What a Woman Wants

“Okay.” He slid his hands into his pants pockets. “What I was going to say is that I thought we decided to, um, let things cool off a bit. You know, after…”

After… Darby was well aware of what he was referring to. But like the “then” quotient, three months ago, neither one of them had seen this particular “after” coming.

She nodded. “We did. Agree, I mean.”

“So do you think it’s a good idea, then, for you to be coming into town like this and asking to talk to me in front of a motormouth like George?”

Darby glanced into the station to see that George’s mouth was indeed running like a well-oiled motor as he spoke on the phone. She looked skyward. “Oh, no.”

John’s eyes narrowed, but rather than the suspicion such an action would imply, concern warmed the mercurial depths. His eyes seemed to be ever changing. One time green, another time blue. But it was the depth that made her feel she might fall right into them and disappear as she caught him gazing at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. Just as he was looking at her now. Or with the flame of passion that had gotten them both into so much trouble and completely threatened a good, no, great friendship.

“Darby? Are you all right?”

He appeared about to touch her. For a moment she wished he would. She’d spent countless nights longing for his touch. Wishing they could go back to that day in the barn and start over again.

In the beginning she’d convinced herself that it was Erick’s touch she missed. Erick’s grin. Erick’s amusing wisecracks. It was only when she gave herself over to her dreams that she realized that somewhere over the past eleven and a half months she had stopped mourning her late husband…and begun lusting after his best friend.

“Darby?’

She looked at him, then said, “John, brace yourself. I’m pregnant with your baby.”

Chapter Two

J ohn had faced many events in his life. As a firefighter, he’d willingly stood in harm’s way to put out dangerous fires. As sheriff for the past four years, he’d faced countless criminals and had even been shot in the thigh—although, he wasn’t certain the shooting counted, because it had been an accident. All the same, he had been shot. And he had found himself in numerous precarious situations that set his heart to hammering.

But all of those events combined didn’t hold a candle to the shock he felt at Darby’s quick, quiet words.

She gazed at him expectantly as the sun rose over the brick two-story buildings across the street and illuminated her in a warm glow, setting her auburn-kissed brown hair afire.

This couldn’t be happening…. It wasn’t possible…. There was no way….

Darby was Erick’s girl. She’d always been Erick’s girl. Then his wife. The mother of his twin girls. Now Erick’s widow.

There was no way he’d gotten her pregnant.

Darby held her hand up between them, as if to ward off his words, though he hadn’t spoken a single one aloud. He noticed that her slender fingers shook, even as he seemed to be looking at her from some faraway place.

“Don’t say anything. I don’t want you to. I just…well, I thought you should know.”

She began to turn toward her truck.

John squinted after her. That’s it? She drives into town, makes him forget every last reason he shouldn’t lust after her, tells him she’s pregnant, then leaves?

He watched his hand reach out and grasp her arm, halting her, though he had no knowledge of sending the command. “That’s not possible.”

Darby slowly turned her head to look at him, her large green eyes filled with disappointment. “Trust me, John. It is.”

His grip tightened. “I didn’t mean…well, you know, that it’s not possible. What I meant to say is…” What had he meant to say? That it wasn’t possible because he didn’t want it to be? That she was Erick’s girl, always had been? That now she was Erick’s widow and it wasn’t possible that he had gotten her pregnant? Or maybe he should tell her that fatherhood was down so low on his priority list it was almost nonexistent?

Given the expression on her face, he suspected it would have been better if he hadn’t said anything at all. And he certainly wasn’t about to voice the rest of the thought fragments trailing through his mind.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Darby blinked at him, as if his question was the last she expected to hear. The disappointment eased from her face, although he wasn’t certain he was happier with its replacement. She looked…well, as confused as he felt. “I’m fine. Or as well as can be expected, I guess.”

Good. That was good. Right? “How?” he asked.

Her brow furrowed.

He swallowed hard. “I don’t mean how did it happen. I mean how do you know? Have you been to a doctor?”

She shook her head. “No. I did a couple of those home pregnancy tests. Both came up positive.” She glanced down to where his hand still lay against her jacket. “I guess I should have warned you that I have a tendency to get pregnant at the mere mention of sex.”

John’s gaze moved beyond her to the twins, who sat in the truck cab watching them curiously. He remembered when Darby had been pregnant with them. Her condition had been the reason her and Erick’s wedding had been moved up six months. Rumor even had it that it was the reason the twosome had married at all.

“I was on birth control, you know, until…”

Until Erick died. She didn’t need to complete the sentence. They both knew all too well why when there was no reason for her to be on birth control. Or should have been no reason. And he…well, he hadn’t exactly thought, hey, I’m going out to Darby’s, I’d better take some protection. Somehow he’d always thought that if it came down to it, he’d have enough self-control to protect them both.

“Are they reliable? The tests?” he asked, his voice sounding unfamiliar to his own ears.

“As reliable as can be expected, I guess.” Darby cleared her throat. “But they only confirmed what I already suspected.” She offered up a small smile. “I’ve been pregnant before. I know the signs.”

John’s hand slid from her sleeve, almost as if on its own accord, as the news slowly seeped through his shock.

“Look, John,” Darby said quietly. “I didn’t come here asking for anything. When I verified the results this morning, I just thought you should be the first to know. I really…um, haven’t thought things out beyond that. Not yet.”

He scanned her face, trying to make sense out of her words.

“Do the twins know?”

“Oh, dear God, no,” she whispered.

The blare of the truck horn made her jump. John swung his gaze to the giggling girls.

Darby blew out a long breath, obviously as anxious about her news as he was. She tucked her hair behind her ear and gestured toward the truck. “The only thing I told the twins was that I’d take them to breakfast this morning.” Hope backlit her eyes. “Would you like to join us?”

John took an automatic step backward. The idea of sitting with Darby and her girls for any amount of time knowing she was pregnant with his baby…well, scared him absolutely spitless. “I, um, don’t think that’s a good idea right now. I…” He glanced over his shoulder, almost surprised to find they were standing outside his office. He supposed he expected to be in some parallel, other reality. A place he was unfamiliar with that would take as much getting used to as the situation he was trying to absorb.

“Okay,” Darby said. “I understand.”

John squinted at her. Could she really be that understanding? Her expression was anxious but soft, no hint of accusation in her eyes, no expectation in her shaky smile. Which made him hate himself all the more.

He laughed humorlessly. “This doesn’t seem real somehow, you know? I keep feeling like someone should jump from the shadows and cry, ‘Candid Camera!’”

She nodded. “I know.”

Only, if anyone leaped from the shadows right now, John was convinced he’d draw his gun and shoot him.

He winced, his thoughts only dancing along the edge of what would happen when the town found out what he’d done.

He glanced first one way, then the other, down the street. Everything moved along much as it should on a weekday in Old Orchard. The shops and buildings that had been destroyed by the Devil’s Night fires last October had been rebuilt to their former, old-style glory and warmly reflected the morning sun. People went about their business as much as they normally did, a wave here, a greeting there. No one had a clue that Darby had just ripped the rug of John’s life out from under him.

The veracity of his position slammed home when he spotted old Mrs. Noonan slowly crossing the two-lane avenue, heading their way. And if she wasn’t bad enough, next to her walked the new pastor, Jonas Noble.

“Good morning, Sheriff Sparks. Morning, Darby,” Mrs. Noonan said, drawing to a stop beside them, a gnarled hand tucked into Jonas’s arm.

“Hello, Mrs. Noonan. Pastor,” John said, reaching up to tip a hat that he’d left inside. He eyed the other man, thinking of the gossip swirling around town about Old Orchard’s newest addition. As sheriff, he’d had no fewer than three requests that he check into Noble’s background, and he’d refused all of them. As far as he was concerned, keeping to oneself was no crime. Even if there was a somber, almost dangerous look to the pastor, a demeanor his pure black garb and longish dark hair only added to.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Jonas said now, his voice low and even.

Darby smiled but didn’t answer. Mrs. Noonan homed in on her. “Is everything all right, Darby?”

Darby blinked. “Pardon me?”

“The girls? The farm? I trust all is well?”

If Darby’s nod seemed a little too emphatic, John prayed he was the only one who noticed. “Oh, yes. Everything’s fine. Thanks for asking.”

Mrs. Noonan smiled. “That’s reassuring. Seeing as you’re in town so early and standing in front of the sheriff’s office talking to our young sheriff…well, I was afraid something might be amiss.”

Amiss. Now there was a word, John thought. Something was amiss. But if he had his way, Mrs. Noonan, Pastor Noble and George Johnson would be the last three to know about it.

Darby started backing up toward her truck. “Well, I’d better be going. You know, before the twins decide to leave without me.”

John lifted a stiff hand in a wave. “I’ll talk to you later, Darby.”

She avoided his gaze, concentrating, instead, on Mrs. Noonan and the pastor. “It was good to see you both. Give my best to the women’s club, Mrs. Noonan.”

“I will, dear.”

“Good. Good.” Darby backed straight into the truck bed, then turned around and virtually ran to the driver’s door. Within moments, the truck was rolling away, a short beep signaling a farewell.

Mrs. Noonan sighed and pulled on the ends of her crocheted sweater. “Pretty girl, our Widow Conrad. Wouldn’t you say, Sheriff Sparks?”

John tugged his gaze from the truck’s disappearing taillights. “Huh?”

The old woman smiled at him, then bid him a nice day and continued on down the sidewalk, Pastor Jonas Noble at her side.

Darby didn’t even have to close her eyes to envision John’s reaction to her news. His face seemed to be etched into her corneas, coloring everything she looked at. The sizzling heat his eyes held whenever he looked at her. The way he tilted his head just so in a teasing, cautious way. His full-on grin when he forgot what they were supposed to be and, instead, enjoyed what they were.

Given the sharp turn their lives had taken, what were they?

Over the past three months she’d been trying to come to terms with her ability to feel attracted to another man so soon after she’d lost Erick, much less wanting one as much as she had John that day in the barn. She’d scrambled for every possible excuse to explain her aberrant behavior. There was the fact that she craved human contact with someone, anyone, capable of carrying on adult conversation. That she missed her husband’s touch and yearned for a man to touch her as he once had. Then throw temporary insanity into the mix, and she figured she had all the bases covered.

The only problem was that her explanations didn’t stop her from wanting John. Worse, she yearned to feel his hot mouth on hers, his hands branding her breasts, even more now than before.

And now she was pregnant.

Darby crossed her arms and took a long, calming breath that did nothing to calm her. Absently she found herself wishing John was there with her, was voluntarily facing what she was alone. She caught herself and briefly clamped her eyes shut.

She looked around the cozy, lived-in waiting area of Dr. Grant Kemper’s old Victorian home on the outskirts of town. He ran his practice here, in an airy room off the foyer. Although he’d officially closed up shop and retired a few years ago, Darby could think of no one else to go to. Her regular ob-gyn was out. To be seen even in the vicinity of the central Old Orchard medical complex would set phone lines on fire within a minute of her appearance. She didn’t kid herself into thinking she could keep her secret for long. She absently splayed her fingers across the flat expanse of her stomach. Oh, no, her little secret would make itself known in her or his own sweet time. But she needed this quiet time to herself for as long as she could hold on to it, if just for the simple fact that her condition was so unexpected. So life-altering.

She rubbed her brow and glanced toward the still-closed door to her right. To the town she was the poor Widow Conrad, whose firefighter husband died a heroic death nearly twelve months ago, leaving her with two young girls to raise all by her lonesome. But while the well-meaning townsfolk saw her that way, she saw her situation completely differently. She wasn’t poor. Not by way of finances, not psychologically. She’d known that every time Erick walked out the door to go to work she might never see him again. She’d accepted it when she’d married him. And while his being ripped from her life had left a gaping hole she had feared would never be refilled, she never once thought her own life was over. Things would just be…different from there on out. She and the twins and the farm and her photographic art. That was how it would be. If sometimes the loneliness she felt deep into the night seemed to reverberate straight through her, if every now and again she felt overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of her responsibilities…well, all single parents felt that way from time to time, didn’t they? She saw herself as neither unique nor worthy of pity.

Besides, she had two beautiful girls as a result of her brief time with Erick.

Her fingers stilled against her stomach. And soon she’d have another child to add to the mix. John’s child.

“Darby?”

So immersed in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed the examining-room door had opened and that Doc Kemp stood there watching her expectantly. She smiled and scrambled to her feet. “Sorry about that. Got lost in thought.”

Doc motioned her into the room. With his portly build, bushy gray hair and full beard and mustache, there was a decidedly Santa Claus-esque look to him she found appealing. Darby entered the room and he left the door open. She darted to it, looked out into the empty waiting area, then softly closed it.

“Ah. I remember you doing something similar a while back,” Doc said. “Approximately seven years ago.”

Darby realized he was right. She had done exactly the same thing when she’d feared she was pregnant with the twins.

“Same reason?” he asked.

Darby blinked, looking over the gleaming, precisely placed instruments on a snow-white towel on a countertop that ran the length of one wall. The neatness of the sheet that covered the black leather examining table. The room smelled of disinfectant and somehow made Darby feel safe. She released a long breath, unaware she’d been holding it until that very moment. She laughed quietly. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

If the doctor’s eyes widened ever so slightly, if he looked momentarily puzzled, he didn’t let on. He merely turned toward a cabinet, took out a kit similar to the over-the-counter ones she’d used herself at home that morning, then motioned toward the connecting bathroom.

Half an hour later, following a pelvic exam and the urine test he’d given her, Darby sat fully clothed on the examining table, feeling an odd mixture of relief and anxiety. Calmed that she’d come to the only person in Old Orchard who wouldn’t judge her. And about ready to jump out of her skin at the thought of her suspicions being confirmed. For once they were, there was no going back. No hoping that she’d been way off base, that the two tests she’d done that morning could be wrong, that she wasn’t pregnant, even though everything she felt flew directly in the face of those hopes.

Doc came back into the room from where he’d left her alone to get dressed and rolled his stool over toward the table. He smiled at her. “Three months along is about my guess.”

Darby didn’t have to guess. She knew exactly the moment the baby within her was conceived. And not only because it was the only time since she’d lost her husband that she’d been intimate with anyone, but because being intimate with John had shaken her to the core, awakened myriad emotions, longings that no self-respecting widow with two young daughters should be feeling.

Even so, Doc’s word gave birth to yet another unfamiliar emotion. Joy. Simple joy that her special yet brief time with John had resulted in a baby that would forever be a part of her life. Even though she feared John wouldn’t. A completely selfish feeling she couldn’t help herself from embracing.

“There, there now,” Doc said softly, urging a tissue into her hands. Only then did Darby realize her eyes had welled over with tears. “If I recall, you had the exact same reaction when you found out the twins were on the way. And look at where you and they are now. It wasn’t the end of the world, was it?”

She managed little more than a shake of her head. She couldn’t even attempt to tell him that her tears were as much out of joy as sorrow.

Doc Kemp reached out and rested a liver-spotted hand on her knee. “You’ve been through a lot in the past year, Darby. I won’t lie to you, I’m a little surprised to see you here, sitting on my examining table again after so long, facing the same problem, but I’m the last person to judge anyone on their actions.” His expression grew solemn. “But you don’t have to do this alone, you know. We’re all here for you.”

Darby put her hand over his. “Thanks, Doc. Unfortunately not everyone’s as understanding as you are.”

“Maybe not. But they’re not all that bad, either.”

“Maybe.”

She wished she could be as convinced as Doc. She’d learned long ago that people liked to fit you into a certain, predictable mold. Should you break free of that mold, step outside that neat little box, judgment could be swift and unkind. The same townsfolk who continued to help her around the farm, showing up on her doorstep with tools in hand determined to assist her through her loss, might all turn in the other direction, leaving her alone. Where now they whispered, “That’s the poor Conrad widow. Awful, the way she lost her husband and those poor kids their father,” when they found out she was pregnant they might say, “Not even a year since her husband died. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket and that one is hurrying it along.”

She wouldn’t even consider what they would say when they found out her late husband’s best friend was the baby’s father….

“A baby,” she whispered.

Doc patted her knee again, then removed his hand.

“I can’t quite bring myself to believe it.” She ran her damp palms over the denim of her dress.

Doc nodded. “Babies are known to have that impact on people.”

He rolled his stool over to the counter, swiftly wrote something down on a pad, then scribbled something on the back of one of his business cards. “You’ll probably want to consult with your own ob-gyn when you’re ready?”

“Yes.”

He smiled and handed her a prescription. “This is for vitamins.”

She glanced at what he’d written and said, “I’ve already been taking them.”

“Good girl.” He pressed the other card into her hand. “I’m heading out to Myrtle Beach tomorrow. This is the number I’ll be at.” He curved his hand around hers. “If you need anything, anything at all, call me.”

“I will,” she said quietly, although she knew that she wouldn’t. She’d already asked too much of him. No, what she had to face, she had to face alone. Correction, she and her small family would face, together.

From the other room, the front door slammed, followed almost instantaneously by the opening of the examining-room door. Darby gave a start, then found herself staring straight into Tucker O’Neill’s face. She wasn’t sure who was more surprised. Then quickly decided he was the more surprised. While he had no reason to expect her to be there, she knew he’d been staying at Doc Kemp’s place for some time now. A doctor himself, he’d opted not to follow in his mentor’s footsteps and instead, took great pleasure in working in the emergency department at the county hospital.

Doc Kemp frowned at him. “I’ve always told you you needed to learn some manners, Tuck.”

The younger man barely seemed to register the gibe. “I didn’t know you’d hung the shingle back out, Doc.”

Darby watched Doc shift the file he’d made for her into a drawer, then close it. He turned to face them. “I haven’t. This is a personal visit. Isn’t that right, Darby?”

She nodded and forced a smile. “Personal.”

“And even if it weren’t,” Doc said, “whatever happens in this house is strictly confidential. Isn’t it, Tuck?”

Darby felt suddenly as if the topic had moved beyond her to something that existed between the two men. Especially when Tuck grimaced. “I’ll be back in a while.”

Just as quickly as the door had opened to let Tuck in, it closed on his departure, leaving Darby once again alone with Doc. She slumped and groaned.

Doc crossed to stand in front of her, a reassuring smile on his grandfatherly face. “What Tuck does or doesn’t suspect is not what’s important right now, Darby. Remember that. I’ll see that he doesn’t go shooting his mouth off where he shouldn’t.”

She looked into his eyes, wanting to feel at ease with his reassurance, but unable to. “I appreciate it.”

He squeezed her shoulder.

A king. A man in charge of his domain. All-powerful, all-knowing. That was how Sheriff John Sparks usually felt when seated in his office. He dropped the telephone receiver back into its cradle, then pushed the paperwork in front of him aside. Okay, so maybe he only felt like that sometimes. When he was alone, took a deep breath and allowed his more fundamental side to step out from the shadows. But he never indulged the emotions for more than a few moments. Never longer than it took him to square his shoulders, puff out his chest and quell the desire to beat his chest like Tarzan.

He fingered the papers needed to transfer the federal prisoners back where they belonged. Of course, right now he felt like the film that coated the bottom of his shoes. Like Judas for betraying his best friend. Like a heel for treating Darby as if she’d just told him she was coming into town to buy some new tires, not tell him she was pregnant.

Good God.

Just thinking the words made his gut twist into knots.

Pregnant.

Baby.

Mother.

Father.

Holy cow.

Propping his elbows on his desktop, John scrubbed his face with his hands.

First in community college law-enforcement classes, then at the fire-department academy, he’d learned how to save lives, protect lives, even take a life if it came down to it. But never in his thirty years had anyone ever talked to him about creating a life.

He grimaced. Okay, there was the botched attempt his father had made when he was ten. It had been all John could do not to laugh as Walter Sparks had awkwardly paced in front of him, where he sat on the bottom bunk in the room he shared with Ben, reciting a speech John was sure he’d used at least four other times with his older brothers. Remembering it now, he thought that with eight kids of his own, his father should have been a pro at relating just how children came into being. But he hadn’t been. Most of John’s knowledge about sex had come from his older siblings and his peers.