Dream Baby

Karen and David—Congratulations on the start of a wonderful new life together.

Nora and Trip Holloway, your friends at the Hideaway

With her glass full of champagne, Nora tipped an imaginary toast outward. “You missed your chance, Karen and Dave. All the best, anyway.”

It had been a long time since she’d had any reason to drink champagne. The liquid tickled her throat as it went down, but didn’t seem to have much flavor. She poured another glass, inspecting the label and wondering if she ought to offer wine to newlywed guests instead. She’d heard the new bed-and-breakfast on the other side of Blue Devil Springs greeted every arrival with fresh-baked cookies and a chilled bottle of Chablis. If Holloway’s Hideaway was going to make it into the millennium, they might want to shake things up a bit.

Curling her bare toes along the edge of the coffee table, Nora sank back with a sigh. The millennium. God, she was so tired of hearing that word. As though just because a year started with a two instead of a one it was more important, or. carried some kind of magic...

She had a headache by the time the festivities in Times Square peaked. Larry was curled against her hip, and Nora ran a hand through the dog’s soft fur. “You know what my New Year’s resolution is, Larry? To stop watching Bill and Mary Beth.”

Outside, celebratory gunshots went off again. From the direction of town there came the zing! of ascending fireworks. The one-minute countdown was on the television screen now. Bill and Mary Beth disappeared, giving way to wide views of the boisterous crowd, but their voices continued to offer nonsense and excitement. Thirty seconds. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven—1999 was only moments away.

. She supposed it was an overactive imagination that made her stomach feel queasy when the countdown was over, and the crowd in Times Square went wild. There were lots of shots of people kissing and yelling and waving frantically toward the television cameras. Bill and Mary Beth hugged each other as if they actually meant it. Nora closed her eyes against the sight of it all and laid her head back against the couch cushion.

She hated the fact that 1999 was here at last. Only twelve months until the year 2000.

She had thought she’d be enjoying motherhood by that time, caught up in Tupperware parties and PTA meetings. She and Peter and her brother, Trip, would have made Holloway’s Hideaway at Blue Devil Springs a premier resort destination, and she would have managed all that around Little League and school plays. It wasn’t a particularly grand or exciting life plan, but it had always seemed perfect to Nora. The most wonderful future any woman could imagine.

But that dream had shattered five years ago, and whatever internal deadline she’d planned for herself by the millennium was far out of reach.

Financially, the Hideaway was barely hanging on. Trip, frustrated by trying to make ends meet, had fought with her frequently over selling the place. Even the arrangement they’d come to, that she would buy out his share of the Hideaway over a period of years, had not satisfied him, and two months ago he had taken off to pursue his own dreams. Peter and little Jeremy William were lost to her. And given the limited male companionship she’d enjoyed in the last couple of years, not to mention that old, ticking biological clock...

In the middle of the night, when she was really honest with herself, that was the thing that hurt the most—the thought of never having a baby of her own to love. She had loved Peter, but theirs had been a whirlwind courtship, and the marriage vows had barely been spoken before the accident occurred. She had mourned him, but the truth was, she had hardly known him at all.

But the baby—Jeremy William would have been the most desired, most treasured child in the world, and the knowledge that Nora would never hold him in her arms, and perhaps no other as well...

How could she face the start of a new century without the hope of a baby in her life? The thought was unendurable.

Another bottle rocket went off in the distance, and Larry growled low in his throat. Nora drew a deep breath, refusing to dwell on such dour thoughts.

She glanced toward the television one last time, where the cohosts were laughing over the antics of people on the street. “Happy New Year, Bill and Mary Beth,” Nora whispered. A moment later she sent them to oblivion and tossed the remote on the huge cypress knee coffee table.

Larry growled again. On her way back to the kitchen, Nora stopped to listen. Although it was nearly too faint to hear over the crackling pop of distant fireworks, Nora was sure someone was knocking on the front door.

Because of the hour and her present state of mind, she was tempted to ignore the summons. It seemed unlikely that one of her neighbors had come by to wish her Happy New Year, and she wasn’t expecting any late arrivals. The newlyweds had been her last hope for the weekend. Still, she pulled her housecoat over the long T-shirt she used for a nightgown. If someone wanted a bed for the night—had taken a wrong turn or broken down on the road—she couldn’t afford to refuse them.

Larry led the way to the bolted double doors, his toenails clicking on the plank flooring as he woofed threateningly. Nora tightened the grip on the collar of her robe.

“Sorry. We’re not open,” she called out as she flipped on the outside lights.

“Not even for me?” a feminine voice full of tentative humor asked.

Surprised, Nora slipped back the bolts and pulled one of the doors wide. Isabel Petrivych had spent her college breaks for the past three years working at the Hideaway, and although she wasn’t expected back on the payroll until spring break, she would always be a welcome visitor.

“Happy New Year, Nora,” the girl greeted brightly.

“Happy New Year to you, too. What are you doing here?” Nora asked.

The girl’s long black hair was unbound, falling in an ebony waterfall over one shoulder. She tossed it back in a reckless gesture and grinned hopefully. “I guess I didn’t know where else to go.”

They both jumped as the sudden pop-pop-pop of fireworks exploded in the night sky.

“Why aren’t you out partying?” Nora asked as they watched the last streamers of red and blue twinkle out of existence over the pines.

Isabel turned back to face her, and suddenly Nora caught the glimmer of tears welling in the young woman’s eyes. “Partying is the last thing I should be doing right now. That’s what got me into this mess. I’ve been so stupid...”

Isabel’s voice broke with emotion as she swiped the tear away with the back of one hand. She laughed, but the sound was choked, desolate.

Nora’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach as she gazed at that sweet, troubled face, and when she spoke, she rushed into speech herself, “Izzie, what is it? What’s happened?”

The girl shook her head, more wildly this time. “Oh, Nora, you’re not going to believe this...” She grimaced shakily. “I’m pregnant.”

CHAPTER TWO

May 1999

THE KID HADN’T SAID a word in over two hundred miles.

Jake Burdette slid another glance away from the road, just to make certain his son hadn’t fallen asleep or turned to stone or gone into some sort of cosmic trance.

Nope, Charlie was still with him all right, still seated in the front seat of the car, still so uncommunicative Jake might as well have been keeping company with an upscale kids’-store mannequin. One twelve-year-old boy dressed in clothes that were too tailored, a haircut that was too precise, a suitcase that was too expensive and an adolescent chip on his shoulder as big as a house.

Since the moment Jake had picked him up at Thea’s in New York—his private school term barely over—then flown down to Norfolk, and on to Orlando, conversations between the two of them had been increasingly one-sided. Nothing more than shrugs and grunts and a few uh-huhs ever since they’d hit the interstate. Not even the eye-popping excess of billboards advertising Florida’s theme parks got a reaction, and Jake’s suggestion that someday they might return for a trip to Walt Disney World was met with a complete lack of interest.

Jake stifled a huge sigh and glanced out the window.

There was no doubt that this little side trip to Florida had come at an inconvenient time in Jake’s life, a time when he really needed to focus all his attention on Charlie.

But right now, he had to keep his promise to his brother.

And Florida wasn’t that bad. After inching through the traffic congestion of Orlando, they’d headed north, past Thoroughbred country in Ocala, through the long corridor of rolling land that made up Florida’s panhandle. The area made you realize not all of the state had given way to the big developers. It was woodsy and wild, and it reminded Jake of some of the wonderful places his grandfather had taken him and his brother, Bobby, camping in Virginia.

To a spoiled snob of a city boy like Charlie, it must look like the backside of the moon.

Maybe Jake should tell him about a few of those childhood trips. They needed to start someplace. He opened his mouth to speak, but in that moment there was the familiar sound of electronic music. Charlie had pulled the video game out of his backpack. The kid could go hours on that thing.

So much for a folksy tale to bond them together.

An hour later Jake pulled off the interstate to gas up. Charlie was still smashing invaders from some high-tech planet—evidently meeting with success, if all the beeps and metallic crashes emitting from the video game were any indication. Still not a word of conversation. The only change in the boy’s stony countenance was the occasional frown of displeasure he gave the game in his hands.

Jake watched him covertly as he ran gas into the sports car’s tank. His son had a sweet forehead, wide and unblemished and intelligent. Without trying very hard, Jake could remember when the boy was four and had suffered through chicken pox—chicken pops, he’d called them—and Jake had sat by the side of his bed and stroked and stroked Charlie’s forehead until the boy had dropped into a restless sleep. Where had all that trusting innocence gone?

He screwed the gas cap back into place and then leaned against the passenger door. “You want a soda from the machine?”

Still fighting his video war, Charlie shook his head. There was the descending sound of a sudden defeat, and with a sigh of complete disgust, Charlie switched off the game and tossed it into the back seat. He stared out the front windshield.

“Sorry,” Jake said, guessing that he’d broken the boy’s concentration, and therefore caused him to lose the war. Jake turned and headed toward the convenience store. He seemed destined to remain on his son’s enemy list.