Mom in Waiting
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Maureen Child
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12
Chapter 1
“I hate reunions,” Tracy Hall muttered into the telephone receiver. This had seemed like such a good idea. Go home to Oregon. Attend a joint reunion for the last forty graduating classes of their tiny high school.
Now that her departure date had arrived, though, Tracy was seriously reconsidering the plan she’d thought brilliant a few weeks ago and that now seemed idiotic.
Still grumbling, she plopped down hard on top of her suitcase. She had enough clothes stuffed into the bag for a trip around the world. And that wasn’t even counting her brand-new garment bag that literally bulged with dresses, high heels and purses or her cosmetic bag that now held several tons of makeup and lotions.
From her precarious seat, she leaned forward and
clicked the latches shut, one after the other, with a sigh of triumph. The suitcase groaned a little as she scooted off, but she ignored it.
A flutter of nerves rose up and twisted in the pit of her stomach. What if this didn’t work? What if someone found out what she was doing? Just imagining the gales of laughter made her groan and grit her teeth.
“Why am I doing this again?” she wondered aloud.
“Because it’ll be fun,” the voice on the phone told her.
“Yeah,” Tracy said, unconvinced. “So far, it’s a blast.” The preparation alone for this little trip into her past had just about worn her out. And that didn’t even take into account The Plan. She even thought of it in capital letters.
“Honestly, Tracy,” her sister Meg said in the drill sergeant tone she used on her children, “you might try for a little enthusiasm.”
Well, she had been enthusiastic. A few weeks ago. When this silly idea of hers had first occurred to her. Now that she was actually having to go through with it, though, the notion had lost a little of its sparkle.
She looked into the mirror directly opposite her. Since the image was out of focus, she closed her left eye. She’d been in the middle of putting in her new contacts when Meg called, so she was now only half-blind.
The woman staring back at her from the glass looked quietly elegant, professional, confident—if you ignored the squint. Which just went to prove how deceiving appearances are. Because beneath the flashy new veneer, she was the same old Tracy Hall
The class nerd. The outcast. Ugly duckling to her older sister Meg’s swan.
So, she’d never be a cover girl. She’d learned to live with that. But, she told herself, even ugly ducklings grow up. And become, if not gorgeous swans, at least not-too-bad ducks.
“Tracy?” Meg said loudly. “You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, smiling at the growing noise from Meg’s end of the phone. “What’s going on?”
“Just the usual,” her sister said with a rueful laugh, then, half covering the mouthpiece, yelled, “Tony! Don’t jump from the top of the stairs. You’ll break your neck!”
“Is he a good old-fashioned super hero?” Tracy asked, picturing her youngest nephew in his latest death-defying feat.
“You are way out of the loop, little sister,” Meg replied. “They’re passé. We’re into Power Rangers and Hercules.”
A twinge of regret skittered through Tracy. She was out of the loop and she knew it. At twenty-eight, she was no closer to having children of her own than she had been at thirteen. The only thing about her situation that had changed was the fact that she’d finally come to grips with the idea that she would probably never have the family she used to dream about.
Working out of your home, alone, was not conducive to meeting single men.
“I’d better go,” Meg said with a tired sigh. “Jenny’s got her Xena, Warrior Princess costume on and she’s challenging Hercules to a fight to the death.”
Tracy smiled. She might not ever get to be a mom,
but she loved every minute of being an aunt. And reunion or not, she was looking forward to spending a few days with all four of her nieces and nephews. “Where are Becky and David?” she asked, wondering about Meg’s two oldest kids.
“Probably selling tickets to the fight,” her sister said. “Half the neighborhood’s arriving as we speak.”
A car horn caught her attention and Tracy walked to the nearest window. “Speaking of arriving,” she muttered as she watched the black Range Rover pull into her driveway. “Rick’s here.”
She squinted against the sun’s glare and closed her left eye, but still couldn’t see the driver. As she stared, a tall, shapeless blob of shadows emerged from the car, closed the door and locked it.
“How does he look?” Meg demanded.
“Blurry.”
“Put your glasses on.” An exasperated sigh followed that direct order.
She kept her gaze locked on the blur and asked, “Exactly what did he say when you asked him to give me a ride?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘Sure,’ unquote,” Meg said.
Mistake, Tracy told herself. Maybe huge mistake. “Y’know,” she said aloud, “the mechanic insists my car is fine now. I probably wouldn’t have any trouble driving myself.”
“Uh-huh. And he’s the same mechanic who fixed it the last time?”
“Well, yeah.” Tracy frowned as the blurry figure moved toward her condo. “But he’s learned a lot since then.”
“I should hope so,” Meg muttered.
“Everybody has to work their way up in their profession. Jimmy’s improving all the time.” And Tracy would not try to explain to her sister why she couldn’t desert the young mechanic for one who was more skilled. But she wasn’t going to be the one to shatter Jimmy’s confidence by abandoning his shop.
Still, she didn’t exactly trust his abilities enough to drive home by herself, either.
“It’s not too late to take a plane,” Meg said, her voice teasing.
“Oh, no.” Tracy shook her head. “Planes are heavier than air. They fall. And they fall from really high up.” Nope. No way was she going to get into an airplane. “But I could take the train.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tracy,” Meg said, impatience coloring her tone. “What’s the big deal? Rick was driving up for the reunion anyway.”
True. And since he was stationed at Camp Pendleton, just twenty or so miles south of Tracy’s house, she really was on his way north. Camp Pendleton. She’d been tempted once or twice over the last couple of years to drive down to the base and see Rick...just for old-time’s sake. But she’d always talked herself out of it.
Accepting a ride from him today might feel a lot less awkward if she hadn’t.
“I don’t know,” Tracy said and leaned forward, watching him, until her forehead hit the cold windowpane. “It just seems weird, that’s all. I haven’t seen him in more than ten years. What if we don’t have anything to talk about? It’s a long drive to Oregon.”
Meg actually laughed at that one. “Since when do you have trouble talking?”
True. Since growing out of her gangly, adolescent
years, Tracy had made up for lost time. Her father had often said that given enough time, Tracy could talk the ears right off a statue.
Of course, good-looking men still had the ability to make her tongue-tied and distinctly uncomfortable. Besides, this was Rick. She could almost feel her nerves gathering for a good old-fashioned anxiety attack. Instantly, old memories rose up in her brain and she almost cringed.
As if reading her mind, Meg added, “I’m sure he’s forgotten all about your stalker tendencies.”
“Stalker?” Tracy straightened up. “I never stalked him. ”I...watched him. From a discreet distance.”
“Yeah,” Meg said on another laugh. “From behind every tree and bush on the block.”
Remembering those long-ago days brought back echoing waves of teenage angst. How she had loved Rick Bennet. Her big sister’s boyfriend.
From below, she heard a brisk series of knocks on the door. Releasing old memories, she jumped into action.
“Gotta go, Meg,” Tracy said, ignoring her sister’s yelp of protest. “See ya soon.” She hung up and hurried to the bathroom. Rick would have to wait a minute or two. She wasn’t going to meet him with only one lens in. If she was going to pull off this little plan of hers, she wanted to get it right from the beginning.
Flipping on the light, she picked up her other contact lens and tipped her head back. She’d been practicing using the damn things for a week now, and she was still uncomfortable sticking foreign objects into her eyes.
But she’d get better. She had to. Her thick glasses
were a part of the old Tracy. And that girl was not going to the reunion.
“Done,” she said to herself, and tried to stop the wild blinking of her left eye. Like a twitch, her eyelid jerked and fluttered as if it was catching on the lens, which it probably was.
The doorbell rang, clanging and bonging like the bells of Big Ben. Apparently, he’d given up on knocking.
“Oh, swell,” she said and clamped one hand over her left eye. Rick was downstairs and she was going to meet him for the first time in years looking like a one-eyed pirate. No time to start over, though. She had to hurry down and let him in before he rang that stupid bell again.
The previous owners of her condo had obviously suffered from delusions of grandeur, installing a doorbell with tones that rivaled a church organ. And, since moving in six months ago, she hadn’t had time to have it replaced.
She’d been too busy establishing her at-home business and then getting herself in shape for what promised to be a very interesting high school reunion. With any luck.
Half stumbling down the stairs, Tracy muttered curses as behind her hand, her eyeball watered and itched. She ached to rub it but was afraid she’d send that new lens into what was left of her brain.
The bell pealed again and the reverberations had hardly faded away before she opened the door and came face-to-face with a big part of her past.
He still looked blurry.
But her memory filled in the blanks and her stomach
did a quick series of twists and flips. Just like the old days.
Oh, this was going to be a long road trip.
“Tracy?”
“Hi,” she said and winced at the squeaking sound coming out of her mouth instead of her normal voice. Lord, his voice still had the power to rumble along her spine with mind-numbing speed. Tracy swallowed hard to dislodge the sudden lump in her throat, but didn’t try to speak again just yet. Instead, she stepped back and waved him inside with her free hand as she tried to remind herself she was not fourteen anymore. That shy, gawky teenager had grown into a widely sought-after computer wizard.
So why, she wondered, could she almost feel the tin wires of her braces digging into her lips? “Come on in,” she finally managed to say.
Rick Bennet had not been looking forward to this. He’d only agreed to give Tracy a ride as a favor to Meg, his high-school girlfriend. But the Tracy he remembered was nothing like the woman standing in front of him now.
In his memory, she was a shy, slightly overweight, fingernail-chewing, ponytail-wearing irritant. The younger sister he’d had to put up with every time he’d arrived at the Hall house to see Meg.
The girl who used to walk past his parents’ house a dozen times a day. The girl who had trailed after him like a smaller shadow.
Obviously though, times—and Tracy—had changed.
He experienced a quick, hot jab of pure male admiration. It had been a long time since a woman had
so instantly affected him. A flash of desire spurted into life as his gaze swept over her.
Her short blond hair was a fluffy tousle of curls that made him want to reach out and touch them, to test their softness against his skin. She wore a simple yellow blouse tucked into a calf-length, filmy looking summer skirt and small strappy sandals on her dainty feet. Pale pink nail polish decorated her toes, and with surprise he noted her tiny silver toe ring. Long, abstract silver drops hung from her earlobes, glinting in the afternoon sunlight. A honey-golden tan accentuated her blond hair and blue eyes, making her look like a magazine ad for youthful living in Southern California.
She made his mouth water. And though his brain had a hard time believing this desirable creature was really Tracy Hall...his body didn’t care.
“Wow,” he muttered. “You look great,” he said, yet noted the hand she kept clamped over one eye and the fact that she was squinting with her other eye.
“Yeah,” she grumbled just under her breath. “For a one-eyed pirate princess.”
“Something wrong?”
“No,” she said, as he stepped past her into the entry hall. “It’s just these darn contacts.”
Well, that explained the absence of the thick, wirerimmed glasses he’d recalled. But what explained the rest of her transformation? he wondered silently. Like a butterfly from a little caterpillar, Tracy Hall had become a stunner.
His gaze followed her as she shut the door and turned to face him.
“Look,” she said, keeping her hand firmly clasped over her eye. “Why don’t you go into the living room
while I run upstairs and see if I can get this darn thing out without blinding myself?”
Grabbing a fistful of skirt, she hiked the hem up to her knees and raced up the steps leading to the second story. Rick watched her, idly admiring the flash of her legs and the sweet curve of her behind.
That thought caught him up short. Tracy’s behind? Little Tracy? Bookworm and math whiz? “Whoa,” he told himself and rubbed the back of his neck. Shaking his head at this unexpected development, Rick turned and walked toward the doorway opening into the living room.
Another surprise.
He didn’t know why, but he hadn’t imagined Tracy living in such quiet elegance. Twin white sofas, their stark surfaces brightened with boldly colored throw pillows, sat facing each other. A low-slung coffee table that looked like a polished redwood stump lay between them and held a scattering of magazines neatly fanned out on its surface. A couple of overstuffed chairs, small decorator tables and reading lamps made up the rest of the furniture in the large, airy room. Two of the four walls were completely covered by bookcases. Another wall boasted floor-toceiling windows with a view of the ocean in the distance. On the last wall was a fireplace with a basket of wood sitting on its hearth. The wide plank floors gleamed in the splash of sunlight streaming through the uncurtained windows.
Just one surprise after another. When he had agreed to give Tracy a ride home to Oregon, he’d somehow expected to find her in a small apartment, locked away from the world. Stupid, he supposed, to assume that a grown woman would be much the same as she
had been at fourteen. Just because she had spent most of her time then hidden behind the pages of a book didn’t mean the same would hold true now.
He couldn’t help wondering if her personality had changed as thoroughly as her appearance.
Upstairs, Tracy raced into her bedroom, clipped her hip on the edge of her dresser and ran into the bathroom, wincing at the low throb of pain. Another bruise soon, she thought. Honestly, she was black and blue enough to convince anyone that she was being abused regularly.
But in her own defense, she wasn’t really clumsy. She was simply always rushing, thinking ahead to what her next move would be to the extent that she didn’t pay attention to what she was doing at the moment.
And right now, she was thinking about the next three days spent in a car—and motels—with Rick Bennet.
Setting both palms down flat on the edge of the sink, she leaned forward and dragged several deep breaths into lungs that felt starved for air. “Jeeezzz, why’d he have to be so good looking still? Why couldn’t he have developed a hunch back, adult acne and bad teeth?”
The butterflies in her stomach had butterflies of their own. One look at him and her heartbeat had quickened until she wouldn’t have been surprised to see it fly right out of her chest.
Just imagine what her reaction might have been if he’d arrived wearing his Marine uniform. Ooohh... the thought of that had her toes curling tightly into her new sandals.
What was it about Rick Bennet that got to her? Even as a kid, Tracy had watched his every move and daydreamed about him breaking up with her sister, Meg, in favor of her. She’d gone to sleep every night kissing a pillow, pretending it was him. She’d filled dozens of diaries detailing every word he ever said to her, which wasn’t difficult since most of their conversations had been limited to... “Hi, Rick,” from her and “Hey kid, where’s Meg?” from him.
Not much, true, but enough to warm every corner of a nerdy fourteen-year-old girl’s heart.
And now...he had actually paid her a compliment. Obviously, the professional makeover she’d sprung for had been worth every penny.
She lifted her head, stared into the mirror and groaned. “Oh, yeah. You’re a real beauty, you are.”
Prying open her eyelid, she fumbled for a minute or two, then finally managed to adjust the annoying contact lens.
Studying her reflection, she had to wonder if this was worth all the trouble. Not just the contacts. She’d eventually get used to them. No, she was beginning to doubt the wisdom of her whole plan.
But reunions didn’t come along every day. And heck, she’d heard people talking about going back to their old schools and lying like crazy about their grand achievements in life. And it wasn’t as though she was going home pretending to be the president of the United States or something.
She flipped off the light switch and walked into the bedroom. Sunlight filtered through the sky-blue blinds and lay in golden slats across her quilt-covered bed. Almost like sunshine sliding through prison bars. Except that they were lying horizontally instead of vertically
and prisons probably didn’t have such homey touches as quilts and feather pillows. And besides, they didn’t put you in jail for lying, did they?
A guilty conscience nudged her again.
“Oh, perfect,” she mumbled, striding toward the bed to pick up her bags. “It’s a good thing you didn’t become a criminal,” she said aloud. “Or a spy. You just don’t have the stomach for it.”
Who was she trying to kid? It wasn’t the thought of living a lie for the reunion that had her so tied up in knots. It was seeing Rick again. It was feeling those old feelings again. It was realizing that some things, no matter how many years had passed, didn’t change.
Slinging her garment bag over one shoulder, she staggered under its weight, groaned, then lifted the metal bar on her suitcase and set its tiny back wheels on the pine floor. Grabbing up her cosmetic case, she headed for the doorway with slow, plodding steps.
Like a man headed up the stairs of a gallows. “Oh, get a grip, Tracy,” she told herself. Honestly, if she was going to spend the next week or two sweating over every tiny white lie—excuse me, exaggeration—she’d never make it.
And for heaven’s sake, she’d better get over the flutter of nerves that attacked whenever she was within an arm’s reach of Rick. He was doing a favor for her sister. Just being friendly. He wasn’t there as her date. Or her lover.
Ooohh. That thought sent a tingling sensation to every part of her body. Slowly, deliberately, she pulled in a long, deep breath, hoping to stabilize her nervous system.
When she was in control again, she lifted her chin and said aloud, “You can do this, y’know. It’s just a
few days alone with him. Then you won’t see him for another ten years or so. How hard can it be?”
Something told her that last sentence would go down in her private journal as the equivalent of “famous last words.”
