by Nancy Warren
In spite of herself she cried out in pleasure. “Look how much you’ve done. Oh, that wide plank flooring looks so good in here.”
“It does. I like the maple. It suits the house.”
She glanced quickly around but nothing hideous hit her. Of course, he might be about to suggest they pull the roof off and replace it with glass to make that greenhouse he was so set on.
But what he said was, “I was looking at your plans. You’ve got this wall here so you’ll have your office and then another room.”
“I was thinking maybe a guest bedroom or a store room.”
“I remember when you kids were small, we always liked to have a space where you could play that was near where we were working. Maybe you don’t want a wall there. Maybe this could be a play area for the baby once it gets old enough, so you could keep an eye on it when you’re working.”
He sounded a little bashful and she knew that – even though his ideas were mostly terrible – it still hurt him to have them rejected. Also, she suspected that Mom had read him the Riot Act. He was to follow her instructions to the letter and not deviate.
She felt such a rush of relief and love when she realized that for once in his life, Jack Chance had come up with a brilliant idea. She nodded slowly, “Dad, that’s so smart of you. Of course. There’d be room for a playpen and I can put a gate up by the stairs. This would be a fantastic play area.”
He beamed with pride. “I can build you some shelves and cubbies to keep toys and games in.”
“I like it. Let’s do it.”
After he left, she wandered the space. Her hand settled on her belly as she imagined herself doing paperwork up here while her child played nearby. Maybe this wasn’t the way she’d planned her life, but she’d make it work. She knew she would.
Iris and Geoff fell into a routine. Her alarm went off much earlier than his, but he got up anyway and liked to share that first cup of coffee with her while she got herself ready. He laughed when he found out that she ate at home before heading to the café, but she always started her morning with oatmeal or a fruit smoothie at home. Otherwise she got so busy at work that she’d forget to eat.
Some mornings they woke at her place, some mornings at his.
She’d go off to the bakery, he’d head off to school. Some nights they’d head out of town for dinner, or he’d have marking to do and she’d cook dinner. Or she’d be working on her novel and Geoff would cook. Now that she and Eric and Milo had this unofficial critique group going, she was writing again. She hadn’t known how much she missed it. Geoff wasn’t the gourmet cook Iris was but he could manage to broil a steak or cook up a pot of pasta. And having a man cook for her was a big turn on she found.
She kept up with her friends and her usual activities, but nearly every night they ended up in bed together.
Meanwhile, she was sneaking her pregnancy vitamins and hiding in the bathroom to take her temperature, which she then had to mark on a sheet. She wouldn’t be ready this month, but she was practicing hopefully the next cycle. Then, when her temp spiked it meant she was ovulating and she’d have to run down to be inseminated.
She was explaining all of this to her mother when Daphne said, “What does Geoff McLeod think of all this?”
Iris had one of those moments. It wasn’t that she didn’t know her mother was perfectly aware that her thirty-three year old daughter had a sex life, it was simply that she preferred not to discuss it.
“He doesn’t think anything about it because he doesn’t know.”
“I’m sure it’s occurred to you—“
“That Geoff McLeod could be my baby daddy?” She sighed. “Of course it has. And no. He’s still married. The last thing he needs is a kid. He’s trying to get his life back on track. We have fun together. That’s it.”
“Okay.” Her mother said in a tone that pretty much meant: This is so far from okay you’d have to take a NASA shuttle to get there.
“Are you sick?” Geoff asked in alarm. He’d been on his way out the door and forgotten his phone, plugged into a wall socket in Iris’s bedroom.
She was rifling through her closet when he walked in, a thermometer sticking out of her mouth.
She made a mumbling sound but didn’t turn around. He waited, not wanting to be a man who abandoned a woman when she was sick. She stuck a finger in the air, as in wait one minute, and then dashed into the bathroom.
It seemed like she took a longer time than necessary to come out and when she did she looked a little flushed, like maybe she did have a fever.
He walked forward and put his hand on her brow, the way you do when someone has a fever, even though he could never tell unless they were absolutely burning up. And she wasn’t.
“I’m fine,” she said. Then, stepping out of his reach, added, “I felt a little off, that’s all. Don’t want to go into work and make half of Hidden Falls sick.”
“No. You don’t.”
“I’m fine. No temperature.”
“Good.” He searched her face knowing something wasn’t right but unable to figure out what it was. “So you’re okay if I go off to the gym and leave you?”
“Yes. Go.” She made shooing motions.
“Kay.” He put his phone in his pocket. Turned back. “You know I only go to the gym so I can afford to eat all those treats at the bakery.”
“I refuse to take responsibility for your lack of willpower,” she stated, spoiling her nose-in-the-air pose with a laugh.
“Good. Because where you are concerned, I have no willpower.” He showed her immediately how true that was by walking forward, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her to him for a deep, hungry kiss. He briefly wondered if he was giving himself flu and decided he didn’t care. He’d risk a lot worse to show Iris how much she meant to him.
She melted against him, her body almost becoming part of his in a way he couldn’t get enough of. Then she pulled slowly away.
“See you tonight?” he asked.
He watched her flip through her mental calendar. “I’ve got book club tonight. Which reminds me I have to pick up some wine.”
He was amused. “Not a book?”
“Please, the book gets ten minutes. The rest of the time we drink wine and b—socialize.”
He didn’t press her, but silently hoped if there was bitching going on that it wouldn’t be about him.
Chapter Fifteen
Geoff had an idea. Either one of his worst or his best he wasn’t yet certain. He’d been watching the little literary circle developing in Iris’s coffee shop. So far it contained four of his students. Including a girl who was crushing on Milo, and Milo was either oblivious or interested and being cool. Absolutely impossible to tell which.
Iris wasn’t sitting around the table when he arrived.
“Hi Mr. McLeod,”
“Hi kids. Don’t mind me, carry on.”
He headed to the counter where Iris’s assistant Dosana was serving.
“Iris in back?”
“No.” She barely spared him a glance. “She left.”
For Iris to leave during a work day was strange, even more strange when she had the writing group.
He left, called Iris and got voicemail. Instead of leaving a message he drove the couple of blocks to her house.
No one answered his knock but the door was open so he pushed it open and yelled, “Hello?”
He heard the sounds of an electric saw coming from upstairs so he ran lightly up, checking swiftly to see that Iris wasn’t in bed sick or something. She wasn’t.
He ran up to the attic and found Jack Chance sawing lengths of lumber in some complicated fashion that seemed to make sense to him.
Since Geoff was challenged by pre-fab furniture he wasn’t inclined to be critical. Not wanting to startle the man so he cut off his own leg or something, Geoff flicked the light switch. That got Jack’s attention and with a wave he switched off the saw. That didn’t help the noise level a whole lot since the Grateful Dead filled al
l the spaces the saw had left empty.
“I’m looking for Iris,” he yelled.
“Huh?” Jack took an earplug out of his ear. Then, with another motion of his hand, went over and flipped off the boom box.
“Hi, Geoff, How are you?”
“Great. Looking for Iris.”
“Oh, She’s not here. Went to the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
Jack scratched his head. Sawdust covered him the way icing sugar covered Iris’s lemon bars. “Maybe not the hospital. A clinic?”
He felt alarm thud through him, couldn’t get the picture out of his mind of her sucking on a thermometer the other day. Why hadn’t he made her see a doctor then? “Is she sick? Is it serious?”
Jack looked both bemused and guilty. Like he’d said something he was going to get in trouble for. “I stay out of all that women’s stuff. You’d better ask Daphne.”
And then, with a friendly wave, he threw the music back on. By the time Geoff had hit the second stair on his way back down, the saw was roaring away again.
He should have asked Jack for Daphne’s cell number, kicked himself for his stupidity, but couldn’t face going through the process to get Jack’s attention again. He jumped in his car and drove as fast as he could to Daphne and Jack’s place, trying to convince himself that if anything was seriously wrong Jack wouldn’t be sawing lengths of wood in Iris’s attic.
He didn’t bother to park in the big area they reserved for cars, but screeched to a halt in front of the house and jumped out. He was banging on the front door in seconds.
It seemed a century before Daphne opened the door and when she did she opened her eyes in surprise. “Why Geoff. Is everything all right?” She glanced behind him as though her barn might be on fire.
“I’m looking for Iris. Jack said she was in hospital.”
She closed her eyes briefly in a move that clearly said, ‘God give me patience.’ “I do not know why I ever tell that man anything. Of course Iris isn’t in hospital. She’s gone for a routine medical procedure. Nothing alarming.”
His heart rate started to slow, not so much because of Daphne’s words but because he reasoned that if Iris was ill or hurt her mother would be at her side, not inside her house with her hands covered in rapidly drying clay. She wore an apron that was dusty with dried clay and she had a gray chunk of it stuck in her hair.
“Okay. Sorry I bothered you. I thought – when the creative writing circle was meeting without her, and then Jack said – well, I was worried.”
Daphne smiled at him. “She’s lucky to have someone to worry about her. Usually, Iris is always the one worrying about everybody else.”
“Okay, I’d better get going.”
“Would you like some tea or something?”
“No. I’ll let you get back to your pottery.”
She glanced down at herself as though she’d forgotten she was working with clay.
He couldn’t settle. He knew that if something was wrong Daphne would have told him but then if it was some routine procedure, why hadn’t Iris told him she was going? He’d seen her this morning.
He didn’t like the feelings that started to swirl around inside him so he pulled on running gear and headed out. Ever since the day he’d got himself lost he always made sure he had his phone with its handy GPS and a bottle of water. But of course, since then he’d never become disoriented. He warmed up a little then ran six miles at an easy place. He was falling into routines and patterns. He jogged when he got home early enough. He worked out in the gym most mornings since he was up at the crack of dawn with Iris anyway.
He liked it here, he realized. He liked this small town with its natural beauty and old hippies. There was no place to buy men’s clothes that he’d actually wear in this town but there were three crystal shops. Yoga wasn’t served up with Pilates like he was used to. It was served with meditation.
He jogged home, did some stretches while he watched the evening news, took a shower.
When he came out of the shower he saw that Iris had called and he returned the call immediately, relief sluicing through him.
“Hi,” she said, sounding the way she always did.
“Hi.” He waited for her to tell him where she’d been but she didn’t.
“I’m starving and I don’t feel like cooking. Could I interest you in pizza or Thai?”
“Sure, I could do that.”
She obviously heard hesitation. “Unless you want to head out of town and sit in an actual restaurant.”
“No. Take-out’s good. You want to come here or should I come to you?”
“I’m thinking of starting a fire. Why don’t you come here?”
“I’ll pick up the food on the way. Be there in thirty or forty.”
He stood waiting for his order to be ready, thinking how quickly they’d fallen into routines. There’d been no need to go over the menu. They already knew what they’d order from the Thai restaurant, in the same way they both liked the fully loaded pizza. So how was it that they had the take-out restaurant intimacy down cold and yet she didn’t want to share with him details of a medical procedure? Even if it was one of those girl things he didn’t really want to know about, what was the big deal telling him she was going?
The more he contemplated that she hadn’t told him what was going on the less he liked it.
When he got to her place she opened the door looking healthy and as though she’d freshened up. Her lips were freshly glossed and her hair just-brushed. “Hi,” she said, leaning in for a kiss.
“Hi.” He kissed her back until a rustle of the bag between them, and the pungent odor of Thai food brought them to their senses. “Come on through,” she said and he followed her to the kitchen.
He waited for her to tell him about her appointment. She told him an amusing story about two five-year-olds she’d overheard at Sunflower discussing where babies came from.
He told her that after Rosalind complained yet again about Lear he’d finally told her that she could thank the bard for her own name. “Fair Rosalind,” I told her, ‘Is from As You Like It.’”
“Well, that’s good. Maybe she’ll have more respect for Shakespeare.”
Except some comic genius went to the library at lunch time, or more likely online, and next thing you know, the boys are saying, “Where Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is virtuous.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Yeah. That horn-maker never gets old.”
“Boys found it funny in Shakespeare’s time.”
“And still do unfortunately for our fair Rosalind. For which I feel somewhat guilty.”
“But not too guilty.”
He shook his head.
“And how was your day?” he asked.
While she took plates out of the cupboard and set them on the counter, he flipped open all the lids on the take out.
“It was good. Now that we’ve got our impromptu writing group happening, I’m writing again. I have to thank you for that.” She touched him briefly. “I don’t know why I ever stopped.”
“That’s great,” he said warmly. “In fact I stopped in today to share an idea with the group.”
Her hands paused for a second as she reached for napkins. “Oh?”
“Yeah. You weren’t there.” He paused but she didn’t speak. “Your dad tell you I came by?”
Now she turned to him surprise and a slight wariness in her expression. “You came here? To the house?”
“I was worried about you. Your dad said you were at the hospital so I got a lot more worried.”
Her gaze dropped and a blush warmed her cheeks. “I wasn’t at the hospital.”
“So your mom said.”
Her gaze flew back to his. “You went to my parents’ house?”
“That’s a funny thing. People say hospital and I worry. Call me crazy.”
“What did my moth—”
He cut her off. “What’s going on?” He edged closer, took her hands in
his and looked into her eyes. “If there’s some issue with your health I’d like to think I can help you in some way. I’m here for you.”
For a second he saw longing in her eyes so fierce he wanted to kiss her and tell her everything was going to be okay. But how could he do that when he didn’t know squat?
She squeezed his hands and took a step back. “I’m healthy. Very healthy, in fact.”
“Okay.”
She blew out a breath. “I did not plan on having to tell you this for a while.” She fiddled with the take-out boxes. Rearranging them on the counter. She glanced at him and away again. “I—I’m thinking about having a baby.”
“A baby.” So not where he’d imagined this conversation going.
“When I went to the doctor for my annual check up she suggested that – for reasons I won’t go into – I should move on it if I want to have kids. I’ve always known I wanted to be a mother.”
“Move on it.” He could feel his eyes squinting the way he got when one of his students was being a smart ass.
“Yes.”
“What does move on it mean exactly?” He conducted a rapid review and knew they’d been using condoms scrupulously, though now he thought back to the first time her little hesitation made sense. She hadn’t been having second thoughts about getting intimate with him. She’d contemplated using him for stud service.
“I’ve been looking at sperm donors.”
“Sperm donors.” He could not believe he was having this conversation like it was normal back and forth over Pad Thai.
“I mean from a sperm bank, of course.”
“So you’re buying sperm from strangers?”
“I have bought one lot so far yes. Well, technically my sister Rose bought it for me for a birthday present.” And now he recalled her getting all emotional over her sister’s birthday card. So all the family must know. Everyone in town, probably, but the guy who was actually sleeping with her.
He put his plate back on the counter, shoved the chop sticks into the center of the tangle of noodles and sauce. A chunk of nut bounced and tumbled onto the counter.
He felt so stunned he wasn’t sure what to even say. The only time he’d felt remotely like this was when his wife dumped him by text.
