He stood up, checking his watch, and she rose with him.
“No time for coffee?”
She was relieved when he shook his head. No sense prolonging this goodbye; she had a life to get on with.
“Can I look you up in Boston when I get back?” he asked at the door.
“Of course!” She accepted his light kiss on her lips but did not respond. A year from now she did not expect to be single, waiting to hear from Jake Macintyre. Even if she was, there was no way she would take his call. All she wanted to do was forget the last twelve hours had ever happened.
After an entire year away from home, Jake had a severe case of culture shock. Just a few days earlier, he’d been in Tibet, living in a Buddhist monastery. He’d eaten no meat, spoken only rarely, and scrubbed the rough floors by hand. Now he was sitting at his brother Jamie’s opulent dining table, where the odor of charred flesh assailed his nostrils.
Jamie poured ruby-red wine into the crystal wineglass in front of him. “I picked up a case of this Merlot the last time I was on the West Coast.” He flashed the wicked grin all women loved. “Along with a full-bodied redhead to match.”
Uncle Matt threw back his head and laughed. “Eat up, boys. The steak is perfect. Medium-rare.”
Jake watched his uncle bring a forkful of meat to his mouth. Its center was a glistening shade of red-black. His stomach clenched as he considered eating the bleeding lump of meat on his own plate. He took a sip of the wine instead, but the tart liquid seemed to expand in his mouth and he had to swallow hard to get it past the lump in his throat. Even the water he gulped from the heavy goblet tasted peculiar, and he imagined invisible contaminants entering his purified body.
Matt speared the steak on Jake’s plate with his fork and transferred it to his own. “I think you’re jetlagged, boy. Don’t worry, you’ll be back on your feed in a day or two. Meanwhile, no sense wasting prime beef.”
Jake had grown up with Jamie and Matt, and he knew the three Macintyre men had a reputation in Wickham for being typical, taciturn New Englanders. Yet it seemed like since he’d been back, they’d done nothing but talk, talk, talk.
“You’re right. I’m exhausted.” He rubbed his forehead, where it felt like his brain had swollen and was pushing against his skull. “I think I’ll just crash in the den and grab something to eat later.”
Although Jamie’s apartment, a penthouse with a view of Boston harbor, was decorated in a minimalist, masculine style, his leather sofa would have screamed “decadence” to the monks, and not just because it was covered in animal hide. As Jake sank into the cushions, he smiled, remembering the discomfort of the pallet he’d slept on in the monastery, and the way his body had protested with aches and pains for the first week of his stay. Now everything felt too soft. It didn’t keep him from dropping off to sleep within seconds, however.
“We hope to have the results of the strike-vote by the end of the broadcast.” The soft, female voice pulling him out of the depths of sleep was familiar. Familiar and seductive.
He forced his eyes open, and eventually focused them on the plasma television screen mounted on the wall. A commercial for a local auto dealer was blaring. He figured out he’d slept for hours, and Jamie had come in to watch the eleven o’clock news — with no concern that it might wake up his brother, of course. Matt would have gone back to Wickham, since it was a weeknight and he started his day at five.
“Will we have another perfect day tomorrow, Ron?” The anchorwoman with the sexy voice finally reappeared. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Her face was the one that had haunted his dreams as he traveled through Russia, and as he tossed and turned on his monastic pallet in Tibet. It was the face that had made all others unappealing for the last year.
“Violet.” He spoke her name out loud, forgetting Jamie was in the room.
His brother laughed from the Eames chair. “So you’re not dead, or in a coma. Although I wouldn’t have thought Violet Gallagher was your type. As Uncle Matt would say, she looks a bit too much like she just stepped out of a bandbox.”
Now that Jake’s vision was clear, Violet was gone from the screen again, replaced by Ron and his satellite weather maps. He’d seen her long enough to notice her long dark hair had been cut and reshaped into a formal, sprayed-in-place style, high and tucked behind her ears. Her makeup and jewelry were bold, and her jacket was a bright shade of pink.
“She’s much softer in person,” he told Jamie. Although she’d been the most beautiful woman at the party, when Jake pictured her — which was more often than he wanted to — it was the way she’d looked the next morning, sleeping beside him, with all traces of self-consciousness gone.
She was in Boston now, and he’d been engaged in a constant debate with himself since he returned. Should he call her? Or should he find someone else, and have the kind of short-term fling he was accustomed to, one that didn’t leave him uselessly yearning for more?
“How do you know her?” his brother asked. “I didn’t think she started working at Channel Twelve until after you left last June.”
“She moved here from Wickham. I went to her going-away party with Uncle Matt the night before I left.” As it had so many times, the memory of that night came back to him intact. The soft breeze on the balcony, the tentative kiss that quickly became urgent. The mind-blowing night in Violet’s bed. At the airport the next day, he’d even considered staying — until he considered the contracts and lawyers and how unemployable he’d be after stiffing his publisher.
“That’s all?”
For the first time in his life, Jake was reluctant to share the intimate details with his brother. “That’s all.”
“I was worried for a minute. It always seemed like there was something off about the artificial insemination story.”
In the past few days, English had sometimes made little sense to Jake, something he’d ascribed to the rapid cultural changes. Although he knew what artificial insemination meant, he couldn’t grasp its context here. “You’ve lost me.”
His brother clicked off the television just as Violet reappeared on the screen, and Jake swallowed back a protest.
“
Miss
Gallagher has been on maternity leave for the last three months. Single motherhood isn’t unusual these days, but the story is she planned it, picked a sperm donor out of a catalog. She’d just started her new gig, so it doesn’t seem likely, does it?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know her well enough to know what she’d do.” He hoped his voice sounded normal, and not as shaky as he was feeling.
Jamie rose and stretched. “Time for me to turn in, I’ve got a flight to New York in the morning. An opportunity to design a new building in Manhattan. When I get back, you’ll get to meet Pamela.” His new woman, whom he swore was
the one
.
But Jake had heard that before, and couldn’t think about it now. As soon as his brother left the room, he grabbed the remote and brought the oversized screen back to life. Violet was reporting that airline baggage handlers would strike the next day, her face showing concern. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Violet, the sweet enchantress of his dreams, was a mother now. Her baby had been born three months ago. He did the math.
Was the child his? If so, why hadn’t she let him know? He could call Richard Rayburn and ask him; when he’d checked his email earlier that afternoon he’d discovered a message from Violet’s former co-anchor. He said he’d gotten the cable job in Boston and wanted to do a story on Jake’s new book. No, Jake decided, he’d go straight to the one person who was sure to know the answer to his question. His agent, Millie, knew everyone in Boston and he’d bet she could get him the address.
On his way to his room, he opened Jamie’s door and stuck his head in. “Go with a carry-on tomorrow. Just a suggestion.”
• • •
When Violet got home at midnight, she was wide awake, jazzed up from caffeine and adrenaline, and yet exhausted to the very core of her being. She’d been tired for three months now. Although the nanny had been living with them for a few weeks, Violet still woke up every time the baby cried, milk soaking the T-shirts she wore to bed.
Her brother Seth was watching television in her living room with a big bowl of popcorn on his lap.
“Where’s Carrie?”
“She went to bed right after the news.”
“Good. I can have Daisy all to myself when she wakes up for her midnight feeding.” She began to strip off her jewelry, beginning with the heavy earrings. They didn’t believe in the natural look at Channel 12, and she hadn’t been there long enough to feel she could make it an issue.
Seth reached up for her hand and pulled her down on the couch beside him. “Vi, Daisy doesn’t wake up for a midnight feeding anymore.”
“Of course she does. Last night … ”
“You woke her up, and all she did was fuss. She wasn’t hungry. Carrie just fed her two hours ago.”
She took a deep breath, trying to forestall the tears that came so frequently in the past year she’d had to make a permanent switch to waterproof mascara. “I don’t think Daisy likes Carrie. She’s been so fussy, off her schedule.”
Seth moved the popcorn to the coffee table and held her hand in both of his. “Remember, I’ve been through this already. A baby’s schedule changes several times in the first year, something you, the queen of schedules, will just have to learn to accept. She’s probably fussy because there’s been so much upheaval lately. Carrie coming to live in, you going back to work. She might even be upset because I’m here.”
“Daisy loves you! I don’t know what either of us would have done without you.”
Her tears welled up again. She remembered her frantic phone call to her brother the night she’d finally done the pregnancy test, and how he’d gotten on a redeye flight from California and arrived the next morning. Her period was a month late; she’d already moved to Boston and begun her new job.
We used condoms every time
, she kept telling herself, followed by
life changes are stressful, and stress can make a period late
. Finally, she admitted the truth. The condoms were old, and stress had never made her late in the past.
Once he’d gotten the whole story out of her, Seth had asked, “Mistake or not, you want the baby, don’t you?”
She’d nodded, too overcome with emotion to speak. This might be her only chance to be a mother, and she already loved the child growing inside her. Although she’d never considered single motherhood, she was well established in her career and could afford to raise a child on her own. She believed every child should have a father, but she would worry about that later. Jake was not a candidate for the position, that much was clear. Maybe she’d make a new plan — the
father
plan — and find someone mature and responsible. Someone she wouldn’t have to call on the French Foreign Legion to locate in an emergency.
“What about the guy? Are you planning to tell him?” Seth had asked her next.
“I don’t even know how to find him,” she’d replied, although of course Matt Macintyre would know how to reach his nephew. But why bother? “The night this happened he didn’t tell
me
he’d be leaving the country the next day, so I don’t feel like I owe him anything. And I don’t want my child to have a father who’s always coming and going, like … ”
“Monty.” Neither of them ever referred to him as Dad. That honor belonged to their stepfather.
Together they’d come up with the idea of telling people single motherhood had been her choice, planned all along. They could believe it or not, but at least no one would ever guess the father’s identity. Except possibly Jake Macintyre, and she tried not to think about that. Tried not to think about
him
, and how magical the night of the party had seemed. Or how foolish she’d been to jump into bed with a man she knew nothing about, all because she was in a rush to find her special someone. Ironically, she had — her name was Daisy Gallagher, and Violet couldn’t imagine life without her now.
Going back to work had been the most recent crisis, and once again she’d made a tearful phone call to her brother. For the first time in her working career, she hated her job. She just wanted to spend every minute with her baby, nursing her, cuddling her, and gazing into the bright eyes already changing from dark blue to tawny brown. Seth had disrupted his life and come East without a moment’s hesitation.
“I’m sorry I took you away from Jenna and Ian,” she said now. “I know you need to get back to San Diego.” Her sister-in-law was seven months pregnant, and should have her husband home to help her — a luxury Violet didn’t have. All she had was the nanny, a young woman who lowered her eyes when Violet spoke to her. Although Carrie was pleasant and competent, their relationship hadn’t warmed up in the three weeks she’d been living under her roof.
Seth put his arm around her and blotted her eyes with his handkerchief. “I have a business meeting here tomorrow morning, but I should leave the next day. Will you be all right?”
She sighed. “I’ll have to be.”
• • •
Violet nursed Daisy when she woke up at six, then handed her over to Carrie and went back to sleep. She was disappointed when she woke up again a couple hours later to find a note under the sugar bowl saying the nanny had taken the baby for a walk in the park a few blocks away from the townhouse.
She poured herself a cup of the coffee Seth made before he left for his appointment and sat down with the newspaper, but she couldn’t concentrate. Why did she need to read the paper, anyway, when she’d be reading the news to all of Boston at six and eleven? She cradled the cup in both hands, and eventually a tear dropped into it and disappeared in the dark liquid. Reporting the news had once seemed all-important to her, but now she couldn’t remember why.
Although she knew the baby wasn’t there, she followed her urge to go up to the nursery, where she lifted a soft pink blanket from the crib and held it against her face. She breathed in the intoxicating scent she hadn’t even known existed until three months ago. Baby.
Her
baby. With the blanket draped over her shoulder, she washed her face and brushed her teeth, then pulled her hair into a short ponytail. She’d had it cut only at her station manager’s urging, but had to admit it was easier to manage now that her life was so hectic.