Think About Love (7 page)

Kippy wouldn't stop screaming.

Samantha had bathed her, setting her on the anti-slip rubber mat in six inches of warm water in the big bathtub. Kippy hadn't been able to sit on her own at four months, but tonight she sat solidly in place, a rubber duck clenched in one fist as she splashed and emitted high, happy shrieks while Samantha soaped and rinsed her. Then she'd eaten the half jar of peaches Dorothy said she took with her cereal each night before bed, and guzzled her bottle.

The baby was obviously sleepy, her head drooping against Samantha's shoulder as she carried her to the little room at the back of the house. But as soon as Kippy's head touched the sheet, her tiny body scrunched up and she began screaming.

Samantha desperately needed a book on baby care. She should have bought one at the mall near the ferry terminal. Why hadn't she thought of it before she brought Kippy home?

She'd bathed Kippy, fed her, changed her diapers, held her, and played with her on an average of one weekend a month. But she realized now that whenever Kippy cried, it was Dorothy she reached for. She had no experience with calming baby hysterics. If it weren't for the fact that Kippy stopped crying each time Samantha picked her up, she'd think the child was ill.

She carried Kippy to the kitchen table where she'd set up her portable computer and sat down with her. "Why don't we work together?" she murmured. "You just lie there and fall asleep, and I'll check my e-mail."

Kippy squirmed and began crying. Samantha rubbed her back, talked to her, and even sang a half-remembered version of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

Kippy screamed.

"Honey, I don't know what to do for you."

She didn't want to worry Dorothy with a phone call to her hospital room, but perhaps Diane knew some magic cure for whatever was troubling Kippy.

When Samantha stood and walked to the telephone at the end of the kitchen counter, Kippy fell magically silent, only to begin whimpering again as Samantha dialed Diane's phone number.

"She may be teething," said Diane, "but it's more likely separation anxiety."

"Separation anxiety?" echoed Samantha.

"I noticed it the last couple of times Dorothy left her with me. It's normal, usually around the time babies start to notice the difference between people and realize that Mom—in this case, Dorothy—isn't always there. They go through a stage where they cling if they think Mom is going to go away and cry when she does."

"She's crying every time I put her down. What should I do?"

"Try walking her, or sitting in the rocking chair upstairs. The motion will soothe her. If you're desperate, you could try putting her in the infant seat and taking her for a drive. That always used to put my babies to sleep."

Miraculously, Kippy had fallen silent again. Samantha turned her head and found the baby's head resting on her shoulder, eyes open and staring.

"Thanks, Diane. Right now she seems OK."

"That will probably change when you put her down. Good luck, Mom."

"Thanks. Diane, I have to go to Seattle tomorrow afternoon to tidy up some loose ends before I'm free." Brenda Simonson hadn't liked the fact of those loose ends, and the judge had given Brenda the power to take Kippy away again if she thought it necessary. "I'll be back late tomorrow night. Can you look after Kippy for me?"

"I'd love to. Anytime, Sam. I'm almost always home, and I enjoy Kippy. I wish mine were babies again."

Now she needed to talk to Cal.

Samantha hung up the phone. With Kippy's wide eyes staring at her, she knew there wasn't much sense trying to put her down in the crib again. She carried Kippy upstairs to the room she and Sarah had slept in through their teenage years, the room that had been her own mother's as a child.

After Samantha and Sarah had moved out, Sarah to marriage and Samantha to university, Dorothy had replaced the twin beds with a double, but otherwise left the room as it was. The bookshelves held a chaotic mixture of romances and kids adventure stories, with a couple of school textbooks mixed in. The contents of the closets were more up to date. Samantha and her sister had sorted through the closet last summer and had given most of their old clothes away to the Goodwill.

She put Kippy on the big bed. This time, instead of screaming, the baby squirmed a little, then shoved her thumb into her mouth and stared at Samantha as she stripped off her damp blouse and slacks.

"Next time, kid, I'll change before I bathe you," she promised, pulling the pins from her hair and finger combing it as the long mass tumbled over her shoulders.

Kippy gurgled, blinked, and reached for a strand of hair.

"Wait a minute," said Samantha, pulling out a pair of faded jeans and a loose sweatshirt. "You're wide awake, aren't you? Completely wide awake."

She stepped into the closet and grabbed a hanger for her suit.

Kippy started crying.

"So I guess it
is
separation anxiety." Her voice seemed to calm the baby, so she kept talking, saying, "I'm here, Kippy. Right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Kippy gulped and made a noise that might have been a gurgle.

This baby tending took a lot of energy. The doctor and social worker were right—a woman with congestive heart failure had enough to worry about without looking after a small baby.

How long would it take Samantha to learn the tricks of being a mother? And when would Kippy fall asleep, so Samantha could call Cal and give him the bad news?

Cal tried Sam's cell phone a couple of times throughout the afternoon, as well as the home number of Dorothy Marshall, Sam's next of kin.

At five-thirty, he had dinner in the hotel's dining room, hardly tasting the food. Afterward, in his room, he tried both numbers again. He wasn't sure what the hell he meant to say if she answered, but his anger had been building all day. He was certainly entitled to more of an explanation than she'd given him. He disliked being treated as the enemy, as someone she needed to keep secrets from.

They needed to clear the air.

He knew it would make more sense to wait until tomorrow, when she was committed to meeting him at six-thirty. Earlier, he'd decided that instead of taking her to the helicopter in the morning, he'd take her somewhere for breakfast and get some answers. He was pretty sure, though, that Sam wasn't going to tell him a damned thing more than she already had.

After a day spent cooling his heels in the small town of Nanaimo, he'd had his fill of coal mines, stunning harbor views, and waiting. To hell with phoning her. He'd go to her island now, tonight.
 

He called a car rental company and then impatiently waited for the car to turn up.
 

He got to the Gabriola Island ferry terminal about seven, only to be told the ferry had just left. The next sailing was scheduled to sail at five minutes to eight.

In fact, it sailed at eight-thirty, and he spent the twenty-minute harbor crossing standing on deck, staring at the long, low shape of Gabriola Island with a cool evening wind blowing through his hair. As the ferry approached Gabriola, the clouds shifted from white and gray to shades of red and pink. Water, islands, and flaming sky—a world away from Tremaine's hectic atmosphere.

When the ferry docked, he drove off and pulled into a parking spot in front of the pub. Inside, he asked for directions. Crocker Road was miles away, almost at the far end of the island. Light faded as he drove east on the two-lane pavement, trees crowded on both sides of the winding road. Ahead, he saw evergreen branches stretching to touch each other over the road, and when he entered this tunnel protected by overhanging branches, he seemed to have driven into another world. The cathedral of trees blocked the small amount of light left in the sky. He'd seen houses earlier, but now all sign of human habitation had disappeared, except for the road itself.

Ahead, something moved at the side of the road and he braked.

A doe. She stood at the edge of the road, staring at him. Something in her eyes reminded him of Sam. Then, suddenly, she turned and fled into the trees.

He'd been right to follow his instincts and take the trip to Gabriola. He hadn't suspected that Sam wore a mask until yesterday, but if this island was the place she'd come from, the part of her that he got to see at work was only the tip of the iceberg.

Perhaps a mile later, he emerged from the tunnel of overhanging trees. A farm on his left... another on his right. Power lines overhead. He followed his instructions, turning right, then right again a mile later, onto gravel road. Population density about one house every quarter mile. Less, if you counted the farms and the unpopulated tunnel of trees.

Most of the light had left the sky by the time he turned onto Crocker Road. Nine-thirty. According to his mother's rigid etiquette, he'd arrived too late for a social call.

Someone had put the house number on a tree at the road. He couldn't see the house, but he turned into the shadowy drive, easing the rental car over humps and bumps. Someone should bring in machinery, gravel, asphalt, to make this long drive less of a hazard.

He was halfway up the slope, wondering if there really
was
a house, when he spotted the log home nestled under evergreen trees. He wasn't sure what he would have done if the lights had been out—probably knocked on the door anyway. He didn't know exactly why it felt so imperative to confront Sam
now,
tonight, but it did.

He pulled up behind the white Ford Escort she'd rented. At least he'd got the right place. Beside the house, he could see a battered old Honda, telling him she wasn't alone.

He got out of the car, slammed the door behind him. No one appeared to investigate the noise. Those thick log walls probably masked the sound. He crossed the open grassy area in front of the house and stepped onto the veranda, touched a comfortable-looking wicker chair that could have been older than he was. The varnished wooden door was set in a frame with a tall, narrow window to its right. He could see an oak dining table through the window, Sam's portable computer open on its surface.

No sign of life, neither Sam nor the Honda's owner.

Sam was a city creature, a businesswoman from her immaculate low shoes to her smoothly disciplined hair. She didn't belong here.

Who really lived in this cabin and what the hell was Sam doing here? What was so important that she'd leave Seattle on the eve of a major event she'd planned, to come to this tame wilderness, to commune with deer and stare out at magnificent sunsets over tall, green trees?

He hammered on the door.

No answer.
 

He waited a minute, knocked again, then prowled the veranda. If she were inside with her grandmother, surely she'd get up and answer.

It wasn't a grandmother. A lover, and with both the dining room and what he could see of the living room empty, they must be in the back of the house. In a bedroom.

He shoved his jacket aside and jammed his hands into his pockets. Maybe he didn't know Sam beyond the business world, but he was damned sure she wouldn't walk out on Tremaine's open house preparations to go off and tangle the sheets with a lover.

He heard the sound and spun in time to see the door open. He closed the distance with two long strides, froze when he realized it wasn't Sam at the door.

The woman had a baby held against her chest, her long, shining, rich brown hair streaming over the shoulder opposite the baby. It must be almost to her waist, the hair... and her eyes....

He stepped back instead of forward. Sam's eyes, her mouth.
 

She was barefoot, for crying out loud, and—how had she managed to hide all that hair?

"Cal." Her voice was flat, not Sam's voice at all, but this
was
Sam. "You'd better come in."

She didn't step back to let him through the door, and he couldn't seem to stop staring. "You've got a baby."

"I suppose I have." She shifted the infant in her arms.

He didn't know what the hell to say. The baby wasn't more than a few months old. How the hell could she have a baby? Maybe he hadn't known about the hair, hadn't realized her bare feet would look so—well, sexy. Hadn't known she even owned a pair of jeans. But he sure as hell would have noticed if she'd been pregnant.

"How old is he?"

Sam hugged the baby tighter. "
She's
six months old." She finally stepped back. "Come in, and close the door behind you."

She swayed with the weight of the baby as she walked away, all long, lean legs and a waterfall of tempting hair.
 

Cal closed the door with too much force, then cleared his throat. Six months. Maybe he was unobservant, but not that damned unobservant!

He couldn't reconcile the two women… His cool second-in-command holding a baby, hair down to her waist and feet naked… and the Sam he knew.

She turned to face him, still holding the sleeping baby.

"It's not your baby."
 

"I tried to call you earlier."

"I'm here now." Watching her hold the baby unnerved him, or maybe it was her hair, the odd look in her eyes. "Shouldn't she be in bed?"