Instant Dad

Drey noted Sara’s reaction with amusement and took over, walking Dr. Bracken to the door and opening it for him. The doctor turned and nodded at him companionably, man to man.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he said, leaning close. “And I don’t ask questions. I do know Craig isn’t the most attentive husband a woman could have. Still, people’s lives are their own affairs. So to speak.” He gave a quick cough of laughter. “But you treat that lady gently. She deserves it. And keep a look out for signs of seizure. You sometimes get that with a bad head trauma. You give me a call if anything worrisome shows up.”

Drey nodded, leashing his smile. He didn’t want to appear to take the doctor’s words lightly. “I’ll do that, sir. You can count on me.”

“Good.” He shook hands with the younger man. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Drey watched him go, still suppressing a grin. The man thought he and Sara were lovers, and Sara had done nothing to disabuse him of that notion. Funny. He had no idea why she would let that theory fly, but he didn’t much care, either. She had her own reasons, no doubt.

In the meantime, this was really a lucky break. It had fallen right into his lap. He was going to get an opportunity to see what Sara Parker was really like. And that was the whole reason he’d come.

Three

Drey retraced his steps into the parlor, but Sara was no longer sitting in the chair. Following the sounds of cabinets being opened, he found her in the kitchen, putting away clean dishes from the dishwasher. She barely glanced up at him as he entered the room.

“That’s all a bunch of nonsense, of course,” she said quickly. “I’m perfectly all right. You don’t have to stay.”

He slid onto a bar stool and leaned on the counter, watching her move. She had a glide to her movements, a grace that appealed to him. The image of her as a ballet dancer came to him again. She seemed to give the impression of being on her toes, even when her feet were flat on the ground.

“That’s okay,” he said smoothly. “I have nothing better to do.”

Putting down the large pot she’d just pulled out of the washer, she turned to face him.

“Look,” she said, her gaze frank and open. “I don’t need you here. In fact, I really don’t want you here. I have things to do and I want to be alone. When you come back in the morning—”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to stay,” he told her, breaking in with a certain arrogance. “I can’t leave you alone after what happened.”

She stared at him, trying to read what was going on in the depths of his smoky eyes. What exactly did he mean by that? What did he think had happened? Just because she’d fallen in the pool didn’t mean she needed to be watched at all times. She wasn’t likely to take a tumble into the hedgerow if he wasn’t there to stop her.

Or was he talking about the nakedness? Did he think being with her in that state gave him some special right to her? If so, he might as well think again.

“I’m going to be perfectly frank with you here,” she said at last. “You have done me a nice turn by saving my life, but when you come right down to it, I only met you today. I hardly know you. Why in the world would I let you stay overnight in my house?”

“Doctor’s orders,” he said as though that were his trump card.

She threw up her hands. “Oh, please. You know very well he assumed we were, well, something more than employer and employee.”

“Yes, I know that.” The grin he’d been hiding was finally getting too strong to hold back any longer and it shone in his dark eyes. “And you didn’t do anything to correct that impression. Why not?”

She started to speak and then choked for a moment, color flooding her cheeks. Why not? That was a very good question. It was more than just not wanting Peggy as a roommate and she knew it. She just wasn’t sure why.

“I…don’t know,” she said defensively. “The whole thing just caught me off guard.”

That wasn’t it and he knew it, too. He watched her, still wondering.

“The good doctor assured me he wasn’t making judgments, but I would think you’d better correct the record at some point. Your husband might not be so understanding.”

Her face seemed to change when he mentioned her husband, as though a cloud had come over her thoughts. “Never mind that,” she said crisply. “I’ll handle my reputation. In the meantime, the best way you can disprove the rumors would be to go. Right now.”

She said it as though she expected him to jump up and run for the door, but he didn’t move a muscle. Instead, he leaned back and looked at her through narrowed eyes.

“Well, this is your house,” he said slowly, “and it is up to you. I’ll go if you really want me to. But someone has to be here.” A devilish light glittered in his eyes. “I can’t in all conscience leave you without anyone. I’ll have to call Dr. Bracken and let him know you’re alone.” He held back his amusement a moment longer. “I suppose he’ll send his wife Peggy over and—”

She threw back her head, groaning and half laughing at the same time. “So, you play dirty, do you?” she accused him.

His grin was slow and his eyes were knowing, as though he could read her mind and knew he was going to be one step ahead of her. “If I have to.”

“Well, I can play dirty, too,” she declared, but when she tossed her head to emphasize her defiance, she set off a flash of pain that shot through her skull and the room swam before her. “Ouch,” she said, closing her eyes and swaying against the counter.

Drey reacted without hesitation. “That does it,” he said as he came down off the bar stool and stepped around the counter and took hold of her. “Come on. You’re going to go lie down.”

“No,” she protested weakly. “No, I can’t.”

He swung her up into his arms without waiting to hear the rest of her speech and started for the stairs.

“I don’t believe this,” she murmured resentfully. “You can’t just carry me around. I’m not a little girl.”

“You’re right,” he said, taking the stairs easily. “You’re a big, obstinate woman.”

She wanted to fuss at him some more, but the pain in her head was disconcerting and her cheek felt so comfortable against his shoulder, she stayed quiet instead, closing her eyes and letting him take over. There was certainly an advantage in having a big strong man around. She felt protected and secure and that was nice—and so unusual for her.

When he gently laid her down on her bed, she almost regretted having to leave the warmth of his arms.

But he didn’t seem to regret letting go. He backed away unceremoniously and glanced around the room.

“Do you have a radio in here?” he asked.

She looked up at him in surprise, shading her eyes from the light with her hand. “Yes. That’s a clock radio on the bedside table.”

“Good.” He flicked it on and searched the stations until he found someone talking instead of music. “Listen to this,” he advised. “Rest. You can even cover your eyes. But don’t let yourself fall asleep.”

“Okay,” she said dutifully, feeling limp. “What are you going to be doing?”

“I’m going to fix us something to eat.”

“You?” He didn’t look like the sort of man who could be found adding basil to the vinaigrette, or even donning an apron and wielding a barbecue fork at the old gas grill. “You don’t cook,” she informed him skeptically.

“Don’t I?” He favored her with a lopsided grin. “You just wait and see.”

He left the room and she closed her eyes for a moment, resting her head, ignoring the voice on the radio and trying to think. She was actually very glad she was lying down, very glad Drey had taken over the way he had. He was right, and so was the doctor. She needed someone. The accident with the pool seemed to have sapped all her strength and had left her very shaken. She was grateful Drey wanted to stay. She would use this time to rest—and to think.

She’d been avoiding doing much thinking over the past few weeks. She’d been busy tying up the loose ends at her import company, fixing things so that she could take time off and get to know the new baby once it came. And she’d been frantically preparing for this baby shower she was having next week. All in all, thinking had been relegated to the sidelines. It was probably time to let it back into the game, at least for a few minutes.

It was odd how twisted her life had become lately. She’d had everything under control once. If she didn’t watch out, things would fall apart and she would end up back where she’d been.

Her eyes popped open. Back where she’d been. Keeping away from that place was the driving force behind everything she did. She’d had a chaotic childhood. She would do everything she could to make sure she never went back there again.

On the outside, her life had probably looked idyllic. Her parents had plenty of money. What they didn’t have was love, or any sense of what went into making a family. She still cringed remembering the late-night fights with people shrieking and racing through the house throwing things, her mother’s boozy mornings, her father’s affairs. As a little girl, she had hidden away from the pandemonium. She had a secret place in her closet with a little lamp and her special books, and she would go there and hide, making up a private world that the rest of her family knew nothing about. As an adult, she’d made that secret place her reality as much as she possibly could and for many years it seemed to work for her.

But little by little, things had begun to fall apart. First her marriage had become a sham, then it had evaporated completely. She’d tried hard to make it work and had built her business to take its place, but things just hadn’t come together the way she needed them to. Then Jenny had told her about the pregnancy and she’d decided to adopt Jenny’s baby. She knew she was taking a risk, but it was something she had to do. And she had to do it right.

“I’m in control,” she muttered to herself. “Everything’s going to be perfect.”

Everything was going to be perfect. After all, she’d tamed the turmoil once before. She would do it again. All you needed was a strong mind and you could set up your own reality. That was what it was all about.

But her reality was a little cockeyed at the moment. It would need some shoring up. First, instead of the perfect and ideal family she’d always thought she would have, she was about to be the single mother of her sister’s child.

If that wasn’t bizarre enough, she’d fallen into her pool and been rescued by her carpenter, who had stripped her naked without a second thought and was now downstairs fixing dinner.

Odd. Very odd. She was going to have to work to get things back on an even keel. And adopting Jenny’s baby was going to be the first step, actually. It was a step she’d been working up to, a step she wanted very badly to take. If she couldn’t have the perfect marriage, at least she would have the perfect baby.

When he left Sara in her bedroom, Drey started for the kitchen, but in the upper hallway he hesitated and instead turned toward the room where he’d found her husband’s clothes. Something was nagging at him, something he hadn’t been able to fit into the puzzle that was Sara.

Sara had told Dr. Bracken her husband was still on a trip to China, and the doctor seemed to accept that. There was really no reason Drey should question it. And, yet, something wasn’t right.

He turned into the bedroom and looked at the neatly made bed, the dresser with its picture of Sara and its neatly placed, silver-backed brush-and-comb set. There was a static quality to the room, as though it were a set for a play, not a place where real people lived. He wasn’t sure why, but something felt wrong.

“In the first place, what kind of a husband sleeps in a separate room?” he muttered to himself, about to open the closet. A quick mental image of Sara’s sleek, naked body flashed into his mind and he bit down hard on his lip to force it away. He wasn’t going to let himself think of her as a desirable woman, no matter how good she looked with her clothes off. That wasn’t what he was here for.

But it did bring up the question—how could a man who loved her stay away?

Each to his own way of living. Wasn’t that the sort of toleration everyone was supposed to practice these days?

Sure, but not where a baby was involved. He’d made a commitment to make sure Jenny’s baby was going to a good home. So far, he wasn’t sure that was what he would call this one.

He turned to the closet and pulled it open, still searching for the element that had bothered him when he’d been here before. Rows of suits hung side by side with polo shirts and winter jackets. He stared at them and the answer came to him. These things hadn’t been touched in months, possibly years. The suits were out of style. The jackets looked like castoffs. And the entire collection had the odd, musty smell of fabric in storage. If Sara’s husband ever came home, he didn’t come here.

Drey closed the closet door and turned slowly, heading for the kitchen once again. He’d learned long ago that things were seldom as they seemed on the surface, but this was extreme. Where was Sara’s husband? Or did she even have one?

It was not merely an interesting question. It was something he had to know.

* * *

“Hey, no sleeping.”

Sara opened her eyes. She had drifted off for just a moment, but she was awake now, and there Drey was, looking down at her. She frowned.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked him.

“To keep you awake. I’m just checking on you. It’s not good for someone with a possible concussion to go to sleep right away.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” She turned and punched the pillow up, then half sat against it. “Why are you helping me this way?”

“I have nothing better to do,” he claimed, but there was a veiled look in his eyes and she didn’t believe him.

There was another reason. She was not so naive as to think he was doing this out of the goodness of his heart.

Should she be frightened of him? She asked herself that as he left the room again, going down to finish cooking. He was a stranger and he was staying the night. Was she crazy to let him? Was she nuts?

Probably. But she knew the man he worked for. And Matthew Bracken said he’d been friends with his daughter in high school. That made him about five years younger than she was, but it also made him someone people in her circle knew. Was all this enough to guarantee he was a good guy?

She still didn’t have her answers, but she resigned herself to being taken care of. It felt so darn good. No one had taken care of her this way since…She thought hard, but she couldn’t remember when anyone else had done it. From the time she was a child she’d always been taking care of other people, trying to make everything work and holding it all together.

That was what was wrong. Things weren’t holding together anymore. Everything seemed to be flying apart. But she didn’t want to think about that.

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