And Babies Make Four (19 page)

And now he had!
She scooted up on her pillows, wincing a little at the residual pain of the incision near her shoulder. Jacques Deveraux’s stray bullet had buried itself in the soft muscle near her collarbone. Luckily it hadn’t caused her any permanent damage, but it had taken the doctor nearly an hour to extract it and the tissue would take time to heal. Still, the pain was a small price to pay for Sam’s life. Sam, who was about to step through the door of her hospital room with an armload of tropical orchids from Eden Valley, their own private paradise.…

But the flowers proved to be hothouse roses. And the man—

“Hayward?” she said in surprise as her former boyfriend stepped into her hospital room.

“I came as soon as I heard.” He set the huge, ribbon-wrapped bouquet on the windowsill and pulled a cane-backed chair to her bedside, brushing off the already clean seat before he sat down. “Darling, are you in pain?”

“No, not really,” she answered, struggling to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I had to come.” His voice was tight with an emotion
that was as foreign to the Hayward she knew as snow was to this climate. “When I heard you’d been shot on that godforsaken island I realized how much you meant to me. I want you back, Noel. And I’m prepared to make it official.”

He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a small, black velvet case. Snapping it open, he revealed a conservative, impeccably tasteful diamond engagement ring. “I know this seems sudden,” he said as he slipped the ring on the finger of her limp hand, “but I’ve given it a great deal of thought. We belong together. We share the same likes and dislikes, the same tastes and temperament. I know you felt that I spent too much time at my job, but that’s not a problem anymore. I got the promotion I wanted, so I won’t have to put in so many weekends.”

“Congratulations,” Noel murmured, too shocked to say anything else.

“Thank you, but that’s not what I want to hear.” He enclosed her hands in his meticulously manicured ones. “Marry me, Noel. I know I could make you happy.”

I know you’d try, Noel thought as she stared in stunned surprise at the engagement ring. For so long she’d dreamed of marrying someone like Hayward, someone solid and dependable who could offer her the security she’d never had as a child. And the love, she added as she looked into his handsome, earnest face. He was a good friend and she cared about him deeply. She didn’t doubt that he would be a kind,
caring husband, and that he would do his best to give her a stable, happy life.

She’d be a fool to throw that kind of future away on a whispered promise, spoken by a man she’d known for only a week, who’d never said he loved her, who hadn’t even bothered to contact her since she’d been wounded saving his life. She’d be a fool to hang her heart on a dream. She might as well start believing in Papa Guinea’s voodoo prayers.…

The squawk of a parrot startled her out of her musings. Looking up, she saw a huge imperial sisserou perched on her windowsill, its green and purple feathers gleaming in the tropical sun. It cocked its head to one side and blinked at her with its wise yellow eyes. Then it bent down and began systematically shredding the rose bouquet into minuscule pieces.

“Hey, shoo!” Hayward leaped up from his chair. “Stop that, you stupid … Noel, why are you laughing? Those flowers were almost impossible to get in this city, and that stupid bird just ruined them.”

“You don’t understand,” she said between fits of laughter. “It’s not a parrot. It’s a sign. From Papa Guinea.”

“A sign from Papa—Noel, are you on some sort of medication?”

“No,” she assured him, her laughter dying. She looked up at Hayward, grateful for his friendship, but knowing she could never feel anything more for him. “I know you’d make me happy, but I don’t think I’d be able to do the same for you. I’m a different woman from the one who left Miami. I’ve changed.”

“Don’t be silly, Noel. It’s only been a week.”

“Sometimes that’s all it takes.” She gently slid the ring off her finger and laid it in his palm. “I’ve fallen in love with St. Michelle and its people … and with one very special man.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Hayward closed his hand around the ring. She saw a quick flicker of pain dart across his face before his impeccably unemotional mask settled back in place. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said stiffly as he rose and left the room.

“He wasn’t da man?”

Noel looked up, and saw that the nurse was standing in her doorway. “No, he wasn’t.” She fell back onto the pillows. “You don’t know where a girl could get a stiff drink around here, do you?”

“Ha, I sure do,” the nurse replied, crossing her arms in a look of reproach. “But you shouldn’t be asking that in your condition, should you now?”

“Oh, come on. It’s not going to hurt my shoulder.”

“It’s not your shoulder I be thinking of. It’s your babe.”

“My …?” Noel bolted straight up to a sitting position. “Are … are you telling me I’m pregnant?”

“We tested ya for the medication when you came in,” the nurse replied, looking almost as surprised as Noel felt. “Are you saying you didn’t know?”

“Not until now.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, her heart swelling with more joy than
she’d ever thought possible.
I’m going to have a baby, Sam. Your baby. Made from our love
. “Lord, I need to call him.”

Automatically she reached for a phone, but her hand came down on a flat, empty tabletop. Apparently phones weren’t a common item in the capital’s spartan hospital. “Please, nurse, you’ve got to find a phone and call St. Michelle island. I need to get a message to a man named Sam Donovan—”

“Jolly-mon?”

“Yes,” Noel cried happily. “You know him?”

“My sister, she lives on that island,” the nurse answered, her smile fading. “Spoke with her last night. She tells me about da Jolly-mon, and what’s happened to him.”

Noel’s joy froze to icy terror. “He’s all right, isn’t he? When the paramedics brought me here they told me he’d been left behind because he wasn’t hurt—”

“It’s not hurt he is, ma’am.” She walked over to the bed and sat on the covers, gripping Noel’s still-weak hand in her strong, brown one. “My sister say that Jolly-mon packed up and left the island night before last. Blew away like the wind. And he didn’t tell no one where he was going.…”

The PC perched on Noel’s coffee table gave a jaunty whistle. “The party was better than the quinella I just won at Hialeah. I like baby rains.”

“That’s
showers
, PINK,” Noel corrected with a smile. She stood on tiptoe on the stepladder, unfastening
the edge of the pink and blue banner with her and PINK’s names on it that was stretched across her living room. “Anyway, I thought you’d promised Einstein you’d given up gambling until the baby arrived. Too much excitement isn’t good for your microprocessors.”

“Did give up. Mostly. Ah, he worries like old lady,” the little PC grumbled. “ ’Sides, I’m fine. Upgraded to Pentium-Pro last week. When do you upgrade?”

“Soon, I imagine,” Noel replied as she stepped down off the ladder and pressed her hand against her slightly rounded belly. Four months had gone by, and she was just beginning to show. Outwardly she had hardly changed at all, but inwardly she’d grown a lifetime. Two lifetimes, she thought as she spread her fingers over the precious new life inside her. If only Sam could see this—

Her mind clamped down on the thought. She’d purposely made no attempt to find or contact him since she’d returned to Miami. He’d never made her any promises, and she couldn’t stand the thought of trying to rope him into a relationship because of their baby. Still, there were times at night when she buried her face in her pillow and cried her heart out, imagining the future they’d never have, and the family they’d never be—

A sharp knock sounded on her front door.

Lord, not
another
gift! She glanced around at the crib-and-toy-cluttered living room, wondering where on earth she was going to put the new item. Though
grateful for the shower her friends had organized for PINK and herself, she doubted she could stuff another thing into the limited space of her condo.

“Just pray it’s a gift certificate,” she muttered as she opened the door … and gasped as her gaze collided with a pair of fierce, ocean-blue eyes.

For a long moment she just stood there, frozen in place, as if she were still surrounded by the wall that had once circled her heart. He looked the same. Oh, his shaggy hair was cut shorter and he wore a conservative gray business suit instead of his muscle shirt and worn jeans, but he radiated the same intangible strength, the same invisible, radiant energy that had burned through her frosty defenses.

“Can I come in?”

Not “I’m sorry I left without a word,” or “forgive me for deserting you while you were in the hospital.” Just “Can I come in?” as if he hadn’t disappeared for four months. “What do you want, Donovan?”

He raised an amused brow. “Donovan? What happened to ‘Sam’?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking for the past four—ow,” she said as she raised her arm for emphasis and caught it on the edge of a high chair.

“Here, let me see that.”

He reached for her bruised hand, but she yanked it back. Having him save her from cave-ins and waterfalls was one thing, but from high chairs …? She turned away, overwhelmed by the memories she’d worked so hard to forget.

“What do you want?” she asked again.

He followed her into the gift-littered apartment, looking like a bull circumnavigating a china shop. His gaze settled on the PC sitting on the coffee table. “Hey, is that you, PINK?”

“Hi, Sam. You missed a great baby downpour.”

“She means shower. We had a party for the babies.
Her
babies.”

“Not just mine,” PINK corrected. “Was also for—”

Noel snapped the PC lid down, cutting off PINK’s audio. “So why
are
you here?”

He glanced at her, his eyes gleaming with a passion that filled her mind with indigo nights and sun-drenched days. “You’re the Ph.D. Do the math.”

She did. In fact, she’d been doing nothing else for the past four months. Any way she sliced it, the numbers still came up that she loved him, and Would until the day she died. But she was also painfully aware that love on her part didn’t equal commitment on his.

He’d waltzed into her life after four months of silence. She had no guarantee that he wouldn’t waltz out again tomorrow for another four months, or four years. She couldn’t live with that kind of uncertainty. And she damn well wasn’t going to subject her baby to it. She knew all too well what it felt like when a child was deserted by a beloved father.

“It was a mistake for you to come here.” She turned around to face him. “You’d better go.”

She saw the uncertainty in his eyes, and felt it strike to her heart. “I guess I was wrong to think that if I showed up in this monkey suit, you’d still—” He
plowed his fingers through his hair, instantly transforming it back into a shaggy mane. “Ah hell, I guess it was just a dream. But I’m not leaving without giving you this. I worked too hard to get it.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wadded up sheet of newsprint, handing it to her. “I contacted a couple of Uncle Gus’s old … um, business associates. The leads they gave me were shaky, but I was eventually able to track down this story in the
Chicago Times
archives. It’s not much, but …”

She unfolded the faded sheet. The yellowed page was torn from the middle of the paper, and bore a midwinter date of almost twenty-five years ago. At first Noel couldn’t understand why Sam had brought it to her. Then her gaze focused on a small article, buried next to the obituaries.
HARRIS BANK ROBBERY THWARTED. DRIVER KILLED
.

“My sources said this was a
family
job,” Sam continued, “and when all’s said and done, Chicago is still a family town. The police were encouraged not to follow up on the crime. The whole thing was deep-sixed as quickly as possible. But I talked to one of the survivors. He said no names were mentioned, but he remembered that the driver was a young Italian from back east, who kept talking about his wonderful little girl, and how he was going to use his cut of the robbery to give her everything his posh mother-in-law said he could never af—Noel!”

She hadn’t realized she was fainting until she saw the floor rushing up to meet her. She was briefly aware of a pair of strong arms circling her before she
blacked out. The next thing she knew she was lying on the couch, with Sam sitting beside her, his face drawn in concern.

“Don’t you get tired of rescuing me?” she mumbled.

“It’s sort of become a hobby.” He traced her jaw with his finger.

Gingerly, she scooted up to a sitting position, the piece of newsprint still clutched in her fist. “Do you think the driver was really my father?”

“We’ll never know the whole story,” he said truthfully, “but this man died around the same time that your father disappeared. And if it was your father, it means he left you not because he didn’t love you enough, but because he loved you too much.”

She nodded and pressed the crumpled, precious piece of newsprint against her heart. Brave, stupid, foolhardy, loyal … She shook her head, remembering the foolish, loving young man who’d made the worst decision possible because he wanted to give her a better life. She swallowed, feeling a great peace, and a sorrow beyond tears. “Thank you,” she whispered. “But why did you do it? Why’d you go to all this trouble?”

“You’ve been asking a lot of questions.” He rested his arm along the back of the couch and yanked on a stray upholstery thread. “It’s time I got to ask one.” He turned back to her, his expression remote and distant. “If I asked you to come with me, would you?”

Noel froze. With a shaman’s sight she saw the two paths of her life stretching before her, one safe and
secure, one as passionate and unpredictable as a tropical storm. The choice she made now would affect not only her life, but the lives of her children and her children’s children for generations to come. But there is only one choice, she thought as her hand covered the tiny rounded form of the child they’d made together. I had money and social position growing up, and it meant nothing. I want our child to be raised with love, even if the road is sometimes rocky and uncertain. Love is worth the price.