Kitabı oku: «Because Of The Baby»

CHAPTER ONE

October

KYLE DAVENPORT STARED at the pasty-faced, middle-aged man in front of him. They sat in the makeshift conference corner of his office, on a pair of scuffed metal folding chairs pulled up to a Formica-topped table salvaged from a diner. Boxes of medical supplies and free samples lined the shelves on the wall beside them.

Kyle clasped his hands on the tabletop. As the clinic’s director he usually spent more time on his administrative duties than he did interacting with patients, but he welcomed the chance to do so. Even when, like today, he had to play the heavy.

“Harry,” he said. “Sounds like we have a problem here. Barbara tells me you haven’t been taking your meds.”

The man gave him a cranky look. He brushed back a chunk of his badly cut gray hair and then inspected the fingerless wool gloves he wore. “Barbara’s a bully.”

“She only wants to help you get better. If you don’t take your meds, Harry, you won’t get better.”

“I hate the meds.”

“I know. I’d hate taking ’em, too. But it’s the only way to make you improve. And if you don’t take ’em you’ll probably get worse. Keep this up and you’ll end up in the hospital.”

They both knew Harry had no health coverage, which was why he came to the free clinic. He couldn’t afford another emergency-room visit like the one last spring. He hadn’t been able to afford that one.

“Harry, help me out here. I know it’s a pain in the ass to take ’em three times a day. But Barbara can’t do anything for you if you ignore everything she says.”

“She says too much. She’s always on my back. I’m going to start calling her Nurse Ratched.”

Kyle tried not to grin, knowing he shouldn’t encourage the guy. But he couldn’t wait to tell Barbara about her new nickname. “I don’t think that’ll increase her level of friendliness, Harry.” He flattened his palms on the table and adopted a serious tone. “Look, buddy, I really need you to take those pills. Why don’t you try it for a week and we’ll take the rest as it comes, okay?”

Harry shot him a defiant glare. “The meds,” he announced, “give me gas.”

Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Oh, do they, now? Well, I can’t say I’d like that, either…It’s bad?”

“You don’t want to know.” And that, apparently, settled the matter. Harry grasped the edge of the table and supported himself as he rose to his feet. He adjusted the ragged old tweed coat he wore 365 days a year, rain or shine, heat or snow. “Well. Guess I’ll be going now.”

Kyle stood, too. “Hey, not so fast. I just had an idea. Hear me out?”

The other man turned back, head tilted, expression doubtful.

“There might be a solution,” Kyle said. “We’d have to talk to Barbara, but it might be possible to change your prescription. We could try to find something that isn’t so hard on your system.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a nurse or doctor. But sometimes more than one med can treat the same problem.”

Harry had his new bottle of meds by the time Melissa arrived for her weekly shift as a volunteer physician at the clinic. Through the doorway of his office Kyle heard Melissa greet Harry by name and the older man give her a cheerful, flirtatious response before leaving the clinic.

Kyle tried to focus on his paperwork. He had plenty this week, and a long list of phone calls to make for the fall fund-raising drive.

But he couldn’t concentrate. Never could on Wednesday afternoons, not since a certain hot summer night in July. He got that familiar, socked-in-the-gut feeling he had whenever he remembered it. Melissa, he thought, would be in to say hello any second.

Right on cue, she stuck her head through the doorway. “Hey, Kyle. How’s it going today?”

She wore her long white coat and a stethoscope looped around her neck. She always pulled her chocolate-brown hair back in a clasp at her nape; a few strands had escaped to graze her jaw. In one hand she held a clipboard; in the other, a half-eaten apple.

He smiled, knowing his face looked just as friendly and calm and unruffled as hers. “Great. Not too busy with the walk-ins. You’ve got some appointments?”

She glanced down at the clipboard. “That’s right.” She raised an eyebrow. “Mmm. I see Zita is scheduled for a visit. That should be colorful.”

Zita, a.k.a. Susan Smith, was a recovering addict with a variety of physical ailments caused by years of hard living. She had an eccentric personality and a loud voice.

“And a couple of new ones…” Melissa crunched on a bite of apple as she skimmed the notes. “Okay.” She swallowed and looked up at him.

“How’s your week going?” Kyle asked.

“Fine.” Her eyes met his and held them, but not for too long. Just long enough to show them both that everything was normal, routine, mundane, unremarkable. As it had been for the past five years. Just long enough to prove they weren’t avoiding eye contact. “My high-school chem teacher turned up in the E.R. last night.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

She shook her head. “Only a sprained ankle. Thought it might have been broken, but he was lucky. It was nice to talk to him—I hadn’t seen the man since graduation fifteen years ago.”

Melissa, an exceptionally bright and hardworking student, had finished high school at sixteen. She’d enrolled at Harvard med school three years later. Kyle had always found her intelligence incredibly sexy.

He took a deep breath. It’s none of your business, he told himself, whether she’s sexy or not. You’re just friends. That’s all you’ve ever been.

Except that crazy night in July.

But that had been a mistake. An aberration. They’d each had reasons for letting it happen—fine. But now they’d moved on. Put things back to normal.

A moment later Melissa tossed her apple core into the trash and went off to see to her patients. Kyle forced his attention back to his paperwork and phone calls.

He’d been running the health clinic, designed to serve the homeless and low-income population of Portland, Oregon, since he’d moved out west six years ago. Needing a change of scene. Needing to get away from all the memories of Felicity.

It had taken awhile to adjust. He’d had experience in nonprofits, but twenty-six had been young for this kind of position. Yet he’d thrown himself into the job, welcoming the challenge and the distraction. He’d barely had a personal life that first year, but he hadn’t wanted one—he’d found it almost intolerable to interact with anyone when it wasn’t part of his job.

Kyle remembered all the nights he’d gone home to his empty apartment, unable even to summon the energy to feed himself dinner before collapsing, still clothed, into bed. Welcoming the blankness of sleep.

But things had gotten better. He’d emerged from that brooding, self-pitying year and started to recapture his old self. Back in Boston, before Felicity’s suicide, he’d always been a social, fun-loving guy. He’d made new friends in Portland and begun to date again. Not seriously, of course—Felicity’s death had cured him of any impulse to get serious—but he’d learned to enjoy himself once more. And then Melissa had become a volunteer at the clinic.

Their friendship had evolved. She’d been wary at first, and had quickly made it clear she wouldn’t be one of his conquests. Relationships that involved sex or romance, he’d noticed, scared the devil out of her. She certainly didn’t want a dalliance—which was all he was prepared to offer.

So their acquaintance had taken a different route. They’d respected each other’s differences and limitations and boundaries, and gradually, without any intent, they’d developed the unlikeliest of friendships.

No, they didn’t tell each other everything. But sometimes they didn’t have to. Sometimes they just understood each other.

And sometimes, he suspected, they just kept secrets—from the world and themselves and each other.

SIX O’CLOCK ARRIVED before he could finish his work. It always did. He needed an assistant, but the clinic couldn’t afford one, so he made do with occasional volunteer help. This month they were short on volunteers.

Barbara Purcell, the large, attractive, forty-five-year-old black woman who served as the clinic’s nurse practitioner, walked into the room and snatched the papers from his hands. “That’s it. It’s closing time, boy. I’m hungry, Melissa’s hungry and that perky little college-girl receptionist is hungry.” She tapped the papers on the desktop to straighten them, then laid them down on a corner of the surface. Just out of his reach.

Kyle didn’t bother to protest. Three hungry women—especially these three hungry women, none of whom deprived themselves of daily nourishment to attain an impossible female ideal—were more than he could go up against. Not to mention he was hungry himself.

“Thi’s Pho Shop?” he said.

Barbara gave him a who-stole-your-brain look. “Where else?”

The four of them collected in the waiting area a couple of minutes later. They locked up and headed down the street, laughing and groaning, complaining and elbow-ribbing, a close-knit, animated group.

The restaurant, which served nothing but beef noodle soup, stood at the corner. It was always packed with Vietnamese Americans during the first half of the day, as traditionally pho was eaten for breakfast and lunch.

This evening the shop hummed with a mixed clientele. The proprietor’s daughter, a teenager in combat boots, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, led them to a table by the window.

“Nice spot,” Melissa commented, taking the seat beside his. “In fact, it’s the nicest spot in the restaurant.” She winked at him. “I think that girl’s got a crush on you, Kyle.”

Whitney, the college student who worked several afternoons as the clinic’s receptionist, rolled her eyes. “Every straight female he meets gets a crush on him.” She reached for some napkins and spoons and chopsticks from the dispenser on the table.

“Hey, I’m straight,” Barbara said.

“Me, too.” Melissa looked at him, tilting her head in feigned sympathy. She patted his shoulder. “Sorry, Kyle. We can’t all join your mass of admirers.”

Everyone laughed, aware of Kyle’s undeniably sexy good looks.

The waitress brought them ice water and took their orders. After she left, Kyle steered the conversation to a different topic. He told himself it wasn’t because he minded Melissa’s teasing. But he felt edgy and a little raw tonight.

Melissa had spoken about his interactions with women the way she always had. She’d been tolerant, amused, occasionally chiding. Nothing had changed. His love life didn’t affect her. Yet he wondered how she could act that way so easily after what they’d done last July.

Damn it, Kyle. You should be grateful she’s handling it like this and not flipping out. Not getting all needy and emotional. Not trying to rope you into a heavy-duty commitment.

Their bowls of pho arrived.

“Oh, yes.” Barbara closed her eyes and inhaled the ambrosial aroma of beef stock rich with onions and ginger and star anise. “Sometimes I dream about this soup.”

“No kidding.” Melissa added bean sprouts and fresh herbs from the condiment plate, then a drizzle of lime. “Mmm. I might just have to have seconds tonight.”

AFTER THE MEAL Barbara drove home to her daughter and son-in-law. Whitney, like Kyle, had taken the bus to the clinic that day, so Melissa gave her a ride to Reed College before heading for his apartment.

Every Wednesday night after Melissa’s volunteer shift and the group dinner, they went to his apartment and watched X-Files reruns. The pattern hadn’t changed since the summer. It hadn’t changed since they’d made love.

They’d gone to bed together, shared a night of mind-blowing sex and then miraculously gone back to business as usual.

With anyone but Melissa it would have been absurd. Unthinkable. But she had a way of making it seem like the natural thing to do.

Pretend it didn’t happen. Ignore it. It doesn’t really exist, this knowledge of what we did together, of the tastes and textures of each other’s bodies; we don’t really know that.

We’re just friends. Best friends, yes. But nothing more.

Melissa parked her car, a safe, dependable white sedan, outside his apartment building. Two years ago she’d moved with her sister into a little house around the corner; she wouldn’t have to drive again until morning.

They entered the lobby and stopped by the bank of metal mailboxes, discussing some clients at the clinic. Just as they usually did. They took the stairs instead of the elevator to his third-floor, one-bedroom apartment, as usual.

Kyle let her in. He tossed his black leather bag onto the dining-room table, thumbed through his mail and tossed it down, too.

The answering machine said he had two messages. He played them back as he opened the fridge and grabbed a beer for himself and filtered water for Melissa. One of the calls was from a professional contact, the other from his mother in Massachusett.

“Haven’t phoned her in two weeks, hmm? Tsk, tsk.” Melissa pulled out a bag of gingersnaps from a kitchen cabinet. “Better shape up, Kyle.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll give her a ring tomorrow, promise. I’m sure she’s already in bed by now. It’s after ten out there.”

He also ought to talk with his brother soon, but Craig was a little harder to reach. No doubt they would catch each other over the weekend.

He and Melissa carried their drinks into the living room, a contemporary space with simple yet cozy furniture. Melissa had helped him decorate the room, suggesting rusty browns and muted greens—subtle, earthy colors—to go with the pale walls and carpet. A huge ficus tree, which survived only because she remembered to check it regularly, stood in a corner by one of the large windows.

Kyle set her water on the coffee table and sprawled on the couch with his beer.

She sat a couple feet away from him, opening the bag of gingersnaps as she kicked off her shoes. She gave his knee a nudge with her sock-clad foot. “Don’t take your mother for granted, Kyle. She’s the only one you’ve got.”

“I know.”

Melissa had lost hers years ago. When she’d been eight, her mother and five-year-old brother had died in the emergency room following a car accident. She’d been the only other person in the car with them when they’d collided with a truck. Kyle didn’t think she’d ever gotten over the fact that she’d lived and they hadn’t, though it wasn’t something she talked about.

Her sister, who was one year older than she, had been at a baseball game with their father. They’d lived on, just as Melissa had, but not very well. Her father had become depressed and Anita hadn’t fared so well, either. Melissa had tried to take care of them, even though she was the youngest. She still did.

Kyle doubted they still wanted or needed her to, however.

Last July Anita had decided to get an apartment with her boyfriend. It was a big deal. The sisters had lived together for years, ever since Melissa had returned to Portland after med school. Melissa, he knew, had liked sharing a household. But Anita, at thirty-two, had wanted to live away from family members—something she’d never done before. She’d made her announcement right before that crazy, unexpected night in July…

The X-Files came on. Kyle took a swig from his beer bottle and tried to concentrate on the show. In his peripheral vision he saw Melissa tuck her feet up under her on the couch and nibble on her gingersnaps.

The episode was one of their favorites, but it didn’t hold his attention. Melissa did.

Whitney at the clinic had once told him his relationship with Melissa was like the one between the X-Files’ main characters, FBI agents Mulder and Scully. He’d laughed. But the comparison had some validity, he acknowledged to himself. He and Melissa had the same kind of connection, a quiet respect and unwavering loyalty to each other. They trusted each other with their lives, though they rarely discussed their innermost feelings.

And the sexual tension. It was always there in the background, simmering. Neither of them would admit it, but that was how it was.

After the show ended, Melissa picked up the remote from the coffee table and switched off the television. “You okay, Kyle?”

“Mmm, sure.”

“You seem a little distracted.” Reaching back, she patted her hair and felt that it had gotten mussed. She released the tortoiseshell clasp and ran her fingers through the straight strands.

The movements weren’t intended to be seductive. They were seductive, though, and it didn’t help his distractedness.

I did that, he thought. I ran my fingers through that hair, felt its silken texture. I know it smells like gardenia.

He’d caught himself leaning too close to her recently, trying to get a whiff.

It made it worse, he thought, to know what she smelled like, felt like, tasted like. Now that he’d seen her naked body, caressed her curves, it had become almost torturous to be near her.

Especially to be near her and not be able to do it all again.

He swallowed. “Guess I’m a little preoccupied with the fall fund drive,” he said. A fib. He hated to lie to her and he didn’t have much practice. The need had never arisen in the past. But she wouldn’t want to hear about him lusting after her. “Sorry.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Nah. You’re already volunteering plenty.” Kyle finished off his beer, which was flat and warm. He decided he’d better attempt some kind of conversation. Assure them both everything was okay. “So…any luck finding a roommate this week?”

Anita had moved out of their little house around the corner on September 1st. More than a month had passed and somehow none of Melissa’s roommate applicants had worked out yet.

She shook her head. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of calling off the search. Living by myself for a while.”

He gave her a look. “Because you think she’ll come running back,” he said, and they both knew he meant Anita.

“Honestly? Yes.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll live alone.” She gave a half smile, just a slight quirk of the lips. “Maybe it’ll be good for me.”

“You know how I feel about that.” It would be great for her. He’d been telling her so for years. She needed to live for herself awhile, instead of for others.

“Then why are you eyeing me as if I’ve done something wrong?” she said.

Okay, they weren’t going to have a lighthearted conversation tonight. This would be one of their serious ones, instead. That was fine, he told himself. As long as it didn’t pertain to the two of them. “You’re not planning to live alone. You’re planning for your poor, weak, flighty sister to have a dramatic breakup with her boyfriend, just like she always does, and then come running back to you. You’re counting on it. She probably knows it.”

“Am I supposed to expect their relationship to last? Expect her and Ty—”

“Troy,” he corrected.

“Troy.” She paused. “I’m supposed to expect them to live happily ever after? That’s never happened before.”

“How many times has your sister moved in with a guy?” He knew the answer, but he wanted her to say it.

“Never. But she’s talked this way about plenty of guys. I can always recognize it. She gets the same tone in her voice, the same look in her eyes. You want to know what it says? ‘It’s real this time. He’s my knight in shining armor. He’s the one who’s going to sweep me off my feet and make everything all right.’ But it never lasts.”

“Maybe this time is different.”

“It’s not.” She spoke with absolute certainty.

Kyle considered her. “Okay. Say it isn’t. Say the relationship goes up in smoke. You really think it’s good for her to come running back to you?”

“Who else can she turn to?”

She didn’t say, Not my father. I’m the only strong one in the family. She didn’t have to. He’d heard her say it in so many ways a hundred times before.

“Mel, what about her standing on her own two feet? Not needing to depend on anyone?”

“You sound like such a guy, Kyle. All that independent, rugged-individualist stuff.” She stood up. Grabbed his beer bottle and her water glass and the gingersnaps. “In my family,” she said, “we support one another when times are tough.”

Melissa carried her load to the kitchen. She returned with a cloth and wiped up the three microscopic cookie crumbs she’d gotten on the coffee table. Her hair clasp, which she’d set on the arm of the couch, went neatly into her pocket.

He knew she didn’t realize how revealing her actions were. She’d spoken so calmly, but that obviously wasn’t how she felt.

She always cleaned things when she was agitated. Tidied a pile of papers. Dusted a picture frame. Suddenly remembered a load of laundry that needed to be folded.

She bunched up the cloth in her hand, spotted a coffee mug he’d left on the end table yesterday and walked over to get it. When she turned around, the most direct route to the kitchen was between the couch and the coffee table. She took a few steps forward.

He didn’t think. He just raised a leg, resting his foot on the side of the coffee table, barring her path.

“Kyle—”

She faced him. Their gazes locked. Something hot and electric and impossible passed between them.

“Kyle, move.” She didn’t step over his leg. His bent knee reached the level of her thighs; she would have had to straddle him. But she didn’t pivot and go the other way, either.

He ached to tumble her onto the couch, on top of him. To kiss her again. He ignored the urge. He looked up at her and said, “What about you, Melissa? Who do you lean on when times are tough?”

Her gaze wavered, sliding sideways. She towered over him, spine straight, the cloth in one hand and the mug in the other, and didn’t give him an answer.

“Come on, tell me. I want to know. Who takes care of you? Who do you turn to?”

She shook her head. “Stop it.”

He couldn’t. Suddenly he couldn’t stop himself. It had been building in him for two and a half months, he finally acknowledged. This restless, edgy energy. This urge to push against her emotionally, to shake things up and break things down, even though he knew he shouldn’t. Even though it could screw up their friendship.

“Or is that just for other people?” he demanded. “For the weak ones?”

“Don’t.”

“I need to know the answer.”

“You already know it.”

“I do? Because it doesn’t seem that way to me.”

“Damn it, Kyle.” She glared down at him.