My Best Friend's Baby (17 page)

Stop it
, Chloe ordered herself. She
had to quit depending on Nick. Starting yesterday.

Red exhaled. "I'll be there. You open up
shop, though, okay?" she asked. "I'm meeting with another one of
those buyers at the Downtown Grill. Nine o'clock. Maybe this one
won't be itching to tear down the place and build one of those
godawful tourist traps with sooouvenirs and pink suede cowboy
boots."

Chloe grimaced. "Red ... I've got a pair of
those boots."

"You would, darlin'. You would."

Her friend's raucous laughter crackled over
the line even as they said their good-byes and Chloe hung up the
phone. The thought of bulldozers rumbling over her beloved pet shop
made her fingers turn to ice. What if she never persuaded Griggs to
give her the loan? What if Red got desperate and sold out to a
developer before she could make any headway with her plans?

It was time to settle her future, once and
for all.

Or at least part of it.

The same left-hand turn that brought Nick
onto Main Street brought him his first view of the crowd. From the
looks of it, a third of the town had turned out. Men, women and
children clumped around the town plaza's courtyard in bunches,
talking, pointing, and peering into the windows of Saguaro Vista
Cattleman's Bank. Police cars blocked the street, lights flashing.
The town's sole newspaper photographer ducked behind one, aiming
for a
Territorial
-worthy shot of the fracas.

It's Chloe
, his sister Naomi had told
him on the phone.
Chloe needs you at the bank
. That's all
he'd heard before dropping the phone and sprinting to his
motorcycle. Now, steering between a woman wearing pink sponge
curlers and a sheriff's deputy directing traffic, Nick wished he'd
waited to hear more. Was Chloe being arrested? Had she finally had
a hormonal breakdown, snapped, and assaulted Effram Griggs?

The town's fire engine careened around the
corner, and suited-up fire fighters piled out. Nick's heart slammed
harder. He wrenched his bike to a stop at the curb and ran through
the crowd. They surged along with him all the way to the bank's
doorway, where the first-comers spilled through the opened
saloon-style doors. He elbowed his way inside.

Nick spotted Chloe's blonde head first. She
was near the wagon-wheel table in the middle of the bank, the same
one used to hold deposit slips and pens on chains and—he looked
closer—today, one very pregnant woman wearing wild hot pink clothes
and an expression he'd never seen before. While he edged closer,
Effram Griggs came into view, flapping a sheaf of paper toward
Chloe like a human ceiling fan. She bent forward in the breeze and
her head disappeared from view.

Dear God
, Nick thought, realizing
what all the paramedic-packed fuss was about.
Chloe was in
labor
.

Right on top of the glossy home-banking
brochures.

She'd probably come to the bank to confront
Griggs about her loan—minus Nick, because he'd been too busy
working on the growth accelerator to help her, dammit—and his
latest refusal had sent her over the edge. Those lunatic hormones
of hers could probably cause just about anything to happen.

"Chloe!" he yelled.

"Nick?"

He reached her and held her face in his
hands, keeping her still so he could make sure she was all right.
She
felt
all right, silky and warm beneath his palms. She
looked okay, sort of pink and glowing ... but, then again, that
could've been the reflected glare from her clothes. Her hot pink
linen mini-dress looked vivid enough to peel paint.

"Hiya, brainiac," Chloe said. "What are you
doing here?"

"Naomi called me. Danny's bus driver was
late because she had to detour around the bank. The street's
completely blocked outside. You're the talk of the town,
Chloe."

She sat up straighter, looking pleased. "The
street's blocked?"

"The
Territorial's
outside, too.
You'll probably make the evening edition."

She beamed. "That's great!"

It was worse than he'd thought. She'd gone
temporarily crazy. Who knew pregnancy could do this to a
person?

Nick rubbed his thumbs gently over her
cheeks. This didn't look like the writhing, screaming childbirth
they showed on TV—or the grueling forty-eight hour laborathons his
mother and sisters had moaned about—but he couldn't be sure.
Chloe's method of having babies was bound to be a hundred and
eighty degrees different than anyone else's.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "Is the pain
bad? Is the baby—"

"The baby's fine." She smiled against his
hands, making him realize how much he'd missed the feel of her.
Then she slipped her fingers around his wrists and tugged downward.
"And so am I. You're acting like I'm going to pop the kid out right
here, or something."

If she was, she was being pretty blasé about
it. Nick frowned, casting his arm toward the noisy crowd. "You're
not? But there are paramedics outside, police and fire fighters
and—"

Something else occurred to him, and he gave
her a stern look. "Are you still mad about our argument, Chloe?
Because if you're just saying this to make me go away, I—"

"No, I'm not. Not mad, not in labor, and not
fibbing. The crowd's here because of the sit-down strike, the
police are probably here for crowd control, and the fire fighters
are probably here in case Griggs locks me in the bank vault after
all."

She stopped and peered closely at him.
"You're looking a little woozy, Nick. You want to sit down?"

Scooting over the table's thick wagon-wheel
rungs, Chloe flashed her knee-high boots and made some room for
him. "Come on. And maybe some water, too. Griggs?"

She put her hand on Nick's shoulder and
peered through the murmuring crowd like a queen calling her court
jester. "Oh, Griggs!"

She
had
snapped. "Another sit-down
strike? Chloe, come down from there. I'll take you home."

"Don't be ridiculous, I—oh, there you
are."

Effram Griggs appeared beside Nick, looking
as though he'd just emerged from a sauna. His forehead looked shiny
with sweat, and his western shirt had twin wet spots under the
arms. Clearly, having Chloe hold court in the middle of his bank
wasn't his usual Monday afternoon routine.

She inclined her head regally toward him.
"Would you bring Mr. Steadman a glass of iced water, please? I
think the crowd's too much for him."

"Right away. Have you finished the,
ahh—"

"When you bring the check," Chloe
interrupted, tucking a pen into the top of one boot. The motion
called attention to the rolled-up sheaf of papers stuck partway
beneath her thigh. They looked like the ones Griggs had been waving
around earlier. "And the water."

"I don't want any water," Nick put in.

Too late. Griggs had already left.

He swiveled toward Chloe, who, having
dispensed with both her pen and the pesky Mr. Griggs, was
cheerfully tapping the papers against her boot.

"The check?" Nick asked. "A payoff for not
causing a bigger riot?"

"For my loan." She rubbed her other hand
over her round, round belly and smiled at him. "My loan for my pet
shop."

"You got it?"

"
Yes
!" She patted the table. "Come on
up. Celebrate my victory, Nick."

"I can't believe you got it."

Griggs returned, hands overhead to pass
through the crowd, holding a dripping glass of water in one hand
and a slip of paper in the other. Solicitously, Chloe set the water
on the table within Nick's reach and then snatched the paper.

"The check!" she cried, holding it up for
the crowd to see.

Bedlam erupted. Shouts of "Hurray!" mixed
with clapping and whistling, then mellowed into a chant. It sounded
like...

"No more Neanderthals?" Nick asked.

She laughed and flipped over a homemade
poster from the table beside her. It showed a club-toting caveman's
body encircled by an 'O' with a diagonal slash through it. Effram
Griggs' head, sour-faced in an old newspaper photo, was pasted onto
the caveman above the words:
No More Neanderthals. Say Yes to
Loans for Ladies.

"Turns out," Chloe said, shoving the poster
through the wagon-wheel slats, "that Griggs has a policy of
refusing loans to women. He's turned down half the ladies in my
childbirth class—most of whom were forced to get loans in their
husbands' names."

She frowned at the injustice of it all. Nick
tried not to wonder if she'd have married him for her loan's sake,
if he'd asked.

"So," she went on, reaching behind her for
the fuzzy white jacket she'd left there and smoothing it over her
lap, "I came in and told him I wasn't leaving until he changed his
stupid throwback policy. I can't believe the old protest ploy
worked! I didn't exactly have a good track record with that one,
you know."

"The only thing you're missing is that
Brownie uniform of yours," Nick said, reaching up to put his arms
around her waist. "Now there's something I'd like to see."

"Actually, hot pink is more
attention-getting."

"I'll say," he said, waggling his eyebrows
as he looked her over.

"But it was probably the baby. An extra
sympathy measure I didn't have when I was seven."

"Maybe."
Or maybe
Mrs. Griggs
had
been pregnant once, too, and her husband had learned his
lesson
. It was better to roll with the lunacy than try to fight
it.

Or maybe that just described life with women
in hot pink and triumphant grins. Nick smiled back amidst the
chants and stomping feet and draped her puffy jacket over her
shoulders, then tugged Chloe into his arms. The crowd cheered.

"Let's go home and celebrate." God, she felt
good against him. "I know just the kind of party you need."

She hugged him closer and raised on tiptoes
to whisper in his ear. "A party of two?"

"Something like that."

The crowd bumped and jostled them, milling
toward the exit now that the excitement was over with. Effram
Griggs, muttering and wringing the loan papers he'd taken from
Chloe in exchange for the check, passed by on his way to the
vault—probably going to lock
himself
in until his personal
nightmare had passed. Police officers loomed closer, probably
wanting to make sure the poor pregnant women in Nick's arms was all
right.

Or not. A sound at the back of Nick's head,
where Chloe had her arms wrapped around his neck, killed his poor
pregnant woman theory in a hurry. Nothing else sounded quite like
the metallic snick of handcuffs closing.

"Chloe Carmichal?" one of the officers
asked.

"Hey!" she answered, snaring Nick as she
tried to tug her bound wrists over his head. "Hey! I'm—I'm—"

Stuck
. Gently, Nick lifted her
forearms past his nose and then hugged her against his side,
turning them both to face a pair of Saguaro Vista's finest.

The men in blue smirked. "You're in trouble,
is what you are," said one. "Disturbing the peace, harassment,
destruction of property—"

"Unlawful assembly, fire code violation,"
continued the other, going on with a description of her rights.

"But—but—" Chloe protested. "But I'm—"

"Under arrest," they finished in unison.

"I still can't believe you staged a sit-down
strike to make Griggs give you your loan," Nick said, squinting
into the sun as it set over downtown plaza.

"You can't argue with success." Smiling,
Chloe slipped the loan check the police had returned to her into
her white pillbox handbag and struggled to fasten the vintage
latch. The stubborn old thing never had operated properly—just like
Effram Griggs. "It worked, didn't it?"

"To the tune of five hundred dollars in
fines and bail. It would've been cheaper to marry for the money,
like your friends in Baby Birthing 101 did."

"They didn't! They just couldn't get credit
in their own names, that's all, and—and you're teasing me, aren't
you?"

His sparkling eyes told her he was. The
rat.

"I would've helped you, you know," Nick went
on. "Red and Jerry would have, too. You only had to ask."

"I know," Chloe mumbled, snuggling deeper
into her fuzzy jacket. "I just ... thought I had time. I thought my
way would work, if I only stuck with it long enough."

Their footsteps rang over the courtyard's
weathered
saltillo
tile as she and Nick headed for the curb
where his motorcycle was parked. She took his arm as they passed
the courtyard fountain. Its wintery spray misted them both, making
Chloe shiver—but not with cold. Losing her pet store dream had come
too close, and all because she'd refused to try getting her loan
another way.

If I only stuck with it long enough.

Maybe sometimes it was smarter to recognize
what wasn't working. Maybe dogged dedication to a plan
wasn't
always a sure-fire tactic.

And maybe not telling Nick the truth was
exactly the same problem in different clothes, Chloe decided later
as they zipped into Nick's driveway and his motorcycle's engine
roared into silence. Maybe her Bruno alibi had outlived its
usefulness. Maybe Nick
could
handle the truth. He'd been
interested enough to critique her father and Tabitha's choice of
baby gifts, interested enough to set up the nursery and pack her
refrigerator with milk for a crowd, interested enough to hound her
about Twinkies and volunteer for hospital duty on junior's
birthday.

She eased off the motorcycle—no easy task,
now that she couldn't see her toes anymore—and handed her purple
helmet to Nick, still thinking. What if she'd been wrong about him,
all along? The evidence, when viewed in a certain light, pointed to
a different Nick than the no-kids, none-of-the-time,
marriage-as-obligation type she'd pegged him as.