“What?” she demanded.
Leo had taken on an air of injured authority. “After church, after you left with Nealie and him—”
“His name is Josh,” Briana said, her voice brittle.
“After you left with him, Wendell Semple came up to me. He said you’d moved all your money out of your account. You wouldn’t give him any reason except you wanted to try banking on that Internet thing.”
“I don’t have to give him any reason,” she retorted. “It’s my money, and I can move it where I want.”
“He’s been our banker for fifty years, through thick and thin. He deserves some loyalty.”
“He’d deserve more if he’d respect my privacy. He has no right—”
“I hope you’re not thinking of taking all our business from his bank. I might want another mortgage. I’ve been thinking of building a new greenhouse. We can’t afford to get on his bad side because you’ve got some newfangled idea.”
She put her hand to her forehead, which was starting to throb. They did not need another greenhouse. They had their hands full with four. This argument was starting to gallop off in too many directions.
She took a deep breath and let her hand drop to her lap. It rested on the manuscript. “Mortgage or no mortgage, he’s got no call to discuss my private decisions with you. I’m an adult.”
“I’m concerned about you,” Leo countered. “You’ve been acting strange lately. Now this bank thing. What’s it about?”
Briana found herself lying again, just as Josh had predicted she would. She told him the story she had told Wendell.
Leo did not look convinced. “No sooner did Wendell walk away than Harve Oldman came up. He said you’d been avoiding him lately. Harve saw you with him—”
“His name is Josh,” she repeated through clenched teeth.
“—and wondered if that’s why you didn’t want to see him anymore. That you were getting back together with— Josh.”
He said Josh with kindliness so false it was frightening. Briana felt as if her face had frozen.
“How I feel about Josh is nobody’s business but mine,” she said. “Harve has no right to ask, and I hope you told him so.”
Leo gave a shrug of innocence. “I told him I was mystified. I said I didn’t know why you’d broken off with him. That I had no idea that Josh was coming back. Or why he’d come now.”
“Josh doesn’t have to explain himself to anybody. He’s welcome anytime. He’s the father of my child.”
“I told Harve not to worry. Josh wouldn’t stick around. He’d be on his way again. He always is. You know that, don’t you?”
She raised her chin. “Yes. Perfectly well.”
“What you need is a man who’s steady. Harve is steady.”
If Harve were any steadier, Briana thought bitterly, he could walk around with a carpenter’s level on his head. He had many virtues, and he managed to make all of them boring. Next to Josh, he seemed as sexually attractive to her as a cement block.
She heard the anger in her voice. “Poppa, I don’t need you to pick me a husband. If I want one, I’ll pick my own.”
Leo looked both benign and wounded. “All I’m saying is Harve is your own kind. He’s a farmer. He’s a good businessman, a good manager. He’s one of us. He could help you run this place, and he’d take good care of you and Nealie.”
Briana could bear no more. She stood. “I can take care of myself and my daughter. I think I’ll go home to her—now.”
“I only told you the truth,” Leo said, looking wounded. “Wendell wondered about you. Harve did, too. You come waltzing out in public with that man—Josh—and people talk.”
“I’ll waltz out in public with whoever I please—including the clone of Dracula.”
She had not spoken this sharply to her father since her whirlwind courtship with Josh.
Tears rose in his blue eyes. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said. “I’m only concerned about you and Nealie. And my conscience commands me to speak out.”
“Mine commands me to end this conversation,” she said. “It’s upsetting both of us.”
He sank back in his chair as if exhausted and defeated. “I only said what I said out of love. I love you. Forgive me.” He leaned his elbow on his desk and put his face in his hand so she could not see his emotion.
“I love you, too, Poppa,” she said. “But I have to go now.”
She turned and left him. She still clutched the manuscript in which he denounced all genetic engineering.
She set it on the hall table while she jammed her arms into the sleeves of her coat and knotted her scarf around her neck. She pulled on her boots, stood and took the manuscript.
Then, from the office, she heard her father’s voice. “Briana? Briana? Are you still there? I’m not well—I’m sick. I think I need a doctor.”
She ran. He sat in his chair, slumped, clutching at his upper chest. His face had gone pale, and sweat misted his brow.
Good Lord, she thought in panic. I’ve given him a heart attack.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THIS WAS a hell of a turn, Josh thought with bitterness.
He had a thousand things to talk to Briana about in private. Instead he was stuck in a hospital waiting room with her whole family while they awaited word of Leo.
At last Leo’s young doctor, Imat DeQueljo, entered.
“He’s going to be fine,” the doctor said with a smile. “Just a very minor attack of angina. We’d like to keep him under observation overnight. He can go home tomorrow at noon. When he does, he wants a family member staying with him, or to stay at one of your homes for a while. He’s a little, you know, nervous about being alone at first. Insecure.”
Expressions of distress sprang to the faces of both Larry and Glenda. They looked at each other and then they looked at Briana. They clearly expected her to do it.
No, no, no, Josh thought. She can’t move in with him. He can’t move in with her. No, no, no.
“I can’t stay with him,” Larry said defensively. “I’m no good with sick people. Besides, I got work.”
Glenda fidgeted and wiped a rivulet of drool from Marsh’s chin. She darted Briana a guilty look. “I don’t think he’d be comfortable with us. The boys make him nervous.”
No, thought Josh. No, no, no. Don’t do it, Briana.
Briana met Josh’s gaze and held it. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.
No, no, no, no, Josh thought. A thousand times no.
How could he ever talk to her with Leo always hovering in the background? In his mind’s eye, he saw Leo in drag, a male duenna with a shawl, a comb in his hair, a Spanish fan and gimlet eyes.
Briana faced Larry and Glenda. “I’ll have to hire somebody. Nealie has doctor appointments. I have to take her to St. Louis. More than once.”
“Change your appointments,” Larry said.
“No,” said Briana. “It took too long to set them up.”
“Then,” Larry challenged, “who’re you going to get to stay with Poppa?”
“I’ll find someone. I said I’d handle it and I will.” She turned to Dr. DeQueljo. “Can we see him?”
“He’s asleep. If you’d care to wait—”
“We got to get these kids home,” Larry said. “He might sleep all night. Tell him I’ll come see him tomorrow. Let’s go, Glenda.”
“Will Grandpa die?” Rupert asked, obviously interested by the prospect.
“No—and shush,” scolded Glenda. “Put on your jacket.”
Rupert looked disappointed. “I never been to a funeral.”
He turned to Nealie. She sat on Josh’s lap, her arm around his neck. Rupert said to her, “You still got on those stupid boots.”
“They’re not as stupid as you, Rupert Von Poopert,” said Nealie.
“Hush, Nealie,” Briana said. “Shame on you. Mind your manners.”
Nealie bit her lip and kept silent until Larry had herded his family from the room and out of earshot. Th
en she sighed and tightened her arm around her father’s neck. She looked at him. “There’s something I don’t understand.”
He said, “What, Panda Girl?”
Her face had grown troubled. “What’s angina?”
“It’s a temporary chest pain,” he said.
“Is it a heart attack?”
“No, babe. It just means for a little while not enough blood got to his heart. It’s a spasm. Like when you get a cramp in your foot.”
She did not seem reassured. “Can they fix him?”
“The doctor thinks they can fix him just fine.”
“And now we’re waiting for him to wake up? So we can talk to him?”
Briana reached over and smoothed the girl’s hair. “I’ll wait. You and Daddy go back to the house. It’ll be your bedtime soon, too.”
“But I’m not sleepy. I had two naps today.” Nealie held up two fingers for emphasis.
“We’ll wait with you for a while,” Josh said. “If we go, you’ve got no way home. Somebody’ll have to drive back for you.”
Briana had called nine-one-one when Leo felt ill, and an ambulance had come screaming up the lane for Leo. Larry and his family followed in their van, and Josh took Briana and Nealie. Briana had been too upset to drive.
With a sigh, she rose from her chair. “Then let’s go stretch our legs. I’m tired of this room. I could use some fresh air.”
“Me, too,” Nealie said, unwinding her arm from Josh’s neck. “I don’t like hospitals.”
She stood, and Josh helped her into her jacket. He knew if everything went well, within a year Nealie, whether or not she liked it, would be in the hospital getting the blood cord transplant that might cure her.
If things did not go well, she could end up in the hospital anyway—and there would be no cure.
He buttoned her coat to the chin and tried to say the right words. “A hospital can be a good place. It can make sick people well. It’s where we go to try to save lives. And it’s where we get babies. When you were a baby, you came from this very hospital.”
“Mm,” Nealie said noncommittally and examined her new boots. “I’ll be glad when Grandpa’s home again, that’s all.”
“Me, too,” Briana said and adjusted the girl’s cap. “Now let’s go outside. We won’t stay there long. Especially if it’s cold.”
“I can’t get cold,” Nealie said, her chin high. “I have boots from Siberia. I’m safe forever and ever.”
“Sure, kid,” Josh said, tucking her muffler more tightly into her collar. “Sure, you are.”
ODDLY, the night was not cold. The ever-fickle Missouri weather had changed again. No snow fell. No wind blew. No cloud marred the sky. No cars crunched by on the snowy streets, and no one besides the three of them seemed to be out on this perfect winter night.
Overhead, the vault of the sky was a luminous blue strewn with stars. A nearly full moon made the snow look like sweeps of white velvet. Across the street from the hospital was a small park, and Nealie wanted go to its playground.
Once there, she headed for her favorite toy, a blue plastic horse mounted on a big spring. She dusted the snow off his head, mane, saddle and tail. She climbed onto his back and began to bounce gently.
“Not too fast,” called Briana. “Don’t get too wild.”
“I won’t,” Nealie answered. “I don’t want to get another nosebleed.”
Briana and Josh stood at the edge of a grove of evergreen trees, watching her. The branches were so mantled with white, they looked as if they were decorated for Christmas.
The snow on the ground was marked by no tracks except theirs. Briana knew she should step away when Josh slid his arm around her and drew her close, but she did not. It had been a grueling day, and she was glad to lean on someone else’s strength for a change.
He fingered her scarf where it was knotted at her throat. “I’m sorry about your father,” he said. He spoke quietly so Nealie wouldn’t hear over the creaking and bouncing of her horse.
Briana shook her head. “I’m sorry, too. Sometimes it seems like there’s so much to take care of—too much.”
He turned toward her, putting a hand on each of her shoulders. She looked into his shadowed face, at once so tough and so kind. His shoulders seemed impossibly wide in the parka, wide enough to bear half the world’s weight if he had to.
“You don’t have to take care of everything alone,” he told her. “I’ve tried to talk about it, but you always cut me off. This time don’t. Please. Let me help you, Briana.”
Almost reluctantly, she slid her hands up to grip the open sides of his parka. He was still so hardened by the Russian cold that he didn’t bother to fasten his coat against the mild night.
She was tempted to lay her throbbing forehead between the furry halves of the parka, to rest it against the firmness of his chest. She remembered the hard muscularity of him when he was naked and they were in bed together. She had felt awed and proud that she could make such a powerful body respond to hers. Such love they had at the beginning and such desire, such wildness and tenderness—layer upon layer of emotion.
She only stood with him for a long moment, neither of them, perhaps, daring to inch closer to the other.
When he finally spoke his voice was gruff. “Which do you think brought on this attack of your father’s—the three helpings of chicken or me?”
“A little bit of both, I suppose.” She managed a melancholy smile. “But mostly me. I upset him when we talked.”
His hands moved down to cup her elbows. “Same old stuff? That he worries about the farm? And Larry? And his own health?”
She nodded. Josh knew Leo’s issues all too well. What he couldn’t understand was that her father’s concerns were real and that Leo had spells of fretfulness that weren’t good for him.
“I have to find someone to stay with him,” she said tiredly. “It’s more than his health. It’s how he lives. The house is a mess. It’s dark and depressing. He doesn’t like cooking for himself. Glenda and I take turns doing it for him. I keep telling him to get help. But he says no, he doesn’t want a stranger in the house—”
Josh’s hands moved to her shoulders, gripping her more tightly. “He’s going to have to put up with it, Briana. You’re running most of the business and your own house. Most important, you’ve got Nealie to take care of. And you’re also going to be pregnant—if we’re lucky.”
She squared her jaw. “I know.”
“You and I have to go to a lab tomorrow and do some very unromantic mumbo jumbo,” he said. “Don’t we?”
She gave him a sheepish look. “Yes.”
“Let me see if I understand this,” he said, stepping a bit closer to her. “You take drugs that make you—”
“Ovulate like crazy,” she said.
His face looked pained. “Then they take these, er, ova—”
“Ova,” she said, suddenly feeling more like her old self, “that’s cute. That at a time like this, you’d want your plurals correct.”
“Does it hurt you? When they take them?” he asked.
“No. Hardly at all. They sedate me a little, it’s over fast.”
“I, in the meantime, am to donate sperm into a paper cup or a beaker or test tube or some damn thing.”
“I’m afraid that’s right. Sorry.”
“And then?” he said, still looking uncomfortable.
“The scientists do what you call their mumbo jumbo. If there’s a healthy embryo, it’s transferred to me. And from there, with luck, nature takes its course.”
He clenched her shoulders. “What if nature doesn’t take its course?”
In spite of the cold, still air, she felt her cheeks burn. She stared at the snow. “Then we try again. You don’t have to do any more. They’ll freeze your extra sperm. You wouldn’t have to come back.”
“Briana,” he said, “I’d want to come back. But you’ve got to do one thing for me.”
She looked at him, half in fear, half in desir
e, knowing what he was going to say.
He said, “Marry me. For God’s sake. Say yes.”
She felt giddily posed between laughter and tears. “I can’t make that decision at a time like this. Poppa’s sick. Nealie’s sick. The whole world’s turned upside down—”
Twenty feet away, Nealie bounced on her little blue horse, like an elf queen riding by moonlight. Josh drew Briana into the shelter of the trees. The snow-laden branches creaked, and sparkles of snow floated down. He pulled her close. His arms wrapped her, pressing her against him. “Marry me,” he said and kissed her, then kissed her again.
The world, all blue and silver, reeled about her, and she felt she was falling upward, into him and into something larger and more intense and more complete than she could ever have without him.
HER MOUTH WAS WARM and deliciously familiar beneath his. He hated the thick coat she wore. He wanted to relearn by touch each curve of her body. He thrust his fingers into her hair, just to feel the heft and satiny thickness of it, once so familiar to his touch.
“Briana,” he mumbled against her mouth. For a moment she clung to him as tightly as he did to her. But then she pushed away and stumbled to a nearby bench. Her mittened hands shaking, she dusted the snow from its surface and sat down almost as if collapsing. She put her face in her hands.
He could not let her go so abruptly. He swept aside snow and sat next to her. He put his arm around her, trying this time not to seem possessive and passionate, but only kindly. “Did I make you cry?”
“No.” She raised her face. It was streaked with snow from her mittens, already starting to melt.
He said, “Briana, I just don’t want you to be unhappy.”
“Then don’t push me all the time,” she said, her voice strangled. “My father just had some—some kind of coronary incident. He’s scared and he’s sick, and this is not exactly the time to rush into marriage.”
“Especially to a man he doesn’t approve of?” Josh said.
“I didn’t say that,” she retorted, “you did.”
“I might point out,” he said, “that your having my illegitimate child might not be the best thing for his health, either.”
The Baby Gift Page 11
