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She tried to get up, to say something polite, but he’d already gone. She stayed where she was, fighting hard against the rebellion in her stomach. Over the past few days, it had gotten to be a more and more familiar feeling.
She wondered how Tom had been able to recognize the symptoms and prescribe the remedy so quickly. A week or two ago, Julie herself wouldn’t have had any idea just how desperately a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy could need crackers and chips.
It had to be fatigue, as well, of course, that had made her nausea get so bad so fast. As Loretta’s closest known relative—almost her only known relative—Julie had been the one to make all the arrangements, deal with the practicalities. No close friends of Loretta’s had shown up with offers of assistance, either. Julie had worked alone from early morning until late at night for days.
There was more to do. Loretta’s apartment was still in chaos. It would have been easier to have someone to share the task with, but Loretta’s father had walked out years ago, and her mother—Julie’s aunt Anne—had died when Julie was eighteen. Aunt Anne had outlived her brother, Jim, Julie’s beloved father, by just five years. As for Julie’s mother, Sharon, Loretta’s aunt by marriage...
Well, Mom was very happy these days, so perhaps it wasn’t fair that Julie felt totally brushed aside and unable to ask for help when she needed it. Mom’s second husband was a thirty-seven-year-old would-be actor, still waiting for his big break, and Sharon Gregory was more obsessive than any stage mother in chasing opportunities for him.
She’d kept dad’s last name when she remarried purely so she could describe herself as Matt Kady’s agent without revealing a conflict of interest. And she seemed to hate the fact that Julie, at twenty-three, proved her old enough to have a grown child.
It was this new distance from her mother that had given Julie the final push she needed to leave California and return to Philadelphia, where she’d lived until the age of nine. And that, of course, was how she’d gotten close to Loretta again over the past three months, after they hadn’t seen each other in more than thirteen years.
Gotten close? She was starting to doubt that now.
“Here.”
Tom was back, with a huge glass of iced water, a freshly opened packet of saltine crackers and a package of chips. Strange chips. He apologized for them at once, while Julie was chewing on her first cracker, feeling the salt begin to settle her stomach.
“I’m sorry about these.” He held up the packet. “Unfortunately they’re Bovril flavored.” His expression was so full of pained regret that Julie almost laughed.
“What is Bovril?” she managed faintly, taking them anyway. The saltines weren’t quite salty enough. Maybe the chips would settle the craving.
“It’s this strange brown drink they have in England,” Tom answered, playing the moment for all it was worth. He could see that Julie badly needed a break.
“Hot and sort of beefy,” he went on. “I was there on business last month and... Well, you see, I have this running gag with my brother Liam. I’m on a mission to find the world’s most bizarre snack foods for him to try.” He grinned, as if he hoped to coax a smile from her as well. “He’s sixteen, and comes up here from Philly a lot in summer.”
“And what did he think of these?” Julie asked, her attention caught now.
It felt almost as good to break their fraught conversation with this moment of lightness as it felt to break her nausea with the crackers. He was doing it deliberately, distracting her with nonsense and she was deeply grateful for his perception.
“He hasn’t tried them yet. He’s working up to it with the safer flavors,” Tom explained, deadpan. “So far he’s tackled ketchup, roast turkey with stuffing and pickled onions, if I remember correctly.”
“Oh. Yummy. Pickled onions, huh?”
Yes! There it was! Tom thought. It didn’t last long. Like a shaft of sunset light breaking through piled clouds and then fading, it was there for just a moment, but the effect of it practically knocked his socks off. Wide and radiant, lighting up her whole face, putting a tiny crease on either side of her pert little nose so that he noticed the freckles again and got a vivid image of her as a kid—a tomboy of a kid who caught frogs and climbed trees and whistled through her finger and thumb.
“To be honest,” he admitted, still watching her, “they all taste mainly of salt.”
“Really? Salt is what I want.”
Julie picked up a cracker and took a bite. Her stomach and taste buds, much to her surprise, approved. She decided to take turns. Cracker. Chip. Water. Slowly.
Tom was watching her. Had been for a while, she knew. “You’re having a hard time.”
“Just these past few days.”
“How far along are you?”
“Not far. About six weeks, the way doctors count it. Four weeks from when I, uh, conceived. I only took the test last Friday. Loretta... never knew.”
“Early days, then,” he said. His voice sounded a little strained at the mention of his ex-wife.
“Yes.”
She gave a tight smile. Early days, and the cause of enormous upheaval in her life. A rethinking of everything in almost every waking moment for days. She was already deeply attached to the life that grew inside her. That didn’t make sense, the way things had started out, but it had happened. She knew that she’d become a part of something important, something that mattered more than anything else, and if Tom could not respond to that and give her what she wanted...
“The nausea doesn’t matter,” she told him firmly. “This baby is the most important thing in the world to me, right now.”
She managed to disguise the unnamed threat in her words, and he responded at once.
“That’s great,” he said. His face softened. “Babies are such incredible packages of hope and love and potential, aren’t they? I’m really happy for you, Julie.”
“Mmm.” She dared to smile at him. He understood. It gave her a warm surge of hope. They could work something out, pull the right solution out of this mess.
Then his gaze flicked to her ringless left hand. His smile gave way to a tiny frown, and her stomach churned again. No, she wasn’t married. She didn’t even have a boyfriend. He’d know why soon enough.
“Hey.” He’d seen that she was struggling again. He was bending down, coaxing her to her feet. “Is this okay? I’d like to get you outside for some fresh air. I had my housekeeper leave us lunch. I can bring it out to the balcony. There’s a breeze off the water, and it’s shady and cool.”
“That sounds great.”
He sounded great. So tender, and so concerned. To have someone care about her physical well-being was so unexpected and so wonderful that it threatened to completely break down the nervous tension, which was all that had kept her going since Sunday. She’d been feeling so alone!
He was holding her from behind, his hand curved like a warm velvet cuff around her forearm. The soft chambray of his shirt covered her bare arm. She could feel the heat of his body against her back through the fine fabric of her cream blouse, and for a moment she let herself sway back, surrendering her weight to his support.
For the first time she fully understood the meaning and significance of the child that grew inside her.
Cradling her in the curve of his arm as he led her through the house, Tom felt his unwanted attraction to her surge again. So she was pregnant! It made sense of the way she looked. There was a secret source to her beauty, which couldn’t quite be explained by adding up her features and assets, since it came from deeper inside her. He felt the swollen fullness of one breast against the crook of his arm and knew that soon she would look as ripe as some lavish tropical fruit.
He wondered why she wasn’t married and why she hadn’t even mentioned a man.
A moment later, she retched, pressed her fist to her mouth and fought hard for control.
“Easy. easy,” he soothed her, as if talking to a nervous colt. “Just take it slowly and keep hold of those crackers!”
“You seem to know,...” she paused and chewed desperately, “a lot about this!” Julie got the words out safely.
“So I should,” he answered her. “I’ve got six younger brothers. I spent months of my childhood on cracker patrol.”
“Six?” She knew at once that Tom’s mother must be more heroic than any warrior.
“And one who’s older.”
“And no girls?”
“No girls,” he agreed cheerfully. “After about number four Mom stopped minding. She figured she and Dad just didn’t have the chemistry in that department, and what the heck, she liked boys anyway.”
“I like boys, too,” she said. “I just about was one, as a kid. A classic tomboy, that is.”
“Yeah, I thought you might have been.” he muttered under his breath.
They reached the balcony. Julie hadn’t taken much notice of the route. Mostly, she’d been looking hard at the floor. Hardwood in some places, slate in others. A couple of large, expensive squares of Turkish carpet. Somehow, she hadn’t guessed that he would be quite so well off and so obviously successful.
Now, Tom settled her in a slat-backed wooden patio chair and promised, “I’ll be back with lunch, okay?”
“Okay,” she nodded.
He was right. It felt a lot better out here in the open.
This balcony didn’t face the dock where she’d arrived. Instead, the light dazzled on the water just beyond a crescent of sandy beach and a shelf of vibrant green lawn, edged with colorful plantings of annuals. A cool breeze blew, combing away the heavy heat, teasing her with its fresh breath on her forehead and cheeks.
Tom was back a few minutes later with turkey club sandwiches crammed with filling, plain iced soda water and a huge bunch of sweet green grapes.
“Mom lived on these, too, I seem to recall.” He grinned.
“I’ll try one.”
Julie pulled a grape off its stem and bit down on the taut, satiny skin. At once it burst in her mouth, and she tasted the flood of sweet juice. Heaven! He gave a grin of sympathy and took a bite of sandwich, revealing teeth that were even, pearl-sheened and perfect.
Then suddenly, now that they were settled, the tension was in the air again. They ate in silence for several minutes before Tom spoke at last. “You seemed shocked to hear that Loretta and I were divorced,” he said. “Was she spinning you a line about us planning to get back together?”
“Yes.” Julie wasn’t surprised that he had zeroed right to what concerned them both. There seemed no point in softening the reply.
“How well did you two know each other?” It sounded like an accusation. “How close were you?”
“She saved my life when I was nine.”
And it made her sterile, although neither of us knew that then.
“That’s close,” he agreed slowly.
“It is. Or it was. And I’ve felt that debt to her, felt my gratitude to her ever since, even during the years we didn’t see each other,” Julie said, then found herself telling the story as if she’d known Tom for weeks instead of less than an hour.
“She was sixteen when it happened. Our families were vacationing together at a small ski resort in Vermont. We’d rented a little cabin. Nothing luxurious. We were skating one evening, and I fell. A kid came past and ran right over my left arm with a hockey skate. It tore open an artery—I still have the scar—and about ten minutes later, the big storm they’d been forecasting came down with a bang. They couldn’t get me farther than the little local hospital.
“Nothing could fly in, either. The airport and helipad were both closed for more than forty-eight hours. I’d lost a lot of blood, and they were out of a match for my type. Out of O negative, also, which anyone can take safely. Loretta’s blood was the only match they could find in a hurry. She gave me two pints, one that night and one the next morning. More than was really safe for her, but only just enough to pull me through.
“Two days later she came down with toxic shock syndrome. In all the drama, she’d forgotten she was finishing her period. She got to be more ill than I was, far more ill, Tom. You know what happened to her. You know how badly her tubes and ovaries were scarred.”
“Yes.” He nodded, his face tight. “The doctors told us that was what made it impossible for her to conceive. I didn’t realize, though, that you were involved.”
“Involved? It was my fault.” Her voice rose.
“No.” He shook his head urgently. “That’s way too extreme, Julie.”
“If I’d known.... If my parents had known what it would ultimately cost her to give me that blood...”
“But you didn’t know. How could you?”
“And yet Loretta never once said to me, ‘It’s your fault.’”
“Yes,” Tom agreed quietly. “She did have moments of surprising heroism sometimes.”
“She seemed like a heroine to me then, when I was nine. She told me a couple of months ago that she’d gotten a kick out of the drama—”
“Yes, I can imagine that.” He gave a faint, crooked smile.
“But that doesn’t take away from what she did and what it cost her!” she said angrily.
Tom’s hostility towards his ex-wife was coming through loud and clear, and blood was thicker than water. Just exactly why had Loretta been so desperate that she would lie about the state of her marriage to Tom, anyway? Suddenly, Julie distrusted him.
“She wasn’t spinning me a line,” she told Tom hotly. “She may have lied about your divorce, but she did want you back! You said so yourself.”
“Not exactly. But we’ll let that pass. She wanted me back so badly that she’d taken a lover in order to forget me, is that it?” he questioned.
His reasoning floored her. Yes, how could Loretta have gotten involved with another man at such a time? But she ignored it and attacked.
“So badly that she was prepared to have another woman bear a baby for her just to make you a father. I don’t know what the truth is about your marriage or your divorce, Tom Callahan, but this baby I’m carrying is yours!”
Chapter Two
Telling him in anger was the worst way possible. Julie hadn’t intended to do it that way. After all, she wanted him to understand. It was a bombshell of an announcement to make out of the blue, since she had evidence mounting every minute that he knew nothing about any of this. She could hardly condemn his white-hot reaction.
“That’s... That’s... Damn it to hell, what is this?” Tom sprang to his feet and began to prowl the balcony, then spun on his heel to face her. She had lightning flashing in her blue eyes, but he was angrier, and his first thunderstruck reaction was plain, old-fashioned disbelief. “Some kind of scam you’ve cooked up between you?” he accused. It was the only thing he could think of that could make sense.
“Scam?” she shrieked.
“There’s only one reason Loretta wanted us to get back together, Julie,” he told her bluntly. “And that’s because after she left me five years ago—with another man, and not the first, either, although I didn’t know that at the time—the business my brother Pat and I had been putting our guts into for years finally began to pay off. We made millions within a year of Loretta’s and my separation. She kicked herself from that moment on for not hanging in there a bit longer. She wanted my money, that’s what she wanted, and the baby—if there is a baby! I mean, hell, how can there be? The idea of the baby was just her last-ditch attempt to get her hands on my spending power.”
“What do you mean ‘if’ there’s a baby? You can’t be suggesting I’d make this up! Make up something like this? Our child? Growing inside me?”
They glared at each other. It seemed impossible to Julie that this was the same man who’d cosseted her nausea so tenderly and capably just minutes earlier. And yet... And yet...
“Just tell me, Julie,” he said quietly, holding his hands away from his sides like a Dodge City sheriff about to go for his guns, “Just tell me.” He raked her with his dark eyes. “You came back to Philly a few months ago, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You were getting to know Loretta again. And since her death you’ve been going through her things, sorting out her life. You said yourself she was killed in her lover’s car. She told you we were just recently separated, but I can show you a copy of our divorce decree, and it’s three years old. From what you’ve come to know of her, do you really take everything she told you at face value now?”
“No, I don’t,” Julie retorted. “You’re right. What she told me is as full of holes as a piece of Swiss cheese, but she’s not me, okay? I’m for real. It took me a lot of soul-searching to agree to what she wanted, although, heaven knows, I owed it to her after what the consequences of my accident had done to her body. And I made her think about it, too. I told her to really think about whether she wanted to have a baby this way, and she convinced me she did.
“I didn’t conceive this child to come into the world unwanted. I could never have done that! When I went to that clinic in Philly and conceived a baby with my egg and your sperm, I was acting in the belief that I was creating a being who’d fulfill the dearest wish of two people who, at heart, loved each other and were meant to be together.
“I’ve read enough about infertility to know how it can rip loving couples apart. From every word Loretta said, I believed I’d be nurturing a baby who’d make something right between the two of you, so that when I gave it up to you and Loretta after birth, it would be a blessing for all of us. That was the only way I’d have done it, and now to hear you talking about a scam!
“Like it or not, this baby is yours, Tom. Yours and mine, and most of why I’ve come up here today is so we can talk about what we’re going to do about it!”
“You mean you want to get rid of it?” he demanded.
