Whose Baby?

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She quashed a momentary thrill. He didn’t mean her, he meant Shelly. “These visits have been nice, haven’t they?”

  “You’re good with them.”

  She sneaked a look. The lines still between his brows, he was staring down into his coffee as if waiting for pictures of the future to form.

  “Thank you.”

  “You ever considered opening a bookstore in Portland?”

  “And competing with Powell’s?” The famous bookstore filled a whole city block. “I don’t think so.”

  He frowned at her. “If you lived closer, we could see our daughters more often.”

  “You could move to Otter Beach.”

  “You know that’s impossible,” Adam said impatiently.

  What was this all about? “I have an established business,” she said reasonably. “Moving wouldn’t be any easier for me.”

  “What if you could find a bookstore for sale over here? Or a good location to start one up?”

  She set down her fork. “You’re serious.”

  “Damn straight.” He took a swallow of coffee with the air of a man tossing back a shot of whiskey. “Aren’t you getting tired of these teary goodbyes, too?”

  “Of course I am, but…”

  “But what?” He leaned forward, his expression persuasive. “Think about it. Will you do that?”

  “Do you have any idea how tough it was to start up a small business?”

  Adam opened his mouth, but she overrode him.

  “Without my parents’ help, Shelly and I would have starved,” Lynn said fiercely. “Ninety percent of small businesses don’t make it. I did. And you want me to throw that away. Start all over. It’s just not that easy!”

  He wasn’t ready to give up yet, she could see. He still leaned forward, intent on his perfect plan. “What if you found a going concern that’s for sale? Portland has plenty of suburbs that support bookstores.”

  “Sure it does. Some of those stores are a lot bigger than mine. I couldn’t afford them, even assuming I could conveniently find a buyer for my store at the snap of my fingers. Others…well, independents are being driven out of business by the hundreds. Thousands. On-line booksellers like Amazon.com are taking some business. That’s bad enough, but as you pointed out yourself, in a metropolitan area like this I’d have to worry about a Barnes & Noble going in on the next block. Heck, B. Dalton and Walden-books are already at the mall. And you’ve got malls around here.” She pushed away her half-eaten pie, her appetite gone. “Take a look. Either the independents are big enough to compete, and are therefore out of my league, or they’re on the verge of bankruptcy. Trust me.”

  Adam sat back, his dark eyes not wavering from her face. After a moment, he said, “You could get a job.”

  “Sure I could. Working for someone else. Hey, maybe if I was lucky B. Dalton would hire me to be a manager! Golly. That would be a thrill after owning my own store.”

  His mouth twisted. “All right. You’ve convinced me. Bad idea.”

  “I am tired of saying goodbye. It’ll get worse once Rose knows I’m really Mommy and Shelly thinks of you as Daddy. But what can we do?” Now she was pleading with him. “We do have responsibilities.”

  “Sure we do,” Adam said flatly. “One of mine is going to be pacifying Jennifer’s parents, convincing them to be patient.”

  She’d almost forgotten. “If you talked to them first, wouldn’t they be satisfied just meeting Shelly? For now?”

  He closed his eyes wearily. “If only she didn’t look so damned much like Jenny.”

  “I’m sorry.” She bit her lip. “I forget.”

  A razor edge of pain showed in his brown eyes. “I don’t.”

  Had his wife known how much she was loved? Once upon a time, Lynn had fooled herself into believing she and Brian were in love, but even then she had known they weren’t soul mates, meant for each other through the centuries. But he was handsome, and he wanted her, and he made her laugh. Love was supposed to grow, wasn’t it? The grandest kind, she had always believed, was in the quiet clasp of gnarled hands that had known each other’s touch for sixty years or more. Why couldn’t she and Brian have that, if they worked at it?

  Now she knew better. Perhaps the grandest love was the kind ripened by half a century or more together, but people couldn’t endure each other that long, didn’t care enough to hold on through hard times, if what they started with wasn’t more heartfelt than “he wanted me” and “he was handsome.”

  Adam, she guessed, had been lucky enough to know real love.

  “You still miss her.” Lynn touched the back of his hand.

  “When I let myself.”

  His hand turned over, slowly, giving her time to withdraw. She didn’t. He gripped her hand gently, his so much larger, browner. Lynn lifted her gaze to see that he, too, was studying their hands.

  “Tell me about your husband,” Adam said unexpectedly. “Why did he think you’d been unfaithful?”

  A sting of hurt cured her of any drift toward a romantic mood. She tried to yank her hand back, but he held on.

  “I know you weren’t,” he said. “Even I can see that you’re not the kind of woman who’d lie to her husband. So why couldn’t he?”

  You’re not the kind of woman who would lie. A barrier of wariness inside her sagged and finally collapsed. Was it possible that her newfound trust was a two-way street? That they really could be friends?

  “He never completely trusted me.” Her fingers curled into a fist and Adam let her go. She tucked her hand on her lap, under the table. It seemed to tingle, as if he were still touching her. “Brian would accuse me of not loving him.” She made a face. “I’d feel so guilty. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. My mother and I love each other, but we’re not…not physically demonstrative. You know?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Maybe that was it, I’d think, and I’d force myself to hug and kiss even when it embarrassed me in public. But no matter how hard I tried, it was never enough. He’d come into the bookstore where I worked, and be mad because I was laughing with some customer. He’d decide we hadn’t really been talking about books, and accuse me of sneaking around behind his back. It was a nightmare.”

  “Was he abusive?” Adam asked quietly, but with a flat, dangerous note in his voice.

  “No. Oh, no.” She sneaked a look at his face, set in hard lines. Her nails bit into her palms. “Brian’s not that bad a guy. I just…lacked whatever it took to make him feel secure.”

  “You lacked?” Adam growled in the back of his throat. “Seems to me, he’s the one with the problem.”

  “I tried to tell myself that. Our marriage got harder and harder, the more I had to think constantly about what I was really feeling and how he’d interpret the way I was acting. Only, then one day I realized—” here was the hard part “—he was right. I didn’t really love him. Not heart and soul. The way he claimed to love me.” Lynn shrugged with difficulty, the next words hurting her throat. “I shouldn’t have married him. I remember getting cold feet the night before the wedding, but how could I tell him I’d made a mistake then? And my friends all laughed and said everyone chickens out at the last minute, so I decided it was normal. But I think I’d been pretending from the very beginning. He’d say, ‘I can’t live without you,’ and I’d tell him the same, but because he expected me to, not because I had any understanding of what that meant. Until I had Shelly, I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to fear losing the one person in the world who was essential to me.” Lynn met Adam’s gaze again in appeal. “I should have felt that way about him, too, shouldn’t I?”

  “How old were you when you got married?”

  Taken by surprise, she had to think. “Um…twenty-two. It was the summer after I graduated from college.”

  “That’s pretty young,” Adam said conversationally. “Maybe too young to feel something so profound.”

  Unwilling to grasp such an easy excuse, Lynn challenged, “How old wer
e you and Jennifer?”

  “I was twenty-five, she was twenty-two like you.”

  “Did you know, deep inside, that she was the one person for you?”

  Adam moved in the obvious discomfiture of a man put on the spot. He rubbed his hands on his thighs, and the chair scraped on the vinyl floor. “I’m not sure men put things in such poetic terms,” he finally said. “I wanted her to be my wife. To me, that was a commitment. Once you’re in it, you make it work.”

  Did that mean he disapproved of her because she was divorced? “I thought that, too. Brian was the one who moved out. I wasn’t giving him what he needed. I think,” she said a little wryly, “he’d found someone who could. Although he hasn’t remarried.”

  “The bastard.”

  “But it was my fault.”

  Adam uttered an obscenity that shocked her eyes wide-open. “Get real,” he said bluntly. “If the jerk had really loved you, he’d have worked to earn your love, not tried to extract it by whining. He’d have been there with you through thick and thin, not hunting for what he ‘needed’ elsewhere. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have abandoned you financially now, whatever came before. That’s not love, even past tense.”

  Lynn blinked, then smiled tentatively. “Thank you. I think.”

  “You’re welcome.” The frown that had begun to seem perpetual had returned to his brow. He stood. “I’m going to call it a night.”

  Her gaze found the copper wall clock. Barely nine? What he really meant was, he’d had enough of their tête à tête.

  “Good idea.” She sounded as repulsively chirpy as a morning talk show host. “I’m in the middle of a book I’m enjoying. Here, just let me rinse this plate off…”

  “I’ll finish cleaning up.” His tone allowed no argument. In the confines of the kitchen, his sheer size unnerved her. Except for the three years with Brian, she had never lived with a man, much less one as large and imposing as Adam Landry.

  Murmuring disjointed thank-yous and good-nights, Lynn fled. Somehow, she feared, she’d blown this conversation, either disgusting him or boring him, she didn’t know which. What had possessed her to go on and on about her marriage? Why not just say, Brian was the jealous type and I could never satisfy him? Why admit that her ex-husband’s suspicions had been right? Why bare her soul and confess her sense of inadequacy? And this to a daunting man who held a power near to life and death over her?

  She peeked in at the girls and saw that Rose had scooted over to cuddle with Shelly. Both heads shared a single pillow. Tears stung her eyes at the sight of her two daughters, as close as the sisters they weren’t. Lynn went on to the bathroom and brushed her teeth with unnecessary force. In the guest room, she stripped quickly and pulled her nightgown over her head. Even between flannel sheets with a comforter pulled high, she felt cold.

  And lonely, although she and Shelly wouldn’t drive away until tomorrow afternoon.

  “MERRY CHRISTMAS, HONEY.” Lynn’s mother heaped the last wrapped gift under the small Douglas fir that just fit in the corner by the window. Downstairs in the bookstore was another, more elegantly decorated tree, a Noble fir wrapped in gold and mauve. This one had tiny lights, a string of popcorn and handmade ornaments interspersed with a few red and green glass balls. Because Shelly had helped trim the tree, the ornaments were clustered where a three-year-old could most easily reach, but Lynn didn’t care.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” She sat at one end of the couch and curled her feet under her, contentedly watching her mother. She began a wistful “I wish…” before thinking better of it.

  But mothers had a way of finishing sentences. “Rose were here, too?”

  Yes. Oh, yes, her heart cried. She said only, “I’d like you to meet her.”

  Irene Miller had her daughter’s hair without the red highlights, in her case cut short into a curly cap shot with a few gray hairs she ignored. A little plump, she was a placid, quiet woman who had seemed satisfied with her life as a single mother and secretary when Lynn was growing up. Lynn didn’t remember her ever even dating, so it had been a shock when she called, during Lynn’s sophomore year at the University of Oregon, to announce that she was engaged to be married. Hal Miller had been a guest lecturer at the university where she was a departmental secretary.

  “He absolutely insisted I have dinner with him,” she had said with a breathless laugh, as though still surprised at either his determination or her own willingness to be swept away, Lynn never knew which. “We’ve seen each other often since then.”

  Lynn had grown very fond of her stepfather, who had insisted this afternoon that Shelly was going to take him to the beach. He had winked conspiratorially over her head; today was Christmas Eve, and Shelly was beside herself with excitement. Wasn’t Grandma going to put presents under the tree? she’d asked twenty or thirty times. Mama had promised she could open one this evening. When could she open it? Now?

  But she was young enough to be diverted, and the two had gone off very happily into a misty, chilly day, both so bundled up they looked as if they were heading for the Arctic.

  Hearing other mothers whining about how their husbands never took over the child care and gave them a break, Lynn usually wondered why they wanted one. She enjoyed Shelly’s company. Shelly’s naps gave her a little time to herself. When she absolutely had to run errands without her daughter, baby-sitting was available. But she had to admit, in the week since her mother and stepfather had arrived, she was discovering how nice it was to have someone else cheerfully offer to go to the grocery store, whip up dinner or take Shelly away for an hour here or there. She could get spoiled.

  Her mother rose easily, smoothing her slacks as she admired the Christmas tree. Then she came and sat on the arm of the couch beside Lynn. Although Lynn had told Adam the truth—Irene Miller’s warmth was in her smile and words more than in her rarely bestowed hugs—this time her mother put out a gentle hand and smoothed her daughter’s hair from her face.

  “You said he might bring her for a visit next week.”

  “Yes.” Lynn smiled with difficulty. “Of course.”

  Her mother studied her worriedly. “Will you get used to seeing her only sometimes? Or are you always going to regret that you didn’t share more of her life?”

  “I don’t know.” Lynn had wondered the same thing, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice. “What can we do?”

  “You’re lucky that he wants only the best for both girls, too.”

  “I know I am,” Lynn said on a sigh. “I was so sure at first that he’d try to take Shelly from me. But he really does adore Rose. He calls her his Rosebud, did I tell you that?” Of course she had. She’d talked of little but her newly discovered daughter this past week. Her mother must be getting sick of hearing her go on and on! But she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “I think he really, truly does want the same thing as I do for the girls.”

  “Whatever that is,” Mrs. Miller said softly.

  Trust her mother to figure out how muddled Lynn’s dreams still were. But what could she and Adam do other than experiment until one day the routine was right?

  “Do you think Shelly is ready to find out Adam is her father?” Lynn asked, as much for reassurance as in the belief her mother really had the answers.

  Mrs. Miller made a face. “Is anyone ever ready to find out something like that?”

  “I wouldn’t have been,” Lynn admitted. “In fact…”

  “In fact?”

  She was sorry she’d begun. Or was she? Now that she had a child of her own, she wondered more than ever about her own father.

  “Do you know, I used to imagine all kinds of things about who my father was.”

  Her mother stood and went to the tree, moving an ornament from one branch to another as if she’d suddenly noticed a lack of balance. Her back to Lynn, she said almost casually, “Oh? Who was he? A movie star?”

  “That crossed my mind, along with a cowboy or a spy or Roberta’s dad. Do you re
member him? He was…oh, a TV repairman, I think.”

  Mrs. Miller didn’t laugh at the very idea as Lynn had expected. In fact, she said nothing.

  Twining her fingers on her lap, Lynn continued steadily, “But what I finally decided was that you’d gone to a sperm bank.”

  That one did get a reaction. Her mother spun around. “What?”

  “Women do it.” Lynn watched her carefully. “I thought maybe you were single and decided to have a baby. And that, well, you chose what qualities you wanted and didn’t know anything else about the donor. Which is why you never talked about him. My father.”

  Her mother’s laugh was semihysterical. “Oh, dear! Oh, I should have guessed that you might think of something like that.” She seemed to sag, still standing there in the middle of Lynn’s tiny living room. “Do you want to know the truth?”

  “Yes,” Lynn said quietly. “I always have, you know.”

  But never so much as lately, she realized. Ties of blood weren’t necessary to love, she had discovered, but they did exert a pull she had never understood.

  “He was a married man.” Shame crept over Irene Miller’s cheeks, although she met Lynn’s gaze. “Not your friend Roberta’s father, although he might as well have been. It was…it was something that should never have happened. I suppose I was lonely, and…if it had been just a one-night stand, a case of being swept away, I could excuse myself. But actually I…I slept with him several times.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Lynn whispered. “Things like that happen. He was the one who was married!”

  Her mother’s chin lifted with conscious dignity. “I can only be responsible for my own decisions, and I knew better. I despised myself, but I was lonely and he was such a kind man! I thought his marriage must be in trouble.” Her smile was faint and tinged with remembered bitterness. “But after a couple of weeks, when he’d said nothing about leaving his wife or our future, I realized that he had no such thing in mind. I was the one with foolish dreams. I quit my job—he was my boss. He probably started a…a fling with the next secretary. Very likely he made a habit of them.”