Surrogate Escape

His mother had disliked her right from the start, but after May Redhorse learned about Lori’s condition and that Jake planned to marry her, her dislike solidified to distain. Mrs. Redhorse was a good Christian and a bad person.

Finally, belatedly, Lori stepped back. Jake’s eyes still had that piercing look of desire. She drew a breath as she prepared to throw cold water on him.

“You could have called your mom,” she said. Bringing up his mother was a sure way to douse the flame that had sprung from cold ashes between them.

His mouth twisted. “She can’t get around very well right now.”

Lori recalled the diabetes and the toe amputation—more than one. His mother had always been a big woman, and the disease had only made her less mobile. Some of her anger leaked away.

“Yes, of course.”

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Jake, pointing to the fussing infant.

“Hungry, maybe. Let’s have a look.”

Lori found Jake’s kitchen and laid the baby on his dinette. Then she peeled back the blanket and stroked the knit edge.

“You kept it,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Just reminds me of her.”

Lori didn’t need a reminder. She carried the memories in her heart like a spike. The baby girl she’d lost. Jake’s baby. At the time she thought the miscarriage was her fault, that she must have done something wrong. She knew better now.

The baby before them had ceased fussing and stared up at them with wide blue eyes. The infant was pink and white, with skin so translucent you could see the tiny veins that threaded across her chest and forehead. She was clearly a newborn, still streaked with her mother’s blood.

Lori shrugged out of her coat and Jake stepped forward to take it. Always the gentleman, she thought. Perfect as Captain Freakin’ America. Captain of the soccer team, basketball team and track team. Fast, smart and somehow once interested in her. The world made no sense.

“What’s that white stuff?” he asked, peering over her shoulder, his breath warm and sweet on her neck.

“That’s the caul. It’s the tissue sack that surrounds the baby in the womb. I hear that some Anglos believe that wearing the caul is lucky.”

“What Anglos?”

“The Irish, I think. Maybe Scottish. I can’t recall. My granddad was a Scot.” Why did she feel the need to remind him her father had not been Apache?

* * *

JAKE GLANCED AT HER, letting the desire build again. He knew her grandfather had been a Scot. He even remembered her father. He’d been a redhead who worked for the oil and gas company in Darabee for a while. He was the reason that Lori’s hair took on a red gleam in the sunlight. She’d taken a lot of teasing over that in grade school. She even had a light dusting of freckles over her nose. Or she had as a child, anyway. It made her different. Jake thought those differences made her more beautiful, but he’d been one of the worst in middle school. Anything to get her attention, even if it was only to see her flush and storm off.

Lori had changed over the five years of separation, and at age twenty-one, she had grown into a woman’s body. Her skin was a healthy golden brown and her mouth was still full but tipped down at the corners. Above the delicate nose, her dark brows arched regally over the deep brown eyes. The sadness he saw there was new. Today she wore her long, thick hair coiled in a knot at the base of her skull, practical like her uniform. And the hairstyle disguised the soft natural wave in her hair. Lori worked with children and babies, so her top was always alive with something bright and cheerful. Today it was teddy bears all tumbling down her chest with blocks. The bottoms matched, picking up the purples of the top and hugging her hips. The shoes were slip-on clogs with rubber soles. White, of course.

But beneath the trim medical nurses’ scrubs, he knew her body. Or he’d known the body of her youth. His fingers itched to explore the changes, the new fullness of her breasts and the tempting flare of her hips. They were children no longer, so before he went down this road again, he needed to think first. He hadn’t thought the last time.

Actions had consequences. He knew that well enough by now.

She had been a pretty girl but had become a classic beauty of a woman. When she danced at powwows, she drew the photographers like a blossom drew bees. The camera loved her, and he had a copy of a magazine where she’d been chosen as a cover model back in their senior year. Dressed in her regalia, she had a poise and intelligence that shone past the bright beads around her neck and white paint that ran down her lip to her chin. The cover that should have been a coup turned into another source for teasing as the lighting highlighted that her brown eyes were more cinnamon and revealed red highlights in her hair. Where was that magazine? His eyes popped open and he glanced about his living space, hoping she wouldn’t spot it before he could tuck it away.

Lori continued on, “My grandmother, my dad’s mother, told me once to look out for a baby with a caul. It means the baby is special.”

“All babies are special,” he said, thinking of one in particular.

* * *

LORI GLANCED AT the newborn, a little girl, checking her toes and fingers and finding her perfectly formed, if somewhat small.

“Do you have a kitchen scale?”

“A what?”

She smiled. “No way to check her weight, then. Grab my medical kit.”

Jake darted away as Lori examined the umbilical cord. Someone had tied it with a strip of green bark over a foot from the baby and then sliced the cord cleanly through. It was not the sort of cut a midwife would make, and it was not the sort of twine you would find in a home. More like the materials someone who had given birth outdoors would use.

Her mind leaped immediately to a teenage mother. Lori checked the baby and found nothing to indicate where the child had been born, but by the look of her, she was white.

“Here it is.” Jake set the kit down on the chair with a thump.

“Hold on to her so she doesn’t fall,” said Lori.

“Hold on how?”

Lori wrapped the baby again and then took his big, familiar hand and placed it on the baby’s chest.

“Easy. Don’t press.”

Then she retrieved a diaper from a side pocket. When she returned, it was to find him using a piece of gauze to wipe the blood from the infant’s face.

“We’ll do that at the clinic,” she said.

“It’s a blood sample,” he said. “Mother’s blood, right?”

She stilled. What she had seen as a childcare issue he saw as a crime scene.

“It’s probably some scared kid,” she said.

“It’s a felony. There are places to bring a baby. Safe places. She left it outside in my truck.”

She looked down at the tiny infant. Someone had given birth and then dumped her on a windy, cold September morning. She had treated babies abandoned by mothers before. They did not all survive. This little one was very lucky.

“Fortunate,” she said.

He met her gaze.

“To be alive,” she qualified.