Whose Baby Part 5

After that first shocked instance, Adam realized she was no longer looking at him. Her gaze devoured Rose. The book she held slipped from her hand and slapped to the floor. Heads turned, but LynnChanak kept staring.

"Daddy?" Rose said uncertainly. "Is that lady your friend?"

Friend. The way she was looking at his daughter scared the h.e.l.l out of him.

"Yeah." He swallowed. "This is my friend Lynn. Lynn, my daughter Rose."

"I..."Lynncouldn't seem to tear her eyes from the child. "I'm happy to meet you, Rose."

In a sudden bout of shyness, Rose buried her face in his neck. She whispered, "Why is she looking at me so funny?" "Maybe," he whispered, too, "because your hair is the same color as hers. How many people have curls like my Rose?"

She giggled, but shakily, because even her three-year-old intuition knew something was up.

G.o.d, he thought with gritted teeth. They looked so much alike. Everyone in the store must notice. They probably all thought he was the proprietor's ex-husband, and this her daughter. How was she going to explain the resemblance?

"Rose is anxious to meet Sh.e.l.ly," he said, too loudly. He didn't so much want to meet his daughter, as he wanted this woman to quit staring at Rose as if she were royalty. Or, h.e.l.l, a baboon. Something she might never see again.

"I..."Lynnblinked and turned her head, cheeks pale and her eyes unfocused. "I ... I'm not sure..."

He glanced around and saw that the shoppers had gone about their business. A young woman behind the counter was ringing up a purchase. At the same moment, a giggle wafted from thesunporch .

"I'm here, Mommy! Remember?"

The playhouse. It must be two-story, because framed in an upper window of the fake castle was a little girl's face, flushed with delight because her presence had been a secret.

The rock that had been sitting in his stomach was suddenly a boulder, craggy and painful. It pressed his lungs until he couldn't breathe.

Rose was wriggling, so he set her down without tearing his gaze from the child. He felt his lips move, knew they formed a name:Jennifer .

Even the voice. Sounding confident and open, she invited Rose to come up. Shyly his daughter went, bending to crawl across the mock drawbridge and inside. As if Rose couldn't figure out how to climb a ladder, Sh.e.l.ly gave her directions and told her what she'd find up at the top and how Mom had said they'd go to the beach and did Rose like hotdogs ,cuz Mom said maybe that's what they could have for lunch. The words flowed like a stream over stones, making a kind of song, and all as inevitable as water finding its way downhill.

Jennifer, he thought in agony.

She peeked out the window at him, her face, alight with laughter, looking forall the world like a nineteenth-century children's book ill.u.s.tration of an elf perched on a flower stem. Sh.e.l.ly's ears stuck out just a little. Jennifer had hated hers, though he had thought them cute. Just like Jennifer's, Sh.e.l.ly's face narrowed from high cheekbones to a pointy chin, and just like Jennifer's, her eyes shimmered with amus.e.m.e.nt and devilment.

"It's worse than seeing the picture, isn't it?" the woman beside him said softly.

Taking a ragged breath, he turned his head and met LynnChanak's eyes. "G.o.d."

She nodded.

"Do you see yourself?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"I suppose." Like him, she gazed toward the playhouse. Neither girl was visible in the window, although whispers and laughter drifted out. "She does look like pictures of me at that age, but I don't exactly remember my face in the mirror from when I was three, so it's not quite as big a shock as Sh.e.l.ly must be for you."

He fumbled for his wallet and, with shaking hands, took out a photo of his dead wife and handed it to Lynn.

She looked at it for a long moment. When she lifted her head, her gray-green eyes were misty. "She was beautiful."

"Sh.e.l.ly is going to look like her."

A tear dropped, shimmering, from her lash. She wiped it from her cheek. "Oh, I wish..."

"This hadn't happened?"

She squeezed her eyes shut, as if willing back further tears. "No,"Lynnsaid finally. "Because then I wouldn't have Sh.e.l.ly, and she's my life. No, I was going to say, I wish we'd never found out. But now..." She gazed again toward the playhouse where first one girl's laughing face, then the other, popped up. "But now, I'm not so sure."

"Jennifer's parents want to meet her," he heard himself say.

Lynnsqueezed her hands together without looking at him. "I thought they might. But how can we do that, without Sh.e.l.ly knowing who they are?"

"I told them they might have to wait."

She smiled with obvious difficulty. "Thank you."

"What about your parents? And your ex-husband's?"

"My mother and stepfather love Sh.e.l.ly, and I'm sure they'll love Rose, if you give them the chance. They'll support whatever we decide. Brian's parents..." She hesitated. "I don't know. At the moment, he's washed his hands of the whole thing. My pregnancy wasn't planned, and..." She swallowed whatever she had been going to say, perhaps suddenly aware that she had been going to reveal too much that was private to a relative stranger. "Well," she said, a little awkwardly. "Certainly there's no rush, where they're concerned. Right now, it's just Sh.e.l.ly and me."

"Not anymore," he murmured.

Her startled glance became troubled, but she said nothing, although the small creases stayed between her brows. He understood how she felt. They were both between a rock and a hard place.

"Does Rose want to go to the beach?"

Adam cooperated with her desire to put their visit on conventional ground. "She can't talk about anything else."

"Then shall we?"Lynnnodded toward the register. "I have someone to mind the shop for me."

Belatedly he noticed that she wore jeans, faded canvas sneakers and a T-shirt the color of theAegean Sea. Her hair was gathered into a ponytail, making her look absurdly young, with that round face and sprinkling of freckles. The fact that he couldn't help noticing her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s and flare of hip was a useful reminder that her husband had suspected her of infidelity. He couldn't let her resemblance to Rose disarm him.

"Rose wanted to pick out a couple of books first," he said. "Maybe I'll do it for her. Any suggestions?"

Lynnled him into the children's area and offered several of Sh.e.l.ly's favorites.

"We've read this about two hundred times," he said, setting one aside. "I liked it the first hundred."

She grinned, her nose crinkling. "Yeah, me, too. But, hey, most of them wear thin after five or ten repet.i.tions."

d.a.m.n it, under other circ.u.mstances he'd have been attracted to her, Adam realized in dismay. Don't, he told himself sharply. Talk about messy.

He grunted and probably glowered, and pretended to concentrate on the book he was flipping through. After a momentLynnturned away and began straightening a rack of paperbacks for middle-grade readers, but he didn't forget her presence. He'd never be able to forget her, he thought grimly. How could he? She was the mother of his daughter. Ofboth his daughters, one way or another.

How many men could say that about a woman they'd never touched?

Irritated with himself at a thought that nudged uncomfortably close to s.e.xual awareness, Adam raised his

voice. "Rosebud, you want to go to the beach?"

He heard whispers above his head. Then Rose said, "Okay, Daddy. If Sh.e.l.ly can go."

"You bet."Lynnsmiled as if she hadn't noticed his withdrawal.

The sounds of scrambling within eventually produced both girls, his Rose in her pink flowered overalls

with matching shirt, and Sh.e.l.ly in a bright red dress he thought it was a dress, made out of T-shirt fabric over purple leggings.

"I know, I know,"Lynnmurmured, evidently seeing his astonishment. "She wants to dress herself, and mostly I let her."

"Ah." Rose accepted what he laid out.Adifference intemperament ?Or was Rose, as he feared, immature for her age? G.o.d! What if there was even something wrong with her?

But her language was well developed, he reminded himself.

"Hey, kiddo," he said. "You still want some books?"

She approved his selection and added two more with scarcely a glance inside the covers. He carried the

pile to the register and letLynnring it up, not even wincing at the total.

"Let me give them to you at cost," she offered. He shook his head brusquely. "Don't be ridiculous. This is your business. If I weren't buying them here, it would be somewhere else."

"I thought..." Her expression closed. "Thank you. No, I don't need to see ID."

She was a stranger, he told himself. He hadn't hurt her feelings in some way he didn't understand. How could he? She didn't have the power to hurt his.

Lynnsmiled brightly as she came out from behind the counter. "Sh.e.l.ly, Rose, let's go use the bathroom before we head off." She raised her eyebrows at him. "Adam?"

"No. If you don't mind taking Rose..."

Her sidelong glance reeked of irony. Oh, no. She wouldn't mind taking his daughter. He couldn't help a minor feeling of loss when Rose willingly tookLynn's hand and went without a look back. They returned hand in hand, the pretty woman, his Rosebud and Sh.e.l.ly, so much like Jennifer that his heart spasmed again.

His face revealed too much once more, becauseLynnsaid in an achingly gentle voice, "Sh.e.l.ly, this is Rose's daddy."

"Hi, Sh.e.l.ly." He sounded gruff to his own ears. "I see you have a sweatshirt. Rose had better get hers from the car."

"I have buckets, too," Rose confided. "An' shovels, an' everything."

"Wow."Lynn's smile was wide and unaffected for the girls, tentative for him. "Then how about we go make some sand castles? Or chase crabs, or hunt for sh.e.l.ls and agates?"

She and Sh.e.l.ly had both tied sweatshirts around their waists. He grabbed sweaters from the car for Rose and himself, as well as the beach paraphernalia.

Rose took his hand and they walked behind Lynn and Sh.e.l.ly the two blocks to the public pa.s.s-through to the beach. Rose stared at the tourists and shop windows. A toy store brought her up on tiptoes as they pa.s.sed. Adam watched the pair ahead, the woman's springy auburn ponytail, the child's sleek brown one just as familiar to him. The way Sh.e.l.ly danced instead of trudging obediently along as Rose did. He loved every placid, thoughtful bone in Rosebud's body, but something in him ached at the sight of Jennifer reincarnated, a sprite in constant movement.

All that distracted him from this child was the sway of LynnChanak's hips, her faded jeans snug, or the sight of her pale, slender nape when she bent her head to listen to the little girl.

Dressed like this, she seemed not so much young as vulnerable, Adam decided. Here was who she was, how she lived. In letting him come to her home, she had bared herself for him, in a way. Their meeting at the hospital had had an anonymity, a sense of the impersonal, that was lost now.

At the ocean, broad concrete steps led from a paved boardwalk down to the pebbly beach. Once at the bottom, Sh.e.l.ly let go of her mom's hand and spun eagerly.

"Come on! I'll show you the best places."

Rose's grip tightened on her dad's hand. "The birds won't hurt me, will they?" she asked uncertainly.

Seagulls gathered only feet away, their beady eyes searching for handouts.

"Nah." He waved his arm, and the nearest bopped backward. "See? They're not interested in you. They want a peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich."

She giggled a little weakly. Instead of prying her fingers loose, he walked with her and Sh.e.l.ly,Lynn trailing. The gulls stayed behind, hoping for bread thrown from the diners eating outside just above.

At a safe distance from the scary birds, Rose proved wiling to let go and join Sh.e.l.ly. The adults strolled behind as the girls ran ahead, scrambling up a favorite driftwood log and jumping over and over again to the forgiving pebbles. Finally Sh.e.l.ly took Rose's hand and led her onto slick rocks where they crouched to stare into a tide pool.

As Adam looked over their shoulders, Sh.e.l.ly was saying earnestly, "We can't take anything out.

Sometimes I touch. See?" She dipped her hand into the cold water and let a swaying anemone brush her fingers. Her face scrunched up. "But if you take them home, they get icky. They stink and stuff. So we leave 'em."

Rose nodded, not wanting to admit she didn't have a clue what her new friend was talking about. Not two minutes later, she slipped over to her father.

"Why do things get icky if we take 'em home, Daddy?" she asked, not bothering to hush her piercing voice.

Death and decomposition was not what he wanted to talk about.

"Because those are sea creatures. They can't live out of the sea. Just like we need air, they need water."

"But they could take a bath with me." Her mouth was pursed with perplexity.