Happy New Year--Baby!

Nicole remained in the apartment a moment longer. She was tempted to look around a little more. It wasn’t right, but then she’d never slavishly tread the straight and narrow path. If she had, she would have never run off with Craig to begin with.

She approached the closet between the living room and the master bedroom, wondering if it was as neat as everything else or if he was the type to stuff everything out of sight. After a momentary debate, decorum won over curiosity. That and the fact that if the closet was crammed with possessions, they would come tumbling out if she opened the door. She didn’t want to spend the next half hour trying to stuff everything back.

Nicole let herself out, locking the door behind her. The delivery truck was just pulling out of the complex. The day looked much too nice to remain cooped up in the apartment with cans of light yellow semigloss paint. Nicole pocketed Dennis’s key and decided to pay a visit to her sister and her brand-new nephew. She needed her spirits lifted.

The sun was fading from the sky when Nicole returned. Walking through the door, she kicked off her shoes. She’d bought them for comfort, but now they pinched. Her feet felt swollen, just like the rest of her. Not that she could see her feet to verify that.

Nicole sighed, trying to take heart in what she’d seen this afternoon. Three weeks after delivery and Marlene looked great. Miraculously, her figure was back to what it had been before she had gotten pregnant.

She opened the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of orange juice. Nicole fervently hoped she’d look as good as Marlene did three weeks after she delivered. Even six weeks after she delivered.

There was something different about her sister, Nicole mused. A definite change that transcended appearance. That undercurrent of urgency to prove something, to constantly achieve something had dissipated. Marlene was a different person now.

Miracles, it seemed, still happened.

Suddenly too tired to make the trip from the kitchen to the living room, Nicole sank down in a chair beside the kitchen table and nursed her glass of juice.

If Marlene still seemed a little tense, she thought, it was because she was really trying hard to be the perfect mother as well as a successful businesswoman.

Nicole’s mouth curved, but there was only bitterness in her smile as the word mother echoed in her mind. It was small wonder if Marlene felt lost. Her sister had no example to follow. Neither of them did. There were no warm memories of a mother’s love to remember, no examples of selfless caring to emulate. They had no real-life experiences to serve as reference.

Nothing other than what Sally had provided as their housekeeper. Sally, who had staunchly remained with Marlene after James Bailey had died, was gruff and spoke plainly, but she had a soft spot in her heart for the motherless children they had been. It was Sally who had given them the only attention and affection she and Marlene had ever known. Still, Sally was no substitute for the real thing.

Nicole looked into her glass, tilting it and coating the sides as she thought. Though they never spoke about it, Nicole imagined that Marlene felt exactly the same way she did. That ever since Laura Bailey had abandoned them, there had been something missing from their lives.

Something very important, no matter how hard she tried to deny it.

Nicole felt her eyes misting again.

Damn, what was it with her today? Everything was making her cry. She hadn’t thought about her mother walking out on them in years.

Nicole exhaled loudly, bracing her shoulders which under the present circumstances wasn’t easy. She wasn’t going to allow memories of her mother, or lack of her mother, to prey on her mind now. As far as she was concerned, her mother was dead. Laura Bailey had died the day she had accepted her husband’s generous monetary settlement in exchange for leaving her children’s lives forever.

She set down her glass and sniffled. This weepiness had to stop. Being pregnant certainly had its downside. Wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, Nicole curved her other hand around her belly. Though she adored the baby she carried with every shred of the love that no one had ever bothered to tap into, Nicole absolutely hated being pregnant. Almost from the very beginning, it had felt as if she were dragging around an old-fashioned steamer trunk filled to capacity with rocks. Rocks that shifted and moved independently of her. Luckily, she had Marlene to lean on. Marlene had given birth in the beginning of December and knew what lay ahead.

Unlike Marlene who had anticipated the delivery with some trepidation, Nicole couldn’t wait to give birth and be done with it. She was passionately looking forward to shedding this elephantine weight she was struggling with. Naturally thin, she had never carried any excess weight until now. And as for her emotions, they had never been in such a state of constant flux as they had been these past months. Minor things taxed her patience and as for the major ones, it was almost beyond endurance. It was a struggle just to get through the day.

Rising, Nicole saw her reflection in the chrome trim on the stove. A pregnant woman was supposed to glow. If that was really true, then someone had failed to issue her the requisite mother-to-be glow kit. Par for the course. If her ship ever came in, she’d probably be standing in the airport at the time.

Damn, she had to shake this mood.

Nicole wandered back to the refrigerator and opened it again. There wasn’t anything in it that hadn’t been there that morning. It was filled with healthy food. Nothing tempted her. Marlene had asked her to stay for dinner but Nicole had taken a rain check because she wanted to be alone. Why, she hadn’t the faintest idea.

Or maybe she did.

Nicole dearly loved her sister, even though they had approached life from different paths, and there wasn’t anyone else’s company she enjoyed more. But Marlene seemed caught up in her child and even in Sullivan, the brother of the man who had donated his sperm to create Robby. Nicole felt as if she were intruding.

She felt, she thought now as she listlessly shifted food on the top shelf, like an A-number-one grouch right now.

Nicole let the refrigerator door slip from her fingers. It sighed shut, eliciting an echoing sigh from her. Maybe she’d just catch the news on TV and then go to bed, even though it was early. With any luck, she’d feel better tomorrow.

She’d just walked out of the kitchen when the doorbell rang. Automatically, she glanced at her watch. It was past six o’clock. She wasn’t in the mood for visitors. Lately, she mused, she wasn’t in the mood for very much. Except for fudge ripple ice cream, and she was all out of that.

The doorbell rang again. Resigned, she crossed to the door. Standing on her toes, Nicole looked through the peephole, prepared to send whoever was on the opposite side of the door on their way.

She sank back on her heels. It was Dennis Lincoln. Now what?

Nicole flipped the locks and opened the door. She left one hand guardedly on the jamb, unwilling to invite him in. “Hi. Is there anything wrong with the television set?”

She’d been crying again, he realized. Her eyes were red rimmed and slightly puffy. Against all regulations and safeguards, something protective stirred within Dennis. He did his best to ignore it.

Dennis shifted the paper bag he’d picked up at the Chinese restaurant. Filled with small cartons of different entrées, the heat radiated through the paper, warming his hands. Following Nicole over the course of the last week, he’d learned little except that she had a fondness for Chinese food.

“No, the set’s fine. Great, as a matter of fact.” He grinned like a kid with a new toy, which was just the way he figured he was supposed to look, if possessing an oversize TV set had mattered to him. “Maybe you’d like to come over this weekend and watch something—with your husband if he’s around.”

Every muscle seemed to instantly tighten in Nicole’s face. The profile he had on her said she and her late husband hadn’t been close in the past couple of years, but they’d obviously been close at least once in that time. He glanced at her stomach. Still, he could see that he had just pulled the scab off a raw wound.

There were times when the job left a bad taste in his mouth.

Nicole lowered her eyes. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

The stillness in her voice underlined the awkward moment. He didn’t want to amplify her pain. Dennis glossed over the moment. “I guess he’s not much of a TV buff. Well, then, perhaps you’d like to—”

He didn’t know, she thought. There was no reason for him to know, of course. It was just that Craig’s death had been such a part of her life in the last month and a half, she unconsciously assumed everyone knew.

She cleared her throat. “My husband’s dead, Mr. Lincoln.”

He let the appropriate concern register on his face. It wasn’t difficult. There was something about the pain in her eyes that drew it out of him naturally.

“Oh God, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.” She was really devastated about his death, Dennis thought. Logan had been a damn fool not to have appreciated her. “When did it happen?”

She took a deep breath, distancing herself from the words. “Almost six weeks ago. He was a professional race car driver. His car spun out on the track and hit a wall. They clocked him doing one twenty.” Craig had died just as he’d lived. Quickly. There should have been comfort in that, somehow. There wasn’t.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you, I mean—”

Nicole waved away his tongue-tied words. There was no need for an apology. “That’s all right. The story only made page three of the sports page. There was no reason for you to know.” She lifted her shoulders in a halfhearted shrug.

After all, it wasn’t as if her new neighbor had been an acquaintance. And not even Craig’s friends had come to pay their respects when Craig died. She didn’t recognize half the people who had attended the funeral. They were people who had populated his new life. Craig had changed from the darkly handsome, gregarious young man he had been when he had started out on the racing circuit. Success had changed him. Or maybe, it had just brought out the man he had actually been.

All water under the bridge. It had been a long time since she had been head over heels in love with Craig. In her heart, Nicole mourned the man she thought she had fallen in love with, not the man who had died. There were times when she believed that the Craig Logan she thought she had known never really existed except in her mind.

This was the point where Dennis was going to be sympathetic. He had planned it this way. But as the words rose to his lips, Dennis felt uncomfortable with the role he was playing. Whether or not she knew about, or condoned, her husband’s involvement with the Syndicate, this had to be a rough time for her.

“Listen, if there’s anything I can do—if you need anything—help around the apartment, something like that, I’m pretty handy when I find the time.”

Nicole shook her head. “I’m fine, really.” If she needed anything, she’d call maintenance before she’d knock on his door. He wasn’t anything to her, even if he did have kind eyes. “Oh, before I forget.” She dug into her pocket. “Here’s your key.”

He took it from her and she stepped back, ready to close the door. Her gaze fell on the package in his hands. There was a translucent stain on the bottom of the bag.