That's Our Baby!

He felt a grin spreading over his face as he thought about how funny she’d looked, all spooked, but feisty. Kerry got her back up much too easily, but he had to admit she was an interesting woman. Most women weren’t, at least not to him. And his response to Kerry was totally unexpected. Unnecessary. And unforgivable. He had no business getting the hots for his best buddy’s wife.

Widow, he reminded himself, for all the good it did.

“Sam?”

“I’m on my way,” he said, turning around and plowing back up the bank toward the cabin.

Kerry waited outside for him, fully dressed in jeans and a lumberjack’s red plaid jacket, her hair in two braids tied with incongruous blue satin ribbons. She looked…different. Not like the Kerry who had been Doug’s disapproving wife, not like the wounded Kerry he’d found here yesterday.

“I made breakfast,” she said without preamble.

“Good,” he said, stepping past her into the cabin, forgetting to knock the snow off his boots. Too late he remembered, but by that time she was sweeping past him and asking if he’d like scrambled eggs along with the flapjacks and bacon reposing on a large platter near the stove.

“Not fresh eggs,” she hastened to add. “They’re powdered. I’ve learned to do a pretty good job with them, though.”

“Eggs would be good,” he said. “We need to bolster ourselves for a long walk and a lot of hard work.”

She didn’t say anything, but busied herself at the stove. He saw that she’d already brought in the slop bucket that he’d emptied earlier. It impressed him that she was so efficient, and he admired the way she moved around the kitchen, graceful but focused on her task. When the eggs were ready, she carried them over to the table, where he sat drinking coffee from a big cracked blue mug that had always been his when he stayed here.

“You make good coffee,” he said.

“Doug taught me how.”

“No way. Yours is much better. Doug’s coffee always tasted like runoff from a moose wallow.”

She looked like she wanted to smile. Instead she set the platter of eggs down.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked sharply.

“I—well, I ate something earlier,” she said. She shoveled flapjacks from the platter to his plate—six of them.

He looked at the large stack of flapjacks in front of him. “Blueberry flapjacks,” he said, pleased. “My favorite.”

“It was a good summer for blueberries. The patch behind the lodge was full of them.”

She busied herself at the stove while he got down to the business of eating. “You should have eggs,” he said conversationally as he wolfed them down. He’d certainly eaten worse powdered eggs, and this surprised him. Kerry had never seemed like the kind of woman who would enjoy roughing it, much less know how to navigate her way around a kitchen.

“More bacon?” He looked up to see a strange and unfathomable expression cross Kerry’s face even as she held the bacon toward him.

“Thanks, this is a great breakfast,” he said as she all but dropped the platter on the table. Her face had a peculiar color to it, a greenish tinge.

“Are you—” he began, knowing in that moment that something was wrong. But he’d hardly uttered the words when she blurted, “Excuse me,” and darted quick as all get-out out the back door. She didn’t shut it after her, either. He heard the shed door slam and got up to push the back door shut, thinking in his annoyance that only a fool cheechako would fail to shut a door in this kind of cold without regard to how much cabin heat she was wasting.

The sounds coming from the shed were unmistakable. Kerry was upchucking with great fervor.

The realization totally unnerved Sam, and he stepped outside into the cold air. He didn’t know whether to make his presence outside the shed known or if he should speak to Kerry or what exactly his behavior should be. She might prefer to be private about this. He was sure that she’d be embarrassed to know he was listening, but she sounded really sick.

He settled on clearing his throat, although he doubted she could hear him.

But Kerry, mortified, did hear him, and that didn’t make this any easier. Morning sickness was the one thing about having a baby that she hated, burdened as she’d been with the symptom almost since the first week of her pregnancy. Now Sam Harbeck, the last person to whom she wanted to show any weakness, was shifting from one foot to the other only a door away while she reversed a breakfast of five saltines and a flapjack.

Unsteadily, she groped in her pocket for a tissue and wished for a giant swig of mouthwash. Sam, of course, was still cooling his heels in the breezeway.

When she was ready, she opened the door and tried for nonchalance, as if vomiting were no big deal. Truth was, she was embarrassed beyond talk. If forced to explain, she’d pray for instant annihilation from whatever source: an asteroid, being kidnapped by elves…

“Are you okay?” Sam asked. Anxious lines radiated out from his eyes, and a furrow of concern bisected his forehead.

“I—um, well, it’s just a slight upset,” she said. If she looked the way she usually looked after one of these episodes, her face was milk-white. Snow-white. Snow seemed like an inspired idea at the moment, so she reached down and grabbed a handful, which she then used to wipe her face. Sam stared at her, his mouth hanging open.

“You aren’t coming down with some kind of virus or something, are you?” he asked sharply.

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe I ate too much goulash last night.” It had been heavily seasoned, and he might buy this explanation.

“I ate goulash, too, and my stomach is fine,” he said, sounding perplexed.

“Then I probably shouldn’t have taken a pain pill on an empty stomach,” she said. She sidestepped past him, and he followed her into the house. The heavy odor of bacon dredged up an urge to throw up again, but there was nothing left in her stomach. For which, Kerry reminded herself with the steely resolve that had brought her this far, she might as well be thankful.

“Maybe you’d better take it easy,” he said. “Stick around the cabin while I take a look at the plane.”

“Don’t be silly. The two of us are more likely to get the plane airworthy than one of us, even if the one of us is you. And didn’t you tell me that time is of the essence? That we need to get out of here before the river freezes? I’m going with you, Sam. No argument.”

Sam knew better than to buck Kerry when she’d put her mind to something.

“Well then, you’d better put on a warm jacket and a good pair of boots. And I’ll clean up the kitchen. How’s your finger?”

“Sore.”

“Let me see.”

She held her hand toward him, and he inspected it carefully. “There’s not as much swelling as I expected. Come over here and I’ll change the binding.”

Kerry followed obediently. She remained quiet while he administered gauze and adhesive tape.

“There,” he said as he finished. “How does that feel?”

“Fine,” Kerry said, wiggling her fingers experimentally. He noticed that she winced, but she didn’t complain.

“Good. We’ll apply snow packs during the day, and that should help bring down the swelling even more.”

Kerry dug in the closet and pulled out a quilted down coat, bright red. When she put it on, she looked like a kid with those pigtails. It would be good if he could think of her as a kid, Sam thought. That would keep him from noticing the sensual lines of her lips.

“I threw a light lunch together,” she said. “Hot chocolate in a thermos. A can of macaroni and cheese. Also, dried fruit—apples and peaches.”

While she was talking, Sam arranged Doug’s tools in his pack. Kerry handed him the bag containing their lunch, and he stashed it on top. Then he slipped his arms through the straps of the pack and hoisted it onto his back. Kerry helped him adjust it.

When they left the cabin, he was surprised when Kerry locked the door and hid the key under a rock.

“Way up here in the wilderness, it’s usual for people to leave their cabins unlocked in case somebody in an emergency situation happens along and needs food and shelter. If the place is locked, it’s considered all right to break in. So who do you think you’re keeping out?” he said. He couldn’t help laughing at her.