The Baby Season

Bad as all that was, it couldn’t touch what she looked like above the neck. Straw-encrusted hair struggling to escape the ponytail, face sunburned and dirty, crimson and white and brown.

She turned away from the mirror. A cool shower would help. A shower had to help.…

She emerged sometime later with tingling pink skin and a mop of wet hair. A glance in the bathroom mirror revealed a face still colorful, but clean. A blow-dryer took care of the hair as long as she was careful to keep it away from her skin. Lotion helped with the burn. She didn’t want to use Grace’s cosmetics, and her own were still locked in the trunk of her car, so she’d have to go without mascara, her one concession to beauty. She didn’t need blush she thought with a smile, but when she found a tube of Vaseline, she smeared a little on her finger and gently applied it to her lips, sighing with relief. Heaven!

Wrapped in a towel, she let herself back into Grace’s bedroom and found a black dress laid out on the red-and-yellow quilt. Next to it were two pieces of lacy black underwear, the tags still attached.

Roxanne put on the black strapless bra and panties that fit like a second skin. She didn’t own any lingerie as beautiful or luxurious—it always seemed silly to spend money on something no one else ever saw.

Not even Kevin, thank the Lord. The swine.

The black rayon dress had an elastic waist and neckline and a full skirt that draped softly to below Roxanne’s knees. She cinched it at the waist with an incredible silver-and-turquoise concho belt she found lying beside the dress. She pulled the neckline down off her shoulders and looked in the mirror. Not too bad. Considering everything.

She left her hair loose on her shoulders, slipped her feet into a pair of Grace’s black sandals that were only a little snug and piled her own belongings into a pitiful heap on a chair.

She was ready to look for Sal.

Grace handed Roxanne a glass of iced tea the minute she entered the kitchen. “I knew that dress would look great on you,” she said.

“Thanks. I really appreciate the loan. It smells heavenly in here.”

“Doc said to remind you to keep drinking fluids and to take a couple more buffered aspirin. I put them out on the counter for you.”

As Roxanne swallowed the pills and hoped they would somehow magically make her skin feel less prickly, she said, “I don’t suppose Oz called?”

“Nope.”

“You waitin’ for Oz, you’ll be here a while,” Carl said as he pushed a wheelbarrow full of blue sacks of crushed ice into the kitchen. He started emptying them one by one into the large bowls that cradled the smaller bowls of perishable food. Looking at Grace, he abandoned his ice and went to stand beside her. “How you feeling, honey?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You look tired. Maybe Doc should—”

“No, Carl. Now, stop, honey. I’m fine.”

They exchanged a lingering look. Roxanne finally noticed that Carl wore a wedding ring identical in design to the one Grace wore.

“I just don’t want you overdoing it,” he said. “Doc said you have to take it easy this time.”

Grace patted his cheek tenderly, lifting a spoon from the pot of bubbling sauce to his lips. “Tell me what it needs.”

He tasted. “Salt.”

As Grace added a pinch of salt, she glanced at Roxanne and explained, “I’m pregnant,” she said. “I had a miscarriage last year, so we’re being extra careful this time.”

“Of course. Uh—congratulations.”

Beaming, Carl and Grace said, “Thanks,” in unison.

As they worked side by side, Roxanne thought to herself that Jack Wheeler’s house had a very nice feel to it. How wonderful it must be to grow up with kind people like these, in a house this warm and welcoming, with a father whose eyes flooded with joy when he caught sight of you.

Lucky little Ginny.

Even without a mother?

Well, as Roxanne knew, there was more than one way for a mother to absent herself. Her own upbringing had been adequate but formal. Her mother was fond of saying she just wasn’t demonstrative, as though being aloof was a commendable character trait. Roxanne had known she was an “accident” before she had the slightest idea what that meant.

If she ever got married and decided on having children, what kind of mother would she make? Would she be like her own mother or might she be more like her grandmother? The two of them represented opposite ends of the parenting spectrum. One was perpetually annoyed at any inconvenience, one was full of serendipity. One threw money at any problem, the other gave love. How could Roxanne tell what she would be like?

After downing the tea, she rinsed out the glass in the copper sink. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Carl shook his head as he moved his operation to a large metal kettle filled with cans of soft drinks. Grace said, “No, really, everything is under control. Why don’t you go on out? People are beginning to arrive.”

Roxanne turned in the direction Grace gestured and saw double French doors. Peering through the glass, she saw a large, enclosed courtyard paved with brick in a herringbone pattern, boasting a bubbling fountain and haphazard pots of flowers. Chairs were clustered around tables heaped with nonperishable food and piles of presents. Two huge creamy umbrellas created shade over half the area. The perimeter was dotted with more doors leading into other rooms and an arch open to the outside. A few people had arrived, and Roxanne searched for a sign of Jack.

Face it, she thought in a moment of truth, she’d been straining for a sight of him or the sound of his voice ever since entering the kitchen. She’d been pleased he’d thought about her sunburn, though she supposed that kind of concern went with being a doctor. Now she scanned the few assembled people. Jack wasn’t among them and she fought to hide her disappointment, even from herself.

Was she anxious to show him what lay beneath all the dirt and grime? Did she want to surprise him, intrigue him, the way he’d been surprising and intriguing her from the first moment he rumbled into her life?

“Now, who are you?”

Roxanne turned to find a small woman peering at her. She wore her silver hair cut short around a heavily lined face to which the sun and passing years hadn’t been kind.

“I thought I knew all of Jack’s friends, but you’re a stranger,” the woman added.

Roxanne introduced herself.

“I’m Sal. Glad to meet you, Roxy.”

Roxanne shook hands as she smiled at the friendly, wrinkled face of the woman staring back at her. All she could think was that this woman had to be close in age to the missing Dolly Aames. If she’d lived here long enough, they would have been peers, maybe even friends. Her mission, which had begun to seem daunting, suddenly came into focus. In a few minutes, she’d hopefully know more about Dolly.

Roxanne explained about her car. “I’m waiting for Oz to call,” she added.

“He won’t call this afternoon,” Sal said, shaking her head. “Lisa is in a state. The twins have colds.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Jack will have to go see them tomorrow.”

“You call him Jack? Everyone else seems to call him Doc.”

“I helped raise him,” she said proudly. “Once you wipe a kid’s nose, it’s hard to start thinking of him as a grown man.”

Roxanne smiled at the image that suddenly sprung before her eyes, of Jack as a child, with a runny nose. Had he looked like his daughter or did his daughter look like his wife? Why did she care? Anxious to get the conversation—and herself—back on track, Roxanne added, “Jack said you might be able to help me. I’m looking for someone.”

“Glad to help. I know most everyone in these parts. Bound to after all these years.”

“Great. The woman I’m looking for moved to California almost forty years ago. I think she ended up right here or very close by. Of course, she might have married and taken a new last name or moved away entirely. Anyway, I’m trying to find her. Her name is Dolly Aames.”

There was a heartbeat when the scant ten inches between the two women suddenly seemed to close to millimeters, then just as abruptly crack open like the Grand Canyon.

Sal blinked rapidly and said, “I’ve never heard that name. I can’t help you.” With a decisive nod, she let herself out into the courtyard.

Roxanne narrowed her eyes.

That hesitation had spoken as loud and clear as the sudden blanching of Sal’s face.

Sal knew something about Dolly Aames.

Chapter Three

“Duck,” Jack said as he entered the courtyard through his bedroom door, Ginny on his shoulders. Ginny giggled as she lowered her head, and once outside, Jack paused for a moment to scan the few faces that had already gathered. No Roxanne.

Good. He wished she had quietly accepted his offer of an out-of-the-way room until Oz got back to her. He toyed around with the idea of having Carl drive her into town, to the motel, where she would be out of sight, out of reach, but he needed Carl here. It’s just that he didn’t want to see Roxanne Salyer again.

That was the biggest lie he’d told himself in months, and he knew it. The truth of the matter was that he was aching to see her. He could tell himself it was to check on her sunburn, but again, that was a lie. He just wanted to see her, that was all. Cleaned up, he wondered if she’d look all professional like a big-city television producer. Maybe she’d lose that waiflike appearance the desert had forced on her. Maybe she’d be so different that he could find a way to forget he’d ever met her.

After all, she wasn’t his type.

Only, what type was she? Sure, her looks were different than the kind of woman who usually got under his skin. But what did looks have to do with anything?

The purely male part of him knew looks had a lot to do with everything. Not just height and weight and coloring, but that inner something that glowed in some women, that seeped through their every little pore and made them iridescent.

Even if their pores were clogged with desert sand?

Even then. Some women had it. Roxanne had it.

Jack mentally slapped himself upside the head. He was thinking like a fool. Still, he couldn’t imagine his ex-wife, Nicole, taking the time or trouble to track down a family friend unless there was something in it for her.

Family meant everything to him. Perhaps it came from being an only child, raised out on a ranch, away from town, with parents who doted not only on him but on each other. Some of Jack’s first memories were of being about Ginny’s age, sitting in the saddle in front of his dad, his mother on her own horse. They’d head up to the mountains where there were a zillion places to picnic with a view as big as the world. Or so it seemed to him.

This memory always flooded him with emotion as it was on this very ride, years later, that his mother’s horse had bolted, then stumbled, throwing her to the rocky ground. She’d died within hours. Jack was eight years old at the time, but he could still remember the numbing grief.

Eventually, however, life on the ranch had resumed its contented pace mainly because of Sal. She’d started working at the Wheeler place as a housekeeper. After his mother died, she’d become more important.

After losing his wife, Jack’s father had rededicated himself to his role as town doctor. Jack had decided early on to follow in his father’s footsteps. He’d envisioned the two of them practicing side by side, and they had for a few years until a stroke claimed his dad. Still, smack in the middle of his career, Jack felt with all his heart that he was doing what he was meant to do.

That and being a good father. Being a father counted—he would always be important to Ginny, she would always be important to him. Man/woman relations, marriage—now that was a different matter. Relationships changed. Nicole had changed.

The marriage should have worked; that’s what never ceased to amaze him. Nicole had grown up on the other side of Tangent. He’d known her for years, thought he knew all about her. They were both products of the same culture, with family roots stretching deep down in the same sandy soil. This should have made for a happy union.

He now understood that Nicole had decided he was her best bet for escape.

Truth of the matter was that neither one of them had leveled with the other. He’d taken it for granted she understood he was a man who was doing exactly what he wanted to do. He’d ignored the signs of her restlessness, of her darting interests and longing for wild escapades. If he thought about it at all, he chalked it up to spirit, reminiscent of his mother.

By the time their differences surfaced, Nicole was pregnant. Jack suggested counseling but capitulated when she refused. And after Ginny was born, he decided he would do everything in his power to make Nicole happy and thus keep his family together.

She decided she wanted to try sculpting, so he’d built her a studio away from the house as requested. Then, at a fund-raiser for the hospital, she met an avant-garde artist gaining fame with movie stars and politicians alike, and demanded having her portrait done. He’d moved heaven and earth—to say nothing of a hefty chunk of change from savings into checking—to engage the fellow. The rest, as they say, is history. The only good thing to come from those four years was Ginny.

Lifting her down from his shoulders, he kissed his daughter’s golden head. She was growing up so fast. Sometimes he had to remind himself not to hold on too tightly.

“Watch your pretty dress,” he told her as her feet hit the bricks. He knew it was a stupid remark; he didn’t give a damn about the dress. What he wanted to say was: Be careful. Don’t hit your head. Don’t scrape your bare knees. Don’t let anyone break your heart.

She caught sight of one of her little buddies, and scooted away without a backward glance.

The door opposite him opened, and for a second, his heart leapt into his throat. Roxanne. But it was Sal who emerged into the courtyard, her wizened face preoccupied. When Jack smiled at her, she lowered her eyes and glanced away.

Slightly alarmed, he strode toward her, absently acknowledging greetings. “Sal?”

Reluctantly it seemed, she turned to face him.

“Sal, what’s wrong?” She was pale and trembling and he reached for her wrist. His first thought was her heart. She’d had trouble the year before, even had a stint in the hospital. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, fine,” she sputtered, pulling her hand away.

“But—”

“Stop playing doctor,” she demanded, visually summoning her reserves. Sal Collins was a strong woman. She didn’t like to be coddled, and Jack knew from a lifetime of experience, if she didn’t want to talk about something, then she wouldn’t. For instance, before she’d come to live with his family, she’d been married and had a baby but lost both. She’d never mentioned them to him. Not a word. Jack had only found out the year before when Sal became ill and he dug up old records.

However, she wasn’t the only stubborn one living at the Wheeler ranch. “Not until you let me take your pulse.”

She extended her wrist and managed a smile. “Honestly.”

Her heartbeat seemed normal enough and there were color spots appearing on her cheeks as Jack’s actions began to draw attention. Her skin wasn’t clammy.

“People are looking,” she whispered.

“Any pain in your chest? Shortness of breath? Dizziness?”

“No, no and no. Let go of me.”

“Okay, but I’m keeping my eye on you,” he said, leaning down to brush her forehead with a kiss.

Sal patted his cheek before withdrawing to a wooden bench. She was well liked and immediately surrounded. Only his two elderly spinster aunts kept their distance. Jack looked around to find Ginny, saw her and three other children sizing up the presents and smiled to himself.

He glanced at Sal again, relieved to see she was returning to her old self. Whatever had upset her apparently was passing. With the arrival of more guests, he devoted himself to mingling and chatting, but each time a door opened, he held his breath.

Amid the ribbing and the laughing, he found himself wondering what had happened to Roxanne.

He was visiting with one of his favorite patients and her husband when Roxanne stepped into the courtyard. For an instant he didn’t hear a word of their conversation.

Nicole had loved to make an entrance, arriving in a flutter of flowing clothes, in a cloud of floral perfume, her laughter as big as she was tiny, like an exotic bird a man wanted to capture in his hands.

Tall and slender, long hair loose on her shoulders, Roxanne looked…well, real. Moving with the grace and ease that were undoubtedly the by-products of good health and regular workouts, she found her way to a quiet edge of the garden, off to the side and not in the center. She was shy, he realized, ill at ease amid so many strangers. Her oval face was devoid of makeup, even lipstick. Her skin was oddly striped with sunburn and—get this—she didn’t seem to care!

She was prettier than Nicole had ever been, he realized with a start. Or maybe she wasn’t quite as pretty. Maybe that was it. At any rate, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Roxanne fidgeted with the concho belt as she watched Jack approach. For a second, when their eyes first met, she could have sworn he’d almost looked pleased to see her, but the moment passed so quickly, it might never have happened.

He didn’t look angry—he just looked overwhelmed. It was a look she was coming to recognize.

“This is quite a party,” she said, deciding to take the upper hand. Ginny and a few other children wound their way in and out between the adults, a couple of whom were holding infants. Chatter and music competed with the soft sound of falling water. A haze of smoke in one corner announced the barbecue, and delicious odors permeated the air, making Roxanne’s empty stomach growl. Carl roamed the courtyard with a tray of appetizers.

Roxanne was aware of a bevy of raised eyebrows and wondered if Jack’s friends were curious who the stranger was. One woman in particular, the pregnant redhead Jack had been talking to, seemed especially curious.

Roxanne wished she could make an announcement: “My car’s broken down!” she’d say. Then she could try again with Sal.

“That’s Nancy Kaufman giving you the once-over,” Jack said.

“She’s pretty. Pregnant, too. As a matter of fact, I see quite a few of your friends are wearing maternity smocks. Has everyone here just given birth or become pregnant?”

“Not me. Not my two elderly aunts over by the fountain, the ones waving their hankies at you.”

Roxanne waved back. “You know what I mean,” she said. “Grace and Nancy are pregnant, as are those three women sitting under an umbrella, and at least one of your horses. There are babies everywhere—in their father’s arms, in slings, in strollers, not to mention the kittens and puppies and Goldy’s foal.…It’s like an epidemic.”

He smiled, perhaps for the first time. It was genuine and dazzling, and Roxanne felt her throat constrict at the pure beauty of it. “They don’t have babies up in Seattle?” he said, his lips still curved and so appealing.

“No. We have bypassed the whole pregnancy thing up in the great Northwest. You Southerners keep moving up, we don’t need to replenish the population from our own stock.”

“I’ve heard about you people and your regional biases,” he said.

She laughed.

“Nancy is our local celebrity,” he added. “She runs the radio station in Tangent.”

“I interned at a radio station back in my late, great college days. I can’t believe that Tangent actually has one.”

“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? We have to drive almost twenty miles to a hospital, but we have a radio station. A very small one, mind you, but nevertheless…well, go figure. Anyway, I told her about you, and she said she’d like to meet a big-time television producer.”

“So would I,” Roxanne said.

With a lazy gaze, he added, “You look very, very nice.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, unsure how to return the compliment without drooling all over him. Gone was the sexy, hot cowboy with the surly brow and the impatient manner. This was the refined doctor, his brown hair glistening with health in the late-day sun, his face cleanly shaved, a soft gray shirt tucked into darker gray slacks. He smelled divine—masculine and clean, a combination of soap and desert heat. This man was just as desirable, she decided, perhaps more so.

He looked as though he had something on his mind but wasn’t sure how to go about saying it.

“Ginny is an adorable little girl,” Roxanne said as Sal and Grace tied a blindfold around the child’s head. They twirled her around before arming her with a tail to pin on a paper donkey. Ginny was wearing a fluttery yellow dress, little golden curls kissing the back of her fragile neck. She looked sweet enough to eat with a spoon.

What a thought!

“She’s a great kid,” Jack said, his voice softening as it always seemed to do when he spoke about his daughter. “She can hardly wait until it’s time to open the presents. Do you remember being that young?”

“I didn’t have birthday parties,” Roxanne said softly.

“None?”

“Well, when I got older, two girlfriends came over and we slept in my grandmother’s attic. Does that count?”

“Did they bring gifts?”

“I think so.”

“Then it counts.”

She would have happily spent the rest of the afternoon gazing up into his eyes, but she was suddenly aware they were attracting more than a few pointed glances. She said, “Jack, I don’t mean to alarm you, but everyone is staring at us.”

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