What a Woman Wants Read online

  The only problem was that her explanations didn’t stop her from wanting John. Worse, she yearned to feel his hot mouth on hers, his hands branding her breasts, even more now than before.

  And now she was pregnant.

  Darby crossed her arms and took a long, calming breath that did nothing to calm her. Absently she found herself wishing John was there with her, was voluntarily facing what she was alone. She caught herself and briefly clamped her eyes shut.

  She looked around the cozy, lived-in waiting area of Dr. Grant Kemper’s old Victorian home on the outskirts of town. He ran his practice here, in an airy room off the foyer. Although he’d officially closed up shop and retired a few years ago, Darby could think of no one else to go to. Her regular ob-gyn was out. To be seen even in the vicinity of the central Old Orchard medical complex would set phone lines on fire within a minute of her appearance. She didn’t kid herself into thinking she could keep her secret for long. She absently splayed her fingers across the flat expanse of her stomach. Oh, no, her little secret would make itself known in her or his own sweet time. But she needed this quiet time to herself for as long as she could hold on to it, if just for the simple fact that her condition was so unexpected. So life-altering.

  She rubbed her brow and glanced toward the still-closed door to her right. To the town she was the poor Widow Conrad, whose firefighter husband died a heroic death nearly twelve months ago, leaving her with two young girls to raise all by her lonesome. But while the well-meaning townsfolk saw her that way, she saw her situation completely differently. She wasn’t poor. Not by way of finances, not psychologically. She’d known that every time Erick walked out the door to go to work she might never see him again. She’d accepted it when she’d married him. And while his being ripped from her life had left a gaping hole she had feared would never be refilled, she never once thought her own life was over. Things would just be…different from there on out. She and the twins and the farm and her photographic art. That was how it would be. If sometimes the loneliness she felt deep into the night seemed to reverberate straight through her, if every now and again she felt overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of her responsibilities…well, all single parents felt that way from time to time, didn’t they? She saw herself as neither unique nor worthy of pity.

  Besides, she had two beautiful girls as a result of her brief time with Erick.

  Her fingers stilled against her stomach. And soon she’d have another child to add to the mix. John’s child.

  “Darby?”

  So immersed in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed the examining-room door had opened and that Doc Kemp stood there watching her expectantly. She smiled and scrambled to her feet. “Sorry about that. Got lost in thought.”

  Doc motioned her into the room. With his portly build, bushy gray hair and full beard and mustache, there was a decidedly Santa Claus-esque look to him she found appealing. Darby entered the room and he left the door open. She darted to it, looked out into the empty waiting area, then softly closed it.

  “Ah. I remember you doing something similar a while back,” Doc said. “Approximately seven years ago.”

  Darby realized he was right. She had done exactly the same thing when she’d feared she was pregnant with the twins.

  “Same reason?” he asked.

  Darby blinked, looking over the gleaming, precisely placed instruments on a snow-white towel on a countertop that ran the length of one wall. The neatness of the sheet that covered the black leather examining table. The room smelled of disinfectant and somehow made Darby feel safe. She released a long breath, unaware she’d been holding it until that very moment. She laughed quietly. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  If the doctor’s eyes widened ever so slightly, if he looked momentarily puzzled, he didn’t let on. He merely turned toward a cabinet, took out a kit similar to the over-the-counter ones she’d used herself at home that morning, then motioned toward the connecting bathroom.

  Half an hour later, following a pelvic exam and the urine test he’d given her, Darby sat fully clothed on the examining table, feeling an odd mixture of relief and anxiety. Calmed that she’d come to the only person in Old Orchard who wouldn’t judge her. And about ready to jump out of her skin at the thought of her suspicions being confirmed. For once they were, there was no going back. No hoping that she’d been way off base, that the two tests she’d done that morning could be wrong, that she wasn’t pregnant, even though everything she felt flew directly in the face of those hopes.

  Doc came back into the room from where he’d left her alone to get dressed and rolled his stool over toward the table. He smiled at her. “Three months along is about my guess.”

  Darby didn’t have to guess. She knew exactly the moment the baby within her was conceived. And not only because it was the only time since she’d lost her husband that she’d been intimate with anyone, but because being intimate with John had shaken her to the core, awakened myriad emotions, longings that no self-respecting widow with two young daughters should be feeling.

  Even so, Doc’s word gave birth to yet another unfamiliar emotion. Joy. Simple joy that her special yet brief time with John had resulted in a baby that would forever be a part of her life. Even though she feared John wouldn’t. A completely selfish feeling she couldn’t help herself from embracing.

  “There, there now,” Doc said softly, urging a tissue into her hands. Only then did Darby realize her eyes had welled over with tears. “If I recall, you had the exact same reaction when you found out the twins were on the way. And look at where you and they are now. It wasn’t the end of the world, was it?”

  She managed little more than a shake of her head. She couldn’t even attempt to tell him that her tears were as much out of joy as sorrow.

  Doc Kemp reached out and rested a liver-spotted hand on her knee. “You’ve been through a lot in the past year, Darby. I won’t lie to you, I’m a little surprised to see you here, sitting on my examining table again after so long, facing the same problem, but I’m the last person to judge anyone on their actions.” His expression grew solemn. “But you don’t have to do this alone, you know. We’re all here for you.”

  Darby put her hand over his. “Thanks, Doc. Unfortunately not everyone’s as understanding as you are.”

  “Maybe not. But they’re not all that bad, either.”

  “Maybe.”

  She wished she could be as convinced as Doc. She’d learned long ago that people liked to fit you into a certain, predictable mold. Should you break free of that mold, step outside that neat little box, judgment could be swift and unkind. The same townsfolk who continued to help her around the farm, showing up on her doorstep with tools in hand determined to assist her through her loss, might all turn in the other direction, leaving her alone. Where now they whispered, “That’s the poor Conrad widow. Awful, the way she lost her husband and those poor kids their father,” when they found out she was pregnant they might say, “Not even a year since her husband died. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket and that one is hurrying it along.”

  She wouldn’t even consider what they would say when they found out her late husband’s best friend was the baby’s father….

  “A baby,” she whispered.

  Doc patted her knee again, then removed his hand.

  “I can’t quite bring myself to believe it.” She ran her damp palms over the denim of her dress.

  Doc nodded. “Babies are known to have that impact on people.”

  He rolled his stool over to the counter, swiftly wrote something down on a pad, then scribbled something on the back of one of his business cards. “You’ll probably want to consult with your own ob-gyn when you’re ready?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled and handed her a prescription. “This is for vitamins.”

  She glanced at what he’d written and said, “I’ve already been taking them.”

  “Good girl.” He pressed the other card into her hand. “I’m heading out to Myrtl
e Beach tomorrow. This is the number I’ll be at.” He curved his hand around hers. “If you need anything, anything at all, call me.”

  “I will,” she said quietly, although she knew that she wouldn’t. She’d already asked too much of him. No, what she had to face, she had to face alone. Correction, she and her small family would face, together.

  From the other room, the front door slammed, followed almost instantaneously by the opening of the examining-room door. Darby gave a start, then found herself staring straight into Tucker O’Neill’s face. She wasn’t sure who was more surprised. Then quickly decided he was the more surprised. While he had no reason to expect her to be there, she knew he’d been staying at Doc Kemp’s place for some time now. A doctor himself, he’d opted not to follow in his mentor’s footsteps and instead, took great pleasure in working in the emergency department at the county hospital.

  Doc Kemp frowned at him. “I’ve always told you you needed to learn some manners, Tuck.”

  The younger man barely seemed to register the gibe. “I didn’t know you’d hung the shingle back out, Doc.”

  Darby watched Doc shift the file he’d made for her into a drawer, then close it. He turned to face them. “I haven’t. This is a personal visit. Isn’t that right, Darby?”

  She nodded and forced a smile. “Personal.”

  “And even if it weren’t,” Doc said, “whatever happens in this house is strictly confidential. Isn’t it, Tuck?”

  Darby felt suddenly as if the topic had moved beyond her to something that existed between the two men. Especially when Tuck grimaced. “I’ll be back in a while.”

  Just as quickly as the door had opened to let Tuck in, it closed on his departure, leaving Darby once again alone with Doc. She slumped and groaned.

  Doc crossed to stand in front of her, a reassuring smile on his grandfatherly face. “What Tuck does or doesn’t suspect is not what’s important right now, Darby. Remember that. I’ll see that he doesn’t go shooting his mouth off where he shouldn’t.”

  She looked into his eyes, wanting to feel at ease with his reassurance, but unable to. “I appreciate it.”

  He squeezed her shoulder.

  A king. A man in charge of his domain. All-powerful, all-knowing. That was how Sheriff John Sparks usually felt when seated in his office. He dropped the telephone receiver back into its cradle, then pushed the paperwork in front of him aside. Okay, so maybe he only felt like that sometimes. When he was alone, took a deep breath and allowed his more fundamental side to step out from the shadows. But he never indulged the emotions for more than a few moments. Never longer than it took him to square his shoulders, puff out his chest and quell the desire to beat his chest like Tarzan.

  He fingered the papers needed to transfer the federal prisoners back where they belonged. Of course, right now he felt like the film that coated the bottom of his shoes. Like Judas for betraying his best friend. Like a heel for treating Darby as if she’d just told him she was coming into town to buy some new tires, not tell him she was pregnant.

  Good God.

  Just thinking the words made his gut twist into knots.

  Pregnant.

  Baby.

  Mother.

  Father.

  Holy cow.

  Propping his elbows on his desktop, John scrubbed his face with his hands.

  First in community college law-enforcement classes, then at the fire-department academy, he’d learned how to save lives, protect lives, even take a life if it came down to it. But never in his thirty years had anyone ever talked to him about creating a life.

  He grimaced. Okay, there was the botched attempt his father had made when he was ten. It had been all John could do not to laugh as Walter Sparks had awkwardly paced in front of him, where he sat on the bottom bunk in the room he shared with Ben, reciting a speech John was sure he’d used at least four other times with his older brothers. Remembering it now, he thought that with eight kids of his own, his father should have been a pro at relating just how children came into being. But he hadn’t been. Most of John’s knowledge about sex had come from his older siblings and his peers.

  And the greatest lesson he’d learned had come from Erick. When you got a woman pregnant, you married her.

  Something brushed against his leg and he started. He pushed his chair back to stare at the black-and-white firehouse cat. “What do you want, Spot?”

  If one was to believe the stories circulating around town about the feline that thought she was a dog, she had a habit of showing up on the doorsteps of those most in need of help, no fires necessary. And it was there she stayed, seemingly for no reason at all. Then, when the crisis went away, so did the cat.

  Dusty Conrad’s wife, Jolie, believed the stories. She even credited the cat for helping to bring her and Dusty back together last autumn.

  Of course John didn’t buy into any of the stories. Not even Jolie’s, although Jolie was one of the most levelheaded people he knew. He patted the cat on the head, then scooted it toward the door before his allergies kicked in. “Go on now. Why don’t you go see what ol’ Ed has for you.” He gestured toward the door and the counter behind, where Ed Hanover had taken over for George Johnson. Ed was always eating something or other.

  John absently plucked the papers from his desk, read the fax number he’d been given over the phone, then dialed it and laid the papers in the document holder.

  He imagined what his father might say at the news that his youngest had gotten a “good” girl pregnant. He could practically envision him tucking in his shirt, hiking up the waist of his slacks and then saying, “a Sparks always lives up to his responsibilities.”

  Of course his many memories of his father saying that had come as a result of some minor infraction such as Ben’s being an hour late delivering his newspapers. Or his own promise to shovel the neighbor’s walk in the dead of winter. Certainly nothing that even neared the magnitude of this.

  Still, his father’s words made a lot of sense. Had he planned on being a father? Unequivocally, no. Did that change things one iota? Again, no.

  He leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly. Well, then, it only stood to reason that this particular Sparks should live up to his responsibilities, didn’t it?

  He sprung from his chair as though it had catapulted him. No way. He couldn’t believe he was even contemplating such an option. No, not an option. It didn’t even near possibility status, as far as he was concerned.

  He paced one way, then the other, but stopped when he caught himself tucking in his short-sleeved shirt and hiking up his pants.

  What would Darby expect him to do?

  The mere thought of her made his stomach pitch toward his feet. Not because she was pregnant, although that detail didn’t exactly have a small impact on him. No. Just thinking of her made him long for something he’d never known he wanted. Something he couldn’t quite define. Filled him with an unnamable something that made him want to hop in his SUV and head straight out to her house.

  He decided to do just that.

  Pressing the button to forward his calls to his cell phone and plucking his hat from the desktop, he headed for the door. He still didn’t have a clue about what he was going to do or say. But he suspected he’d figure it out by the time he got there.

  Chapter Three

  The four-bedroom farmhouse on the outskirts of town sat nestled in the middle of the Promised Land Farm, 150 acres of ripe farmland that had just been plowed and planted. Having been raised in an apartment over the Laundromat in downtown Old Orchard, Darby usually took great satisfaction in her home, her surroundings, living the life she’d always longed to but never had until she married Erick.

  Right now, however, she just wished the world would stop spinning for thirty seconds.

  No, ten. That was all she needed. Just enough time to find the patience she usually had for the people who tried to help her out since Erick’s death but somehow managed to make life even more of a challenge.

&n
bsp; She’d returned home after her doctor’s appointment to find that the teenage girl from up the road had left the pen gate open when she’d fed the animals. Everything from a llama to a miniature horse was left trampling all over the crooked rows of corn Old Man McCreary had planted last week. And now Erin had let Billy the Goat into the kitchen, the dinner potatoes were boiling over, Lindy was on Darby’s heels with nonstop questions, and somewhere in the house the cordless phone was ringing, even though Darby couldn’t for the life of her remember where she’d left it.

  “Mom, do babies really come from mommies’ stomachs?” Lindy’s latest question nearly sent Darby skidding across the tile as she tried to keep Billy from devouring the blue-and-white checkered tablecloth. She tugged on the full-grown goat’s collar, and he in turn tugged on the tablecloth, sending the dinner placements crashing to the floor.

  Darby sighed, nearly backing into Lindy. “Yes, sweetie, babies really do come from mommies’ stomachs.”

  She swallowed hard. There wasn’t even a remote chance that her six-year-old daughter was talking about her own mommy, or the brother or sister who was on the way.

  She tousled the girl’s blond curls as she bent over to retrieve the plastic cups. She’d learned long ago that while plastic might not be the most refined choice, it was the most practical. And the latest mishap only served to prove the point.

  “But…” Lindy began.

  Darby began stacking the plates and gathering the silverware, then leaned over and switched off the heat under the pan of potatoes. “Lindy, you remember when Petunia had her colt last year, don’t you?”

  From the corner, where Erin was ineffectually pulling on Billy’s lead, came a laugh. Then Lindy said, “Mom, Petunia’s baby came out of her butt.”

  Darby snapped upright, finding the imagery on top of everything else a little much. She wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. The girls were six. She’d explained where babies come from when Petunia gave birth and wasn’t quite up to another run-through just now. Not considering she’d be coming awfully close to describing the circumstances that had led to her own current pregnancy.