The Baby Bond

She tried to get up, to say something polite, but he’d already gone. She stayed where she was, fighting hard against the rebellion in her stomach. Over the past few days, it had gotten to be a more and more familiar feeling.

She wondered how Tom had been able to recognize the symptoms and prescribe the remedy so quickly. A week or two ago, Julie herself wouldn’t have had any idea just how desperately a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy could need crackers and chips.

It had to be fatigue, as well, of course, that had made her nausea get so bad so fast. As Loretta’s closest known relative—almost her only known relative—Julie had been the one to make all the arrangements, deal with the practicalities. No close friends of Loretta’s had shown up with offers of assistance, either. Julie had worked alone from early morning until late at night for days.

There was more to do. Loretta’s apartment was still in chaos. It would have been easier to have someone to share the task with, but Loretta’s father had walked out years ago, and her mother—Julie’s aunt Anne—had died when Julie was eighteen. Aunt Anne had outlived her brother, Jim, Julie’s beloved father, by just five years. As for Julie’s mother, Sharon, Loretta’s aunt by marriage...

Well, Mom was very happy these days, so perhaps it wasn’t fair that Julie felt totally brushed aside and unable to ask for help when she needed it. Mom’s second husband was a thirty-seven-year-old would-be actor, still waiting for his big break, and Sharon Gregory was more obsessive than any stage mother in chasing opportunities for him.

She’d kept dad’s last name when she remarried purely so she could describe herself as Matt Kady’s agent without revealing a conflict of interest. And she seemed to hate the fact that Julie, at twenty-three, proved her old enough to have a grown child.

It was this new distance from her mother that had given Julie the final push she needed to leave California and return to Philadelphia, where she’d lived until the age of nine. And that, of course, was how she’d gotten close to Loretta again over the past three months, after they hadn’t seen each other in more than thirteen years.

Gotten close? She was starting to doubt that now.

“Here.”

Tom was back, with a huge glass of iced water, a freshly opened packet of saltine crackers and a package of chips. Strange chips. He apologized for them at once, while Julie was chewing on her first cracker, feeling the salt begin to settle her stomach.

“I’m sorry about these.” He held up the packet. “Unfortunately they’re Bovril flavored.” His expression was so full of pained regret that Julie almost laughed.

“What is Bovril?” she managed faintly, taking them anyway. The saltines weren’t quite salty enough. Maybe the chips would settle the craving.

“It’s this strange brown drink they have in England,” Tom answered, playing the moment for all it was worth. He could see that Julie badly needed a break.

“Hot and sort of beefy,” he went on. “I was there on business last month and... Well, you see, I have this running gag with my brother Liam. I’m on a mission to find the world’s most bizarre snack foods for him to try.” He grinned, as if he hoped to coax a smile from her as well. “He’s sixteen, and comes up here from Philly a lot in summer.”

“And what did he think of these?” Julie asked, her attention caught now.

It felt almost as good to break their fraught conversation with this moment of lightness as it felt to break her nausea with the crackers. He was doing it deliberately, distracting her with nonsense and she was deeply grateful for his perception.

“He hasn’t tried them yet. He’s working up to it with the safer flavors,” Tom explained, deadpan. “So far he’s tackled ketchup, roast turkey with stuffing and pickled onions, if I remember correctly.”

“Oh. Yummy. Pickled onions, huh?”

Yes! There it was! Tom thought. It didn’t last long. Like a shaft of sunset light breaking through piled clouds and then fading, it was there for just a moment, but the effect of it practically knocked his socks off. Wide and radiant, lighting up her whole face, putting a tiny crease on either side of her pert little nose so that he noticed the freckles again and got a vivid image of her as a kid—a tomboy of a kid who caught frogs and climbed trees and whistled through her finger and thumb.

“To be honest,” he admitted, still watching her, “they all taste mainly of salt.”

“Really? Salt is what I want.”

Julie picked up a cracker and took a bite. Her stomach and taste buds, much to her surprise, approved. She decided to take turns. Cracker. Chip. Water. Slowly.

Tom was watching her. Had been for a while, she knew. “You’re having a hard time.”

“Just these past few days.”

“How far along are you?”

“Not far. About six weeks, the way doctors count it. Four weeks from when I, uh, conceived. I only took the test last Friday. Loretta... never knew.”

“Early days, then,” he said. His voice sounded a little strained at the mention of his ex-wife.

“Yes.”

She gave a tight smile. Early days, and the cause of enormous upheaval in her life. A rethinking of everything in almost every waking moment for days. She was already deeply attached to the life that grew inside her. That didn’t make sense, the way things had started out, but it had happened. She knew that she’d become a part of something important, something that mattered more than anything else, and if Tom could not respond to that and give her what she wanted...

“The nausea doesn’t matter,” she told him firmly. “This baby is the most important thing in the world to me, right now.”

She managed to disguise the unnamed threat in her words, and he responded at once.

“That’s great,” he said. His face softened. “Babies are such incredible packages of hope and love and potential, aren’t they? I’m really happy for you, Julie.”

“Mmm.” She dared to smile at him. He understood. It gave her a warm surge of hope. They could work something out, pull the right solution out of this mess.

Then his gaze flicked to her ringless left hand. His smile gave way to a tiny frown, and her stomach churned again. No, she wasn’t married. She didn’t even have a boyfriend. He’d know why soon enough.

“Hey.” He’d seen that she was struggling again. He was bending down, coaxing her to her feet. “Is this okay? I’d like to get you outside for some fresh air. I had my housekeeper leave us lunch. I can bring it out to the balcony. There’s a breeze off the water, and it’s shady and cool.”

“That sounds great.”

He sounded great. So tender, and so concerned. To have someone care about her physical well-being was so unexpected and so wonderful that it threatened to completely break down the nervous tension, which was all that had kept her going since Sunday. She’d been feeling so alone!

He was holding her from behind, his hand curved like a warm velvet cuff around her forearm. The soft chambray of his shirt covered her bare arm. She could feel the heat of his body against her back through the fine fabric of her cream blouse, and for a moment she let herself sway back, surrendering her weight to his support.

For the first time she fully understood the meaning and significance of the child that grew inside her.

Cradling her in the curve of his arm as he led her through the house, Tom felt his unwanted attraction to her surge again. So she was pregnant! It made sense of the way she looked. There was a secret source to her beauty, which couldn’t quite be explained by adding up her features and assets, since it came from deeper inside her. He felt the swollen fullness of one breast against the crook of his arm and knew that soon she would look as ripe as some lavish tropical fruit.

He wondered why she wasn’t married and why she hadn’t even mentioned a man.

A moment later, she retched, pressed her fist to her mouth and fought hard for control.

“Easy. easy,” he soothed her, as if talking to a nervous colt. “Just take it slowly and keep hold of those crackers!”

“You seem to know,...” she paused and chewed desperately, “a lot about this!” Julie got the words out safely.

“So I should,” he answered her. “I’ve got six younger brothers. I spent months of my childhood on cracker patrol.”

“Six?” She knew at once that Tom’s mother must be more heroic than any warrior.

“And one who’s older.”

“And no girls?”

“No girls,” he agreed cheerfully. “After about number four Mom stopped minding. She figured she and Dad just didn’t have the chemistry in that department, and what the heck, she liked boys anyway.”

“I like boys, too,” she said. “I just about was one, as a kid. A classic tomboy, that is.”