Babies in the Bargain

by Victoria Pade

“Mel and Mandy seemed more cooperative today,” he observed then.

  “I’m still not their favorite person but they seem to be tolerating me.”

  “Thanks for all the work you did on the living room during their nap this afternoon. The Barracuda never guessed that there hadn’t even been a place to sit earlier.”

  “I’m just glad I actually got some things accomplished today,” Kira said, letting her relief over that sound in her voice.

  Cutty didn’t comment. He merely took a drink of his tea.

  Kira did, too, wondering all the while how she was going to get into the subject she really wanted to be talking about.

  As she searched for a segue she couldn’t help surreptitiously studying him.

  The one thing she decided she couldn’t fault the reporter for was being attracted to him. He was such an appealing combination—rugged, sexy masculinity and the kind of sensitivity that made him seem accessible and genuinely caring.

  Then, too, there was the fact that he was jaw-droppingly handsome with a face of chiseled planes and those long-lashed evergreen eyes….

  “So, you and Ad seemed to have a lot to talk about in here tonight,” he said then, drawing her out of her reverie.

  Was she mistaken or was there an edge of something that almost sounded like jealousy in his voice?

  She couldn’t be sure but just the possibility gave her a whole new lease on life.

  “Mainly we were talking about you,” she said, seizing the opening his comment gave her rather than playing coy.

  “If you were talking about me it must have been a boring conversation.”

  “As a matter of fact, Ad said he didn’t know how long the interview would take because you’re an interesting person.”

  “I think he was putting you on.”

  “I don’t think so. But it did occur to me when he said it that I don’t really know much about you.”

  Cutty shrugged, conceding that point. “There’s not much reason you would know anything about me.”

  “I’d like to, though,” Kira said, jumping in with both feet.

  Cutty’s mouth slid into a crooked smile that looked pleased to hear it. “You would?”

  “I would. Ad said that you had a rough go of it—his words—even before you met Marla. Is that true?” Kira asked.

  “I didn’t have a storybook childhood, if that’s what he was referring to,” Cutty admitted, but without a hint of self-pity.

  “What kind of childhood did you have?”

  “In a nutshell, my mother walked out when I was a baby, so I never knew her. And my father was an alcoholic. Not a functional, social-drinker kind of alcoholic. We’re talking the town-drunk kind of alcoholic.”

  “Really? Was he like that before your mother left or did his drinking come after that?”

  “I don’t know to tell you the truth. I only know that from my earliest memories he spent more time drunk than sober.”

  “Did he hold down a job?”

  “Off and on. He’d dry out—to him that meant he only drank at night and on the weekends. When he was doing that he’d get whatever job he could. But it would only last a few weeks, a month maybe, before the Friday night binge didn’t end on Sunday. Then he’d lose the job. Disappear for days on end—”

  “Disappear?”

  “He wouldn’t come home and I wouldn’t know where he was,” Cutty explained.

  “But he’d leave you with someone, right?”

  The question made Cutty laugh a humorless laugh. “Until I was six we rented an attic room in an old house in Denver from a woman named Mabel Brown. Mabel was pretty old but she looked after me, made sure I always had something to eat, a lunch to take to school. But if you’re asking if there were formal baby-sitting arrangements made, no, there weren’t. Mabel just sort of stepped in when my dad didn’t come home.”

  “But only until you were six?”

  “That’s when Mabel died. She hadn’t owned the house, she’d been renting, too, and using what my father paid her—when he paid her—to make her own rent. The owner wasn’t happy to discover that and kicked us out. That was when an old army buddy of my dad’s let us move into the two rooms above his gas station. Jack was the army buddy and he sort of took over where Mabel had left off. Home-baked cookies were replaced by Vienna sausages,” Cutty finished with a laugh.

  Suddenly Kira’s own home life and her harsh father didn’t seem so bad.

  “Why didn’t anyone call Social Services and have you put into a nice home?” she asked.

  “Jack would never have turned my father in for anything. Besides, he lived right behind the station. He just told me whenever my father didn’t show up, to knock on his door and I could stay with him. So that’s what I did.”

  “What about school? Didn’t a teacher ever realize what you were going home to?”

  “I didn’t tell anybody. I was afraid of getting my dad into trouble. Besides, in a lot of ways, it was just how I lived. What I was used to. I didn’t really know any different. And if I needed a parent to show up for something at school and my dad wasn’t in one of his dry phases, Jack came and told them he was my uncle.”

  “What about that—an uncle, I mean. Didn’t you say something about an Uncle Paulie?”

  “Right. Uncle Paulie. Actually he was my great- uncle. But he lived here, in Northbridge and his health wasn’t terrific so he never came to visit. He just sent Christmas and birthday cards, and money when my father asked him for loans. He always let me know I was welcome if I ever wanted to move in with him, but he never turned my dad in or anything. You have to understand, as bad as this sounds, my pop was the nicest guy in the world. He was a happy guy, drunk or sober, he was warm and kind and good-hearted. Everybody—including me—loved him. He just had a problem.”

  “And you never considered going to stay with your uncle?”

  “I had to stick around to take care of my dad,” Cutty said as if it should have been evident.

  “No, your dad should have been taking care of you,” Kira corrected. “What about food and clothes? Did he provide those?”

  “He’d come home with a sack of groceries whenever he thought of it but they didn’t last until the next time it occurred to him so when I’d run out I’d eat with Jack. Plus Jack let me work in the station. I’d sweep up. Stack cans of oil. Keep the counter stocked with gum and candy bars—whatever I could do as a little kid. He’d pay me and I’d stash the cash and use it for stuff to eat here and there.”

  “And clothes?”

  “Once a year, the day before school started, Jack would take me to the Army Surplus store. He’d buy me two shirts, two pairs of jeans, a package of socks, a package of undershorts, a pair of work boots and a coat if I needed a new one. It was like my employee bonus,” Cutty said with another laugh.

  This story was breaking Kira’s heart but Cutty told it as if it was no big deal.

  “As I got older,” he continued, “Jack taught me how to work on cars and I got to be a pretty good mechanic. So by the time I was a teenager I was making fair money for that. Then I bought my own clothes.”

  “What happened to your father?” Kira asked then, assuming he was no longer living since Cutty had referred to him in the past tense.

  “He died the day before I turned seventeen,” Cutty said sadly despite the fact that the man had obviously not been much of a parent to him. “He was drunk, of course, in an alley in downtown Denver. He either passed out or just went to sleep, and froze to death during the night.”

  Kira didn’t know whether to say she was sorry or not. It had been so long ago, that didn’t seem called for, so instead she said, “When you were seventeen—did you know Marla then?”

  “We were in school together, so I knew her, sure. But we didn’t start dating until about a month later. We were put into the same group to do a project in a physics class.”

  “Were you still living over the gas station?”

  “Living and working there,” Cu
tty confirmed.

  “So at seventeen you essentially had your own apartment to take a date to,” Kira said as one piece fell into place.

  “The recipe for disaster,” he said, guessing what she was thinking.

  But she wasn’t only thinking that things might have been different if he and Marla hadn’t had quite so much privacy. She was also thinking that she was getting a fuller picture of the young Cutty. A picture that explained some things.

  “So from when you were just a little kid you not only had to take care of yourself, but of your father, too,” she summarized then. “And even when you had the chance to leave you didn’t because you felt like you had to take care of your dad. That sense of responsibility must have played a big part when Marla got pregnant.”

  Again Cutty shrugged as if that was just a given. “Her being pregnant was my doing,” he said.

  “And when Marla didn’t want to have an abortion, you eloped. Then did you guys both live over the gas station?” Kira asked because she honestly didn’t know what had happened to them after that.

  “We only stayed at the gas station for a few days. It wasn’t a good place for Marla. That was when I finally took Uncle Paulie up on his offer and we came to Northbridge.”

  He said that with a note of finality in his tone that Kira took to mean he didn’t want to talk about what happened then. So even though her curiosity was only partially satisfied, she didn’t push it.

  Instead it was her turn to say, “Wow.”

  “Like I said, not a storybook beginning all the way around.”

  “That’s an understatement.” And no wonder his friend had been so defensive on his behalf. It was amazing that after growing up the way he had, Cutty was the man he was.

  And what a man he was sitting across from her, calm, strong, confident. And so attractive. Even more attractive—if that were possible—now that she knew all he’d gone through, all he’d overcome and risen above.

  “I should probably go,” she said suddenly when she realized that their eyes had been locked together for a few minutes for no reason she could explain.

  Cutty didn’t say anything. He merely went on watching her.

  Kira stood and took both of their empty glasses to the sink to rinse and put in the dishwasher.

  When she turned again he was standing, bracing part of his weight on his cane, tall and straight, with those broad shoulders and that slightly disheveled hair and those eyes still on her.

  “Tomorrow I’d like to use nap time to get myself some more practical clothes,” she said then, in a hurry to inject something mundane into what suddenly seemed charged and somehow sensual. “Jeans. T-shirts. I didn’t pack with the twins in mind.”

  Cutty was slow to pick up the ball but after another moment of feeling as if his gaze was caressing her, he seemed to concede and said, “There are a couple of small stores on the main drag and one department store near the college. I’ll give you directions.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Kira knew she needed to leave but it wasn’t easy to force her feet to take her to the door.

  “I guess I’ll see you in the morning then,” she said, hoping to give herself more impetus.

  “And you can sleep in a little since the kitchen and living room are clean,” Cutty pointed out as he followed her to the screen.

  “Right,” she agreed. “Except the place could use some dusting and vacuuming and mopping. And I didn’t get to the laundry today and—”

  They were suddenly standing face-to-face at the door and Cutty had raised a single index finger to her lips to stop the flow of her lengthening to-do list.

  He was studying her intently, his green eyes holding her so mesmerized that even when he took his finger away, she still didn’t go on.

  “I’m just grateful for what you did today,” he said in a voice that was deeper, softer, richer than the simple statement seemed to warrant.

  Kira forced herself out of the near trance he’d put her into and tried to joke. “I’m just glad I actually did something.”

  He didn’t laugh. But then neither did she. Instead they both seemed lost in something Kira didn’t quite understand. Something that the touch of that finger to her lips, that look in his eyes, had caused. But whatever it was, from what it was making her feel, she knew she should cut it short before it completely carried her away.

  Cutty surprised her then by bending down enough to replace that index finger with his lips, kissing her.

  It was quick. There and gone before she so much as closed her eyes. Or kissed him back.

  But it was a kiss nonetheless.

  “For a job well-done,” he said then, making a joke of his own to explain what seemed to have taken him a little by surprise, too.

  “Better than a package of socks from Army Surplus,” she countered.

  It made him laugh, and Kira liked that. And him. More than she thought she should.

  So, rather than potentially making a fool of herself, she pushed open the screen door and stepped outside, refusing to look up at that face that had too powerful an effect on her.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she did.

  “I’ll be here.”

  He’d clearly only meant that offhandedly but it was enough to make it easier for Kira to leave him and cross the yard to the garage apartment.

  Because without the thought that she would get to see him again in only a matter of hours, she might not have been able to make herself go.

  Chapter Four

  The kiss Cutty had given Kira was the last thing she thought about when she went to bed Friday night and the first thing on her mind when she woke up Saturday morning. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. No matter how hard she tried. And she did try.

  But for some reason, there wasn’t a single thing that was capable of distracting her from it. From thinking about that little nothing-of-a-kiss.

  Why had he kissed her? she asked herself for the dozenth time as she got out of bed and headed for the shower.

  He’d said that it was only a reward for a job well-done and it had sounded like a joke, but maybe it hadn’t been. Maybe the kiss really had only been a friendly sort of gesture, she thought as she stepped under the spray of warm water and let it beat down on her. Maybe that nothing-of-a-kiss had genuinely been nothing. Just a thanks for playing temporary nanny and housekeeper. A nothing-of-a-kiss that could as easily have been on the cheek as on the lips.

  Except that it hadn’t been on the cheek.

  It had been on the lips.

  And Kira didn’t honestly believe that it had only been a thank-you kiss. Not when she factored in the way Cutty had been looking at her just before he’d kissed her. Not when she remembered the feeling she’d had of being lost in those eyes.

  No, that kiss—no matter how brief—had been more than a thank-you kiss.

  Just not much more.

  Maybe it had been a test-kiss, she thought, still trying to decipher it and what it might have meant.

  A test-kiss. Like dipping an elbow in the babies’ bathwater before putting them in the tub.

  But if that was the case, then what was Cutty testing? Kira wondered.

  Her, maybe. Maybe he was seeing what she would do. If she would slap him. Or be horrified. Or kiss him back.

  She hadn’t slapped him or been horrified. But she hadn’t kissed him back, either. She’d just been too surprised to do anything but stand there.

  And she shouldn’t be regretting that, she told herself as she shampooed her hair. She shouldn’t be regretting that she hadn’t done anything to encourage him.

  She wished she’d kissed him back. She wished that the kiss had lasted longer than it had.

  And it was easy to see why. Cutty was beefcake beautiful. He was nice. Kind. Patient. Intelligent. Funny. He was the real deal. The complete package.

  Still, that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t give in to his appeal, she reminded herself when her shower was finished. It didn�
��t change the fact that she would never allow herself to be merely some replacement—the way her mother had been for Marla’s mother.

  It was just that it would have helped if there wasn’t something there when it came to Cutty, she thought. Something that made her notice every detail about him. Every nuance. That made her extremely aware of every hair on his head. Of every inch of his face. Of every bulge of every muscle.

  It would have helped if there wasn’t something there that made her know when he came into a room even if she didn’t hear or see him. Something that didn’t make her heart flutter each time she caught sight of him. Something that had left her whole body aquiver after that nothing-of-a-kiss…

  That nothing-of-a-kiss that he should never have begun, she thought as she discarded the towel she’d used to dry off and slipped into her robe.

  Not that she wasn’t guilty of thinking about what it might be like to have him kiss her. She was. Yes, there had been the odd moment when he was talking on the telephone and his lips were near the mouthpiece and a momentary image flashed through her mind of those same lips pressed to hers.

  Yes, there had been more than one occasion when he’d smiled or laughed and her gaze got caught on those agile lips, lingering there while she wondered what that mouth might feel like on hers, what those lips might feel like parting over hers, urging hers to part, too….

  But she was only guilty of thinking about it. Simple, fleeting fantasies that she’d pushed aside almost the moment they happened. Flights of fancy. Certainly not anything she would have ever acted on. At least she didn’t believe she would ever have acted on them.

  But he had.

  And she couldn’t deny that even just recalling it was enough to send a little rush through her.

  “Stop it,” she commanded her reflection in the mirror over the sink while she ran a brush through her hair.

  But the rush went on undisturbed anyway.

  And that worried Kira. It worried her that Cutty had opened a door that should never have been opened. It worried her that she wasn’t going to be able to suppress those fantasies if she thought there was any possibility that they might become more than that.