Baby by Midnight?

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “I need help installing a lock on that door, that’s for certain. Now get out of my bathroom before I send you sprawling with my—” She scoured beneath the surface of the bubbles for a weapon and pulled up a back scratched. But there were places on her body she could no longer reach and she needed that scratcher. Dropping it back into the water, her hand dived again and came up with the loofah sponge which, while not exactly a luxury item at the bath and beauty shop, was still something of a treasure for her. She dropped it, too, and went in search of something else.

  “Keep looking. You’ll come up with that rubber ducky, yet.”

  “You bet I will.” But his thumbs were pressing soothing circles against the balls of her feet, and his fingers were working away the tension in her soles. And her soul cautioned her not to be too hasty. Sure, he shouldn’t be in the room. By rights, she should have locked him out of the house before getting in the tub. But he’d told her to go ahead, take her bath, while he gave Loosey her belated after-skunk scrub. She hadn’t forgiven him for hauling her into the hospital and disturbing Dr. Elizabeth. No, indeed.

  On the other hand, it felt so lovely, so altogether decadent to lounge in the tub while someone else did the dirty work. And now...well, he was very talented with his hands. Before she knew it, her head was resting on the back of the tub again and her eyelids were drifting closed. “Mmm,” said Annie, the pushover of the century. “That feels...good.”

  “Does it?” His voice was almost as soothing as his massage. “Want me to keep rubbing?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Which translates into roughly ‘yes, don’t stop’ or ‘no, keep going?’”

  “I know what you’re doing.” She sighed, replete with relaxation. “So don’t think you’re pulling the wool over my eyes.”

  “That’d be some soggy wool.”

  “You’re trying to make up to me for dragging me in to see the doctor.”

  “That’s what I’m doing, all right.”

  He didn’t sound sorry, but she didn’t mind so much anymore. “Just so you know you’re not fooling me.”

  “You always were two steps ahead of me, Annie. ’Course, I guess that doesn’t take a rocket scientist, does it?”

  “No. It takes somebody a whole lot smarter than that.” She sensed his smile, even with her eyes shut. “It takes somebody who knows all your little tricks.”

  His hands slid around her heels and began to work her ankles. Trickster. If he thought he was getting any farther than that, he had a surprise coming. She could still reach that back scratcher and she’d sacrifice it, if she had to. “Your feet are swollen,” he said. “Is that because of the baby?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Either that or because I weigh a couple of tons.”

  “No, you don’t. You’ve stayed in great shape, Annie. I’m proud of you.”

  Her eyelids went up with that remark. “My shape is great, but only if you’re comparing me to the great gray whale. I’m convinced I’ll never see size eight again.”

  He laughed softly. “I can remember when you thought you’d never get to wear ladies’ sizes at all.”

  That had been when she was still in double-A’s and her complaint had little to do with clothes and everything to do with what women wore under them. “Not the same thing at all. How can you remember that when you can’t even remember my birthday?”

  “Who says?”

  “All the presents I never got. Plus half the time you’d call to wish me a happy birthday either a day or two ahead or a week later.”

  “True, but the other half of the time, I was right on the money.”

  That was the thing about Alex. He liked to hold his cards close to his chest and he loved being unpredictable. “I never could figure out if you did it on purpose.”

  “What? Forgot your birthday? Why would I do that?”

  She regarded him for a moment, so comfortable in his presence that, if she’d had any sense at all, it would have scared her, especially when there was nothing covering her but a bathtub full of bubbles. “You never forgot it completely, Alex, and I sometimes wondered if you missed it by a day here or there just so I wouldn’t expect you to get it right and be disappointed if you didn’t.”

  He kept rubbing, his gaze focused on the movement of his hands, his attention on her feet, giving away nothing except a little tender, loving care. “I’m for any theory that makes you happy, Annie.”

  Okay, so he’d never admit it in a million years, but she believed she was right. “How about the theory that you really have no business being in here when I’m in the tub?”

  “I wasn’t thinking in terms of business. I just figured you needed someone to rub your feet and ease you out of being cranky.”

  “I’m cranky because you’re not listening to me. Go, Alex. Get out of here before I throw something at you.”

  “You tried that already.”

  “This time I’ll find something, and you know I have really good aim.”

  “For a girl.” His smile was funny and gentle and she loved the way it crinkled up around his eyes.

  “You’re just scared, that’s all.”

  “Either that or just plain stupid.” He looked over the ocean of bubbles. “You sure you don’t need help getting out of the tub?”

  “I’ve been doing it by myself for years.” She pulled her feet from his now-slippery hands and buried them below the bubbles. “Go.”

  “If you’re sure...” He meandered lazily to the doorway, stopped to lean against the frame. “Because I can keep my eyes shut, if being naked bothers you.”

  Being pregnant and naked bothered her, but she certainly wasn’t going to say so. “I’m not falling for that old line. Now go.”

  He grinned, nodded. “I’ll be right outside in the hall if you need me.” He stepped out, then leisurely stepped back in. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you, Annie. You made up that Peace Corps fella, didn’t you?”

  Uh-oh. She strove for a puzzled expression, knowing he was capable of standing there until there was nothing left of the bubbles but a ring around the tub. “I don’t know what you mean,” she tried confusion.

  He explained. “The man you said is the father of your baby. You never told me his name.”

  Terrific. “Oh, you mean—” Quick, she thought, think of a name. “You mean—” The only thing between her and another embarrassing situation was a bevy of sandalwood-scented bubbles. “Bub,” she said. “Bubba...Bud. His name is Bud. Bud Loofah...Loofman. Bud Loofman.”

  “Bud,” Alex repeated, patently disbelieving. “Bud Loofman, huh? Well, I’ll be damned. I thought sure you made him up.”

  Caught in her lie, she forced a gay denial. “Now, why would I do something like that?”

  He shrugged, grinned and held her gaze long enough for the teasing to turn itself inside out. “Maybe,” he said softly, seriously, “so you wouldn’t have to put any faith in me.”

  Her heart did a startled beat, skip-beat routine as the truth of that hit home. But before she could even consider how to respond, his smile returned and he shrugged. “But I guess nothing is ever quite that simple, is it?”

  Then he closed the door and Annie sat alone in the tub, watching the fragrant bubbles burst and dissipate, as if Alex had taken their reason for being with him when he left.

  LOOSEY HAD PROBABLY NEVER been so clean in her whole life. She’d probably never smelled better, either. She lay, like a rug made of well-washed collie, in the middle of Annie’s living room, underneath a coffee table of solid oak, on which Alex had his feet propped. He’d made a decision while he waited for Annie to dry off, dress and join him. He wasn’t going home tonight. Whether she issued an invitation to stay or not, he was staying. He didn’t quite know how he’d tell her, but this is where he belonged, and damn if he was going to let her order him to leave. He wanted to be with her. As close as she would allow, at least in the same house. He’d sleep on the floor if he had to. But this is where he was spending the night. He’d alread
y phoned the ranch, chatted a minute with Willie, let her know in a roundabout way that there was no need to leave a light on. As if she didn’t know that already from past times when he’d routinely missed curfew, as if she’d ever failed to leave the light on, anyway.

  Now all he had to do was let Annie know he’d be bunkin’ on her couch.

  Loosey snored a little, moved in whatever dream she was ftirting with, hit the foot of the coffee table with her cast and woke herself up. She lifted her head and looked at him, disoriented and startled.

  “I know just how you feel,” he told her, leaning down to scratch her head. “But it could be a whole lot worse. What if we really believed she’d name the kid Hoyt Loofman?”

  Loosey’s tail made a halfhearted thump as she yawned and laid her head against his hand. But then, like a bear alert to the smell of honey, she sat up and her tail began to thump the floor in earnest. A moment later Annie appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a fuzzy robe the same color as her eyes, her hair pulled into a wet topknot and curling about her head in a fountain of crinkly disarray. The fragrance of sandalwood and sausage pizza wafted into the room like intriguing and invisible smoke signals ahead of her. “Did you make this?” she asked, holding up a half-eaten slice of pizza.

  “It didn’t come out of the freezer, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s good. I’m impressed.” She took another bite with gusto.

  “It’s a special recipe. Pizza à la string beans.”

  She considered, kept chewing, swallowed. “You did not put green beans on this pizza.”

  “You’re right. I ground them up and put them in the crust.”

  Frowning, she peered at the underside of what remained of her slice. Then she shrugged. “I don’t believe you, but please don’t feel as if you have to prove it to me tonight, okay? I just want to sit for a while and put my feet up.”

  He scooted over on the sofa, patted the cushion. “Be my guest. It is, after all, your couch.”

  “At least you didn’t let Loosey up there with you. She has this sneaky way of taking over any available lap.”

  “Good thing I saved my lap for you, then, huh?”

  Annie rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. Like you wouldn’t be squashed flat as a flapjack if I sat on you.” Getting a firm grip on the sofa’s rolled arm, she angled her backside down toward the cushion a little at a time. “It takes me a while, but I eventually get down.”

  “If you’re aiming for my lap, you’re gonna miss it by a quarter acre.”

  She dropped the rest of the way onto the cushion with a sigh of relief, and her tummy suddenly became the focal point of his attention. Leaning back, as she was, she looked bigger, rounder, more... Well, more maternal than he would ever have thought possible. Of course, he supposed, a pregnant woman was about as maternal looking as it got. Except for maybe a woman holding a baby to her breast.

  Whoa. There was an image he hadn’t expected. Annie and the baby. His son. The bottom dropped out of his melancholy and hit the floor running. They were having a baby. He and Annie. The magnitude of that fact flat took his breath away.

  “I know,” she said, misinterpreting his sigh. “I can’t believe I’m this huge, either. It’s not twins, though. Dr. Elizabeth ruled that possibility out months ago.” Laying her hands on the swell of her belly, Annie released her breath in a rush. “Early on, after the morning sickness subsided, I thought it might be nice to have twins. You know, two for the price of one labor and delivery kind of thing. But then my waist disappeared, breathing got to be a challenge—walking and sitting, too—and I decided I was crazy to think for a second that this little guy—” she patted her tummy “—wouldn’t be perfectly happy as an only child.”

  Alex wanted to kiss her, because he always wanted to kiss her, but also as a sort of thank-you for putting her body through the nine-month transformation it took to bear his child. That was a pretty big sacrifice, when you thought about it. Nine months of mood swings and nausea and sitting at an angle. Nine months of weight gain and water retention and a basketball of a belly. He was both sorry for her discomfort and elated by it. But since he couldn’t explain any of that to her in a way that wouldn’t make him sound like Tarzan of the Apes, he guessed he wouldn’t kiss her.

  Leaning down, he picked up her legs, swung them onto the sofa and put her feet in his lap. He pulled off first one fuzzy house shoe, then the other and set them on the floor. Annie wiggled her toes. Her sweet-smelling, funny little toes. “I never knew you had such a foot fetish, Alex.”

  “Think of this second massage as a bribe.”

  “I thought that’s what the pizza was.”

  “No, that was supper. This is more like an advance payment for breakfast.”

  Her toes went still. “As in you’re bringing over doughnuts in the morning and you don’t want me to grab the jelly-filled before you get a chance at it?”

  He didn’t want to skirt the issue. He wanted to come right out and tell her he needed to be with her, that he belonged with her. But the words wouldn’t quite line up the way he wanted. “I think of breakfast more as a stick-to-your-ribs kind of meal, like Nell puts together at the Chuck Wagon. But I also think breakfast could be just a man and a woman cooking oatmeal in the kitchen after waking up together.”

  There was a shift in her expression, and surprise vied with dismay in her eyes before she choked out a short laugh. “Ha, ha, very funny. Don’t even try to make me believe you’re sitting over there lusting for this svelte and sexy body.”

  “I’ve been lusting after your body since seventh grade, Annie, and at no time since then have I ever not lusted for it.”

  “Oh, please. Spare me the tongue-in-cheek sweet-talk, Alex.”

  He met her gaze squarely, telling her in a look that he meant what he’d said, letting all the desire he felt show in his eyes. She looked away first, them brought her gaze back with an honestly confused frown as she leaned back against the sofa cushions. “What are you really after, Alex? Because I know it’s not sex.”

  His fingers began a circular and rhythmic massage. “Laugh at me if you want, but seeing you like thins, all round and womanly, is very sexy.” He gave her a slow and self-deprecating smile. “It was all I could do back there not to climb into the bathtub with you.”

  Her laughter bordered on being just plain old nervous energy. “Quit pulling my leg.”

  “I’m merely rubbing your feet, Annie, but if you want, I reckon I can give the old gams a yank or two.” He ducked when she threw the pillow, but he didn’t pick it up and toss it back. Instead he concentrated on seducing all ten of her toes and he started by kissing them. One toe at a time.

  Annie stopped laughing.

  She sighed, then sighed again, as he stroked the ball of her foot with his thumb, and when he teased her instep with the tip of his tongue she jerked as if it tickled, which it probably did, which only made him try it again. Softer. More of a butterfly’s touch than a feathery brush of the lips. Her head drooped to rest on the back cushion and she closed her eyes. He watched her give over to the pleasure as he slid his hand to her ankle and stroked back to the sole of her foot, then followed the same path with spidery kisses and an ultrasoft touch.

  She was so pretty, her creamy skin set off by the thick, dark eyelashes now resting against her cheeks and the red-gold, tousled glory of her hair. The freckles that had once been a cute dusting over her nose and cheeks had faded into a healthy complexion that blushed a vivid rose when she was embarrassed or angry. Even in the long-ago days when he fancied himself The Sundance Kid, he’d always imagined Annie as his partner, the two of them riding the valley of the Bighorn side by side, he astride a leggy sorrel, her riding a Medicine Hat pinto. Sundance and the Redhead. Alex and Annie. Even back then, they were two of a kind, outlaws of the heart, never quite belonging anywhere except with each other. That was their fortune and their fate. He knew it as well as he knew the everchanging sunset and the persistent, Wyoming sunrise. He was prett
y sure that Annie knew it, too. Even when she was madder than a bee in molasses over something he’d done or failed to do. Even when he knew he’d disappointed her and ought to make amends but didn’t. Even when she had to watch him walk away and not look back.

  He didn’t deserve her, not for a night or any other measure of his life. But maybe, just this once, he could persuade her to believe that he did. Maybe, just for a while, she’d turn a blind eye of faith on him and not see his flaws too clearly until morning. Maybe tonight, darkness and trust would be his allies.

  Slowly, with all the tenderness in his lonely soul, he moved from the couch and knelt beside her, gathering her carefully into his arms. “Annie...?”

  She turned her face to his, invitation on her lips, and before she could reconsider, he kissed her. Fiercely. Hungrily. He hadn’t lied when he’d said he found her incredibly sexy at seven and a half months pregnant. The surprise was how intense the desire was to make love to her, how tight his body instantly became with wanting her... and yet how eager he was to temper that desire with restraint. When he drew the kiss to a lingering close, he loved the fact that she didn’t pull away.

  “Alex?” Her voice was a whisper, a breathless affirmation of pleasure, before she swallowed hard and said, “I don’t think I can—I mean, sex probably isn’t going to be...too great for either one of us at this...at this stage.”

  “Sex is always great,” he said, cupping her face in his palms, kissing her again, lightly, smiling into the frown that clouded her eyes. “But it’s not what I’m after here, Annie.”

  “It isn’t?”

  He shook his head, gathered the words and the courage to ask for what he needed. “I want to stay the night,” he said. “I want to sleep in the same bed, share the same blanket, hear you breathing when I wake up in the middle of the night, and have you be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning. And I’m not talking about sex. Not because I don’t want to make love to you. Not because I find your body any less desirable. I just want...need...to be with you. I want to hold you, caress you, kiss you and stay close to you all the night long. I know it must sound like a crazy idea to you, but—”