Her Best Friend's Baby

“Depends.” She could swear he’d developed an amble in his walk now that he wore jeans and boots. And that hat was a killer. She wondered if he’d have the nerve to wear it in New York. “You being from back east and all, you might have strange customs, like thinking pizza should have anchovies on it. If you’re going to make me eat anchovies on my pizza, I might have to report that bluebonnet crime of yours.”

He grinned. “No anchovies.”

“Then I’ll cover for you on this deal.” She glanced around. “Sun’s going down. We’d better head on back before the video store rents out all the decent movies. I have a specific one in mind.”

“Such as?” He fell into step with her as they crossed the road to the car.

“I was thinking Toy Story.”

“But isn’t that a kids’—”

“I knew it! You’ve never seen it, have you? No point in asking if you’ve seen Toy Story 2.” She shook a finger at him. “And you call yourself a father-to-be. We are going to remedy this serious gap in your education right away. Climb in. We’re making tracks for the video store.” She started to get in the car.

“Wait!”

She paused with one foot in the car. “What?”

“Look at the hills. They’re…they’re purple.”

“Oh, yeah. They do that a lot when the sun goes down.”

Morgan turned in a slow circle and took a deep breath. “Wow. A lot?”

“Yep. In fact, Austin is known as the City of the Violet Crown for that very reason.” She got out of the car and stood looking at the hills that surrounded Austin like the rim of a bowl. Sure enough, the hills were putting on a show tonight. She was glad Morgan was able to see them at their best. “I guess I’ve started taking it for granted, which isn’t a good thing.”

“Arielle must have, too,” he said. “She never told me about this.”

Mary Jane noticed that the mention of Arielle’s name was now possible without both of them getting weepy. “I don’t think she would have made a very good member of the Chamber of Commerce. She once told me that after seeing New York City, she had no interest whatsoever in coming back to Austin to live.”

“Well, New York has lots of things to recommend it, but the hills definitely don’t turn purple at sunset.” He stood with his hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans as he continued to gaze at the color washing the hillsides. “I’m beginning to understand why you turned down the job of being the baby’s nanny.”

She took a deep breath. Rejecting Arielle’s plea that she move to New York and be a nanny to the baby had been the most difficult decision she’d ever made. “I know Arielle was upset about that.”

“Yeah, she was, but I guess she had a tough time understanding why you wouldn’t want to move there. She probably figured if she loved it so much, you would, too.”

“I would have loved being close to Arielle, because I missed her. But I know myself, and when I tried to picture being cooped up in your high-rise with all those artificial plants…oops.” She gave him an apologetic glance. “Sorry. It’s a gorgeous apartment.”

“But sterile.”

“Different strokes,” she said. “And it’s not only the living arrangements. I have a lot of good friends here, and I like my job at Austin Eats. Besides, I would miss…” She paused and smiled. “The Violet Crown, I guess, and the sunshine, and the wide-open sky, and the moonlight towers.”

“Moonlight towers?” He glanced at her expectantly.

“Gigantic streetlights.” She was glad to move away from an uncomfortable topic. Arielle’s reaction to her refusal of the nanny position had caused an argument between them, and at first Mary Jane had been afraid her grand gesture of having the baby for Arielle would be ruined because she hadn’t been willing to be a nanny, too. In fact, Mary Jane had figured that the topic had been set aside, not closed.

“Tell me about the moonlight towers,” Morgan said.

“I’ll show you one on the way to the video store. They were put up more than a hundred years ago, a whole bunch of them, to light the city. Before that I guess it was black as pitch once the sun went down. The type of light in the towers has changed, of course, but a lot of them are still up and working, even though they aren’t really needed anymore. It’s one of our claims to fame.”

“I know another one.”

“I’ll bet you’re going to say the National Wildflower Research Center. Lots of people have heard of that.”

“Except me. You have such a thing?”

“You bet. Around here we take our wildflowers seriously.”

“So I’m learning. But that isn’t what I was going to say.”

“Town Lake? The capitol building? UT?”

He shook his head. “I was going to say that one of Austin’s biggest claims to fame is that Mary Jane Potter lives here,” he said quietly.

The extravagant compliment caught her by surprise. Heat burned in her cheeks, and her heart started to race. “You only say that because I gave you an extra turn rowing the boat.”

He gazed at her with the heart-melting smile that made mincemeat out of every defense she tried to throw up. “Yeah,” he said, his voice husky. “That’s what turned the trick, all right.”

She swallowed. “Time to go get Toy Story.” She hopped into the car and started the engine. She hoped he hadn’t noticed that her hands were shaking.

Once he was buckled up, she headed off, concentrating on the road and not the very appealing man sitting in the seat next to her. Her determination not to glance in his direction might have been why she noticed the For Sale sign on the gate of the small ranch adjoining Garrett’s place.

Apparently his neighbors, the Slatterys, had finally decided to move closer to their children in California. Lana had told her the house was a real gem, solidly constructed and nestled away from the road. The property included a pecan orchard, a small pond and plenty of room for horses. It was more than Mary Jane ever expected to be able to afford, but maybe she’d go if they had an open house, just to dream a little.

“You’re upset with me,” Morgan said.

“No.” His gentle voice did things to her. Nice things. Dangerous things. She cleared her throat. “But you really shouldn’t pay me compliments like that.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But somebody should be saying them. You are a rare and wonderful woman, and somebody should be holding your hand, bringing you flowers, taking you dancing. When I think of how you’ve interrupted the natural flow of your life in order to have this baby, I’m humbled by your generosity and ashamed that I never saw it before as the incredible sacrifice that it is.”

She shook her head. “You’re making me out to be more noble than I am. When Arielle proposed the idea of me being a surrogate mom, I remember being incredibly relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“I owed her so much. She got me through those years after my mom died and my dad became a zombie. But as a kid, even as a teenager, what could I ever do to pay her back? And then she handed me the one way I could. I knew that if I could produce a healthy baby and give it to her, I’d finally have settled the score.”