With Baby in Mind

by Arlene James

  With Baby in Mind

  Arlene James

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Kendra smiled at the five people trying to make themselves comfortable amid the jumble of cardboard boxes that cluttered and crowded her small living room. It was so sweet of them to make this gesture. They had surprised her by showing up on her apartment doorstep nearly an hour earlier, toting bottles of champagne and teasing her about being underdressed for a gala farewell dinner at one of her favorite restaurants. It was meant to be a larger party, but some of “the gang” were running late, as usual. At least it was usual for the Sugarmans; well, Parker, anyway.

  Marriage had had a definitely steadying effect on Nathan Sugarman. His wife had proved to be the anchor that his drifting life had needed. Though five years Parker’s junior, Nathan had shown every evidence of following in his older brother’s footsteps until a saucy young real-estate agent by the name of Candace had snared his heart and put a ring on his finger. In the two years since, Nathan, who at twenty-nine was just a year older than Kendra, had become almost dull in his domestication. In truth, he had always been much more sedate than Parker. It was only after the death of their mother, just before Nathan had graduated from high school, that Nathan had begun to imitate his older brother’s carefree life-style. Their father had left the family years before, and as far as Kendra knew, they had never heard from him since, so it was understandable that Nathan had looked to Parker as an example of manhood. Some said that the lack of fatherly influence also accounted for Parker’s hedonistic ways, but Kendra was not so sure about that.

  In the years since Parker had taken what he called “an active interest” in his brother’s life, he had become a big part of the close-knit group of friends of which Nathan had been a member since elementary school. During that time the gang had experienced enormous changes as some had gone to college and others had moved in and out of various jobs in search of careers. Several of the group had married, only to divorce again as often as not, while others had drifted from one relationship to another, each introducing temporary additions to the informal club. Yet, the original membership remained intact, with only Parker—and to a lesser degree, Candace—surviving the many convolutions of the association, and in an odd way, all those changes seemed to have brought the group closer together.

  As a consequence, Kendra had come to consider Parker as much a friend as Nathan. She saw and appreciated the many fine qualities Parker possessed, but she saw, too, the inherent wildness in Parker’s nature, the impulsiveness, the need for the thrill, the unapologetic tendency to seek his own pleasure. So it was that she sat there, smiling at her friends, absolutely certain that whatever was holding up the Sugarmans could be laid squarely at Parker’s feet. Honestly, sometimes that man could be so exasperating!

  “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Walt Lyons, the tall, slightly balding, high school basketball coach, “but I’ve developed a mighty thirst.”

  “Right,” agreed Jeanna Crowe, herself a public school teacher. “Are we going to just sit here staring at that bubbly all night, or are we going to toast Kendra’s new endeavor?”

  “Why not?” put in Dennis Scherer, twice-divorced construction subcontractor. “The Sugarmans are supposed to bring their own bottle, so we can just repeat the toast when they get here.”

  “But that isn’t fair,” worried Cheryl Randle, looking to her husband, Bill, for a solution. Sweethearts since seventh grade, theirs was one marriage in which everyone had a stake, the common judgment being that if Bill and Cheryl couldn’t make it, no such thing as a happy marriage even existed.

  “We’ll save them their shares of our two bottles,” Bill proposed smoothly. “Besides, knowing Parker, they’re liable to be at least one up on us before they even get here.”

  “True,” Cheryl conceded, and everyone laughed.

  Kendra got up to locate some plastic cups, her glassware having been packed in storage for several days now. Searching among the boxes and excelsior in her kitchen, she finally came up with seven of the small disposable cups. As they were six people, that left only one cup for the three Sugarmans upon their arrival. Cheryl promptly volunteered to share a drink with her husband, leaving two cups for the latecomers, one of which Candace and Nathan, as the only other married couple in the group, could share, as well.

  “Unless Parker prefers his straight from the bottle,” Walt quipped.

  “Maybe Candace will have a spare rubber nipple to put over its end,” Dennis said, an oblique reference to the married Sugarmans’ infant daughter and an obvious dig at Parker’s tendency to overindulge in alcohol. Everyone laughed, but just then Parker’s patented knock sounded at the door—one loud tap, followed by three light, quick ones—and the laughter turned to comical groans.

  Kendra let him in to a chorus of, “Wouldn’t you know it!”

  He pecked Kendra on the cheek. “Sorry I’m late. Hey, all!” True to form, his gaze went instantly to the champagne. “Looks like I’m just in time, actually.”

  “I swear,” Walt commented teasingly, “the man has a built-in sixth sense when it comes to corks about to be popped!”

  “Damned right,” Parker said over the chuckles, “and a seventh for willing women!”

  “Women willing to be dumped, you mean,” Jeanna commented cuttingly.

  Parker swept back the sides of his nubby, cream silk sports jacket and slid long, graceful hands into the side pockets of pleated slacks the exact shade of dark burgundy as the formfitting turtleneck sweater he wore. At a touch over six feet in height and with shoulders seemingly as broad as the door at his back, he seemed to tower over Jeanna as she sat in the center of Kendra’s low couch, and his smile was absolutely deadly.

  “I don’t dump women, Jeanna,” he said smoothly. “I tell them up front that as soon as we’ve given each other what we both want, I’ll be moving on...and then I do.”

  “Which?” Walt asked. “Give them what they want, or move on?”

  Parker answered without ever taking his eyes off Jeanna’s face. “Both.”

  Instantly Jeanna’s cheeks flamed bright red, and her nostrils flared in a sure signal of suppressed anger. Not for the first time, Kendra wondered if something more personal than the intimacy of good friends had passed between Jeanna and Parker, and not for the first time, she felt a pang of dismay and disappointment at the possibility. The others were wondering, as well; it was on their faces, and suddenly, for reasons she couldn’t begin to identify, Kendra couldn’t stand it anymore.

  She forced a smile, laid a companionable hand on Parker’s shoulder and steered the conversation in another direction. “What about Nathan and Candace? Aren’t they with you?”

  He turned his full attention on her, his milk chocolate eyes like warm velvet. “I thought they’d be here,” he said softly, adopting that husky voice that he reserved for the select few who currently rated highest in his affections.

  Why she had lately made that short list was a mystery to Kendra, one to which she didn’t give much thought out of a murky sense of self-preservation. It could, she supposed, have to do with the fact that she would soon be leaving on a yearlong sabbatical from her job as a pediatric nurse at one of Dallas’s most revered children’s hospitals to take a pos
ition as a volunteer on a medical rescue team sponsored by the United Nations. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the group had absented themselves for an extended period, but it was certainly the first in a long while, hence this farewell party. A sudden fear seized her. It wasn’t like Nathan to be late for an occasion such as this.

  “You don’t suppose something’s happened, do you?” she asked nervously.

  Parker’s eyes darkened as he asked himself the same question.

  “Naw,” Walt declared. “Probably the babysitter was late.”

  “Candace would have called,” Cheryl said flatly.

  “A flat tire, then,” Dennis proposed.

  “Nathan’s got a phone in the car,” Parker reminded them, one long-fingered hand coming up to stroke the cleft in his square chin.

  “Maybe they got held up with a client,” Dennis suggested helpfully. “It’s happened to me often enough.”

  Kendra instantly relaxed. “That’s it.” Funny how certain she was, especially when she saw the doubt in Parker’s brown eyes. “They’ll arrive any minute now,” she assured him. “Meanwhile, let’s crack that champagne.”

  “Here, here!” came the cry, and soon they were all laughing again and passing a foaming bottle between them.

  When the phone rang, they agreed that it would be one of the missing Sugarmans on the other end of the line, so when Kendra recognized the voice of her father, she felt an unfamiliar rush of regret.

  “Oh, hello, Dad,” she said loudly enough to inform the others. Then regret turned slowly to disbelief and finally to horror as she listened to Daniel Ballard’s emotion-clogged voice inform her that the worst had indeed happened. She was trembling, tears spilling from her eyes, as she lowered the telephone receiver. It was Parker who first seized the significance of her grief.

  “It’s Nathan!” he declared with awful logic. “Nathan works for Dan Ballard.”

  Someone else said, “No!” Then another moaned, “Oh, God!”

  Kendra nodded and burst into tears, thrusting the phone at Parker even as she threw her arms about him. He shoved her aside as if he could somehow save his brother, get to him through the telephone. She stumbled into Dennis, who had already come up to hug her, and then Jeanna was there, her face pale and drawn, terror in her eyes. Parker was shouting into the telephone, arguing with Dan as if that could change the message Dan had to deliver.

  “What?” Walt demanded. “For God’s sake, what’s happened?”

  Kendra looked at them all, tears blurring their shocked worried expressions. Cheryl was already crying softly into Bill’s shoulder. They knew. Somehow they all knew, but she had to tell them anyway, had to confirm it with irrevocable words of pain.

  “They’re dead.” Jeanna screamed, but Kendra went on as if she hadn’t heard her, the words, first stilted, coming faster and faster as she spoke. “Nathan and Candace. A wreck on 635. They were in a company car. The police took the number from the sign on the door and called Dad at the real-estate office.”

  Parker was yelling, “No, damn you, no! Not my brother!”

  All alone, Kendra thought numbly. Now Parker was all alone. She pulled away from Dennis and went to him again. This time he dropped the phone and threw his arms around her, sobbing brokenly. She bit her lip, wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

  * * *

  “I still can’t believe it.” Dan Ballard wiped tears from his pale gray eyes with a big, rough hand, and sighed. “So damned young, and with so much promise. God, how will I run the office without them? You know I wouldn’t have retired without Nathan there to take care of things.”

  Kendra nodded, blinking back her own tears, and smoothed the tablecloth with shaking fingers. “I know, Dad. Nathan was very important to the business, and Candace was a large part of it, too.”

  “Yes. And I was fond of her, so very fond of her. But that boy... Oh, that boy! I loved him like a son. I had even hoped, you know, that the two of you would—” He broke off, his mouth twisting between a smile and a frown.

  Kendra covered his hand with her own much smaller one and squeezed. “I never knew you felt that way, Dad. I always thought of Nathan as a kind of brother, a buddy.”

  He nodded. “I could see that. Why do you think I never said anything?”

  She lifted his hand, surprised, as always, at the weight of it, and pressed it to her cheek. “You know me so well. Sometimes I think you know me better than I know myself.”

  Dan Ballard turned his hand so that his palm rested against her cheek, and smiled, his eyes soft and shimmering with tears. “My little girl,” he said. “I remember so well when you were born. Such a tiny baby. You frightened me, you were so small. I wasn’t like Nathan. From the very beginning he’s handled that little darling of his with such ease and—” He broke off groaning, his eyes clouded with pain. “Oh, God,” he said, “the baby! What in heaven’s name is going to happen to that precious little baby?”

  Kendra pictured the little face, round and plump and cherubic, a puckered bow of a mouth, narrowed eyes black as night, turned-up nose and a wispy fringe of inky hair topping it all. Darla Gayle Sugarman was a beautiful infant, not wrinkled or red or featureless as some babies were prone to be, but an infant, nonetheless, and all the family Parker had left. She wasn’t likely to be much comfort to him, poor little orphan. She was only, what, seventeen, eighteen weeks old? Kendra supposed that Candace’s sister, Sandra, would care for the child. She was the only logical choice, really, being a well-known child psychologist with five little ones of her own. It was ironic, really, considering how Nathan and Candace had felt about Sandra’s theories on child rearing. Still, she supposed there was no other choice. Kendra wondered if Parker would stay close to the child, be a part of her life. For his own sake, she hoped so, but she doubted that he would put forth the effort. A confirmed bachelor like Parker wouldn’t have much dealings with infant children, and he was so broken and hurting that he probably couldn’t think beyond his own grief for some time to come.

  She wondered again if she should have let him go so soon after receiving the news, but what could she have done, really? After he’d pulled himself together, he had insisted that Edward White be called. He had things to do, arrangements to make, and Edward was not only his friend, but his lawyer.

  Walt had made the call. It was understood that Kendra wouldn’t want to make it herself. She had ended their engagement nearly six months ago, but no matter how firm her stance, Edward still offered to take her back, still held on to that last shred of hope that she would come to love him. That was one of the chief reasons she had embraced the medical volunteer program’s solicitation with such enthusiasm. Maybe during her absence, Edward would find someone else upon whom to pin his hopes. She hoped so. She fervently hoped so. She liked Edward White, had always liked him, but that was all it had ever been, and she should not have tried to make it more. Well, it was too late for regrets of that kind.

  Right now she was just thankful that Parker had Edward to look after him. One thing about Edward White, he was a good friend. He was also a good lawyer, but Parker need the friend more just now. Poor Parker. Poor, wild, crazy fascinating Parker. He was even more hurt, more grief-stricken than her father. The only person who had lost more than Parker had, was Darla, the Sugarmans’ infant daughter, but she would have no memory of her parents, no true sense of loss. Sandra and Heath Pendleton would undoubtedly take care of her, and Edward would take care of Parker. That left only her father for Kendra to comfort, and even he did not really need her. He had Kate, though it amazed Kendra that anyone could derive any comfort from that cold, self-centered woman.

  Speak of the devil. Right on cue, Kate opened the back door of Dan Ballard’s house and walked in as if she owned the place. Kendra clamped her teeth together and watched helplessly as Dan got to his feet and went to the tall, blond, handsome woman with whom he had replaced his late wife. Deliberately, Kate set aside her briefcase and opened her arms. Dan stepped into th
em and closed his own around her.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here any sooner,” Kate said. “I was taking a deposition in the Pollock case, and it took us forever to track this guy down and convince him to testify. I couldn’t risk a postponement.”

  “I understand,” Dan said gently, “but I’m awfully glad you’re here.”

  “So am I,” Kate said, and her eyes cut to Kendra. Immediately she adopted that brisk, competent manner which Kendra so hated. “Now, then,” she said, patting Dan on the back, “first thing we need to do is get you into a hot tub of water so you can relax. Then I’ll pour you a glass of wine, and we’ll sit in front of the fire and talk. You can tell me all about it then. But first the tub.”

  Obediently Dan nodded. “I’d like that,” he said.

  No, Kendra thought, he doesn’t need me, not now. She stood and slung the long strap of her purse over her shoulder. Dan lifted his head and turned to face her, an arm wrapped securely about Kate’s waist. “You’re not going, are you, honey?”

  “I really should,” Kendra told him. “I still have packing to do.”

  “Packing!” His voice rang with shock.

  Kendra winced inwardly. But why should she stay? He didn’t need her. No one did, no one here. But there were children in Africa dying of the most commonplace diseases. They needed her. Devon Hoyt, chief of the U.N. volunteer medical team, needed her. One of her professors in nursing school, he had sought her out, offered her this chance to be useful, to be needed.

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve made a commitment, Dad, to a very worthy cause. I see no reason to back down now.”

  He took a step forward, mouth opening, but Kate clamped a hand down on his forearm, and immediately he closed his mouth and halted. Of course, Kendra thought bitterly. He would argue with her, but not with his precious, oh-so-sensible, cold-as-ice Kate. She bit back a complaint, knowing it was useless. As puzzling as Kendra found her hold on him, there was no doubt that Kate Ridley wielded more influence with her own father than she did. So be it. She was tired of fighting this particular fight. She had long ago said all she had to say on the matter, but even knowing how she felt, Dan still fancied himself in love with Kate. Kendra did not understand her father’s choice of a girlfriend. Kate Ridley was as unlike her mother as another woman could be. But it was his life, as Edward had so often told her.