“No kidding. She’s a thorn in my side. I thought if we got it on, things might improve. What about you? Do you like her?”
Isaac traced the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “I don’t know her.”
The doorbell rang, and Isaac headed to answer it, the cordless in his hand. “Hey, Dan. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I was getting around to that. I’m on call. Rich had something come up.” Rich Scarborough, the Chief of Obstetrics.
They’d planned a climb, but Isaac wouldn’t mind the solitude.
He opened the door, and the black cat, the one Danielle called Meow, shot in from the cold. She found the tabby kitten he’d adopted outside the market and began hissing.
Tara, with Laura in a sling against her breasts, held two foil-wrapped packages. The night had sprouted stars behind her.
Isaac spoke into the phone. “I’ve got to go.”
The alpine cold was numbing, and he let her in. She handed him the still-warm loaves of bread and continued into the living room with its rustic furniture.
“What’s the hurry?”
“I have a visitor.” He shut the door behind her. The tabby had retreated to a recess beside the broom closet. Meow rubbed Isaac’s legs, but he knew better than to touch her. They all did.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Dan found the chalet beautiful but lonely. His own place was actually farther from town, in an enclave. The locals called it “on the mountain.”
“Bye.” Isaac switched off the phone.
“Sorry,” he apologized and sniffed the foil-wrapped loaves. Pumpkin. “What did I do to deserve this?” My brother likes you. Even if he says he doesn’t.
“Nothing.” Tara’s smile was mischievous. “Yet. Where are the kids?”
“Silverton. Spending the weekend with my mother.”
Tara helped herself to a seat on the ancient couch. The disarray had worsened, if anything. Lunch boxes, probably not empty, sat in various places, and the laundry mound now extended to the floor. She spotted a bread crust under the opposite couch. “He sold both houses furnished, didn’t he?”
The former owner. “Yes.”
Tara sensed his impatience with her visit. It gave her a bad feeling, but it was too late to stop. She couldn’t stop—and couldn’t think of a better approach. Not here, in his presence, under that gaze. “I have a proposition for you.”
Isaac’s eyes darkened. He pulled a footstool toward him and dropped down on it.
It would be easier to speak without that hot feeling in her chest, the feeling that wouldn’t let her stop, the feeling that made her tremble. “I’d like to propose—” she waited a beat, trying to read his face “—a marriage of convenience.”
CHAPTER THREE
The midwives at Maternity House treat us with respect. Tara, she holds my hand; her brow creases when I feel the pain. “Your baby will be here soon,” she says, and she embraces me. She is like my oldest, Elana. I tell her she is like my daughter, and she gives more hugs.
—Inez Martinez, age 44, Maternity House, Sagrado, Texas, after the birth of Juan Diego
ISAAC HAD HEARD perfectly and didn’t ask her to explain.
But she tried. “I need a husband, you need a wife. We treat it as a business decision and a business partnership—”
“Slow down. I need a wife? And that’s a business decision?”
The only way to save face was by never lowering her head. Anyhow, what kind of reception had she expected? She’d known she would have to persuade him. “I’m thinking of a temporary arrangement. You can bail when you find someone you like better. You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”
He only stared.
Tara forced out the words. “I can take care of your children.”
“This seems like an extreme suggestion.” She knew his brother’s desire for her—and she doesn’t know me at all. He smelled sexual abuse or an absent father or both. Heloise’s younger sister Dominique, the midwife, had shown similar traits. A girl loses her father when she is ten, Heloise had explained, she looks for him her whole life. Maybe with her sexuality, she tries to call him, to retrieve what she lost.
Isaac asked, “Why do you want this?”
Tara counted the chances that he would agree to her plan. Slim. In which case she shouldn’t reveal the truth about Laura. “A male father figure for Laura.”
“You said temporary. How will it help the bébé?” His control was slipping. Anger, fear, emergency. Under any of these emotions, he became le docteur en médecine of Kibuye, Rwanda. He was angry. “Who is her mother?”
Tara heard the change in his voice, the lapse into French followed by carefully enunciated English. She heard the anger, too, and her pulse quickened. In the past ten years, she’d learned to stand up to her fear and to anyone who frightened her. Birth had taught her that. “Calm down.”
Her eyes were on his, unblinking.
Isaac returned her stare, measure for measure. “Who is the mother?”
Still angry. It was the emotion men did best, one reason she and men were a bad combination. Intimacy always led to this.
But if she wanted to adopt Laura, with Isaac McCrea, the story would have to come out. Trust. That he won’t tell his brother or the police. Trust that he’s not a law-and-order kind of guy. He couldn’t be—not after the things he must have lived through.
Trembling, she began the story. She told him about the border and about Maternity House. Then, Julia. Finally, Laura.
Outside, a screech owl called. A floor lamp with holes cut in the metal shade flushed the huge room in shadowy wood tones.
When she’d finished, Isaac still waited.
“That’s it.” Tara eyed Laura, now asleep beside her on a plastic-sided changing blanket laid over his couch.
His head spun. She’d just...kept the baby. In other cultures, in other places, it wouldn’t be an issue. For Isaac the man, it wasn’t an issue. But for Isaac McCrea, M.D., it must be. He didn’t even want to know about this situation.
But now he knew. “What’s your plan?”
“Get married. Get a home study. Go back to Maternity House with every single thing we need in hand. I’ll level with them, tell them the whole story. From that point on, I’m counting on friends, and it’s a prayer, but at least I know people in the system.”
“You should have talked to them before now.”
“Then Laura would have gone to another home.”
“That may happen anyway.”
His words made her shiver. No chance. No way. He could help! His children needed a mother, needed her. Especially the little girl, Danielle. Kids shouldn’t live...like this. She could clean up. She’d known a guy who worked for Orkin. She knew how and where to place bait and seal up a house, and she could get rid of these mice.
And she needed Isaac so she could keep Laura.
“I don’t even know you, Tara.”
Before he could formulate more words, she said, “Let’s have a few dates. I’ll even try to find a sitter for Laura.”
Her smile was full of affection, compassion for his anger. She didn’t know his anger. Like