With Baby in Mind

by Arlene James

  She nodded and reached up to curl her arms about his neck, holding on for dear life, while Darla slept peacefully in the crook of Parker’s arm, her thumb buried in her mouth up to the second knuckle, and Kate walked around the table to lean against it, arms folded.

  “Mr. White,” she said crisply, “will you tell this court what you know about the Sugarmans’ marriage?”

  Edward grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, like I told you, Ms. Ridley, the whole thing was my idea in a way. After Nathan Sugarman died and it became obvious that Dr. Pendleton was going to challenge your client, Parker Sugarman, for custody of Nathan’s daughter, I was answering his questions about waging such a legal battle—being a lawyer myself and Mr. Sugarman, that is, Parker’s best friend. Anyway, among other things, I mentioned that it wouldn’t do his, er, Parker’s case any harm if he were married instead of single, which he was at the time, single, I mean.

  “To my surprise, Parker seemed to take my suggestion seriously. He was absolutely committed to retaining custody of his niece, just as his brother and sister-in-law stated in their last will and testament.” Edward shifted position again, crossing his legs and leaning back a little in the chair. “I figured he’d do something stupid like hoodwink one of his bim...ah, more gullible lady friends into marrying him, then dump her once he didn’t need her anymore.”

  Parker swore under his breath at that and tightened his hold on Kendra. Kate sent him a warning glance over her shoulder and turned back to Edward.

  “And did he fulfill your expectations, Mr. White?”

  “No way. He went right out and found himself the best wife he could.”

  “Kendra Ballard Sugarman?”

  “Right. Kendra.”

  “And what do you base this assessment of Mrs. Sugarman on?”

  Edward renegotiated his position again, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward. “I was engaged to her. We broke up some months prior to her marriage to Parker.”

  “And what precipitated that breakup, Mr. White?”

  “I don’t know,” Edward growled, then seemed to think better and glanced at the judge. “Yes, I do. Kendra wasn’t in love with me. She was in love with Parker Sugarman.”

  Kendra felt Parker stiffen and loosened her death grip on his neck, eyes downcast. He slid his arm up around her neck and curled his hand under her chin, forcing her gaze up to meet his. She tried to tell him with her eyes everything she felt at that moment, and it seemed to work, because he smiled and kissed her again, rolling his face into the softness of her hair afterward as he hugged her close. She barely heard what was said next.

  “So when the Sugarmans married, at least Mrs. Sugarman was very much in love.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you base that judgment on?”

  “Well, for one thing, she’s sleeping with him, and I know for a fact that she wouldn’t be unless she loved him.”

  Somebody gasped, but it wasn’t Kendra. Her eyes were closed and her head was laying on Parker’s shoulder, her face turned into the curve of his neck. Parker splayed his fingers in her hair, holding her there. The Pendletons’ attorney objected to something or other—Kendra wasn’t sure what—and Kate conceded whatever it was, then went on with her questions.

  “Of your personal knowledge, Mr. White, how long has Mrs. Sugarman known her husband?”

  “Most of her life.”

  “And in your opinion, she was very much in love with her husband when she married him. Correct?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That sort of rules out an impulsive decision on her part, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Brower objected again, but the judge told him to shut up and sit down and took over the questioning himself.

  “So tell me, Mr. White, in your opinion, how does Mr. Sugarman feel about his wife?”

  “Opinion doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Edward said. “He’s told me himself on more than one occasion how much he loves her, how lucky he and Darla are to have her and how desperately he wants the marriage to continue.”

  Kendra closed her hand in the fabric of Parker’s coat and sobbed audibly onto his shirt collar. Darla woke up then and sat upright, demanding attention. Kendra jerked back, wiped the tears from her eyes and reached for her.

  “Hush, baby. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. Here now, let Mommy rock you.”

  Darla settled against her shoulder, stuck her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes while Kendra rocked her gently back and forth. Parker draped his arm around the back of her chair and laid a hand comfortingly on Darla’s back, his eyes speaking volumes to his wife.

  “Mommy,” he whispered, “I love you.”

  Kendra bit her lip to keep from laughing aloud.

  The judge was talking, but she didn’t catch a word of it. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t possibly matter. Everybody stood. Parker’s arms came around her, closing the baby between them.

  When court adjourned, Mr. Sugarman was kissing Mrs. Sugarman, Mr. Ballard was hugging the future Mrs. Ballard, the Pendletons were looking stunned and attorney Edward White was standing with his hands in his pockets, a certain longing mingled with the affection in his eye, while Darla slept on, content, safe, secure, oblivious. In other words, everything was just as it should have been.

  Epilogue

  Darla toddled across the grass, careening from Dan to Kate to Parker, who scooped her up, swung her about and lifted her onto his shoulders. She playfully kicked him in the side of the head, prompting a comic rendition of a stumbling collapse that left them both sprawled upon the Ballards’ carefully manicured lawn, Darla giggling and Parking moaning until he convinced her that he was truly hurt. Darla scrambled up and pounced on him, landing astride his chest. She grasped his dark hair in her fists and attempted to lift his head, calling, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  “Ow!” Parker bolted up into a sitting position, catching her in his arms as she toppled backward. His hair stuck out in all directions. Her own was gradually sliding out of the two tiny ponytails perched on the sides of her head. “Girl, you’re brutal,” Parker told her as she held her at her arm’s length. She laughed, stuck her thumb in her mouth and swung out with both feet. “Cut it out, or Daddy’s going to snatch your nose right off your face!”

  She kicked at him again, and he made a grab for her nose then showed “it” to her, the tip of his thumb thrust through the coiled fingers of his fist. Darla snatched at it, but Parker scrambled up and was off, Darla running after him and squealing, “No! No!” Seeing she couldn’t catch him, she ran straight to her grandfather. “No, Papa, no!”

  Dan swept her up onto his hip and called out to Parker. Parker pretended to throw it to him. Dan pretended to catch it and press it back onto her face. “Let me see,” he said as she turned her face this way and that. “Beautiful!” he told her. “But you’re beautiful even without a nose.”

  Darla flung her arms about his neck and covered his face with tightly puckered kisses, while Parker jogged over to Kendra and dropped down onto the lawn chair next to her.

  “Give me a drink, good-lookin’, and I’ll slobber all over your face.”

  She let the papers fall to her lap and eyed him censoriously. “Is that your erudite way of offering to trade kisses for my iced tea?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “In that case,” she said, picking up the glass from the wrought-iron table at her elbow and passing it to him, “be my guest.”

  He took a long, cooling drink, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and reached across her to return the glass to the table, purposefully brushing the tips of her breasts as he did so. She smiled secretively into his eyes, making silent promises as he leaned forward and fixed his mouth over hers. He kissed her leisurely, his hand slipping into her hair, his tongue making a lazy circuit of the inside of her mouth. When he pulled back, his eyes were smoky with desire. “You don’t suppose Dan and Kate would want to babysit tonight, do y
ou?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I’ll ask Kate.”

  “Naw, I’ll ask Dan. He’s a softer touch.”

  Kendra laughed. “True.”

  Parker settled back and mingled his fingers with hers. “What’s that you’re reading?”

  She picked up the letter with her free hand. “It’s Devon’s answer.”

  “To what?” Parker asked, lifting his head.

  “Oh, after he slunk away from the courthouse without speaking to me that day, I wrote him and demanded some answers. It seems he was out in the field until recently.”

  “Yeah, right,” Parker scoffed. “It probably took him all these months to think up a good excuse for what he did that day.”

  “Well, it’s pretty much what we figured,” she said. “The Pendletons knew about my commitment to the medical field team and deduced that I’d had to beg off. They asked some questions of the right people and wound up in touch with Devon. He put two and two together and came up with fourteen.”

  “Thanks to Sandra Pendleton,” Parker said. “I swear, if she wasn’t Darla’s aunt, I’d tell her to kiss my—”

  “But she is,” Kendra cut in, “and so you won’t. Besides, there’s enough blame to go around. I did write that letter Devon read from in court, and you have to admit that Sandra’s assumption that you’d duped me into marriage is understandable, given your reputation.”

  “What gets me,” Parker said, “is how badly everyone underestimated you.”

  She was surprised and pleased. “Oh? How so?”

  Parker smiled and leaned close again. “You know what they say, it takes a hot woman to change a scoundrel like me.”

  Kendra rolled her eyes. “I believe that’s a good woman.”

  “Same thing,” Parker claimed, grinning wickedly.

  She laughed and crossed her legs as nonchalantly as possible in an effort to counter the melting desire building at their apex. “Well, now we know,” she said primly, folding Devon’s letter and cramming it back into the envelope with one hand.

  “Yes, ma’am, we sure do,” he agreed, wagging his eyebrows.

  Kendra spurted laughter and laid her head back, closing her eyes. Parker followed suit, his thumb making lazy circles against her wrist. Kendra smiled, loving the tiny ways he constantly seduced her, proof that his ardor had grown rather than waned. She sighed, content with her world, but then a question that had long nagged her wormed its way into her mind. She lifted her head and looked at her husband.

  “Parker, why do you suppose my mother didn’t like sex? It had to be that. It couldn’t have been my father.”

  He turned his head and opened his eyes. “I don’t know, honey. Could’ve been any number of things, I guess. Something in her childhood, some trauma, even a simple misunderstanding. One thing I do know for sure, though, she could’ve passed that hang-up on to you, but she didn’t. That says a lot about the kind of woman and mother she was.”

  “I guess it does at that,” Kendra mused, squeezing his hand.

  The screen door squeaked as Kate came out onto the patio. She slid a tray of salads and sandwiches onto the table and straightened, shielding her eyes from the glare of the late-summer sun with her hand. “Dan!” she called.

  He stopped pushing Darla in the swing he’d hung from the same limb where he’d hung Kendra’s twenty years earlier. “What is it, hon?”

  “Lunch!”

  “Coming.” He lifted the safety bar and plucked Darla out of the seat, then started toward the house with her on his shoulder.

  Kate looked down at Parker and Kendra. “Take my word for it,” she said, her smile just a bit smug, “whatever it was, it wasn’t Dan.” Kendra’s mouth fell open. Parker just chuckled. Kate grimaced. “I know, I know, but I couldn’t help it.”

  Parker hitched up an eyebrow at her. “What else couldn’t you help overhearing?”

  Kate glared down at him. “For your information, I’d be delighted to babysit tonight. That child’s just as dear to me as she is to Dan.”

  Parker laughed aloud and bounced up to his feet. He kissed Kate on the cheek and started across the yard to meet Dan and Darla. “Thanks, Mom,” he tossed over his shoulder.

  She drilled a hole into his back with her eyes, then dropped onto the chair he’d just vacated and slid a look at Kendra. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she said.

  Kendra shrugged. “No secret about it. I’m sure you knew before I did really.”

  Kate nodded and said softly, “I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”

  Kendra sighed. “I don’t know, Kate. I’m convinced that she was happy in lots of ways. She missed something special, yes, but I think she had what she most wanted.”

  Kate looked out across the yard at her husband. “You can thank him for that, you know. He’s one of a kind, Dan Ballard.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Kendra said, her smile private and sweet. Kate lifted an eyebrow and they both burst out laughing.

  Dan and Parker trotted up then, Darla spread-eagled between them. “Man, I’m hungry,” Dan said.

  Kate grinned up at him. “You always are.”

  “Me, too,” Parker echoed, setting Darla onto her feet. Kate and Kendra looked at one another and burst into fresh laughter. “What?” Parker asked, but nobody answered.

  The men traded looks over the heads of their wives, shrugged and reached for what they wanted most. It wasn’t salad.

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-8790-7

  With Baby in Mind

  Copyright © 1994 by Arlene James

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