Confidential: Expecting! (11 page)

“Anything else you want me to know?”

I’m having your baby.

But she decided to keep that information confidential. Sharing it now, with this other big issue unresolved between them, would only complicate matters. Mallory shook her head.

“When I asked you to come with me tonight, I can honestly say I didn’t think the evening would end this way,” he said after a moment.

“No.” Was he saying goodbye? Neither his expression nor his body language gave his intent away.

“I’m sorry, Mallory.”

It wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped to hear. Arms crossed over her waist as if to protect the life growing inside her from rejection, she braced for his farewell.

“It’s all right.” The words cost her.

“No. It’s not.” He closed the distance between them, lifted her chin with his finger. “I’m sorry for doubting you, for jumping to conclusions. Forgive me?”

He was asking for contrition?

“I don’t understand. I thought…I thought you were going to say that things between us are over.”

“I may be a fool, but I’m not that big a fool.”

“I should have told you about the information I’d found. I didn’t mean for it to be a secret. It’s just that I gathered it before anything had really taken place between us and, well, afterward, when I decided you were more important to me than any story…”

“Because you love me.” He looked pleased now.

“Yes.”

“Well, I have a scoop for you, and I don’t care who knows it.” His hands found her hips and pulled her close. Just before he kissed her, he said, “I love you, too.”

T
HE
next few weeks passed in a wondrous haze. Mallory couldn’t recall ever being so happy or feeling so complete, which was odd considering she was still writing intern-worthy fluff for the
Herald’
s Lifestyles section and having to put up with Sandra’s snide comments whenever their paths crossed at work. Lately Sandra wasn’t only snide, she seemed smug. Mallory dismissed it. Her colleague was the last person on her mind.

Indeed, work in general continued to take a back seat. She spent less time at the office, putting in the standard number of hours and no more, unless specifically asked by the features editor. Where a few months earlier she would have spent most of her waking hours breathing in newsprint and combing through wire service stories, she now spent her evenings with Logan at her home or on his sailboat or in his upscale condominium, where he was attempting to teach her the rudiments of cooking in his gorgeous gourmet kitchen. She was learning a great deal, not only about sautéing,
basting and frying, but about herself. As she’d told him that night in her apartment, she’d stopped selling herself short.

Mallory liked who she was when she was with Logan. She felt no need to be perfect or to cloak herself in a mantle of toughness. As flawed as she was, he enjoyed spending time with her. He said he loved her. Even so, she still hadn’t told him about the baby, whose existence had now been confirmed by her doctor.

Though she told herself not to be, she was a little scared. What would his reaction be? She had to believe he would be happy and supportive despite their circumstances. And surely he would be the polar opposite of her father in every way. A lifetime of hurt, however, was not easy to overcome. Besides, she had time. She was barely two months along. And everything between her and Logan was so new, so perfect. She wanted to give them both time to adjust to being a couple before introducing the fact that they were to become parents.

Mallory was bustling around her apartment rounding up a change of clothes and trying to remember what she’d done with the white chef’s apron she’d bought, when the telephone rang. She assumed it was Logan since they were eating in at his condo tonight. He was going to teach her how to make an authentic Chinese stir-fry.

She grinned as she picked up the receiver. “Be patient, lover,” she said on a laugh.

“Mallory? Is that you?” On top of the usual agitation in her mother’s voice, Maude sounded perplexed.

Mallory sorely regretted not consulting the Caller ID readout. Not only was this conversation bound to be a downer, it was guaranteed to be long.

“Yeah, Mom. Sorry about the greeting. I thought you were someone else.”

“That much I gathered,” Maude said dryly and with a touch of censure.

“I’m…I’m just on my way out the door, Mom. I have someplace I need to be and I’m already running a little behind. Can I call you back later?”

“By later I assume you mean tomorrow.” Not a touch of censure now, but a slap of it, and that was before Maude added, “I thought you’d sworn off men after the last one. What was his name?”

Mallory didn’t bother to supply it. The past was irrelevant. “I’ve met someone special, Mom.”

“Oh, no.” It wasn’t exactly what a woman wanted to hear from her mother in response to a statement like that. “You sound like you think you’re in love.”

“I don’t think it.” Mallory left it at that, already regretting mentioning her relationship with Logan. Thank God her mother was clueless about the baby.

“Don’t fall into the same trap I did,” Maude warned before launching into her old rant. “I wasted fourteen years of my life waiting on your father, making a home for him and putting his needs ahead of my own. You know what I had to show for it when he left me? Nothing.”

You had me, Mallory wanted to say. You had a daughter who felt deserted by not one but two parents.
But she knew the futility of trying to rationalize or argue. Maude wanted sympathy and agreement. Mallory couldn’t bring herself to offer either, so she substituted them with silence.

Her mother seemed not to notice. “You make a good living at the newspaper,” she went on. “You have a career, money, a purpose, all of the things I should have had and would have had in my twenties if I hadn’t let your father talk me into marriage and letting him provide for me. I thought I was in love back then, too.”

Again Mallory had to bite her tongue, since if her parents had never met she wouldn’t have been born. Her mother’s bitterness had blinded her to how insulting and hurtful her comments could be.

“You have a good life, Mallory. I’ll be very disappointed in you if you let some man ruin it,” Maude finished.

This wasn’t a new tack her mother took. She’d been saying much the same thing since Mallory’s first date at age fifteen. For the first time, though, instead of rolling her eyes and letting it pass without remark, Mallory got angry. Angry enough to break her cardinal rule and argue.

“A good life, Mom? Is that what you think I have?” Until recently, it had been so pathetically empty, so work focused and one dimensional. Spending time with Logan, falling in love with him, made her see that clearly. “Just because I’m single doesn’t mean my life has been good.”

The rebuttal—the words as much as their crisp
delivery—must have thrown Maude. Mallory pictured her mother’s mouth working soundlessly on the other end of the line. It was a wonderful moment, an amazingly liberating one, especially since Mallory hadn’t even realized she’d been as tethered to the past as her mother.

But all good things must come to an end, and her mother’s silence was one of them.

“That’s the way you talk to me? After all of the sacrifices I’ve made through the years to see to it that you could have everything I didn’t and couldn’t?”

Mallory almost apologized, not because she felt contrite, but because she could wind up the conversation that much more quickly if she gave in, gave up. A glance at her watch showed that she was already going to be late arriving at Logan’s condo. Well, whether a little late or a lot, this couldn’t wait. For once, she was going to set the record straight.

“I appreciate your sacrifices, Mom. I always have. What I don’t appreciate is the way you’ve used them as a battering ram, trying to ensure I would always feel beholden to you. You did what a parent is expected to do and, okay, more since Dad skipped out on his obligations after he left.”

“After he left!” Maude spat the words. “He wasn’t much of a father while he was still in the home. You have no idea the sacrifices I made,” she said a second time.

Mallory decided to try a different approach. “You could have more now, Mom. You could go back to
school, take some courses so you could get a job you actually liked.”

Maude snorted. “At my age?”

“You’re fifty-four. That’s hardly ancient.”

“He’s really turned your head, hasn’t he? This fellow you’re rushing off to see.” Her mother sounded disgusted.

“He’s a good man.” The very best. And he was going to be a good father. She would believe that. She wouldn’t let the past poison the future.

“They all start off that way.”

“No. They don’t.” The truth struck Mallory with enough force that she leaned against the kitchen wall for support. “None of the guys I dated in the past started off treating me very well. Maybe that’s what I wanted,” she murmured, half to herself. “Maybe, after what happened between you and Dad, I didn’t want to be tempted to have a serious relationship, one with long-term possibilities.”

She was tempted now. More than tempted, she decided. And the baby growing inside her wasn’t the only reason.

“Mallory—”

Her mother was gearing up for another depressing diatribe, but Mallory had heard enough. Nothing she’d said to Maude had changed her mother’s mind, but at least Mallory had had her say and experienced an epiphany of her own.

“Mom. I’ve got to go. Logan is waiting for me.”

“You look different,” Logan said as she stood chopping a red bell pepper at the kitchen counter.

She was using the Santoku knife the way he’d taught her, keeping the tip of the blade on the cutting board and levering the rest of it up and down to cut the vegetable. She’d already given the same treatment to an onion and a couple stalks of celery for the shrimp stir fry they were making.

“It’s your fancy lighting.” She used the knife to point to the trio of amber-glass pendant lights that hung above the counter, but a panicky part of her wondered if he could tell she was pregnant just by looking at her.

“No.” His eyes narrowed speculatively. “It’s more than that.”

“You’re making me feel self-conscious,” she warned when he continued to stare at her. “I’m liable to slice off a finger if you keep inspecting me like that.”

He wasn’t deterred by the prospect of bloodshed. “You look…lighter.”

Mallory blinked at that before setting the knife aside and crossing her arms over her chest. “Are you saying you thought I was fat before?”

He chuckled. “Not lighter in that regard. Lighter in spirit I guess is what I mean.”

She made a tsking noise. “Watch it. You’re coming awfully close to analyzing me.”

“Not close. I am.” He plucked a piece of red pepper from the cutting board and popped it in his mouth. “So, what’s happened?”

Where to begin, Mallory thought. She unfolded her
arms and decided to keep to the most recent event. “I talked to my mother just before coming here.”

“Oh.” He nodded. “Is that why you were late?”

“Yes.” She wiped her hands on the front of her white chef’s apron, not because they were dirty, but because her palms suddenly felt moist.

“Is she okay?”

“Yes.” Then Mallory shook her head. “No, not really. I feel sorry for her.”

“How so?”

Logan was all doctor now, but Mallory didn’t mind. She’d come to appreciate this side of him. His calm assessments and keen insights. She offered some of her own. “My dad did a real number on her, but it was years ago.”

“Sometimes the passage of time is irrelevant if the hurt was substantial enough.” When she frowned, he said quietly, “I let ten years pass before I found myself in another serious relationship.”

“Because of Felicia.”

He nodded and the revelation caused Mallory to swallow. They had talked about a lot of things since that night in her apartment, but by unspoken agreement, they’d steered clear of this topic.

“A little ironic, huh?” His expression turned sardonic. “I counsel people on relationships, on moving forward with their lives despite adversity or after heartache. Yet I spent the better part of a decade in emotional limbo.”

“You’re not in limbo now.” She rose on tiptoe and kissed him.

“Nope.” He nipped at her lower lip.

“You’ve moved on with your life.”

“Full steam ahead,” he agreed. Then he sobered. “You know, I’m still not sure if I prefer what I’m doing to being in private practice, but for the first time since I went on the air, I no longer feel like a fraud.”

“I’m glad.”

“So, what happened with your mom?”

“She needs to move on. Forget limbo. The woman is in purgatory and she’s only too happy to try to drag me there, too. She’s lonely and bitter and absolutely determined to remain that way.”

“Have you accepted that her unhappiness is not your fault or your responsibility?”

“Oh, I accepted that a long time ago. What occurred to me today when she began lecturing me on the evils of men and relationships—” when Logan’s brows lifted, Mallory inserted “—yes, my mother finds your species to be without redemption. Anyway, when she trotted out the same old saw today, I got so angry that I actually argued with her.”

“You’ve never argued with your mother before? You?” he said again, his lips beginning to twitch.

“Are you insinuating that I’m contrary?”

He leaned forward to drop a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I wouldn’t dare. Now, go on with your story.”

“I’ve argued with my mom about plenty of things,
but not about men in general or my dad in particular. I’ve always just let her have her say,” Mallory admitted.

“Avoidance,” he murmured.

“Maybe. Probably.” She shrugged. “But I didn’t think I’d put any stock in her words or that they’d had any impact on my life. Until today.”

“What changed?” he asked softly and reached for her hand. His fingers weaved through hers, a symbol of the bond that had formed between them. It gave her strength and Mallory smiled.

“I changed. I realized that until recently I was a workaholic. I didn’t just enjoy my job, I’d made it the focus of my life to the exclusion of all else. Well, except for loser guys.”

“Present company excluded, I hope.”

“Definitely. The men I dated in the past were…so wrong for me. I knew that, on a subconscious level at least, but I didn’t want to get serious with anyone. I didn’t want to chance a repeat of my mother’s life.” She shook her head slowly. “The funny thing is I was already living her life. Sure, the circumstances were different—no jerky ex-husband, no child to raise without support.” Her heart thudded at that, but she pressed on. “No mediocre job to toil away at because I didn’t have a college degree or marketable skills—but I had become every bit as lonely and jaded.”

“Wow.” He nodded appreciatively. “No wonder you look so light. You shed a ton of baggage.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I did.” They both had.

“And you did it all by yourself.” He pretended to
frown. “You know, if more people could do what you just did, I’d be out of a job.”

“But I’d still need you, Logan.” She raised their linked hands to kiss the back of his. “Thank you.”

Logan’s smile was gentle, his steady gaze mesmerizing. “For what?”

“For not being a jerk.”

He laughed. “Thanks, I think.”

“I’m starving.” She released his hand, but instead of going back to chopping vegetables, Mallory began to untie the apron strings.

“What are you doing?”

Instead of answering his question, she asked one of her own. “Ever made love in a kitchen?”

“This kitchen?” His voice was hoarse and his gaze darkened when she tossed the apron aside and started undoing the buttons on her blouse.