She raised her head, completely disoriented. Through the hair over her face, she saw that she lay atop a gray T-shirt with the letters UCLA on the front. She swiped the hair out of her eyes and raised them to discover that inside the shirt was a man. Connor. Not the smiling, argumentative, usually nonthreatening Connor she was used to seeing in a lab coat or the jeans and sweatshirt he wore around the house.
This was Connor with not much of anything on, except the T-shirt and, she hoped, the boxer shorts he usually wore to bed. She didn’t want to make a point of looking to be sure. She could feel the mild rasp of his legs against her smooth ones.
Warmth flooded her face—and every part of her body in contact with his. She pushed herself up to sit back on her heels, then realized she was straddling his leg. She scrambled onto the other side of him. Sean Connery, she noticed for the first time, lay on the other pillow.
She saw Connor’s turbulent eyes note her heightened awareness as they ran over her, feature by feature.
“Where’s the baby?” she asked in sudden alarm.
He pointed to the carrier on the floor beside the bed. She had to lean over him to see. Max was fast asleep, dark lashes resting quietly on plump cheeks, tiny mouth open.
“When you snuggled in,” Connor said, his voice quiet but as rich and deep as his eyes, “I put him back in the carrier.”
She slipped back onto her knees on his other side and frowned in consternation. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I did that. I’m usually so aware of him when I have him in bed with me. I never roll on him or…”
He put a hand to her hair, running his fingers through it to comb it back from her face. “It’s all right. You knew I had him, so you relaxed.”
He looked anything but relaxed, though he lay quietly, and she felt no urgency in his touch. “Did you get any sleep?”
A small but very wicked smile curved his lips. “Not much, no.”
She would have felt guilty, but he didn’t seem at all distressed by the cause of his insomnia.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be,” he replied, still wearing that smile. “Just kiss me and tell me there’ll be more nights like this in my future.” A small laugh escaped him. “Well, not precisely like this, but with you sprawled over me, exhausted by our lovemaking.”
She was suddenly trapped by a vision of that scenario. After lying in his arms the past few hours of the night she felt different, as though what he wanted out of their relationship had somehow seeped into her. She imagined what would happen if she leaned into him now and kissed him.
But the dim light coming in through the window suddenly jarred her into reality. It must be well after six! For the first time in years—literally—she’d be late opening the restaurant.
She scrambled out of bed, thinking, What am I doing? This lolling in bed with a man I’ve known only a few days isn’t for me! I’m a hardworking, sensible woman. She turned in a circle, having completely lost her bearings though this was the room she’d slept in every one of her twenty-eight years.
“I have a business to run! Trips to take! A baby to care for! And, yes, those goals are not at all compatible, but I’m stressed, all right!”
She didn’t realize she’d said those words aloud until Connor, still lying in bed, said with an amused frown, “What are you stressed about? You’re the one who slept.”
She snatched a white cross-training, full-arch-support shoe off the floor and pointed it at him. “Don’t be clever, okay? I’m an hour late opening the Cup, thanks to you. If you were wide-awake all that time, why didn’t you wake me?”
His shrug suggested that the big hunk of male lying in her bed had been helpless to do that. “Had I awakened you,” he said, his voice lowering an octave, “it wouldn’t have been to send you off to work.”
Warmth flooded her face again and she had to storm off to the bathroom as the image of their lovemaking filled her head again. She could resist him only if he was unaware of how much she wanted him.
DAN, BLESS HIM, HAD OPENED the coffee shop on time.
“It’s all right,” he said, taking the baby carrier from her and following her into her office as she thanked him profusely. “It’s been slow. But what happened?”
She looked into his face, preparing a fib about the baby, but he smiled suddenly and said, “Oh.”
“What, ‘Oh’?” she asked irritably, ripping a clean apron out of her closet and putting it on. “The baby was up most of the night, and therefore, so was I.” It was partially true.
He pointed to the baby, fast asleep in his carrier. He’d hardly even stirred while she’d dressed him over Connor’s suggestion that she leave Max with him. But she’d been determined to lean on him less, depend more upon her own abilities. She had them. At least, she used to have them. She’d once functioned fine on her own. She’d longed for a man, for children, for family, but when they hadn’t seemed to be on her horizon, she’d managed on her own. She was not going to lose her ability to do that.
“He’s sleeping now,” she said pointedly, “because he kept me up all night. That’s why I’m late. Not, ‘Oh.’ And don’t think I don’t know what you meant by that.”
She put the baby in the playpen in the corner near the counter and wiped off a table, then set it up again. Then she got a large piece of poster board from the supply closet and sat on a stool at the counter with a handful of felt-tip pens.
With no customers in the shop, Dan stayed behind the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“I meant,” he said, coming to stand in front of her, “that I thought you looked a little—” she glanced up and he paused to consider the word carefully “—rumpled,” he finally said.
She leaned around him to look at her reflection in the pie case. Her hair was smooth, her makeup minimal but neat, her apron clean.
“Not that kind of rumpled,” he said, fixing her with a paternal look. “Your…your personal tidiness is rumpled. For once you look as though you don’t have all your ducks in a row. You’re doubting the world as you’ve come to know it.” He leaned on the counter and toasted her with his cup. “That’s a sign of maturity.”
She took issue with that. “That’s a sign of sloppiness.”
He shook his head patiently. “No. If we’re lucky as children, we grow up wanting to emulate the life we had as children. It isn’t until we grow and learn and experience other things that we realize we can build on what we knew, but we have the right, even the responsibility, to be who we are.”
She extended both arms to encompass The Brimming Cup. “This is who I am,” she said.
He looked into her eyes the way her father sometimes used to. He often saw in her things her mother missed because Alice Dupree was so busy being his support system.
Dan nodded. “I know that was once true,” he said gently. “But do you think it still is?”
Dean, Finn and Henry walked in and Dan quickly retreated to the kitchen. The place was suddenly filled with their banter and their laughter. They all looked into Max’s carrier and, seeing that he was asleep, went quietly to their back booth.
Shelly poured their coffee, took their orders, then sat down again with her poster board project.
“What’re you doing?” Jack Hartman walked in and stopped to peer over her shoulder.
“Making a list of possible projects to tackle in town.”
“Tackle?” He walked around the counter and poured his own coffee.
“With money,” she replied. “I’m taking a poll of my customers to see what they’d like done first. I want to help with a few things.”
“And how much have you earmarked for this bountiful work?” He sat beside her and watched her print with the squeaky pens.
“Not sure,” she replied. “I guess it depends on what has to be done. What do you think should be first? Cleaning up Catherine and Jester’s statue? The church roof? New equipment for the school playground?” She put all those things on her list, then
stopped to think, the top of a marker against her chin. “The town hall needs a new lawn. It was brown all summer.”
Jack sighed. “I’d like to see Catherine’s statue cleaned,” he said, his expression suddenly grim, “only if I won’t be around to have to look at it.”
Shelly remembered belatedly that Catherine had been Jack’s dead wife’s ancestor, and when Caroline, his wife, had been alive, everyone used to remark on how much she looked like her. She knew that the statue was always a painful reminder for Jack.
“The park needs work, too,” she said, hoping to distract him. She hated it when he talked about leaving Jester. He was a devoted and conscientious veterinarian, and a good friend.
“And the bleachers on the baseball field,” he said, shrugging off the grim mood and getting into the spirit of her project. “There are more termites than people in them during the summer.”
“Order up, Shelly!” Dan called.
Shelly handed Jack her pen and slid off the stool to pick up her orders. “I’d like to get a list of ten things that need work,” she said. “You’re welcome to add your thoughts.”
“What’s going on up there?” Dean asked as Shelly put his bacon and eggs in front of him.
She explained about her project as she served Finn his French toast, and Henry a waffle with a side of sausage. “You guys have any ideas?”
“A public rest room downtown,” Dean said.
“Now, that’s a good idea.”
“Clean up Catherine’s statue,” Henry added.
Shelly nodded. “Already got that one. I’d appreciate it if you gentlemen would check out the list before you leave and tell me which project should have priority.”
“Flower baskets hanging from the street signs,” Finn contributed. “We used to do that in better times. It doesn’t take all that much money and it looks pretty when visitors come. It also used to cheer me up.”
“Flowers are good,” Shelly concurred. “I’ll add that to the list.”
Luke walked in, followed by several people who worked in the Town Hall, and Shelly became too busy to think about anything but food. As she hurried past with orders, she asked Jack to add Dean’s and his cronies’ suggestions.
The growing list attracted more attention and more opinions. Jack made a grid numbered from one to ten at the right of each improvement suggested, and when he left, he posted it for her near the door so that customers could check a particular item’s number of importance before they left. She noted that across the top, he’d printed, “Shelly’s Projects.”
She was wiping off a table later, folding up a Plain Talker someone had left and saw with annoyance that she’d made the front page again, along with Dean and the Perkinses. It was simply three separate photos of them with captions under the headline, Keeping Up With The Main Street Millionaires.
She was shocked to read that the caption under her photo said she’d opened an account for the baby. How did Brinkman know that?
She wanted to scream. Instead, she called the publisher of the paper and asked for Harvey’s head wrapped in the next edition.
CONNOR DELIVERED A BABY. The terrified husband had driven his wife to the medical center rather than risk the icy drive to the hospital in Pine Run. He was a large man in a complete panic. He did not want to assist with the delivery and chose to stay in the waiting room with his three boys.
But his wife, who assured Connor that she was fine and everything seemed to be progressing just right, barely had time to climb onto the table before she delivered.
He held up the pink little girl for her to see.
She stared at it in disbelief and demanded, “Where did you get her?”
He analyzed that question from every angle and still couldn’t decide how to answer. He finally settled for “Pardon me?”
“It’s a girl!” she said, reaching for her, her face suddenly wreathed in smiles. “We have three boys. I thought boys was all I’d ever have. But it’s a girl!”
“Didn’t you have an ultrasound?”
“Yes, but we wanted to be surprised about the sex. And…I am!” She clutched his hand. “You’re good luck, Doc. All Nathan ever handed me were boys.”
“I’ll ask for a raise,” Connor laughed. “Let me do a few tests here, then you can have her right back and see your family.”
The father wrapped his arms around Connor, but the boys, about six, seven and eight, looked at him as though he’d betrayed them.
“You’ll like her,” he promised. “When she gets older, she’ll have girlfriends right about the time you’re wanting to go out on dates and having trouble meeting girls. It’ll make your lives a lot easier.”
The oldest one, Albie, looked doubtful. “Maybe I won’t want to meet girls. Maybe I’m going into space.”
“Guys always want to meet girls,” Connor assured him. “Even in space.”
“I want to meet Spider-Man.”
“Well…he’s got a girlfriend.”
Albie looked suspicious. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Then an older man with difficulty breathing was brought in by his daughter and granddaughter and Connor had to devote his attention to determining the problem. He was relieved to discover some time later that it was simply an empty inhaler.
The office was quiet by midafternoon when Nathan arrived to do some paperwork. Connor sat in his office, making a list of supplies that were running low.
“I can’t tell you how great it is to have you here!” Nathan said, handing Connor a cup of coffee and a small paper bag containing two large cookies. When Connor moved to vacate the chair behind the desk, Nathan raised a hand to make him stay. He took a chair that faced the desk. “Used to be that I had to do this paperwork at night after I closed the office. There was never time in the middle of the afternoon.”
Connor made a sound of approval. “Ooh. Cookies from the bookstore. Where does Amanda Bradley get them?”
“From Gwen Tanner, who runs the boardinghouse and caters on the side. Apparently she doesn’t know what to do with her money, either, because she’s still baking.”
“Thank goodness.” Connor bit into the cookie. “I’m glad to be here. I delivered a baby this morning, mother and daughter doing fine. Said to tell you they like me better than you because all you’ve ever delivered are boys. I gave them a girl.”
Nathan laughed. “The Carbys? Francie must have been in shock.”
“She couldn’t stop smiling. The boys weren’t too pleased, though.”
“They’ll learn to love her. It might take seventeen or eighteen years. How’s Max?”
“Thriving.”
“And Shelly?”
“She’s catching on. Getting possessive about him. That child’s going to have so much sensory stimulation from being in the coffee shop that he’ll be ahead of all the other babies when he…when he goes into foster care.”
“Maybe Luke will find his mother.”
“If he does, will she want him back? She got rid of him once.”
While Nathan mulled that over, Connor added with a sigh, “Whatever happens, Shelly’s going to be upset when Mrs. Pearson takes him away.”
“Yeah. Maybe it’ll encourage her to get serious about you.” Nathan grinned at him. “You are doing all in your power to bring that about?”
Connor sipped at his paper cup of coffee and gave Nathan a self-deprecating look over the rim. “She’s remarkably resistant to my charms.”
“Some women don’t appreciate subtlety.”
Connor had to laugh. “I have not been subtle. What she fails to appreciate is honesty.”
Nathan shrugged. “Maybe that’s the wrong approach. She’s won the lottery and a baby was dropped into her lap. Maybe what she needs from you is a sort of phantom lover—a step into fantasy. Then, eventually, when Louise has to take the baby away, and she has to do something settled and sensible with the money, you’ll still be there.”
Connor wasn’t quite with him
. “As fantasy or reality?”
Nathan smiled with a worldly wisdom Connor had never noticed in him before. “What every good husband becomes—a combination of both.”
“Really.”
“Trust me.”
Connor wondered later as he went upstairs to finish his supplies inventory if that had been his problem with Lisa. Had he not tried hard enough to lend a fantasy element to their lives?
He remembered her complaints about his change of specialties, the blank looks she had given him when he tried to explain how he felt about treating children, her unwillingness to discuss having a family. He finally concluded that while he was most certainly partially to blame, her complaints and criticisms had hardly left room for fantasies to grow.
Then he remembered Shelly sprawled over him in the predawn hours, her hair like silk against his chin, her breath warm and steady against his chest even through his T-shirt, her foot slipping languidly along his bare leg as she obviously dreamed of comfort. After the harsh reality of life with Lisa, last night with Shelly qualified as fantasy—disappointingly unfulfilled fantasy, but fantasy all the same.
He was about to hand Nathan the on-call beeper before grabbing his jacket when the phone rang.
“Hi, Shelly,” he heard Nathan say. He turned, wondering if the call was for him. “Yeah, Connor’s still here. You want…okay, calm down, Shelly. What…?”
Connor grabbed the phone from him. “What’s the matter?” he asked. He could hear Max crying in the background, but the sound of it was almost drowned out by the sound of older children crying. Possibly several of them. Excited adult voices were barking out orders.
“Connor, Luke’s trying to get him out, but he’s worried about his fingers. They’re cold and he’s afraid if he can’t do it right away and there isn’t enough blood flow…”
“Shelly!” He shouted her name to make her stop. “Whose fingers aren’t getting any blood flow? Why?”
“Albie Carby! He’s stuck in the gumball machine!”
He stifled a laugh. It wasn’t that the situation was funny; he was sure Albie didn’t think so. But compared to the possibilities that had been running through his mind, the gumball machine allowed him to smile. “I’m on my way,” he said.
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