Marry Me Page 27

  He set the wrench down with more care than the task deserved. “I thought she wasn’t due for a month.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Then why are you going now?”

  “Babies have a habit of picking the worst possible time to arrive.” She watched him carefully. Maybe he’d paled a bit. Perhaps his mouth had tightened. She wondered if he’d tell her if this hurt him but even given how far they’d come, doubted that he would. “Let’s just say that I’ve got a hunch and would rather not take any chances.”

  “All right.” He tossed the wrench aside and stood, wiping his hands on his thighs. “Just let me wash up before we go.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  His eyes, flat and carefully unemotional, met hers. “I’m not letting you go out there alone.”

  “It’s barely snowing now.” And it’s too much to ask of you, to stand by a few feet from another woman laboring to bring forth a child. I would spare you. “I’ll be there before it really starts—if it really starts.”

  “And have me sitting home, wondering where you are, worrying if you’re okay?” He walked over to her and cupped her face in his palms, tilting it up. “No, thank you.”

  The intensity in his eyes left her breathless. And hopeful. He had to feel something, didn’t he, to look at her like that? “You would worry?”

  “Of course I would worry.”

  “I—”

  He stopped her with a kiss so sweet it made her eyes sting. “Shush,” he whispered. “I’m coming along.”

  The moan died slowly, keening off into the night like a fading ghost. At the sound, the coffee cup slipped from Joe’s hand and shattered on the floor.

  Emily poked her head out from behind the blanket Jake had rigged to shield the bed from the part of the room where he and Joe waited. “Anybody bleeding?” she asked, her hair long lost to its knot, hanging limp around her shoulders. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and somewhere along the way she’d thumbed open the button at her throat and her skin glistened in the heat of the room—she’d had him stoke the stove high. He focused on that tiny wedge of tempting neck because it was a far better thing to contemplate than most of the other thoughts hovering around.

  Jake stood up from where he’d been gathering the broken pieces of cup. He curled his fingers, hiding the small drop of blood on his palm where the point of a shard had pierced him. “Nope.”

  She studied him for a moment, and he did his best to appear unconcerned. “Everybody doing okay?”

  “We’re doing just fine,” he said, and hoped it sounded better to her than to him. “No problems at all.”

  She shot a skeptical glance at Joe, flopped limply in his chair, staring aimlessly with glazed eyes.

  “You men have any supper? I’ve really no time to make anything, but—”

  “Jeez, Em, you think we’re too helpless to throw together a sandwich?” The mere thought of food had his stomach roiling in protest. “Don’t worry. Everything’s under control out here.” He cleared his throat. “How about…ah…” He jammed a finger at the blanket. “Everything okay in there?”

  Her smile was brilliant. “Perfect,” she said, the blanket flapping forlornly as she disappeared behind it again.

  Perfect, he thought, as a brief, short shriek, abruptly cut off on a rising note, had panic surging thickly at the base of his throat.

  He gathered the rest of the debris, this time with more care, and looked around frantically for someplace to stick it. Finally he dumped the shards in a pot, sloshed the spilled coffee around with a rag he pulled off the back of a kitchen chair, and called it good enough.

  They’d arrived at noon, wet and chilled, the sky shedding flakes more thickly by that time. May, obviously surprised to see them, invited them to join the lunch they were just sitting down to.

  Stuffed with May’s excellent plum cobbler, Jake had just begun to relax when May stood up, squeaked, and looked down at the rush of fluid pouring from beneath her skirts.

  Jake and Joe stood dumbly, useful as boats in the desert, while Emily efficiently mopped up the floor, tucked May into bed, and got water steaming, bustling around the men as if they were furniture.

  And then time hit the wall and stuck. Oh, it must be passing; the sun had crept across the sky and slid down, but every time Jake glanced at the clock the hands hadn’t budged a bit since the last time he’d checked.

  “Jake,” Joe finally said, his low voice filled with dread. “Is it supposed to take this long?”

  How the hell should I know? “Oh yeah, sure. Emily said sometimes it takes even longer than this.”

  “Longer?” Joe’s face bleached the color of his white shirt, crisp when they’d arrived but now limp and rumpled as if put on the moment it was pulled from the wash. “Did it…did it take so long with…”

  His hands were slick and Jake rubbed them against his thighs. “Yeah.” He closed his eyes briefly against the memories that charged up, clear and raw as the day they’d been born. “It’s not the same, Joe.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Emily promised.” He said it with forced conviction only to ease Joe’s mind. But it settled his, too; Emily might shade the truth when the situation required it, but she’d been completely confident on this point. He was sure of it.

  Another cry rent the air. Joe sat bolt upright, eyes wide with terror. “Jesus, Jake! I can’t—” He looked longingly toward the door, apparently on the verge of bolting through it.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” How’d he ever believe Joe would take this lightly? Jake wondered. Another point to Emily. “If you run out now, you’ll be suffering for it till the day you die.”

  “I wish it was me. It’s got to be worse…the waitin’ and worryin’, it’s got to be worse than the doin’. Doesn’t it?”

  Oh no, it’s not, Jake thought, but in the interests of keeping Joe here, spared him that answer.

  “Now see here.” Jake rose from his chair and his bones creaked, reminding him just how long he’d been hunched there, his muscles so tense they’d practically frozen in place. “I’m the last person to recommend drinking as a solution to anythin’, but where the hell’s that whiskey you make?”

  “I—” Dazed, Joe blinked until the question took hold. “Keep it behind the woodbox.”

  Jake dove for the bottle, decided not to bother with a cup. He yanked out the cork and shoved it at Joe. When Joe didn’t respond, Jake reached down and forced his fingers around it, then pushed it toward Joe’s mouth.

  Joe gulped, then shuddered. “Ahh.” He gulped down a quarter of the bottle, bringing enough color into his cheeks that he no longer looked in danger of fainting at any moment.

  “How about you?” Joe asked.

  Jake’s mouth went dry. The sharp smell of the alcohol burned his nostrils and he missed it, more sharply than ever, and the black oblivion it promised. He swallowed hard. “No,” he said. “I’m all right.” That might be a lie, he thought, but he sure as hell hadn’t been all right when he’d been drinking, either.

  Another cry, long and strained. Joe’s bottle tilted in his slack grip, the pale liquid spilling out and forming a puddle right into the damp spot the coffee had left.

  Ten brutally long seconds later, Joe straightened his shoulders like a man who knew there was nothing for it but to charge into battle even though he’d surely be killed. “I’m goin’ in there.”

  Jake grabbed his arm. “Em’ll call you if you’re needed. She promised.”

  “But—”

  And then there was another cry, a new one, wavering, nasal, as beautiful a thing as this earth offered.

  “Jake,” Joe said, stunned as a poleaxed steer. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “I heard it,” he said, grabbing Joe’s hand and pumping hard.

  “Thanks, I—” He stopped dead, gaze glued over Jake’s shoulder. Jake spun, saw Emily approaching with a smile the size of Montana, a yellow-wrapped bundle tucked c
arefully in the crook of her arm.

  “Is that—” Joe took half a step, couldn’t go any farther.

  “Of course it is. What else would it be?” She beamed at him. “Congratulations.”

  “May, is she—” Full sentences were beyond him.

  “She’s wonderful. She did a beautiful job.” Emily pushed back a corner of the blanket. Jake caught a glimpse of dark, wet hair, plastered against an impossibly tiny skull. “Don’t you want to meet your daughter?”

  “That’ll be ten bucks, Blevins,” Jake said, but Joe ignored him.

  “My daughter,” Joe whispered, with such reverence that Jake knew any preference Joe might have had for a son had disappeared the instant he’d laid eyes on this girl. Haltingly, Joe stepped closer, tucked his hands behind his back, and peered into the swirl of blanket as if terrified of what he might see. “My—”

  He dropped to the floor.

  Torn, Emily looked from the patient at her feet to the one in her arms.

  “I’ll take her.”

  “Jake?”

  “You better check on him,” Jake said, and hoped to God he wasn’t going to faint, too. He felt light-headed, the blood roaring in his ears until he could barely hear her response. “I won’t drop her. I promise.”

  “You’d better not,” she said, pretending to tease while she studied him worriedly.

  Carefully she transferred her precious burden to him. “Jesus. I forgot how light they are.” Eyes closed, mouth open, plump cheeks curved so adorably. “Jesus.”

  Emily, who’d bent beside Joe, looked up, her brow knit. “He’s fine. Just fainted.”

  “If there’s ever a moment in a man’s life worthy of fainting, this is it.”

  “I really should—”

  “Attend to May,” he finished when she was reluctant to do so. “Go ahead. We’re fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’ll be just till he wakes up, right?” Oh, the smell of the babe rose to him, that powdery sweetness like nothing else. “Em, if we’re ever going to have one of these of our own, it’s probably about time I test out the idea.”

  She struggled to hide her concern. “All right,” she said over her riotous worry and slipped behind the curtain.

  She delivered the placenta, pleased to discover that May had torn only a bit—not bad for a first baby, she thought, especially one of such a healthy size for all that she’d arrived early. Despite her reassurances, Emily could now admit to herself that she’d been anxious. She had little doubt of the quality of her training but it would take her a while to get used to working so completely alone and without the comforting presence of a hospital only blocks away.

  After promising an exhausted but proud May she’d return momentarily with her daughter and her husband—she hadn’t mentioned Joe’s little nap—she pushed aside the draped blanket.

  It was a picture that would live in her mind until the day she died: Jake, crooning softly to the child, so absurdly tiny in his big arms, his face such a mixture of awe and terror that, if he hadn’t owned her heart already, she’d have handed it over in that moment.

  She came to stand beside him; he was too lost in his rapt fascination to notice her approach.

  “Jake,” she said, and put a hand on his arm.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” he said, hushed as if in a cathedral.

  “Beautiful,” she agreed. And then, reluctantly, “May is asking for her.”

  “Oh. Of course.” He looked up, eyes glistening. He blinked hard. “I have to go get her, Emily. I have to go get my daughter.”

  Gently she touched his hair and peered over his shoulder, admiring the squawking, red-faced infant. “I know.”

  Chapter 21

  Winter’s early incursion faded as quickly as it had arrived, making way for a long, golden, fertile autumn filled with crisp days and blue skies and a hefty harvest for Joe Blevins…when the besotted father could tear himself away from staring into the cradle long enough to go to the fields.

  The last week in October Emily returned from McGyre with the mail, and upon finding the shack empty, hurried to where the new house was rising steadily, sticks of clean, raw yellow wood blocking out the boundaries of a home to come.

  It’d been a bit of a trick to convince Jake that she should be the one to take the Register in for distribution and pick up the mail. Part of the printer’s duties, she’d informed him, but finding the little white lies that had once tripped so easily off her tongue came harder now, even though she said the words to spare him.

  Hammer in hand he came to meet her, his smile uncomplicated, unfettered, and her heart swelled. Yes, there was much to be settled between them, but she could be patient. It would all work out in the end. She’d never been so sure of anything in her life.

  He kissed her until the letters fluttered from her hands to the ground and she surely would have followed them if his arms hadn’t held her up.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let me show you what I’ve done.”

  “Now?”

  He grinned, thoroughly pleased with the reaction he’d drawn. “It won’t take long. And then I’ll be able to give you my full attention.”

  He took her by the hand and drew her into the center of the structure. “What do you think?”

  “I—” It took her a moment to sort it out, translate the maze of lumber into future rooms. He’d expanded the kitchen, moved the staircase, nudged the wall of the dining room farther into the parlor. “You changed the framing.”

  “Yeah. Once, when we were talking about houses, you said…you mentioned you liked a big kitchen, and that you thought it would be clever to put it in front where you could see the comings and goings. And that you hated having to squeeze into a dining room.”

  “But I—” She’d always hoped. Her whole life had been fueled by it. But this…this was bigger than hope, all encompassing, a joyful lifting that left her light-headed, ready to float right up to the pretty blue sky. “You changed Julia’s plans.”

  “Yeah.” She looked for signs of regret. There was a shadow of sadness, yes; she knew there would always be. One could not love and lose without having the loss mark you permanently. She wouldn’t even want it to disappear. It was the sum of life, loss and joy, and if you were very lucky, the balance came up bigger on the joy side.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know I didn’t have to. But I want this to be our house.” He reached for her and cradled her face in his palms as if he held an object of infinite preciousness, as carefully as he’d held Joe and May’s new daughter. “Julia’s house still lives, in my dreams, just as it always did. But this one…this one is ours,” he said with absolute conviction.

  “Oh.” She kissed him again, because sometimes words just wouldn’t do.

  “So,” he murmured when he lifted his head. “How was town?”

  “Town? It was…” She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. Or perhaps, deep down inside, she’d been too afraid of what was in that letter and allowed herself to “forget.”

  She pawed frantically through the brittle brown grass. “There!” she said and pounced on the flash of white. And then she slowed, clutching the envelope in her hand.

  He stared at the white square before slowly lifting his gaze to her face. “It’s from Mr. Jensen.”

  He put out his hand, sucked in a breath.

  “Jake…”

  “It’s okay, Em. I’ve got to read it sooner or later, and waiting doesn’t change what’s inside.”

  She tried to mouth her usual faith in the future but the words wouldn’t come. This mattered too much.

  She watched his face carefully while he ripped open the envelope. The torn bits fluttered down to the ground as he scanned the two sheets of paper inside. His mouth firmed, and the rich, new life in his eyes—which she hoped she’d had something to do with—went flat and dull.

  “We’ll get a different lawyer,” she said quickly. “Jensen, he’s just one man, he
doesn’t know—”

  “He’s the best I can hire in Chicago.” He crumpled the letter in his fist. “It’s not that bad, Em. He said it would be hard. We knew that going in.”

  “But she’s your daughter.” Emily refused to believe that the courts wouldn’t acknowledge the right of his claim. A child deserved to know her father, and Jake deserved his chance to be one.

  “Jensen said there’s no getting around the fact that I left.”

  “You had no choice in the matter.”

  “Didn’t I?” he said hoarsely. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. All right, I didn’t have a choice. But it’s my word against theirs, and Barnett Bates’s word means a helluva lot more in Chicago than mine.”

  “There’s no one there who’d vouch for your story?”

  “No. No, not anymore, not with their livelihoods on the line.”

  “So what can we do?”

  He walked over to her. “He said it’d be better if we proved up first. Finished the house. So I can show that I can offer her a real home, a stable future.” He drew a line down her jaw and she trembled at the touch. “And you’ll help, too. Show that I’m a responsible, happily married man.”

  Happily? Any other time, in any other circumstances, the word would have meant the world to her. “We’ll do it, Jake. We’ll get her back. I promise.”

  “So.” He visibly boxed the subject away. “What else do you have there?”

  “It’s just a letter from my sister.”

  “Read it to me, will you?”

  “Jake…” She didn’t want to drop the subject, but he’d shut down completely, in a way he hadn’t in months. She hated the barrier he put up between them. She thought she’d found her way inside.

  “Your sister does entertain me,” he said. “So where’s Kate?”

  She shook her head. “It’s from Anthea.”

  “Ah, another one weighs in. Let’s hear it.”

  My dearest Emily:

  I bet you’re all braced for the worst, aren’t you? Certain you’re going to get a lecture from me? But I expect that Kate has already filled that function for the both of us, and quite expertly at that.