Baby's First Christmas

Obviously Sally wasn’t going to give this up until she told her. “No romantic assignations, Sally. I’m expecting a private investigator.”

Sally’s brows knit together in a wiggly line of confusion. “What do you need a private investigator for?”

Marlene knew that it would never occur to Sally that the answer to that question was none of her business. Sally had been in the family’s employ since before Marlene was born, and had become even more integral in their lives after Marlene’s mother had walked out on them. For years Sally had been the only maternal influence she and her sister Nicole had had in their lives. She was their buffer against James Bailey’s paternal demands. If the woman was a little rough around the edges, that could be forgiven. After all, love didn’t always come neatly packaged in shiny gold foil.

“I’ve decided to try to find out who the baby’s father is.”

Marlene placed a protective hand over her belly, the way she did each time she and Sally discussed the baby. Sally had very vocally disapproved of her method of entering into the state of motherhood, but then, Sally hadn’t been the one to experience the yearnings that insistently battered her.

Her father’s untimely death thirteen months before had caused Marlene to stop and take stock of her life. At a juncture where most women already had families, Marlene stood barren and alone. The life she had was meaningless unless there was someone to be shaping her legacy for. Unless there was someone to come home to. But since she’d never had time for relationships, that left her decidedly short of one would-be father.

Never one to hang back and leave things to fate, Marlene had taken matters into her own hands. She had remedied the situation the best way she knew how. And she had no regrets.

Sally’s frown deepened. “You would have known that if you had gone about it the way God had intended you to.”

Marlene sighed. She felt especially tired today. She’d pushed hard to wrap up an ad campaign before taking the rest of the day off. When she had originally made up her mind to become pregnant, she had sworn to herself that she wasn’t going to let her condition slow her down or change her life beyond weight gain and the sweet satisfaction of knowing she was carrying another life within her body. Pregnancy, like everything else, became a challenge for her to overcome. Each day was business as usual.

To that end, she made certain that her makeup was meticulously applied each morning without fail. And she still wore the same three-inch heels she had always favored. God, in his infinite kindness, hadn’t sent down an onslaught of varicose veins to plague her or puffy ankles to slow her down.

The only plague she had to deal with was on the home front: Sally and her disapproval.

“We’ve been through this, Sally. That’s all behind us,” she said patiently.

The smirk took years off Sally’s age. “No, that’s all in front of us, especially you.”

Marlene raised an eyebrow and simultaneously lowered her voice. “Sally—”

The housekeeper threw up her hands, not so much in surrender as in disgust. Marlene knew just what she was thinking. If only the girls had had a normal upbringing, Marlene would have a husband in the picture by now. And Nicole wouldn’t have run off with that worthless bum.

“I know, I know, butt out.” A smile that would have made the Mona Lisa envious graced the old woman’s thin lips. “You should be so lucky.” Sally cocked her head, studying Marlene, reminding her of a gray-haired sparrow. “What brought this on? I thought you told Nicole that it didn’t matter to you who the baby’s father was?”

That had been true in the beginning, Marlene acknowledged. But curiosity had nibbled at her incessantly until it had worn a hole right through her. Besides, there were other reasons to know.

“It doesn’t,” Marlene insisted. “But someday my baby might want to know who its father is. I want to be able to offer a name, a history. A picture. He—or she—deserves that.”

Sally snorted. “You don’t deliberately start out being a one-parent family if you can help it. That baby deserves a father who isn’t just a resumé or an eight by ten glossy.”

With anyone else, Marlene would have been defensive. But Sally knew the story. She’d been there as it was unfolding.

“I never have the time to meet anyone, Sally. You know that.”

“You would have if you hadn’t spent all your time trying to please your father.” She shook her head, remembering. “Sooner get blood from a stone than win that man’s respect and affection.”

Marlene sank down in the wing chair, the firmest one in the room. She was bone weary and didn’t have the stamina to go into this now. Whatever James Bailey had been didn’t change the fact that he was her father and that she loved him.

“If you felt that way about him, why did you work for him all those years?”

“Same reason I’m still here. You. And your sister, when she lived here. I figured that you two needed someone in your corner, and that I’d do until someone better came along.”

Touched, Marlene rose and kissed her wrinkled cheek. “No one better than you will ever come along.”

Sally shrugged self-consciously. Having worked for James Bailey all these years, she had little experience dealing with praise. She shuffled out of the room. There was still dinner to deal with.

“Don’t think that means you’re getting out of buying me a Christmas present,” Sally huffed over her narrow shoulder.

Marlene laughed. Sally was one of a kind. Probably by popular demand. “I’ve got it picked out already,” she called after the woman.

Sally stopped in the doorway and turned toward Marlene. Maternal concern softened the harsher contours of her thin face. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Sandwich?”

Marlene shook her head. “I’m fine, Sally.”

Sally smiled to herself. “Yeah, I guess you are at that,” she murmured under her breath.

The doorbell rang just as she was about to disappear into the kitchen. With a sigh, she turned on her heel.

Marlene glanced at her watch. The private investigator was early, though not by much.

He had said that he might be late because of the traffic. The infamous El Toro Y, located south of her home, tended to knot up between the hours of three-thirty and seven. Since he had to come from that general direction, he’d obviously allotted extra time.

Or maybe all the holiday shoppers were out at the malls and not on the freeway today, she mused. She waved Sally back to the kitchen.

“Don’t bother. I’ll get it,” she told her as she passed Sally on the way to the door.

Bony shoulders rose and fell. “Suit yourself. My pay’s the same whether I answer doors or not.” Sally moved back toward the kitchen, then stopped, hovering on the threshold between the two rooms as Marlene opened the front door.

He wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting, Marlene thought. As far as she knew, detectives weren’t supposed to arrive wearing expensive three-piece suits, but then, she thought ruefully, she’d been raised on TV detectives. Endearingly mussed PI’s who were filled with snappy patter and caught their man, half the time by accident, before the last commercial aired.

Marlene put out her hand. “Hello, I’m Marlene Bailey. You’re early.”

As if in a trance, Sullivan took her hand. Whatever he’d been going to say flew out of his head. Her words had caught him completely off guard.

As did her appearance. She was the most pregnant woman he had ever seen. At least, the most pregnant woman he had ever seen from such a close vantage point. But that wasn’t what had words curling up on his tongue. The woman was gorgeous.

Not only that, but she had class written all over her, from her tilted cleft chin to her tailored, pale blue suit. It was the kind of class that came from bloodlines, from pampering and from never having to worry about paying bills, no matter how large they were.

Why would a beautiful woman have to resort to a sperm bank in order to conceive a child?

“I am?” he finally said, mystified by her reaction. How could she have been expecting him?

Unless, he suddenly realized, the woman at the Institute had had a change of heart and called her, warning her that he was coming.

Marlene had made up her mind not to feel awkward about this. All the way home from the office, she had rehearsed what she was going to say to the investigator. Though she suspected that her request did not exactly run along the lines of the mundane, she was certain that he probably dealt with a great many strange requests. And successfully, if his clothes were any reflection of his track record.

She glanced expectantly over her shoulder at Sally. Muttering, the older woman withdrew. Marlene led the man into her living room.

“Yes, I didn’t expect you for a while.”

She did know, he thought. The Riley woman must have told her he was coming. Dollar signs were probably dancing in her head.