The Baby Clause: A Christmas Romance

by Tara Wylde

  I’m having a tough time believing that.

  45

  Sam

  I’ve been told I have the worst timing ever, on more than one occasion.

  Sarah’s ex has me beat, hands down.

  I hug the wall, listening for anything out of place. But the rain’s doing a fantastic job of filling my ears with white noise. If Vince is creeping across the creaky boards, he’s getting away with it.

  Nothing for it. Got to—

  Something goes bang in the night—not a gun, but a door, way on the other side of the clearing. He’s found the root cellar, and slammed the door. Doesn’t make sense—one minute, he’s shooting up my living room; the next, he’s cowering among the...decades-old potatoes? Wine racks? Giant monster rats? Don’t think I’ve been out there since Dad died.

  Maybe he never set out to fire on us. Maybe he only planned to spy on us through his scope. Maybe he saw what we were up to, took an impulsive shot, and freaked out.

  If he thinks he hit us, I might have the element of surprise. Plus, I’ve got the tactical light on my rifle. Can’t assume Vince doesn’t have a light of his own—probably does, given he made it all the way up here—but at least I won’t be at a disadvantage.

  I signal for Sarah to stay put, and head out after Vince. The lamp’s just bright enough for me to make out the black patch in the distance where the cellar stairs vanish into the ground. Found a huge salamander down there one summer. Popular hiding spot for slimy creatures. Ha-ha.

  I peer down the stairwell from the bushes. The door’s shut tight. There’s a shiny spot on the handle, where the dust’s been rubbed away. He’s in there, all right. I jump down, trusting the downpour to cover the sound. It’s the work of a second to ready my rifle and kick in the door, to reveal—

  —nothing.

  Or...not quite nothing.

  There’s a torch, still lit, abandoned on the floor. No, not abandoned: strategically placed, to illuminate a single word fingered into the dust.

  Psych!

  Fuck.

  Also, fuck.

  I kill the tactical light, and sprint back the way I came. Halfway across the yard, I can already hear Vince shouting from the living room. Good. That means Sarah’s still alive. Swallowing the impulse to barge straight in, gun blazing, I circle around back. The sunroom door’s locked, but it’s also made of glass. I force myself to wait for the next thunderclap, and put the butt of my rifle through it. The sound of shattering glass seems impossibly loud, even under cover of thunder, but Vince’s shouting doesn’t stop. I can hear what he’s saying now. It’s about me. It’s...not flattering.

  That’s right. Keep talking. More words mean less shooting.

  Glass crashes again, from the living room this time. Vince yelps and swears. Sarah must’ve thrown something.

  I kick off my shoes and head down the hall in my socks. A board creaks, near the stairs, one I don’t remember creaking before, but Vince doesn’t seem to notice. I shuffle the last few steps, till I can see the living room reflected in the kitchen window. Vince has Sarah cornered under the knickknack shelf. She’s got the fire poker in one hand, and one of Dad’s collectible ashtrays in the other. Vince raises his gun, and she chucks the ashtray, nailing him in the elbow. He swears, wavers, and—

  Now.

  I spin around the corner, rifle up. I stare him down, through the sight. “Drop your weapon.”

  He gets a petulant look on his face, like a kid denied candy. “You can’t—“

  “I said, drop it!”

  He lowers the barrel, but doesn’t let go. “This is between us. You can’t—you can’t just come in and—“

  “Weapon on the floor. Now.”

  He finally obeys. The shotgun hits the ground muzzle-first, leaving a nice dent in the hardwood. I narrow my eyes. Something tells me that wasn’t an accident.

  And Vince is still whining. “Guys like you—you think you can just fuck anyone’s girlfriend, have your little...your dirty little hillbilly sex-pad, and you always get away with it, just because—“

  I’m sick of this guy. I twist his arm behind his back. “On your knees.”

  “Why? What are you going to—ow!”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not worth the legal headache of harming a hair on your head.” I wrap my arm around both of his, securing him in place. “I’m just going to restrain you, till the police can come properly dispose of you.” I force him to his knees, as he doesn’t seem interested in going on his own. He still has a lot to say, but I call over him to Sarah. “There’s, uh...in the master bedroom, just up the stairs to the left—if you look in the bedside table.... Uh. Y’know. Set of handcuffs.”

  I’m pleased to see a look of amusement flit across her face at that. “Be right back,” she says. She snags a candle, and heads off.

  “At least I’m stopping you from using those on each other,” says Vince.

  I roll my eyes, and don’t dignify that with a response. Guys like this hate being ignored.

  Sarah ignores him, too, when she comes back with the cuffs. “I like your room. Especially the skylight.” She smiles at me, doesn’t spare a glance for him. “One thing, though—I do have to inform you that Boone ripped your shirt into tiny little pieces, and is sleeping in your bed.”

  I laugh. “Of course he is.”

  “Who the fuck’s—“

  “Do I have to gag you, as well?” I snap on the cuffs, and let go of Vince. He wriggles, like he’s about to get up, but a firm hand on his head puts an end to that.

  Sarah and I exchange glances over his head.

  “So...this is awkward,” she says.

  “I know—we ought to be all snuggled under the blanket by now doing the whole...the whole afterglow small-talk thing.”

  Vince huffs.

  “You mentioned something about me in your clothes, drinking hot chocolate earlier. We could do that. Y’know, sip some cocoa, pretend we’re in Starbucks, and he’s the creepy staring guy in the corner.” She shoots him a glance. He scowls back at her, and she shivers. She’s putting a brave face on the situation, but I can tell she’s rattled. I need a moment alone with this guy. Time to establish some ground rules.

  “Why don’t you go see what you can find in my closet, and I’ll start the cocoa?”

  “Sure.” She sneaks one more glance at Vince before hurrying off. He’s still giving her his best death-stare.

  I wait till she’s safely out of earshot, then crouch down in front of him. “This is how it’s going to—“

  “I don’t take orders from—“

  I hold up my hand. “I said, this is how it’s going to go. You’ll stay where you are, nice and quiet. You’ll keep your eyes and your commentary to yourself. If you don’t, I’ve got a roll of duct tape in the kitchen, with your name all over it. Ever had to rip duct tape off your mouth, after it’s been there a few hours?”

  He shakes his head sullenly.

  “You don’t want to find out what that’s like. Scruffy guy like you, couple of days between shaves—“ I do an exaggerated wince. “Not going to be fun.”

  “Fine. Whatever. You don’t have to—“

  I hold up one finger, and he shuts his mouth with a snap.

  “Better.”

  By the time Sarah makes her way back downstairs, looking adorable in one of my dress shirts and a pair of tatty gardening shorts, I’m boiling milk, and Vince is, well, exactly where I left him. We set up camp in the kitchen: I can still keep an eye on our prisoner, and conversation’s a lot easier with some space between us and him.

  Sarah doesn’t look his way once. Doesn’t even mention him. A lot of people would seize the chance to be spiteful in this situation—I wouldn’t have been surprised by a few verbal jabs, maybe a kick or two. I like that she doesn’t stoop to that level—that her wild, bitey side seems to come out in playful moments, not angry ones. She smiles, asks questions, touches my hand, like we really are on a date. Makes me think what we did might’v
e been more than lust, more than stress relief.

  I think I could fall for her.

  Vince is breathing loudly, in a way that feels passive-aggressive.

  “This is the most uncomfortably romantic thing that’s ever happened to me,” I say, hoping she’ll focus on the romantic part, not the uncomfortable part.

  She chuckles. “We’ll be dining out on this story for years.”

  We’ll be. I like it.

  Vince stays mostly quiet, even when our chat drifts distinctly into the realm of sweet nothings. He can’t seem to hold back the occasional scoff or Jesus H. Christ, but I don’t follow through on my duct tape threat. The idea of Sarah seeing me do something like that, even to a jerk like Vince, doesn’t appeal.

  It’s about half an hour later, when I spot flashlights outside. Someone’s coming up the path. I’m not worried: there are two possibilities here. Either Vince brought the world’s least stealthy SEAL team by way of backup, or it’s the cops.

  I reach out with my foot, and nudge Sarah’s ankle. “Looks like rescue has arrived.”

  46

  Sarah

  The cops bundle Vince off pretty fast, and even return my phone, salvaged from my battered car. Turns out my parents did call, when midnight came and went, and I was nowhere to be seen. Dispatch said they had a car in the area. Didn’t take much searching to turn up Vince’s truck, still running at the foot of the driveway, and my rental car beyond, all beat to hell.

  I accept a ride home—doesn’t seem right somehow to put off reassuring my parents I’m alive and well. But I’m back up the mountain the next day at Sam’s invitation. The hasty hug goodbye we shared, under the cops’ watchful eye, didn’t seem a fitting end to our midnight adventure. So when I woke up to a text floating the idea of a late lunch, I didn’t hesitate.

  The place looks much friendlier in the daylight. The same cabin that reminded me of Baba Yaga’s hut, looming over me in the dark, now seems modern and inviting, all artfully weathered logs and picture windows. Boone’s in the yard, dancing around the root of a towering pine, barking at something in the branches. Sam’s on the side porch, putting the finishing touches on a new window.

  “Good as new,” he says, when he sees me coming.

  “That’s a relief!” I steel myself, and make the offer, though the repairs to that rental car are about to clean me out. “I’d be glad to chip in....”

  He shakes his head. “Don’t even think of it. I already had some spare panes—we get all kinds of crazy weather up here. Hail and all.”

  Phew.

  I join him on the porch. “The walk up here is gorgeous. I can just picture it in summer, everything in bloom....”

  “Including the mosquitoes, unfortunately.” He winks. “Winter’s my favorite. There’s an old field past those trees with a pond at the end. Gramps cleared it out to keep goats. Only, the goats never quite materialized, so every winter we’d go sledding on the hill, skating on the pond. Best memories ever.”

  Familiar ones, for me. “My parents have a pond like that, too. Haven’t skated in years, though.”

  “We could go, over the Christmas holiday.” He gets a sudden look of panic on his face, like he didn’t mean to say that out loud. “I mean—you do come up for the holidays, right? I just—I assumed—”

  I nod, before he can babble himself right out of the idea. “I’d love to.”

  He relaxes at that, but there’s still a certain tension in the air. Unfinished business from last night. I can tell he’s thinking about it, too. Vince barged in at the worst possible moment, and I’m dying to find out what would’ve happened next, but...it’s different now. Last night, we had a million excuses to go for it—adrenaline, no electricity, a vague sense of danger—but today, it’d feel like...choosing something. Starting something.

  I think I want to.

  I know I do.

  Boone comes whuffing up the steps, and immediately tangles himself around both of our legs. Quite an accomplishment for such a small, squat dog. Sam grabs me for balance, and I grab him back. We end up staggering inside, arm in arm, laughing.

  “I see your little friend’s none the worse for wear.”

  He goes red, and glances at his crotch.

  I burst out laughing. “Your dog, silly!”

  “Oh—oh, right! I mean, I wasn’t...I didn’t—“ He’s blushing to the tips of his ears. “Well, that was...inappropriate.”

  “The whole saving my life thing earns you a couple of free passes.” I give his arm a fond squeeze. “I’m absolutely not laughing at you right now.”

  “I swear, I don’t normally have such a one-track mind. Usually, it’s more like...two tracks. No—three. The sex track, the work track, and the worrying about things that’ll never happen track.”

  “Like...how you’d survive the zombie apocalypse?”

  He plasters on a mock-serious expression. “Oh, I’ve a number of contingencies in place in the event of...of undead Armageddon. Most likely, though, I’d bag up my canned goods, couple of good books, and head for Dad’s hunting cabin. It’s on an island in the middle of a lake, so unless there were zombie birds, I’d be golden.”

  “Canada for me,” I admit. “They’d be all slow and frozen—the zombies, I mean—and I’d saunter by in my fluffy parka, like ‘not today, dead-head.’”

  “Not today, dead-head.” He shakes his head, smiling. “I love that you think about these things.”

  “My mind might have the same three tracks.”

  “Good to know.” Sam leads the way into the kitchen. In the light of day, it looks a lot more old-fashioned than the rest of the house. Modern touches have been added—granite countertops, stainless steel fixtures—but there’s an old pulley-controlled drying rack suspended from the ceiling, and the walls are nearly black with age. One of the windows, the smallest one, directly above the sink, offers a hazy view of the yard, through stained and rippled glass.

  He catches me looking. “This was one of the original rooms, when Gramps first built the place. This, and the living room, though the stove was pretty much all I kept through there.”

  “You added the rest yourself?”

  “Well, me and Dad, and a team of builders—but, sure! I’ll take the credit.”

  “You should put it in Architectural Digest.”

  “September 2015. Made the cover and everything.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” He pulls a face. “Had to drag half my furniture into the yard, and bring in stuff from my office. Seems my idea of comfort clashed with their idea of elegance.”

  “I knew those photoshoots had to be fake! No one’s, like, pantsless, drinking their morning coffee on a spotless white couch, under a single lily-shaped arc lamp.”

  He shudders. “My couches probably have more coffee in their cushions than stuffing. Anything white...bad idea.”

  We laugh at that, but neither of us says anything else, and the elephant creeps back into the room. I’m not brazen enough to address it head-on. What would I even say? Hey, Vince sure ruined our moment. Want to pick up where we left off? Nope. Can’t say that.

  “How about a tour?”

  Oh, bless him! “That’d be perfect!” A little overenthusiastic? I think so. I clear my throat, and try a rather less shrill “Lead the way.”

  He does, mercifully turning his back before I turn completely pink.

  47

  Sam

  I wasn’t going to say the tour thing. I really wasn’t. But there was a silence, so of course I had to fill it with the goofiest, most obvious thing possible. Did I just come off cheesy, or have I crossed into full-blown creep territory? Oh, god, she looks like a deer in the headlights. Her voice has gone high and fake-cheerful, like...like when you’re ignoring a fart at a dinner party. Please pass the salt. No, I don’t smell that.

  Can I just tell her I’m not expecting her to jump into bed with me, because of last night?

  No. No, I cannot.

  I hate t
he way social rules designed to make life less awkward, like not saying whatever pops into your head, have the opposite effect half the time.

  I catch myself telling her, at great length, about the massive spider I found in one of the ferns in the sunroom, and resolve to get it together. “So, uh...I caught it in the only glass I had, big enough to fit all its legs, and tossed it out that window,” I finish.

  Sarah gives the fern a stern look, like she’s daring another spider to pop out. “You’re braver than I am,” she says. “I’d have dropped a book on it, and...left it there forever. People would come over, and I’d be all ‘That book? Part of the decor!’ Might even nail it to the floor.”

  We make our way upstairs, stopping to mock Dad’s tragic and only attempt at taxidermy, a lopsided pheasant guarding the landing. My bedroom door’s open, and she peeks in.

  “Can I go in?”

  “Let’s see...dirty socks in the hamper? Check. Bed sort of made? Sort of check. Be my guest.”

  And here we are. In my room. Guess you never quite grow out of that dizzy, nervous girl-in-my-bedroom feeling, because, yep. There it is.

  She’s checking out all the dorky stuff she probably couldn’t see last night by candlelight: a shelf full of action figures, one from each movie I’ve had a hand in; a Biker Mice from Mars poster; the guitar I never learned to play. I don’t have an excuse for any of that stuff, beyond I liked it, so I’m relieved when her attention shifts to the big bay window.

  “That’s got to be the most cushions ever piled onto one window seat,” she says. Her back’s to me, but I can hear the smile in her voice. “I love how comfortable your place is.”

  “Is ‘comfortable’ code for ‘messy’?”

  “No! No, I mean...some people, you go over to their house, and it’s like no one even lives there. Like, you walk in the door, and the hallway’s empty, except for this tiny end-table, under a tiny mirror...with a bonsai on it.”