The Baby Bump

Chapter Three

When the last patient of the morning canceled, Ruby let him know with a fervent “Hallelujah!”

Ike was still smiling when he heard the front door slam—Ruby did like a long lunch when she could get it. But his mind was really on Ginger, and had been all morning.

There was no question that he’d see her again. She’d seek him out because she had to; he was the best source of information on her grandfather. Ike needed that connection just as much, because he happened to love the old man, and something had to be decided about Cashner before the situation turned into a real crisis.

Still, when the office phone rang, he never guessed it would be Ginger contacting him again this soon. Nor would he have thought he’d hear from Louella Meachams—one of his most reluctant patients. She told him she “had no truck with doctors” every single time he took her blood pressure. Louella was at least part guy. Not gay. Just an exuberantly male kind of female. People trusted her in town. He did, too. She just had a lot of coarse sandpaper in her character.

“Don’t waste your time telling me you’re busy with a patient, Ike MacKinnon. I don’t care if you have fifty patients. I have a woman in my office on the floor. Fainted dead away. Now you get right over here and do something about her.”

“Since you asked so nicely, I’ll be there right away. But in the meantime … do you know who she is, why she fainted, what happened?”

“I don’t care what happened. I want her off my floor. When she went down, it scared the bejesus out of me. I thought she was dead!”

“I understand—”

“I don’t care if you understand or not. You get her out of here somehow, someway, and I’m talking pronto.”

“Yes, ma’am. But again …” Hell. Ike just wanted a clue what the problem could be. “Do you know her?”

“Her name is Ginger Gautier. Cashner’s granddaughter. What difference does it make? The problem is I thought she’d stopped breathing. Almost gave me a heart attack. I don’t do first aid. I had a sister who fainted all the time, but that was to get our mother’s attention. It was fake every time. This is not fake. I’m telling you, she went down. Right in front of my desk.”

“Okay, got it, see you in five, max six.”

“You make that three minutes, Doc. And I’m not whistling Dixie.”

If Louella really believed there was an emergency, she’d have called 911—but Louella, being stingy, would never risk an ambulance charge unless she was absolutely positive there was no other choice. So Ike took the time to shove on street shoes, grab a jacket and scribble a note to Ruby before heading out.

He could jog the distance faster than driving it—the lawyer’s office was only three blocks over, faster yet if he zigzagged through buildings. Pansy let out an unholy howl of abandonment when he left without her, but sometimes, darn it, he just couldn’t take his favorite girl.

Less than five minutes later, he reached the bakery and zipped up the steps to the second floor. When he turned the knob of Louella’s office, though, something heavy seemed to be blocking it. “Louella, it’s me, Doc,” he said as he knocked.

Louella opened it. Apparently she’d been the something heavy blocking the entrance. “She keeps trying to leave. Doesn’t have a brain cell in her head. I told her she wasn’t going anywhere until you checked her out, and that’s that.”

“I must have said a dozen times that I’m feeling better—and that I was going straight home from here.” Ginger’s voice was coming from the floor—but it certainly sounded healthy and strong.

“Yeah, I heard you. And I told you a dozen times that there could be liability issues if you left here in shape to cause yourself or others harm.”

“You’re the only person I’ve met in a blue moon who’s more bullheaded than I am, bless your heart. But keeping a person against their will is called kidnapping. Or is there another legal term?”

While the two women continued this pleasant conversation, Ike hunkered down—apparently Louella had threatened Ginger with death if she tried to get up before the doctor got there. He went through the routine. Pulse. Temp. Whether she could focus, whether she had swollen lymph glands.

Wherever he touched her, she jumped.

He liked that. If he was stuck feeling walloped this close to her, he at least wanted her to suffer the same way.

He got some extra personal contact—judicious, but lucky for sure—when he helped her to her feet. She didn’t wobble. Of course, with his arm around her, she couldn’t have wobbled—or fallen—even if she’d wanted to. But she shot him one of those ice-blue looks to indicate he could remove his hands. Now. Right now.

“Okay, Louella, I’m taking her from your office.”

“And don’t let her come back here until she’s fit as a fiddle.”

“My. I had no idea that fiddles had health issues. Like whether they could be fit or sick. I had no idea they were alive at all—”

Ike saw the look on Louella’s face, could see she was in a rolling up the sleeves to get into another squabble, so he shuffled Ginger quickly into the hall.

He saw her sudden choke when they reached the top of her stairs, so he suspected she was still a little on the dizzy side. He hooked an arm around her, making sure she was steady.

“You don’t need to do that,” she said irritably.

“Can’t have you falling on my watch.”

“I’m not on your watch.”

“Uh-huh. You know … you could have been nice to Louella.”

“She wasn’t nice to me first!”

“You seriously scared her when you fainted.”

“That’s an excuse for holding me hostage and not letting me leave? For insulting me? For calling you?”

“Yup. At least, that’s how I see it. But then, I don’t have your temper.”

At the bottom of the stairs, he’d barely pushed open the door before she shot through. She took a step west before he kidnapped her wrist.

“Hey. My car is that way—”

“And you’ll be in your car in about a half hour. But first, you need an immediate medical intervention.”

“Intervention? What are you talking about?”

The New York Deli was at the corner of Magnolia. Whether anything served had anything to do with New York, no one knew or cared. The place was always packed at lunch, but Feinstein—the owner—always saved a table for Ike. It was bribery, pure and simple. Feinstein was worried about the performance of his boy parts. He’d never had any marital problems with his wife before, but “everybody” knew guys eventually needed a little chemical boost. Which was to say, Feinstein had motivation for taking good care of the town doctor.

Ike never came for the bribe. He came for the food. And Ginger continued to make minor protestations about being herded like a sheep, but that was only until she saw the menu.

Mrs. Feinstein—possibly the homeliest woman Ike had ever seen—advised Ginger on the best choices, and who could have guessed? Ginger agreed without arguing.

Right off, she devoured three pickles. Then a masterful corned beef on rye. Chips. Cole slaw. Since she picked at the crumbs after that, he figured she was still hungry, so he ordered dessert. Apple cake with whipped cream.

Then more pickles.

He leveled a sandwich, too, which took all of a minute and a half. So while her mouth was full, he took the opportunity to start a conversation. “I’m guessing that before the evening news, the whole town will know that you fainted twice this morning, that we’re having lunch together … and they’ll likely be speculating on whether we’re sleeping together.”

She dropped her fork, which he took as encouraging. So he went on, “My theory is … we might as well sleep together, since we’ve already been branded with the tag.”

She dropped her fork—again—but then she just squinted her eyes at him. He didn’t see temper this time, just reluctant humor. “Hey. Do you usually flirt with women you think are pregnant by someone else?”

“Not usually, no. In fact, never.” He retrieved a couple fresh forks from the table next to them, then went back for another couple. Who knew how many she would need before this meal was over. “But I keep finding your situation, well, unique. You came home because you were really worked up about your grandfather. But there’s no guy here. If you had a guy, he’d have to be a class-A jerk not to be with you when he knows you need help.”

“Wow. That analysis and conclusion is just stunning.”

“Yeah, my mama always said I was a bright boy,” he agreed with his best deadpan expression. “So my theory is … there’s no guy to stop me from moving in on you.”

This time she had to chuckle—clearly in spite of herself. “I’ve been doing a lot of hurling and fainting. Most guys would run in the opposite direction.”

“Most guys haven’t been through medical school.”

“That’s an answer?”

“What can I say? A first-year resident loses any chance of being embarrassed ever again in his life. Some things just come with life. Now what’s that expression about?”

She lifted a hand. “I was just thinking. I had this sudden instinct … that you just might be a hardcore, card-carrying good guy.” She put a stop sign into another hand gesture. “I’m not accusing you of anything terrible. I just didn’t expect to even let a positive thought anywhere near you. So I’m just saying. If I was ever going to trust a doctor again as long as I live—which I’m not—it might have been you.”

“Ah. It’s the doctor thing that’s a problem. You’re such a relief.”

“Relief?”

“Practically every single woman in this town has been feeding me, taking care of me, fluttering her eyelashes at me. All their mamas think of doctors as being a terrific catch. You know, dumb as a fish that just needs the right bait to sucker in. You’re so much more fun. I’d ask you out … but I’m afraid if we had a good time, you’d quit disliking me, and then where would we be? Not having fun together anymore. It’s not worth the risk. Still, I don’t see why we shouldn’t sleep together. That doesn’t have to interfere with your giving me a constant hard time. We could just redirect all that passionate energy a little differently when the lights go off.”

She cupped her chin. “Did anything you just said make a lick of sense?”

He didn’t care if he was making sense. She’d had a rotten morning—a stressful visit with him, then a stressful visit with the lawyer, no easy answers about her grandfather. And he hadn’t known until he’d sneaked the information that the father of her baby was both a doctor and a louse.

She was flying solo. Flying solo with a pregnancy and no help in sight.

But he’d gotten her fed. And teased. And almost laughing. She’d forgotten it all for a while.

Sometimes that was the best a doctor could do. Offer some stress relief. There was no way any doctor could cure all ills … much less all wrongs.

When she glanced at a wall clock, he did, too. He was startled at how much time had passed. Ruby was going to kill him. He was ten minutes late for his first afternoon patient.

“Yeah, I didn’t realize how late it was, either. I need to get back to my grandfather.”

He put some money down, knowing the Feinsteins wouldn’t give him a check, and eventually steered her to the door. There was the usual gauntlet of “Hi, Doc!” and “Ginger, so glad to hear you’re back in town” and other ferocious attempts to stall them. He kept moving them as fast as he could.

Outside, the sky was pumping out clouds now. A whiskery wind tossed paper and litter in the air, lifted collars. The temperature was still warmish, somewhere in the sixties, but there was rain in the wind, and the bright sun kept hiding from sight.

“I see your car,” he said.

“You don’t have to walk me there. You have to be in a hurry to get back to your office.”

“It all comes with the service. A lady faints, she gets walked to her car.”

“What if she isn’t a lady?”

“If a wicked woman faints, she still gets walked to her car. It’s in the rule book.”

“What rule book is that?”

“The South Carolina Rules for Gentlemen rule book. My mom made me memorize whole passages before I was four. She called it getting ready for kindergarten.” Walking next to her felt like foreplay. It was kind of a test of rhythms.

Whether they could walk together, move together in a natural way. How his height worked with hers. Whether she could keep up with his stride. Whether she wanted to. Whether she galloped on ahead when he wanted to amble.

Fast, too damned fast, they reached her rust bucket of a Civic. She dipped in her shoulder bag for her car key, found it, lifted her head and suddenly frowned at him.

“What?” He had no idea what her expression meant. Even less of an idea what she planned to do.

She popped up on tiptoe, framed his face between her soft palms and kissed him. On a guy’s scale of kisses, it was only a two. No tongue. No pressure. No invitation.

More … just a short, evocative melding of textures. Her lips. His lips.

Like a meeting of whipped cream and chocolate.

Or like brandy and a winter fire.

Or like the snug of gloves on a freezing morning.

Or like that click, that electric high-charge surge, not like the million kisses you’ve had since middle school, not like the any-girl-would-do kisses, but the click kind. The wonder kind. The damn it, what the hell is happening here kind.

She pulled back, sank back, cocked her head and looked at him. Her purse fell.

He picked it up. Her keys fell. He picked those up, too.

When he got his breath back, he said carefully, “Do we have any idea why you did that?”

“I’ve been known to do some very bad, impulsive things sometimes. Even if I regret it. Even if I know I’m going to regret it later.”

“So that was just a bad impulse.” He shook his head. “Sure came across like a great impulse to me.” Before she could try selling him any more malarkey, he said, “I stop to see your grandfather at least twice a week. Always short visits. He pretends it’s not about his health. So do I. Which is to say … I’ll see you soon. Very soon. And that’s a promise.”

But not soon enough. His heart slammed.

Of course, that was the man talking, and not the doctor. Sometimes it was okay to be both roles … but not with her, he sensed. Never with her.

Ginger had barely pulled in the drive when the rain started. It was just a spatter when she stepped out, but the sky cracked with a streak of lightning by the time she reached the porch.

Thunder growled. Clouds started swirling as if a child had finger-painted the whole sky with grays. Pretty, but ominous. Inside, she called, “Gramps? I’m home!” The dark had infiltrated the downstairs with gloom, somehow accenting the dust and neglect that seemed everywhere. Still, she heard voices—and laughter—coming from the kitchen.

At the kitchen doorway, she folded her arms, having to smile at the two cronies at the kitchen table. The game looked to be cutthroat canasta. Money was on the table. Cards all over the place. From the time she’d left that morning, a set of dirty china seemed to have accumulated on the sink counter, but the two old codgers were having a blast.

She bent down to kiss her grandfather. Got a huge hug back. And for now, his eyes were lucid and dancing-clear. “You’ve been gone all day, you little hussy. Hope you spent a lot of money shopping and had a great old time.”

“I did.” The two rounds of fainting and encounters with Ike were locked up in her mind’s closet. Her grandfather recognized her. Had a happy, loving smile for her. “Cornelius, you’re getting a hug from me, too, so don’t try running.”

Cornelius pretended he was trying to duck under the table, but that was all tease. He took his hug like a man. Cornelius was smaller than she was, and possibly had some Asian and black and maybe Native American blood. For certain no one else looked quite like him. Ginger had never known whether her family had adopted him or the other way around, but he and Gramps were of an age. Neither could manage to put a glass in the dishwasher. Neither obeyed an order from anyone. And both of them could while away a dark afternoon playing cards and having a great time.

“All right, you two. I’m going upstairs for a short nap.”

“Go. Go.” She was promptly shooed away, as Cornelius chortled over some card played and both men issued raucous, enthusiastically gruesome death threats to each other.

Apparently the morning had been tough on her system, because once her head hit the pillow upstairs, she crashed harder than a whipped puppy. She woke up to a washed-clean world and the hour was past four. After a fast shower, she flew downstairs to find her boys on the front veranda now, rocking and sipping sweet tea and arguing about a ball game.

When Cornelius saw her, he pushed out of the rocker. “We was thinking you might not wake up until tomorrow, you were looking so tired.”

“I was a little tired, but I’m feeling great now.”

Cornelius nodded. “I’m headed to the kitchen. Got some supper cooking. Can’t remember what all I started right now, but should be ready in an hour or so.”

“That’d be great, you.” She planned to head into the kitchen and help him—but not yet. Her gramps’s eyes were still clear, still bright. She pulled a rocker closer to him, sat down.

“Gramps. All these years, you had Amos Hawthorne managing the land, running the farm. But no one’s mentioned him, and I haven’t seen him around.”

“That’s because he’s not here anymore. I had to fire him. I don’t remember exactly when it happened. But he stopped doing what I told him. He badgered and badgered me, until I said I’d had enough. Let him go.”

Ginger gulped. “So … who’s handling the tea now? The shop? The grounds?”

“Well, I am, honey child. Me and Cornelius. We closed the shop after …” He frowned. “I don’t know exactly when. A little while ago.”

“Okay. So who’s doing the grounds around the house? The mowing. The gardens and trees and all.”

“Cornelius and I had a theory about that. We need some goats.”

“Goats,” Ginger echoed.

“Yup. We have a heap of acreage that’s nothing but lawn. Goats love grass. Wouldn’t cost us a thing. The goats could eat the grass without using a lick of gas or needing a tractor at all.”

Ginger was getting a thump of anxiety in her tummy again. “So … right now we don’t have a lawn service or a farm manager?”

“We both think goats could do the work. They’d be happy. We’d be happy. Don’t you think that sounds like fun, sweetheart?”

“I do. I do.” She’d inherited the ability to lie from her father. “Gramps, do you know who did your taxes last year? I mean, do you have an accountant in town?”

“Why, honey, you know your grandma does all that. I always oversaw the business, the farm. But it was your grandma who did all the work with figures. We never depended on outsiders for that kind of thing. Why are you asking all these questions? We can do something fun. Like play cards. Or put out the backgammon board. After dinner, we could take the golf cart around before the bugs hit.”

He was right, Ginger realized. There was no point in asking any more questions. Every answer she’d heard so far was downright scary. There appeared to be no one running the place. Not the tea plantation. Not the house. Gramps seemed under the impression that Grandma was still alive, still there with him. The whole situation was more overwhelming than she’d ever expected.

Ginger wondered if she could somehow will herself to faint again. It certainly helped her block out things earlier that day…. Except that fainting brought on Ike, as if he had some invisible radar when anything embarrassing or upsetting was happening to her.

She still couldn’t figure out what possessed her to kiss him. He’d been a white knight, sort of. And she’d been starving and hadn’t realized it. And a simple gesture like a hug or a kiss just didn’t seem like that big a deal….

But it was.

It was a big deal because she already knew she was susceptible to doctors.

She also knew that impulsiveness got her into trouble every time. A woman could make a mistake. Everyone did that. No one could avoid it. But the measure of a woman was partly how she handled those mistakes.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. She’d been trying to drill that mantra into her head. A doctor might seem like great husband potential for lots of women—but not her. Doctors invariably put their jobs first, their own needs, and played by their own rule book.

Ike for sure played by his own rule book.

Keeping her heart a long, long way away from him was an easy for-sure.

Chapter Four

The next day, by midmorning, Ginger was not only reenergized, but conquering the world at the speed of sound. She’d put both boys to work by wrapping microfiber fabric around their shoes. Their job was to shuffle around the entire downstairs. It might not be the most glamorous way to dust the hardwood floors, but it was good enough. They were, of course, complaining mightily.

She’d hunkered down in the kitchen to clean, and figured she wasn’t likely to escape the room for another three years at best. She’d found flour moths. That discovery canceled out any other plans she’d had for the day. She immediately started removing everything from the cupboards. Her first thought was to wash every surface with bleach, but she worried fumes that strong couldn’t be good with a pregnancy, so she pulled on old plastic gloves, mixed up strong soap and a disinfectant, then unearthed a serious scrub brush.