A Child Of Her Own

“She told me her daughter is one of your students.” Rick shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Are you taking any new students right now? I mean, I know it’s in the middle of the year and all.”

“I take new students all the time,” Lori Lee told him. “I have classes for ages three to fourteen, and I give private lessons to older girls and to students who excel, or those who need a little extra help.”

Rick glanced at the hot-pink mug she held in her hand. “Don’t let me keep you from drinking your coffee. It’ll get cold.”

“Oh.” She had forgotten all about the mug until he reminded her. “Would you care for some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

“It’d be too much trouble.”

“Don’t be silly. Sit down. I’ll get you some.”

Why had she invited him to stay? Why was she pouring him a cup of coffee? Had she lost her mind? A guy like this wouldn’t need much encouragement before he moved in and took over. She’d had sense enough at seventeen to steer clear of him. Why wasn’t she that smart now?

“How do you take your coffee, Mr. Warrick?”

“Black. And call me Rick.”

She handed him a mug, being careful not to touch him. “Please do sit down.”

When he sat on the sofa, she perched on the edge of the chair across from him. As they sipped their coffee, they stole quick glances at each other.

“How much do you charge for lessons?” he asked.

“I charge by the month. Two classes a week. The basic fee is thirty-five dollars, but that doesn’t include extras like costumes and—”

“I’d like to enroll my daughter.” He took several gulps of the hot black liquid, then placed his mug on the metal-and-glass coffee table in front of him. “She’s six, in the first grade at Southside. I’d like for her to make friends with the kind of little girls I saw here today.”

“Has she ever taken dance or baton lessons before?”

“Nope. But I bought her a baton for Christmas a couple of years ago and she plays with it all the time.”

“She would have to start out in the beginners’ class with our three-to-six-year-olds. When she begins to show progress, I’ll move her up into Twinkle Toes.”

“She’s sort of shy, and I’m afraid she’ll turn out to be a loner like her old man. I don’t want that,” Rick said. “I’d like for her to fit in and be accepted.”

The way I never was. He didn’t say the words, but Lori Lee knew what he meant. She hadn’t known much about Rick, except that he’d been shuffled from one foster home to another, and that his younger sister, Eve, had been adopted by a good family who hadn’t wanted Rick. No one had wanted the hellion he’d been back then.

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Darcie.”

“Well, bring Darcie by the studio tomorrow afternoon so she can meet the other girls in the beginners’ class, and we’ll show her what twirling is all about.”

“I don’t know if I can take time off from work tomorrow, but I’ll see what I can manage. If I can’t bring her, I’ll get my sister to.”

“You’re going to drop by with the estimate for the new heat and air system by tomorrow, aren’t you?” Lori Lee asked.

“Yeah.”

“Bring the estimate by at the same time you bring Darcie, that way you won’t be taking time away from your job,” Lori Lee suggested. “Since my Aunt Birdie owns the building, I’ll have her come over and talk to you while I show Darcie around the studio and introduce her to the other girls.”

“Yeah. Sure. Thanks.” Rick stood, walked over and picked up his coat. He slipped into it and lifted his toolbox. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yes, see you tomorrow. You and Darcie.”

She followed him, pausing when he opened the front door and turned to face her. “Look, Lori Lee, I know when I left this town, people were glad to see me go. I’d earned myself a pretty bad reputation.”

“That was a long time ago.” She could smell his sweat, not an offensive odor, just a rough, masculine scent that blended with the clean smell of his clothes and hair.

“I haven’t been a saint these past fifteen years, but I’m doing my best to settle down and provide a home for my daughter.” He stared into Lori Lee’s big blue eyes and felt himself drowning. If he’d known she had moved back to Tuscumbia, would he have come home? “Darcie is my main concern. Everything I do, I do for her.”

“I understand,” Lori Lee said.

He nodded, then turned and walked out the door and down the sidewalk to his parked minivan, Bobo Lewis Heating And Air-Conditioning printed on the side in bold black lettering. She stood in the doorway and watched him until he drove down Main Street and the van disappeared around the corner on Fifth.

She’d told him she understood his devotion to his child, and she did. If she had a little girl, she would make her daughter the center of her universe. But she could never have the one thing she wanted most—a child of her own. Regret knotted her stomach. Sorrow clogged her throat with unshed tears.

Lori Lee went back inside the studio, sat on the edge of her desk and flipped through her Rolodex, then made her first telephone call to cancel her private lessons for the day.

Lori Lee chopped up the pack of lunch meat into tiny pieces and dumped it into Tyke’s doggie bowl. The brindled Boston terrier jumped up and down, gazing at Lori Lee with huge brown eyes.

She set the bowl on the floor and petted Tyke on the head. “Here you go, baby. Eat up while I fix my supper.”

While Tyke gobbled up his meal, Lori Lee removed a single-serving casserole from the refrigerator and popped it into the microwave. As she waited for her dinner to warm, she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the round table that was dressed in lace and floral fabric matching the kitchen wallpaper.

Leaning back in the cane-bottom oak chair, she sighed. It had been a long day. She was tired, hungry and unnerved. She’d decided to wait until morning to tell Aunt Birdie the bad news about the central heat and air at the studio. She wasn’t overly concerned about the expense for her aunt, who probably had enough money to buy and sell the whole town. Birdie’s fifth husband had left her millions, and she’d been far from poor before Hubert Pierpont’s death. No, what Lori Lee dreaded was telling her aunt that Rick Warrick would be installing the new heating equipment and that he planned to enroll his daughter in the twirlers.

Birdie Guy Jackson Lovvorn Hill McWilliams Pierpont was a woman who loved men and simply couldn’t understand how her favorite niece had gone nearly six years without a significant other. As far as Aunt Birdie was concerned, dating didn’t count. A woman needed to be in love, and if she were in love, she should either be living with the object of her affection or married to him. Lori Lee fell short on all counts.

Aunt Birdie had been Lori Lee’s confidante as long as she could remember. She’d told her aunt things she’d never even told Deanie. And since her parents had moved to Naples, Florida, three years ago, after her younger brother Ronnie’s death, Lori Lee had become even closer to Birdie. Maybe it was her aunt’s big, warm heart or her zest for life that had always assured Lori Lee that Birdie would not only understand but sympathize.

If she had listened to her crazy Aunt Birdie’s advice when she was seventeen, Lori Lee would have acted on her feelings for Rick Warrick and ridden off with him on his motorcycle in the middle of the night. But Rick had frightened her, and she’d kept her distance, seldom even speaking to him. But in her dreams, awake or asleep, she had fantasized about being his woman.

She wasn’t a teenage girl anymore. She was an adult who had just turned thirty-two on her last birthday. She was old enough to know better than to allow her hormones to dictate her actions. And her hormones had certainly gone into overdrive this afternoon when Rick Warrick reentered her world

It wasn’t as if there weren’t men in her life. Actually there were more men chasing her than she knew what to do with, but not one of them made her stomach do flipflops or her blood sizzle with excitement. Ever since her divorce from Tory had become final and she’d moved back to Tuscumbia, there had been a steady stream of eligible, and a few not so eligible, men beating a path to her door. Several of those men had offered her marriage, but she had declined.

She’d been madly in love with Tory McBain, the big, handsome star quarterback for the University of Alabama, whom she’d married at twenty-two and divorced four years later. Their marriage had ended badly, leaving both her heart and spirit broken. But Lori Lee knew one thing for certain, she would never marry again until she could love someone else with that same kind of wondrous passion.

She supposed what upset her the most about being exposed to Rick’s rough and rugged brand of male sensuality was that she was still as scared of him as she’d ever been. The effect he had on her frightened her because it was stronger than anything she’d ever felt. Not even her love for Tory had been as powerful.

But she didn’t love Rick. How could she? She barely knew him. No, she didn’t love the man. She just wanted him—wanted him in a desperate, almost savage way she had never wanted anyone else.

Two

Rick set two bowls of vegetable soup beside the plastic spoons and paper napkins on the card table. He wasn’t much of a cook, but he made sure Darcie got three decent meals a day. A couple of times a week, they ate supper at his sister’s, but he tried not to impose on Eve more than he had to. She already did too much for them, and Rick accepted her help only for Darcie’s sake. In the two years since his ex-wife’s death, he had discovered just how difficult it was for a single man to raise a child alone. Especially a tiny, shy, insecure little girl who was just now beginning to trust him enough to believe he wouldn’t leave her.

When April had been killed in a car crash, along with her drunken boyfriend, Rick had had no choice but to take Darcie on the road with him. He’d been a construction worker most of his adult life, ever since he’d done his stint in the army. Seven years ago, he had wound up in Mercy Falls, South Dakota, where he’d met a barfly named April Denton. April had been a looker. Big blue eyes. Long blond hair. And a body to die for. The first time he saw her, he’d thought of Lori Lee Guy. There’d been a striking resemblance between the two, but where Lori Lee was a class act—a Southern belle with a pedigree as long as his arm—April had been cheap and flashy. They’d burned themselves out after a few weeks of passion, and Rick had moved on to another town and another woman. Then April had called him and told him she was pregnant. He hadn’t wanted to marry her, but in the end he had. He’d done it for the child, even though he hadn’t been sure, at the time, the baby was really his. No kid deserved to come into this world unloved and unwanted, as he’d been.

“Daddy, are the grilled cheese sandwiches ready?” Darcie asked.

“Huh?” Rick’s mind jumped from the past to the present. He picked up the metal spatula and flipped the sandwiches in the electric skillet. “Any minute now, sweetie. Go ahead and start on your soup if you’re hungry.”

“Shouldn’t I say grace first? They always say it at Aunt Eve’s before they eat.”

“Sure. Say grace.” Rick bowed his head.

“God is great, God is good. Now let us thank him for our food. Amen.” Darcie looked up at her father and smiled.

Her two front teeth were missing. He hadn’t known a damn thing about the tooth fairy until Eve had explained all about the mysterious spirit who gathered up teeth from beneath children’s pillows and left money in their place. Darcie’s two front teeth had cost Rick four bucks—two dollars a tooth. Eve had told him that front teeth were more expensive, and in the future a dollar a tooth would suffice.

Rick lifted a sandwich and placed it on a paper plate beside Darcie’s soup bowl, then repeated the procedure with his sandwich. He pulled out a folding chair and sat down across from his daughter.

“Am I going to have to stay over at Aunt Eve’s tonight?” Darcie slurped her soup, then took a bite out of her sandwich.

“I’m afraid so. I’ve got to work, and you’re just not old enough to stay out here in the apartment by yourself.”

Rick hated leaving Darcie alone several nights a week, but he had no choice. If he wanted to earn enough money to buy Bobo’s half of the business before the old man retired, he had to work a second job, if only part-time. His and Darcie’s future depended on him, on his making a place for them in the community and earning enough money to give Darcie the kind of life he’d never had.

He wanted his daughter to have every opportunity, and it was up to him to make sure she got the chances she deserved. If only the right people would accept her, allow her to become friends with their children and invite her into their inner circle, Rick would pay any price. But with his former reputation and past history hanging around his neck like an albatross, finding acceptance for himself and his daughter in Tuscumbia might prove an impossible task. But he sure as hell was trying. If they’d just give him a chance, he’d show the good citizens how much he had changed, how determined he was to be a good person, too. He’d do just about anything for Darcie’s sake.

“What kind of car is it you’re fixing for that man?” Darcie asked.

“It’s a 1959 Corvette,” Rick said. “And the man I’m restoring the car for is Powell Goodman. He’s a lawyer and a pretty important guy around these parts. His father and grandfather were both judges.”

“Aren’t you an important man, Daddy?”

Important? Him? To most people he was about as important as yesterday’s trash. “I’m just an ordinary guy, sweetie. A man trying to make ends meet and give his kid a better life than he had.”

Darcie scooted out of her chair, walked around the table and, standing on tiptoe, flung her arms around her father’s neck. “You’re an important man to me, Daddy. Very, very important.”

If Rick had been an emotional man, he might have teared up at his child’s sweet, loving proclamation. But Rick hadn’t shed a tear since he’d been younger than Darcie was now. He’d learned early on that nobody gave a tinker’s damn whether he was upset, lonely or hurt. Poor little A.K. Had his own parents ever loved him? Sometimes he wondered if his mother had given him only initials for a first name because it had been quick and easy, no bother for her. But by the time he was in junior high, all his buddies called him Rick, taken from Warrick. And to this day, he preferred the nickname over the solitary initials on his birth certificate.

Rick hugged his daughter, kissed her on her forehead and nuzzled her nose with his. She giggled gleefully. “Thanks, big girl. I think you’re a pretty important person, too.”

“Snooky-nose me again, Daddy.” Darcie pressed her tiny button nose against her father’s long, lean, hawkish nose.

She loved to play what Rick had dubbed “snooky-nose,” where they rubbed their noses together. He repeated the nuzzling, then lifted her and set her down in her chair. “Eat your supper, young lady. I’ve got fifteen minutes to eat, clean up our mess and get you over to Aunt Eve’s.”

“When you own all of Mr. Bobo’s business, then will you be able to stay home with me every night?” Darcie lifted her grilled cheese sandwich.

“You bet.” Rick devoured his soup and sandwich, occasionally glancing at his daughter who nibbled at her food.

He supposed he should see April every time he looked at Darcie. She had the same blond hair and blue eyes, but since she’d been a toddler, every time he looked at his daughter he saw himself—and Lori Lee. Darcie had his facial structure, his wide mouth with a thick bottom lip and his prominent chin, but she was all blond, blue-eyed loveliness like Lori Lee. Once he’d realized Darcie really was his child, he had fantasized that Lori Lee was her mother instead of April.

More than anything, he wanted his daughter to become the kind of woman Lori Lee Guy was.

“While I clean up here, you get your pajamas and your school clothes for tomorrow ready to take over to Aunt Eve’s.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

He knew he had to bring up the subject of enrolling her in the Dixie Twirlers, but he wasn’t quite sure how she’d react. Darcie was shy and had had a difficult time making friends at school.

“Hey, Darcie, how would you like to take baton lessons from a very nice lady?” Rick dumped their disposable utensils, bowls, plates and cups into the garbage sack.

“Do you mean Miss Lori Lee’s twirlers, Daddy?” Darcie clutched her footed pajamas to her chest. “The Dixie Twirlers?”

“You’ve already heard about them, I see.”

“Oh, yes, Daddy. Steffie Royce and Katie Webber are in Twinkle Toes. They get to go to contests and march in parades and—”

“Do I take this enthusiasm to mean you’d like to enroll in classes?” Rick scoured the soup pot with steel wool, then rinsed the container and turned it upside down on the drainboard.

“Can I really? You aren’t kidding me, are you?”

“Tomorrow, after school, Aunt Eve can bring you by the shop, and when I take over an estimate to Miss Lori Lee on a new heating and cooling system, you can go with me. I told her about you today. She wants you to meet the other girls in her beginners’ class and see if you want to join them.”

“I want to join them. I want to join them!” Darcie jumped up and down, then flew across the room and into her father’s arms. “You’re the best daddy in the whole wide world!”

Dear God, what had he ever done to deserve this precious child? He knew he was far from the best father in the world, but if love and devotion counted for anything, then maybe he had a chance of someday earning that title.

“Well, well,” Birdie Pierpont mused, dramatically rolling her big green eyes heavenward. “Life never ceases to amaze me. Just when I’d given up hope of you ever awakening from your hundred-year celibate sleep, along comes Prince Charming to awaken you with a sweet kiss.”

“Rick Warrick is no Prince Charming,” Lori Lee said. “And he’s certainly not going to awaken me with a kiss.”

“No, you’re quite right, sugar. Rick is more a beast than a prince, and I imagine his kisses are more passionate than sweet.”

“Argh!” Lori Lee stormed out from behind the checkout counter in her costume shop and straightened a perfectly straight row of leotards folded neatly on a table. “This is the very reason I didn’t want to even mention Rick’s name to you. I knew you’d start cooking up some scheme in that evil brain of yours.”

“Thank you, sugar, for the compliment. So seldom does anyone appreciate a truly evil brain these days.” Birdie, all two hundred pounds, five feet four inches of her, rounded the corner of the counter and followed her niece.

“I wish I’d never told you about my crush on Rick when I was a teenager. Mother would have been shocked senseless if I’d ever told her that you advised me to go riding off on his motorcycle with him.”

“Look, my dear Miss Prim and Proper.” Birdie planted her pudgy hands on her wide hips. “You’ve been as fidgety as a worm in hot ashes ever since you learned that A. K. Warrick was back in Tuscumbia.” When Lori Lee opened her mouth to protest, her aunt held up a restraining hand. “No, no. Don’t you dare deny it. Since your divorce, you’ve led all the men around here on a merry chase, but not once have I seen you foaming at the mouth. Not until now.”

“Birdie Lou Pierpont, you have the most vulgar way of expressing yourself.” Lori Lee leaned over into the front window, got on her knees and began fiddling with the display. “I am not foaming at the mouth.”

“I’ve been accused of worse things than vulgarity.” Birdie fluffed her curly white-blond hair. “It wouldn’t hurt you to come down off that pedestal the men in town have placed you on and get a little vulgar yourself. I’ll bet Rick could teach you how to get down and dirty.”

Lori Lee crawled out of the display window, turned sharply and glared at her aunt. “Will you please stop this? Rick is going to be here any minute to bring us the estimate for the new heat and air system, and he’s bringing his daughter with him. I want you to promise me that you’ll be on your best behavior.”

Puckering her mouth into a sulk, Birdie crossed her fat arms over her ample bosom and let out a loud huff.

Lori Lee loved her Aunt Birdie dearly, but more often than not the woman tried her patience. She’d never been able to understand how her straitlaced, churchgoing, engineer father could possibly have an older sister as wild, zany and totally unorthodox as Birdie.

“I’ve seen him and his little girl, you know.” Birdie inspected her clawlike red fingemails.

“Where?”

“Around.”

“You never mentioned it to me.”

“I knew you’d been trying to avoid him,” Birdie said. “But I also knew that in a town this size, your paths were bound to cross sooner or later.”

“I have not been avoiding him! There is nothing going on between Rick and me. There never has been. There never will be. He’s going to oversee the installation of the new heat and air system, and I’ll see him when he drops his daughter by for classes and picks her up. That’s the beginning and end of my association with Mr. A. K. Warrick.”

“Fine. Far be it from me to interfere in your dull, lonely life.”

“My life is neither dull nor lonely, thank you very much.”

“Oh, don’t thank me, my dear.” Birdie smiled, cracking her full face into dozens of tiny, thin wrinkles. “You must thank men like Powell Goodman and Jimmy Davison for filling your life with so much passion and excitement.”

“I’m not looking for passion and excitement!”

“Pity.” Birdie tsk-tsked and shook her head sadly. “Rick would be just the man to give you both, but since you’re not interested... Of course, he does have one thing you might want.”

“There’s nothing he has that I want.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Lori Lee said adamantly.

“Not even his child?”

“Are you implying that... For your information, several of the men I date have children, if I wanted a man for that reason.”

“Yes, but all of the ones with children also have exwives,” Birdie reminded her. “I understand Rick’s wife is dead.”

“I’m going to say this one more time, and then we’re not ever going to have this discussion again. Rick is not my type. He wasn’t fifteen years ago, and he’s not now. We have nothing in common.”

The front door opened and the UPS carrier delivered a large box. Lori Lee signed for the package, exchanged pleasantries with the deliveryman and lifted the box to the top of the checkout counter.

Just as she found a knife and positioned it to rip apart the box, the door opened again. She glanced up and her heartbeat accelerated. Rick walked in holding the hand of the little, blond angel at his side. Lori Lee glanced back and forth from Rick to his child. Tears misted her eyes. She looked down, concentrating on opening the box, trying desperately to hide her reaction.

Rick’s little girl could be her little girl. The little girl Lori Lee had carried in her body for five months. The little girl who’d been unable to live outside her mother’s body.

“Well, Rick, how are you?” Birdie padded across the floor in her sock feet, leaned down and held out her hand. “Hello there, cutie. You must be Darcie Warrick.”

“How’d you know my name?” the child asked, gazing up at Birdie, a tenuous smile quivering on her lips.

“Aunt Birdie knows all sorts of things about people,’ Birdie said. ”Especially people who interest me. And you, Darcie, interest me a great deal.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do.”

“Why?”

“Well, you come with me and I’ll get you a cola and show you all the wondrous things in our little Sparkle and Shine shop here, then I’ll tell you why you interest me so ’ Birdie offered Darcie her hand. The child accepted, then looked to her father for approval.

“It’s fine, sweetie. You go with Miss Birdie,” Rick said.