“As did the news we got yesterday,” Tad said, glad to change the subject and grinning like a proud papa to be. Giving her no chance to stop him, he went on, “If you haven’t already heard, Abby fainted while we were looking around here.” His smile widened all the more as he announced happily, “Doc confirmed she’s expecting.”
Abby felt herself flush as congratulations were offered all around. “When is the baby due?” Cindy asked.
“January twenty-ninth, give or take.”
“Meanwhile,” Tad said, rolling up his sleeves, “we all have a lot of work to do if we want to make the Blossom Weekly News into the acclaimed regional newspaper I envision it as being.”
“Speaking of the next edition, have you seen this?” Frowning, Sonny gave a handwritten note to Tad. “What do you think about this letter to the editor? It was under the door when I came in this morning.”
“‘Dear Editor,’” Tad read aloud to the group, “‘I hope now that we’ve got a world-famous reporter running the paper here in Blossom that we’ll finally get some decent investigative reporting done, because there are some real crooks operating in this town who need to be put out of business and fast!’” Tad stopped reading abruptly.
“Who are the crooks?” Abby asked, intrigued.
Tad frowned. “It doesn’t say. The note’s not signed, either.” He looked up at the group. “Any idea who the writer is talking about?”
Everyone shrugged. No one ventured a guess.
Tad turned to his aunt. “Aunt Sadie, you’ve lived here for the past forty-some years. Do you have any idea who the writer might be talking about?”
Sadie colored slightly. “I’ve heard stories, of course, about this and that. Everyone has. But I make it a policy not to speak ill of people without proof. So you’ll just have to smoke them out.”
If anyone knew how to do that, Abby thought admiringly, Tad did.
“FIND OUT ANY MORE about the identity of the town crooks?” Abby asked Tad later that evening as the two of them sat down to their first official dinner in their new home.
His eyes gleamed in a way that let her know he was up to something. “I’m working on it. Meanwhile, you can say it if you want to,” Tad told Abby frankly as he spread a napkin on his lap and passed the peas.
“Say what?” Trying not to notice how cozy it felt to be there with Tad that way, or think it could be that way for them forever if she wanted it to be, Abby ladled take-out mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and rotisserie chicken on her plate.
Tad gave her a cocky grin that belied the hurt in his words. “You didn’t like my idea about using the renovation of our white elephant of a home as the centerpiece of a series on home remodeling.” Tad added some coleslaw to his plate.
Circumventing her mixed emotions about the way he’d pretty much announced his idea as a done deal during the staff meeting, Abby shrugged. She knew she shouldn’t be annoyed. In the end this was going to be his home, not theirs. She was only staying there temporarily.
Keeping her expression carefully neutral, Abby dug into their hot almost-as-good-as-home-cooked meal. “Living room one week, dining room the next. Who wouldn’t want to see what we do to jazz up the master bedroom?” And the narrow double bed that Tad had not slept in the night before. But that had been her choice, she reminded herself sternly. He’d only been following her lead.
“Plus,” Abby forced herself to continue enthusiastically, “it will be great for the baby if we can get your house completely fixed up before he or she is born.”
Tad continued to study her. If he’d noticed the way she’d referred to the house as his, not theirs, he didn’t show it.
“You’re right. It will be good for the baby,” he said calmly. “Which is why I don’t understand why you’re so ambivalent about the project.” Tad’s deep blue eyes searched hers. “As the new Lifestyle editor and the parent here with all the decorating expertise, it’s going to be your show from start to finish.”
He was acting as if they were going to be a real family, at least until their baby was born. Struggling to retain her equilibrium, Abby pushed back her chair and headed for the refrigerator. She rummaged around for the strawberry jam. “You were very generous, giving me free rein in the decorating. I mean, who knows?” Moving the three gallons of milk around, Abby finally found the jam and pulled it out. “My taste could turn out to be horrendous, to say the least.”
Just the way their living together before the baby was born, as a sort-of-married couple, could also be a mistake. For Abby, the lines between reality and fantasy and wishful thinking were already becoming blurred. Was the same thing happening to him? she wondered as Tad got up and lounged against the opposite counter.
One corner of his mouth lifted at her prediction of doom in the decorating department. “I don’t think so,” Tad retorted dryly as he watched her peel the protective plastic seal away from the jam jar and toss it into the trash. “So what gives, Abby?” he asked bluntly, folding his arms. “What is it about this setup you don’t like?” He hesitated only a moment before he asked, “Are you ticked off because I told everyone we were expecting a baby?” He reached out and plucked the jam from her hands.
Abby gave him a deadpan look, then turned away from him stiffly and sat back down at the table. “I would have waited a bit, if it had been left up to me.”
“Okay.” Tad opened the jam for her and sat down, too. “Next time I’ll ask,” he promised as he handed her the jam. “And together we’ll decide on the timing.” Beneath the small cozy table, their knees touched. At the contact little lightning bolts of warmth surged through her. Abby tensed beneath the onslaught; she did not want to feel desire for him.
“Now what?” Tad asked, watching the play of emotions across her face.
Abby swallowed and concentrated on her meal. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing when your cheeks get pink like that.”
She’d thought the two of them could be just friends. But she was beginning to see this was going to be much harder than she’d thought. Every time she was around him, she was reminded how good it had been between them. And then she started wanting him and yearning to be close to him all over again. And she knew what a trap that was. If she let herself rely on him too much, it would hurt all that much more the next time he refused to confide in her or insisted on living out his dreams, not hers.
Abby’s temper flashed as he continued to study her. She did not want him seeing into her heart and mind. “Stop being so solicitous!” she snapped. She felt like he was humoring her, and she did not want to be humored, any more than she wanted to be pampered just because she was pregnant.
Tad’s face broke into a grin. “Oh, I get it. This is one of those moods, isn’t it, that comes with the fluctuations of hormones?”
Abby fumed. She was definitely not moody! And she was definitely not the follow-him-anywhere wife he wanted her to be. She gave him a dark look, aware she would’ve rather died at that point than ask him for any favors. “I would not go there if I were you,” she warned as she pushed her empty plate away.
“Fine.” Tad’s eyes took on an amorous sheen as he stood and carried both their plates to the sink. “What would you like to do tonight?”
What a loaded question, Abby thought on an unaccountably wistful sigh.
If she wasn’t pregnant...
If they hadn’t rushed into marriage...
But she was, and they had, Abby realized uncomfortably. And there was no denying that if she felt his lips on her skin again, there was no telling what would happen.
Assuring herself her caution was for the best, Abby kept her distance and regarded him cheerfully. “Since you brought home dinner for us, I’ll do the dishes. Then I plan to go back to work.” Knowing how much work she had to do to get the Lifestyle section launched in the time frame she’d set for herself, she’d spent most of the afternoon setting up a temporary home office for herself in her bedroom upstairs where she could work as much
as she wanted, undisturbed.
“You don’t have to do the dishes alone,” he told her pleasantly.
“It’s okay,” Abby said, bracing her hands on either side of her and staking out her territory by the sink. “I don’t mind.”
His expression inscrutable, Tad crossed his arms again and continued to study her. “You’re sure about that?”
Abby nodded, never more aware of the agreement they’d made not to bring sex back into the mix. Given the way things were, the fact that their marriage was not going to continue after the birth of their baby, she did not want to fall for him any more than she already had. “Positive,” she told him.
He returned her smile with one of his own. “Okay then,” he said as he grabbed a pocket-size notepad and pen and slid them into his shirt pocket.
Watching him head for the door, Abby asked, “Where are you going?” She wondered even as she spoke why it mattered so much to her. Or why she should feel so lonely without him.
“Back down to the newspaper to grab a camera, then over to the Rotary Club meeting, the softball games at the Little League fields and then maybe the local tavern.” Tad came back just long enough to give her a brief kiss on the brow and a hug goodbye. Turning, he headed straight back to the exit and said over his shoulder, “We have a helluva lot of news to gather if we’re going to put out our first edition of the Blossom Weekly by Saturday.”
So it was back to business as usual.
Why was she not surprised?
TAD STOPPED SHORT at the bedroom door. “Sonny’s gonna be here any minute to photograph the Before pictures of the house and you’re not—”
“—dressed,” Abby grumbled, as she rummaged madly through her closet. “I know,” she said, uncomfortably aware of the way her short and silky kimono-style robe clung to her suddenly too-plump breasts.
“What’s the problem?” he asked sympathetically as she held up one garment after another to her and then promptly hung it back up.
The problem was, Abby thought as she sorted quickly through her collection of highly sophisticated summer business attire, in an effort to avoid prolonged contact with Tad, she’d been working out of the house the past four weeks. Challenged to build a new Carolina Life section of the paper with minimal resources and an even more minimal budget, she’d been on the telephone nonstop. That being the case, it had made sense to work at home, away from the often chaotic bullpen atmosphere of the Blossom Weekly News.
Thus far, she’d had a fair amount of success contacting the journalism departments of all North Carolina universities and recruiting freelancers to submit samples of their work. From there she’d doled out assignments to capable writers, their fees due upon acceptance of their articles.
The problem was, in deference to the warm and often muggy June weather, she’d been wearing shorts and T-shirts, and she hadn’t realized until too late how her body had changed by the end of her second month.
“I’m just running a little late,” Abby told him as she plucked out a sky blue suit that had always been a little large on her, stepped over a sliding stack of old editions of the Blossom Weekly News and headed for the adjacent bath.
Very much aware Tad was waiting on the other side of the closed bathroom door, Abby slipped off her robe and draped it over the rim of the old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub. With a slight prayer she stepped into the pale blue knee-length skirt. She tugged it up over her hips and found—just as she’d feared—that the zipper was a good inch away from closing.
Hoping against hope that the jacket would cover what the skirt did not, Abby reached for the long tunic jacket and slid her arms into the sleeves. Swiftly she buttoned it up the front and found—to her delight—the jacket would close. It was a little snug around her hips and breasts, but otherwise okay.
Breathing a huge sigh of relief, Abby ran a brush through her hair and stepped out of the bathroom. She was shocked to see Tad shifting her clothes to the other side of the master-bedroom closet and putting in a bunch of his own.
“What are you doing?” she asked, trying not to notice how good he looked in the dark green polo shirt and jeans.
“Putting my clothes in here.”
Abby blinked, not aware that anything in the current platonic nature of their relationship had changed. “Why,” she asked drolly, “when you have so much room in the other closet?”
“Because I don’t want everyone in Blossom to know we’re sleeping in separate bedrooms,” Tad told her practically as he reached over to the other side of the double bed where he should have been sleeping had theirs been a normal marriage and rumpled the covers there, too.
“Shouldn’t you be making that bed, not mussing it up? Since it’s going to be photographed and all,” Abby questioned him.
Tad inclined his head at the ringing doorbell. “No time. Besides, this is a Before picture and we want it to look as bad as possible so that the After one will look even better,” he told her. “What time is the designer you selected to supervise this project supposed to get here?”
“Same time as Sonny.” Abby glanced at her watch. “Right now.” Abby lifted the hem of the bedspread.
“Have you seen my beige pumps? Never mind.” She knelt to get them and heard the first tiny rip of a skirt seam. “Here they are.”
Better not bend down like that again, Abby thought just as the doorbell rang again.
Oblivious to the damage Abby had done to her skirt, Tad stepped around another huge stack of files, three unpacked suitcases and several boxes of her belongings that had been sent from the New York apartment she’d had to let go and headed for the door. “I’ll get it.”
Abby nodded. Praying her skirt would hold through the photo session, she said calmly, “I’ll be right down.”
“WHOA, THIS IS SOME MESS you got here,” Sonny said as he extracted the camera from the case and looked around.
“Tell me about it,” Tad agreed grimly as he led Sonny into a living room packed with an assortment of his and hers moving crates.
Call me a fool, Tad thought, but when he’d asked Abby to share his dream with him, he’d expected them to be together twenty-four hours a day. The reality was they rarely saw each other. Abby was always on the phone, out of the office, working at home or off on appointment, lining up freelancers and even a dietitian to do a cooking column. And while he appreciated the gusto with which she was doing her job, as her husband and the man who’d once made passionate love to her—and was dying to do so again—he felt very neglected.
Sonny snapped several pictures of the disorganized heaps of carpet, tile, wallpaper and paint samples that covered much of the spacious front hallway. “Abby really likes to get into her work, doesn’t she?” he remarked.
“You got that right,” Tad murmured, aware it was taking a real effort on his part not to feel completely disgruntled.
The truth was if he’d known how thoroughly Abby would throw herself into the job as Lifestyle editor, he never would have offered it to her. As it was, she worked until she crawled into bed, exhausted, and then slept for ten or sometimes even twelve hours straight, only to wake and start the same routine all over again. When they did talk, it was about business and little else.
And while part of him admired her dedication, another part was increasingly frustrated and ticked off. He wanted to kiss her and remind her what it was like to be really married to him, the way they’d been married that first glorious night, but he’d made a promise to allow them to get to know each other first. The only problem was she wasn’t letting him get close to her. In fact, he felt more removed from her than ever.
Delicate feminine footsteps sounded on the stairs. Seconds later Abby swept into the room, looking more beautiful than ever. “Hey, Ab,” Sonny said, “ready to get those pictures taken?”
“Sure.” Abby grinned warmly. “Just make sure you’re focusing on the rooms, not us.”
“Easier said than done,” Sonny said, looking down into his lens, “’cause the camera love
s you.”
That, Tad could believe. Just as he could imagine what Sonny was clearly so struck by. From her glowing tresses, sparkling eyes, graceful movements and luminous skin, there wasn’t an inch of Abby that wasn’t both gorgeous and compelling. It didn’t matter what she wore or how she did her hair, whether she was in shorts and a T-shirt, with her hair drawn up in a bouncy ponytail on the back of her head, or—like now—wearing crisp tailored clothing and high-heeled pumps that showed off her spectacular legs. She was sexy as hell. So sexy, in fact, that he was in a constant state of arousal whenever he was around her. The knowledge she was carrying his child made it even more difficult to control himself.
Politically correct or not, he wanted to take her and make her his, again and again and again. And he was still thinking about it as Abby led a madly photographing Sonny through the entire first floor, then up the broad front staircase to the master bedroom and bath.
“Whoa. Is this a bedroom or an office?” Sonny asked, stepping around the piles of work, a half-dozen as-yet-unpacked boxes of Abby’s stuff from New York and two open overflowing suitcases.
“Both,” Abby said.
Sonny quirked an amazed brow. “Some honeymoon, huh?” he said, guessing—correctly—that not much besides work went on here.
Which was, Tad noted, exactly what Abby wanted him to think. That was not, however, the impression Tad wanted to leave. Nor was it a situation he wanted continued.
Knowing it was bound to tick off his wife, yet feeling bound to provoke things a little, anyway, since she’d already done the same, Tad laced a proprietorial arm about Abby’s shoulders. Ignoring the way she stiffened almost imperceptibly at his touch, he tucked her close to his side.
Watch it, her simmering look said.
No, you watch, his look said right back.
Planting his other hand on the small of her back, he trapped her against him. “Hey, there’s no rule that says you have to make love in a bed,” he said, lowering his head to hers. Caressing her lips with his eyes, he continued softly, “Red-hot loving can happen anywhere.” Like Paris. Wanting to remind Abby of that, lest she forget everything good that had happened between them before they’d quickly and foolishly jumped into marriage, Tad threw caution to the wind and kissed her soundly. At the touch of their lips, she melted in his arms, just the way he’d thought she would.
Make Room for Baby Page 5
