Another Love, page 7
“You must like my mommy a lot, since you want us to marry you and stay with you and our baby.” Timmy made a statement, but the inflection in his voice made it sound more like a question.
Blake could handle that one. “Sure. I like both of you a lot,” he said, getting up and motioning toward the house. “I promised your mom we’d talk when I got home, so I’d better head on inside now. Would you like a push?”
“No thanks. I can do it myself. Michelle taught me how. What am I supposed to call you after you and Mommy get married?” Timmy asked as he rolled along beside Blake on the sidewalk that led to the back door.
“I’d like it if you wanted to call me ‘Daddy,’ but if you’d rather, you can just use my name.”
“Blake? Like Mommy calls you?”
“Yes.”
Timmy rolled along quietly for a few seconds, before announcing that he thought he’d like to think this over for a few days. Though he hadn’t considered sleeping arrangements before, Blake considered Timmy’s assumptions. Perhaps he needed to have Erin’s things moved into the master suite before they married.
* * * * *
Blake didn’t talk with Erin right away. Instead, he had Mary serve their dinner on trays so they could watch a movie with Timmy on the giant screen TV in the family room. After helping tuck the sleepy little boy into bed at nine o’clock, he walked Erin to her room.
“Get ready for bed.”
After having stayed awake most of the previous night worrying about what to do, Erin was too tired to bristle at Blake’s terse command. When she emerged from the bathroom in her oversize T-shirt and lay back on the bed, he was still there, apparently waiting to pull the sheet and light blanket over her legs and tummy.
“I’ll be right back,” he said once he’d tucked her in. “We need to go over some things.”
He was back in a flash, his black leather briefcase in hand. “I think I’ve taken care of most everything,” he said, settling on a chair next to her bed and fishing out several neatly typed sheets and some kind of a legal document bound in stiff, blue paper. “Here, these are for you.”
If Blake thought he had arranged every detail, he probably had. “What do I need to do?”
“These are the arrangements for the ceremony. All you need to do is go with me to get the license and go buy whatever you’d like to wear. The license, we can get late tomorrow afternoon. I thought Miguel might take you shopping first. Then he can bring you to meet me at the courthouse around four o’clock.”
“Sandy said she’d take me shopping. It would save her from having to drive me back here if she could just drop me off at the courthouse. If you wouldn’t mind driving me back?” Erin had agreed that Blake’s house would become her home, but she couldn’t think of it as such, at least not yet.
“I planned to.” He smiled, but then his expression sobered. “Erin,” he said after a long pause, “you said you wanted Timmy to believe this marriage would be real. And I agreed. Don’t you agree that if we’re going to succeed in this little deception, we’re going to have to become a lot more comfortable with each other?”
“What do you mean?”
“He means, you’re going to have to get close if you’re going to pull off this without folks asking a lot of embarrassing questions,” interjected the familiar ghostly voice.
Blake shrugged. “I mean, we’re going to have to be together occasionally without Timmy there as a buffer. More than occasionally after the baby is born, because if we don’t do things as a couple, people will think there’s something strange about our marriage. We need to be friends, even if we’re not lovers.”
“But we hardly know each other.” Blake certainly had shown no interest before in becoming pals.
“You’d best be getting acquainted, Mommy. You two are going to spend a lifetime raising that baby, you know.”
When Blake smiled, his deep blue eyes seemed to brighten. “You’re right. My point is, we need to get to know each other. After all, we’re going to be married. And we’ll be parents in less than a month. We’re going to be sharing one big master suite if not one bed. I won’t bite.”
“All right. By the way, it was nice of you to suggest we all watch that movie together.”
“I enjoyed it. You know, I don’t think my parents ever spent a whole evening with me, just relaxing at home.”
“He’s right, Erin. Like I told you before, his parents were something else again.”
“I kn—I mean, really?”
Blake raised an eyebrow at her inadvertent slip, but he apparently chose to ignore it and give her another bit of his life history. “Really. My father lived and breathed the law, and Mother’s world still revolves around whatever her jet-setting friends are doing. I’m going to need a lot of guidance, but I intend to be the best parent I can be to my children.”
Blake sounded matter-of-fact, but Erin imagined a lot of turbulent emotion lurked behind his simple declaration. Of all her doubts—and there were many—one was not that Blake would be anything but a caring father for his child. “You’ll be a wonderful dad.”
“Are you ever going to relax around me?” Blake asked suddenly. “Look at you, you’re as strung out as an embezzler caught with his fingers in the till.”
He’d be strung out, too, if he had a ghost popping in and nudging him nearly every time he turned around. Realizing she’d clenched her fists, Erin released them, though she imagined the strain of being here alone with Blake and the omniscient but invisible ghost of his dead wife showed plainly on her face. “I’m sorry. I can’t help feeling vulnerable, lying here undressed with you there, fully clothed, handing down ultimatums.”
“Would it help if I took off my shirt?” Blake set the blue-bound papers on the bed and attacked the second button of his pale yellow dress shirt. His grin told her he was joking now.
But she wasn’t. The sight of his hard-muscled chest, dusted lightly with dark brown hair, made her mouth go dry and her heart beat in double time. How could he not affect her when he shot her such an irresistible smile?
“Stop it.” Frantically, Erin searched the room, searching for that golden aura that usually surrounded Glenna’s ghost.
“Uh, I think it’s time for me to go. I’ll be back,” Glenna whispered as Erin watched a trail of golden dust float through the closed patio doors.
She looked back at Blake quickly, but not soon enough to keep him from giving her a very puzzled look. “What’s wrong?”
Erin hesitated. Part of her wanted to tell him about the ghost, until the saner portion of her brain intervened. If she hadn’t seen Glenna, she wouldn’t have believed. There wasn’t a chance in the world that she could make Blake believe in the ghost’s presence. Finally she found her voice. “Nothing. What is this?” She picked up the blue-bound, official-looking document Blake had set on the bed and leafed through it.
“It’s a form we both need to sign, rescinding the surrogate arrangement.” Blake stopped unbuttoning buttons and met Erin’s gaze. “I don’t want this baby ever to know you agreed to have it and give it up for money.”
He still thought what she did was wrong.
Erin’s hurt must have shown, because he reached out and touched her—not her hand or face, but the round, hard mound that defined their child. “I understand why you did this. And I respect you for it, but you’re going to be this baby’s real mother now. Do you want him or her to find out some day that you originally intended to have him for someone else?”
No, she didn’t. But to sign another paper? It had been hard enough to sign the first one. “Why can’t we just rip up the original contract?”
“Because copies have been filed with the family court. These papers rescind the permission you gave for me to adopt our child at birth. I’ll get the original papers back when I present these to the judge. Then we can tear them up. We can even burn them if you’d like,” he offered lightly.
“All right.”
Glenna told Erin last night that Blake was a good man who could love deeply and well. Erin knew that was true. Knew she could easily love him if she let herself, and that he’d love his child. But she doubted Glenna’s assessment that he would someday be ready to love a woman again.
“I’m going to go now, let you get some rest. I’ll meet you tomorrow afternoon so we can get the license. Other than that, you won’t need to do anything except be in the garden room at seven o’clock on Saturday. Here, I almost forgot. You’ll need these if you’re going shopping. I don’t want you worrying about the costs.” He pulled some credit cards out of his pocket and set them on the table.
It ruffled Erin’s fierce sense of independence that Blake should pay for her wedding dress, but she didn’t protest. Her depleted checking account currently boasted forty-eight dollars and some odd cents, not enough to go very far toward decking her out as a blushing if very pregnant bride. Besides, she imagined she should save arguing with Blake for something that mattered more than a bit of tattered pride.
Chapter Eight
“Keep away from that sale rack,” Sandy cautioned when Erin headed toward the sign that advertised another fifty percent off already-reduced prices.
“Yes, do. And put that dreary navy-blue thing back. Where do you think you’re going? To a funeral?”
Erin looked around. Glenna couldn’t be here, in this little out-of-the-way maternity boutique where the clothes all wore discreet designer labels and even more discreet but obscenely expensive price tags. But there she was, perched on the corner of the antique desk that served as a cash register, so dainty and pretty she made Erin feel like a circus elephant about to be fitted for a new tent.
“Do you like this one?”
Erin turned to her sister, who was holding up a pale pink organdy dress with a white linen collar.
“Only if it comes with a matching outfit for one’s little girl.”
Erin laughed at Glenna’s observation. The dress, with its short puffed sleeves, Peter Pan collar and the gathered skirt that billowed from a yoke complete with lace insertions, did remind her of a giant version of a child’s party dress.
“What’s so funny?” Sandy asked.
“Oh, nothing.” Glenna grinned, Sandy looked perturbed, and Erin felt as though she might go stark raving crazy before she got out of this place. “I don’t think that will do.” Erin shook her head at the offending garment and pulling another dress off the rack.
“Too somber.” Sandy was apparently not impressed by the tiny white flowers on a background of black cotton. “And not dressy enough.”
“She’s right. If I know Blake, he’ll be wearing one of those gray pinstriped suits and a somber tie. You don’t want your wedding pictures to look as though color film hasn’t been invented yet. Here. Try this one.”
Erin reached out quickly to grab the garment that almost leaped off the rack at her. It was pale blue, gauzy silk, with a low scooped neckline and a skirt that fell in soft, wrinkly pleats from the empire bodice. For a maternity dress, it was gorgeous. Then she looked at the price tag and gasped, putting it back on the rack with a sigh of regret.
“I like that one,” Sandy said. “Go try it on.”
“It’s too expensive.” Determined to find something that would please both her sister and her ghostly friend, Erin flipped through the size eight selections on the sales rack. “Here, this should do.” She held up a silvery gray jumper whose black silk blouse would lend a slimming effect to the ensemble.
“This is not a funeral. Lord knows, we’ve had enough of them.”
Erin whirled around and looked at Glenna, shocked.
“What? I can’t say that? We can’t ignore it. It happened. Now put away that outfit and go try on the one I found for you. So what if it’s expensive? Didn’t Blake tell you not to worry about the cost?”
The dress practically fell into Erin’s hands again. “I guess I’ll try this one on after all.” If she did, and if she looked like Dumbo the Elephant, then she’d have an excuse not to buy it.
“You look gorgeous,” Sandy said with wonder when Erin stepped out of the dressing room.
“I look pregnant. Very, very pregnant.” Erin felt huge but pretty in the soft, blue dress.
“But it’s his baby. He’ll think you’re beautiful.”
“Sandy, this dress costs almost a thousand dollars.” It felt good, though. Erin ran her fingers over the crispy, crinkled silk that formed a calf-length skirt.
“Every one of Blake’s suits cost more than that. And when I died, he donated a closet full of my clothes that cost fifty times the price of that dress to charity, just to get them out of his sight. You’ve got to put things into perspective. Get the dress. It’s gorgeous, and so are you.”
Glenna slid off the corner of the desk and moved to a display of jewelry. “I want to pick out something, just to you from me. Here. See this necklace and earrings. They will look beautiful with that dress.”
“Are you going to get it?” Sandy paced around Erin, looking at her from all angles. “The cut must be what makes it so expensive. It makes you look radiant, not blimpy. Come on, Erin, buy it. You can lend it to me someday when I’m expecting Greg’s baby,” she added, a dreamy look on her face.
Erin felt pulled toward the locked display case Glenna had indicated. “I’m going to get it, but it’s insane to spend this much. Even if Blake can afford it.” Then, she saw the jewelry that had caught Glenna’s eye.
There were three roses crafted of gold, with shiny blue dew drops that looked like sapphires. The smaller ones were earrings, and the larger one a pendant on a fine gold chain. The workmanship took Erin’s breath away. She loved them, but after noticing the smile on the clerk’s face as she opened the case, she realized they must cost as much or more than the dress.
“You like them, don’t you? I knew you would. Go ahead. Take them. Our Blake isn’t much of a jewelry man—I had to buy most of my own trinkets when we were married.”
Erin recalled the simple string of creamy cultured pearls Bill had given her the day before their wedding, regretting for a moment that she’d sold them to raise money for Timmy’s first, long hospital stay. Blake had said he’d be giving her a ring, but she imagined it would be the only token she’d get to remember this very practical, unemotional union.
“I’ll take these, and this dress,” she told the clerk. “Sandy, do you think we’ll have time for me to find a pair of shoes?”
“Sure. There’s a store two doors down.”
As Erin gathered her packages and prepared to leave the boutique, she saw Glenna surrounded by that golden haze that always seemed to herald her arrivals and departures. She could almost swear Glenna gave her the thumbs-up sign along with an exaggerated wink.
* * * * *
The next afternoon, Erin recalled Glenna’s farewell gesture and felt she could use some cheering up, even if it did come from a ghost. Timmy had gone with Blake to get a haircut. Mrs. Malone was busy with getting things ready for the ceremony and the meal that would follow.
Erin had been ordered to nap, but sleep wouldn’t come. For a little while, she tried to conjure up Glenna in her mind. When that didn’t work, she let her mind wander to another day, another wedding.
Had she ever been that young and that naive? Erin pictured herself at twenty-one, starry eyed as she’d walked slowly down the aisle. Her dress had been traditional—white lace on satin, with a chapel train. Her veil had obscured her view of Bill’s handsome, smiling face. And she’d been the traditional bride, ready to love, honor and cherish the young man who became her husband for as long as they both might live.
She tried to picture Bill, to recall how he’d looked and what he’d said when they cut the three-tiered wedding cake at her parents’ home after the ceremony. She thought hard, trying to recreate their wedding night in a small hotel on the beach in Galveston. Those memories had faded to a sepia glow. Unfortunately the ones that still lay heavily on her mind weren’t nearly as glowing. Erin couldn’t help the feeling of sadness that swept over her.
They’d shared good times in spite of time and circumstances that dulled the joy of first, young love. She’d stayed home while Bill worked his way up the corporate ladder at a small electronics company. He’d been the original party animal, and until Timmy’s birth, they’d enjoyed constant sensual adventures.
It was impossible for Erin not to compare Bill’s initial distaste for fatherhood with Blake’s wholehearted enthusiasm for his coming child. Bill had adored Timmy from the day he was born, though. He’d been a good dad until that rainy Saturday nearly four years ago when he’d run his financed-to-the-hilt silver Porsche into a tree, killing himself and crippling his little boy.
Now, as she prepared for her second wedding, Erin told herself this rational, logical union would work out. Better than her first marriage that had begun with two kids in love and ended in a mass of twisted metal on a highway outside Dallas.
By the time Sandy arrived to help her dress, Erin had a mask of calm, cool assurance firmly in place. It was only inside that she was shaking, praying silently that she was doing the right thing for Timmy, this new baby, Blake, and herself.
* * * * *
Blake was having similar feelings after he left Timmy with Mary and made a final inspection of the room where Erin would be sleeping from now on. In another two hours, she’d be his wife, and that thought brought on sharp, agonizing pain. He saw the room not as it was today, but the way it used to be, reflecting Glenna’s presence in every whimsical detail she’d added through their years together.
Every item had commemorated a special time. The woven Navajo rug Glenna had bought while they camped in Arizona because its colors reminded her of the desert sunrise…that glistening rough-cut blue topaz they’d found in the wilds of Panama… Even the massive four-poster bed he’d commissioned from a famous Appalachian craftsman while they vacationed in Gatlinburg had brought back memories…
