Daddy on Her Doorstep

For some reason, they both froze.

No, not for some reason, for the reason.

The age-old reason.

The age-old thing that happened between a man and a woman.

The words for it were never right, never good enough. The clichés were like overwashed fabric, faded and weak. There was nothing weak about this. It was a slam in the gut, an overpowering onslaught against Andy’s senses.

It had both of them in its grip for seconds he couldn’t have counted even if he’d tried. Five? Forty? More? He saw the echo of his own awareness in her bright eyes, suddenly narrowed, and when he dropped his gaze to her full mouth, this didn’t help, because her lips had parted and the light caught the sheen of moisture there and he could hear the breath coming in and out of her, too rapid and shallow.

She knew. She understood. She felt it.

I am not going to kiss you, Claudia Nelson. I am not going to pull that tight little knot down from the top of your head and run my fingers through your hair …

Nothing was going to happen between them, not tonight and not ever.

She must have reached the same decision. Her laugh was nervous and short. She reached up to twist a tendril of hair between her fingers. “Sorry, I really didn’t expect you to get the chair.”

“You looked tired, is all.”

“I—I am. I’m sleeping so badly.” She shrugged, smiled and frowned, all at the same time.

“Better get used to that.”

“Not every baby is a bad sleeper. I’ve read up on strategies …”

“I’m sure you have,” he drawled, trying not to smile.

She looked at him sharply, and there was a moment when the tension in the air could have switched. Awareness to argument. Sizzle to sniping. But they let go of both moods and she headed purposefully for the front door. “I’ll take a bath. That seems to help.”

“Might help soothe the baby, too, in a month or so.”

“Yes, a lot of the books say that. Thanks for the meal, Dr. McKinley, I really appreciate it.” And I’m calling you Dr. McKinley so you’ll forget what you saw in my eyes.

He cleared his throat. “I’m right here, any time you need me.”

“I’m fine. I’ll take it easy tomorrow, settling in.”

His last glimpse of her as she went along the porch to her front door was of her hand reaching around to her arched back once more, massaging it in a rhythmic circle just above the peachy curve of her backside with the flat of her fingers.

After this, they barely saw each other for several days.

Well, saw each other, but never for long at close hand.

She waved to him from the porch swing a couple of times as he was heading to or from work. He passed her in the street when he was jogging and she was walking back from the store, and they stopped for twenty seconds of greeting.

He heard her on her cell phone one morning, standing in the front yard to catch the best reception. “That was after the merger … Did you look under the original company name? … No, they’re very similar.” It sounded as if her office was having trouble letting go of her, or more likely the other way around.

One night, coming home after dark, he could see her front window lit up and there she was curled under a soft mohair blanket on the couch with a book in her hand. Even from this distance, he thought he could see a picture of a pregnant woman on the cover.

The weather warmed up a little, and he caught sight of her on Saturday afternoon, on a yoga mat in the garden, doing her pregnancy yoga exercises in a white ruched tank top and black stretch leggings, closing her eyes and breathing in, stretching her arms slowly upward, out and down, facing the beautiful sun, making a prayer position with her fingertips poised just below her chin.

That night, he was called out to assist in a delivery of triplets, and had about three hours’ sleep.

On Sunday afternoon, she must have taken a nap—he’d tried, after his long night, but couldn’t—because when he went into the garden himself, to put in a few hours of much needed work, a glance up at her bedroom window showed the blinds tightly closed.

When he’d raked the lawn clear of the last fall’s leaves, tidied the shrubbery into shape and pruned the climbing roses along the side fence, he looked again and found the blinds open this time, to let in the late-afternoon light. He thought he could see a figure moving in there, but she was in the shadows, not near the window and the light. If she’d noticed him down here, it didn’t seem as if she planned to come out and say hello.

Chapter Three

“Have an amazing time in Aruba, you two,” Claudia told Kelly, on the phone.

She moved farther away from the window. Her landlord had just put down his pruning shears and looked in her direction, and she didn’t want to have to wave and smile—or more truthfully, she didn’t want him to know that she could see him so well from up here, and that she was looking.

He was wearing a pair of grass-stained khaki shorts, an ancient chambray shirt with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulder seam and some kind of boots, scuffed and clunky, with a scrunch of thick woolly sock appearing at the top. His bare legs were packed with knotty muscle and his dark hair had a twig and two leaves in it.

The sun shone on his uneven, sporty tan. His face and neck were nicely bronzed. His forearms were ropey and brown and dappled with sun-bleached golden hair. His upper arms and those strong, knobby shoulders were paler, but they’d soon darken up if he kept to the gardening routine.

There was a ton of stuff to do out there. If he went on like this, Claudia would have plenty to look at between now and July.

Plenty of plants, she meant, of course.

“Oh, we will,” Kelly enthused, to Claudia’s half-listening ear. “And I’ll be so relaxed as your birth partner next month, after our break, that the baby will just float into the world. I’m glad it’s working out for you up there.”

“It’s working out great.”

She ended the call, hoping Kelly hadn’t caught the slight edge of doubt in her voice. It was working out great. She did her exercises every day, she read books on birth and baby care, she took naps and walks, she made nutritious meals, she played music to the baby, resting her hands on her belly to feel the movements change in response.

If it was too quiet and a little lonely and there wasn’t quite enough to do—even on the days when she made or took three calls to or from the office—well, that was very temporary.

And if an old wooden Victorian with a big garden and creaky floors and a wraparound porch told you more than you wanted to know about the man in the other half of the house, well that was temporary, too. Once the baby was born, she’d be far too busy to pay any attention to Andy McKinley, in the garden or anywhere else.

She wouldn’t care about his musical taste—everything from classical to country to driving rock, depending on his mood. She wouldn’t notice the lack of a female voice and female footsteps, suggesting he was currently unattached. She wouldn’t clock his hours or his clothing as he came and went—scrubs if he was headed to the hospital, neat professional attire for office-appointment hours, jeans and jackets and shorts and T-shirts for the various athletic things he apparently did in his free time.

One day, she had seen a canoe being strapped to the top of his pickup, and two men had arrived, bringing coolers, and they’d all gone off together in the pickup, wearing spray jackets and laughing a lot. She liked the way Andy laughed, and the way his arms moved when he was strapping the canoe in place.

She tried not to notice nearly this much about him, but how could she help it, when her days and her routine were so quiet? And when she was sleeping so badly, which meant that if Dr. McKinley was called out to an emergency in the early hours, she generally knew about this, too, because she heard the vehicle reversing down the drive.

Pull yourself together, Claudia. You’re a mom-to-be, not a teenager pining for a date.

If only she was sleeping better!

Only another month …

The baby was coming. It was three in the morning, the early hours of Monday, but the delivery room at Mitchum Medical Center had an energy to it that Andy knew well.

Not long now. Almost there.