Beauty and the Baby

She couldn’t help wondering what the other women were doing tonight and if they still found motherhood as exciting as they had in the beginning.

Would she? Or was her only certainty these days the fact that she found the prospect of giving birth and motherhood scary as hell?

She came to a stop at a red light. Her hands felt slippery on the steering wheel.

Opening night jitters, she told herself.

Her due date was breathing down her neck and although part of her felt as if she had been pregnant since the beginning of time, another part of her did not want to race to the finish line, did not want the awesome weight of being responsible for the welfare of someone else other than herself.

“I know what you’re going through, Angela,” she whispered into the darkness as she eased onto the gas pedal again.

Right now, Angela probably felt isolated and alone. Maybe if she gave the girl a call, to see how she was doing and if she’d called to make an appointment with the doctor, Angela wouldn’t feel so alone.

The next moment, the thought was shot down in flames. She didn’t have Angela’s number. On top of that, she wasn’t even sure where the girl lived or what her mother’s name was, so surfing through the Internet’s numerous helpful sites wouldn’t be productive.

The number, she realized, was probably on Carson’s computer.

Lori made a U-turn at the end of the next block and pointed her vehicle back toward the center.

By car, St. Augustine’s Teen Center was only fifteen minutes away from Bedford and home, but it might as well have resided in a completely different world. Here, the streets were narrow rather than wide, and the neighborhoods had not grown old gracefully. The windows of the buildings seemed to be staring out hopelessly at cars as they drove by. The street lights cast shadows rather than illumination. It made Lori sad just to be here.

This was the kind of neighborhood Kurt and Carson had grown up in, she thought. The kind they had both tried to leave behind.

Except that Carson had come back. By choice.

Lori saw St. Augustine’s Teen Center up ahead. Lights came from the rear of the building where Carson kept his office. She glanced at her watch. It was past eight.

What was Carson still doing here?

Chapter Three

T he parking lot was deserted, except for Carson’s beat-up pickup truck. His other car, a sedan, was housed in his garage at home. Right beside the classic Buick Skylark he had been lovingly restoring for the past three years. Lori had a hunch that working on the car was what kept him sane.

Everyone needed something, she mused.

Parking beside the truck, Lori got out and crossed to the rear entrance. Curiosity piqued, she let herself into the building and walked down the short hallway to the back office. Light was pooling out into the room onto the floor outside, beckoning to her.

For a moment, she stood in the doorway, watching him, trying to be impartial. Carson was really a very good-looking man, she thought. Handsomer, actually, than Kurt had been. There was a maturity about him, a steadfastness that marked his features. It was a plateau that Kurt hadn’t reached yet.

What Carson needed, she decided, was a life. A life that went beyond these trouble-filled walls. Contrast was always a good thing.

Right now, he looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. A weight he guarded jealously. Carson O’Neill wasn’t a man who shared responsibility or had ever learned how to delegate. He thought he had to do it all in order for it to be done right.

Carson glanced up. He’d thought he felt someone looking at him, but he hadn’t expected it to be Lori. If he was surprised to see her standing there, he made sure he didn’t show it. He let the papers he was shuffling through sit quietly on the desk.

“Can’t seem to get rid of you, can I?” And then he realized how late it was. How did she get in after hours? It was late. “I thought I locked up.”

“You did. I have keys, remember?” She held them up and jingled the set for his benefit before slipping them back into her purse.

He laughed shortly. “That’ll teach me to hand out keys indiscriminately.”

“You really are in a mood tonight, aren’t you?” She noted that he wasn’t smiling and there was an edge to his words.

Carson laced his fingers together as he leaned back in his chair and rocked, looking at the stack of bills that never seemed to go away, never seemed to get smaller. It felt as if he had come full circle in his life, except that this time, he was hunting for funds at work instead of in his private life.

“Looking for money that isn’t there always does that to me.”

She crossed to his desk and picked up the last paper in his in-box. It was from the electric company. The one beneath it was for the phones. Both were past due. She had a feeling they weren’t the only ones.

Dropping the papers, Lori raised her eyes to his. “Trouble keeping the wolf away from the door?”

He shook his head. Times were tight. People picked and chose their charities carefully. St. Augustine’s had no name and wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list. If it closed its doors, no one would notice. No one except the kids who needed it most.

Carson sighed. “It’s beyond trouble. More like a major disaster.” He glanced at the figures on the computer monitor again. They didn’t get any better no matter how many times he looked at them. “I’m trying to meet 2003 prices with a 1950s budget.”

Her heart went out to him. He was one of the good guys no matter what kind of face he tried to present to the world. But she was a firm believer in it always being darkest before the dawn. Somehow, he’d find the money to make it through one more month. And then another, and another. He had before.

Lori smiled at him. “I think this is the part where Mickey Rooney jumps up on a table and shouts, ‘Hey kids, let’s save the old place by putting on a show.’”

The funny thing was, Carson understood what she was talking about. She’d made him watch one of those old movies once. It was while Kurt was still alive. His brother was out of town on some get-rich-quick venture and he’d come down with the flu. This was right after he’d taken over at the center and Jaclyn had walked out on him. Lori had come by with chicken soup she’d made from scratch and a sack of videotapes to entertain him despite his protests to the contrary. It was around then that he’d begun to seriously envy his brother.

But he scowled now. He needed a miracle, not an old movie grounded in fantasy. “People really watched films like that in the old days?”

She nodded. “Ate them up.”

He pushed himself away from the desk, wishing he could push himself away from the bills as easily. “Well, there’s no one to put on a show here.”

Lori had felt tired until she’d walked in. Now, one thought was forming into one hell of an idea. “No, but there could be a fund-raiser.”

“What?” She was babbling, he thought. Fund-raisers were for fashionable causes backed by wealthy foundations and people blessed with too much money and too much time on their hands.

Lori’s mind was racing. There was Sherry’s fiancé, not to mention the man who had returned into Joanna’s life. Both were well-connected billionaires in their own right. It could work.

Her grin was almost blinding. It matched the sparkle in her eyes as she turned them on him. He had trouble keeping his mind on the situation.

“I know a few people who know a few people who have more money than God.” Maybe it was time she got together with the ladies of the Mom Squad again, Lori thought. She’d been the one who had baptized the group, the one who had been instrumental in bringing them all together for mutual support in the first place. Maybe it was time to spread some of that support around. “From what I hear, they’re always up for worthy causes.”

Even so, that did him no good. “And probably get hit up by them every other minute of their lives.”

She looked at him fondly. No one would ever accuse Carson of being a rampaging optimist. “Which is why having the inside track is a good thing.”

He looked at her skeptically. “And you have the inside track.”

He didn’t believe her. What else was new? She had a feeling that if he ever traced his family tree, he would find that his lineage went back to the original Doubting Thomas.

“Anymore ‘inside,’ she told him, “and it might have to be surgically removed.”

“What the hell do they put in those prenatal vitamins of yours?” She was dreaming, pure and simple. And wasting his time with pipe dreams. Miracles didn’t happen to people like him.