That's Our Baby!

by Pamela Browning

  The back door catapulted open, and Kerry rode in on a wedge of snowflakes. Guiltily he dropped the sleeve of her nightgown and hoped she wouldn’t notice.

  “Whew! I don’t think the weather’s anywhere near letting up!” she said, seemingly in better humor than when she’d left. She doffed the shawl and draped it over a chair near the stove to dry.

  “You shouldn’t have gone out in the storm.”

  She spared him a hard look. “A human body has certain needs. It was necessary.”

  He realized that if he hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t needed privacy, she would have taken care of those needs inside. He knew for a fact that there was an ancient chamber pot stored under the eaves upstairs.

  “If it’s still storming next time you go to the shed, let me know. I’ll go with you and wait outside. You shouldn’t go out alone.”

  “I’ve been going to the shed alone for the past three months and have never had a problem. I think I can still manage it for the next couple of days.” She took in the neat kitchen. “Thanks for cleaning up,” she murmured grudgingly.

  “No thanks are necessary,” he said. She’d tucked the light sweater she wore into her jeans, and her breasts strained against the fuzzy fabric. The color was a luscious cherry red, and he found himself studying the curves of her breasts in expectance of seeing the outline of a nipple. He thought he detected a puckering of the fabric, and his unbidden thought was of Kerry’s nipples erect from the cold, shifting tantalizingly against the soft knit.

  The thought made him swallow hard past the lump in his throat, and he clamped his lips tight against the wave of desire that swept over him. Which only reminded him that yes, he did have lips, and that so did she, and that they were exactly the same shade of red as her sweater, and that it would be oh so easy to kiss her and let his lips follow the sweet line of her neck all the way down to the swelling of her breast.

  This was going much too far. “I’d better check the shed and see what tools we have,” he said, his tone intentionally brusque. He grabbed his parka and pushed past her toward the door.

  As he braved the icy barrage that greeted him in the breezeway, he found himself wishing again that he’d accepted his friends’ invitation and hightailed it for Key West last week. He could sure use a margarita right about now.

  WHEN SAM WALKED BACK in the cabin ten minutes later lugging a two-by-four and Doug’s old toolbox, he startled Kerry so much that she spilled hot chocolate all over the countertop in the kitchen.

  Sam dropped the lumber and the toolbox and grabbed a roll of paper towels. “You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”

  “No,” she said, tearing off a wad of towels and blotting at the dark-brown liquid inching across the counter and dripping down the front of the cabinets. “I can’t do anything right lately. Not even make hot chocolate from a mix,” she said.

  He spared her a glance. “Maybe you’d better leave cooking chores to me until you can manage with your finger a little better.”

  “I feel like such a doofus,” she said unhappily.

  He ignored this. “There are spatters on your sweater,” he pointed out.

  She looked down at the brown blotches spread across her midsection. “I’ll go change,” she said, reaching behind her with both hands and fumbling awkwardly with several tiny buttons at the neck. She muttered impatiently and turned her back toward him. “Would you mind?” she said.

  She lifted her hair out of the way, exposing the pale skin at the nape of her neck, and, acting as if he did this all the time, Sam reached up and unbuttoned the buttons one by one. His fingers grazed her soft flesh, and he thought he felt a shudder run through her. Or maybe she was only shivering. The cabin was well-chinked, but all this going in and out of doors had lowered the air temperature in the cabin considerably.

  Well, it was time to change the focus here. He was getting much too rattled over this. Over her.

  “Do you mind if I build a fire in the fireplace?” he said.

  She didn’t speak, only shook her head, fluttering into motion the loose tendrils wisping around her neck. Sam found himself wanting to push her hands away so that the weight of her hair would swing across her shoulders, brushing against his hands, tangling in his fingers. It shone in the dim lamplight, a marvelous wealth of hair. Her ear peeped through the edges of it, and he wanted nothing so much in that moment as to nibble on the lobe and keep going until he came across something more substantial and equally delectable.

  As soon as he finished with the buttons, she said, “Thanks,” her voice murmuring so softly that he could hardly hear her.

  “Be careful climbing the ladder,” he said, deliberately trying not to stare at her breasts.

  “I guess I do seem accident-prone,” she replied with a rueful laugh, but he noticed she didn’t look at him as she took off lickety-split for the ladder.

  The boards above his head creaked as Kerry moved around the loft, and Sam imagined her there, lifting the lid of the big old trunk nestled close to the eaves, tugging the sweater over her head to reveal a lacy bra. But maybe Kerry didn’t go in for lacy underwear. Maybe she wore plain white cotton. Or maybe she didn’t wear any.

  When Kerry came back down again she had donned a somewhat less provocative plaid flannel shirt of Doug’s, and Sam was sitting on the raised stone hearth and building a fire in the fireplace.

  “Is the finger feeling any better?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe I’m getting used to it,” she said.

  She walked to the sink and dipped water from the barrel into a large chipped enamel dishpan. He watched her as she dumped detergent into the water and began to swish the red sweater around in the suds.

  “I would have done that if you’d asked me,” he said, fanning the growing flames.

  Her expression was skeptical. “It never occurred to me to suggest it,” she said. She poked at the sweater; he jabbed at the fire. When he’d revved the flames to his satisfaction, he noticed that Kerry was having a hard time rinsing and wringing as she tried to spare her bum finger.

  “Here,” he said, rising to his feet. “If you absolutely must do that, I’d better help.”

  She didn’t move when he approached, just stood there ineptly stirring the sweater around in a few inches of water. Her bottom lip was held firmly between her teeth, and he thought that she looked as if she were going to cry.

  He couldn’t stand it. Kerry was supposed to be all bite and fizz, not soft and squishy and the kind of woman who would cry, for Pete’s sake. Her present state was so different from her usual persona that he felt at a loss to deal with her.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d deal with her the same way he always had when he felt threatened by her. He had to get her back up, had to rile her.

  “Look at your bandage,” he said. “You’ve gotten it all wet.”

  “Yeah, but I know where I can get another one.” She moved sideways, and he took over.

  “If you’re lucky. Say, was it absolutely necessary to do this tonight?” he said.

  “It’s a new sweater. I’ve only worn it a few times.” While he wrung it out, Kerry produced a clean towel and silently accepted the dripping bundle from him, rolling it awkwardly into the terry cloth.

  Impatient with her, with her failure to lash out at him, Sam said, “Give it to me.” He blotted at the sweater, then unrolled the towel. “Dry enough?”

  “Sure. Here, you can spread it on this paper on the table.” He did, and edging past him in the narrow space, she moved in to shape the sweater into its proper form.

  “All right, looks like I’d better rebind those fingers, only don’t think you can get away with this too many times,” Sam said when she had finished.

  “So what else is there to do besides this?” Kerry affected a bored tone of voice and presented her fingers as he unrolled lengths of gauze.

  “I don’t know. Play tiddledywinks. Engage in intelligent conversation. Reminisce.
” He bent close. Her hair smelled fragrant and outdoorsy, redolent of balsam and pine. He wondered what she used to wash it up here at the cabin. Rainwater perhaps.

  “Reminisce,” Kerry echoed, clearly taken aback. “Just what would you and I reminisce about?”

  “Old times. Good times.”

  “If we’d had any, that is. Ouch, you’re winding that too tightly.”

  He released some of the pressure. “Reminisce—that’s what Doug and I used to do here at the cabin. We’d fry us a panful of salmon, kick back and examine our experiences in the clear light of reason.”

  “You did?” Kerry sounded surprised.

  “We sure did.”

  “Did you ever talk about Sybilla?”

  Sam cocked his head at her and tried not to laugh. “Nope. Never.”

  “Well, I sure had to witness a lot of rib-poking and eye-rolling every time her name was mentioned.”

  “Doug liked to rag you about her.” Sam remained noncommittal because of all things, Sybilla was one thing he didn’t want to talk about. His lips would remain sealed about that little caper.

  Kerry watched him work, silent for a time. “If there’s one thing I hope to find out before the last trump sounds, it’s about Sybilla,” she said, seeming much too hopeful.

  Sam finished the job quickly and more sloppily than he would have liked, mostly because he couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing. “I’m not telling you about Sybilla,” he said firmly. “No way.”

  Kerry looked sulky, annoyed. “Why not? It was a long time ago.”

  “When Doug and I were stationed in Germany with the Air Force, to be exact. Too long ago to remotely interest anyone.”

  “Me,” Kerry said stubbornly. “It interests me.”

  “What interests me is that you’d better not get those fingers wet again tonight. Doctor’s orders.” It also interested him that when Kerry became petulant, her lips curved into the most mesmerizing pout. An eminently kissable pout. And right now the strain of pretending that he wasn’t becoming attracted to her was beginning to make him slightly crazy.

  While he was making himself think about this, Kerry held her hand up and waggled her fingers experimentally, then winced with the effort.

  “Time for another pill,” he said, falsely jolly. He handed her one, and she swallowed it.

  “Want me to give the hot chocolate another try?” he asked.

  “Might as well. If you’re not up to talking about Sybilla.”

  “I already told you I’m not.” Wishing she’d shut up about Sybilla, Sam pulled out packets of hot-chocolate mix and filled the old coffeepot with water to heat on the stove; he ignored Kerry, who sat down and pulled her legs up so that she was sitting cross-legged on the old green pullout couch that had been in the cabin ever since he could remember. She stared into the growing flames and looked pensive.

  “That hot chocolate’s going to taste pretty good,” she said as he poured it into two mugs and carried one back to her. She scooted over to make room for him, a movement that in anyone else Sam might have considered a sign of companionship. In this case, however, there was nowhere else to sit unless you could count a saggy old hassock and a hard backless wooden bench on the other side of the room. So sitting beside her really meant nothing. He tried to remind himself of that.

  Beside him, Kerry blew on her hot chocolate to cool it; he drank his immediately. The fire crackled and spit, a whirl of sparks flitting up the stone chimney like so many manic fireflies.

  “What are you going to do with that lumber you brought in?” she asked.

  He had laid the two-by-four along one wall, one end of it resting on the colorful rag rug covering part of the floor. “That’s what I’ll need to fix the plane.”

  She lowered her cup. “No way,” she said.

  He laughed at the way she looked when she said it. She had a funny way of quirking her upper lip in disbelief; it was a trait that had once annoyed him.

  “It’ll work. Here, let me show you,” he said. He reached over to the upended varnished keg that served as an end table and picked up the pencil and paper that were there. A dog-eared magazine served as a lapboard.

  As Kerry leaned close, warming her hands around the hot mug, her injured finger and the one that supported it stuck out at an odd angle. Her knee brushed his accidentally. She jumped away like a scared rabbit, which was how he knew that she’d felt something, too. He wondered if what she felt remotely resembled the sudden shock of awareness that had whipped through him fast as lightning.

  Sam wasn’t accustomed to such bodily phenomena in his daily life. He knew he was attractive to women and had even become smug about it, taking what they offered and refusing to give much of himself in return. But he’d certainly never, even at his most receptive, felt anything that remotely resembled a lightning strike.

  And maybe he hadn’t really felt one now.

  He made himself bend over the paper, deliberately keeping his distance. “This is the plane,” he said, sketching it roughly, “and this is the float and strut that are still there. Here’s the shorn-off strut. I can cut the lumber to the right size with a saw I found in the shed and bolt it onto the shaft. After that I’ll figure out a way to affix the float, and we’ll be out of here.”

  “It sounds too simple,” she said. Her eyelashes cast long shadows on her cheeks.

  “It isn’t hard. Of course, I’ll have to assess damage to the float and the rest of the plane.”

  “And the river had better not freeze,” Kerry said. She had bundled her hair into a ribbon on the side of her head that faced away from him, exposing the curvy line of her jaw. She had ridiculously high cheekbones, the kind any model would die for. He had the urge to reach over and cup her cheek in his palm, to caress her smooth skin. It would feel like flower petals. Hibiscus blossoms, like they grew in Key West.

  Get a grip, Harbeck, Sam told himself. He couldn’t imagine why Kerry was so attractive to him. True, he’d recently broken up with Marcia, his girlfriend for the past six months, so maybe he was feeling the excitement of being free. Usually the women found him, however. He didn’t have to go looking for them.

  And he hadn’t been looking for Kerry.

  Well, he might as well face it: He’d sought her out because he wanted her to sign those forms. And that was supposed to be the end of any association between them. So why was he thinking he might call her when they both got back to Anchorage?

  He wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want to hear from him. Not after he revealed the secret that he and Doug had kept from her.

  Agitated, he stood up and went to his parka, removing a United States Geological Service map from the inside pocket. His fingers brushed the waterproof pouch containing the papers he’d brought for Kerry to sign, and he hesitated. He had the reckless thought that maybe it would be better to get the whole thing over with now. Maybe she’d sign without making any problem tonight before he managed to rub her the wrong way again. Before—anything. Suddenly he realized what might happen here in this cabin while they were together. The thought brought a buzzing to his ears and dryness to his mouth.

  He hadn’t heard her getting up from the couch.

  “What are you doing?” she said, close behind him. She was peering over his shoulder.

  “Getting out my charts. I thought you’d like to see how we stand,” he told her, turning the coat so she couldn’t see the pouch in the pocket. He felt her close behind him, so close that her breath was warm upon his cheek. He glanced around and saw that her lips were slightly parted, her eyes wide and curious. In the dim lamplight her pupils were large and luminous, and in that moment Sam thought he could have drowned in their depths.

  By now his heart was pounding, and he told himself it was out of fear of discovery. He didn’t want her to catch him with those papers. But why? Hadn’t he come here for the express purpose of getting Kerry’s signature on the dotted line? Why didn’t he slap the papers down on the table and whip out his pen?


  Why indeed? He knew the reason, and now it ate at him, stirred up his gut, filled him full of regrets.

  Sam had serious misgivings about surprising Kerry with those papers after being around her and seeing how vulnerable she was, and how valiant. He didn’t think he could bear to witness the cold fury he knew his revelation would bring.

  And her fury would only be part of it. It was sure to be followed by hurt and disappointment when she digested the fact that he, Sam Harbeck, had shamefully conspired with her late husband to betray her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Shaken by the realization that he cared, truly cared, what Kerry Anderson thought of him, Sam needed a few moments to gather his thoughts and pull himself together. He brushed past Kerry and busied himself by tugging the hassock over to the couch and spreading the map open on it. Kerry followed, perching beside him on the couch and leaning forward, her shoulders hunched, her hair tumbling forward in a froth of golden curls.

  “All right, Harbeck, I’m looking. You want to explain?” Her eyebrows lifted slightly as she spoke. They were like softly curved birds’ wings, those brows, lending thoughtful expression to a face that was already almost too perfect.

  Sam cleared his throat. He wished he’d never come here. He wished he’d never agreed to the crazy scheme that he and Doug had cooked up in this very cabin. And at the moment he wished with all his heart that he’d never met Kerry.

  But he had, and he might as well act as if nothing was wrong.

  He drew a deep steadying breath. “Here’s Williwaw Glacier,” he told her, tracing its ribboning track on the chart with a blunt forefinger, “and here’s the bend in the Kilkit where I left the plane. This cabin is a couple of miles away from there. It won’t take long to walk to the plane if the weather’s good.”

  “We can start early in the morning,” Kerry said, glancing over at him. Her eyes reflected the warm glow from the fireplace, and he distractedly noticed a pulse throbbing in the hollow of her neck. The collar of her shirt parted to reveal a dusky shadow—cleavage, and he was achingly aware that the shirt she was wearing molded itself to her curves.