Maybe Baby Read online

  Elaine Fox

  Maybe Baby

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  The only sure thing about luck, Delaney Poole’s mother always…

  Chapter 2

  Six weeks later Delaney sat in the bathroom of her…

  Chapter 3

  Jack Shepard sat at a back booth in the dim…

  Chapter 4

  The moment Jack left, Delaney sank onto the rolling stool…

  Chapter 5

  Ten minutes after she’d arrived at the clinic, Delaney stood…

  Chapter 6

  Delaney pulled into the drive, up to the open wrought-iron…

  Chapter 7

  Delaney’s heart thundered in her chest, pushing blood through her…

  Chapter 8

  “Not much masculine stuff in here.” Jack’s voice carried in…

  Chapter 9

  Sadie’s Diner was nearly full the day Delaney and Kim…

  Chapter 10

  Jack met Delaney at the carriage house the following evening…

  Chapter 11

  The next day Delaney finished up the last of her…

  Chapter 12

  In Delaney’s fantasies, she always imagined herself the first to…

  Chapter 13

  Jack stood in the middle of the field wearing gym…

  Chapter 14

  Jack drove slowly, way too slowly, down Route 1 from…

  Chapter 15

  “I was talking to Carl the other day.” Delaney leaned…

  Chapter 16

  Ruark just died and Sybill had told Drake the truth.

  Chapter 17

  The evening was cool, so Jack threw a sweatshirt on…

  Chapter 18

  Jack’s stomach hit the floor. Jim?? Jim existed? Jim was…

  Epilogue

  Sam walked into the diner with an extra spring in…

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Harp Cove, Maine

  April

  The only sure thing about luck, Delaney Poole’s mother always said, is that it’ll change.

  Delaney was starting to believe that was true.

  After a year of bad luck—wherein she’d endured an unhappy relationship; lived with parents who barely spoke to each other, let alone her; and worked for peanuts as a resident in a busy inner-city hospital emergency room—it looked as if it might all turn around.

  First, she’d dumped the guy. Then she’d gotten her own apartment. And now she was up for an assignment in the most beautiful place she’d ever been: Harp Cove, Maine.

  As she stood across the street from a bar called the Hornet’s Nest, Delaney couldn’t help but smile into the darkness. She loved this town. Loved it with the excitement of a kid getting exactly what she wants for Christmas.

  This backward little two-stoplight town, bathed in sea salt and populated with eccentrics, was exactly what she had in mind when she checked “Rural” on her National Health Service Corps questionnaire. No high-profile, big-city emergency room for her. No sprawling suburban hospital with professional hierarchies and stepladders to success. Sure, they offered an intense form of professional stimulation, but they couldn’t give her what she really wanted: community.

  She wanted to work somewhere she felt needed. Not by the staff or administration, but by the people, the neighborhood, the town.

  And here it was. Harp Cove. Population 5,000. In the winter, that was. In summertime, that number probably tripled, but it was still a friendly, manageable town. A town in need of a doctor who, in a little over a year, would be fresh out of residency with state-of-the-art medical knowledge.

  Music from the bar thumped across the April night, stumbling through the air like a clumsy drunk, begging her to revel in the teeming energy of the only watering hole in town.

  Delaney tilted her head back, hugged her arms around her middle, and looked up at the stars. The sky was carpeted so thickly with them they looked like shattered glass, splintered and bright. So different from the dim sparks visible through the murk of a D.C. night. She breathed in slowly. Salt, pine, soil. Intoxicating earthy scents.

  Harp Cove.

  She imagined herself telling people back home, when she returned for the occasional visit. “It’s just a tiny town on the coast of Maine,” she’d say, smiling wistfully, “but I love it.”

  And they would picture her in some wild, dramatic setting, resourcefully saving lives with pinecones and twine. Pioneering.

  Delaney laughed. As if she cared what the people in D.C. thought of her life. Most of them were just people she worked with anyway. Between med school, her internship and residency, she’d lost touch with most of her old friends. And she’d really only dated one guy since college—the disastrous Lonnie she’d gotten rid of six months ago.

  So now she was free—free to start life fresh, in a brand new place. And this was the place she wanted. This odd, mystic, northern town, so unlike the predictable suburbs and myopically driven city she’d known all her life.

  She smiled and realized she was happy. Irrationally, deliriously so. She couldn’t remember another time in her life when she felt so hopeful. It was the most centered feeling she’d ever had. And it was because she knew exactly what she wanted to do, and where she wanted to do it. Odd, she thought, how the place instantly made her feel as if she’d been lost her whole life, until she happened to come here.

  She just had to get this assignment.

  Delaney had been in Harp Cove for four days, exploring the town in which she hoped to be assigned to work by the National Health Service Corps, the organization that had paid most of her med-school tuition. NHSC required one year of service for every year of tuition they paid, so, since Delaney had saved and paid for the first year herself, she could be in Harp Cove for three years. More, if she chose.

  Granted, she had one more year of residency to go—in the frantic hustle and revolving-door busyness of a D.C. hospital—but after she finished up next June she might be here, living her dream of being a country doctor. And all it took was four years of med school, one year of internship, and three years of residency.

  She smiled to herself. The end was in sight. Soon, she told herself, soon she would be a real, certified doctor. Not a student, not an intern, not a resident, but a doctor.

  Chances were good she would get the assignment. Apparently most people chose locations in warm climates, or towns not too far from a major city. This town—nearly four hours up the coast from Portland—was too cold and too remote to interest anyone but her. She hoped.

  If she got it, she would start in July of next year. Perfect timing for this northern clime. She imagined herself moving in, unpacking her boxes, and getting to know her neighbors. They would be happy to have a doctor so close, she thought. And she would be happy to be the one these kind, quirky folk came to when they needed help.

  Delaney’s whole body quivered with anticipation. She wished she was already settled here and this was her first weekend as a resident. She wished that, instead of leaving tomorrow to go home for another year, she was going to start work at the clinic here in town. She wished the waiting were over and it was all starting now, because up to now it seemed she’d done nothing but prepare for life. But here…here she would live it.

  She spun suddenly in a circle, her arms outstretched, her shoes scrunching on the sidewalk—like something from the opening sequence of a sitcom—and came to a stop facing the tavern. She laughed to herself and glanced self-consciously around the square. But no one had seen her, and it wouldn’t really matter if they had.

  Music from the bar grew louder as the door of the Hornet’s Nest belched a small crowd of people. They laughed
and hung on each other as they meandered down Milk Street, no doubt to walk along the piers in the unseasonably warm weather and stare out into the vast blackness that was the Atlantic Ocean.

  Part of the tourist trade, most likely. She’d been told by more than one person this weekend that tourism had started early this year, thanks to an unusually warm spring. Most of the people at that bar right now were probably “from away,” and it was only going to get worse. Summer, people had warned her, was far different from the frozen, snowy winters in Harp Cove. But that didn’t scare Delaney. She didn’t need throngs of people. She certainly didn’t need the loud music and smoky press of a barroom crowd. In fact the only reason she was here right now, contemplating entry into the melee at the Hornet’s Nest, was because of the guy in the red sweatshirt.

  She’d seen him all over town this weekend—not always in the red sweatshirt, of course—and what a treat that was. He was exactly her idea of good-looking. She’d noticed him the first morning after she’d arrived, when she’d woken up early, as usual, and walked from her B&B to the marina in the crisp air. He was the only thing stirring other than herself, his red sweatshirt catching her eye across the empty boats anchored in their moorings. She watched him moving around his sailboat, tying stuff up, unfurling things and furling them back up, moving boxes from the dock into the cabin.

  As she’d strolled along the walk within view of where he was docked, he’d looked up at her from the cockpit of the boat, dazzled her with a smile, and said, “Good morning” in a tone that seemed so intimate in the early stillness that she’d actually blushed.

  Later she’d seen him at the post office, then the Clam Shack, the pharmacy, the hardware store, and, finally, this morning, the coffee shop. At first they’d exchanged hellos and short pleasantries—each interaction unaccountably making her palms sweat—until this morning in the coffee shop, when he stopped by her table and asked if he could join her.

  He had dark blond hair and greenish brown eyes. A rugged, slightly weathered face—from sun-drenched days on the boat, she presumed—complemented by white teeth and serious cheekbones. And he had hands that looked more than capable of producing any knot the Boy Scouts could dream up. They’d produced a few in her stomach, that was for sure.

  Jack. That was his name. Sailboat Jack, as she referred to him in her mind. They had hit it off immediately, their senses of humor bouncing and feeding off each other so easily that their conversation had taken off like a shot and never gotten back to the basics. She didn’t even know his last name. She only knew he owned the sailboat and it was named the Silver Surfer after some comic-book hero he’d read as a kid. And that tomorrow he was sailing back to Cape Cod.

  “I decided to stay for the weekend because I know the band playing at the Hornet’s Nest, down the street,” he’d told her, “but tomorrow it’s back to Massachusetts to spend a week putting a roof on my sister’s house. She’ll have my head if I’m not finished by the end of spring break.”

  Ah, a guy who knew his way around a toolbox. Good.

  “Where in Massachusetts are you heading back to?” she asked, simultaneously relieved and disappointed that he did not live here in town.

  “Wellfleet.” At her obviously blank look he added, “It’s a little town on the Cape.” He stirred some sugar into his coffee.

  “Wellfleet,” she repeated. It sounded familiar.

  His eyes flicked up to hers, his mouth quirked into a small smile, and she felt a quiver run through her. Everything about him was attractive, she thought. Even that tiny little glance.

  “You probably wouldn’t know it, unless you’ve been to Cape Cod.” He glanced at her again, questioningly—the look somehow hitting her in the solar plexus—and she shook her head. “It’s not much more than a couple of streets and a harbor, but it’s nice.” He shrugged. “Real artsy. Not much going on if you live there year round, though.”

  “I imagine this place is the same way,” she said, looking out the window of the diner to avert the unaccountable blush she felt coming on. If she moved up here, maybe they could see each other again. How far was Cape Cod, anyway?

  He laughed. “Sure. It’s not as bad as Wellfleet, but it’s pretty dead. Summer’s a different story, though. I usually spend half the summer here because the crowds on the Cape are so much worse. That and my sister’s kids are hellions. I’m usually ready to get away from them after a few weeks.”

  She laughed. “That’s charitable. I’m sure your sister appreciates that.”

  “Believe me, she feels the same way.”

  “Well, it must be nice to have the whole summer off,” she said, wondering if she’d found the fatal flaw in this seemingly perfect man. Sailboat Jack—unemployed drifter.

  “Biggest reason I became a teacher.” He flashed a smile as mischievous as any fifth grader’s.

  “Oh my God.” She laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re paid to influence young minds.”

  He leaned his seat back on two legs and looked at her through amusement-narrowed eyes. “Don’t worry. They only give me the hardheaded ones.”

  “Like your sister’s kids?”

  He laughed. “God, no. Not as bad as that. There seems to be a gene in our family that produces demon children. No, I like other people’s kids fine, but the ones related to me are insane.”

  “Oh you’d feel differently if they were your own.” She smiled, thinking it would be a shame if no one got the chance to inherit those beautifully lashed eyes.

  “That’s what everyone says, but I’m not sure I want to find out. I’ve avoided it so far, anyway.” At this he stopped, tilted his head, and looked at her. “You have kids?”

  “Oh no. I’ve been too…busy, I guess.”

  “I bet you’ll get around to it,” he said then. “You seem like the type to produce nice, quiet children.” He smiled slightly, his eyes warm on hers.

  For some reason the look had addled her brain because after that he’d invited her to the Hornet’s Nest, and she’d declined. For what? she’d thought later. Another night alone in her room at the B&B? Twelve hours to think about leaving?

  He’d tried to talk her into it. The band was terrible, he’d said. She really shouldn’t miss the opportunity to get a headache without having to consume even one sip of alcohol.

  But she’d continued to demur, mostly out of habit, saying she had to get up early to leave the next morning. Which was true, but still. Why not go?

  Unfortunately, her practical side told her exactly why not. He was too good-looking, he lived too far away, and the last thing she needed right now was the distraction of a man. Besides, even if she moved here, it wouldn’t be for a year, and he would still live several hours away. And once she started working, she’d have no time for any kind of relationship, least of all one that would require a lot of driving. So what would be the point?

  There was no point, but here she was. Standing outside the bar whose roof should be shaking from the force of the bass guitar inside, ready to take this last night and paint the town red.

  She crossed the street and took hold of the door handle. Music blasted as she pulled it open and pushed into the bar. She was immediately enveloped by a blanket of smoke, heat, and humanity. All around her people with fresh sunburns and thick sporty sweatshirts laughed and bellowed at each other over the music. Delaney kept one eye peeled for Jack as she snaked her way through the crowd.

  The bartender spotted her immediately as she bellied up to the bar. He sidestepped a coworker and called across the noise, chin jutting upward with the word, “Yeah?”

  His forearms were enormous and covered with tattoos. A bird with upstretched wings slipped under her gaze as he took a cursory wipe at the bar in front of her with a dingy cloth.

  “Beer,” she called back, and gestured toward the tap with the Geary’s lobster label on it.

  He nodded and slid a pint glass under the tap.

  Delaney leaned back against the round varnished edge and looked through the c
rowd. It was unlikely Jack would be wearing the red sweatshirt she’d first seen him in, but she found herself looking for it just the same. A surprising number of people were wearing red and each time she spotted it her stomach gave a little leap.

  Simple physical chemistry, she told herself. Nothing but raging pheromones and overreacting endorphins. Still, she hadn’t felt so infatuated with anyone since she was fifteen. But then this whole weekend had been spent enjoying life in a way she hadn’t since childhood, so it should hardly be surprising.

  She handed the bartender a five when he slid a dripping beer across the bar to her, and let the change sit in the puddle it had left. She’d be wanting another, she thought. She’d give Jack two beers’ time to show up before she left.

  “Hi, I’m Phil.” A tall, pudgy fellow with a bright pink face squeezed next to her at the bar and held out his hand. His light hair was thinning, and his high forehead looked painfully sunburned. She automatically thought of cautioning him about the incidence of malignant melanoma in people with his coloring, but nobody liked a spoilsport.

  “Delaney.” She shook his hand.

  “Come here often?” He smiled, revealing a row of smallish teeth.

  Delaney smiled. Definitely not from around here, she thought. The accent was too New York, not enough Down East.

  Then she caught sight of him. Jack. He shouldered through the mob with a grin here, a wave there, a short conversation over one shoulder, and a familiar clasp of hands with the bartender. His hands were tan against the sleeves of his white shirt, his left one—as it had been on previous occasions—ring free. His hair was windblown but fell into an unstudied style, and his sweatshirt bagged attractively to his jeans-clad hips.

  As Delaney’s eyes scanned lower, the thought came to her, unbidden and completely surprising: What would be wrong with a one-night stand?