A Bachelor and a Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

“I’m not homeless,” she protested. “Just temporarily unhoused.”

  It was an offer, she supposed in all honesty, that she couldn’t refuse. She knew she could probably crash on any one of a number of sofas, but she would also be bringing her baby and that was an imposition she wasn’t willing to make. Babies made noise, they took getting used to. It was an unfair strain to place on any friendship. Rick had the only house where the cries of a child wouldn’t echo throughout the entire dwelling. Where she wouldn’t be in the way as she struggled to find her footing in this new world of motherhood.

  Joanna chewed on her lip, vacillating. “You’re sure your father’s away?”

  For a moment, Rick was transported back through time, sitting in math class, watching her puzzle out an equation. He smiled, fervently wishing he could somehow go back and relive that period of his life.

  But all he had available to him was the present.

  “I spoke to him this morning via conference hookup. He’s having a great time marlin-fishing off the Florida Keys.”

  Joanna tried to picture the stuffy man sitting at the stern of a boat, a rod and reel clutched in his hands, and failed. “Marlin-fishing? Your father?”

  He knew it sounded far-fetched, but it was true. Howard Masters had undergone nothing short of a transformation. “The heart attack turned him into a new man. He might not be stopping to smell the roses, but he is taking time to do almost everything else.”

  The man had always been consumed with making money. She’d heard that he’d only taken one day off when his wife died. “What about the business?”

  “Mostly, it’s in my hands.” He wondered if that made her think that he’d become his father. The thought brought a shiver down his spine. “He likes to look over my shoulder every so often and make ‘suggestions.’ But mostly, he leaves it all up to me.”

  She wondered if Rick would eventually turn into his father. There was a time when she would have said no, but that was about a man she’d loved. A man who had failed to live up to her expectations. “Is that why you’re here?”

  Eyebrows drew together over an almost perfect nose. “In the hospital?”

  “No, in Bedford. Did the family business bring you to Bedford?” He nodded. She knew she should leave it at that, but she couldn’t help asking, “And why were you outside my house last night?”

  He gave her the most honest answer he could, given the situation. “I’m not really sure.”

  Fair enough. Joanna blew out a breath, shifting slightly again, trying not to pay attention to the discomfort radiating from her lower half. This too, shall pass.

  “Well, I can’t say I’m not glad you were.” She raised her eyes to his. “Otherwise—” her voice, filled with emotion, trailed off.

  He stopped her before she could continue. “I’ve learned that ‘otherwise’ is not a street that takes travel well.” There was nothing to be gained by second-guessing. “You get too bogged down going there.”

  He heard the door just behind him being opened. Welcoming the respite, Rick turned and saw a nurse wheeling in a clear bassinet. Inside, bundled in a pink blanket, sleeping peacefully, was possibly the most beautiful baby he’d ever seen.

  “Someone’s going to be waking up soon and it’s feeding time,” the woman announced. Her smile took in both of them.

  Rick moved out of the way as the nurse brought the bassinet closer, his eyes riveted to the small occupant. “Wow.”

  The single word filled her with pride. Joanna couldn’t help smiling. “I believe that’s her first compliment.”

  “But not her last,” Rick guaranteed. “She cleans up nicely.”

  “You got to see her at her worst,” Joanna pointed out. She didn’t add that he’d seen her at possibly her worst as well.

  Rick sincerely doubted that the word worst could be applied to a miracle. Something stirred within him as he watched the nurse lift the infant from the bassinet and hand her over to Joanna.

  He was in the way, he thought. “Well, I’d better be going.” He began to edge his way out.

  Suddenly, she didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. “Would you like to hold her?” Joanna asked.

  Somehow, the baby looked far more fragile now than she had last night. And his hands were large and clumsy. “I already did.”

  “I mean now that she’s not messy.” Joanna read his expression correctly. “She won’t break, you know. Not if you’re gentle.”

  “I won’t slam dunk her,” he promised. The quip was meant to hide what was really going on inside him. There were emotions there that he wasn’t sure he understood or knew what to do with. Certainly none that he could label properly.

  Very carefully, he slipped his hands under the baby’s back and neck, making the transfer. He unintentionally brushed his fingers against Joanna’s breasts. Their eyes met and held for a moment before he backed away from her, holding the infant to him.

  The nurse looked on and nodded with approval. “You’re a natural.”

  “He should be,” Joanna told her. “He’s the one who held her first.”

  The woman’s smile brightened. “Oh, are you her father?”

  “No.” The nurse’s innocent question dragged him away from the formless region he’d momentarily found himself inhabiting and back to the real world. He wasn’t the little girl’s father and that was the whole point. “I’m not.” He handed the infant back to Joanna. “I’ll be back before you’re discharged.”

  There was a formal note in his voice that she didn’t understand or like. The temporary bridge between their two worlds was gone and they were back to being wounded strangers again.

  “We’ll see,” she called after him. She had the satisfaction of seeing him momentarily halt before continuing out the door.

  Like a commando unit making a beachhead, the three other women who comprised the Mom Squad descended upon Joanna as one later that afternoon, brightening her spirit as well as her room.

  They came bearing gifts, and, more importantly, they came bearing good will and cheer. Something she was finding temporarily in short supply.

  The baby was awake and alert and seemed very willing to be passed from one woman to the other like a precious doll.

  Sherry Campbell, newly returned to the working world as a reporter for the Bedford World News and a brand-new mother in her own right, was the first to hold her. The baby was almost as big as Sherry’s own three-month-old son. But then, Johnny had been a preemie.

  “She’s beautiful.” She beamed at Joanna. “Of course, that’s not a surprise. Look at her mother.”

  Chris Jones, a special agent with the FBI, coaxed the baby out of her friend’s arms. She tucked the newborn against her, partially resting the infant against her own rounded stomach. “Too bad we don’t know what the father looks like.”

  Lori O’Neill laughed. “Well, he was obviously not a frog.”

  Sherry frowned thoughtfully as she looked at the others. Joanna’s method of becoming pregnant was a matter of record. “Do sperm banks allow ugly men to contribute their um, genes?”

  “Apparently not,” Chris cracked. She handed the infant over to Lori and then moved around to the side of Joanna’s bed. She perched on a corner, though it wasn’t easy. “So tell me, was it awful?”

  “Was what awful?” Joanna asked.

  Chris hesitated. “Giving birth. Was it like getting shot?”

  Joanna pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh at the question. She knew that Chris was nervous about this unknown territory they all had to face on their own. “I’ve never been shot, so my field of reference is a little limited.”

  Chris backtracked. “Okay, was it like what you imagine getting shot is like?”

  Lori rolled her eyes. She’d never given birth herself, but she’d talked to scores of mothers. The comparison was unusual, to say the least. “Chris—”

  “Well, I’ve been shot,” Chris insisted, “and that was the worst pain I’ve ever physically had, but it was okay
.” She looked at the others, feeling herself grow defensive. “I’m just trying to put things into perspective here.”

  Sherry pretended to shake her head as she leaned in to “confide” to Joanna. “You’d think that a woman who was with the FBI, who’d gone through some pretty scary situations and lived to tell about it wouldn’t be so afraid of giving birth.”

  Chris tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder. “I’m not afraid of giving birth, I just want to be prepared, that’s all. The first thing you learn as an agent is never to walk into a room you don’t know how to get out of—”

  “The only way to ‘get out of’ this particular ‘room’ at this point is to give birth,” Lori told her, “so you’d just better resign yourself to that. Relax,” she gave Chris’s shoulder a playful pat, “it’s not as bad as you think.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Sherry?” Joanna asked. After all, the vivacious reporter had been the first of them to go through childbirth, and if anyone could fill Chris in on the darker side of giving birth, it was Sherry. She’d delivered her baby in a desolate mountain cabin with only a dog and a reclusive billionaire in attendance. Lucky for her, the man had been a jack of all trades, up to and including being a one-time pre-med student.

  Chris sighed, picking at the design on the blanket. “Because all Sherry’ll tell me is the official party line.” Chris rolled her eyes and parroted the famous edict uttered by mothers since the beginning of time: “You forget all about the pain as soon as you hold the baby in your arms.”

  “Well, you do,” Joanna insisted. And she had already—for the most part. “Except when you try to shift your bottom.”

  Sherry and Lori laughed, but Chris looked at her seriously. “So it’s awful?”

  “Awful?” Joanna repeated, examining the word. “No, not really. It’s not exactly something I’d recommend doing for pleasure,” her eyes slid over toward the baby, who was back in Sherry’s arms, “but it is definitely worth it. Trust me.”

  The baby began to fuss a little. Sherry patted the tiny bottom and the fussing stopped. “So, I hear you didn’t make it to the hospital, either.”

  Joanna laughed shortly. “I almost didn’t make it anywhere. My house was on fire when I went into labor.”

  Lori’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, we didn’t know. How’s your house?”

  Joanna remembered how terrified she’d been as they put her into the back of the ambulance. The last thing she saw as they closed the doors was the wall of flames closing in around her house.

  “Still standing, they tell me. The fire chief came by to see me earlier today and said they managed to save part of it, but right now, it’s not habitable.”

  There but for the grace of God, Sherry thought. She knew all about Joanna’s situation and her financial predicament. Like Joanna, she’d been eased out of her job. Hers had been a high-profile position as lead anchor woman for the local news station. If it hadn’t been for some string-pulling that had landed her on the newspaper, she would have been in the same place as Joanna now. Unemployed. The only difference being she had her family to lean on. Joanna didn’t.

  Sherry leaned over and squeezed Joanna’s hand. “You can come and stay with me.” Sherry grinned. “We can start a baby co-op.”

  But Joanna shook her head. “You have a new baby and a new man in your life, the last thing you need right now is another woman with a newborn.”

  Lori was quick to interrupt. “You can crash at my place.”

  Joanna laughed. She knew Lori meant well, but it wasn’t possible. “I’ve seen your place. It’s a broom closet. Not even you can really crash there.”

  Lori knew she had a point. She’d been looking at apartment rentals ever since she’d found out she was pregnant. “I’m looking for a new place.”

  “Well, there’s always me,” Chris offered. “My place is bigger than a bread box,” she pointed out.

  Joanna had already made up her mind, however. “Thank you, all of you, really, but I have a place to stay.”

  Sherry second-guessed her. There were times that Joanna had just too much pride. “You can’t stay at a hotel. They charge exorbitant rates and—”

  Joanna cut her off. “It’s not a hotel. It’s the Masters estate.”

  The other three exchanged looks. Chris was the first to recover. “What? How did this happen?”

  Joanna decided to go with the abridged version. No one knew about her and Rick and, for the time being, she wanted to keep it that way. Maybe for all time, she thought. “It happened when Rick Masters rescued me from my burning bedroom.”

  Lori recalled seeing something in the newspaper. “Didn’t I just read that he was spending time in Florida?”

  Joanna nearly choked. She could just see Howard Masters rushing in to save her. “Not the father, the son.”

  A slow, appreciative smile curved Sherry’s lips. She’d seen photographs of Richard Masters. Definitely not a face that stopped a clock. A heart, maybe, but not a clock. “Oh, the son.”

  Chris was familiar with the man. “Wow, talk about a fairy-tale meeting—”

  “It wasn’t our first.” The words had popped out before she could stop them.

  Lori made herself comfortable on the bed. “Have you been holding out on us?”

  “Just someone from my past.” Joanna shrugged dismissively.

  “Details, we want details,” Chris begged. She exchanged glances with Lori. “You know how hungry for romance pregnant women get.”

  Joanna searched for a tactful way out. “It all happened a long time ago.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Sherry urged her on, “tell us.”

  Oh, what the hell did it matter? After all, these were her friends, women who had already shown, more than once, that they cared about her. “We were supposed to get married.”

  “And?” all three cried almost in unison.

  She sighed. The memory still bothered her, even after all this time. “And his parents convinced me that I was all wrong for him. That Loretta Langley was the woman he should build his future with.”

  “Hate the woman already,” Lori told her. “Who was she?”

  “Someone from his side of the tracks.”

  “Tracks don’t matter unless you’re a train,” Chris told her firmly. “I hope you told those people where to go.”

  Maybe she should have, but her mother hadn’t raised her that way. And besides, Rick’s parents had been very, very persuasive and thorough. “No, like I said, they convinced me.”

  “But not him,” Chris told her.

  The matter-of-fact tone had her pausing. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you do the math. He just ‘happened’ to be there to rescue you, right?” It didn’t take a profiler to see through this case. “Unless the man’s a demented pyromaniac who sets up his own heroic scenarios, I’d say he still had a thing for you.”

  Joanna waved away the conclusion. She wasn’t about to set herself up for another fall, not after all this time. “I doubt it.”

  But Sherry backed Chris up. “He offered to let you stay with him, didn’t he?”

  “He could offer to let the population of Scotland stay with him and not really notice. It’s a very big house,” Joanna insisted when she saw the others exchange looks.

  Her own husband’s house had been virtually empty before she’d come into his life, Sherry thought. Size had nothing to do with it. It was who was there to fill it that mattered. “I’d say the lady doth protest too much, wouldn’t you?” She looked at the others, who nodded.

  Sherry’s comment fell on deaf ears as far as Joanna was concerned. They could say whatever they wanted. It still didn’t change what was. For whatever reason he’d shown up in her life now, Rick had gotten over her a long time ago. To believe anything else would just be deluding herself and right now, she thought as she looked at her baby, she had more important things to think about.

  Four

  Never mind that he’d already made two appearances in h
er life in the last two days, the first of which would always rank as spectacular, each time Joanna saw Rick walking toward her, it didn’t fail to surprise her, at least to some degree.

  This time, he actually came with a surprise of his own as well. Nodding a greeting at her, Rick deposited a large rectangular box on top of her blanket-covered legs.

  Despite the fact that the logo on the box proclaimed it to be from a department store that catered predominantly to a clientele whose incomes began in the six-figure range, Joanna stared at it blankly. There was no wrapping paper, no card to declare its purpose, not even a ribbon to proclaim a feeble attempt at festivity. He just placed it before her and then took a step back, like someone admiring his own handiwork.

  Not touching the box, she raised her eyes to his. “What’s this?”

  Rick curbed his impatience, telling himself that what was inside was utilitarian and not a gift. But a sense of anticipation refused to abate. He wanted to see the expression on her face when she opened it. “It’s a box.”

  “I can see that.” She fingered it tentatively. Was he giving her a gift? Was he trying to say he was sorry for not coming after her eight years ago? No, that was stupid. She was sure he probably didn’t think about that at all. Not the way she did. “What’s in it?”

  He almost leaned over and opened the box for her, but at the last minute, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Only one way to find out that I know of—unless you’ve acquired X-ray vision along with that suspicious mind of yours.”

  She raised her chin, a hint of defensiveness evident in the motion. “I am not suspicious.”

  Rick laughed shortly. From where he stood, it felt as if she was questioning all his motives. “Then what would you call it?”

  “Being cautious.” Joanna shrugged carelessly. The sleeve of her hospital gown went sliding off her shoulder and she pushed it back up. “Once burned, twice leery, that kind of thing.”

  He didn’t want to go where she was leading. There was no point in going over that ground. “You were burned by a box?”

  Joanna pressed her lips together. He knew damn well what she was saying. “No, by a feeling.”