Somebody's Baby

  “My job,” Cole assured the young woman, the look he’d seen cross Dawson’s face when he’d first come over still stamped in his mind. As a paramedic Cole was well versed in the art of reading body language, and could discern a lie or an omission when he interviewed victims about their injuries, not necessarily by their words but by subtleties of facial expression and posture. No, my husband didn’t hit me, or I just had one drink, or I don’t do drugs. Their body language often told a different story, and right now all he saw was tenseness in Dawson’s body and panic in his eyes. Cole instinctively knew that Dawson might not have mentioned to his pretty girlfriend about encountering Sloan that day in the ER. He pledged an unspoken “guy pact” to say nothing about Sloan.

  “Lani’s an RN at WGH,” Dawson said.

  Cole had no memory of her, but he typically left his patients at the ER and returned to manning his shift.

  “I only fill in,” Lani qualified. “I help when they’re shorthanded, mostly in the cancer center.”

  “Do you know Lindsey Ridley?”

  “Lindsey! She’s one of my favorites. How do you know her?”

  “We’re neighbors.” Lani snapped her fingers and gave Cole an even brighter smile. “Of course, Cole! She talks about you, what a help you are, how you play baseball with her son, Toby. She sometimes brings him to her chemo sessions.” Her features softened. “We have a playroom for kids who don’t have sitters and have to come with a parent. We have toys and TV, but Toby sneaks out and sits beside Lindsey’s chemo chair. It’s against the rules for him to be in the room, but…” She shrugged, suggesting that she didn’t always follow the rules. Cole liked Lani immediately, and nodded and grinned.

  “Hey, Cole! Your food’s up!” a voice shouted from across the room.

  He said his goodbyes to Lani and Dawson and returned to the booth and his sizzling steak, with the image of Toby next to Lindsey in the treatment area stuck in his head. Gloria worked, and Lindsey wouldn’t leave Toby alone at the house when he wasn’t in school. What a way for a kid to grow up—beside his mother’s chemo chair.

  He was sliding a knife into his perfectly cooked steak, when a text message dinged his phone. It had come from Sloan and was brief and to the point.

  Will ask Lindsey for DNA test. Only way to know the truth. Returning to LA tomorrow noon.

  “He seems nice,” Lani said after Cole had walked away.

  “Yeah. He did a good job helping my worker.” Dawson heaved a breath now that Cole was safely on the other side of the room. Cole could have said something about first meeting him with Sloan, but he hadn’t. Maybe mental telepathy worked after all, because Dawson had sure been sending out messages. “You’ve never run into him at the hospital?”

  “I’m mostly in the cancer center, and never in the ER.”

  “So you like this Lindsey?”

  “Very much. I think I’ve worked with every patient who comes through the center, but few as courageous and likable as Lindsey Ridley.”

  “That’s saying a lot.” Dawson took a swallow of beer, wondering about the real reason Sloan might have shown up in Windemere…and be friendly with a paramedic too. He was hard-pressed to believe that she’d simply driven over for a visit. Sloan hated this town, had fled it twice. What could have possibly drawn her back? Especially now that she was on her way to the fame and fortune she’d always craved?

  “…listening to me?”

  Lani’s voice intruded into his wayward thoughts. The last person in the world he should have been thinking about was Sloan. He set his glass down, hung his head. “Sorry, love. I got distracted. Tell me again what you said.”

  Lani offered a bemused smile. “It wasn’t important.”

  “But you are.”

  “Was it me talking about a patient from the cancer center?” He had lost his mother to ovarian cancer in his teens, so she made it a point to not talk about her work around him, and tonight she had. “I didn’t mean to make you unhappy.”

  He shook his head. “No, you talking about your work doesn’t bother me. Truth is, though, cancer still kills, doesn’t it? No matter all the research, new drugs, gene therapies, and after all the effort, all the money and time spent on curing it, cancer still has its way with us.”

  A formidable enemy. “We’re making progress against it every day.” Lani brightened, shifted the subject. “Hey, here’s an idea…let’s go to the apartment and have a midnight swim in the heated pool.”

  He saw in her eyes the offer to stay the night with him, and quickly said, “Race you to the car.” She laughed. He stood, tossed money onto the table for the waitress, and held Lani’s hand on the walk to the door. He glanced toward the booth where Cole’s crew sat eating and talking, and saw that Cole’s spot was empty, food untouched. Dawson briefly wondered why a guy would leave a perfectly good steak to grow cold. He shrugged and followed Lani outside, erasing all thoughts of Cole and Sloan from his head.

  She was running for her life through absolute darkness. Disembodied hands grabbed for her from behind…wraiths’ hands with grasping fingers, sharp fingernails. Suddenly she felt hot foul-smelling breath on her face. Somehow the creature had circled around and was now in front of her. She skidded to a stop, pedaled backward, struggled to breathe, opened her mouth to scream. Not a sound came from her air-starved throat. She had no voice. The thing that wanted her was only inches from her body….If it caught her, it would hurt her….Bad. From a distance came the noise of someone singing. Her spine struck a sticky wall, pinning her in place. She struggled to break free, but couldn’t. The singing grew louder. The voice! She knew the voice….

  A terrified Sloan bolted upright in bed, gasping for air. She saw that she was in her hotel room and that the singing voice was hers, the new ringtone she’d downloaded to her cell phone clattering on the bedside table. She pulled cobwebs of fear from her brain. A dream. She’d been trapped in an old and familiar dream from her childhood. Not real. A dream. She sucked in a lungful of cool air, snatched up her phone like it was a lifeline. “Hello.”

  “Sloan?”

  “Cole?” She felt surprise, then rescued.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you. Truly…I know it’s late, but I have to see you.”

  She glanced at the digital clock radio on the table. Two a.m. “Now?”

  “Please, Sloan. It’s important.”

  Her heart seized. “Lindsey?”

  “She’s okay. I didn’t mean to scare you….Sorry.”

  Sloan dragged her hair away from her face. “Where are you?”

  “In the lobby of your hotel.”

  This gave her pause. She hadn’t remembered telling him the name of her hotel. But she had told Lindsey. She shook her head, again to chase away the last vestiges of her nightmare. “Where do you want to meet?” She didn’t want to invite him to her room.

  “In the pool area. No one’s out here this late, so if you don’t mind coming down, I’ll meet you poolside.”

  “It’ll take me a few minutes—”

  “I’ll wait.”

  She threw on jeans and a lightweight sweatshirt, took the elevator to the lobby, and went out to the fenced pool area, where the cool night air was scented by a blooming honeysuckle clematis. Cole was sitting in a deck chair, but when she stepped from a side door, he stood and walked to her quickly. “I appreciate you coming to meet me.”

  “It’s all right. I’ll sleep on the plane,” she told him, knowing full well that she never did.

  “I got your text sitting in a restaurant, and had to talk to you, especially since you’re leaving tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch. “Or rather today.”

  “I thought I’d have another day to visit Lindsey, but my agent wants me home doing promotional work.”

  After the work of clearing the interstate accident, failing to eat anything but nachos, and driving to Nashville to intercept Sloan, Cole was wiped out. But he’d felt it was necessary to see her face to face to fill her in on what was really happenin
g with Lindsey. He gestured to the poolside chairs. “Can we sit?” He walked her to a lounger and dragged the chair he’d been using closer.

  Underwater lights from the pool illuminated a serene watery surface, broken in spots by water bugs. Overhead a waxing moon looked as if a slice had been removed. She settled in the lounger. “You want to talk about the DNA testing, don’t you?” The idea was perfectly logical, the procedure simple, so she prepared to defend it. “I’ll cover any costs of genetic testing.”

  “Actually, I’m asking you not to do it at all.”

  Her guard went up. “Why not? A DNA test is fast and accurate. It will either link us or eliminate me.”

  Cole braced his forearms on his thighs, allowing his big hands to hang loose over his knees. “There are some things Lindsey hasn’t told you, or maybe hasn’t gotten around to telling you yet.”

  Sloan tensed.

  “While she was hospitalized, the docs did more scans and tests. Bottom line: Treatments are no longer working. Her cancer has invaded her brain and will continue to spread quickly. She might have five months at best to live. She told me her goal is to at least make it to Toby’s seventh birthday in late June. She’s opting out of further chemo once this current round is finished, and will move into palliative treatment only….That’s end-stage pain management. Hospice will set up a home-visit care schedule.”

  His words exploded like bombs inside Sloan’s head. The moonlight turned her hands ghostly white in her lap, and the wraiths of her earlier nightmare seemed to be creeping around the pool deck, raking her with evil red eyes. Her chest tightened. “We were together all day. She was so happy showing me the scrapbook….She never said a word about…about…”

  Cole leaned closer, trapped her eyes with his. “Except for her son, you, Sloan, are the only bright spot in her life right now. I’ve not seen her happier than she’s been these few days of believing you’re her sister.”

  Lindsey, taking herself out of treatment. She was dying! Sloan couldn’t get her head around it. “I—I can’t believe it. I…I’m just getting to know her.” Another thought struck Sloan. “How will she keep it from Toby?”

  “She’ll give him the best of herself for as long as possible. Gloria will finish raising him. That’s been the plan all along. I should have let her tell you this, but I knew I had to say something to you before you asked her for that test.”

  An owl hooted from a treetop near the pool, sounding mournful. She pictured Toby, his eyes filled with grief. Despite the sweatshirt, she felt cold seeping from deep inside. She’d known these people for mere days, and yet her heart broke for them. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just wait. That’s all I’m asking. After she’s…” He cleared his throat. “Once Lindsey’s gone, do your test. She’ll leave plenty of DNA behind. Even Toby…especially Toby. A swab from him will also establish your identity and the authenticity of the claim.”

  She studied Cole, the planes of his face, his sincerity etched in the moonlight. “So you’re asking me to pretend we’re sisters when we’re together even though it might not be true?”

  He shrugged, offered a sad but hopeful smile. “You’re somebody’s baby. Why not Jerry Sloan’s? What can it hurt for a dying woman to believe you, a famous singer, and she are related? Once she’s gone, you can vanish too.”

  “Somebody’s Baby”…She had written the song for another but now saw that the words held truth for her too. “I don’t know how often I’ll be able to visit her.” Sloan’s tour schedule spun in her head.

  Cole pressed his thumbs into his tired eyes. “All that’s necessary is to keep in touch with her. Text, call now and again. Any effort you make will mean the world to her with whatever time she has left. And her wish is that all of us don’t stand around all gloom and doom. She wants laughter and happiness in her life. We can give her that. Can you help us do that whenever you’re around?”

  How could she deny such a simple request? “I can do that much.”

  He’d made his case and believed that Sloan would follow through. He stood and took hold of her hands, and she rose too. With the lounge chair snug against the backs of her legs, they were so close that she saw the stubble of beard growth on his chin, the square outline of his jaw, the dimple crease near his mouth.

  Cole saw how moonbeams bathed her face with pale ethereal light, turning her skin milk-white, her eyes as clear as crystal. The image was indelible. “Moonlight becomes you, Sloan Gabriel.”

  It had been a long time since she’d wanted—truly wanted—a man to hold her. Tonight, right now, she wanted this man to take her in his arms and kiss her. His mouth was tantalizingly close. Perhaps his kiss could dull the ache inside her heart, and the sense of déjà vu that had come with it.

  Cole told himself it would be easy to bend and touch her lips with his. It was what he wanted—to taste her. Then he thought of Lindsey, of how he’d come to help her, not to kiss Sloan. Walk away. Danger zone. He collected his good sense, took Sloan’s hand, and walked her to the side door. With trembling fingers Sloan ran her key card down the lock. He pulled the heavy door open, and she stepped into the lighted lobby hallway. He said, “I won’t forget this. Have a safe trip and keep in touch.”

  Sloan turned, rested her forehead against the cool glass, and watched him exit the pool’s gate. What wouldn’t he forget? Her promise to maintain a charade for Lindsey’s sake? Or a moonlit kiss that could have been?

  “Ready to get to work?” Terri asked as she and Sloan walked through the glass doors of her high-rise office. The receptionist beamed them both a smile, and Kiley burbled a cheery hello from her desk.

  “Isn’t that why we came straight here from the airport?” Sloan said.

  The plane had landed at LAX, and they’d gone to baggage claim, gathered their luggage, and met their limo curbside. Once in the car, Terri had instructed the driver to drop Sloan’s bags at her apartment building and shuttle them downtown through heavy traffic. During the long flight Sloan had told Terri everything Cole had reported about Lindsey, but she’d said that it had been her decision not to ask for a DNA test until after Lindsey’s death. Terri had listened quietly and asked, “You’re sure about this?”

  “It seems like the right thing to do. For now what does it really matter if I’m her half sister or not?”

  They’d been sitting in first class, so Terri’s tray table had held a glass of chardonnay. She’d taken a sip. “Only a lawyer can answer that question. Want to talk to ours?”

  “She’s dying, Terri. I can’t just ignore her.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m just reminding you that you’ve been paid a nice advance to cut an album, so a hundred percent of your attention is necessary now. We’re building a career for you, and that means a lot of hard work.”

  “I’m never going to let anything get between me and what I want, and becoming a singer is something I’ve wanted all my life. I won’t let you down.” She’d held back from saying a famous singer, her ultimate goal.

  Now inside her plush corner office, Terri tossed her purse onto a chair and said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  Sloan followed her down a carpeted hallway, into a windowless room where long tables were set along three of the four walls, each stacked high with CD jewel cases. “Know what those are, Sloan?” Terri didn’t wait for any guesses. “Those are songs from various music publishers, every one of which is looking for a singer. The right singer.” She gestured toward two of the tables. “These stacks are hopefuls in the hunt to be plucked from obscurity, hooked up with the right voice, and turned into a smash hit, or at the very least, a song on an established singer’s album. Perhaps even on a record by a rising artist.

  “Somebody has to listen to every one of those songs. The reviewer’s job is to match the song to a particular artist we represent. If one of the reviewers hears music with potential for one of my clients, the CD is shifted to that table and labeled.” Terri pointed to the table
with fewer well-ordered stacks. “When a new voice, like yours, comes along, it has to be tagged and categorized.”

  “What do you mean, ‘tagged’?”

  “It’s a broad way of identifying a singer for sales and marketing. We say this artist is ‘in the tradition of Reba, or Miranda, or Carrie,’ and that helps classify a newcomer for the sales force. Currently you’re still riding the wave of winning the contest, so we want to keep you in the forefront until your album is ready to go to market.” Terri shrugged. “However, music listeners’ memories fade, and if we can’t keep someone ‘out front,’ a singer can have a short shelf life.”

  Terri’s way of reminding Sloan that the music market was fickle. Too long a wait for new material and listeners moved on. After a long pause, Terri said, “Back to these CDs….Since your category is country, those candidates are put into these stacks.” Terri pointed. “The choices are further narrowed and sent to a particular artist or producer. The artist gives a listen to decide if a song is right, because artists want songs that work with their voice. Singers often pass over songs that other singers like and turn into hits. It’s a collaboration, and also a crapshoot. The magic happens when the right artist finds the right song, the right producer, and the right sound mixer.”

  Terri picked up a canvas bag and handed it to Sloan. “These CDs have been chosen for you. Give them a listen. Check off the ones you like, and we’ll take them into a studio and let you try them out vocally with a few musicians.”

  Sloan thought back to her band days, how they’d created CDs in small studios, with mikes and a sound mixer on a laptop computer. Music was still made that way, in small studios that catered to pay-their-way singers and bands, and downloaded to social media, where the songs might be heard and “liked.” But she belonged to a big-name label, and the steps to success were carefully managed.

  Terri glanced at her watch. “Look, how about we call it a day? Car service will pick you up at eleven tomorrow. For now Kiley has a car waiting for you down at the street.”