me about it,” Joe muttered, and calmly went into action. “First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to get you inside.”
She moaned. He didn’t think she was actually hurting, just scared, but then, he’d never had a baby. How would he know?
“You can walk, can’t you? I can carry you if you think you’ll have trouble with the steps, but walking’s supposed to be good for a woman at a time like this.”
He hoped it was. If he had to carry her, they might both come to grief right here between the onions and the butter beans. Joe was a big man—six-two, a hundred eighty-seven. But he’d been horse-busted, gunshot and otherwise mistreated a few too many times in his thirty-eight-and-a-half years. No sense in pushing his luck.
With his arm to steady her, she made it just fine. She had nice, delicate features, but that jaw of hers told a different story. He might not be able to wind things up here quite as easily as he’d hoped.
“I want to take a real quick shower before I go to the hospital. Will you stand outside the bathroom door so I can call you if I need you?”
Joe was busy looking around, just in case she was dumb enough to keep the stuff right out in plain sight. His grandmother always had, but then, she’d had the right to show it off.
“Are you sure you ought to do this?” he asked. First time or not, she might be one of those women who popped out babies like spitting out watermelon seeds.
“Nothing hurts. I feel fine. In fact, I feel better than I’ve felt in ages.”
“Euphoria.”
“I beg your pardon?” But before he could explain that sometimes, even in the midst of a crisis, a feeling of well-being could overcome a body and make him think everything was all right when it wasn’t, she was already headed down the hall.
“Can you do it in three minutes?” he asked, going after her.
“Not if I shampoo my hair. Give me five.”
“Lady, they’re not mine to give. If you get into trouble in there, I’m the one who’s going to have to bail you out, and I’ve got a bad knee, so don’t push your luck, all right?”
She beamed at him. Positively beamed. Joe forgot all about her big, gravid belly and her dirty, green-stained, onion-scented hands. And the fact that she was trying to sell off a trinket belonging to his grandmother that was valued at eighteen grand.
Euphoria. By the time he snapped out of his version, she was barricaded behind the bathroom door. He could hear her humming something that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby.
“Hand me that bottle of lotion from my dresser, will you? Second door to the left,” she called over the sound of rushing water.
Well...not exactly rushing. Trickling would be more like it. He’d already noticed that up close, the house lost some of its bucolic charm and was just an old house, with worn floorboards, rattling windowpanes and a couple of wheezing window units fighting a losing battle to overcome the heat and humidity.
He fetched her lotion, and while he was at it, he glanced around the bedroom. Just in case. Joe, after all, was a man with a mission.
Seven hours later he was on his fifth cup of black coffee, which was the last thing he needed, when a nurse wearing scrubs came through to the waiting room. He stood, thinking it was about time, and she came on over.
“Are you Joe?”
“Has she had anything yet?”
“Not yet. She’s asking for you again.”
As frustrating as it was, Joe had figured it was only common decency to let her have her kid and catch her breath before he got down to business. Not that he’d had much option. Back at the house she’d been too distracted. While she’d timed her pains, he’d asked if she’d ever heard of a Ch’ien Lung vase, and she’d said, oh, that reminded her—she needed to feed her fish.
She had a goldfish. Women were wacky, and broody women were worse than that. He’d given up on getting any reasonable answers and asked if there was anybody he could call for her.
She’d said, yes, he could call her a cab because she might as well go in and stay instead of waiting until the last minute. So he’d made up his mind to stick it out. It wasn’t like she could run out on him, not in her condition.
He’d stuck by her, and when the pains were eight minutes apart, he’d helped her climb into his truck, gone back and gotten her suitcase and driven her to the county hospital.
After she was settled in her room and a string of folks wearing white or green had pulled the curtains shut and done whatever it was they had to do, he’d dragged a chair up beside her bed and helped her wait.
He could’ve questioned her then, but he hadn’t. They’d talked about nothing in particular. Her goldfish. He was called Darryl. The weather. It was hot. Her garden—it needed rain. And then the pains started piling in on her, and he’d let her crush his fingers and wished there was more he could do.
Not that it was any of his business, but she needed someone, and nobody else had showed up.
“It won’t be long now,” he’d told her, hoping to hell he was right. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
“I think I...left the...back door unlocked,” she’d said through clenched teeth.
“I checked. It’s locked.” She had nice teeth. Not perfect, just nice and white and square. Joe tried to convince himself that she couldn’t possibly be involved. In the hospital gown, in spite of a few fine lines at the outer corners of her eyes and a few more across her forehead, she looked more like an overgrown kid than a woman in the process of having a baby.
But she had the goods. She was fencing the stuff. None of the other women he’d talked to had been left with anything. The jerk had seduced them, promised them marriage, cleaned them out and left them, every last one Joe had interviewed, flat broke and either mad as hell or brokenhearted. Or both.
This one was still in possession of the J. J. Dana jade collection. A collection that had been valued at a million and a half nine years ago when the old man had passed away and was probably worth a lot more now. And if she was carrying either a grudge or a torch for the jerk, she covered pretty well.
Once they’d rolled her into the delivery room, Joe had returned to the waiting area. He’d considered going out and finding himself a hotel, figuring he could come back in a day or so, talk to her once she’d had time to settle down and wind things up. There was time. She wasn’t going anywhere.
But he hadn’t. Instead he’d hung around some more. Waiting.
“Are you the father?” Roughly an hour and forty-five minutes had passed. The woman in scrubs was back.
Not about to get himself thrown out on a technicality, Joe cleared his throat and said, “He couldn’t be here. I’m standing in for him. Is she okay? Has she had it yet?”
The nurse shoved a lank chunk of hair back up under her paper hat. “It’s a girl. Mother
