plan to try to adopt her if we don’t find Fiona soon.”

  Silence fell between them.

  He studied her, apparently drawing his own conclusions. “It’s not just Emily calling me Daddy that’s gotten to you. You’re upset about the commercial, aren’t you?”

  What else? Especially when I add the way Phoebe Claterberry seems to be ditching Dennis to chase you and pay attention to Emily. “Let’s just say the commercial reminded me of some things I shouldn’t be so quick to forget.” Like the fact that women find you irresistible. Like the fact I once found a naked groupie in your bed.

  “What you saw was only an ad. That’s not who I am in real life.” His impatience was evident.

  Joanie moved restlessly to the window as Emily resumed playing with her blocks. “I know that,” Joanie declared irritably, folding her arms tightly beneath her breasts.

  But even as she spoke, she was having second thoughts about their passionate lovemaking the evening before at the lighthouse. She’d given herself to him with every fiber of her being, thinking all the while that she was one of the few women he’d ever been close to in his life. Only to discover…what? That the TV ads and his reputation as a lady-killer extraordinaire were closer to the truth than she wanted to admit? That he might have sired a child with another woman, a child he knew nothing about? And hence, another woman in his life?

  All this added up to heartbreak and scandal, the two things she wanted most in this world to avoid.

  Steve placed his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her gently. It was all Joanie could do to keep up her defenses and not melt into his welcoming warmth. “What are you thinking?” he asked softly.

  “Just what I said last night.” Joanie blinked back the tears gathering in her eyes. “That we’re getting involved too quickly. And I promised myself I wouldn’t do that this time,” she finished in a low, strangled voice. For all the good it’s done me. Whenever I’m with Steve, my common sense flies right out the window.

  His hands tightened possessively. “Forget what Emily said j
ust now. There’s nothing wrong with what we’re feeling!” he said passionately.

  Wasn’t there? Then why was the air between them heavy with desperation? Why did he look as if he was afraid he was going to lose her? “Then why can’t we slow down a bit?” she said.

  He dropped his hands and searched her face. “Is that what you want?”

  Joanie drew a calming breath, forcing herself to ignore her impulsively romantic nature. She wet her lips. “I think it would be wise, yes.”

  Steve’s sensual lips curved downward in frustration. “It’s not going to change anything,” he warned. “I’ll still feel the way I do and so will you.”

  But what if another woman came between them again? Joanie wondered, feeling all the more shaken and confused. Would she survive the hurt this time? She barely had the last. She put her hands out to ward him off. “Steve…”

  Getting the message, he put several steps between them. “All right. I’ll back off—for now. But be warned, Joanie.” His eyes lasered into hers. “I’m not a patient man. And I have no intention of letting you slip away from me again.”

  STEVE SAID GOODBYE to Emily, who was just about ready to take her afternoon nap, then headed next door. He frowned at the pale blue envelope taped to his door. His name was scrawled across the front. Inside was a note written in calligraphy. He read it quickly, then grimaced, unable to believe what was written there after the conversation he’d just had with Joanie on that very subject. It couldn’t be true. Could it? And if it was…Damn it, he was tired of playing these games.

  Note in hand, he strode furiously back to Joanie’s door. He had to knock three times before she answered. She let him in, a silencing finger to her lips. “I just put Emily down for her nap,” she whispered, pointing back to the bedroom, where Emily’s crib was.

  “Fine. Then we’ll whisper,” Steve said.

  “What’s put the bee in your bonnet?” Joanie demanded.

  Steve handed her the letter, still struggling to comprehend the enormity of what he’d read. He’d never felt so deprived or so elated, never mind both at once. Joanie’s frown deepened as she recognized the stationery. She slanted him a perplexed look. “What are you doing with Emily’s note?” She clasped a hand to her chest. “I thought I had it.”