Feels Like Family

“Pitiful,” Erik said. “I thought men were supposed to stick together.”

“Normally, yes,” Ronnie agreed. “But in this instance, I have to admit to being a little curious myself about why the prospect of talking to my wife has you as jittery as a june bug.”

“Are you two through yet?” Dana Sue was impatient. “At this rate, there won’t be any time left for a nice long chat.”

“Now there’s a reason to celebrate,” Erik muttered.

Across the kitchen, Karen giggled, then buried her face in a paper towel in a futile attempt to smother her laughter.

“Another traitor,” Erik noted. “Okay, let’s get this inquisition over with.”

Dana Sue frowned at him. “It’s hardly an inquisition,” she said, leading him to a booth in the dining room. “Just one friend catching up with another one.”

Erik smiled despite his deteriorating mood. “How much catching up can we possibly have to do?”

“You were gone half an hour,” she said. “A lot can happen in half an hour.” She sat and patted the seat beside her. “Sit right here.”

“I think you should reserve that spot for your husband,” Erik said. “I’ll sit over here.” He sat on the edge all the way around on the other side of the table, as far away as he could possibly get and still be in the same booth.

Dana Sue regarded him with amusement. “How did your chat go with Helen? Did you two kiss and make up?” she asked just as Ronnie joined them.

Ronnie’s eyebrows shot up. “You and Helen? Now that’s something I never would have imagined.”

“Be quiet,” Dana Sue ordered.

“There is no me and Helen,” Erik assured him. “It’s all in your wife’s imagination.”

“I did not imagine that kiss last night,” Dana Sue told him. “That kiss was hot enough to solder steel.”

“How much do you know about soldering steel?” Erik asked.

“Beside the point,” Dana Sue retorted. “You get the picture. Now, answer me. Did you kiss and make up when you walked her back to her office?”

“We walked. We talked. End of story. May I go now?” Erik said. “My bread pudding is probably burned to a crisp.”

“It’s not due out of the oven for another ten minutes and you know it,” Dana Sue said without hesitation. “I want details about what happened between you and Helen.”

Erik slid out of the booth. “Then call Helen. The doors of this place open in less than an hour and I have work to do, something I would think that you, as the owner, would remember.”

He walked away without looking back.

“I won’t forget about this,” Dana Sue called after him.

Sadly, he knew that was the truth. Like most women, Dana Sue had a long memory. Worse yet, she had a streak of determination that could rival a wartime general’s. Something told him her full-throttle campaign to get him hooked up with Helen had just begun.

4

Helen hadn’t been able to forget the way her evening had ended at Sullivan’s a few days earlier. Nor had she been able to forget the speculative glances Dana Sue had given her and Erik during their tense meeting with Karen the next day. She knew that kind of look. Her friend thought there was something going on between Erik and her. Or maybe she just wanted something to be going on so she could feel good about her matchmaking skills. Either way, Helen was not looking forward to her next encounter with Dana Sue and the questions that awaited.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t put off seeing her any longer. She, Dana Sue and Maddie were scheduled for one of their morning get-togethers at The Corner Spa today. Since Helen had been all for these regular meetings to discuss spa business, she could hardly skip one. Her absence would just bring Dana Sue’s curiosity to a boil.

Besides, what with Maddie’s increasingly hectic schedule— a new husband and a new baby took up most of her time—and Dana Sue’s demands at Sullivan’s and her remarriage to Ronnie, the three of them hardly had any time to themselves anymore. Helen missed their leisurely chats. She’d started to feel a little like an outsider in their busy lives, though both of them would be appalled if they knew she felt that way.

Filled with a peculiar sense of dread, she braced herself as she walked through the bustling workout room. Personal trainer Elliott Cruz waved to her, as did several of the women who were sweating through a spinning class. The instructor was really putting them through their paces on the stationary bikes.

Helen paused to stick her head into the lavender-scented spa area where Jeanette was busy giving a facial to a blissful customer. The relaxing aroma reminded Helen that she’d been promising herself a massage for weeks now, hoping it would ease the constant tension in her shoulders.

“Everything okay with you?” she asked Jeanette, whom they’d stolen from a very upscale spa in Charleston. With her very short black hair and huge dark eyes, there was something exotic about Jeanette that made most of their clientele think she’d come from Europe. At least until they heard her speak. Her accent was as slow and sugary sweet as any South Carolinian’s.

“Perfect,” Jeanette told her. “Be sure to ask Maddie about the idea I had the other day.”

“Will do,” Helen promised.

Jeanette had more ideas, most of them excellent, than everyone else combined. She’d brought a lot of experience and creativity with her when she’d come to work for them. Their day spa services had increased in revenue at an even faster clip than their gym memberships. The days of Helen thinking of her investment in The Corner Spa as a tax shelter were long past. The place filled a surprisingly large niche in the region and business was booming.

Jeanette had already justified the expense of adding another technician to help handle the ever-increasing number and range of beauty treatments and massages they offered to a clientele who wanted to be truly pampered. Even the women of Serenity, who’d never even considered the extravagance of getting a massage, were signing up to treat themselves on special occasions. And, thanks to Jeanette’s word-of-mouth promotion, they’d sold a dozen gift certificates in the past week alone before Maddie had even had a chance to make their spa package marketing plan. If this kept up, The Corner Spa was single-handedly going to turn the previously well-kept secret of Serenity’s small-town charm into a tourist destination.

When Helen couldn’t put it off a second longer, she wandered onto the patio and spotted Maddie in the shade with her eyes closed. Obviously she’d seized the opportunity for a little catnap. Helen hesitated to interrupt her.

Maddie had only recently told them that she was pregnant for the second time since her marriage to Cal, something she claimed had taken both of them by surprise. Still, her previous pregnancy had gone so smoothly and she and Cal were so delighted with their daughter that she’d taken the fact of her second pregnancy in stride, though Maddie admitted she’d kept it to herself through the first trimester just in case there were complications.

Helen was the one who’d been thrown. Why did it seem to be so easy for Maddie to have a baby while she herself continued to wrestle with the decision about whether to take measures to have a child of her own? Sometime during the past year, watching Maddie breeze through her pregnancy with a doting husband by her side, holding baby Jessica Lynn in her arms and breathing in that powdery, just-bathed baby scent, Helen had become increasingly obsessed with the idea of having her own child. The depth of the yearning had caught her completely off guard. Up until then, she thought she’d been content and fulfilled with her single lifestyle and playing doting aunt to her friends’ children.

Once the yearning had surfaced, though, it had taken over most of her waking moments, at least when she wasn’t drowning in a sea of court documents. Lately she’d been working hard to get her high blood pressure in check, as the two high-risk pregnancy obstetricians she’d visited had advised. She’d made a dozen lists of the pros and cons about seizing her dream by whatever means necessary. But when it came down to actually taking the next step, she’d hesitated. She didn’t know what to make of her uncharacteristic indecisiveness. Something was holding her back, but she had no idea what.

Pushing aside her own doubts and her envy of Maddie’s pregnancy, she plastered a smile on her face and went to join her friend.

“Are you sure you’re only a few months along?” Helen asked, waking Maddie from her nap. She patted the mound of her tummy. “Seems to me you weren’t showing this much this early with any of your other kids. Maybe you’re having twins this time.”

“Bite your tongue,” Maddie said. “One baby at a time is more than enough. I hate to think how exhausted I’d be if there were two of them.”

Helen regarded her with concern. “If you’re that tired, shouldn’t you be at home with your feet up?”

Maddie grinned. “I work for these tyrants,” she explained. “This place gets busier and more demanding every day. I can’t get any time off. Besides, the baby’s not due for months.”

Helen sat down and studied Maddie’s glowing face. With four children already—three from her first marriage to pediatrician Bill Townsend—forty-two-year-old Maddie hadn’t been nearly as anxious as Cal to try again, but looking at her now, Helen knew that she was as excited about the new arrival as her husband.

Maddie studied Helen with a knowing look. “You haven’t said much about it for quite a while now, but you’re still thinking about having a baby, too, aren’t you?”

Helen nodded. “I had no idea I’d ever feel such a strong maternal yearning, but every time you hand me Jessica Lynn and she looks up at me with those big blue eyes and blows those tiny little bubbles or smiles at me, it makes me realize just how much I’ve missed in my life.”

“And?” Maddie prodded. “Did you ever follow through and talk to a doctor about whether your high blood pressure presents too much of a risk? When you didn’t mention it, Dana Sue and I figured that you’d dropped the whole idea.”

“To be honest, I’m a little surprised you haven’t pestered me about it long before now,” Helen said. “You’re usually not that hesitant to poke about in my life.”

“This is one of those decisions that’s yours to make. Neither of us wanted to sway you one way or another. So, did you follow through or not?”

Helen wasn’t sure why she’d kept those doctor visits a secret, but when confronted with a direct question, she saw no reason to lie. “I’ve seen two high-risk pregnancy experts,” she admitted. “Both of them have said that if I promised to take extremely good care of myself and stay in bed at the first sign of blood pressure problems, I could go ahead with a pregnancy.”