Her Best Friend's Baby

“Good.”

“Tomorrow we’ll think about what to do next.”

He nodded. Slowly he stood and helped her to her feet. Supporting each other like war casualties, they made their way up the stairs.

In her bedroom, Morgan stripped down to his T-shirt and shorts with mechanical detachment and climbed into bed. She left the light on as she crawled in beside him. For the first time since she’d been four years old she was afraid of the dark.

He pulled the covers to his chin. “I can’t seem to stop shaking.”

“Me, either.”

As if by mutual agreement they turned and scooted into each other’s arms, holding each other close.

Fine tremors ran through him, as if he had a fever, and his bristly chin scraped her cheek. “I tried to call,” he said.

“I know.” Not minding his scratchy beard, she snuggled closer, needing the body contact while she tried to keep her own shakes under control, tried to get warm.

“That was stupid. Trying to tell you on the machine. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay.” She wanted to rewind the day and go back to that golden moment before she’d played her messages. That moment when she’d been excited about two days off. She would work every day of her life if she could make this not be true.

“It’s not okay. What if…what if the shock of hearing it on the phone…what if something had happened to the baby?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth against the wail of despair that strained at her throat. Arielle’s baby. And the little girl was Arielle’s, in every sense except that she would develop in Mary Jane’s womb. And now Arielle would never see her daughter.

A heavy steel door seemed to have slammed, separating Mary Jane from the woman she loved, the woman she would do anything for. Now she could do nothing. Nothing. “Oh, Morgan.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I wanted so much to give her this baby.”

“I know,” he said roughly. “The baby is all that’s kept me going.”

“Oh, Morgan.” She began to cry again, and so did he. They held each other desperately, shuddering with anguish.

He choked out the word baby and put his hand over her stomach.

“The baby… Arielle’s still here,” she said, crying.

“Thank God.” He kissed her hair, her wet cheek. “Thank God, we still have the baby.”

She hugged him close as tears streamed down. “Yes.”

“The baby.” He kissed her throat between choked sobs.

“It’s okay.” She needed to comfort him, needed it more than anything in the world. She pressed his head to her breast. “It’s okay, Morgan. Everything will be okay.”

“Oh, God.” He rubbed his damp, bearded face against her breasts, almost as a baby might. “I need to feel….” He slipped his hand under the hem of her T-shirt and flattened it against her belly. His howl of misery echoed in the small room. “Arielle!”

Her heart broke into a million pieces. And she understood what she’d never wanted to know, that death and birth are spokes of the same wheel. Instincts older than time moved within her. Laying her hand over his, she guided it down between her thighs.

“She’s here,” she murmured.

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

“Here.” A wisdom handed down through the ages urged her to open her thighs. A wound this deep could only be healed with the ultimate bonding of man and woman. “Come to me.”

Moving like a sleepwalker, he held her gaze as he discarded his shorts and moved over her.

They came together smoothly, as if they’d been making love to each other for years. He said nothing as he thrust again and again into her, his teeth clenched against the sobs racking his body.

Concentrating on his face, she clutched his shoulders and rode the crest of the wave carrying her toward the only salvation they could find tonight. He seemed to understand it, too. As they neared the crest, the despair in his eyes gave way to a new light. At the moment before they climaxed, she drew strength from that light. Then she tumbled with him into chaos, bearing with her the faint yet steady glow of hope.

CHAPTER TWO

MORGAN AWOKE with a sense of well-being. He loved waking up with Arielle tucked in close beside him like this, especially after a night of—

Nausea washed over him, and he scrambled out of bed as if it were full of a million snakes. Snatching up his pants, he held them over his nakedness as he fought the gorge rising in his throat. What had he done?

Mary Jane turned toward him, a smile on her lips, her eyes still dazed with sleep. Then she focused on him.

He watched in horrified fascination as reality replaced fantasy in her blue eyes. He knew exactly what she was going through.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rusty and coarse. What an asinine thing to say. Sorry didn’t begin to cover it. He couldn’t imagine how he could ever make up for what he’d done last night.

She swallowed and kept staring at him, her gaze bleak.

“Say something,” he pleaded. “Call me names. Tell me I’m the worst sort of slime ball you’ve ever come across. I deserve whatever rotten things you want to say about me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Why? I’m the one who threw myself at you like some—”

“No! It is not your fault. You were upset! I hit you with the news, and then I…” He couldn’t bear to think of what he’d done. Unforgivable.

She opened her eyes and sat up, still wearing the pink sleep shirt he hadn’t bothered to remove before he took advantage of her. Arielle had sent her that to wear once they’d seen the pictures from the first ultrasound. And now he had profaned that cute, silly T-shirt.

God, she was so young. He’d never seen her like this, flushed with sleep, her hair a tousled riot of curls falling to her shoulders. Arielle once said Mary Jane’s hair was the color of maple syrup, which was appropriate, because Mary Jane was so incredibly sweet. Morgan closed his eyes, awash with pain and shame. And damn his soul to hell, he wanted her. Still. Stirring like a dark secret, desire taunted him with his worthlessness.

“I knew what I was doing,” she said in a not-quite-steady voice.

His eyes flew open. “You most certainly did not! You were carried away by the news and your fluctuating hormones, which is perfectly understandable, especially at your age. But there’s no excuse for me, a thirty-one-year-old man who’s supposed to be in control of himself.”

Her back stiffened. “What do you mean by that crack about my age? You sound as if I’m a mere child!”

“I consider twenty-two pretty damn young!” He wasn’t going to tell her that this morning she looked younger than that, which made the heat within him even more reprehensible. “That was one thing that bothered me about this whole pregnancy. Physically you’re a perfect age for bearing a child, but mentally—”

“What a crock! You don’t know a damn thing about my mental age. I have to say, Morgan Tate, you are a real pr—uh, prude.”

“Go ahead and use the first word you thought of,” he said. “It fits.” He’d much rather have her anger than the bleakness he’d seen in her eyes when she first woke up. He’d probably shattered her illusions forever, but she was trying to pretend she was worldly enough to handle it. He’d never loathed himself more than he did at this moment.

She whipped out of bed. “Go ahead and beat yourself up about last night if you want. I don’t intend to do that, because I knew exactly what I was doing, and it seemed like the best thing for both of us at the time. Maybe it was wrong.” She sent him a challenging look. “But it’s done. Now I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Mary Jane, it will never, ever happen again.”

“I wouldn’t expect it to.” She drew herself up a little taller, which still wasn’t very big. She couldn’t be more than five-three, max. “Especially since you consider me such an infant. There’s a half bath downstairs if you want to use it.” Then she marched into her bathroom like royalty and shut the door.

He wanted her so much he nearly groaned aloud. He was a pig, not worth someone putting a bullet through his head. His wife had been dead two days. Until Mary Jane had taken him into her warm body, he’d been as good as dead, too. She had saved him, pulled him from the black pit of hell, and he yearned for her with an unholy fierceness.

But she would never know.

MARY JANE STOOD under the shower and let the hot water pour over her head. She wondered if a person could drown in the shower if they breathed in the water. It was a tempting thought, but it probably wouldn’t work. You had to be pretty determined to drown yourself, like the guy who walked into the ocean in that old movie A Star is Born.

Besides, even if she started to drown, there was a doctor in the house. He’d revive her. Yes, there was a doctor in the house. An embarrassed doctor who thought he’d forced himself on an innocent young woman. He’d turned a thing of beauty into something ugly.

It was right, what she’d done last night. She clenched her fists and raised her face to the hard spray. The right thing. If he couldn’t understand that, then to hell with him.

Except that she wanted him to understand it. She wanted him to see that last night had been her last gift to Arielle, her attempt to take care of the man Arielle had loved so much. Arielle would have understood. Mary Jane would never have allowed last night to happen that way if she hadn’t believed, deep inside, that Arielle would have been okay with it.

Well, if she didn’t intend to drown herself in the shower, which she would never do anyway because she had the baby to consider, then she might as well stop stalling and wash up.

As she moved the washcloth over her body, her nerve endings hummed in response. Her heart might feel like a hunk of lead, but her body was saying thank-you for the favor of a little loving. She’d only had two serious boyfriends in her life. One had been a good lover but a terrible conversationalist, and she’d discovered how important it was to her to be able to talk to a man when they’d stopped kissing for a little while. So the second relationship had started with lots of conversation. Great conversation. And he’d turned out to be a dud in bed.

According to Lana, finding the combo of a good talker and a good lover was definitely the old story of looking for a needle in a haystack. And Lana, being twenty-six, had four more years of experience than Mary Jane, so she knew all about needles and haystacks. Lana said some women finally settled on which was more important, the body connection or the brain connection, and went with that.

Mary Jane had never had the guts to ask Arielle if she got both when she married Morgan. Arielle had been so enthusiastic about what a great person Morgan was, not mentioning his body, that Mary Jane had concluded the brain connection was the main thing. And yet…powerful, smooth strokes…feeling complete…rising, reaching together.

Shaking her head, Mary Jane put the image out of her mind. It could have been a lucky accident that she and Morgan had been so in tune last night. One time didn’t count. Morgan and Arielle had likely connected primarily on the mental level. After all, Arielle was extremely smart, and she’d once said sex wasn’t the most important consideration in a husband. Mary Jane remembered how she’d laughed and argued with Arielle about that. But Arielle had stuck to her guns. She…

She was gone.

Stuffing a washcloth over her mouth to hide the noise, Mary Jane cried under the shower until the water turned cold.

WHILE GETTING DRESSED, she could hear noise downstairs in the kitchen—the faucet going on and off, the refrigerator door closing and cabinet doors banging shut. She could guess what Morgan was up to. He was checking to see what she’d been eating. Wonderful. She’d planned to stock up on fresh veggies today. Her supply was pretty much gone.

She wondered if he’d found the brownie mix in the cupboard or noticed the box of doughnuts sitting on top of the refrigerator with one stale raised glazed left in it. She’d left the bag of Jolly Ranchers right out on the counter.

Well, too bad. She would not be treated like a wayward child in her own house. Glancing at herself in denim overalls and a T-shirt as she passed the dresser mirror, she realized that’s exactly what she looked like. Damn.

Quickly she rummaged through her drawers and pawed through the clothes in her closet, looking for something more sophisticated. Finally she gave up. Unless she planned to parade downstairs in the silky silver number she’d worn on New Year’s, she was SOL. The silver dress wouldn’t fit anymore, anyway.

She should probably do something with her hair. Freshly washed, it curled and cavorted everywhere. But she had to tame her hair for work, and after six days of that she was sick of tying it back. Screw it.

She should put on shoes. Otherwise she’d appear in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. Smiling grimly, she slipped her feet into a pair of leather mules, took a deep breath and went downstairs.

Morgan sat in her sunny little kitchen nook making a list on the back of a paper sack. With the dark stubble on his chin and the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled back, he looked like a gangster, or maybe a pirate. He sure didn’t look like a respectable New York City pediatrician.

He glanced up when she walked into the kitchen. “We need to go to the store, but first I’ll take you to breakfast. There’s nothing decent to eat here.”

She wasn’t hungry, but she’d deal with that question later. “I was going to—” She caught herself as the words came out sounding more belligerent and defensive than she wanted them to. Clearing her throat, she started again. “I was planning to shop today,” she said quietly. “I just got off six straight days at work.”

“Six days straight?” He looked scandalized. “You’re still at the diner, right?”

“Yes.”

“We have to do something about that. Six days straight is criminal. Who’s your boss? I want to talk to—”

“Hold it!” So she sounded belligerent. She couldn’t help it. He wasn’t going to waltz in here and take over her life. “You are so not going to talk to Shelby Lord! She asked me to work an extra day as a special favor, and she’s very concerned about my health, if you must know. I told her I would be fine with it, and I am fine with it.” She’d never admit that the last day had been more tiring than she’d expected.

He tossed the pen he’d been using on the table and pushed back his chair. Standing, he ran his fingers through his hair and glanced at her. “You may be fine with it, but hours and hours on your feet are not the best thing for the baby. Why do you insist on continuing to work there, when we’ve offered to subsidize you so that you could quit?”

Pain shot through her and she stared at him, wondering if he realized he’d just used the word we. There was no we anymore. She saw the exact moment his mistake registered. His brown eyes clouded and he looked away, swallowing several times.

Watching him struggle with his grief, she quickly lost her anger. “I keep my job because I like it,” she said softly. “I know waitressing doesn’t seem like a career to you, but I have a good time helping customers, at least most of the time. All of us weren’t meant to be white-collar workers.”

He shook his head, but he didn’t look at her. Instead he pretended great interest in birds gathered at the feeder in her tiny back patio. “I didn’t mean that,” he murmured. “You may think I’m some sort of elitist snob, but I’m not.”

“The truth is I don’t know you very well, Morgan.” She thought of the way they’d come together last night, the knowing that had taken place on an elemental level, and wondered if she knew him better than anyone else on earth.

He cleared his throat and glanced at her, his eyes moist. “I guess you don’t know me. There were those few days before the wedding, and then the last visit, for the procedure.”

She nodded. “Arielle kept saying the two of you would visit Austin, but you never came.”

“No. She really liked New York.”

“I know.” She looked into his eyes and knew they had to get out of this house or they would both break down again. “You said something about shopping.”

He nodded. “Your food supply leaves much to be desired.”

She decided to ignore the insult. At least he hadn’t specifically started in on her about the sweets. “Do you want to go out looking like that?”

“Like—” He looked startled, and then he rubbed a hand over his chin. “Maybe I should shave.”

“Unless you want to frighten old ladies and small children.”

The ghost of a smile flitted across his mouth. “I’d rather not.”

She’d forgotten that he had a wonderful smile. This wasn’t a real version of it, but it reminded her why she’d taken a liking to Morgan when she’d first met him. When he smiled, really smiled, he put his whole heart into it. His whole heart wasn’t in it now, but she could hardly blame him for that.

“Come on upstairs and I’ll find you a new razor,” she said. “You’ll have to lather up with soap instead of shaving cream, though. And the razor will be pink. I hope that doesn’t offend you.” She started out of the kitchen.

“Nothing could offend me more than I’ve offended myself.”

Whirling, she threw out both hands in exasperation. “Good Lord, will you stop?” She’d never been a patient person under the best of circumstances, and he was sorely trying what little patience she could find this morning. “We were both under a hideous strain, and we comforted each other! I thank God you were here to tell me in person! Don’t you thank God that you had someone to run to, someone who loved Arielle as much as you did?”

His throat worked. His dark eyes filled. “Yes. I thank God for you, Mary Jane. I will thank God for you for the rest of my life.”

She looked into his eyes and something happened to her heart, making it go all squishy and warm and tender. Wow. The guy packed a wallop. She needed to get him moving or she was liable to do something really embarrassing, like move closer and kiss him. Like suggest they go upstairs for something besides that razor…

“Shaving,” she said. “We can get through this, Morgan, if we just put one foot in front of the other.”

“Maybe you should get the razor and bring it down. I can shave in the half bath.”

“You can, but the light’s no good in there. And the mirror distorts a little. Believe me, I know these things, having stared into both mirrors more times than I should probably admit. Come on.” She started up the stairs.

“That’s okay. I’ll use the half bath.”

One hand on the railing, she turned and gazed at him. She wondered if he was one of those stubborn men who turned everything into a power struggle. If so, the sooner he left Austin, the better. “I hate to say this, Morgan, but you are being a pain in the ass. I’ll bring the razor down if you insist, but what damned difference does it make where you shave?”

He cleared his throat and looked away. “I just think…it would be better if I stayed down here. And out of the…bedroom.”

Oh. As she gripped the railing and considered the implications of what he’d said, she couldn’t hold back a small feeling of triumph. He’d liked his experience with her last night. He’d liked it so much that he wanted more. Maybe Morgan wasn’t all brain, after all.

“I’ll get the razor,” she said, her step much lighter as she went upstairs.

AT MARY JANE’S suggestion, they’d driven across town to an area she seldom visited to have breakfast and shop for groceries. Morgan thought it was a smart move. Mary Jane didn’t want to run into anyone she knew until she had herself more emotionally together, and he didn’t want to run into anyone who had known Arielle. After all, his wife had spent the first twenty-two years of her life in this town.

Taking another sip of his coffee, he sat across the table from Mary Jane in the booth of a small neighborhood restaurant and watched her not eat. She made a show of it, cutting her omelette into bite-size pieces, sipping her juice, putting a little pepper on her food. His plate looked as untouched as hers, but he wasn’t pregnant. She needed to eat.

“Look, I know you’re not hungry,” he said at last. “But you need to try.”

She glanced at him. “Couldn’t I swallow twice as many of those prenatal magic bullets you’ve prescribed for me?”

He shook his head and felt a smile trying to work its way through his pain. “They don’t work very well if you don’t have food in there, too.”

She sighed and took a bite of omelette into her mouth. Chewing and swallowing, she made a face. “It’s cold and the cheese has congealed.”

“Then I’ll order you another one.” He lifted his hand to signal the waitress.

“You most certainly will not!” She shoveled in another bite. “I’m eating. See? Eating.”

“That’s silly. They can throw that away and get—”

“Put your hand down.” She reached across the table and grabbed his wrist, smacking his hand on the table. “We are not going to put the waitress and the cook to more trouble because I dawdled over my food and let it get cold. They’ll think something was wrong with it. It’s not good karma to send your food back uneaten.”

“But you weren’t eating it.” The back of his hand stung where she’d whacked it against the table, but it was the warm grip of her fingers around his wrist that really bothered him. Her fingers against his skin reminded him of how she’d clutched his shoulders last night while he buried himself in her. He forced himself to stay focused. “The food would have gone back to the kitchen eventually, anyway.”

“Nope.” Her blue gaze held his earnestly. “I would have asked for a doggy bag. Nobody’s insulted if you ask for a doggy bag.” She looked at his hand on the table. “Can I trust you not to try to get the waitress over here?”

“Guess so.”

“All right, then.” She released her hold and went back to eating her cold omelette. “It’s a matter of professional courtesy.”

“I can see that.”

She paused and glanced pointedly at his plate. “Eat up.”

“But I’m not—”

“Hungry? I don’t think that’s the issue. You need your strength.”

He pushed his plate aside. “I’ll ask for a doggy bag.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. If you’re going to force me to eat this cold food, you can do the exact same thing. Start chewing.”

“We’re not in the same boat.”

She shoved his plate in front of him. “We’re in exactly the same boat. I may be physically carrying this baby, but you are the father.”

And the only parent. He went still, bracing himself for the blow if she decided to point that out. She didn’t. She was incredibly sensitive. He hadn’t known that about her. There were lots of things he hadn’t known about her, like the silken welcome she provided for a man in bed. That was one thing he’d be better off not knowing, and the one thing he’d never forget.

“Let’s say you let yourself get run down,” she said. “You weaken your immune system, and there you are, a sitting duck for every bug that cruises by. So you have one illness after another, getting even more run down, and then, when this little girl is born, you’re too full of germs to be in the delivery room, let alone ready to function as her father.” She pointed her fork at him. “What do you say to that, Mr. Pediatrician? Is that fair to anybody?”

“No. No, it’s not.” He picked up his fork. Eating food when you’d rather not had never seemed like an act of courage to him before. But he realized that in Mary Jane’s case, that’s exactly what it was. He could do no less.

“Attaboy.”

He couldn’t help it. He grinned. Yesterday he’d been absolutely sure that smiles and laughter were a thing of the past. But here was irrepressible Mary Jane Potter, valiantly shoving down food she didn’t want and cheering him on to do the same. A person would have to be made of stone not to respond to that.

She grinned back. “But I gotta warn you, it tastes like crap.”

His grin turned to a chuckle.