by Mary McBride
“I think it’s the best news I’ve ever had in my life, Laura.” He slipped his arms around her, absorbing her brief, half-hearted struggle. “I love you so much,” he whispered. “This is perfect.”
“I love you, too,” she said on a long sigh. “But I’m not so sure this is perfect.”
He hugged her tighter. “Yes, it is. Let’s go take the test. Come on. Right now.”
“I sort of thought I’d wait.” Her voice wobbled and she shrugged weakly against him. “You know. Just take my time reading the instructions. Contemplate the box a little while. That kind of thing.”
“Nope.” He picked her up, then reached for the test kit and jammed it in her hand. “Here. You can read the instructions on our way up the stairs.”
After nudging Laura into the bathroom and closing the door, Sam settled on the top step, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and one leg cocked, trying to look casual even as he was reminding himself to breathe every now and then. He checked his watch about every forty-five seconds, unsure how long these things took.
Still, he had no doubt about the outcome. Laura was pregnant. He was sure. The gods of happiness wouldn’t lift a man this high if they only meant to drag him down. Would they? Even closing his eyes did nothing to erase what felt like the goofiest of grins from his lips.
A baby! A delicate little girl with Laura’s soft blond hair and huge blue eyes. A little girl who’d play endless dress up in her mother’s crazy clothes and who’d learn early on to laugh at thunder and lightning. Or a brown-haired boy, a sweet, good-natured doofus who’d take decades to grow into his inherited big hands and feet.
Ah, God. A baby. This changed everything.
Or not.
Sam’s grin evaporated. He opened his eyes and shoved off the wall. It didn’t change a thing as far as Laura’s fear of abandonment was concerned. Hell. It might even make it worse since she knew better than anyone that a man could just as easily walk out on a woman and a child.
Damn you, Oliver McNeal. I haven’t found you for her yet, but I will if it’s the last thing I ever do. I’ll find you and somehow I’ll make you fix what you broke all those years ago.
When Officer Travis knocked on the back door, Laura immediately knew it was somewhere between four and four-thirty because for the past three weeks he’d knocked on the back door every single afternoon between four and four-thirty. Sam had asked him to check on her ever since the plus sign appeared on the test stick. Of course, if Sam was as concerned about her condition as he claimed to be, Laura thought that he could have spent a little more time at home, himself, instead of making poor Charlie do it.
Ever since finding out she was pregnant, Sam had all but disappeared. He said he was winding up cases at his office prior to his certain reelection as sheriff. Laura wasn’t so sure. Her worst fear was that he was getting cold feet now that their “just in case” had materialized in the form of a baby.
“Come on in, Charlie,” she called. “I’m glad you’re here. I need a guinea pig.”
“You need a what?” he asked, pulling open the screen door, then sloughing off his cap as he stepped into the kitchen.
“A guinea pig. I’m making chili for the very first time. From scratch!” She dipped a clean spoon into the pot on the back burner, scooped up some of the chunky, simmering, bright red concoction, and passed it to the officer. “See what you think. Be careful, though. It’s hot.”
“Looks great,” he said, smiling as he blew a few cooling breaths at the rising steam before he inserted the spoon and its contents in his mouth. “Mmm.”
Laura held her breath.
When she hadn’t been able to find a cooking class in which to enroll, she’d picked up a copy of a gourmet magazine instead. Most of the recipes were daunting if not downright terrifying, with ingredients like duck fat and fennel and leeks. But the recipe for chili seemed easy enough, and she’d spent the morning happily chopping onions and green peppers and garlic, humming even, and so in hopes of pleasing Sam with her newfound expertise.
But as she watched, Charlie’s expression of sheer, even heavenly pleasure altered somewhat to mild distress, and then, a few seconds later, it mutated to pure horror. He grimaced. His eyes bulged out and his hand jerked up to his collar. Laura thought he was teasing her, and she didn’t much appreciate it when he made a horrible strangling sound deep in his throat.
“What?” she asked, glaring at him.
“Water!”
“Water?”
“Water!!”
Charlie’s hands flailed in the direction of the sink, which he apparently couldn’t see at the moment because of the tears in his eyes. Oh, God. He wasn’t kidding. She grabbed a glass and filled it from the tap. After Charlie gulped down all sixteen ounces, he gestured for more.
While he drank the second glass, Laura poked a spoon in the chili pot and tasted it for herself. It wasn’t so bad, she thought, just before the top of her head exploded and flames shot out of her eyes.
Not bothering with a glass, she stuck her head under the faucet and turned the water on full blast.
“What did I do wrong?” she moaned after she finally came up for air.
“Dunno,” Charlie said, his voice sounding slightly sandpapery, as if his vocal chords had been shredded. “How much chili powder did you use?”
“Only what the recipe called for. A cup, I think. Let me check.”
Laura snatched the magazine off the counter and ran a finger down the page, ticking off the ingredients.
“Oh,” she murmured. “Oh, damn.” She didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or to take a sledgehammer to the stove. “It was supposed to be two tablespoons of chili powder and one cup of chopped green pepper. I think I got them mixed up.”
“Well…” Charlie shrugged and said, “I can definitely see how that could happen.” He slapped his cap on his head. “I’d better be going, Laura. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she sighed, turning the burner off under her hellacious brew. “See you tomorrow, Charlie.”
She had just crammed the last of it into the garbage disposal when Sam called from his office to announce that not only would he not be home for dinner, but not for breakfast either since he was about to catch a plane for Chicago.
“Why?” Laura asked, trying not to sound too disappointed or too upset by his continuing absences.
“I need to pull together a few loose ends on one of my cases,” he said.
“Oh.”
She could hear him sigh one of those beleaguered and all too familiar, when-will-you-trust-me sighs. But how could she? He was already leaving her. It just happened to be in bits and pieces rather than the ultimate farewell.
“Will you be all right alone tonight?” he asked. “Want me to call Charlie and…?”
“Don’t be silly, Sam. I’ll be fine.” Peachy. Alone. Again. Now there’s a surprise.
Laura tried to lighten her voice. “Hey, you’re going to miss a great dinner. I made chili today.”
“No kidding? Aw, honey, I’m sorry. This just kind of came up out of the blue.”
“That’s okay.”
“Save some for me, will you?”
“Sure.” Might as well make up another vat of it tomorrow. What else is there to do while I wait for the axe to fall?
“The plane’s boarding, sweetheart. Gotta go. I’ll call you later from Chicago.”
“Okay. Have a good trip.”
“I love you, Laura.”
“I love you, too, Sam. Bye.”
“Goodbye again,” she whispered after hanging up. “I just didn’t think it would be quite so soon.”
In window seat 20-C, Sam buckled his seat belt, then leaned back his head and closed his eyes. It hadn’t taken a private investigator to detect the sadness and insecurity in Laura’s voice, or the subtext of her every word, her eternal Go ahead. Leave. Everybody does. Why should you be any different?
Hell. If this Oliver McNeal in Chicago didn�
��t pan out, Sam didn’t know what he was going to do. He’d just about exhausted the few leads that he’d gleaned from Laura during casual conversations. Her father’s name, his approximate age, a remembered reference to an unnamed aircraft carrier.
Unbeknownst to Laura, Sam had spent the last three weeks trying to find the right man out of the dozens of names he’d turned up. He’d even taken a day trip to Omaha the previous week to meet with an Oliver McNeal who turned out to be not only the wrong age, but the wrong color as well.
But finding the man wasn’t his biggest problem. It was finding the reason he’d abandoned his little girl, and Sam could only do that in person, man-to-man, eye to eye. A letter or a phone call weren’t going to tell him what he really needed to know, which was whether or not he might be reintroducing Laura to a man who might hurt her all over again.
He looked out the window while the plane hurtled down the runway. She made chili today! Ah, God. He couldn’t wait to get home.
Chapter 16
When Charlie knocked on the door the next day, Laura looked at the clock on the stove, imagining she’d gone into a trance while stirring her second batch of chili and had somehow lost three hours. But that wasn’t the case. It was just a little after one o’clock.
“Cooking again, huh?” the officer asked without a trace of sarcasm as he entered the kitchen. “Smells great.”
“You’re early today, Charlie.”
“Sam asked me to pick you up and take you to the courthouse.”
Laura dropped the spoon into the pot. “What?”
“He said to get you there by two-thirty or else.”
“Why?” It was only now that she noticed a kind of silly smile perched on the officer’s lips. “What in the world is this about?”
“Well…” The smile got even sillier. “A wedding, I guess. He said to tell you to wear your wedding dress and to make sure you bring the license.”
She snapped off the heat under the pot. “Why didn’t he call me himself?”
Charlie shrugged. “He tried, I guess, but there was no answer. Then he said he had to catch a plane, so I should come get you.” He glanced at his watch. “We don’t have all that much time, especially if you’ve got to get into a wedding dress.”
“I don’t have a wedding dress,” she muttered. “This is ridiculous.”
“All I know is Sam said he’d kick my butt all the way across the county if I didn’t get you to Judge Randle’s chambers on time. Look. Just put on any old dress, Laura, grab the license and let’s go.”
Laura stalked up the stairs, after proclaiming that she was only doing this to keep Charlie out of trouble, no way was she doing it for Sam, no way was she going to go through with a marriage to a man who spent more time away from home than in it, and no way was her baby going to be abandoned. If he or she didn’t have a daddy to begin with, that was fine. That was perfect. Then there wouldn’t be anybody to walk out on them. Ever.
She glared at the big brass bed that Sam had bought her, and hot tears began to well up in her eyes. Being with Sam was the most important thing in her life. She wanted to marry him. She wanted to cook his meals and have his children and share this bed with him forever.
“What is wrong with you?” she muttered. “Just put on a damned dress and go marry the man. Whatever happens. However long it lasts.”
After she wiped her eyes, she raked her T-shirt over her head and wriggled out of her jeans.
“What damned dress?”
She still hadn’t replaced the clothes she’d lost in the fire. There wasn’t much incentive when she knew her size would be changing continually during the coming months. Briefly, she considered getting something from Sam’s mother’s closet, then decided she didn’t want to get married looking matronly and reeking of White Shoulders.
Which left her with only one option.
Laura opened a dresser drawer and pulled out her little blue velvet dress. One thing was for sure. When Sam walked out on their marriage, at least he wouldn’t ever forget their wedding day.
Sam paced back and forth in front of the county courthouse. He checked his watch for the ninetieth time since he and Oliver McNeal had deplaned, sprinted to Sam’s Blazer in the parking lot, then broken more than a few speed limits between the airport and the courthouse.
He told Charlie two-thirty, didn’t he? Dammit. It was now two-forty. Judge Randle had to be back on the bench at three. Worse, Oliver McNeal had to be back on a plane to Chicago at three forty-five in order to catch his six o’clock flight to Kuwait where the man was about to begin a two-year stint as a drilling consultant.
His heart sped up when he saw a squad car pull into the courthouse parking lot, but the tags didn’t match Charlie’s. He swore, loud enough to garner him an indignant tsk from an elderly woman several feet away.
“I’m getting married,” he said by way of apology. “And my bride is fifteen minutes late.”
She gave him another sharp little cluck of her tongue, then said, “You oughtn’t marry her, if she’s not worth waiting for.”
“Oh, she’s worth it. It’s just that…”
Sam felt his mouth close helplessly. What could he say? It was way too complicated to explain. All he knew was that if Laura didn’t get here in the next few minutes, his perfect plan was going to fall apart. She might still consent to marry him, but it wouldn’t be the wedding he wanted to give her.
Charlie—God bless him!—roared around the corner and brought his cruiser to a screeching stop in front of the courthouse entrance. Sam sprinted forward to open the back door where Laura sat, arms crossed and head down, looking for all the world like someone who’d just been picked up for…prostitution!
She had it all on. The whole nine glitzy, glamorous yards. Better yet, the single, skimpy yard of blue velvet with the neckline down to there and the hem halfway up her gorgeous legs. The killer, rhinestone studded shoes. Even the tiny beaded bag barely big enough for a key and a Kleenex. Even as he fell head over heels in love all over again, Sam was sorely tempted to strangle her.
He stretched out his hand and helped her out of the seat. “Hurry, babe.”
“Sorry we’re late, boss,” Charlie said.
“It’s my fault, Sam,” Laura said. “I dawdled. Don’t blame Charlie.”
“I don’t have time to blame anybody.” He propelled her toward the courthouse entrance, and called over his shoulder. “Step it up, will you, Charlie? We need a second witness.”
“Sam! For heaven’s sake, slow down. I can’t walk that fast in these shoes.”
He pushed through the door and headed toward the elevator, steering Laura through the crowded lobby and ignoring her repeated protests as well as the curious looks and assorted wolf whistles that followed them. At the elevator, he punched the up button and then gazed down at his bride.
“Did you bring the license?”
“Right here.” She extracted it, folded and refolded until it was barely bigger than a postage stamp, from her purse. “Are you sure you want to do this in such a big rush, Sam? Maybe it’s not such a great idea. Maybe we should wait. Maybe, you know, I should get the right kind of dress. This could be a jinx or something. Maybe…”
The elevator doors whooshed open and he moved her forward, gently but firmly.
Charlie slid through the doors just as they were closing.
“I had to leave the cruiser out front in that no parking zone, Sam. I hope it doesn’t cost you too many votes.” The officer dragged in a breath. “Did I hear you right? You want me to be a witness?”
“Yep.”
Charlie grinned as he swept his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. “Gee, thanks, Sam. I’m flattered. I really am. I’ll be proud to stand up for you.”
Laura looked up from tugging here and there at her dress, fussing with the velvet’s nap. “Who’s the other witness?” she asked.
Sam smiled. “You’ll see.”
When the elevator doors opened, Sam raced out first t
o look up and down the corridor. Laura thought he was acting very strangely indeed. More keyed up than she’d ever seen him. Nervous, actually. Like a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers, as Nana used to say.
Well, she wasn’t all that calm herself. And, sad to say, she wasn’t all that excited. A bride ought to be full of happy anticipation on her wedding day, not full of doubts and suspicions.
Sam was in the corridor now, pointing this way and that, like a traffic cop.
“I’m going to check to make sure Judge Randle is in his chambers. Charlie, how about waiting down there by the water fountain?”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“I’ll wait there, too,” Laura said, following in Charlie’s tracks. “I could use a drink of water.”
Sam snagged her arm. “That’s bad luck,” he said. “Brides aren’t supposed to use drinking fountains on their wedding days.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Hey. I don’t make up these rules.” He propelled her along the corridor to a door marked ‘Private,’ then told her, “This is the bride’s waiting room. Go on in, and I’ll come get you when the judge is ready for us.”
Laura balked. “Isn’t there some rule about brides not having to wait alone? Can’t you stay with me, Sam? Please?”
“I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
He seemed almost too eager to get away. “You’re not having second thoughts about this, are you? About the wedding? Because if you are…”
He cut off her words with a kiss. One of those all-out, tongue-touching, breath-robbing, spine-melting kisses that he was so good at. Then he turned the knob on the door and gave her a little shove inside the room.
A gray-haired man in a dark blue suit was standing by the window, gazing out. At the sight of him, Laura whispered frantically over her shoulder to Sam, “I don’t want to wait in here and feel like a fool in front of a complete stranger.”
But Sam was already closing the door on her. The latch sounded a definitive click at her back just as the gray-haired man turned from the window to face her, and for a second Laura felt as if she were looking in a mirror.
