Love by Proxy (14 page)

Amelia bluffed it out. “He gave me a car. Tried to give me a car,” she corrected.

Jeanette’s face fell. “Oh. So that was it.”

“I won’t be treated like a charity case. I like you. I stay here because I care, not because I want to be pampered.”

“You’re independent and proud, Amy,” Jeanette said gently. “And I adore you, because I’m independent and proud, too. I hate being waited on and looked after.”

“I don’t mind looking after you,” Amelia said gently, and smiled. “So stop making me feel like a jailer. You just get well, boss lady, and I’ll help you escape from the big dark jailer. Okay?”

Jeanette laughed delightedly. “Okay!” She yawned and blinked. “I’m so tired. Worth looked worse than I do, you know. Was he very upset?”

“Terribly,” Amelia replied. She sat down by the bed. “He loves you very much.”

“Yes, I love him, too. I’m sorry it was so hard on him. I do worry about him, Amy. What is he going to do when I die?” she asked softly. “I can’t live forever. And just lately, I have trouble finding reasons to stay alive myself. There’s nothing to look forward to. He’ll never marry. There’ll never be great-grandchildren.” Her wrinkled face seemed to age with sorrow. “The end of the line. It stops with him. All my dreams, gone.” Her sigh was bitter. “Oh, Amy, he’ll be so alone.”

Amelia bit her lower lip and looked down. “I know.”

She felt the old, wrinkled hand sliding into hers. “It hurts me to think of him going on the way he is.” The pale eyes lanced into hers. “Amy, do you ever think of him…as a man?”

It took all Amelia’s willpower not to let that remark get to her. She faked a smile. “Once in a while,” she confessed with just the right amount of interest. “He’s very attractive.”

“He watches you, Amy,” she said unexpectedly. “All the time. I hoped you might feel something for him, because I think he feels a great deal for you.”

Amelia had to fight down a blush. Yes, of course he did, he’d slept with her and he remembered how good it had been, but he wasn’t interested in a lifetime of her. He just felt guilty.

“Do you think so?” she asked Jeanette, but she couldn’t meet the older woman’s eyes.

“Worth’s spent most of his life alone,” the older woman told her. She moved her silvery head on the pillow. “Even as a boy. He was never a joiner. Then, he went into the Marines and served in Vietnam. When he came home, he’d changed drastically. He drank for a year, and was frankly in danger of becoming addicted, until I persuaded him to get some counseling. He quit, and he’s never gone back, except for an occasional drink now and then. Then it was women, a different one every night. Until Connie.” She tugged at the sheet. “He’s never had much love. His parents died, and he knew that Jackie was my favorite. It was only after Jackie died that I turned to Worth. He’s so used to secondhand love, Amy. When Connie betrayed him, I suppose it was just the last straw. He’s drawn into himself this past year. He talks about growing old, but always alone. And so much of it is my fault. I’ve had a long time to live with my regrets.”

“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “For both of you.”

Jeanette smiled wearily. “I have been tossing you at Worth, I confess it. But you’re such a sweet person, Amy. So giving. Worth needs someone happy and sunny like you, to balance him, to keep him from growing cynical about life. If only he’d notice you.”

He already had, but Amy wasn’t going into that!

“Perhaps by the time he comes back from Bogota,” Jeanette murmured thoughtfully, “things will have changed.”

Those words turned out to be prophetic. Several weeks went by with Amy growing weaker and sicker by the day. By the sixth week, she was losing her breakfast regularly and certain that her worst fears had been realized. A test at a local health clinic gave her the proof. She was pregnant.

Ten

E
ven though she was expecting it, the news knocked Amelia to her knees. She’d been able to keep sharp-eyed Jeanette from seeing her problem, but now what could she do? Worth hadn’t said anything personal to her since he’d left the country. If he had to speak to her on the phone, he was brief to the point of rudeness. Now he seemed to hate her, so how could she tell him that she was pregnant?

Jeanette needed Amelia, now more than ever. But she’d have to leave eventually, when she began to show. And then what? She couldn’t bear even the thought of having Worth find out. She didn’t want to know how he’d react to being trapped. She already had the feeling that she was an embarrassment to him—a used-up lover who was just in the way.

She was tormented by her own thoughts. She didn’t know what to do. She loved Worth. Part of her was ecstatic about the baby. But a more sensible part was terrified. She thought about her inability to support a second person, all the pitfalls of single parenthood, her parents’ reaction to her unwed pregnancy. What a mess. And all the fault of misguided compassion.

The only person she could have talked to was Marla Sayers, but Marla was out of town with Andy, visiting his mother. Amelia had had little contact with her friend since her job with the Carsons began. Marla had been busy when Amelia was free, and vice versa. Now Amelia wished she’d tried harder to maintain that friendship. She needed a friend now. And she remembered then, without wanting to, what Worth had said—that he’d be her best friend. And she started crying.

Her emotions were balanced on razor edge. She cried at the drop of a hat. She lost her appetite, because she was sick so much. And sometimes she tired so easily that it was really frightening. She felt that she could sleep straight through for days. The physical signs grew as well. Her breasts became swollen. Her waistline began to expand. And all the while she wondered what to do, and knew that things were going to get critical all too soon.

Worth’s calls had decreased to one a week, and thank God he hadn’t mentioned anything to Jeanette about coming home. But it was Jeanette who brought things to a head.

As Amelia was reading a letter to her one night, she fixed a level gaze on the young woman and asked point-blank, “Are you pregnant, Amy?”

The letter fell to the floor and Amelia stammered around for a reply. But what could she say? “Yes,” she said miserably, and stared down at her feet. She was wearing a floppy blouse and an unbuttoned pair of slacks, and she felt as big as a house even though she was barely two and a half months along. Incredible to think Worth had been gone that long.

“It’s been a long time,” Jeanette said softly, “but I remember so well how it felt when I carried my son. It was my happiest year. But it isn’t yours, is it, dear?”

Amelia shook her head. “I…don’t know what to do, you see. My parents would be scandalized. They’re churchgoing people. They live in a small community, and they didn’t raise me to be promiscuous.”

“You don’t seem like a promiscuous girl to me, Amy,” came the quiet reply. “It must have been just before you came to work for me. Do you love the father?”

Amelia nodded, but she couldn’t lift her eyes.

“And how does he feel?”

Her lips twitched. “He doesn’t know,” she said huskily. “He seems to have no use for me now. It was just a one-night thing. I was crazy about him, and he needed me.” Her shoulders lifted and fell. “And then just that quickly, he didn’t want me any more. The classic situation. I suppose I panicked when I turned twenty-eight and I was alone and unmarried. Well, I’m still unmarried,” she added, glancing up ruefully. “But I sure won’t be alone much longer.”

Jeanette nibbled on her lower lip. “There’s no chance this man might want to marry you and acknowledge the child?”

“He would probably deny that it was his,” she returned. “He hates me, and that’s no lie. I’m an embarrassment to him now.”

“He doesn’t sound like much of a prize,” the elderly woman huffed. “You’re better off without him. But, Amy, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get another job,” she said gently. “I’m sorry. But you must see that I can’t stay here now.”

Jeanette glared at her. “I’m not too old to have a child around.”

“Of course you aren’t,” Amelia placated, “but Worth wouldn’t like it. You know he wouldn’t. He and I fight all the time lately. He resents the very fact of my presence. He always has.”

“I know. I kept hoping that things might improve between you, you know,” the older woman confessed. “But I could see the day he left that it had been rough sailing.”

“It would get worse if he knew I was pregnant,” Amelia continued. She had to keep Jeanette from telling him about the child, but without letting her know why. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell him. I…want to get away, before he comes back.”

“Oh, I see,” Jeanette said suddenly, her eyes kind and sad, too, and Amelia’s heart stopped dead. The older woman sighed. “You think that his opinion of you would be even worse if he knew, don’t you? But, my dear, he isn’t such a bear, and he does realize that people are human, that they make mistakes. You might give him a chance….”

“No,” Amelia said. “I couldn’t bear it if he knew. Please, promise you won’t tell him.”

“All right. I promise, dear.”

“I’ll go home, for the time being,” Amelia said, thinking ahead. “I won’t tell my parents yet, but I’ll go home and think it all out. I have to have a little time. And I’m not showing much yet. My parents stay so busy these days that they’ll never notice the changes. And by the time I’m showing, I’ll have a job somewhere away.”

The older lady looked lost. “I’ll miss you terribly, Amy. Is there any way I can help? Even financially…”

“No.” Amelia got up, and impulsively bent to hug the old lady, gently, careful of her scar. “I love you, Jeanette Carson,” she said with a wobbly smile. “I’ll never forget you.”

“Nor I you,” Jeanette whispered.

Amelia went out without a backward glance, and by the end of the evening, she’d called her parents, canceled her lease at the Kennedys and booked a flight home the next morning.

It was hard to leave the house, to leave the memories behind and know that she’d never see Worth again as long as she lived. It tore the heart out of her to go. And saying goodbye to Jeanette was excruciatingly painful. Although there were plenty of servants, and Jeanette had promised to hire a nurse to stay with her at night, Amelia felt guilty about going. But now she had no choice. The worst, or best depending on her point of view, had happened. Now she had to make arrangements. It wouldn’t be so horrible, anyway, she told herself. She only wondered if the child would mind the decisions she was having to make. He or she would grow up without a father, and that was a stigma she’d never expected to give a child of hers. It was ironic, when Worth was just the age to need children, and she was giving him one, that he’d never even know about it. She felt bitter sadness for them both.

Jack and Peggy Glenn were in their fifties. He was tall and thin and dark-eyed, she was short and blond and blue-eyed. They looked odd together, but there was such love in them for each other. Amelia had always envied them that devotion, and she’d hoped to find it herself. But all the years of searching hadn’t produced it in her own life. She was pregnant, but not out of love. Her condition was due to a man’s grief and lust, nothing more.

“It’s so good to have you home,” Peggy murmured as they made supper that first night. “We’ve missed you. Are you home for good?”

“I don’t know,” Amelia admitted. “I’m not sure. I just needed a little time to myself. I’m kind of between jobs.”

“You haven’t told us much about this last one. Your employer was an elderly woman, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. A lovely lady. I miss her already.”

“Then why quit?”

Amelia searched for words.

“Leave the girl alone,” Jack said with a mock frown. “She’s home, isn’t she? That’s enough.” He put an arm around her. “Stick with me, kid, I’ll protect you from the Spanish Inquisition over there.”

Peggy laughed and threatened him with the soup ladle.

After that, there were no more questions. Amelia settled into the routine, helping her father by fixing meals while Peggy set type, doing odd jobs around the house. In her spare time, she missed Worth like mad and thought about the tiny baby she was carrying and how she was going to make a life for it. She worried about Jeanette, too. It had been such a blow to leave her friend.

Her grandfather was shelling along the beach at the end of her first week home, and she ambled lazily along the sandy stretch in a huge, floppy pink-flowered dress and sandals with her long, dark hair flying in the wind, dreamily scanning the shimmering sea on the horizon.

The grizzled, thin old man looked up from a conch shell he’d just pried from the sand. “About time you came home,” he grumbled. “Thought you’d be over to see me before this. I came to see you, after all.”

“For five minutes, in between ball games on Sunday,” she tossed back. “I’ve been busy. Somebody has to feed Mom and Dad.”

He chuckled. He wiped the conch off on his long-tailed white shirt, and his whiskers seemed to withdraw into his chin when he grinned at her. “Told them yet?”

She stared at him. “Told them what?”

“About the child.”

She froze in place. Those pale blue eyes of his saw too much. She wondered if he was guessing, and if not, how he knew.

“Women glow,” he said easily. “Seen it too often not to recognize the signs. Your grandma and I had six, you know. Your dad would probably notice, if he and Peggy weren’t so crazy about each other. They never look at you. I do.”

“I always thought you were probably the only person around who really loved me, just because I was me,” she teased, only halfway kidding.

He smiled at her. “You’re my heart, girl. Always were. The best of ’em all. Fifteen grandkids, and you’re the only one who came when Grandma was dying. Answer me, are you going to tell them?”

“I can’t,” she said simply. “They’re like children themselves. It would kill them.”

“How about the man?”

She sighed. “He hates me.”

“Oh, does he, now?” he asked, glancing past her. “Ten to one he doesn’t, or why would he make the trip down here?”

“Him? Trip?” She frowned, turned to follow his gaze and felt sick to her toes. There was only one man she knew who was as big as a house and had hair so black that it reflected in blue-black light. He was wearing a gray suit, and he looked only a little less threatening than a charging bull.