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“See you around.” He released her hand.
As she left she felt as if she’d lost something precious she could never find again.
“One…two…three!” Vince chanted enthusiastically the following Monday as he raised Sean’s arm up and down. After three, Vince put his lips to the little boy’s tummy and blew a puff of air, making Sean giggle. Sean always giggled when Vince did that and Vince loved to hear it.
However, Sean stopped midgiggle and gave a little cough.
Vince studied his son then commented to Mrs. Zappa, who was folding laundry, “He’s sniffling. I noticed it this morning when I gave him his bottle.”
Mrs. Zappa was a short, robust woman, with rimless spectacles and gray salting her black hair. She was full of energy and seemed to love taking care of Sean.
Mrs. Zappa placed Sean’s little shirts in a chest drawer and crossed to the changing table where Vince stood taking his son through the routine of exercises for his arm.
She studied the baby. “He ate this morning.”
“Not as much as usual,” Vince reminded her.
“Does he have a fever?”
Vince picked up the ear thermometer he’d bought. “According to this he doesn’t, but maybe I’m using it wrong.”
Mrs. Zappa took it from him and crooned to Sean. “Let me try to take your temperature, too.” Afterward she scanned the readout. “Normal. But with a baby, that could change at any time. I’ll check it every hour or so. We’ll make it a game.”
Vince glanced at his watch. “I should get going.”
“Did you eat breakfast?”
A genuine homebody, Mrs. Zappa felt she had to mother him as well as Sean. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It had been a long time since anyone cared whether he ate well or slept…not since he’d been married to Tessa.
“I’ll grab something at the station.”
“Oh sure, some of those pastries from the Yellow Rose. Don’t you realize they’re clogging your arteries?”
“I could just have black coffee,” he joked.
Rolling her eyes, Mrs. Zappa picked up Sean, bouncing him in the air. The baby chortled and drew up his legs.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Rossi.”
He’d asked her to call him Vince, but she wouldn’t.
“You might have lived your life just for yourself for a long time, but now you have the future to think about. You have to stay healthy for this little boy. He’s going to need you around for many, many years to come. So in addition to working out with those weights in your bedroom, you need to eat right and take care of yourself.”
She must have seen the weights when she cleaned and swept his room. “I hear there’s a runners’ path around the lake,” he said. “I’d like to include that in my schedule a few times a week, but it might mean you’d have to stay another hour or so. How do you feel about that?”
“More money in my piggy bank for that cruise I want to take.” She grinned at him and took Sean over to his crib, laid him down and started the wind-up mobile toy above him. The tiny animal figures moved around the circle in time with the music.
“I’m going to make chili for tonight. How hot do you like it?” she asked with a grin.
“Hot.”
She shook her head. “Pretty soon I’ll have all your tastes figured out.”
Crossing to Sean’s crib, Vince adjusted one of the figures on the mobile that had become tangled with another. When he gazed down at Sean, he held out his finger for his son to grasp. Sean grabbed it with his good hand and Vince hoped beyond hope that Dr. Rafferty could give back to the baby the use of his right arm.
Mrs. Zappa gazed at him across the crib. “You know what you need, don’t you?”
He wiggled his finger back and forth with Sean holding on to it. “What? More cookware?” Mrs. Zappa had been dismayed when she’d arrived that he’d only bought a saucepan and a frying pan.
“Not cookware. You need a wife.”
That brought Vince’s gaze to hers. “I don’t need a wife. I have you,” he joked.
“Be serious, Mr. Rossi. I see you worry every time you look at that little boy. A wife would help cut that worry in half. A wife would help lighten the troubles and double the joys.”
Before he thought better of it, he responded, “I tried that once and it didn’t work out.”
If that wasn’t an understatement, he didn’t know what was. He was sure Tessa still blamed him for everything that had happened, including her hysterectomy. He deserved the blame, the guilt and the regrets.
“I’m not husband material, Mrs. Zappa.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because my marriage failed. Because I never had a role model.”
“You didn’t have a dad?”
“I had a dad who drank.”
“I see,” she said slowly. “That doesn’t mean you can’t learn. If you want something bad enough, you do what you have to do. You learn what you have to learn.”
As he thought about that, the end of his marriage played insistently in his head. Tessa had made her decision at the hospital when she chose to go home with her father rather than with him. Had he learned from that? He’d learned some bonds overrode others. He’d just been too smitten with Tessa to see it. “You make life sound so easy.”
“Oh, no. Life isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s a downright struggle. But having the right person beside you makes all the difference in the world. My Tony…” She sighed. “He was the best husband in the world. He told me every day he loved me. He never hesitated to give me a hug or a squeeze. He was a good man who worked hard to make our life the best it could be. I’ll never stop missing him. Thank goodness that, while I miss him, I have all the memories from thirty-six years of marriage to give me comfort. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without him.”
“You have children, right?”
“Two boys—one lives in Austin, the other in San Antonio. And because I have two boys, that’s how I know you need a wife to help you raise your son.”
Since his divorce, Vince never thought about committing to a life partner again. He simply couldn’t imagine it. When he and Tessa had married, everything about the marriage had been strained from the get-go. She’d come from wealth and they’d had no money. She’d come from a ranch with every modern convenience. They’d had a walk-up apartment with very few amenities. She’d thought being married had meant spending time with him. He’d had to work from sunrise to sunset just to give them the basics, just to pay for doctors’ appointments, the utilities, the repairs on his truck that was always breaking down. He’d had no expectations about marriage, but she had.
It was time to leave for work, but he had one more question for Mrs. Zappa. “So many marriages aren’t good ones, so many fail. What was the secret to making yours a good one?”
The older woman saw he was serious and wanted an honest answer. Soberly, she replied, “There are two secrets—compromise and forgiveness. So many young people think love is enough. But it’s not, not unless it grows into selfsacrifice, not unless both people can put the other one first.”
As Vince left the apartment a few minutes later, his mind was on everything Mrs. Zappa had said as well as on every one of the mistakes he’d made when he was eighteen, naive enough to think that love was enough.
That evening Vince paced the kitchen with Sean in the crook of his arm. He did not want to call Tessa.
But Sean coughed once again, a cough that made Vince hurt for the little boy. Sean also sounded as if he was wheezing.
Making the decision that was best for his son, Vince went to the cordless phone, picked it up and dialed. Earlier he’d looked her number up in the phone book and he’d remembered it. If she didn’t answer, if she wasn’t home, he’d take Sean to the emergency room.
Tessa must have had caller ID because when she picked up the phone, she asked, “Vince?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but Sean’s sick. He just had the sniffles this morning, but now he has this cough and a temperature of 101 and he’s wheezing. He’s done the emergency room route before when his parents died and he was in the hospital, too. I want to spare him that if I can.”
After only a moment’s hesitation, Tessa said, “Give me your address.”
He quickly did, telling her what side roads to take off of the main street.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she assured him and cut off the call.
Until Tessa arrived, Vince paced, rubbed Sean’s back and laid him in his crib. When the coughing seemed worse, he picked him up again. Ten minutes seemed like an hour, but Tessa finally rang the doorbell.
He hurried to answer it, Sean in his arms.
Tessa was carrying her doctor’s bag, and although she wore jeans and a short-sleeved blouse, she had a professional air about her. After one look at Vince’s face, she took Sean from him and carried the baby to the sofa.
Vince felt absolutely helpless and hated the feeling.
Now Sean was crying, as well as sniffling and coughing. Tessa tried to soothe him as she examined him. When she listened to his chest with a stethoscope, she frowned. “You said this has been going on since this morning?”
“Yes. It was just a cold.”
“It’s more than that now. I want you to run the shower, hot water. Get a lot of steam in the room. After you do that, find me a bath towel to wrap him in. I’m going to give him an injection and then sit in the bathroom with him until he’s breathing better.”
Vince came over to Sean, laid his hand on his son’s head. “Maybe I should stay here with him while you give him the injection.”
Tessa gazed up at him. “The sooner you get the shower running, the sooner he’ll breathe easier. Trust me, Vince.”
He realized he could trust Tessa, the doctor. And Tessa, the woman? She’d chosen her father’s protection over his but that didn’t matter right now. Only Sean mattered.
As he left the living room, he glanced back at Tessa. She was reaching into her bag, taking out a vial of medication.
He hadn’t prayed in a very long time. But he prayed now that Sean could fight this off and soon be well.
Chapter Four
Tessa sat on the closed commode in Vince’s bathroom, cooing to Sean and rocking him. Her hair was soft, fuzzy and damp from the steam, tendrils curling this way and that. Her clothes were damp, too.
Vince didn’t think she’d ever looked more beautiful.
His own shirt was sticking to his skin but he’d been so worried about Sean that he hardly noticed. The baby had stopped coughing and his wheezing didn’t sound as constricted.
“We can’t keep him in here much longer. I’ll run out of hot water. What then?”
“I don’t think we’ll need a trip to the emergency room. Can you go to the drugstore and buy a cool mist humidifier and distilled water? Also, Pedialyte. I want him to drink it so he doesn’t get dehydrated.”
Vince glanced at his watch. It was after nine but he knew the drugstore was open until midnight.
“Oh, and children’s acetaminophen if you don’t have any.”
“Are you going to stay in here until I get back?”
“If your hot water holds out,” she said with a small smile.
He was so tempted to wrap his arms around her and Sean, to tell her how grateful he was for her expertise, for coming when he knew she didn’t want to be here.
Instead, he said, “Thank you, Tessa.”
Her gaze locked onto his for a few seconds—a few seconds of awareness and memories and sizzling attraction that was still there.
But then she looked away and gazed down at Sean. “No thanks necessary.”
Her voice was a bit unsteady.
As Vince climbed into his SUV, he couldn’t keep from envisioning how Tessa had massaged Sean’s little chest and patted him softly on the back when she’d first taken him into the bathroom. She was so good with children.
And she’d never have any of her own.
Vince knew Walter McGuire had blamed him for everything that had happened, from the pregnancy to the quick marriage to the walk-up apartment he and Tessa had lived in, to the condition that had taken their baby and almost Tessa’s life, too. Over the years, Vince had wrestled with his own guilt and attempted to look over that span of time rationally, especially the pain that had come from Tessa choosing to go home with her father from the hospital, rather than with him. Everything that had come after had been born in that decision of hers. And whether he wanted to admit it or not, the pain from her choice still lodged in his heart.
He found what he needed in the drugstore and was home in twenty-five minutes. Home. It wasn’t home yet. Maybe it just needed pictures on the walls in the living room and a few rugs on the floor? That might help. But how long would he and Sean be staying here? If Sean had surgery, how long would recovery take?
Next week he might have that answer.
Now when Vince stepped into his house, something felt…different. Maybe it was the lingering scent of strawberries and vanilla from Tessa’s lotion or whatever she used. That day she’d come to the station, it had wrapped around him and twisted his gut. Or maybe the difference in the condo came from the sight of her medical bag sitting on his dinette table.
But then he was drawn to what really transformed his condo into a home rather than simply the place where he lived. The sound of Tessa’s lovely voice crooning to his son pierced his heart.
He never should have called her tonight. Yet Sean had needed her. What else could he have done?
His training in the Air Force and as a cop had taught him to walk silently unless he wanted to be heard. Setting his purchases quietly to the side of the computer on his desk in the corner of living room, he went down the hall to Sean’s room and stopped just outside the doorway. Tessa’s hair and blouse were still damp. She’d tossed a towel over the back of the rocker and had wrapped Sean in one.
Vince could see his son was sleeping as Tessa rocked and sang, “Baby close your eyes. Dream of puppy dogs and fireflies.”
He didn’t know the song and wondered if she’d made it up herself to sing to her little patients.
He knew he hadn’t made a sound. He’d hardly taken a breath. Yet she glanced up and spotted him as if some sixth sense had told her he was there.
“Is he asleep?” Vince asked though he’d already guessed the answer.
“Yes, he’s breathing easier. The little guy was tuckered out. He drank some apple juice for me. If he wakes up later, he might be sweated. See if he’ll take some of the Pedialyte.”
“Let me get the humidifier going and we’ll see if he’ll sleep in his crib.”
After Vince added the distilled water to the machine and plugged it in, Tessa asked, “Do you have something easy we can put on him so we don’t wake him?”
