Bringing Up Baby New Year & Frisky Business Read online

  Darcie tended to agree, but she’d been too busy to find another woman to bond with on that issue. And she was too busy now. “Thank you but I only need a telephone, Mrs….”

  The woman laughed. “It’s Jefferson. And in case you’re wondering, the ratfink is my philandering husband.”

  “Oh.” Darcie smiled in understanding. She had a few choice names for Bart Junior, too. “Well, Mrs. Jefferson, my car is dead, and I really do need a telephone.”

  “Of course. Is there an underground for women in your situation?”

  “Underground?” The room smelled of nail polish, and Darcie realized the woman must have been in the middle of giving herself a manicure from the look of the tools arranged on the coffee table. Maybe she had been enjoying the occasional beverage while she was painting her nails. “I don’t think so. I think women’s cars get towed to the wrecking yard the same as men’s. I’ve never heard of storing them underground, although it’s not a bad idea. Broken cars are unsightly, aren’t they?”

  The woman stared at her for a moment. “Then you really are having car trouble?”

  “Not just car trouble. Car disaster. I’ve prayed over that bucket of bolts until I’m blue in the face, but I think what it needs is a good mechanic. And good mechanics cost a lot of money.”

  “If you’re not running away from some tyrannical husband from the Middle East, then why are you dressed like that?”

  For the first time, the woman’s comments made sense. Darcie had totally forgotten that she was wearing a bathrobe and turban. Perhaps her costume was a success. “Would you take me for the Virgin Mary?”

  The woman cocked her head to one side. “Not with that beautiful red hair sticking out, which makes you the mother of that darling baby and no virgin, at least not in this century. And then there’s your freckles. Is that what you’re supposed to be? The Virgin Mary?”

  “Yes.” She adjusted the towel to try to hide more of her hair, but that drew Gus’s attention to it and he began trying to grab it. “Stop that, Gus.”

  “Gus? Baby Jesus’s name is Gus?”

  Here we go again. Going all sheep-faced over my blessed name.

  Darcie lifted her chin and aimed a challenging look at this eyebrowless woman. “Yes. Gus. G-U-S.”

  “I love it! Come here, Gus.” She held out her arms.

  To Darcie’s amazement, Gus went right to her. Then he reached up and pulled at her hair. The whole thing came off in his hand, revealing a mop of gray curls underneath. Just wanted to see if it was attached. Wasn’t.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Darcie snatched the wig away from a startled Gus and ran around to put it back on the woman’s head.

  “Oh, leave it,” the woman said, grabbing it with her free hand as she jiggled Gus expertly on her hip. “And tell me why you want to be the Virgin Mary.”

  “Because…” Darcie started to tell her, but then she remembered that the plan for the yard should be kept secret. Tannenbaum designs were always kept secret. She’d been given strict orders not to peer under the tarp covering something very large in the Elderhorns’ garage. She was only a mile or so from Tannenbaum, and this woman might know some of the residents. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” she finished.

  “Doesn’t matter.” The woman waved the wig in the air. “I’ll help you look like her if you want. You didn’t contradict me when I called this baby’s father loathsome, so I assume you’re a victim of some man’s cruelty, in any case.”

  “I suppose I am, but what I need most desperately at the moment is a telephone.”

  “Right in there.” She gestured through a doorway. “The light switch is on the wall to your left as you go in. That used to be the ratfink’s office. Don’t mind the mess. I think the phone still works.”

  “I’ll take Gus if you—”

  “Gus and I will be fine, won’t we, peaches?”

  That all depends, bright eyes. Seems risky to trust a lass whose hair comes off in your hand like a dead mongoose.

  “Grandma might have a graham cracker in the kitchen for you.”

  Then again, I like living on the edge, I do.

  Graham crackers were one of the few treats Darcie gave her son. From the way he grinned, she decided he’d understood what “Grandma” had just said, and she’d have a very upset baby on her hands if she said no. “One, then. And thank you.” With some misgivings, she hurried into the office, switched on a light and gasped. “Mrs. Jefferson!” she called. “You’ve been vandalized!”

  “No, I haven’t. And you can call me Geraldine.” The woman came to stand in the doorway to survey the files spilling out of open drawers, the jumble of papers on the desk and fax paper unrolled all over the floor. “After twenty years of being his wife and secretary, handling every detail of his life with no thought to a career of my own, I had to listen to his sickening confession that he’d found someone else. Found her awhile ago, in fact.”

  Understanding exactly how she might feel, Darcie looked around the room again. “Used restraint, didn’t you?”

  “I did. I think the phone’s under that pile of blue folders. Gus and I will be in the kitchen looking for a graham cracker.”

  Darcie watched them go, still amazed at how quickly Gus had taken to Geraldine. Darcie felt quite at home with her, too. It would have been nice, Darcie thought wistfully, to have a mother like Geraldine who really was Gus’s grandmother. But she was letting herself get carried away over a chance meeting by thinking such thoughts.

  She found the telephone right where Geraldine had told her it was and she dialed Joe’s number.

  He answered on the second ring, sounding worried. “Hello?”

  “It’s Darcie.”

  He sighed with relief. “Thank God. I called your apartment and got no answer. I was ready to check with the police.”

  “My car broke down.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At a house owned by a nice woman with no eyebrows named Geraldine Jefferson. She’s in the kitchen giving Gus a graham cracker.”

  “Uh, okay. How far away from here?”

  “Not far.”

  “That’s good. Why doesn’t she have eyebrows?”

  Darcie lowered her voice. “Some women shave their eyebrows and put them on with pencil later. I caught her by surprise without her eyebrows. If you come here, don’t stare.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of staring. What’s wrong with the car?”

  “It won’t go.”

  He chuckled. “No kidding.”

  Something about the way he laughed low and sexy reminded her of the time he’d called her apartment to talk about tulips. Maybe it was the influence of standing in Mr. Jefferson’s office and thinking about how women got run around the mulberry bush by men. Some were obvious about it, like Bart Junior and Mr. Jefferson. Others sounded sexy like Joe, making a woman yearn, but wouldn’t deliver the happily-ever-after.

  Still, she’d had Joe on the ropes once and she couldn’t resist trying to get him there again. “Zee car, she is—how you say?—zee ley-mon. Zee pistons, zey will not pump up and down.”

  He cleared his throat. “Uh, Darcie, maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t talk like the French Maid anymore.”

  Another French word came back to her. “Pourquoi?”

  “Because something about it really gets to me, especially talking about pistons and things like that, and we’ve agreed it wouldn’t be a good idea if we got involved.”

  “Ah. Monsieur doesn’t date zee woman with zee bambino. I—how you say eet?—forgot.”

  “Uh-huh. Give me the address and I’ll come over and see what I can do about your car.”

  She liked the fact she’d rattled him. She’d cooperate with him to win this money, but maybe she shouldn’t make the whole thing too easy for him. “Okeydokey.” She gave him the address. “And remember not to stare at Mrs. Jefferson even if she looks strange.”

  STRANGE DIDN’T EVEN COVER the sight that greeted Joe when he was us
hered into Mrs. Jefferson’s living room. And the lack of eyebrows on Mrs. Jefferson wasn’t the worst of it.

  “Ta-da!” Darcie said, holding out her arms. She wore a bathrobe and some sort of turban affair that hung down to her shoulders, but that wasn’t the most startling part. She seemed to have dyed her hair black and her face had been darkened with some sort of makeup.

  Before he could react to that, he noticed the strangest little blond dog waddling along the floor toward him. The dog had paws that looked like…like hands. Then the dog looked up at him. It was Gus, practically covered in a Dolly Parton wig.

  “What do you think?” Darcie asked.

  He hardly knew how to start navigating this land mine. “About what?” he asked cautiously.

  “Do I look like the Blessed Virgin or not?”

  Not. “Did you…dye your hair?”

  “No. It’s a wig Geraldine loaned me.”

  He let out his breath, not even aware he’d been holding it. He shouldn’t care if she dyed her hair purple, but the thought of her changing the color of that soft, curly, wonderful mass of red hair made his stomach ache.

  Darcie turned to Geraldine. “This is Joe Northwood.”

  Geraldine nodded, but her gaze was assessing. “Nice to meet you. I understand you don’t date women with children.”

  Joe’s jaw dropped as he swung back to Darcie. “What next? A public service announcement on TV?”

  “You never said it was a secret.”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Geraldine and I are soul mates,” Darcie said. “We tell each other everything.”

  “You just met each other!”

  “When it’s right, it’s right,” Geraldine said. “Fate sent Darcie to my door. I even helped her look like the Virgin Mary, though she wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “I see.” Joe was beginning to wonder if he really understood what he’d gotten himself into. Darcie wasn’t quite as sweet and uncomplicated as he’d thought.

  Gus reached out a fist and took hold of the leg of Joe’s jeans. Slowly, with great purpose, he pulled himself upright and wrapped both arms around Joe’s leg. “Da-da,” he said softly, peering out from under the bangs of the blond wig.

  “WELL, THERE GOES the neighborhood, Herman.” Madge Elderhorn had perfected a technique whereby she could poke her binoculars out through a slight gap in the front drapes so that someone outside would have to really look to notice what she was doing.

  Santa Claus had brought her the binoculars last Christmas, and they were just what she’d wanted—the kind with an infrared feature so a person could see what was going on at night. Well, Santa hadn’t really brought them. She couldn’t trust Herman to pick out the right kind, either, so she’d bought them for herself, put Santa’s name on them, then put them under the tree.

  “Did you hear me, Herman? Riffraff is as riffraff does.”

  Herman kept his gaze focused on the latest episode of The X-Files displayed on his new flat TV. “How so, sugarplum?”

  “It’s not bad enough that we have to put up with that old clunker of a truck the house sitter drives, but he just pulled into the driveway towing the maid’s car. Uh-oh. She’s getting out of the car, which we have to assume is not running.”

  “That’s usually when cars get towed, luscious lips.”

  “Oh, my God, Herman. She’s wearing a bathrobe! You can see exactly where this is leading.”

  “Maybe her plumbing went out, babycakes, and she’s come to borrow DeWitt’s shower.”

  “Oh, I think her plumbing is in fine shape. I think Mr. Joe Northwood is quite interested in her fine plumbing, if you ask me.”

  “No, sugar lump. Mr. Northwood is a carpenter, not a plumber.”

  Madge blew out a breath in exasperation. How Herman managed to find his shoes in the morning was beyond her. “Will you look at that? He’s carrying the baby’s playpen into the house for her, so it’s obvious she plans to stay awhile. And they’re leaving both of those disreputable vehicles right in the driveway. Next thing you know, one of them will be up on blocks, mark my word. I told Edgar DeWitt he should hire a professional house-sitting service, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “No doubt it’ll be his downfall, snookum-wookums.”

  “Two old rattletraps like that, and they think they can win Tannenbaum’s Christmas Festival and Good Cheer Contest! What a laugh!” When the man, woman and baby had finally gone inside, she scanned the neighborhood one last time. “Well, Herman, I really need to get back to my sewing project.”

  “You’ve spent a lot of time on that, love bundle. Is it a Christmas surprise?”

  “You might say that,” Madge replied as she headed for the stairs. Trudy had wanted ammunition. Madge was about to provide an entire munitions dump.

  6

  JOE SET DOWN THE PLAYPEN and unlocked the front door. “I can probably get it running long enough to get you home, but there’s more oil pouring out of that engine than one of J. R. Ewing’s wells. You need either a major overhaul or a new car.” He gestured her into the dimly lit living room.

  “By the shine on a leprechaun’s britches, I just knew it.” Darcie tried to keep her voice low so she wouldn’t wake Gus, who was sleeping in her arms. “The very minute I have a chance of getting ahead, up pops another blessed expense!”

  “Where do you want the playpen?”

  “Right here will be fine, thanks.” Once he’d set up the playpen, she laid a sleeping Gus inside. He should be home in his own bed, she thought, but sacrifices would have to be made on all sides in order to win the festival prize, which she and Gus now needed more than ever. The baby stirred, and she leaned over the edge of the playpen to rub his back.

  “Want something to drink?” Joe asked softly from the doorway leading into the kitchen.

  She glanced over at Joe and was hit by the reality of being here alone with him, this man she’d flirted with, the one she’d imagined sleeping naked on the sheets she changed every week.

  “Wine, maybe?” he asked. “And I think there’s some flavored coffee in the freezer I could grind, or…would you like some plain old hot chocolate?”

  Wine might affect her good judgment and coffee would make her more wired than she already felt. “Hot chocolate sounds nice.”

  She imagined he’d make instant and it would taste like chalk, but at least they’d each have something to hold on to while they discussed this display, which might prevent her from dreaming of holding on to him. Besides, hot chocolate sounded homey, not seductive, and she needed to concentrate on this contest, not Joe Northwood’s beautiful body.

  She followed Joe into the kitchen. No light was on in the kitchen except the fluorescent one over the stove. The lighting was way too intimate, but Darcie couldn’t figure a graceful way to suggest flipping on the overhead. “Do you need some help?”

  “No, thanks.” To her surprise, he took down sugar and a can of cocoa powder from the cupboard. Apparently, he planned to make real hot chocolate, the kind that made you think you were swallowing a cupful of heaven. He measured sugar and cocoa into the pan and stirred in a little water. “I take it you don’t have a lot of spare cash for car repairs.”

  She watched him put together the hot chocolate with an efficiency that showed he was used to doing it that way. “Not if I had any hope of paying for tuition in January. And that’s saying we’ll win the contest, which isn’t a foregone conclusion.” She pulled off her turban and the wig Geraldine had loaned her and draped both of them over the back of a chair.

  “We’ll win.” Joe poured milk into the saucepan. “What’s the tuition for?”

  “For the past several years I’ve been paying my way through school, slow but sure, so I could become an interior decorator.” She thought he had the sexiest behind she’d seen in ages and she liked the way he moved, like a man comfortable with his body.

  “And then Gus came along.”

  She rested her chin in her hands, unable to take her eyes off
him. “That’s right. I had one semester to go. And don’t tell me I was dumb to get pregnant,” she added. “I already know that. Bart Butterworth Jr. made all sorts of promises, but in the end he slipped out of every one slick as a whistle.”

  Joe stirred the cocoa. “And where is this slimy Butterworth character?”

  She appreciated his gallantry. Too bad she hadn’t met Joe earlier in her life, but then she wouldn’t have her son, and everything she’d been through was worth it because the end result had been Gus.

  Sighing, she leaned back in her chair. “When I told Bart Junior we’d be expecting a baby in seven months, he suddenly remembered an important appointment in the Amazon jungle. Called it—let me get this straight now—‘a spiritual quest for a true connection with the oneness of the universe.”’

  Joe snorted. “Sounds like he’d made one too many connections before he left.”

  “He certainly did.”

  Joe turned off the burner. “What did you say your last name was?”

  “O’Banyon.”

  “That’s pretty damn Irish,” he said over his shoulder as he walked to the refrigerator and took out a metal can. “Were you born over there?”

  “I was. Came here with my da when I was thirteen. In high school I tried so very hard to change my speech so I’d sound like I’d been born in the United States. But Irish expressions still slip out now and then.”

  “The brogue sounds good, Darcie. Don’t try to change it.”

  “Apparently, I can’t.”

  He had his back to her, but she could hear two distinct whooshing sounds, and when he turned around with the mugs of hot chocolate, each one wore a cap of whipped cream.

  Darcie clapped her hands together. “How perfect!”

  Joe’s grin was boyish. “I’m glad to have an excuse to do it. Most women I know are too sophisticated to enjoy….” He paused in confusion. “That didn’t come outright. What I mean is, I—”

  “Never mind,” Darcie said. “I’m not sophisticated and I know it. I’m the daughter of a janitor and I clean other people’s houses for a living. It’s my dream to become an interior decorator, but I won’t be putting on airs then, either.”