Dream Baby

She’d never been much of a fighter. Never confrontational. Even as a child she’d been the peacemaker in the family.

So what had she been doing just now? Lying through her teeth to a total stranger. Hearing her voice get higher and higher as she became more and more defensive. Ready to lay a flying tackle on this interloper if he so much as lifted a threatening finger in Isabel’s direction. Even now, the adrenaline was still pumping, pumping in her veins, until she felt almost light-headed with the force of it. And why—for God’s sake?

She felt silly, embarrassed by the assumptions she’d made about Jake Burdette in there. Not the father, but the baby’s uncle. He must think she was an idiot. Oh, it was comical, really...

Only she didn’t feel like laughing. Not at all.

Beneath all the feelings of humiliation and stupidity lay a tiny trickle of fear, slipping through her insides, leaving her cold and frightened.

Why was he here? What did he want? Why now, when she’d just begun to really believe that her life could be different, that her life could be made up of all the wonderful things she’d ever dared to dream about. John Forrester was drawing up the necessary paperwork. A safe delivery. A petition to the court. A few signatures. Then the dream of motherhood would become a reality.

Deliberately she settled on the bottom step and drew in a deep lungful of air. Okay, she told herself, okay. Burdette’s coming here today didn’t have to be a bad sign. It didn’t mean he was here to effect some sort of reconciliation between Isabel and his brother. He was probably just trying to do the right thing by her even if his younger brother wouldn’t. Maybe he planned to give her some money. Pay her doctor bills. Offer her a place to stay until the baby came.

Yes, that was why he was here. He looked like a man who took his responsibilities serioùsly. And in spite of that aggressive attitude, he had kind eyes—the soft hazel of autumn leaves. A man with eyes like that wouldn’t hurt you, not deliberately. She had to remain positive, upbeat.

Closing her eyes, she willed herself to focus on the images nearest her heart—the baby. What he would feel like in her arms. His sweet smell, the softness of his hair, the whisper of his breath as she held him against her neck. Was there anything more heavenly than that—?

“Is my father ever coming out?”

Nora opened her eyes. A boy squinted down at her, his hands fisted on his hips, a look of pure annoyance etched across his childish features. He wasn’t a bad-looking kid, but he was clearly in the pit-bull jaws of adolescence—no patience with adults and little desire to develop any.

Nora stood, brushing off the seat of her leotard. In spite of his preppy, clean-cut appearance, the boy looked tired, and Jake Burdette lost a point in her parenting manual. “Your dad might be a little while. Would you like to come for a walk with me?”

“Why should I? I don’t even know you.”

She stuck out a hand. “Nora Holloway. I own this place.”

He took her fingers in a reluctant handshake. “Why?” he asked in a voice richly steeped in sarcasm.

It looked as though the kid had inherited some of his father’s manner. Nora didn’t rise to the bait. She’d spent too many years winning over unenthusiastic boys and girls who had been dragged to the Hideaway by parents who were determined that they experience “the Great Outdoors.” She smiled at him. “Not your kind of place, huh?”

“Not in a million years.”

“Oh, well. Do you like animals?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“I have a shed behind the main lodge where I take care of wild animals that have been injured. Want to see it?”

“Not really.” With overt disinterest, he plucked a handheld video game out of his back pocket and began a slow march back to the car.

She wondered if Jake Burdette knew what a poor job he’d done in raising his son. “Well, you’re on your own, then,” she called after him. “So long.”

She didn’t look back as she walked behind the main lodge, but she could feel the boy surreptitiously watching her. He might not want to acknowledge it, but she suspected he had a kid’s natural curiosity about where she was headed and what she was doing.

Her spirits lifted a little as she trooped down the short, grassy pathway that led to the building at the edge of the woods. The rehabilitation work she did with the animals in the shed usually took all her concentration. Maybe it would help keep her mind off Jake Burdette and what he might be saying to Isabel right this moment.

As kids, Nora and Trip had cobbled together a playhouse from scrap lumber, setting it far enough away from the main lodge to escape their parents’ watchful eyes. Five years ago, enlisting almost no outside help, Nora had expanded the playhouse, turning the modest structure into a rehab station that could house a small number of wounded animals. As a wildlife rehabilitator licensed by the state of Florida, she usually had half a dozen patients, but right now there were only four, with an eagle scheduled to come in from a nearby vet’s office sometime soon.

The door to the shed creaked a little as she opened it, announcing her arrival to her charges. There were screeches and the flutter of wings from the cages holding an orphaned crow named Jeckle and a mockingbird named Begger, a chattering trill from Bandit, a raccoon who’d suffered numerous cuts when he’d been mauled by a dog, and a sniff of interest from the direction of Marjorie’s pen.

“Hello, you guys,” Nora said softly as she moved down the line of cages. “How are you doing today?”

The windows in the shed were small, but the sunlight sifting through them was strong enough for Nora to see that each of the animals was faring well. Within the next two weeks, they would all be able to be returned to the nearby national forest. Even Marjorie.

It was with some reluctance that Nora moved closer to the pen where the deer was penned. She knew she’d made a mistake with the fawn, an unforgivable error for a rehabber to make.

Marjorie’s mother had been killed on the road, and the animal had been brought to her when she’d been hardly old enough to stand, malnourished and soaking wet. Nora had bottle-fed her, had wrapped her in blankets and stroked her for hours until the poor thing had stopped shivering. The fawn’s sweet brown eyes had looked up at her defenselessly, trustingly, as though she knew Nora was trying to save her life but didn’t know what to do to help.

And in that moment, Nora had done something every rehabber was supposed to avoid at all costs—she had fallen in love with one of her charges.

The fawn needed her as no other animal had. Nora brought the creature back from the brink of death at least half a dozen times during those first few days. In the first critical week, she had spent more time out here on a cot in the shed than in her own bed. But gradually the fawn had begun to rally and thrive.

Now, after six months, she was ready to be reintroduced to the wild. Nora knew in her heart it was past time, really. If she kept Marjorie much longer, the deer would lose all her instincts for survival.

Nora moved to the pen’s entrance, but went no farther. Too often the deer had lifted her head over the edge of the door for a scratch, or had taken food from Nora’s hand. Exhibiting such tame and. trusting behavior was sweet and desirable in a deer park, but unacceptable for a wild animal. Knowing she was responsible for this kind of human imprinting, Nora was doing her best to reestablish some boundaries between the two of them.

The deer ran her body against the wire pen, obviously hoping for a friendly rub. Nora backed away. “I’m sorry, little girl,” she said. “No more human contact. You’ve got to stay wild.”

As though disappointed, the fawn snorted noisily, then wandered to the back of the pen to paw through the hay. She looked so healthy now, muscled, sleek, with none of the nicks and scars so many deer in the woods suffered. Nora watched the animal for a long time, wondering where she’d find the strength to send her off to join others of his kind.

While Nora stood there silently asking how she could have allowed herself to make such a mistake with Marjorie, she became aware of another presence. Actually, she heard the boy long before he appeared in the open doorway of the shed. He walked like a city kid—noisily, with total disregard for the beauty of the silence and his surroundings. From the corner of her eye she saw him move tentatively forward, inspecting the place.

Without glancing his way, Nora pulled a bale of hay off the small stack the feed store had delivered last week.

The boy moved into her line of vision, observing her silently for a long time. Then he asked, “Are you...like...one of those weird old ladies that keep eighty-two cats in their house?”

Nora straightened. “Gosh, I hope not. Come back in fifty years, and we’ll see.” She motioned behind him where a rusty box of tools sat on a wooden feed bin. “Hand me those wire cutters, will you?”

It took him longer than it should have to figure out which tool she meant. Finally, he lifted the wire cutters cautiously and held them out to her with a questioning look.

“Those are the ones,” she told him. She slid the cutters under the wire binding the hay together. One snip, and the bale began to fall apart into flakes. “Feel like helping out?”

“I don’t want to get dirty.”

“I can see why,” Nora replied, eyeing the expensive cut of his slacks and shirt. Who dressed a kid—especially a boy—like that? “Maybe you’d better not. I need someone who can really dig in and help me out.”

The boy seemed to consider this statement for a moment or two, then he shrugged. “I’ll be careful, and I guess there’s nothing better to do.”

“Can you tear this hay into pieces?” With one hand she indicated a second small pen she’d recently finished constructing. “Then spread it around the floor there?”

He nodded and began pulling apart the hay, methodically placing it in layers across the dirt floor of the pen while she retrieved medicines from the small refrigerator under one of the counters. She noticed that he was very careful not to allow the straw to touch his clothes.

“Don’t you have anyone to do this for you?” he asked.

“I do now. What’s your name?”

“Charles.”