Her head spinning from lack of oxygen, Joanna fell back against the tablecloth, the grass brushing against her soaked neck. She was too exhausted even to breathe.
Rick stared at the miracle in his hands. The miracle was staring back, eyes as wide and huge as her mother’s. He felt something twist within him. He was too numb to identify the sensation.
“You’ve got a girl,” he whispered to Joanna, awe stealing his voice away.
He dripped with perspiration, but he knew it was chilly. There was nothing to wrap the baby in. He stripped off his shirt and tucked it around the tiny soul. The infant still watched him with the largest eyes he’d ever seen.
Several feet away from him, a fire truck came to a screeching halt. He hardly acknowledged its arrival. All he could do was look at the baby he’d helped to bring into the world.
Joanna’s baby.
The scene around them was almost surreal. People were shouting, firefighters were scrambling down from the truck, running toward them. Running toward the fire.
In the midst of chaos, an older firefighter hurried toward them, his trained eyes assessing the situation quickly. Squatting, he placed a gloved hand on the woman on the ground as well as one on the man holding the newborn. “You two all right?”
“Three,” Rick corrected, looking down at the new life tucked against his chest. “And we’re doing fine.” The smile faded as he looked at Joanna. “I mean—” She’d gone through hell in the last few minutes. He might be fine, but she undoubtedly wasn’t. “She needs to get to a hospital.”
Rising to his feet, the firefighter nodded. “I can see that.” Turning, he signaled to the paramedics, who were just getting out of the ambulance. The firefighter waved them over, then glanced back at Rick as the two hurried over with a gurney. He nodded toward the burning buildings. “Anyone else in there?”
“I don’t know.” Rick looked to Joanna for confirmation. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I just got here myself,” he explained.
“Not just,” the firefighter corrected, looking at the baby in Rick’s arms.
Rick had no time to make any further comment. A paramedic took the baby from him. He felt a strange loss of warmth as the child left his arms.
“We’ll take it from here,” the paramedic told him kindly. “Thanks.”
The firefighter and a paramedic had already lifted Joanna onto the gurney. Strapping her in, they raised the gurney and snapped its legs into place.
“You the father?” the first paramedic asked.
Rick was already stepping back. He shook his head in response. “Just a Good Samaritan, in the right place at the right time.”
He avoided looking at Joanna when he said it.
She and the baby were already being taken toward the ambulance. The rear doors flew open. Rick remained where he was, watching them being placed inside. For one moment, he had the urge to rush inside, to ride to the hospital with her.
He squelched it.
He was in the way, he thought, stepping back farther as hoses were snaked out and firefighters risked their lives to keep the fire from spreading.
“Lucky for the little lady you were in the neighborhood,” the older firefighter commented, raising his voice to be heard above the noise.
The rear lights of the ambulance became brighter as the ignition was engaged. And then it was pulling away from the scene of the fire.
Away from him.
“Yeah, lucky.”
Rick turned and walked toward his car. Behind him, the firefighters hurried about the business of trying to stave off the fire before it ate its way down the block and up the hillside.
There was no doubt about it, Rick decided. He should have his head examined.
After he’d gone out to look over the proposed site for the construction of the new corporate home office, instead of returning to the regional office he was temporarily working out of, he’d taken a detour. Actually, it had been two detours.
He’d gone to see just how much damage there’d actually been to Joanna’s house. He was hoping, for her sake, that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked last night.
In the light of day, the charred remains of the last house on the block—a call to the fire station had informed him that the fire had started there with a faulty electrical timer—looked like a disfigured burned shell. But the firefighters had arrived in time to save at least part of Joanna’s house. Only the rear portion was gutted. The front of the house had miraculously sustained a minimum of damage.
Still, he thought, walking around the perimeter, it was going to be a while before the house was livable again.
With a shrug, Rick walked back to his car and got in. Not his problem. That problem belonged to her and her significant other, or whatever she chose to call the man who had fathered her baby.
As far as he was concerned, he’d done as much as he intended to do.
For some reason, after Rick had gone to what was left of Joanna’s house, he’d found himself driving toward Blair Memorial Hospital, where the paramedics had taken her last night.
Joanna didn’t look surprised to see him walk into her room.
The conversation was awkward, guarded, yet he couldn’t get himself to leave.
He had to know.
“You said last night that you weren’t married.”
He’d promised himself that if he did go to see her, he wasn’t going to say anything about her current state. The promise evaporated the moment he saw her.
“I wasn’t. I mean, I’m not.”
“Divorced?” he guessed.
“No.”
“Widowed?”
She sighed, picking at her blanket. Had he turned up in her life just to play Colombo? “No, and I’m not betrothed, either.”
She was playing games with him. It shouldn’t have bothered him after all this time, but it did. A great deal.
“So, what, this was an immaculate conception?” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “What’s the baby’s father’s name, Joanna?”
She took a deep breath. “11375.”
He stood at the foot of her bed, confusion echoing through his brain. “What?”
“Number 11375.” She’d chosen her baby’s father from a catalogue offered by the sperm bank. In it were a host of candidates, their identities all carefully concealed. They were known only by their attributes and traits. And a number. “That’s all I know him by.”
Trying to be discreet, Joanna shifted in her bed. She was still miserably uncomfortable. No one had talked about how sore you felt the day after you gave birth, she thought. Something else she hadn’t come across in her prenatal readings.
She raised her eyes to Rick’s. His visit had caught her off-guard, but not nearly as much as his appearance in her bedroom last night had. All things considered, it was almost like something out of a movie. A long-ago lover suddenly rushing into her burning bedroom to rescue her. After that, she doubted very much if anything would ever surprise her again.
What kind of double talk was this? “I don’t understand. Is he some kind of a spy?”
“No, some kind of a test tube.” She saw his brows draw together in a deep scowl. He probably thought she was toying with him. This wasn’t exactly something she felt comfortable talking about, but he’d saved her life last night. He deserved to have his question answered. “I went to a sperm bank, Rick.”
If ever there was a time for him to be knocked over by a feather, Rick thought, now was it. Maybe he’d just heard her wrong. “Why?”
“Because that’s where they keep sperm.”
This was an insane conversation. What are you doing here, Rick? Why are you eight years too late?
She ran her tongue over her dry lips. “I wanted a baby.”
For a second, he couldn’t think. Dragging a chair over to her bed, he sank down. “There are other ways to get a baby, Joanna.”
Suddenly, she wanted him to go away. This was too painful to discuss. “They all involve getting clos
e to a person.”
Memories from the past teased his brain. Memories of moonlit nights, soft, sultry breezes and a woman in his arms he’d vowed to always love. Who’d vowed to always love him.
Always had a short life expectancy.
“They tell me that’s the best part,” he said quietly.
She looked away. “Been there, done that.”
Her flippant tone irritated him. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if there’d been money involved in this transaction, as well. But the question was too cruel, even if she deserved it. He let it go.
Rick rose, shoving his hand into his pockets as he looked out the window that faced the harbor. “So there’s no one else in your life?”
“My baby.” Her baby would make her complete, she thought. She didn’t need anyone else.
Rick looked at her over his shoulder. “Someone taller.”
She knew she should be fabricating lovers, to show him that she could go on with her life, that it hadn’t just ended the day they parted, but she was suddenly too tired to make the effort.
“Not in the way you mean, no.”
Funny, whenever he’d thought of her in the last eight years, he’d pictured her on someone’s arm, laughing the way he loved to see and hear her laugh. It had driven him almost insane with jealousy, but he’d eventually learned how to cope.
Or thought he had until he’d seen her last night, her body filled out with the signs of another man’s claim on her.
He turned and looked out on the harbor again. The sky was darkening, even though it was only two in the afternoon. There was a storm coming. Unusual for April. Boats were beginning to leave. “I went by your house this morning.”
Her house. Her poor house. Joanna held her breath. “And?”
There was no way to sugarcoat this, but he did his best. “It was only half destroyed by the fire.” Rick turned to look at her. “But it’s not habitable.” He saw the hopeful light go out of her eyes.
“Damn, now what am I going to do?”
He approached the matter practically. “Well, it’s not a total loss. It might take some time to rebuild—you do have coverage, right?”
Yes, she had coverage, but that wasn’t why she was upset. Fighting back tears, she sighed. “That’s not the point. I was going to take out a home loan on it.” The appointment had been postponed from last week. She fervently wished she’d been able to keep it. Now it was too late. “Nobody gives you a loan on the remains of a bonfire.” Joanna struggled against the feeling that life had just run her over with a Mack truck. She’d been counting on the money to see her and the baby through the next few months until she could go back to work and start building their future. “Now I don’t have the loan or a place to live.”
Rick studied her face for a long moment. And then he said the last thing that she expected him to say. The last thing he must have expected himself to say.
“You can come and stay with me.”
Three
She stared at Rick, momentarily speechless.
As far as she knew, prenatal vitamins did not fall under the heading of hallucinogenic drugs and she’d had nothing else to throw her brain out of alignment. Why, then was she hearing Rick make an offer she knew he couldn’t possibly have made?
“What did you say?”
Her eyes were even bluer than he remembered, bluer and more compelling. He had to struggle not to get lost in them, the way he used to.
“I said, you can come and stay with me—until you get on your feet again,” he qualified after a beat, feeling that the offer begged for a coda. This wasn’t meant to be a permanent arrangement by any means. He was just temporarily helping a friend. For old times’ sake.
If she could have, Joanna would have walked away. As it was, all she could manage was a pugnacious lift of her head.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t take charity.”
He felt as if she’d insulted him, insulted the memory of what had once been between them. Or had that only been in his own mind? Right at this moment, the chasm that existed between them seemed a hundred yards wide. Sometimes, it was hard to remember how it had gotten this way.
“It would have been charity if I’d just put a wad of bills in your hand and told you not to pay it back.” He shrugged, struggling to rein in anger that had materialized out of nowhere. “This is just putting a couple of empty rooms to use.”
She assumed by his offer that he was staying at the estate. It was the last place she wanted to be. Not with the past vividly rising up before her. “I really don’t think your father would exactly welcome the invasion with open arms.”
“One woman and an infant are hardly an invasion—or an intrusion,” Rick added before she could revise her words. He guessed at part of the problem. His parents had never treated her with the respect that he’d felt, at the time, that she deserved. His mother was gone now, but there was still his father. “And my father is Florida on vacation.” An extended one, he thought. His father hadn’t been back to California for several months, actually.
A vacation meant that the man was returning. “So, what’s that, a week, two?”
“More like three months or more.” With things like teleconferencing, there was not as much need to appear in the flesh anymore, Rick thought. He couldn’t say that he disliked the arrangement. The less he saw of his father, the better.
Her mouth curved with a cynicism that was ordinarily foreign to her. “Oh yes, I forgot, the rich are different from you and me—” She glanced up at him. “Well, from me at any rate.”
He heard the bitterness in her voice. Was that directed at him? Why? He hadn’t said anything to trigger it. But then, as his father had once pointed out, he really didn’t know Joanna at all.
Something within him made him push on when another man would have just shrugged and walked away. He wasn’t even sure why.
Maybe because, despite the bravado, she looked as if she needed him. Or at least, someone. “Mrs. Rutledge is still there.”
At the mention of the woman’s name, Joanna’s face softened. She and his parents’ housekeeper had gotten on very well during the days when he had invited her to his house.
“How is Mrs. Rutledge?”
Like a fighter returning to his corner between rounds, Rick gravitated toward the neutral topic. “Still refusing to retire. Still thinking that she knows what’s best for everyone.”
Joanna smiled, remembering. “She always reminded me of my mother.”
More neutral territory. Rachel Prescott had been the woman he’d secretly wished his mother could have been. He’d spent a great deal of time at Joanna’s house over the three years that they went together. He’d half expected to find her in Joanna’s room when he came to visit. “How is your mother?”
“My mother died last year.” Joanna looked down at her hands, feeling suddenly hollow. Thirteen months wasn’t nearly enough time to grieve.
The news hit him with the force of a bullet. “Oh, I’m sorry.” What did a person say at a time like this? How did he begin to express the regret he felt? The world was a sadder place for the loss. He looked at Joanna, his hand covering hers in a mute sympathy be couldn’t begin to articulate. “She was a very nice woman.”
“Yes, she was.” Joanna fought the temptation to stop this awkward waltz they were dancing and throw herself into his arms, to tell him that she’d really needed him those last few months when she had stood by her mother’s side, watching the woman who had been her whole world slip away from her. Instead, she looked up at him and said, “I read about your mother in the paper. I’m sorry.”
Rick shrugged, letting the perfunctory offer of sympathy pass. It was sad, but he really didn’t feel the need for sympathy. He’d never been close to his mother, not even as a child, and consequently, hadn’t felt that bitter sting of loss when she died. He’d returned for the funeral like a dutiful son, remaining only long enough for the service to be concluded before flying out again. The entire stay had been
less than six hours.
In part, he supposed, he’d left so quickly because he’d wanted to be sure he wouldn’t weaken and do exactly what he’d done last night. Drive by Joanna’s house. Looking for her.
Joanna tried to fathom the strange expression on his face. She had almost gone to his mother’s funeral service at the church, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But somehow, that had seemed too needy. So instead, she’d shored up her resolve and remained strong, deliberately keeping herself occupied and staying away.
There was another reason she’d kept away. To come to the service would have been to display a measure of respect and she had none for the deceased woman, none for her or her husband. Not since the two had joined forces that August day and come to her bearing a sizable check with her name on it.
All she had to do to earn it was to get out of their son’s life, they’d said. To sweeten the pot, they’d appealed to her sense of fair play, to her love for Rick. Between the two of them, they’d projected the future and what it would be like for Rick if he married her. They were adamant that he would grow to despise her. He belonged, they maintained, with his own kind. With a woman from his social world, with his background and his tastes. Someone who could be an asset to him, not a liability. They’d even had someone picked out. A woman she knew by sight.
They argued so well that she’d finally had to agree. She hated them for that, for making her see how much better off Rick would be without her.
“Actually,” Rick commented on her original protest, “if there is any charity being dispensed, you’d be the one doing it.”
He always was good with words, she thought. But he had lost her this time. “Come again? I think I pushed out my hearing along with the baby.”
The laugh was soft. He began to feel a little more comfortable. Despite the hurt feelings that existed between them like a third, viable entity, Joanna had always had the knack of being able to make him relax.
“If Mrs. Rutledge finds out that you’re homeless,” he explained, “and that I knew about it, she’ll have me filleted.”
A Bachelor and a Baby Page 3
