Daddy Next Door (Hometown Reunion)

by Ginger Chambers

  “Last time I looked hens were female. I’m not female.”

  “Stop bullying me!”

  “I’m not—”

  When she tried to slip through the door he blocked her way. “Stop trying to pretend that nothing’s wrong, Raine,” he said. “I know something is. For the past seven years every visit you’ve made home has been planned well in advance, and arranged so you wouldn’t have to stay longer than a few days. And suddenly you’re here—on the spur of the moment, for you don’t know how long—and you haven’t even told your mother!”

  Raine wouldn’t look at him. Her gaze slid first to the floor, then down the hall.

  “Tell me, Raine,” he urged her. “I can help.”

  She shook her head, denying him closeness. Tears had started to gather on her lashes, and the sight of them made Gabe’s stomach twist with fear.

  “Has someone hurt you?” he demanded. “You haven’t been...” He couldn’t say the word. It was something he’d been terrified could happen to her ever since she’d left the comparative safety of Tyler for the mean streets of New York. The late hours she kept, the location of some of the theaters—it all put her at risk.

  “No,” she whispered tightly, instinctively understanding. “I haven’t been raped.”

  Relief surged through him, but something was still terribly wrong. “Are you in some kind of financial trouble? I’ve got some money saved...whatever you need, it’s yours.”

  “It’s not that,” she said.

  “A man. A boyfriend.” The words hurt him, but he had compromised with reality a long time ago.

  She laughed, the sound hollow, empty. “In a way,” she admitted. When she turned her lovely green eyes on him Gabe could see the strain and worry churning in their depths.

  “You can’t do anything about it, Gabe,” she said miserably. “No one can, not even my mother. I was just coming to her because—because...” She strove unsuccessfully to keep her voice under control. “Because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go!”

  She swayed toward him, and he reached out to gather her into his arms. How many times had he done this in his dreams? Felt her sweet femininity pressed urgently against him? But fact was far different from fiction. In his dreams she wasn’t crying with heartbreaking intensity and he hadn’t needed to lend comfort.

  Tears shook her body for some time, and Gabe didn’t try to stop them. Instead he repeated softly, “I’m here, Red. I won’t let anything harm you.”

  “Oh, Gabe,” she breathed into his neck, “I wish everyone in the world was as kind as you.”

  “Now I’m St. Gabriel,” he murmured wryly.

  Slowly she collected herself, until only an occasional sniff remained.

  He stroked her hair, as content as she was for them to say nothing.

  Finally, she pushed away. Even after the maelstrom of tears she managed to look beautiful. There were no splotches on her pale skin or puffiness around her eyes. “It’s really not your worry, Gabe,” she said.

  “Tell me,” he pressed.

  She looked away. “You’ll think I’m a fool.”

  “I won’t.”

  She gave another tinny laugh, similar to the one she had used earlier, before turning her gaze back on him. “Why not, when I do?”

  He waited.

  “I’m pregnant, Gabe. The father of the baby says he loves me, but he doesn’t want the child. He wants me to...”

  She continued to talk, but Gabe lost track of what she was saying. Raine...pregnant! A great wind roared in his head, something similar to the storm they had experienced last night. But instead of breaking tree limbs and tossing around possessions, it threatened to crack Gabe’s heart.

  “Do you love him?” he heard himself ask. He didn’t know if he had interrupted her or not.

  “I thought I did. I do! Oh, I don’t know!” She bit her bottom lip in a vain attempt to keep it from trembling. “Gabe, I don’t know what I feel about anything! I couldn’t stay in New York. Not when... I came here to think. To decide—”

  “Who is he?” Once again he heard himself asking a question he would never have posed in a saner moment.

  “Does it matter?” she countered.

  Gabe forced himself to think rather than merely feel. “You’re right,” he said and ran a hand over his clipped hair.

  “See? I told you you couldn’t help...and that you’d think I—”

  “He wants you to have an abortion?” he demanded, his emotions hardening into anger against this unknown man.

  “It wasn’t his idea that I should get pregnant.”

  “Was it yours?”

  “No. It was...an accident.”

  “But he still had his fun.”

  “Gabe, don’t...please.”

  Gabe heard the pain in her plea. He went to stare out the kitchen window. He didn’t see a thing. Instead his mind raced from one idea to another, trying not to think about Raine and the baby’s father, and what the two of them had done in order to—

  She tugged on his sleeve, having moved soundlessly across the room to stand at his side.

  Words burst out of him. “What kind of a man doesn’t want his own child?”

  She recoiled as if he’d hit her, and he instantly reached out, dragging her against him, pressing her head to his chest.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he swore brokenly, filled with remorse. “I didn’t mean... You have a big decision to make, Raine. And I can’t... I shouldn’t—”

  Her fingers stole up to seal his lips. “Shh,” she whispered, tears once again dampening his shirt.

  They clung together for a long time, each trying to draw strength from the other.

  She moved finally and he unwillingly released her.

  “I—I should get my things,” she said.

  “What for?” He frowned.

  “To take over to Mom’s.”

  His frown deepened. “Are you sure you want to do that now? Should you be alone?”

  “As you said, I need to think. And what better way to think than by being alone?”

  “But...”

  “It’s what I want,” she said softly.

  Gabe had no idea what his face revealed to her. Inside, his impulses had scattered. In the end all he could do was nod.

  For long seconds after she had left the room Gabe didn’t move. Raine was pregnant! He couldn’t seem to get past that fact.

  All the years, all the time they’d known each other... He couldn’t remember the actual day he’d fallen in love with her. She’d always been around, tagging after him as they grew up. At times his friends had teased him. But she hadn’t meant to cause trouble. Both of them had had something missing from their lives, something they’d found in each other. He’d lost his mother to a freak boating accident, and Raine’s father had walked away from his family when she was barely one. Together, they reconstituted a whole.

  But love? Boy for girl, man for woman? Had he gone to sleep one night and awakened feeling differently about her? Or had he seen her and realized that something had changed? There was no way for him to pinpoint the moment. The feeling was just there, like the air he breathed.

  His private agony was that to this day Raine had never reciprocated his feelings. She continued to look upon him as good old Gabe, friend for life. Almost closer than a real brother. But still a brother, in name if not legality.

  “I think that’s everything,” she said as she returned to the kitchen, carrying her suitcase.

  Gabe hastened to relieve her of the burden. “I still think you should stay here. I can take better care of you than you’ll take of yourself.”

  “I promise I’ll eat something,” she said, smiling tightly.

  “I’ll go to the store. Bring some supplies over
. Not a lot,” he insisted before she could protest. “Just the essentials.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Gabe,” she said and reached out to touch his cheek.

  “I’ll send my bill over later,” he teased.

  “Whatever it is,” she replied seriously, “it should be more.”

  The poignancy of the moment was too much for Gabe. He couldn’t drag this out much longer. He shifted the suitcase to his other hand and led them out of the house.

  “Call me if you need anything,” he directed her.

  “I will,” she promised.

  The distance across the two yards was far too short. He wasn’t ready to let her go! Yet just as he had stepped back repeatedly over the past seven years to watch her leave Tyler so she could realize her dream, he saw her to the back door of her mother’s house and turned away.

  What she had told him made no difference to his love for her. He would love her forever, child or no child.

  At his kitchen door he paused to look back. She continued to stand in the doorway of the other house, staring at him but not seeing him, a fact he discovered when he lifted a hand to wave and received no response.

  She was thinking of him—that man in New York. The father of her baby.

  As Gabe’s hand fell back to his side, it tightened into a fist.

  CHAPTER THREE

  RAINE SAT CURLED in an overstuffed chair in one corner of the bedroom that used to be her own. A few of her childhood things remained—a favorite doll, a small crystal horse, her teddy—but the area no longer boasted a bed. It had been fully converted into a hobby room, with a sewing machine, work tables and low metal shelves filled to bursting with numerous storage boxes. Bits and pieces of ribbon and cloth signaled projects underway.

  Raine held a sample of her mother’s handiwork. It was a wall hanging for a new baby that had the child’s name, birth date and weight embroidered inside three colorfully appliqued balloons. Jonathan Alexander Olsen. Saturday, April 21... Eight pounds, four...

  Without a doubt Jonathan had been longed for, wanted. He’d come into the world greeted by beaming smiles and joyous exclamations. Not for a moment had his mother contemplated ending his life before it even began.

  Raine placed a hand over her still relatively flat stomach. A child was growing inside her. It didn’t seem real!

  What kind of a man doesn’t want his own child? Gabe’s raw demand continued to reverberate inside her mind, along with the way Joel had looked at her when she’d last seen him—as if she had done something really stupid, and he had had no part.

  “Raine?” Gabe called to her.

  She sat up, setting the wall hanging aside. “In here, Gabe! In my old room.”

  The back door closed behind him as he came inside. “I knocked, but you must not have heard,” he called.

  A grocery bag rustled as he placed it on the counter. Then he came to find her. “Quite a change, huh?” he said, smiling.

  “She kept my old poster.” Raine motioned to the beautifully rendered drawing of a pair of ballet dancers superimposed over the enlarged, ghostly image of a swan.

  “That’s because the girl looks like you.”

  “I used to dream it was me.”

  Gabe stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I brought you a few things.”

  “Thanks.”

  Seconds passed. Not exactly uncomfortably, but slightly strained. A new experience in their relationship.

  “Don’t think badly of me, Gabe,” Raine said at last.

  His look of surprise was genuine. “I could never do that!”

  “But to be so stupid!”

  He came over to crouch beside her chair. “Don’t do this to yourself, Red. Things happen, both good and bad. I see it every day.”

  “But to let...” She twisted her hands together.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Gabe said. “This man...the baby’s—” he paused and took a quick breath “—the baby’s father. You told him straight out about the pregnancy? I mean, you didn’t just...talk around it?”

  “I told him, Gabe.”

  “And he still...?”

  Raine nodded shortly.

  “What about the part you’re rehearsing? Can you keep it, if you decide to keep...”

  Raine gave a watery laugh. “No. I’m cast as a turn-of-the-century ingenue. The two things wouldn’t go together at all. I’d be let go.”

  “How far along...” He stopped, as if uneasy asking such an intimate question. “No—” he shook his head “—that’s not my business.”

  She touched his cheek. “You could never intrude, Gabe. If anyone’s intruding, it’s me...on you! It—it helps to talk about it, though. To you.”

  “Marge would be better.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It’s her grandchild I have to make the decision about.” She paused. “It just doesn’t seem possible, Gabe. I took care! I tried to make sure he always took precautions, too! And still it happened.”

  A tiny muscle twitched in Gabe’s cheek. She felt it move beneath her hand.

  “I want to give you another option, Raine,” he said, his blue eyes holding hers. “For if you want to keep the baby.”

  She couldn’t sit still any longer. She stood up and walked over to a worktable. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that, Gabe. The whole idea... I don’t have any money, any insurance. I couldn’t stay in New York. I’d have to come back to Tyler...probably work in the diner until... And you know how people are here!” She shuddered involuntarily at the thought of being the object of all the derisive gossip.

  “None of that would happen if you married me.”

  Raine’s restless movements jerked to a halt. “Marry...?” she repeated.

  “Just in name. Not in...you know.”

  She shook her head. “No. I won’t do that to you, Gabe. I got myself into this mess, I can get myself out.”

  He walked over to her. “With an abortion,” he said.

  “I don’t know! I don’t want... But—”

  “How far along are you?” This time he completed the question. “Nothing shows.”

  “A little more than ten weeks.”

  He thought for a moment. “That would work out just right. I went to a training course in mid-February, then I took the next week off for a short vacation. Gossips here could count all they want.”

  “Gabe—”

  “Think about it, Raine. That’s all, just think about it. It’s another option. I don’t want you to feel like you’re backed into a corner with no escape.”

  “But Gabe, it would be so unfair!”

  “Aren’t I the one who has the most to say about that? And afterward? Well, we can end it whenever we want after the baby’s born...when you’ve had time to get your life back under control and can decide what you want to do with the future.”

  “But what about you? What about your life?” she countered. “What would it be like for you to continue living in Tyler? It’s too much to ask, Gabe. Having to put up with all the speculation, having to put up with me being pregnant. So far I haven’t had any trouble, not even bad morning sickness, but that doesn’t mean everything will continue smoothly. Then, when it’s over—when you’ve seen me through the worst—all you get is a quick thanks?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.” He gave that sweet, special Gabe grin.

  Raine stared at him. “You really mean it, don’t you?” she murmured huskily.

  “I’ve never meant anything more in my life.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “Taking care of you is a habit. It feels kind of funny when you aren’t around.”

  “You find plenty of people to fill in. Mom’s told me how much you do for the town.”

  “Just think about w
hat I said, okay?”

  She nodded and he turned away...leaving the room, leaving the house. Leaving her to do as he suggested: think.

  * * *

  RAINE CONSIDERED THE situation from every possible angle, until her emotions became hopelessly ensnarled. She wanted the problem to go away! Yet she shied away from the act that would ensure its disappearance. She wanted Joel to have reacted differently, to want both her and the baby! But merely wanting it did no good. If she let herself have the baby, everything she had worked so long and hard for would be derailed...for a year? Two? Three? If she didn’t, if she aborted, she could resume her work right away. Return to the production company, be ready with the others for tryouts in the regional theaters, and then later on, be there when the play opened on or off Broadway in late fall. Late fall. That was the doctor’s estimate of the baby’s due date.

  Raine closed her eyes and groaned. A decision would have to be made, and made soon. Pregnancy was one of those few instances in life when the passage of time only added to the complication.

  Instinct pulled her both ways. Her brain voted for the stage; her heart, the child. She speculated about who the baby would look like. Would it have Joel’s black hair and dark eyes? Or be filled with color like herself?

  And how, currently, did she feel about Joel? She hadn’t been able to answer Gabe’s earlier question. Nor could she answer her own now. The wound was still too deep and fresh to poke and prod.

  Then there was Gabe. Steady, dependable Gabe...with his ready solution to rescue her.

  Raine fought with the dilemma all night, trying to find the right answer. The result was that she slept far later into the next day than she’d planned. She awoke, dragged groggily from a frightening dream that didn’t want to end, to someone pounding on the back door.

  “Just—” She choked on the word and had to start over. “Just a minute!”

  She searched for her robe but couldn’t find it. Finally, as the pounding continued, she stumbled down the hall wearing only her pale pink pajamas.

  Gabe stood on the back step, his expression anxious.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, opening the door.