The Baby Bond

“No, please! I asked you on the phone not to disrupt your schedule.”

“You see, when you called yesterday, I—” He broke off and shook his head, unable to find words, then reached back to wipe a lean hand around the inside of his open collar. “Look,” he began again after a moment, “I’m going to give my assistant, Marcia, the rest of the day off, then we’ll talk. We need to give this some time, and we don’t need interruptions from anyone. I’m so sorry you couldn’t track me down before the funeral.”

“Yes. So am I. I did try.”

“I was on the west coast for a couple of days.”

“And Loretta didn’t seem to have this address and phone number written down anywhere obvious. I looked through her papers a little, but there was a lot of other stuff to do, and—”

“I know you did,” Tom was saying. “And I appreciate it. This must have been a horrific few days for you. Just excuse me for a moment.”

He went to the outer office, and Julie heard the low vibration of his voice as he gave his assistant some instructions.

It gave her time to think, and to feel once more the growing unease that had begun five days ago, just hours after she had learned of Loretta’s death. Why had it taken her nearly four days to find any reference to Tom Callahan’s summer address amongst Loretta’s papers? He was her husband! Yet Tom himself had not seemed surprised that Julie couldn’t track him down.

Something was very wrong. Something didn’t gel.

Tired to the bone after five nights of shredded sleep, she sank into one of the two rust-brown leather armchairs facing the floor-length windows that overlooked Diamond Lake. The cool leather was as soft as cream. At once, the peace and beauty of the place started its healing work. Tom Callahan’s summer retreat stood on its own private island, surrounded by a bright mirror of limpid water, with the folded, forested Adirondack mountains beyond. She understood exactly why he had chosen this place. What she didn’t understand was—

He was back. He set a tray on the small table then pulled up the second armchair and sat down, his long thighs jutting from the leather seat

He’d brought coffee. Two steaming mugs of it. Her stomach rebelled, but she craved something to do with her hands and something to fill her mouth, so she answered his questioning look with, “Yes, thanks. Lots of cream. And some sugar, too, please.” Maybe the sweetness would keep back the nausea that had been rising in her all morning.

“Not watching your weight?” Tom teased carefully, adding a large dollop of cream to her mug.

“Not at the moment.”

He was, though, Tom realized. Not watching her weight, but watching her body. She was beautiful, even handicapped by the fatigue and stress that had put slate-blue shadows beneath her blue eyes and tightened her long, graceful limbs.

Her wheat-blond hair was looped on her head so that a few tendrils fell in long, bouncy curves. He wanted to wind his fingers through them. Her skin was as smooth and warm-hued as ripe apricots, with just the airbrushed hint of dappled gold freckles across her nose. And she had the most incredibly warm, generous mouth he’d ever seen.

Tom shifted and sent a spoonful of sugar fanning across the tray. It didn’t matter. The mess was nothing. It was all contained on the tray. He dug into the sugar bowl and got another, but the clumsy action disturbed him all the same.

He hadn’t thought at all about what Loretta’s cousin would be like. He definitely hadn’t considered the possibility that he might find her in any way attractive. Perhaps the low, emotion-filled music of her voice on the phone yesterday, during their painfully clumsy conversation, should have told him something.

He didn’t want to be attracted to her. He was a free man emotionally, and no one who knew him would question his right to that freedom, but he didn’t want this difficult meeting to get any more complex than it had to be. For both of them, this was about endings, not beginnings. After today, it was doubtful they’d ever need to meet again.

He pushed his physical awareness of her aside, stirred the sugar into her coffee and handed it to her.

Determined to get to the painful heart of this as quickly as possible, he said, “You told me it was a car accident. Was it quick? Was she at the wheel?”

“It was instantaneous, the police told me. For both of them. The car was traveling at over ninety miles an hour.”

“Both of them?” Tom queried automatically, though he wasn’t really surprised. Not if he recalled all those times in the past when he’d thought Loretta was alone and she hadn’t been.

Julie fisted a hand in front of her mouth and cleared her throat. She had no choice but to tell the truth. “There was someone else at the wheel,” she said huskily. “A man.”

The words tasted like cardboard. She had wanted to get all this over quickly, yes, but had expected a little more opportunity to prepare him...and herself. Small talk meant nothing at a time like this, but it had its uses. Tom Callahan, on the other hand, clearly preferred to look things in the face.

Her stomach twisted. A gulp of coffee didn’t help. Made things worse, in fact.

This was Tom’s wife they were talking about. Sure, the marriage had had problems. Loretta herself had admitted that. She’d talked about it in exhaustive, passionate detail. Their separation. Their attempts at reconciliation. The baby they’d both wanted—the baby that hadn’t come, even after infertility treatment.

But despite all of this, Loretta was still Tom’s wife, and as of last week there was every hope of the two of them successfully resuming their marriage. Or so Julie had believed up until last Sunday. Now, she was far from sure.

“His name was Phillip Quinn,” she said, unable to blur the truth with tact. This was a truth you couldn’t blur. “And according to his family, Tom, they were lovers. I’m...so sorry.”

She forced herself to look at him, steeled against what she expected to find—the sight of despair and shock written in the dark good looks of his face. It was hard enough for her to contemplate—hell, it just didn’t make sense! But for him...

Instinctively, she reached out to take his hand, and he let her, until she realized how she was chaf ing it, pulling the tanned skin back and forth across the well-shaped muscles and sinews. Then she practically dropped his hand onto the arm of the chair. In the background came the sound of Don Jarvis starting the motorboat again. She assumed he was taking Tom’s assistant back to shore.

“I’m sorry, too,” Tom said, his voice low and steady. “That two people should die that way. Ninety miles an hour! That’s a heck of a speed to be traveling, and on city streets.”

“But—” Her hands splayed convulsively.

“Did you think it would come as a shock?” he said quietly. “Did you think it would hurt me?”

“Your wife and another man? Of course I—”

“Julie, Loretta was unfaithful to me five years ago. More than once. That’s why—partly why—we split up. Our divorce was a long way from being friendly, and it’s been finalized for three years. I’ve seen her twice since, both times at her insistence, and both times it’s been ugly. She was once a big part of my life, yes, and no one deserves to die that way and that young, but I can’t bleed for Loretta now, and if she did have a lover and was happy with him in the moments before she died, then I’m glad for her. Maybe she was starting to accept it at last.”

Divorced. Tom and Loretta were actually divorced? And Julie knew that Loretta hadn’t accepted it at all. The house, the whole earth seemed to rock, and Tom Callahan’s face, with his teak dark eyes fixed so intently on Julie’s expression, turned a pretty shade of golden yellow then faded altogether.

She felt him grab the hot coffee mug from her limp grip just in time, then she sank into the supportive depth of the chair. Her eyes were closed, her mind whirling.

She didn’t for a moment doubt the truth of his words. They made far too much sense. Divorced for three years. It was why, in the pathological chaos of Loretta’s apartment—the apartment Julie had assumed was Tom’s Philadelphia home, as well—it had taken her so long to find a reference to his Diamond Lake phone number and address. It explained the sense of uneasiness she’d had as she began to sort through Loretta’s things, and the mounting certainty that the whole situation was not as she’d believed it to be.

Loretta had lied. She’d lied big-time. To herself, perhaps, as much as to everyone else.

“A rocky patch,” she had called it. “A temporary separation. We both just needed space. But if I could give Tom a baby. He’s always wanted kids, and I’m so ready to be a mom, Julie. So ready. My career at the cable station means nothing. I just want Tom, and his baby, and to be a family. I know it’s what he wants, too.”

Pacing in her apartment, two months ago, like a caged animal.

“This infertility thing is killing us, Julie, and it’s strangling our marriage. Slowly, like...like a pair of hands just gradually squeezing together, tighter and tighter. We both agreed it was best to take a break over the summer while I started looking for a surrogate mother. That’s why Tom has gone to the lake. We worked out the contract before he left.

“We just couldn’t stand what we were doing to each other, you see. We were both hurting so bad we’d just lash out over nothing, and then realize and cry and apologize and make promises and break them again two days later. The idea of surrogacy and the terms of the contract are about all we’ve agreed on in weeks. Taking a break is the right thing.”

Why had she lied like that? She had changed Julie’s whole life with those lies.

“Julie, are you all right?” Tom’s voice, dark and low, came out of the mist that enveloped her.

She struggled to open her eyes and banish the dizziness in her head. A couple of deep breaths brought control, but her stomach was turning over. The nausea again.

“You look terrible,” he accused, concern etched onto his face.

“Yes... I’m pregnant.” She waited for a reaction, every muscle and nerve ending coiled. She doubted what Loretta had told her on this issue, too. Perhaps Tom did know. But the loaded word didn’t trigger a flash of understanding. Instead, it only deepened his look of concern.

And he didn’t waste any time clucking in sympathy. “I’ll get dry crackers and water,” he said, already on his feet. “Salted potato chips, too. Don’t move, okay? It’ll take just a minute.”