A Bachelor and a Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

  He looked at her. What was she implying? He’d been the one to get hurt back then, not her. She’d made a tidy profit out of it as well. “Well, maybe that makes two of us.”

  Exasperated, he gave up waiting. Rick reached over and lifted the top of the box for her, shaking it slightly so that it would come loose. The bottom rose with it, then separated. As the box fell, its contents came tumbling out, revealing a two-piece red suit.

  He remembered, she thought, stunned. There’d been a red suit she’d once pointed out to him, saying that she loved the way that it looked. This suit was almost identical to that one.

  But that was eight years ago. It had to be a coincidence.

  And yet…

  “Clothes?” She tried to read his expression. There was no indication that he knew what the red suit meant. “You bought me clothes?”

  He picked up the pale cream blouse that had been packed under the suit and had slid off the bed when the box opened. He placed it next to the outfit. Rick nodded at what she was wearing.

  “Well, you’re being sprung soon and I didn’t think the hospital was going to let you keep that fetching gown they issued you. I happen to know for a fact that there are laws on the books against parading around in public without any clothes—even with a body like yours.”

  She ran her fingers over the fabric. She knew the kind of price tags that went with outfits like this. There was no way she could have afforded to buy it for herself. But somehow, she was going to find the money to pay him back. She was her own person and not to be bought, even by acts of kindness.

  Joanna laughed shortly at his comment. “Thanks for the compliment, but it’s been a while since you’ve seen this body.”

  She knew, to the day, just how long it had been since they’d been together as lovers. How many years, how many months, how many days. No matter how many other things she filled her head with, that information somehow always managed to remain.

  He wondered if she even remembered pointing out that red suit to him. Probably not. He was being too sentimental. Funny, he would have thought that there was no sentiment left in him. All it took to bring it out was being with her.

  Rick shrugged. “There was that encounter a couple of days ago,” he quipped.

  Color shot up to her cheeks. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do and yes it has been a long time since I admired your body in the very best sense of the word.” His eyes swept over her. “But I’d still be willing to bet that you look better than ninety-eight percent of the female population.”

  Her eyes filled with amusement. “Ninety-eight percent, huh? My, you have been busy. When did you get any time to pay attention to business?”

  “Slight exaggeration,” he allowed, sitting down in the chair beside her bed. “The kind, if I recall correctly, that you used to be given to.” It was a throw-away line. He recalled everything there was to remember about her. That was his curse, the reason he could never get himself to settle down and start a family the way his friends all had. The way his parents kept insisting that he do. He nodded toward the box. “That should fit you.”

  She glanced inside the jacket. It was the right size. “You’ve got a good eye.”

  “More like a good memory. I did buy you that sweater one Christmas.”

  A sadness waft through her. The sweater had been retired to a keepsake box, along with every single word he’d ever written to her and every photograph of the two of them she’d had. The box had been in her closet. It was undoubtedly a casualty of the fire. It was as if she wasn’t even allowed to hang onto her memories.

  She tried to keep the tears back.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she sniffed. “Allergies.”

  He scrutinized her face. She was lying. “I don’t remember you having allergies.”

  Joanna waved her hand vaguely. “It comes and goes.” Very carefully, she placed the jacket back into the box on top of the skirt. She folded the blouse, leaving it on top of both, then closed the lid over them. “Thank you.”

  He took the box from her, placing it on the shelf against the wall. “You’re welcome.”

  He was still thoughtful. It was nice to know that some things hadn’t changed. “I hadn’t thought about what I was going to wear,” she confessed. Her daughter, on the other hand, was all taken care of. All she had to do was choose an outfit from the gifts that Lori, Sherry and Chris had brought her.

  He had a feeling clothes had slipped her mind. When he’d gone back to her house a second time to closely assess the damage, he’d also taken inventory of her clothes. Nothing had been spared. It was just sheer luck that he’d found her purse on the living-room coffee table. Aside from the smoke damage, it was still intact.

  “You were never detail-oriented.”

  “No,” she agreed, “that was always your department.” That was what had made them so perfect together, they complemented one another. Whatever trait one lacked, the other possessed. It was as if they were meant to be one whole person. Or so she’d tried to tell herself at the time.

  Had she ever really been that innocent? To actually believe in soul mates?

  For a moment, Rick sat there in silence, looking at her and wondering what had happened to them. Why had things gone so wrong? They’d had so much going for them.

  And then he laughed to himself. He knew the answer to that. In part, he blamed his family for what had happened, but he couldn’t help blaming her as well. All she’d had to do was love him, to have faith in him and know that he would have made everything right.

  But she’d allowed herself to be lied to. To be bought off. That had been the real end of any dreams that might have been. She’d allowed money to come between them. Just as his parents had predicted.

  The touch of her hand on his had him pulling out of the daze his thoughts had taken him into. She was staring at him. “What?”

  He had such a strange expression on his face. As if he were a million miles away. “Where are you?”

  “Right here,” he said shortly, embarrassed at being caught. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”

  And she had a feeling she knew about what. “Having second thoughts about the arrangement?”

  “No.” The denial was sharp. He forced a smile to his lips, or what might have passed for one, had she not known what he was capable of. “Just thinking,” he repeated.

  He was shutting her out. Well, what did she expect? That they would suddenly pick up where they’d left off eight years ago? Did she expect him to sweep her off her feet, tell her that nothing else mattered except that he loved her and would always love her?

  She wasn’t twenty anymore, wasn’t naive anymore. There was no such thing as happily ever after, not for her and Rick at any rate.

  Still, she heard herself pressing, wanting him to be truthful with her. “About what?”

  About how something wonderful could have turned out so badly. He rose to his feet. “What time are they signing you out tomorrow?”

  Mentally, she retreated to her corner. His kindness had thrown her off for a minute, but she was okay now. Able to handle things as they came. “Before noon. My insurance won’t cover another day.”

  He frowned. Something didn’t sound right. “I thought the teachers’ union had a good insurance plan?”

  “They do.” And she wished she could still have it. But the COBRA payments that would have allowed her to carry on her insurance after termination had been far too expensive for her even to consider. “Mine’s an individual policy.” She took a breath before telling him. “I’m not a teacher anymore.”

  He stared at her. When they’d been together, all she could talk about was becoming a teacher. It had been her goal ever since she’d been six years old. And one of the things his mother had found abhorrent. “You loved being a teacher.”

  “I still do.” She struggled to keep the note of bitterness out of her voice. Like everything else, this was just a hurdle she had
to get over. “But the one thing I failed to factor in when I made my decision to become a single mother was that the local school board would be uncomfortable with my single state coupled with my distended body. Simply put, they didn’t feel that I was setting a good example for the children. So, they asked me to ‘go on an extended leave of absence.”’

  “No money,” he guessed.

  “No money.”

  She was as feisty as he remembered. Another woman would have crumbled in her situation. “So you’re unemployed.”

  Joanna preferred to put her own spin on it. Raising her chin, she told him, “I am temporarily between positions.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “Damn, but you are unsinkable, aren’t you?”

  “I try to be. Things have a way of working themselves out.” She looked at him pointedly. “Who would ever have thought you’d come charging through the flames to rescue me?”

  “Who would have thought,” he echoed. Taking out a PalmPilot, he pulled up his schedule and made a notation with his stylus. “I’ll be here before eleven,” he promised, then tucked the PalmPilot into the pocket of his jacket. He saw her smiling and shaking her head. “What?”

  “I just had a flashback.” She grinned. “Remember how you used to say that you were never going to be anything like your father?”

  Momentarily stepping into the past, he couldn’t help recalling other things he’d said to her. Like pledging his undying love. It sounded hokey now, but he’d meant it then with a fierceness that had taken even him by surprise.

  Life had a way of changing things.

  Rick brushed his fingers along the outline of her cheek. “I used to say a lot of things.” And so had she. He dropped his hand to his side. There was no point in going there. He’d learned his lesson. Words were usually empty, forgotten moments after they were uttered. “Times change.”

  She raised her eyes to his. Maybe I was wrong to believe your parents, maybe I was wrong to leave you, but you were wrong, too. You didn’t come after me, didn’t try to make me change my mind. “Yes, they do, but people don’t have to.”

  He deliberately turned his thoughts to the business world. “They do if they want to grow. If you don’t move forward, you slide backwards.”

  That was his father talking, not him. Had he become his father these last years? She didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to think of him that way. “Not necessarily. There’s nothing wrong with standing still.”

  There is if you’re trying to stay one step ahead of memories that can undo you. He looked at her for a long moment. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, he turned away and began to walk out.

  She felt a pang squeeze her heart. What was she doing, trying to torture herself? She still had some money saved. “Rick.”

  His hand on the door, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “What?”

  “I can still go to a hotel.”

  “Mrs. Rutledge is expecting you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  And with that, he left.

  She glanced over to her sleeping daughter, and fervently prayed that men found a way to evolve in the next fifteen years, before her baby got involved in her own whirlwind.

  “Sometimes, Rach, men are more trouble than they are worth.”

  But even as she said it, Joanna knew she didn’t really believe it.

  It felt as if every cloud in Southern California had converged above Bedford the next day. The storm began at around six in the morning and promised to continue until the evening without any letup.

  “If it’d rained like this three days ago, my house would still be standing,” Joanna commented as she took the seat beside Rick in the Mercedes.

  Behind her, Rachel lay strapped into a baby seat. Joanna had been surprised to see that he had thought to get one for the baby. The tab on the items she owed him for was growing.

  If it had rained like this three nights ago, he would have just kept going after passing her house. There would have been no need to rescue her, no need to deliver her baby. And no need to bring her into his life, however temporarily.

  Fate was a very strange thing. It both took and gave.

  He glanced toward her. She was quiet. He couldn’t remember her ever being quiet. “Tired?”

  “A little.” And more than slightly apprehensive that she was making another wrong decision.

  “We’ll be there soon,” he promised.

  “I remember the way.”

  She remembered far more than that, she thought, and that was part of the problem. How insane was it, to walk back into the past like this?

  But it wasn’t the past, not really. She was a mother now, and he had moved on with his life, too. They were just two people who’d once shared a past, nothing more.

  Despite the storm and the frantic rhythm of the windshield wipers, Joanna could make out the form of a tall, thin woman standing at the entrance of the house, a huge umbrella in her hand, poised to go into action at a moment’s notice.

  The instant she saw them, Mrs. Rutledge opened the umbrella and hurried toward the passenger side of the car, prepared to protect and serve to the best of her ability. Some things, Joanna thought with a surge of warmth, didn’t change.

  “There’s Mrs. Rutledge,” Joanna heard herself saying. “Won’t she catch cold?”

  He wondered if Joanna was aware that she sounded excited. “No germ would dare try to incapacitate Mrs. Rutledge. I’ve never known her to be sick a day in her life. Or at least, not a day in mine.”

  The next thing Joanna knew, her door was being opened. The scent of vanilla dueled with the smell of the rain and won.

  “My dear, how pale you look.” The woman’s light-green eyes shifted accusingly toward Rick before becoming compassionate again as she looked at Joanna.

  “Hello, Mrs. Rutledge.” Joanna smiled warmly at her. There was no evidence of any change in the housekeeper. She still had iron-gray hair, worn short, still dressed in a light-gray shirt-front uniform that came mid-way down her calves. “How are you?”

  “Ready to bring a little color back into your cheeks, you can count on that.”

  After over fifty years, there was still just the barest hint of a Southern drawl in her voice. Nadine Smith Rutledge hailed from South Carolina, the seventh of fifteen children born to a coal miner and his wife. They’d all gone on to earn their own way in the world as soon as they were old enough to work. Only Nadine had made it out this far west. She’d come to work for Rick’s grandfather and stayed on through the generations, making herself indispensable along the way.

  The housekeeper peered into the back seat, her face softening considerably. “And this must be your little one. One forgets how tiny they start out.” She looked over at Rick. She took on the tone more suitable for a headmistress than a housekeeper. “Well, don’t just sit there, come around to my side and hold the umbrella while I help Miss Joanna and her baby out.”

  “Yes’m.” Tolerant amusement surrounded the single word. Rick hurried out of the car, rounding the hood. He took the umbrella from the older woman, holding it aloft as Joanna got out. It was large enough to provide shelter for all three of them.

  Mrs. Rutledge carefully unfastened the straps around the infant. Cornflower-blue eyes opened wide to watch her. “She’s got your eyes, Miss Joanna. And your fair skin.” With gentle hands she drew the baby out of her seat. “Going to be a beauty, she is, mark my words. Oh my,” she murmured as she brought the bundle of softness to her chest. “I haven’t held a little one in my arms since I took care of Mr. Rick here.” Mrs. Rutledge glanced over her shoulder at him. “Hard to believe he was ever this small, isn’t it?”

  Rick cleared his throat. “Could we get Joanna and her baby out of the rain before we go traveling down memory lane, Mrs. Rutledge?”

  “Hope your baby’s got a better disposition than that one,” she commented to Joanna.

  With her arms wrapped firmly around her small charge and Rick holding the umbrella over her head, Mrs
. Rutledge led the way to the front door. Joanna pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. The woman made her think of Queen Victoria strolling about Windsor Castle.

  Castle was the word for it, Joanna thought a moment later.

  Or maybe mausoleum was a better one. She’d always felt that the house where Rick had grown up had all the warmth of a stone. Nothing seemed to have changed. If anything, it felt even colder.

  “I know, I know,” Mrs. Rutledge commented, glancing at her face. “It has all the hominess of a cave, but now that Mr. Rick is here, I suspect there’ll be some changes made. Won’t there?” She peered at him pointedly as he shut the front door.

  After closing the umbrella, Rick deposited it in a large metal umbrella stand his mother had bought on one of her frequent shopping trips to Paris. It was shaped like an African elephant. Water cascaded along the elephant’s face, making it appear as if it was crying.

  He felt absolutely no attachment to this place. “I’m here to set up a new corporate home office, Mrs. Rutledge,” he reminded her, “not to redecorate the house.”

  “Still, if you’re moving back here, you’re going to need to make some changes. Make this more of a home.” Her eyes sparkled as she turned them toward Joanna. “I’ve been making up this list of renovations for the last few years.”

  Joanna looked at Rick. He’d told her his father was away on vacation. “Doesn’t Mr. Masters still live here?”

  Mrs. Rutledge dismissed the obstacle with a wave of her hand. “He’s hardly been here in the last six months. He’s become a changed man since his heart attack.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Enough about that, you two need to rest. Let me show you where you’ll be staying,” Mrs. Rutledge said. Turning on her heel, she led Joanna to a room located on the first floor in the east wing of the house.

  Since Mrs. Rutledge had taken over, this was his cue to leave, Rick thought. But he decided he could spare a few more minutes. Besides, he wanted to see the expression on Joanna’s face when she saw the nursery.

  Moving around them, Rick opened the door to the first room and then allowed Joanna to go in ahead of him. “It’s yours for as long as you want.”