Buch lesen: «The Late Bloomer's Baby»

Chapter One

Three mornings had passed since heavy rains had caused the Walnut and Whitewater rivers to overflow. The flood-waters had receded now, but hundreds of homes had been abandoned. The muddy devastation at Isabel’s house had been tough to see. Turbid water had not only filled the basement, but had risen three feet onto the main floor.

Yesterday, a van load of volunteers had helped her sister cart much of the wreckage to the curb, but the pungent smells and endless mud would be harder to remove. Isabel wouldn’t even be allowed to live in the house until the damaged walls and systems had been repaired and inspected.

She’d need all the help she could get. Callie knew she’d been right to come. In spite of the necessity for plans and contingency plans.

In spite of her turmoil.

For the past hour, she’d been in the Hilltop Church gymnasium. After completing financial aid applications for Isabel, she’d joined dozens of others awaiting counsel from relief workers. The molded plastic seats were sticky, the area smelled like a neglected clothes hamper and folks were plainly too weary for small talk.

Callie had alternated between wondering about Luke’s welfare down a corridor in the nursery, and imagining Ethan appearing through the gym’s open double doors.

If he did, she’d be fine. He wouldn’t see her with Luke. She’d only have to deal with the trauma of seeing him again. However, as soon as possible, she intended to get her baby boy and escape to a place less public.

Good thing Ethan was from Wichita. He’d spent time in Augusta with Callie while they were dating, but he didn’t know many people here and vice versa. Chances were good that no one would talk to Ethan about her or her baby.

When her number was called, Callie clutched the clipboard to her chest and strode to the opposite end of the gym, where various relief agencies had set up temporary workstations.

“Let’s have a look, Miz Blume.” The worker met Callie’s gaze briefly as he took the paperwork, then he waved her into a chair across the table from him.

Callie wasn’t a Blume anymore, of course, but she didn’t bother to correct him. He looked vaguely familiar. He must remember her from her youth.

She hadn’t really considered herself a married woman for almost two years, anyway. Not since the day Ethan had abandoned their marriage and her life.

The man knit his brow as he read the application, then clicked his pen top once against the table as he turned the page. When he flipped the paper back, his scowl deepened.

Callie leaned forward in her chair, trying to see if she’d neglected to answer some question. When the man turned the page again with a heavy sigh, she reminded herself to be patient. She had no reason to worry. She’d analyzed every response as if it were test data.

The worker tossed the forms on top of his sizable stack, and Callie waited for him to speak. No matter whom he was helping, he should offer some instruction now, as well as a few kind words. But he didn’t. He sighed again and sat back in his seat, glaring past her head at the waiting crowd.

When Callie didn’t automatically vacate her chair, he repeatedly clicked his pen against the table. “‘Bout six weeks,” he said, then he clicked two more times before calling the next number.

Callie hadn’t been dismissed so rudely in a long time. She realized she was holding her limbs stiff, bracing herself against bitter memories. Of her mother, chasing outsiders from the yard with a pellet gun. Of the whispers she’d heard during her family’s rare visits to town. To the folks in Augusta, she would probably always be one of those Blume girls—a little pitiable, a bit mysterious and different enough to be feared.

But this man’s behavior, today, didn’t matter. Callie had returned to help her family, not to change people’s minds. She forced herself to relax, then stood and headed toward the open double doors. She’d locate her son in the nursery and get out of here.

Luke had plopped down in the middle of a round rag rug where several other toddlers were exploring a scattering of toys. While Callie approached, she watched her gregarious son hand a colorful block to a cute blonde who looked about his age, then another to a bigger boy.

Some days, everything Luke did reminded her of Ethan, and she spent a lot of time yearning for those wrecked hopes, and wishing that father and son could know each other.

But the risks would be too great. Just the thought of losing Luke caused Callie’s heart to race.

She had control, she reminded herself as she breathed slowly. Her husband had had only one contact with any of the Blumes over the past twenty-two months.

Before she’d come to Denver for Christmas last year, Isabel had run into him at a Wichita department store. Despite her affection for Ethan, she had let him know that the Blume women stuck together. That he should stay out of their lives.

Ethan probably wouldn’t come.

Callie was fine.

She picked up her son and cuddled him close, chuckling when he patted her cheeks and said, “Mum-mum.”

After thanking the nursery attendants, Callie retrieved her portable stroller from the coat closet, wrangled it open and clipped her son inside. She looped the diaper-bag strap over her shoulder, then wheeled Luke into the hallway.

As she prepared to enter the chill of a mid-April morning, she crouched down to zip Luke’s tiny red jacket and lift the hood over his dark brown hair. “Ready to go to Aunt Josie’s?” she asked.

In answer, Luke stuck a finger in his grinning mouth.

Callie smiled, happy that at least he’d have two loving aunts in his life. She stood and pushed the stroller toward the parking lot. People were too busy to pay much attention, but she didn’t want to be seen often with Luke.

On her way to the rental car, Callie reminded herself that Ethan had chosen the estrangement, not her. Yet if he learned about Luke, she’d risk losing the baby.

Ethan was Luke’s biological parent.

Callie wasn’t.

Thanks to a miracle of science, Ethan had actually left before she got pregnant. The fertility treatments had failed during the previous twenty-six cycles, so she’d held little hope for that last set of appointments at the clinic. And, after all, her husband had left her six weeks before.

However, Ethan’s presence hadn’t been necessary, and Callie had needed only to prepare her body for pregnancy and undergo the procedure. She’d imagined how wonderful life would be if her husband came home to such happy news, and she’d tried one last time.

She’d gotten lucky.

A precious life had implanted itself in her womb, and she’d maintained the pregnancy. In the end, it hadn’t even mattered that she’d had to use a donor egg. Only that she carried Ethan’s child. She’d been overjoyed.

But Ethan had never returned.

Callie hadn’t been able to overcome her broken heart to seek him out and tell him. She’d been alone when she decided to keep those last appointments. She’d been alone when she nurtured herself through pregnancy and childbirth. She’d gone on with her life. Precious Luke was hers alone.

Life would be easier if she thought of Ethan as an impartial sperm donor.

By the time she’d loaded Luke into his car seat, his bottom eyelids were turning pink. He’d been a trouper through all this, but the change in routine must bother him. Maybe he’d fall asleep on the way to Josie’s place.

After buckling him in, Callie pulled his favorite teddy bear from a diaper-bag pocket. She cranked the gear on its back that would play a tinkling version of Brahms’s “Lullaby,” then handed the toy to her son before loading the rest.

As she drove away from the church, she wondered how much progress her sister had made with the cleanup. In addition to the house, Isabel had inherited Blumecrafts, their mother’s home-based quilt and handmades business. She had no choice but to recover quickly.

Minutes later, Callie parked behind Josie’s building and noticed Isabel’s used two-door under the carport. Thanks to her auto insurance coverage, she’d replaced her destroyed vehicle yesterday. Unfortunately, her homeowner’s policy didn’t cover flood damage. Either her sister had dropped by to find out what Callie had learned from the financial aid people, or something had happened.

Callie opened the rental car’s back door and released Luke from his child seat. She chuckled when he squealed and bounced in her arms. Even after his too-short nap, he’d awakened easily and happily.

So much like his father.

Callie shuffled Luke onto a hip, grabbed the diaper bag, decided to leave the stroller in the trunk and locked the car before heading toward the building. Seconds later, she walked straight into Josie’s apartment through the open hallway door.

She found Isabel in the kitchen scrubbing grime from a sinkful of small craft tools. “Maybe you can leave the front door open at the house,” Callie said, “but you shouldn’t do that here. Anyone could come in.”

Isabel didn’t turn around. She had pulled her brown hair off her neck, emphasizing a tired droop to her shoulders. “Sorry,” she said. “The kids went out to look at my car a minute ago. They thought it was new, instead of new to me. Guess they forgot about the door.”

What kids?

Callie frowned as a tiny girl of above five and an over-weight boy maybe twice her age, each redheaded, came running into the hallway from Josie’s bedroom. The boy yelled something about the electronic game in his hand, while the girl tried to snatch it. After pausing to check out Callie and Luke, they took their noisy argument down the hallway and back to the bedroom.

“Who are they?” Callie asked, dropping Luke’s diaper bag on the kitchen table.

“Roger Junior and Angie.”

Callie had spent the past couple of days watching divorced farmer Roger Senior neglect her sister, but she hadn’t met his children until now. She frowned as the little girl’s shrieks grew louder. “Why are they here?” she asked.

“I’m babysitting.” Isabel glanced over her shoulder and smiled, which was amazing under the circumstances. She was temporarily homeless and scrubbing her fingers raw, yet once again her boyfriend was exploiting her giving nature.

And once again, Isabel was allowing it.

Callie put Luke down to crawl around on the floor, then crossed the room and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. As she pulled them into a healthier position, she said, “You’ll strain your neck muscles. Don’t you have important things to do today?”

Isabel dropped a quilting hoop onto a towel and turned around to lean against the counter. “Yes, but Roger had some barley to check and the kids’ school is closed this week,” she said. “The kindergarten corridor got half an inch of floodwater.”

“Roger should have kept his children home,” Callie said. “They are surely old enough to be alone an hour with their dad on the property. Especially the boy.”

Isabel closed her eyes, as if trying to block the censure in Callie’s expression. “He gets more done with them gone.”

“Where’s their mom?”

“Working at the discount mart.”

As her sister listed excuses for Roger and his ex-wife, Callie lifted her brows. After a minute, she sighed. She had often told her patient sister that Isabel would go berserk if she didn’t learn to stand up for herself, but if the devastation of a flood didn’t do it, Callie didn’t know what would.

Luke crawled toward the kitchen door, clearly lured by the hooting coming from the bedroom. Callie chased after him and scooped him into her arms before he moved out of sight.

“Anyway, it’s okay,” Isabel said. “Since you’re here, I can go to the house. Do you mind watching three kids for a while?”

“Nope.” Callie intended to give her sister whatever help she needed. As she transferred Luke from one arm to the other, she realized she hadn’t told Isabel about her morning at the church. “I filed the paperwork,” she said.

“Did they tell you anything?”

“Just that you’d hear within six weeks,” Callie said. “But I did learn that some charities are offering immediate aid in smaller amounts. I’ll check that out tomorrow.”

“I need money right away,” Isabel said, her blue eyes wide. “I’ll have to hire an electrician, a plumber and a couple of carpenters. We can’t handle the more complicated repairs, and I’m already behind on Blumecrafts’ orders.”

“I know. This money is meant for toiletries and clothes.” Dropping into a chair with Luke in her arms, Callie added, “I also learned that you aren’t the only one who got caught without flood insurance, Izzy. I heard a FEMA guy say he figured that less than a hundred Augustans were covered.”

“But there are eight thousand people living here!”

Callie nodded, then smiled at her sister. “When I was waiting to turn in the paperwork, I got the strangest feeling. Everyone in the waiting area looked overworked, maybe a little lost. For once, I felt like one of them.”

“I guess if there’s an upside to this flood, it’s that we Blumes are just a part of the crowd,” Isabel said. “And of course that we get to spend time together. I miss having you around, Cal.”

Their reclusive mother hadn’t trusted school officials, and had taught Callie and her sisters at home from kindergarten through high school graduation. For the most part, she had kept them at home, isolated from a world she considered evil. They’d felt like three against the world. Sometimes, they still did.

“I miss you and Josie, too.” Callie studied her youngest sister’s colorful kitchen. “You’ll be okay with money, I think. I’ll help with the bigger expenses until your funds come through, and Josie can help you refinish the inside of the house without it costing too much. We’re lucky to have an interior designer as a sister.”

As Isabel nodded her agreement, a loud scream sounded from the bedroom. Both women winced, and Luke’s wiggles grew more vigorous. “I hope Josie doesn’t mind having kids in her apartment,” Isabel said. “Or us cramping her space.”

“She’ll get over it.”

Roger’s children raced into the kitchen, and Roger Junior interrupted the conversation to ask if he and his bird-brained sister could watch television. Then the children continued their squabbling in loud whispers that made Luke giggle.

Had the entire world become bad mannered, or only the people in Augusta? Callie caught her sister’s eye and shook her head. Then she glared at the kids until they quieted.

“Well, Isabel, as you were saying, I’m here now,” Callie said, hoping to send a clear message that interruptions would not be tolerated. “You can go on over to the house.”

After Isabel had disappeared into Josie’s bedroom to get ready, Callie narrowed her gaze at Roger Junior. “One hour of television. Nothing lewd or violent.”

She followed them into the living room, where they flopped onto the carpet in front of the TV. When Roger Junior got up to grab a bag of chips from the top of Josie’s refrigerator, Callie stopped him. “No snacks in the living room,” she said, and ignored his complaints.

She left Luke on the living-room floor and waited for her sister to appear from the bedroom. “Will Roger’s kids eat lunch here?” she asked as Isabel carried a box of plastic gloves and some bottled cleaners to the front door.

“Roger should arrive to get them any minute,” Isabel said. “If he doesn’t, there’s peanut butter in the pantry.”

After Isabel left, Callie latched a baby gate across the kitchen entrance, shut the bathroom and bedroom doors and tossed a soft ball on the floor for Luke to chase around.

“You kids help me keep the baby safe, would you?” she bellowed over the noise of some cartoon. “If you open this gate, close it behind you. Doors, too.”

Roger Junior pressed the mute button on the TV remote control and glanced up. “Sure, ma’am.”

Callie noticed the change. With Isabel gone, the boy had become more respectful. Callie would guess that he took his cues from his father.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“Are you really a doctor?”

Grateful for his belated show of manners, Callie smiled. “Yes. I’m not an M.D., though. I’m a research scientist.”

“You look at human brain cells in petri dishes?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

The boy stuck his thumb up between them and scrunched his entire face into a smile. “Call me R.J.,” he said before he turned up the sound and returned his attention to the cartoon.

Callie chuckled, suspecting she’d just been given a supreme compliment.

“Can I pway wif your baby?” Angie asked.

Callie showed her how to roll the ball to Luke, and kept watching until all three kids were occupied. Then she climbed over the baby gate to search Luke’s diaper bag for a bottle.

Someone rang the doorbell. Must be the kids’ dad. Callie decided she’d offer to babysit for a while longer so Roger could hightail it to the house to help his girlfriend.

“R.J., answer the door, please,” she hollered, as she crossed to the kitchen sink to fill the bottle with water. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

Callie heard the door open, then an extended silence. She poked her head around the corner just in time to watch a tall, dark-haired man close the door behind himself.

But it wasn’t Roger.

It was Ethan.

The only man Callie had ever loved or trusted, and the only man who could hurt her.

Then. Now.

Forever.

Lord. In all the commotion, she’d forgotten her all-important plan. She wasn’t supposed to answer doorbells when she and Luke were alone. She should have thought harder about who might be standing on the other side of that door.

Luke sat facing the front door and smiling with the golden-brown eyes and dimpled cheeks that made him the spitting image of his daddy.

Rethinking her plan wasn’t an option. Callie barely remembered to keep her legs under her body. She propped a hand against the baby gate and watched as Ethan surveyed the children sprawled around Josie’s living room.

Did his eyes linger when they passed over his son, or was that Callie’s imagination?

Ethan’s gaze sailed across the space to meet hers. “Hello, Callie,” he said. As he stepped farther into the room, his eyes darkened to a serious brown.

He’d reacted to seeing her, not the baby, she realized.

Lucky thing. Callie’s secret was safe for the moment.

Still, her pulse pounded so furiously in her ears that she had the crazy notion Ethan could hear it, too. Her throat was dry, and her muscles were wobbly.

She needed to sit down.

No, she needed to grab her baby and make a run for it. But Luke was very near his father, which would mean that Callie would have to dash right past Ethan on her way out.

Right past the solid chest that had caught a million of her tears. Right past those muscular arms, and that passionate mouth.