Drive-By Daddy: Drive-By Daddy / Calamity Jo. Patricia Knoll

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ stared at her mother. “Yes, I do. Dr. Harkness is 800 years old, if he’s a day. Why don’t you go out with him?”

      Her mother pursed her lips. “I can’t. I’m saving myself for Brad Pitt.”

      They’d had this conversation before. “Brad Pitt is too young for you, Mother.”

      Margie Alcott bristled in her chair next to Darcy’s bed. “Well, thanks. I needed that.”

      Darcy sighed. “No offense meant. But admit it, Brad Pitt is even too young for me.”

      “Darcy, the man is in his mid-thirties. About six years older than you.”

      “Well,” Darcy groused, crossing her arms, “he seems younger than me.”

      “Everybody’s younger than you, honey. You’re such a little old lady. Always have been. Anyway, I think you two would make a nice couple.”

      “Who? Brad and me? Or Dr. Harkness and me?”

      A sly look came over her mother’s pleasantly rounded face. “Actually, you and that cowboy.”

      “Here we go.” Darcy threw her hands up, more to dispel her persistent thoughts about her mystery cowboy than to wave away her mother’s words. Still, those she had to challenge. After all, she’d stuck herself firmly in this I-don’t-need-a-man corner for the past nine months. She couldn’t now, because of a chance meeting, admit that she was wrong. Darcy exhaled sharply, signaling her determination to reentrench herself in her own views. “What makes you think I need a man?”

      “Well, that tiny little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes down there in the nursery, for one thing. She needs a father. You know—that nucleus family thing you hear so much about.”

      “Nuclear, Mother.”

      “Is that it? Well, it’s the same thing.”

      “I guess.” Darcy looked down at her hands and picked at a nail. Could she feel more guilty right now? It had taken her by surprise, this feeling of being alone in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Could it be that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother? She shook her head. No. The last thing she needed right now was to doubt herself. She couldn’t, not with another life depending on her to be the adult here.

      “It’s not as if I’m deliberately denying my daughter a father,” Darcy suddenly blurted into the silence that had settled between them. “I’m not trying to make some politically correct feminist statement here. Being a single mother wasn’t exactly in the game plan, remember.” To her distress, Darcy’s chin quivered.

      Her mother reached out, laying a hand on Darcy’s arm. “Oh, baby, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

      Darcy squeezed her mother’s hand…and felt worse. Now she’d upset her mother too. “I know. God, Mother, the hormones. I’m all over the page with this. One second I’m mad, the next crying. Is this normal?”

      Margie Alcott nodded, her smile returning. “Oh, sure it is, baby. You’re a mess, and you’re fine. It’s all normal.” Her mother squinted, as if in thought…which she promptly shared. “Well, honey, as normal as you’ve ever been. You always have been a little bit different, you know. Special, I like to say.”

      “Thanks,” Darcy replied. It was moments like these that reminded Darcy that the reason her mother knew where all her buttons were and how to push them was because she’d installed them.

      “Now, Darcy, don’t you make that face that says I don’t know what I’m talking about. Because I do.”

      Knowing she and her mother would never agree about Darcy needing a man in her life, she sighed and changed the subject. “Isn’t your little granddaughter the sweetest thing you ever saw?”

      At the mention of the baby, Margie Alcott put her hand to her bosom, and her smile turned beatific. “She’s so beautiful, Darcy. I think she looks a little like that cowboy who brought you in yesterday.”

      Well, that hadn’t worked. Here they were…back to the cowboy. Darcy shifted…painfully…in her bed. “Oh, stop that, Mother. He delivered her. He didn’t father her.”

      “Well, I wish he had. I saw him when he brought you in yesterday, you know. A handsome man, with that white hat and white truck. It’s all just unbelievable, Darcy. And in the newspaper. You can see it for yourself right here. Big headlines. And a nice picture.” She handed Darcy the folded newspaper she brought with her.

      “A picture?” In her mind, Darcy again saw the camera light flashing as she and her baby, wrapped in that Indian blanket, were being carried in by the cowboy whose unbuttoned chambray shirt had bared his chest to her cheek. “Dear God. Was I covered?”

      “Well, I should say so. Look for yourself. It’s right there on page one.”

      “Page one? Great. Slow news day in Buckeye, Arizona?”

      Margie Alcott puffed up sanctimoniously.

      “It was until you decided to deliver your baby out in the desert. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life, Darcy. Why, it’s a wonder your…stuff didn’t get all sunburned, just hanging out there like that. What if someone had come by and seen you?”

      Darcy could only stare at her mother, and fight the heat staining her cheeks. “Someone did come by and see me, Mother.”

      “I know. It’s all there. On page one. Look at it.”

      Against her better judgment, Darcy finally looked. Yep, there she was. On the front page. Atop a gurney and being wheeled into surgery for stitching. The look on her face was probably the same one she’d have if she’d just escaped an alien abduction. But the accompanying picture was of her proud and grinning mother, fresh from the beauty shop, holding her new grand-baby, whose tiny little face was scrunched up in a scream. Darcy flopped the daily paper down. “Lovely. You look great, Mother.”

      Margie patted her silver-gray hair. “You think? Let me see that.” She reached for the paper, and Darcy gave it to her, lovingly watching her mother scan the photo. “Well, I do, don’t I?” Then she began turning pages, perusing them carefully. “But I’m going to get after that Vernon Fredericks. After all, he’s the editor. And there’s not one picture in here of your hero.”

      “My hero? You mean the Lone Ranger?”

      Margie looked up from today’s copy of the Buckeye Bugle. “Is that what you call him? The Lone Ranger?”

      Darcy shrugged, seeing again, in her mind’s eye, the man’s blue eyes and hearing his calm voice. “I have to call him something. In all the excitement, I forgot to ask him his name. And then, once we got here, he just drove off.”

      Margie folded the paper and tossed it on the floor. “Well, who do you think he is?”

      “Just some turned-around cowboy from Montana. At least, that’s what he said.”

      Her mother pulled her chair closer. “I hope you at least thanked the man, honey. He did save your life. And your baby’s.”

      “I know, Mother. And I did thank him.”

      “What’d СКАЧАТЬ