Just Kiss Me (29 page)

She looked at him, his dark eyes and hair and handsome mouth crunching away. “How do you know that?”

“I downloaded an app from
Today’s Parent
.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a big smile. “It sends me weekly alerts.”

The yogurt in Vivien’s mouth suddenly tasted sour and she felt like she’d been punched in the heart. He was looking at her like he used to. Giving her that smile that had melted her and lit up her insides. The smile that used to make her think he saved it just for her. She swallowed hard. “I can’t do this.” She stood so fast her chair fell back. “I thought we could be civil to each other for the baby’s sake.” She shook her head. “I thought maybe we could be friends, but we can’t.”

Henry looked up at her and set down his spoon. “I don’t want to be your friend, Vivien.” He kept his gaze locked with hers as he slowly rose. “I can never be your friend. Too much has happened between me and you.”

He was right. In the past few days she’d forgotten that he’d only pretended to care for her. He’d broken her heart once before. Almost smashed it to pieces, and she wasn’t such a fool that she would let him finish the job. She turned away and he grabbed her hand.

“You’re having my baby, for God’s sake.”

She looked back at him over her shoulder and the warmth of his touch spread to her wrist. “This is about the baby.”

“What?”

“This.” She pointed at the table. “Bringing me breakfast all the time. You just want to make sure I eat right.” Why had she thought it meant more?

“That’s part of it.”

She should be grateful, but she’d let her stupid heart convince her head that he might care for her a little. She pulled her hand from his before the warmth in her wrist spread up her arm to her chest.

“The other part is that I love you, and it’s an excuse to see you every day.”

In her heart, she wanted to believe him. She wanted it so much that she felt like she was being inflated with happy gas. Her head knew better. “I don’t trust you, Henry.” She folded her arms over her chest as if they could shield her heart.

“I know.”

“You lied in the past to get what you wanted.”

“I never wanted to lie to you. I never wanted to deceive you, either.” He reached a hand toward her but dropped it by his side. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to fall in love with you, but I did. I fell so hard that all these months later, I still can’t catch my breath.” He grabbed his car keys off the table. “You don’t trust me and I don’t blame you. You don’t believe me and I don’t know what I can to do to change that.”

She wanted to believe him. Even after all he’d put her though. She wanted to believe him so much that she had to fight the urge to throw herself on his chest. He turned and walked away and she had to fight the urge to run after him, too. Her gaze slid from his dark hair and broad shoulders, down the back of his T-shirt to his jeans. She wanted to believe him so much that even after all the self-help books she’d read to get over him, she fought the urge to grab on to his bumper as he drove away.

She shut the door before she gave into her urges. To take her mind off her troubles with Henry, she packed up more boxes then got on her computer and ordered maternity clothes. Lots of maternity clothes. When that didn’t work she met Spence for dinner. He ate crab and lobster and she ordered steak, medium-well, because she’d read that pregnant women shouldn’t eat shellfish or rare meat. They talked about growing up across the yard from each other and she felt herself relax more than she had in weeks.

Later that night, as Spence pulled his car to a stop in front of the carriage house, he turned to her and said, “I was thinking about something the other day.”

She was almost afraid to ask. “What?”

“My brother and sister are having a baby. That makes me both a maternal and paternal uncle. I bet there aren’t too many people who can say that.” He thought a moment. “Well, not in this generation of Whitleys, anyway.”

He made her laugh and she would have invited him inside, but she knew he didn’t want to be near his mother. Not even in the same zip code, which was fine with Vivien. Spence had exhausted her brain and all she wanted was her bed. The minute her head hit the pillow, she fell into a deep peaceful sleep until the doorbell woke her the next morning. She grabbed her robe and walked down the stair. Her hair was a mess and she needed a shower. She was going to have to insist—again—that Henry call or text before he came over, but it wasn’t Henry standing on her porch, sunlight glistening within the deep luster of the family pearls.

“I wanted to hand deliver this personally.” Nonnie shoved a white envelope at her.

“What is it?”

“You’ll have to open it to find out.” She turned on the heels of her sensible pumps and moved toward the garage, the tail of her peach scarf flapping in her wake. Vivien watched her jump in her Cadillac before she stepped inside the house and closed the door. She looked at the envelope in her hand, almost afraid to open it, afraid Nonnie had found some way to evict her.

It wasn’t an eviction notice, though. It was a card with a stork holding an umbrella on the front, and
It’s a Baby Shower
printed across the top. Inside the card, Nonnie had written the time and date and location for the baby shower of
Vivien Rochet and baby Whitley-Shuler
.

She wouldn’t have been more surprised if the card had turned into dynamite and exploded in her face, Wile E. Coyote style.

A baby shower? For her? This had to be a joke.

IT WASN’T A
joke. Just a really bad nightmare. Vivien sat on a white wicker chair, surrounded by cupcakes with candy rattles, stacks of gifts wrapped in baby-shower paper, and the Episcopalian ladies from her mother’s church. They all wore sun hats and sipped tea in Nonnie’s rose garden like this was all somehow normal.

“Your mother would be so happy,” one of them said. “It’s not like in my day, when girls got sent off if they got pregnant.”

That comment brought a round of commentary ranging from the morals of society today to who’d been sent away “in their day.”

“Oh” and “uh-huh” were Vivien’s contributions to the conversation. She kept her smile in place. She was an actress. She could do this.

“I remember my first child. I was so sick I had to get better to die,” someone else said, which turned the conversation into a competition over who’d been the sickest.

“Oh.” Vivien drank tea and ate a cupcake and wondered what the hell was going on. She glanced at Nonnie several chairs away, but her smile was stuck in place, too, like she wasn’t anymore a happy hostess than Vivien was the guest of honor.

They were both faking it, tacitly keeping up the charade as Vivien opened gifts of handmade quilts and knitted booties and a kit to mold her baby’s hands that looked so creepy she hid it beneath a blanket.

“When I gave birth, I didn’t take drugs to block the pain. I had my children the way God intended. Just me, the doctor, and several nurses.” She paused her childbirth horror story long enough to take a sip of tea. “And the woman screaming down the hallway like someone cut her arm off.”

“I tore something fierce.”

“Uh-huh.” Vivien tried to block those comments from entering her brain as she blessedly opened the last gift. A handheld breast pump.

“You’re going to nurse that baby, aren’t you?”

She feared an incorrect answer. “I believe so.”

“Good. Best to get your nipples all toughened up now as later.”

She raised her hands to her breasts. She didn’t want tough nipples. Now or later. What was wrong with these women? Was Nonnie’s purpose in having this party to torture Vivien with harrowing stories from old church ladies? If it had been her goal, it was working.

She folded the wrapping paper because they seemed to expect her to keep it. She’d been at the party for two hours now and figured it was time to make her escape. She gave a tired sigh and even faked a big yawn to set up her getaway.

“Thank you ladies so much,” she said sincerely.

“You have one more gift,” Nonnie pointed out.

Vivien glanced around, expecting to see another gift wrapped in paper, but the only thing sitting on the table was a wooden box. “This?”

“Yes.”

The box barely filled both palms and had different wood inlays. It was beautiful, but when she tried to open it, she couldn’t. She turned it upside down and looked at it from every angle. She shook it and heard something rattle inside.

“What is it?” someone asked.

Vivien smiled. “It’s a puzzle box.” Henry. It suddenly became clear who was really behind the baby shower. “If y’all will excuse me, I need to rest.” She thanked everyone again and carried as many gifts as she was able across the yard. The wooden box sat on top of the breast pump, and once inside the carriage house, she tossed everything but Henry’s gift on a clean spot on the sofa, then moved to the kitchen table. She sat in the same chair she’d sat in as a girl, and skimmed her fingertips across the wood, which had been carefully sanded until it was as smooth as satin. She’d been fairly good at opening Henry’s boxes as a kid, but after an hour, she figured she must have lost her touch. She slid one piece of tiger wood one way and walnut another. One strip up, another down. Back, forth—up, down, and just when she felt like getting a hammer and smashing the beautiful box, she heard a soft click. A victorious smile curved her lips and anticipation pumped through her veins.

A weathered cork sat inside the box lined with green velvet. It had turned a darker brown and was a little shriveled, but the name
Moet & Chandon
was still clearly visible.

Vivien reached inside and pulled out her mother’s cork. The one she’d searched for in the bed of red impatiens. To anyone else, it was nothing. Just a weathered piece of nothing. To Vivien, it was everything.

HENRY TURNED OFF
the shop lights and locked the door behind him. Vivien’s baby shower should have been over hours ago. He had no idea what usually took place at a baby shower, but he hoped like hell his mother had behaved herself.

As if thinking of his mother had conjured her up, Nonnie’s Cadillac turned into his driveway. After his little chat he’d had with his mother, he hoped she’d been nice to Vivien. Or had, at least, faked it. If not, he was going to stick to his promise of cutting her out his life.

The car pulled to a stop and the door swung open. Instead of his mother’s tall, boney frame, Vivien stepped out.

“You wouldn’t happen to know why your mother threw me a baby shower, would you?”

“Wouldn’t know a thing about that.” For a second he thought something must have gone wrong, but she smiled and the knot between his shoulders relaxed. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because she’s such a warm-hearted woman.”

“Thank you,” she said through her smile. “But next time, don’t leave the guest list to Nonnie.”

Next time.

She held out her hand and the old cork he’d found for her rested in her palm. “Thank you for this, too. This is the best gift anyone has ever given me.”

“It’s not exactly gold.”

“It’s better.” She stared at him, solemn as a judge. “I love you, Henry.”

He placed his hand on her arm and slid it up soft skin to her shoulder. “Are you just saying that because I’m charming and rescued your cork before the new owners moved into the row house?”

“No. I love you because you’re a good man and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop loving you.”

He pulled her against his chest where she belonged and looked down into her upturned face. “I’ve missed you like crazy. You’re sunshine and honey. Whiskey in a teacup, and everything I want in my life.” He pushed her hair behind her ear. “I love you, Vivien Leigh. I loved you before the baby. I love you even more now. I would do anything for you. Give you anything. I want you. I want us. I want—”

“Shhh…. Henry.” She rose onto the balls of her feet. “Just kiss me.”

Henry, being a Southern gentleman, gave the lady what she wanted.