The Baby Bargain

by Dallas Schulze

  Dan was standing at the stove, stirring the soup. It seemed odd to her to see a man doing such a domestic task. She couldn't ever remember seeing her father doing anything in the kitchen except possibly washing his hands. Cooking was a woman's rightful job, he always said, making it sound like a divine law.

  Sensing her presence, Dan glanced over his shoulder. Kelly fought the urge to duck back around the corner.

  "You're just in time for some of my world-famous soup," he said casually. "Have a seat. It'll be done in a minute."

  He turned, leaning one hip against the counter as she shuffled farther into the room, her gait limited by the need to keep the thick white socks from drooping off her feet.

  "How do you feel?"

  "Better, thank you. I guess I look pretty awful."

  "Well, the clothes are a little large," he said honestly.

  "I meant this." She lifted one hand to her face, half covering the bruises that surrounded her eye.

  "It*U heal." In a way, it was comforting to see the glint of anger in his eyes and know that it was on her behalf. She couldn't remember anyone ever being angry for her, unless maybe it was her brother, Devlin. But he'd been gone such a long time.

  "Are you hungry?" Dan asked, turning to take a bowl from the cupboard.

  "I don't know. I guess so." She eased onto one of the plain oak chairs.

  "Well, I'm not much of a cook but I open a mean can." He set a bowl of soup in front of her and a plate containing a slice of buttered bread. "Eat up."

  "Thank you." She picked up the spoon more out of politeness than hunger, but after a mouthful or two hunger stirred to life. She pushed back her sleeve as she reached for the bread, biting into it with relish.

  Dan watched from the kitchen, feeling a smug satisfaction. He wondered how long it had been since she'd had a decent meal. Much too long, he'd be willing to bet. She was too thin, especially for someone carrying a baby. She needed some fattening up.

  The fact that she was swallowed up by his clothes only emphasized her slightness. The shirt covered her almost to her knees and he could only imagine how she'd had to gather the waist of the jeans to keep them up. She shoved the sleeve back again when it threatened to droop over her hand. Tossing down the dish towel, he crossed to the table.

  "Here. Let me roll those up for you." He waited until she'd looked up at him before holding out his hand for her arm. She hesitated a moment and then slowly lifted her arm so that he could reach the sleeve. She'd tried to roll it up but, one-handed, she hadn't been able to do a very thorough job.

  Dan rolled the sleeve with a few deft motions, his mouth tightening when he caught sight of bruises he hadn't seen before on the inside of her lower arm. He said nothing, only lowered that arm and reached for the other.

  "Thank you," she murmured when he'd finished.

  "Shall I do the jeans, too? You're going to trip if you leave the legs dragging like that."

  Wordlessly she turned sideways in the chair. Dan knelt at her feet, reaching for the clumsy roll of denim at her ankle.

  '1 guess I didn't do a very good job," she said. "It hurt a little to bend over."

  Dan snapped the newly formed cuff tight with a quick gesture that made Kelly jump.

  "Why won't you tell me who did this to you?" he asked, lifting his head, his blue eyes bright with anger.

  "Why does it matter?"

  "Because he shouldn't get away with this. No one should get away with something like this. Not even a father—especially not a father. It was your father, wasn't it?"

  Kelly hesitated, lowering her eyes to where her hands twisted in her lap. "I don't want to think about it I don't want to have to talk to the police and doctors. I don't want strangers reading about me in die newspaper and talking about me. I just want to forget."

  Dan covered both her hands with one of his. She started and would have pulled away but he refused to let her.

  "Kelly, what he did was wrong. Whoever he is, he had no right to hurt you. Do you think he did have a right? Do you think you did something to deserve this?"

  She stared at his hand covering hers, her thoughts tangled. No, she didn't believe she'd done anything to deserve what had happened. And yet she kept hearing her father's voice saying that she had sinned, that she had to be punished.

  "What I did was wrong," she whispered at last.

  Dan's hand tightened over hers. "Is that why he beat you? Because of the baby?"

  "Yes." The word was almost inaudible but it carried the impact of a sledgehammer blow. Dan felt it actually drive the breath from his lungs. He'd known it all along, but he'd had to hear her confirm it.

  "Was it your father?"

  There was a long moment where he thought she might refuse

  to answer and then she nodded slowly. Dan swallowed hard. He could deal with his own rage and guilt later. Right now what mattered was making Kelly see that none of this was her fault, that she had no reason to blame herself.

  "What we did was irresponsible and foolish. If there's any punishment to be meted out, it should have been mine. I shouldn't have brought you here in the first place, but once I did I had no business being careless. I, of all people, should know enough to take precautions."

  He was silent for a moment, seemingly looking inward at things she couldn't see. He shook himself, his eyes focusing sharp and bright on hers.

  "Don't you ever think that any of this was your fault. Or that you deserved what your father did. We made a mistake but what he did was flat wrong. The fact that he's your father doesn't give him the right to hurt you, no matter what you've done. Understand?"

  His eyes held hers until she nodded. He squeezed her hands before releasing them and standing. "Your soup's getting cold."

  Kelly turned back to the table, picking up her spoon automatically. "You won't try to—do anything about this, will you?" She stared at the table, counting her heartbeats while she waited for his answer.

  "Not if you don't want me to," he said at last.

  "Thank you."

  "You don't have to thank me," he said roughly. "It's my fault you're in this situation to start with."

  Kelly stirred her spoon through the soup, watching the patterns created in the broth. She would love to be able to lay the blame squarely on someone else's shoulders but that wasn't really fair.

  "You didn't force me," she said quietly, not looking at him.

  Dan shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking at her bent head. "How old did you say you were?"

  The seemingly irrelevant question startled her into looking up at him. "Eighteen. Why?"

  "You're sure as hell not like any eighteen-year-old I've ever

  known. Sometimes you seem older than I am. Don't you want to get mad at me? Throw things, call me names?''

  "What good would that do?"

  "It would make me feel better," he muttered.

  The answer was so illogical but so understandable that Kelly smiled, wincing when the movement pulled at the cut on her mouth. She pressed her fingers to her lip.

  Dan smiled with her, though his eyes held a darker look. Looking up at him, Kelly was suddenly reminded of the first time she'd seen him, the way the lights in the bar had caught in the gold of his hair, the way his eyes had seemed as blue as a summer sky.

  She looked down, fingering her spoon. She didn't like to remember the good things about the night. It seemed safer to forget them. If she remembered too much, she might forget the reason she was here, she might forget the reason he was being so nice to her.

  His only interest was the baby she carried. It could be disastrous if she ever let herself forget that.

  Chapter 7

  1 he waiting room looked more like a parlor than a doctor's office. The sofas would have fit neatly into any den and the end tables spilled over with luxuriant houseplants. There were four women seated in the room, all in various stages of pregnancy. Four women and Dan.

  The nurse had called Kelly into Dr. Linden's offic
e ages ago. Dan hadn't felt out of place while Kelly was with him, but after she left he felt as if he'd somehow grown too many arms and legs. He felt overgrown and gangly in a room scaled for women. The sofa was too low to the floor or his legs were too long. He seemed to take up too much room. He felt conspicuous, as if everyone was wondering what he was doing there.

  He finally picked up a magazine that featured a laughing infant on the cover and opened it at random, focusing his eyes on the pages as if absorbed in the article there.

  Was it taking too long? How long should an appointment like this take? Was Kelly all right? Maybe he should have insisted on talking to the doctor himself. Ben had said he'd call and give her Kelly's history, but maybe it would have been

  better if he'd talked to her. Not that he could have added anything to what Ben had told her.

  Dan scowled at an ad for a car seat. Ben probably knew more about Kelly than he did. If it wasn't for Ben, he wasn't sure he could have gotten her to the doctor without tying her up. Ben had talked her into it, convincing her that it was the best thing to do.

  She hadn't wanted to go to the doctor until the swelling around her eye had gone down, until the bruising was gone. Until, as she put it, she looked human. Ben had come by the apartment the night after his first visit, and Kelly had reluctantly allowed him to look at her pupils and to check the bruising over her ribs. He hadn't been happy about her decision but he'd admitted that it probably wouldn't do any harm if she waited a few more days.

  Ben. Dan's frown deepened. After she'd gotten over an initial shyness, Kelly seemed far more comfortable with Ben than she was with him. Of course, she didn't share a history with Ben like she did with him.

  Dan flipped a page, frowning down at a picture of a mother and father with their smiling infant It was foolish of him to expect her to be anything but uneasy with him. Her brief acquaintance with him had hardly turned her life into a bed of roses.

  His memories of New Year's Eve might be hazy from too much whiskey but he remembered enough to know that her first experience with sex hadn't been a totally wonderful one. He shifted uncomfortably, almost wishing he didn't remember that night as well as he did. If he'd known it was her first time, he could have taken more time.

  Hell, what was he thinking? If he'd known she was a virgin, he wouldn't have taken her to bed in the first place. Even as drunk as he'd been, that would have gotten through.

  If that evening wasn't enough to make her view him with less-than-rose-colored glasses, there was what had happened since. Her father had beaten her when he found out about her pregnancy. And she wouldn't have been pregnant if it hadn't been for his careless stupidity.

  Actually, considering everything, it was a wonder she could even stand to be in the same room with him. He was grateful for the small strides they'd made. Given time, he could show her that he wasn't a monster. They'd created a child together. It would be nice if they could manage at least a friendship.

  Besides, in the short time he'd known her, he'd developed a real admiration for her. She had a remarkable inner strength. Despite what she'd been through she hadn't been broken. She had survived. He'd been able to piece together only part of her past history, but what he knew had only made him admire Kelly even more.

  She had a brother who'd left home when she was a child. The clunky boots were his. There was a certain wistful pain in Kelly's eyes when she mentioned him that led Dan to believe she hadn't heard from him in a long time.

  Her mother had died in a car accident when Kelly was twelve. She'd admitted that much when he'd asked about her mother, but she'd said nothing more and something in her eyes had kept him from probing.

  If there was a good age at which to lose your mother, twelve certainly wasn't it. It would have been especially hard for a young girl, just entering adolescence. That was a tough time for any kid without adding the death of a parent.

  She'd been left with only her father. Dan's fingers crumpled the edge of the magazine, his expression so grim that the woman who'd been sitting on the other end of the sofa got up and moved to a seat across from him. Just the thought of Kelly's father was enough to bring rage boiling up inside.

  Kelly didn't want him brought to justice and Dan had agreed to respect her wishes; that didn't mean he couldn't think of all the things he'd like to do to him. His smile held such a savage edge that the woman got up again and moved to a seat farther away.

  Dan flipped a page, his smile fading. He'd give up all his fantasies about wringing her father's neck, if he could just be sure that Kelly and the baby were healthy. In the time she'd been staying with him, most of the bruises had faded.

  He'd gone out yesterday and bought her a dress, since she

  could hardly wear his jeans and shirt to the doctor's office. And the dress she'd been wearing when she had come to him was not only ugly, it was a vivid reminder of what she'd gone through.

  His eyes softened, remembering her surprise that he'd thought of it. It hadn't mattered that the dress was a little too big so that she had to pull the belt to its tightest notch. She'd pulled it out of the bag, handling the soft green cotton as if it were handwoven silk.

  She'd actually had tears in her eyes when she thanked him, Dan remembered, feeling a stir of anger. How long had it been since she'd received a gift? How long had it been since anyone had shown her simple affection? Since her mother died?

  He shook his head, forcing his fingers to relax their crushing grip on the magazine. He couldn't do anything about what had gone before. All he could do was see to it that no one ever abused her again.

  She was recovering. He could see a change just in the past few days. She no longer flinched every time he got close. She'd gained a pound or two, and there was even a hint of color in her cheeks.

  As Ben had said, she was young and surprisingly healthy. She was healing quickly—at least on the outside. The scars that worried Dan were the ones on the inside. Given time, would those heal, too?

  "Mr. Remington?" Dan's head jerked up at the sound of his name. The nurse was standing in the doorway to the inner office.

  Dan stood, the magazine falling to the floor. He bent to pick it up, nearly banging his head on the center table as he did so. He fumbled the magazine onto the table, feeling like a fool, sure that everyone was watching him as he moved toward the door.

  The nurse showed him into an office painted in warm peach shades, undoubtedly designed to soothe the nerves of anxious patients. It didn't seem to have any such beneficial effect on Dan. His imagination had been working overtime for days, creating any number of vague but horrific pictures. Being in the

  doctor's office only brought them to more vivid life. Thankfully he didn't have long to wait.

  He stood as the door opened, braced as if for a blow. Kelly entered first but he could read nothing from her expression, as usual. He had a feeling she'd spent a lot of years hiding her feelings. Dr. Linden followed her, a slender woman in her early forties, with rather ordinary features and kind eyes.

  "You must be Mr. Remington," she said, her eyes flicking over him in a glance that missed nothing. "Kelly tells me you're the father of her child."

  "Yes," Dan admitted, feeling much as he had when his third-grade teacher had discovered that he was the one responsible for the toad that found its way into her desk. "Is everything all right? The baby, I mean. And Kelly?"

  "They're both fine, Mr. Remington. Why don't you sit down and we'll discuss what I'd like Kelly to do. She's agreed that you should be here."

  "Thank you," Dan said to Kelly.

  "It's your baby," she said quietly as she sank into one of the chairs that sat across from Dr. Linden's desk.

  She listened with half an ear as the doctor told Dan that she was prescribing vitamins. Kelly wondered if anyone but her had noticed that Dan asked about the baby first, adding her only as an afterthought. Not that she had any reason to expect anything else. It was just that he'd been so kind and thoughtful, it was easy to forget that his main
concern was for the baby.

  The baby she tried so hard not to think about. Thte baby she'd promised to give up. Kelly forced her thoughts back to the present.

  "I spoke with Dr. Masters and he gave me Kelly's history, or as much of it as he knew," Dr. Linden was saying. She glanced down at her notes. "As I've already told Kelly, it would have been advisable for her to have seen me right away, rather than waiting as you have."

  "Is there some problem?" Dan leaned forward in his chair, his body tense.

  "As I told you, both mother and child seem to be in fine health, Mr. Remington. Remarkable health, really, considering

  what Dr. Masters told me. Kelly is a little too thin. I've drawn blood to test for anemia but, overall, I think they're both doing quite well."

  Kelly felt the breath Dan exhaled as he leaned back in his chair. Relief that the baby was okay, she reminded herself. She couldn't forget that

  "It says here that you should be eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and drinking lots of milk." Dan looked up from the booklet he was studying to frown at the hamburger that sat in front of Kelly.

  "There's lettuce and tomato on the hamburger," she offered. "And French fries are a vegetable."

  "I don't think that's what they've got in mind. But the milk shake is good. You'll need lots of calcium."

  Kelly dunked a French fry in catsup, biting into it without enthusiasm. She'd hesitated when he suggested going out to lunch after her doctor's visit. Every instinct told her that the less time she spent with Dan Remington, the better off she'd be. She had to keep some distance between them.

  She'd only rarely eaten in a restaurant, and in her new dress she felt almost pretty. Dan had chosen a coffee shop not far from Remembrance's one and only mall. Kelly hadn't even been sure she was hungry, but the smell of food brought her appetite to life. It seemed as if all she did lately was eat and sleep.

  "I suppose I should start looking for another place to stay," she said, thinking of the fact that he'd been sleeping on the sofa, which was about two inches too short for his long frame.

  "What?" Dan dropped the booklet and focused his full attention on her. "Why?"