Vital Signs

by Bobby Hutchinson

  This wasn’t love, she tried to tell herself.

  “It’s just endorphins,” she said aloud.

  “Endorphins, huh?” His voice was thick and sleepy and unbearably sexy.

  “This fantastic feeling after sex—it’s just the endorphins in your bloodstream.” Not that she believed it, of course.

  “Hardly the most romantic explanation I ever heard.”

  She could tell by his voice that he was smiling. She wondered how long he’d go on smiling if she told him the truth about what she was feeling. From everything she’d read, and what she’d heard from the women she worked with, guys got really nervous when a woman said the L-word after sex.

  He sniffed and sniffed again. “What’s that smell?”

  “That’s just us. It’s— Omigod, it’s not. It’s the lasagna. If I let that burn, Laura’s gonna kill me. She made the whole thing from scratch.” Hailey struggled out of his embrace, clambered to her feet and hurried to the kitchen. She grabbed pot holders from the drawer, then opened the oven door too fast and swore creatively as heat scorched tender parts of her anatomy.

  “That’s a great word. Seems to me we used it differently a few minutes ago.” He was right behind her. “Is it burned?”

  “It may not be, but I am. Maybe it just spilled over, and that’s what’s burning. I hope so, anyhow.” She lifted the pan out with great care, holding it far away from her naked body as she settled it on a hot pad on the counter.

  She turned and looked at him, and started to giggle.

  “You haven’t got a stitch of clothes on.” All of him was spectacular, but she particularly liked his bum. Nurses saw lots of bums, so she had ample grounds for comparison.

  “Neither have you.” He was giving her a heavy-lidded look that made her doubly conscious of being buck naked.

  “Are you hungry?” The way to a man’s heart, et cetera, she thought. “I’m famished.” Her stomach rumbled as if to prove the point.

  “I’m always hungry.” But the look he was giving her suggested that it might not be for food.

  “Okay, let’s put some clothes on and we can—”

  “Uh-uh.” He put a hand on her arm and she stood still.

  “No? No what?” Her heart sank. He looked serious.

  Picking up one of the wineglasses, he used two fingers to smear red wine on her nipples. She stopped breathing.

  Then he leaned closer, not touching her with anything but his tongue, and licked it off.

  It was the most imaginative thing anyone had ever done to her, and she could see it excited him as much as it did her. There were advantages to being naked.

  He must have thought so, too, because he said, “You’re beautiful the way you are. Don’t put any clothes on.”

  She digested that. “You mean…you mean you want us to eat lasagna in our birthday suits?”

  “Yup.” His eyes were challenging. “Dare you.”

  She thought it over for a moment. There were curtains on all the windows. Nobody was likely to come to the door. What the heck—how many chances had she ever had to be kinky?

  “Okay.” She found the wine bottle and refilled their glasses. She was going to need all the false courage she could swallow to carry through with this, but it would sure give her something to remember.

  The phone rang, and she ignored it. The machine could take the message.

  With extreme caution, she loaded their plates with lasagna and salad, and they sat down. She was very glad she’d made soft cushions for the wooden chairs. She was glad, too, of the generous tablecloth. All that showed when she was sitting were her shoulders and her breasts. Which was bad enough, because in terms of size, they weren’t anything to write home about. At least there wasn’t enough of them to droop onto her plate.

  The thought of her nipples resting in the lasagna made her laugh, and although he didn’t know what it was about, he laughed, too. Or maybe he did know; she was beginning to realize that Roy Zedyck had depths to him you’d never suspect.

  He’d had his way with the clothes thing. She’d go for the head trip.

  “How come you’re still single, Roy? It’s obvious you really like kids.” And you’re gorgeous to look at and have a repertoire in bed that any sex-minded woman would love to come home to.

  He could have deflected the question, turned it into a joke. She half expected him to, but instead, he frowned, and she could tell he was trying hard to give her an honest answer.

  “I’m not exactly sure why. You’re right. I’d like a family of my own, but it’s just never happened. In my early twenties, I remember wanting to meet someone and settle down. I still feel that way, but maybe I’ve gotten too selective. Too picky. I’ve heard it gets worse the older we get.”

  As far as she knew, “selective” meant looks and personality and compatibility and libido and plain old kindness. Those things were always on the lists the single nurses made to detail what qualities they wanted in a partner. The married ones made lists of the things they didn’t want, which as far as she could figure out were pretty much habits of the guys they were married to, including such things as smoking or chewing tobacco and farting in bed.

  “Picky how?” It wouldn’t hurt to have him detail all the things she couldn’t provide, would it? Well, it might hurt some, but it would be good to know exactly why this wasn’t going to work.

  Damn, it was hard to carry on a sensible conversation across the table from that bare, furry chest and those great shoulders. To say nothing of what she knew was hidden by the tablecloth. She had to give him credit, though. He was giving this conversation thing his best shot.

  “Last time around it was a difference in values. She wanted the good life, fancy car, big house, trips to the latest vacation hotspot. A social worker’s salary doesn’t allow for those kind of extras, and even if it did, I’m not interested in living that way.”

  Neither was she. “That’s one of Ingrid’s favorite truisms—money doesn’t buy happiness.” All she had to do was think of Laura to appreciate that.

  “Ingrid and my mom went to the same school of isms.” He smiled and forked up another mouthful of lasagna, chewed it and swallowed.

  “What else?” This wasn’t too helpful. He’d obviously been involved with pretty shallow women. God, he had nice forearms. Hands, too. She shivered, remembering where those hands had been.

  “The other sore point’s been my job, the amount of time it demands, the unpredictable hours. And women have a valid point there. It’s tough to be with someone who doesn’t work a regular nine-to-five day. Not that I need to tell you about that.”

  “I’ve thought sometimes of getting on steady days, but I sort of like shifts. I get to see the kids at bedtime, in the morning and during the night.” And she’d never had a guy around long enough to complain about her hours, anyway. “So who ended them? Your relationships.”

  He shrugged. “Me, I guess. I could see it wasn’t gonna work, so I got out early.”

  “Before the women had a chance to?” This was good info, she told herself. She’d know what to expect. She might not know when, but it was still good to know what was in store. The lasagna stuck in her throat. “Have you ever been in love?” Hell, yeah, Bergstrom, just psychoanalyze the guy right out the door. But these were important questions. “The kind of love where you wanted to get married and have kids? You must have had lots of opportunities.”

  He took a slice of garlic bread and shook his head. “Not as many as all that. I’ve dated a fair amount—all of us have by the time we reach thirty-six. But love, I dunno. I thought I was in love twice, the happy-ever-after kind. But the first woman couldn’t make up her mind between me and someone else, and like I told you, the second one wanted a different lifestyle. Both times it was pretty obvious it wouldn’t work.” She could see he was getting uncomfortable, and then he turned the tables on her.

  “What about you, Hailey? How come you’re not married? I’ve seldom seen anyone more suited to having a hou
seful of kids.”

  She had nothing to lose by being honest. Maybe it had something to do with sitting here naked. “I used to think it was because I wasn’t beautiful.” It was hard to say out loud.

  He looked as if he wanted to protest, and she was glad when he didn’t. Facts were facts.

  “But then I got it through my head that lots of women who aren’t technically beautiful fall in love and get married,” she went on. “So I had to dig a little deeper than that.”

  “And?”

  “And I think that in psycho-jargon, I have big issues with abandonment.”

  He looked surprised, and then slowly nodded. “Because of your dad dying when you were so young?”

  He was quick, this guy. But then he’d probably had to take his share of psych courses to get his degree, just as she had.

  She nodded. “Other things, too. My mom and my sister are really alike, and even though they didn’t mean to, they sort of excluded me while I was growing up. They had a club that I didn’t understand and certainly didn’t belong to.”

  “Ever been in love?”

  “Yup.” Boy, this naked thing was intimate, all right. People at nudist camps mustn’t have any secrets at all. “Once. I was in training, and he was a second-year med student.”

  “What happened?”

  “He let me take care of him for six months and then he dumped me for a lab tech.”

  “What a jerk.”

  “Yeah.” And she was abandoned again.

  “Didn’t you get right back on the horse?”

  “Not really.” You couldn’t call Norman Patino a real, honest-to-goodness attempt. “I decided to skip B and go straight to C. Skip the husband part and go for the baby, instead.”

  Roy had finished his second helping of lasagna. Just as she stood up to take their plates to the sink, someone rang the front doorbell. A second later she heard Jean hollering, “Hailey? Hailey, are you in there?”

  “Omigod.” Hailey dropped the plates and one of them shattered on the tile floor. “Quick, get some clothes on. It’s my mother.”

  Roy was right behind Hailey in the race for their clothing, strewn across the living-room carpet.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HAILEY PULLED ON her dress to the persistent dinging of the doorbell, searching frantically for her panties until she remembered she hadn’t been wearing any.

  Roy was yanking on his shirt and zipping up his jeans. She saw his blue briefs on the rug and kicked them under the couch.

  “Okay?” He reached out and smoothed her hair.

  “Okay.” She turned his shirt collar right side out, then went to the door and opened it.

  “Hi, Mom.” She sounded chirpy. She hated chirpy.

  “Hailey, where were you? I’ve been ringing for ever. Were you in bed?” Jean glanced past her and must have seen Roy. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you had company.”

  “Come on in.” It was the last thing Hailey wanted, but there weren’t a lot of choices here. “This is Roy Zedyck, David’s social worker,” she babbled as Jean stepped inside. “We were just having dinner—” Hailey stopped herself and drew a sane breath. “Roy, my mother, Jean Bergstrom.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Bergstrom.”

  “Call me Jean. Nice to meet you, Ron.”

  “Roy.”

  “Sorry. Roy.”

  “Come and sit—” Hailey realized too late that all the sofa cushions were on the floor and did a swift right turn toward the kitchen.

  “Come and sit in here.”

  Of course Jean had noticed the cushions. How could she miss them?

  But she was running true to form. She didn’t seem to be noticing much of anything, which for the first time ever was a blessing.

  “We were just having dinner. Would you like some lasagna, Mom?”

  “No, I— Good Lord, Hailey, did you break something?”

  She’d steered her mother into the kitchen, forgetting about the pieces of crockery scattered over the tile.

  “Sorry, watch where you step. I dropped a plate.” She bent and scooped up pieces and tossed them into the garbage, feeling like a nitwit.

  Jean bent down and helped her. “You’ll have to get the tiny bits with a wet paper towel,” she instructed, and Roy tore off a wad and held it under the tap. Now all three of them were down on the kitchen floor. Hailey had a hysterical urge to giggle, and she wondered if her mother could tell she had no underwear on.

  She smoothed her dress down and got to her feet, and Jean followed. Roy stayed down, meticulously swooping the wet paper towel over the tile, getting every last splinter.

  “Sure you won’t join us?” Hailey gestured at the table, where the remains of the salad were wilting and red-wine splotches stained the tablecloth. It didn’t look very inviting.

  “I can’t stay. Is there something wrong with your phone, Hailey? I called twice.”

  “We were busy. Talking.” Damn, that sounded so defensive. She was twenty-nine years old; she had a right to a sex life. But her skin didn’t get the message, because she could feel herself turning crimson.

  Again, Jean didn’t seem to notice. Sometimes there were advantages to having a mother who was oblivious to your life.

  “Hailey, do you have any idea where your sister is?”

  Jean’s question caught her off guard, although she ought to have expected it. Why else would Jean drive all the way to her younger daughter’s house on a weekday evening?

  Hailey glanced around in a panic, wondering if any of the kids’ toys were in evidence, but thanks to Laura’s housekeeping skills, there was nothing in sight except what was left of the lasagna.

  “No, I don’t.” She didn’t know, not in the literal sense; Laura hadn’t told her where Michael lived. Hailey prayed that Jean wouldn’t ask if she knew what Laura was doing.

  She didn’t. “Well, Frank’s worried sick about her. Apparently she left him a note saying she was taking the kids away until school started, but she didn’t say where she was going. And she never said a single word to me. I can’t believe she’d just go off without telling me. I think she’s having some sort of breakdown.”

  Jean sounded hurt and angry and worried, but Hailey didn’t cave in. She’d promised Laura, and under the circumstances it seemed safest to say as little as possible.

  It dawned on her that Roy knew Laura and the kids were staying here. He was looking at her and she could see the puzzlement on his face.

  Damn her sister, anyway. Now the man was going to think she was a practiced liar.

  “Tea, Mom? Coffee? A glass of wine?” Hailey felt like taking the bottle and downing it, and then opening the other one for good measure. “A piece of cake?” It still wasn’t iced, but what the heck.

  “No, I should be going, although I haven’t a clue who to try next. You don’t suppose Frank’s sister might know where Laura’s gone.”

  “I doubt it.” Jean must really be desperate. She knew Laura had always despised Frank’s sister. Suddenly Hailey felt sorry for her mother. “I’m sure that wherever she is, she’s just fine, Mom. Maybe she just needed to get away for a while.”

  Jean gave her an incredulous look. “Away from what? She has everything a woman could want right at home.”

  There was nothing Hailey could say to that without incriminating herself and Laura. After several endless moments of strained silence, Jean said, “I’d best be going. Nice to meet you, Ron.”

  “And you, Joan.”

  “Jean.” She gave him a look.

  When her mother was safely out the door, Hailey threw herself into a chair, grabbed handfuls of her hair and shrieked as loud as she could.

  Roy waited it out, but not surprisingly, looked more confused than ever.

  “What the heck was that all about?” he said when she ran out of breath. “Why don’t you want your mom to know that your sister’s staying here?”

  She had to tell him the truth, but she needed chocolate to get through it. Hailey
retrieved the cake from the top of the bread bin, cut two huge slabs and plunked them on plates. Then she poured glasses of milk.

  She handed him his. “I didn’t get around to making any icing.”

  “You’re fired. And could you take your clothes off again? It makes the food taste so much better.” He took a bite and looked at her with an expectant expression. “Well?”

  “Can’t. I only do naked when I’m eating lasagna.”

  “We’ll just have to have lasagna three times a day from now on.”

  Hailey noticed the projection, but she wasn’t going to make too much of it. Besides, she had to unravel her family’s tangled knots for him.

  “My mother should have married Frank, instead of making Laura do it,” Hailey began. Then she filled in all the details about Frank the louse, and Laura the victim and Jean the facilitator. The only part she didn’t mention was that Laura the slut was pregnant, and probably right this moment having wild sex with her son’s soccer coach.

  “My sister’s a little like one of those women you fell in love with,” she concluded. “She’s always had love and possessions and money all mixed up.”

  His eyes were intense, watching her. He’d finished the cake, and he set the plate on the counter and reached over and took hers away.

  “You’d never make that mistake,” he said, pulling her into his arms. His voice was gravelly, coming from deep in his chest. “You’d be very good at love, Hailey. You’re exceptionally good at sex.”

  She didn’t want to try to figure out why he was saying that. The words were enough. She moved into his arms, and this time they actually made it up the stairs to the bedroom.

  “HAILEY, WAKE UP.” Laura was shaking her arm. “I brought you a coffee.”

  It took her a while to open her eyes.

  “Thanks.” The bedside clock said nine-forty-five. Shocked at the time, Hailey sat up. “Did anybody phone from St. Joe’s?”

  “I don’t think so. There weren’t any lights blinking on your machine. I just got here a while ago, and I have an appointment with Nicole at eleven. Could you watch the kids for me for a couple of hours?”