The Black Sheep’s Baby

Chapter 12

H e couldn’t pretend not to understand. He shook his head and breathed a soft affirmation.

“I was hoping…” she lifted her head and gave it a little shake, and he braced himself to meet her eyes “…it was, I don’t know…some kind of crazy fluke.”

“Temporary insanity.”

“Yeah…”

He snorted. “It is, you know.”

“Insanity?” Her lips quivered, and twisted when she tried to keep them from it. The look of utter desolation on her face tore at his heart. “It is-I know it. I don’t know what else it could be.” She would not meet his eyes. “I’ve never felt anything like it before. I know I can’t let it happen. I can’t. But, dammit…” She clamped a hand across her mouth, muffling the rest.

“But…what?” Something made him say it, lowering his face closer to hers.

He could barely hear her whisper, “But, I do so want it to.”

His heart ached, trembled, thundered within him. He could remember experiencing such emotion only twice before in his life. Ironically, once for a birth and once for a death. Which, he wondered, was this?

“You want me-” he whispered, and could not go on.

“Yes-God knows why…beyond all reason.” She said that angrily. “I want you-” her voice broke, then, and she tilted her face upward, defying her own resolve…tempting his beyond all reason “-to make love to me. Only-” with a hand covering her eyes she rushed to deny it “-only I know we can’t. I know it. It’s unthinkable. It’s-”

“We can.” He heard the words dimly, and the stirrings of excitement deep in his belly and groin told him they were his, though he felt them merely as a flow of breath over lush, warm lips, lips that were slightly parted and quivering in anticipation of the kiss they both already felt, and so badly wanted. Wanting made him believe the words were true. Overwhelming need made him nudge her chin with his and caress her lips once more. “We can…”

She gave an anguished moan. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the pain and confusion in hers as slowly, slowly they sank into each other, as their mouths melted together-though their bodies remained apart, swaying a little, touching only where his hand rested on her arm, and hers on his. All he thought about then was how hot and sweet her mouth was, the most intoxicating thing he’d ever tasted, like some enchanted elixir put in his way by a capricious god to tempt him. One taste, and a man would be lost forever.

And yet he could not make himself stop tasting. Do it-yes, everything in him shouted. Do it. Sort it all out later.

Breath drained from him as, in full surrender to the enchantment, he drew her arms around him and gently enfolded her in his. Deep inside her bulky jacket he could feel her body tremble. Galvanized by that, he lifted one hand and drove it into her hair, wove his fingers through the cold, slippery curls to cup her head in his palm, curled his fingers into a fist, tangling them in the vibrant mass of her hair as he held her against the deepening thrust of his kiss. Held her that way, kissed her that way, until he was trembling, too, and dizzy with the need for more.

With the hand not caught in the skein of her hair, he found the pull tab of her jacket zipper. It made a growling sound as he tore it down-a sound echoed a moment later, deep in Devon’s throat, when she took her arms from around him long enough to shrug the jacket away. It slithered to their feet, and then her arms lifted, clearing the way, and her body was hard and taut against him. His hand was under her sweater, his fingers spread across the remembered, tender-soft skin of her back, and her hands were tangled in his hair, now, both of them-claiming and holding his neck and head as if they were precious treasures she’d found.

A strange, giddy happiness enfolded him, against all logic and reason, and his body, naive and feckless as an adolescent boy’s, believed in it. He simmered with excitement, shivered with delight and smiled against her mouth as he picked her up in his arms.

What had he expected to do then? Who knew? He was in freefall, drifting on that strange, unwonted euphoria, conscious of and caring about nothing else but the woman in his arms, the soft-firm resilience of her body, the cool, damp smell of her hair, the hot brandy taste of her mouth. Had he intended this? He felt the bed bump against his knees, and he was laying them both down, still kissing her deeply and hungrily, filling his arms, hands and mouth with her. Was he thinking about causes, consequences and aftereffects? He was beyond thought.

And she, too, it seemed. She made no objection at all when he measured her naked breasts in his hands, and gasped when he teased a taut nipple between forefinger and thumb. When his fingers discovered the button on her slacks, when he tore the zipper down, she only arched her body closer, turning…seeking…and her sounds were soft moans and tiny growls, every bit as famished as his. His knee slipped between her legs, urging them wider apart, and she moved them willingly, eagerly, inviting him to know the warm, pulsing, vulnerable softness hidden there. Her fingertips made frustrated forays beneath the waistband of his jeans.

He tore his mouth from hers and raised himself on one elbow, thinking to make the way easier for her. But she ducked her face into hiding against his chest and gasped out a muffled cry. “What are we doing?”

His tongue felt thick, his brain muddy and shocked. “I thought we were-”

“No.” She reared back her head and glared at him. Dimly he registered the fact that her eyes were bright as diamonds, glittery with something that wasn’t all desire. “What is it with you, Lanagan?” Though her voice was sharp and her words angry, her face was defenseless as a child’s. Her hands clutched fistfuls of his sweater. “You can’t possibly love me. I don’t know how you can even want me. Why are you doing this?”

He felt his body go still. The hand still tangled in her hair relaxed its grip and opened to cradle the back of her neck. Accepting the sea change in her passion, he reluctantly gentled his, and with a stroking touch along the sides of her throat, said warily, “I don’t know why. Any more than you do.” He tilted away from her and gave her a crooked smile before he added, in a raspy growl that was meant to be sardonic, “It’s not like I had this on my agenda.”

“Are you sure?” She hadn’t returned the smile. Eyes the impenetrable green of jungles gazed accusingly into his.

The movement of his fingertips over the velvety surface of her skin stopped abruptly. He caught his breath, held it a moment then let it go in a gust of incredulous laughter. “You mean, as in ‘Plan B: If All Else Fails Get Devon into Bed?’”

“Something like that.” Her gaze didn’t waver.

He stared down at her for a long time before he answered, noticing the faint bluish shadows beneath the fine-textured skin around her eyes, the golden tips of her lashes, the faint, unexpected hint of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. Funny-he wasn’t thinking at all about how beautiful she was then, only how terribly vulnerable she seemed. He could feel her trembling still, a fine, tight quivering deep down inside, and it was odd, too, how it affected him so differently now than a moment ago. Definitely not as a spur to his desire, but not to anger, either. He wasn’t sure which he wanted to do most, in fact-turn away from her in utter defeat and thwarted passion, or gather her close and hold her in tenderness and protective care. Like Susan…

“You can believe me or not,” he said in a voice that had become guttural with emotion-and it was odd, too, how much it mattered to him whether or not she did. “But until today it never occurred to me that I could. Get you into bed, I mean.”

She believed him. And wished she didn’t.

“It never occurred to me that you could, either. Until today.” She couldn’t believe she was actually laughing, but she was, in quiet gusts against his chest, but she knew it was the kind of laughter that can crumple into sobs in a heartbeat. Desperately afraid it might, she fought to stop it, drawing in a breath, holding it, parceling it out in little settling-down sighs as she lay back against his arm. “We can’t possibly do this,” she said in a low voice.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Eric gave a gusty sigh of his own and lay back on the cot’s meager pillow, settling her subtly against him. “The bed’s too damn small. Plus, if I have a condom at all, it sure as hell isn’t here.”

Was he joking? She didn’t know him well enough to tell. She sniffed and said, “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

They lay together, side-by-side on the narrow, dusty cot, listening to the baby’s gentle snores and staring up at the ceiling like children watching clouds. Devon’s chest, her whole inside ached as if a tremendous weight was bearing down on her. Filling her lungs seemed a difficult task. She felt air-starved and exhausted when she said, “You could have me disbarred.”

She felt his body flinch as though she’d struck him. “You think I’d do that?”

“I think you’d do whatever it takes to keep Emily.” Listening to her own toneless voice, she felt a chill go through her. “To keep my parents-my clients-from getting her.”

“You’re right about that,” Eric said softly, flatly. There was a pause, and then said, “Having you disbarred isn’t going to accomplish that, though, is it? They’ll just get themselves another lawyer.”

She nodded, feeling her head move against his arm, and she thought how strange it was to be talking about such things as this, lying together like sated lovers. “They’ll be doing that anyway.” She hesitated, then added bleakly, “After this, at the very least I’ll have to recuse myself.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

She had no reply. As she tried to think of one, misery settled over her like a thick, musty shroud.

Silence came, then, too, until it was broken by a baby’s sleeping sigh. Devon felt Eric’s body tense as he turned to check, then relax again beside her.

After a moment he said lightly, with an air of beginning, “Devon…tell me about your childhood.”

The quiet words stirred through her and she held herself in a listening stillness, frightened at the emptiness she felt inside, thinking of images of dry husks blown away by cold autumn winds. The silence lengthened until finally she whispered, “I can’t.”

She felt his body sink as he exhaled. “Look, I’m trying to understand, okay? I just want to know how it was with you, with Susan. Make me understand.”

“I said, I can’t.” His hand, which had been a warm, strangely comforting weight across her ribs, now seemed like the bar to a cage. On the brink of panic, she pushed it away and struggled to sit up, scrambling over his legs and reaching with her feet for the edge of the cot. “I don’t remember, okay?” She threw it over a shoulder, defiantly.

He raised himself on his elbows. “What do you mean, you don’t remember? Your whole entire childhood? Not anything? Even a single memory? How’s that possible?” He gave a disbelieving snort. “Everybody remembers something.”

Anger came, and she embraced it gladly. “What’s with you? What’s this…thing you have about memories? That’s all you ever talk about, you know it? ‘Remember when this? When I was a kid that?’” She was on her feet, now, turning jerkily, hugging herself between furious gestures. “What difference does it make?”

“What difference?” He swung his feet around and sat up on the edge of the cot, occupying the place she’d just left. “Hell, Devon, what are we without memories? Memories are…” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it endearingly tousled while he searched for the thought. “Jeez-they make us who we are.”

Endearingly? Confused and distressed, she looked away. “Well, I guess that’s just who I am, then,” she said, brittle and defiant. “A person who was never a child.”

“Everyone was a child.”

She wanted to hate him for the sorrow in his voice. She wanted to think of something sarcastic and clever to hurl back at him. Because she couldn’t, she kept silent, while a pulse ticked crazily against her belt buckle, and the tension coiling inside her felt like a watch spring coming unwound.

“What about pictures?” Eric asked suddenly, straightening with inspiration brightening his eyes. “Your folks must have pictures…photo albums.”

She shook her head and grimaced impatiently, not meaning to lie, really, just not wanting to explain that she never looked at the photographs in her parents’ house. Except for the one on the shelf in the bookcase in the living room-she could hardly miss that one, the professional portrait of two little red-haired girls, one sitting tall and smiling with the gawky self-consciousness of adolescence, the other a chubby-cheeked baby in ruffles, propped on a pillow and clutching a stuffed Winnie the Pooh toy. A portrait of strangers. Devon felt no connection to the children in the picture whatsoever.

“What’s your earliest memory, then?”

God, he was relentless. She wanted to stamp her feet, tear her hair, cry-ironically, all the sorts of things a child would do, and which she had no memory of ever having done. But in any case, she was an adult now, and all she could do was lift her hands to her head and give a tiny moan. “Oh-I don’t know-jeez, I’d have to think-”

“You want to know what mine is?” She most definitely didn’t, but of course he ignored her whimper of denial. “At least, I guess it’s my earliest-I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been maybe…two. I was sitting on my mom’s lap…” His voice was gentle with remembering.

In spite of herself, she found herself turning toward it, then moving instinctively closer like a chilled animal seeking warmth in the darkness. And when she saw his face, not gaunt and full of shadows but lifted to her, smooth and light and young, her heart turned over and the anger in it drained away.

“And we were on this great big tractor. I had my hands on the steering wheel, pretending I was driving it-scared to death, you know? But so proud, too. And I know I must have been pretty small, because that steering wheel seemed huge. I had to stretch my arms wide to grip it on both sides. It felt warm in my hands…almost too warm…hot, actually.”

“That’s it?” She made her voice light, but there was a quiver of envy in it.

He spread his hands and smiled his lopsided smile. “That’s it. Hey, memories don’t have to be big, you know. They can be anything-a smell, a song, a certain food, a particular toy…a moment. Just one little moment in time, captured up here-” he tapped his temple “-forever. Like a photograph.” And he grinned at her, cocky over the aptness of his analogy.

In capitulation, she sat beside him on the cot with her hands pressed tightly between her knees and drew a deep breath. “Okay…” she said on the exhalation, “I guess the earliest thing I remember is…I was packing, so I must have been getting ready to leave for college. Susan was watching me. She didn’t want me to go.”

Incredibly, she wished with all her heart that while she was telling him these things he would put his arms around her again, gather her in and hold her close and enfold her in warmth and safety. And prayed he wouldn’t.

“Details?” Eric prompted softly.

Her mouth was dry. Her throat ached. She tried to swallow, and it felt like thorns. “The suitcase was open on the bed,” she whispered. “She was leaning against it…crying.”

Please don’t go. Don’t leave me here, Devon…please don’t leave me…

“That’s all-I don’t remember anymore-I’m sorry.” And she was on her feet, heart thumping, racing. Yet she was cold. Cold clear through.

She jerked away from him, and as her gaze swept past the window, a movement caught her eye. A spurt of relief-and guilt and anguish-shot through her. “Oh, God-” Bobbing to see past the tangle of a climbing rosebush heavily laden with red-gold hips, she managed a breathless, “Look-your mom and dad are back. I don’t want them to see…” Snatching up her jacket, she ran from the cottage.

Shot through with guilt-adrenaline himself, heart pumping like a runaway freight train, Eric stood in the bunkhouse doorway and watched her make her way across the yard to the house, sliding a little on the trodden-down pathway through the snow. He felt jangled and shaken, but exhilarated, too, as if he’d just missed capturing a Pulitzer-winning shot, or a wild bird in his hands.

Coming up the lane in Lucy’s old Ford 4X4, Mike and Lucy watched the stumbling red-haired figure in the unzipped ski-jacket half running through the well-trampled snow, accompanied and impeded by a pair of excited Border collies.

“Look, isn’t that Devon?” said Mike. “Wonder where she’s been.”

“With Eric, I imagine.” Lucy didn’t even try to keep the satisfaction out of her voice.

Mike frowned at the windshield. “So who’s minding the kid? Is that why she’s in such a hurry to get back?”

Lucy was shaking her head emphatically. “They wouldn’t be so irresponsible. Look-there she is.” She nodded toward the bunkhouse, where Eric was just coming out of the door with a comforter-swathed bundle tucked under one arm.

“Huh. What in the heck would they be doing out there in the bunkhouse?” Mike still looked puzzled as he pulled the Ford into its usual parking spot under the trees.

Lucy gave him an exasperated jab with her elbow. “Oh, Mike, don’t be dense.” He threw her a startled look, and she couldn’t resist smirking at him. “I’m sure he was showing her his darkroom. What else?”

He let go of a gust of laughter. “Lucy, you are incorrigible.”

“I love it when you talk writer to me,” she purred, batting her lashes outrageously. She was feeling outrageously pleased. Her plan was working. She was sure of it.

“Hi, Mom…Dad.” Eric paused beside the car as they were opening doors. “Need a hand unloading?”

“You get that baby in out of the cold. I can handle the unloading. Your mom’s got to get ready for chores.” Mike grinned. “Hey, how’s the darkroom? Just like you left it?”

Eric grinned back at his dad, and Lucy’s heart gave a little shiver of happiness. They didn’t really resemble each other, those two, and yet, in the indefinable way of fathers and sons, they were so alike. “Pretty much. Need fresh chemicals, though.” He turned to Lucy with a look of innocence she remembered well. “Hey, by the way, Mom-the photo albums? Where’ve you got ’em stashed?”

“Oh, heavens,” she replied in pretended exasperation, “all over the place. Some in the parlor, some in your room…my sewing room. There’s so many, I wouldn’t begin to know where to…”

“That’s okay, don’t worry about it. I’ll look.” He turned back to Mike. “Dad, is it okay if I use your computer for a while this evening?”

Mike’s eyebrows went up but all he said was, “Sure, go ahead. With all this yet to wrap, I can’t imagine I’ll be using it. Help yourself.”

“Okay, thanks.”

When their son had disappeared inside the house with his quilt-wrapped bundle, Mike said to Lucy out of the side of his mouth, “What d’you suppose he’s up to now?”

“Who knows? It’s Christmas,” Lucy replied serenely. At last…

The rest of the day was devoted to preparations for the coming holiday-and, in Devon’s case, avoiding Eric.

While Lucy and Mike were outside doing the evening chores, she stayed barricaded in her room like a hostage, listening to the intermittent sound of his footsteps going past her door. Up and down the stairs they went, in and out of his room, and her nerves jumped every time she heard his door click open or shut. Restless beyond bearing, she paced like a caged cat while the tension inside her tightened to screaming pitch.

When she finally heard the sound of banging doors, the clank of buckets and loud cheerful voices drifting up from the service room, she was so relieved she almost wept, and even though cooking had never been among her hobbies, went skipping down the stairs to volunteer to help with dinner.

Apparently delighted by Devon’s offer, Lucy banished Mike, who-equally delighted to be relieved of kitchen duty-immediately went off to the parlor to help Eric with his mysterious computer project. She then handed Devon a knife and set her to cutting up vegetables for a salad to go with the beef stew that was already thawing in a Tupperware container in the microwave.

While she worked efficiently alongside Devon, Lucy chattered about all that had been and still remained to be done to get ready for the coming holiday. She sounded positively happy at the prospect of peeling and chopping the endless array of fruits, nuts and vegetables that would go into the various traditional family dishes-potato soup for Christmas Eve, corn bread and walnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey giblet gravy, candied yams, creamed onions, cranberry Jell-O, fruit salad and pumpkin pies for Christmas dinner.

Devon had never heard of so much food. She asked, with twinges of alarm, how many people Lucy was expecting for dinner on Christmas Day.

Lucy smiled and explained that this year it was to be just her brother Earl, his wife Chris and their daughter, Caitlyn. “And you and Eric, of course,” she added, and her smile was so radiant Devon had to look away, and wonder at the traitorous prickles that had come to the backs of her eyes.

Thus prompted, Lucy went on to talk about past Christmases when her children had been small and the household had included Great-aunt Gwen, and even farther back in the past when she and her brothers had been the children and their parents still alive. Boisterous Christmases, then, when the farmhouse had been crowded with children and noisy with laughter and music.

Listening to her, Devon felt a heaviness around her heart. Memories…everything here is memories, she thought.

What was it Eric had said about memories making people who they are? Who, then, am I? she wondered. The heaviness became an ache.

When the salad was finished, Lucy handed her a stack of plates and bowls and asked her to set the table. “That was always the children’s job,” she told Devon with an impish little smile. “First Ellie’s, then Eric’s.”

Devon smiled back, but it felt bleak and fraudulent. The children’s job. Did I do this when I was a child, in my own parents’ house? she wondered as she arranged plates, bowls and napkins, knives, forks and spoons on the red plaid tablecloth. I must have, and probably Susan, too.

But if I did, why don’t I remember?

She had no appetite for dinner, and had to force herself to choke down polite helpings of Lucy’s delicious homemade beef stew and the fresh green salad she’d helped to make. There was no reason for it; the atmosphere in the kitchen was comfortable and welcoming, as always. In spite of the baby she insisted on holding in her lap, Lucy bounced up and down, back and forth between tending to Emily’s needs and everyone else’s, and ignored everyone’s urgings to relax. Eric chatted with Mike about computer things and avoided Devon’s eyes. They all reminisced-incessantly.

But Devon realized that, there in the midst of Eric’s family, surrounded by unself-conscious love, easy conversation, affectionate teasing and warm remembering, she felt alienated…left out. And envious.

After dinner, Devon insisted on doing the dishes. “You must have other things you need to do,” she told Lucy, nodding toward the baby she held casually cradled in the crook of one arm. “This is about the only way I know of to help. Please, it’s the least I can do.”

So, with twinkling eyes and secret smiles, Mike and Lucy vanished like co-conspirators behind the closed door of their bedroom, taking Emily with them. Eric went back to traipsing mysteriously up and down the stairs. Up to her elbows in soapy dishwater at the kitchen sink, Devon could hear him whistling tunelessly each time he whisked past the open doorway.

And each time he did, her heartbeat accelerated.

Dammit, she thought, staring into the froth of bubbles. Dammit. It felt like failure to her, this inability to forget the delicious warmth of his hand on her neck, the demanding weight of it on her belly, the tingling rush that lifted the fine hairs all over her body, the thumping ache of desire between her thighs. What irony, she thought bitterly. I’m a failure on the one hand because I can’t remember, and on the other because I can’t forget.

Devon wasn’t accustomed to failure. She desperately wanted to blame someone else for it. Blame Eric, blame his parents, this farm, the entire cotton-pickin’ Midwest, for that matter. One thing she knew for certain: she was sick to death of all of it. She couldn’t wait to get away from these people and their old-fashioned corn-fed ways, their constant conversation and mushy Christmas songs, their house cluttered with holiday decorations, and a kitchen that always smelled of something cooking. Something fattening, naturally. She couldn’t wait to be back in L.A., back at her job where she was almost never a failure, back in the solitude of her own cool, quiet apartment with its uncluttered serenity, everything in its place and classical music playing on the stereo.

She shivered. I can’t wait.

Footsteps passed by in the hallway, and a rush of tuneless whistling, like a playful gust of wind. Her heart quickened, and her cheeks grew hot. “Dammit,” she whispered to the sinkful of soap bubbles. “Dammit.”

Later, still dodging Eric like a character in a French farce, Devon listened at her bedroom door until she heard him go downstairs, then quick-stepped down the hallway to knock on Lucy and Mike’s door.

“It’s me-sorry to bother you,” she said in a low, urgent voice in answer to Mike’s cautious “Who is it?”

The door opened halfway and Mike’s face appeared, wearing a look of cordial inquiry. “Hey, Devon-what can I do for you?”

Behind him, Devon could see a bassinet beside the bed, and an overflow of pastel blankets, and Lucy sitting crosslegged on the floor in a sea of wrapping paper and stick-on bows.

“Could I trouble you for some of that paper?” She nodded toward the mess on the floor. “And a couple of bows, some tape and scissors… Oh-and if you have any to spare, a couple of boxes, about…yay-big?”

“Sure-help yourself,” Mike said cheerfully, while Lucy was already scolding and absolutely forbidding Devon from even thinking about giving gifts to anyone.

But Devon stood her ground. And later, back in her own room with all the gift-wrapping supplies she needed, she had the strangest feeling Lucy had been pleased to find that Devon could be every bit as stubborn and strong-willed as she was.

It was late-by Iowa farm standards, not the L.A. lifestyle Devon was accustomed to-by the time she finished wrapping her gifts for Mike and Lucy. It took her longer than she’d expected, since she didn’t normally do her own gift-wrapping, and it took her a few abortive tries before she got the hang of it. The finished product still lacked the professionalism and elegance she was used to, but under the circumstances, she thought it would do.

The house was quiet; it had been some time since she’d heard Eric’s footsteps, and there wasn’t so much as a peep coming from Lucy and Mike’s room. What better time to play Santa’s elf, Devon thought wryly as she tiptoed down the stairs to the parlor. While everyone was asleep, she’d slip her two small gifts among the growing pile under the tree…

In the parlor’s near darkness, she felt for the twin light switches beside the door and chose one. And it was the Christmas tree that sprang to life, bathing the room in the soft glow of its multicolored lights. Her breath escaped in a tiny involuntary pleasure-sound, like that a child might make, as she stood in the doorway and gazed at the shimmering tree, tiny lights reflecting off a mishmash of ornaments accumulated through generations of a family’s Christmases without regard to taste or style. And before she knew what was happening, she found herself blinking away tears.

Silly, she thought. Really-it’s just a tree. She wasn’t sentimental about Christmas-not even a little bit.

She dashed away the moisture on her cheek with a finger, but the ache in her throat remained.

Then, as she stood there alone in the doorway of that quiet, empty room, something came over her, a feeling so vivid it was more like memory than imagination. She saw the room no longer empty, but filled with people…adults in all the chairs, crowded together on the sofa-even perched on the arms-and children on the floor, all gathered around the tree. And no longer silent, but alive with laughter, and Christmas music playing on the stereo-something schmaltzy, Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

And Devon was no longer alone, as someone came behind her to slip his arms around her with the ease of someone who’d done the same thing countless times before. Someone whose touch and scent, though familiar to her as her own, never failed to make her heart bump, and beat with a new and faster rhythm. His arms enfolded her in their warmth and the lonely ache inside her vanished. A smile bloomed across her face as he whispered her name…

Devon…