Baby Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  That is, until a lull, when he leaned over the table and smiled at her. “Tell me, Rachel, what have you heard from our favorite state agency?”

  They had managed to avoid this topic so far, and she had thought that maybe, if things went well, they’d be able to avoid it all night. Now she realized that she had been deluding herself. The question was inevitable, and she couldn’t very well dodge it.

  “HSS? I spoke with a caseworker today.” Rachel set her fork down and toyed with the edge of the tablecloth.

  “Great! So what’s their plan?”

  “They’re doing some checking,” she hedged.

  “Checking? Of what?” Joe looked askance, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what she was talking about.

  “Ms. Ewing—that’s the caseworker—mentioned putting Chrissy in a local foster home where everyone is sick with the flu. But for obvious reasons she doesn’t really want to do that, so she’s exploring other options.”

  Joe looked angry, his expression dark. “I can’t believe they don’t have any other place for her! They can’t put a newborn in a house where everyone is sick.”

  Rachel bit her lip. “I agree,” she said finally.

  “They’ll have to find another place. I’d take Chrissy to my mother’s, let her look after her, before I’d let her go to someplace like that. Come to think of it, why wouldn’t my mother qualify? She’s given birth to six kids, taken care of many grandchildren, and Chrissy would be safe with her. I suppose there’s a catch, though. I bet they won’t let just anyone take Chrissy.”

  “No, they won’t,” Rachel said. She stared at the lobster on her plate, her brain racing around and around. She wished she could think of some other subject to get them off this topic. Fortunately their waiter appeared and filled their water glasses.

  “I suppose you have to be licensed or something to take in an abandoned kid.” He glanced up at the waiter.

  “Hey, Lance, do you know anything about foster parents?”

  “You have to be licensed,” the man said helpfully. “My sister used to be one.”

  “So maybe your sister could qualify to take in a baby? It’s a strange story, see, but—”

  “No, sorry, she can’t help you. She and her family moved away a couple of years ago, opened a resort in the North Georgia mountains. Will there be anything else, Joe?”

  Joe said no, there wasn’t, and Rachel kept staring at the lobster and the melted butter and the lemon wedges, thinking that she really didn’t have much appetite.

  “So what we need is a licensed foster parent, is that right?”

  Rachel set down her fork again. She saw that there was no getting around this. She’d have to tell Joe the truth. Not all of it, but part of it. Enough to set his mind at ease about Chrissy.

  “We’ve got one, I think,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

  His eyebrows shot up. “We do?”

  She nodded.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Joe. I’m a licensed foster parent. And I asked if I could be given temporary custody of Chrissy.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You?”

  “Me.” Rachel looked him straight in the eye.

  “You never mentioned it,” he said.

  “It—well, it never seemed necessary.” She drained her wineglass.

  “All this talk about HSS and foster parents? A baby that needs a place to go, and you never said anything?”’ He heard his voice rising word by word, and he fought to control his incredulity.

  “I never thought Chrissy would be with me so long. I thought someone would come and get her.”

  Joe narrowed his eyes. “Is there anything else you think you should mention? Anything important?” There were so many more things to learn about Rachel, and this fascinated him. It was why he wanted to get to know her better, couldn’t wait to understand what she was all about. He shifted in his chair, impatient to get to that point in their relationship and worried that he never would.

  “All I need to say, I guess, is that Chrissy can stay with me as long as necessary. I told the social worker that, too.”

  “I’m glad, Rachel,” he said. Still, she looked troubled.

  In that moment he would have given anything to know why. It had to do with the mystery he had sensed about her, he was sure.

  After that, it was as if she retreated. In another woman, he might have interpreted her mood as coyness, but Rachel was far too down-to-earth to play those kinds of games. She nibbled at her food distractedly, and the silences between them grew prolonged and pronounced. Joe figured that this might have been because Rachel was worried about the baby, who had clearly captured her heart. But he sensed that there was more to it than that.

  Joe set himself to the task of drawing Rachel out, but she wouldn’t cooperate and she didn’t lighten up. He couldn’t understand it. Most women made it clear that they wanted to talk about themselves, and some didn’t want to talk about anything else. Yet here was Rachel, in whom he was mightily interested, and he got almost no response when he asked about her life in North Florida or her apartment in New Jersey or even about her friends. Didn’t she have friends apart from her fellow residents at the Elysian Towers? She hadn’t mentioned any.

  His mind began to run away with the possibilities. Maybe Rachel was an ex-nun. Maybe Rachel had taken care of her sick mother for a long time before the mother had to go to the nursing home where she lived now. Maybe Rachel was an alien from outer space and had no knowledge of her past.

  This last made the corners of his lips twitch, and Rachel cocked her head to one side in her most endearing way and regarded him with a slight frown. “I was saying that I hope whoever left Chrissy in the manger is all right. What’s so funny about that?”

  He hadn’t even realized that she was talking about the baby again. He pulled himself back to the time and place.

  “Nothing at all is funny about it, Rachel. But I wasn’t paying attention.” They had finished dessert, and their plates were already being cleared away.

  Rachel bit her lip, and in that moment Joe was sorry that he’d told her he wasn’t listening. What he wanted to say was that he was so bowled over by the way she looked tonight that all he could think about was holding her in his arms. But something—chalk it up to good judgment, he hoped—kept him from saying it.

  “It wasn’t anything you said,” he assured her hastily, but she didn’t seem convinced. When he saw a skeptical expression steal across her face, he knew he’d had enough of the restaurant and other people. What he really wanted was to be alone with Rachel. He wanted to kindle joy in her eyes, not question marks. For the first time, he noticed that her eyes were a complex dazzle of browns. At the moment he longed for those eyes to focus on him as if he were the only man in the world, which wouldn’t happen as long as they sat in a restaurant where he was unable to put into play his full powers of persuasion.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Joe said as he slapped a large bill down on the tray. He’d hoped that she would be as eager to leave as he was, but it was hard to figure her mood, especially when she walked stiffly ahead of him out of the restaurant and into the parking lot, not chatting, not looking back.

  He breathed in the soft night air, ripe with the fresh green scent of the tropics and full of promise. “Rachel, what’s wrong?”

  She seemed unapproachable and aloof, cool as polished marble. “I think I want to go home,” was all she said.

  He felt as if she’d stuck a pin in him and deflated all his hopes. Well, Rachel might be acting standoffish, and she might be resistant to his charm at the moment, but he couldn’t ignore the subtle sexuality underscored by that dress she wore. He’d always liked that particular shade of yellow, and especially in short skirts that flirted around the wearer’s knees. And he’d always liked leggy blondes with tumultuous hair. The hair might not be tumultuous tonight, piled into a knot on top of her head as it was, but that was all the more reason to want to slide his fing
ers under its golden mass and release it from bondage.

  He wasn’t about to give up on Rachel Hirsch, and for that very reason, he caught her hand, swung it between them. “I don’t want to take you home yet. We could go dancing, and I intend to show you the lot I’m planning to buy.” He spoke as persuasively as he knew how.

  “If your mind wanders when we’re supposed to be chatting over dinner, I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.”

  So that was it. She thought he’d blanked her out. “My mind wasn’t wandering,” he protested. Anything but. He’d been totally focused on her, almost to the point of stupefaction.

  “You said you weren’t paying attention. I don’t know why I came with you tonight.”

  When Rachel was at her most off-putting, he wanted to be playful. He pulled her to him, liking the way her eyes lit with surprise at this maneuver.

  “I know why you agreed to go out. So we could do this,” he said, and he kissed her on the mouth.

  She made a little noise, but it wasn’t a protest. He kissed her thoroughly, even though he was still aware of the palm fronds rustling in the swale bordering the parking lot and the laughter of a couple who were going into the restaurant. Rachel felt pliant in his arms, not resisting, not objecting.

  When he released her, she stared at him, her eyes wide but not startled. “Maybe you’re right,” she said in a low tone. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

  “Would you mind being more specific?” So they wouldn’t be pinned in the headlights of an approaching car, he tucked her arm through his and drew her in the direction of the pond. They could walk beside it while they sorted this out; after kissing her, his resolve not to take her home had only increased. And he was pretty sure that she really didn’t want him to.

  “Sex. It’s about sex, isn’t it?”

  This flabbergasted him. They were near a small wrought-iron bench overlooking the water, and he kept walking until they were in front of it. They both sat down, and she unlooped her hand from his elbow and crossed her arms across her chest.

  “It’s about more than sex,” he said, trying to frame his words carefully. “So much more than that, Rachel, believe me. It’s about finding someone by chance and realizing that she’s everything you want in a woman. It’s about caring and the joy of shared experiences.”

  Rachel wouldn’t look at him, but she pounced on the opening he’d given her. “We haven’t shared that many experiences,” she pointed out.

  “We could if you’d let me in. You’re shutting me out, Rachel. Why?”

  “As I recall, last night you were doing the running,” she said tartly.

  He understood then that he had hurt her more than he thought by putting an end to things last night. In that instant he was overwhelmed by remorse. He hadn’t meant to hurt her; in fact, his motives had been for exactly the opposite reason. Furthermore, he didn’t want to hurt Rachel ever. She brought out all his most protective instincts.

  Now she was looking at him, her eyes wary, her lips slightly parted and moist. When she looked like that, it was hard to think. He’d rather let instinct take over and do what came naturally.

  He forced himself to focus on what he needed to say to her. “The reason I pulled back last night was that I want to do this right. I don’t want to get us off to a bad start, and I was afraid that’s what was happening.” Even as he spoke he thought he could feel the heat from her skin across the space between them though it wasn’t a particularly warm evening even for South Florida.

  For a moment Rachel looked almost as confused as he felt. Impulsively he reached over and cupped his hand around her chin. “Don’t say you don’t know what I’m talking about. This is real, Rachel. This,” and he kissed her lightly on the lips, “and this and this.” He punctuated his words with kisses across her jawline and down her throat. He felt her pulse leap in the hollow there, saw her hands clench involuntarily.

  She pushed him away. “Joe, the timing isn’t good, I’m not ready for this, I don’t know what to think when you kiss me. I don’t know what to feel.”

  The moonlight gleamed on her hair, darkened dusky shadows in the hollows of her cheeks. If he were lucky enough to have such a woman for his own, he would never let her go. Which reminded him of something he’d been wondering, especially when she mentioned timing and not being ready and all the things that might mean that she wanted him to buzz off.

  He put a few more inches between them and steeled himself to hear something he wouldn’t like. A bullfrog in the reeds surrounding the pond went Barrumph! His words came out gruffer than he’d intended.

  “Is there someone else, Rachel? A guy who is important to you? If so, tell me. Tell me now, because I won’t want to hear it later.”

  She stared out across the pond. There it was again, that aura of sadness, that ill-concealed pain.

  “No,” she said finally, when he thought he couldn’t hold his breath any longer. “No, Joe, there isn’t anyone.”

  He expelled the air from his lungs. He picked up her hand again, splaying her fingers against his palm, entwining his fingers with hers.

  “Well, then,” he said exultantly, knowing that nothing she could have said at that moment would have made him any happier than the knowledge that she was free. “Let’s go somewhere. Somewhere fun. Somewhere exciting.” But he knew that it didn’t matter where they went because anywhere they were together would be exciting enough for him.

  “I thought you were going to show me that lot on the ocean where you want to build your house,” she said.

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Whatever you want. Whatever you’d like,” he said, and then she smiled and he knew that he’d do anything for her, any time.

  He was in love with her. He knew it in that instant just as well as he knew his own name.

  RACHEL TOLD HERSELF to let herself experience the moment. To lean into it. Maybe to embrace it.

  But she couldn’t let herself go. It had been so long since there had been a man in her life. She hadn’t had any serious boyfriends before Nick, certainly none since, and she wasn’t sure how to act. Nick had been so much older than she was, a doctoral candidate at the university when she was a mere freshman; she had quit school to marry him. She’d grown up during their courtship, and now, as an adult, she felt unsure of herself when dealing with men, especially this man, who awakened needs and desires that she had thought she’d dispensed with long ago.

  She knew what her grandmother would say. Mimi would tell Rachel to go ahead and enjoy herself, not to worry about repercussions, not to have regrets. One part of Rachel wanted to do exactly that, but she was afraid. She had lost so much. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing again. If Joe turned out to be a hit-and-run artist, how would she feel about that? Not good.

  Neither of them talked as Joe drove back across the bridge and north on the beach highway, which predated the blacktop road that had heralded condominium development on the south end of Coquina Island. They passed the old lighthouse, still lit after over a hundred years in service, and houses became sparser but grander as the road tapered to a narrow trail. On this part of the highway most of the houses were only flickers of light behind high green hedges, and some of them had heavy security gates. Wealthy people lived here; did Joe have that kind of money?

  She surreptitiously studied his profile, liking the way his hair curled along his neck. He had a firm chin, no nonsense there, and from the side, she could see that there was a bump just below the bridge of his nose. She would bet he’d broken it once and that it hadn’t mended well. Nick had had a bump like that, too.

  She didn’t want to think about Nick. But she thought of him often—every day, in fact. She’d loved her husband with all her heart. She’d never been unfaithful to him in mind or in body, not from the moment she’d set eyes on him, and she didn’t want to be unfaithful now.

  It was as if she could hear Mimi’s scoffing voice in her head. How can you be unfaithful to
a man who has been gone for four years? Mimi would have said. You’re only young once. Take advantage of it. Live a little, Rachel. You’re alive. Act like it.

  Yes, she was alive. But she shouldn’t have been. She should have died with the rest of them. With Nick and Lolly and Melissa and Derek and sweet little Max, the puppy.

  Joe pulled the car over to the side of the road. The radio went on playing music as he cut the engine, an instrumental, something soft with lots of violins. Rachel stole a look at him, and he said, “I wanted to take you dancing. Come on, dance with me. Let’s get out of the car.”

  “Dance here? How can we?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said, and then he was around the car, opening the door for her.

  The salt wind was sharp in her nostrils as he took her in his arms. All at once she felt feather light, and they began to sway to the music. There was nothing around them but the dunes and the sea and the stars, nothing but the car and the music and blacktop stretching out in front of them and in back of them.

  He was a good dancer, and so was she, but it had been a long time since Rachel had danced with anyone. She’d forgotten how music could take hold of her consciousness, impress itself on her soul and infuse her feet with such lightness of movement. Joe held her close, so close that her breasts brushed his chest, and she could feel the movement of his hips against her.

  I’m alive, she thought. Alive. Alive. Her heart was beating to the rhythm of those words, or was it the music? The music and her heart seemed one, and she closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel this moment.

  When the song was over, Joe pulled her to him for a parting embrace, and she half expected both his arms to go around her, but instead he reluctantly let her go.

  “You’re a good dancer,” he said. “I like that.”

  “A little out of practice,” she said, shrugging off the compliment.