Her Best Friend's Baby

His eyebrows rose. “Are you giving me an order?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. I don’t know how they do things in New York, but out here in Texas we give people a shout when it’s necessary. I would say running off to Austin and leaving your medical practice high and dry qualifies.”

“My God, you’re lecturing me!” He seemed ready to give her an argument.

She met his gaze. “I may be a mere child in your eyes, and an uneducated waitress on top of that, but it’s possible I know more about some things than you do, in spite of the fact you’ve gone to college for about a million years and probably graduated magna cum incredible.”

He blinked. “I don’t think of you as an uneducated waitress.”

“That’s what I am,” she said quietly. She noticed he hadn’t contradicted her statement that she was a mere child. He still thought she was too young—too young for him. “I finished high school,” she said, “but I was sick to death of sitting in stuffy classrooms by that time. Waitressing is the only thing I know how to do.” She paused. “Well, that’s not quite true. I know how to—”

“Never mind!” he shouted.

Her eyes widened. “I was going to say crochet. What did you think I was going to say?”

“I’ll make that call.” He was out of the car in an amazingly short time, considering that he had to unwind his body to get through the low-slung door.

But he didn’t get out quickly enough to keep Mary Jane from seeing that he’d blushed red as a stop sign.

While he made his call, she studied him without fear she’d be caught gawking. She needed to look at him more closely and decide what she thought about all this. For one thing, she wanted to make sure that she wasn’t rising to the bait. If she wasn’t careful, she’d take his assumption that she was only a kid as a challenge to prove she was every inch a woman. That would be bad.

Once he’d made his connection to New York, he leaned a shoulder against the curved cubicle surrounding the telephone. Now that she’d begun to see him as a man instead of a pediatrician and her best friend’s husband, she allowed herself to notice the wide set of his shoulders, his narrow waist circled with a black leather dress belt, the pleated trousers that didn’t totally hide his nice butt. He shifted his weight. Definitely a nice butt.

He wore his wavy brown hair short, and she found herself gazing at the nape of his neck with the urge to kiss him there. They’d never really kissed at all, come to think of it. What had happened between them last night hadn’t been a romantic interlude, more like a bid for survival. She wondered how it would feel to be truly kissed on the mouth by Morgan. For some reason she figured he’d know how to use his tongue.

She imagined him without those rumpled clothes and felt the stirrings of lust. He had strong-looking legs. She remembered that much from this morning, before he’d started getting all guilt-ridden and she’d stopped noticing his body.

No doubt it wasn’t kosher to be sitting here checking him out, considering their circumstances, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Maybe she was using curiosity as a distraction from the scary grief that hovered over her like King Kong. If so, it worked pretty well.

Yeah, she was damn curious about what kind of lover Morgan was. Arielle wasn’t the type to drop coy little hints, like some wives did, about her husband being a stud. Mary Jane had assumed Morgan was a nice guy but not particularly exciting in the bedroom.

Last night notwithstanding, and she couldn’t really count that, he might still be a ho-hum Romeo. But if Morgan was no fun in bed, then her radar was way off. She was picking up signals like crazy from this man. He was starting to make her drool, to tell the truth. She didn’t feel particularly noble admitting that to herself, but it was true.

She might be able to blame the pregnancy for her sexual interest in Morgan. In a way, that made the lust all his fault, his and Arielle’s. She liked the idea of pointing the guilty finger at her hormones. Those rambunctious little dudes were the villains, getting her all worked up.

But if she followed that line of reasoning, she should be drooling over anything in pants. Plenty of male customers came through the door at the diner, and she hadn’t felt inclined to jump their bones. She’d felt generally deprived sexually, but it hadn’t affected her discrimination.

Morgan hung up the phone and turned. As he walked to her, her heart did a little dance of welcome. He was only staying a few days, she reminded herself. They obviously needed each other to make it through the first shock and come to grips with their tremendous loss. When they’d recovered their balance, he would go back to New York and continue with his life there while she would stay in Austin and continue hers. She’d probably better cool it.

He climbed into the car and shut the door. “Calling was the right thing to do.” He looked at her. “Thanks.”

“So they can manage without you for a little while?”

He nodded. “Chuck told me to take whatever time I needed. I said I’d check in with him in a couple of days.”

Mary Jane had another sudden thought. “You didn’t get any pets since I was there last, did you?”

“Nope, no pets. And only fake plants. A weekly cleaning service.” He stared out the window. “The apartment could go on forever just fine without anybody being there. We planned it that way so we could have more freedom.” He shook his head, bemused. “We planned everything carefully. We had a smooth, neat life. No wrinkles.”

“Then why in the world did you want a baby?” The question came out before she even knew she was going to ask it.

He turned and looked at her for a long time. “The truth?”

“No better time than now.”

“I wanted the baby. Arielle wasn’t sure a baby was a good idea. I often wondered if there was some sort of mind-body thing going on that kept her from getting pregnant. I was the one who suggested finding a surrogate mother. I may even have been the one who thought of you.”

Mary Jane realized she’d known all along that Arielle wasn’t absolutely gung-ho about having a kid, although her friend had never said anything to give herself away. She’d tried to be a good sport. But looking back on it, Mary Jane recognized that most of the enthusiasm had come from Morgan and herself. She’d been so excited about doing this huge favor, a favor that would prove her undying love for Arielle, that she’d told herself Arielle wanted the baby more than anything in the world.

But she hadn’t. She’d gone along with the idea for Morgan’s sake.

“I think on some level I knew she wasn’t wild about the idea,” Mary Jane said. And then a disloyal thought came to her. If Arielle hadn’t wanted this baby more than anything in the world, what kind of mother would she have been?

“She would have loved that little kid, though, once she got used to motherhood,” Morgan said. “Once the baby was here.”

Mary Jane glanced at him and wondered if he’d been thinking the same thing she had. “She would have been a wonderful mother,” she agreed quickly, not wanting to admit a chink in her loyalty, even to herself. “And I should know. She practically raised me.”

“I know. She told me all about that. She was very proud of her job.”

“She should have been.” But disloyal thoughts seemed to be the order of the day, because Mary Jane was thinking another one. She wondered why she felt so obligated to Arielle for taking her on. Arielle had needed a job as much as Mary Jane had needed a nanny. And yet the way the story always came out, Arielle had rescued Mary Jane. Which was kind of true, but it hadn’t been exactly a one-way street.

“I guess this is a pointless discussion,” Morgan said.

“Not really.” She leaned her head back against the seat. “I’m looking for any way I can to deal with what’s happened, and I have to admit it helps to know that she wasn’t as excited about the baby as I…thought she was.”

“She would have been, once the baby was born,” he insisted.

“Of course she would have.” Mary Jane didn’t think either of them totally believed that. She took a deep breath and glanced at him. “I figure besides a phone card you also have a gold card.”

“Yeah.”

She switched on the engine. “That’s good, because unless you were planning to fit into some of my outfits, you need to do some clothes shopping.”

“Oh.” He looked at his wrinkled shirt. “Good plan. Any major department store will be fine. I’ll just get a few shirts and a couple of pairs of slacks, some underwear.”

She backed the car out of the parking space. “You mean more stuff like what you already have hanging in the closet at home?”

“Pretty much. Why?”

“Because you’re in Texas, my friend. Why not go native?”

“You mean buy Western clothes?”

She gave him a quick once-over. “Why not? You have the build for it. Come on, now, haven’t you ever wanted to be a cowboy?”

“No.”

“Never? Not even when you were five? You never galloped through the back yard shooting bad guys?”