Love to Love You Baby

  * * *

  Keely propped the telephone between her ear and shoulder, sorting through an accumulation of mail as the phone rang in her aunt’s Athens hotel. Bill, bill, bill, circular, bill, bill, letter from Gregory, bill, bill—letter from Gregory?

  She reached for the antique brass letter opener her aunt kept on her desk just as Mary McBride Forrester came on the line. “Hello? Hello? Whoever you are, do you speak English?”

  “Hi, Aunt Mary,” Keely said, putting down the opener, but then turning the envelope over and over, as if she could summon up some sort of X-ray vision and see the letter inside. “I’m returning your call.”

  “My six calls, you mean,” her aunt shot back across the miles. “Where have you been? Is the shop all right? Did Mrs. Morgan’s library table arrive safely?”

  “Everything’s fine, Aunt Mary. And the library table was delivered two weeks ago, remember? How’s Greece?”

  Keely could hear the sigh across the long-distance lines as the woman took in a deep breath, then waited until her aunt was two minutes into what would probably be a five minute monologue before reaching for the letter opener again.

  As her aunt talked, Keely read:

  Dearest Keely,

  You haven’t returned any of my telephone messages, and I don’t blame you. I’ve been a pig, haven’t I? Well, the time has come to make it all up to you, darling. I’ve just heard about the most marvelous little space in the Village. Perfect for your shop, and the rent is perfect for you.

  The landlord tells me his tenants vacate the first of August, at which time he’s doing a little remodeling—without my input, which is his loss—a little fumigating, but don’t you worry about that. This is, after all, New York, where the men are men and the roaches are everywhere. I’m enclosing his card so you can contact him. I said he should expect your call.

  Good luck, my dear girl. We’re off to Paris, Shavonna and I, to shop, and won’t be back for at least a month. Remember Paris, Keely? Ah... we’ll always have Paris....

  Gregory

  “Keely? Keely, are you there? Damn phones.”

  “Hmmm? What? Oh! Yes, I’m here, Aunt Mary,” Keely said, still looking at the letter. “It... it all sounds so wonderful!”

  “Travelers’ complaint sounds wonderful? The poor man has swallowed so much Imodium, I doubt he’ll ever again be able to—well, never mind. We’re leaving Athens tomorrow, Keely, for the last leg of our cruise, so you won’t hear from me for a while. For God’s sake, child, don’t burn the place down. Just finish whatever you’re working on now and put the CLOSED sign up until we’re back.”

  “When will that be, Aunt Mary? I thought you were corning home next week.”

  “Keely, a person does this honeymoon stuff just once, if she’s doing it right. We cruise, we sightsee, and maybe we stop off in Paris or Rome on our way home. I’m going with the flow, as I remember you calling it, for the first time in my life. It’s wonderful! All right, I have to go. The sun’s setting here, and the view from our balcony is breathtaking.”

  Keely was left holding a buzzing phone, which she put down as she sank into the desk chair. Paris. Everybody was going to Paris. And where was she going?

  Nowhere. Whether she stayed here or moved back to Manhattan, from the moment she’d first held Candy, first sat across the dinner table from Jack, she’d had the sinking feeling that she was going absolutely nowhere. Which was a damn shame, now that she knew just where she wanted to go.

  She stood up, crumpled the letter, and threw it into the waste can. She went upstairs to her bedroom and packed up more of her clothing to take back to Jack’s house. She threw out the newspapers, hit the ERASE button on the upstairs phone line without listening to the messages from Gregory, and closed all the shades so that the sun wouldn’t fade her aunt’s dark blue carpets.

  She dumped fairly ancient milk down the kitchen sink drain, threw out a half loaf of stale bread, and wrapped up the garbage for the next morning’s pickup.

  She hung the CLOSED sign on the front door of the shop.

  And she made it all the way to the car before she stopped, went back, fished the crumpled letter and business card out of the waste can, and jammed both into her purse before heading back to Whitehall.

  When she arrived, it was to find a note on the kitchen table, a note from Petra. She’d written it in Spanish, so that all Keely could make out was that Petra had gone to the dentista, and that Jack was acting as cuidaninos de bebé.

  Jack was acting as sitter to the baby?

  Keely instantly panicked. Where? Where was Jack? Where was the baby? She ran upstairs. No Jack. No Candy. She ran back downstairs. Ditto.

  And then she stopped, shook her head, and realized that she was panicking when she should be rejoicing. Wasn’t this what she wanted? Jack and Candy, bonding? Getting to know each other. Appreciate each other. Forging a connection.

  Without her as part of the equation.

  “Stop it!” she commanded herself, making one last pass through the downstairs rooms before heading for the garages. “Just stop it. You love the baby, and that’s it. You don’t even like Jack Tre—Ohmigod!”

  Keely broke into a run, sliding to a stop after she’d thrown open the gate and entered the fenced-in pool area. “Jack Trehan —are you out of your tiny mind? Get her out of there!”

  She watched as Jack, Candy held tight in his arms, turned around in the pool, looked up at her. “Look, Candy, Aunt Keely’s home, and she’s turning all red and splotchy. Isn’t that cute? Smile, McBride, you’re scaring the kid.”

  “Jack, I mean it. Get that baby out of there. She could drown.”

  “She isn’t going to drown. I’ve got her.”

  “Oh, yeah? The other day you couldn’t hold her and she was wrapped in paper towels. And what if you get a cramp and go under? What happens to Candy then?”

  Jack sighed, began walking through the shallow end of the pool, toward the cement steps. “What do you do, Keely? Sit up nights, thinking of everything that can go wrong in any situation? I didn’t go into the deep end, and besides, Candy likes the water. Don’t you, sweetheart?” he ended, nuzzling Candy’s neck.

  The baby giggled, grabbed Jack’s ear. “Da. Da-da-da-da!”

  Someone was really going to have to watch Candy as she got older, was able to walk away in a grocery store or something. She had gone straight to Petra. Now she was drooling all over Jack. The kid would walk away with anybody. She’d have to be taught about strangers. Would Jack teach her about not talking to strangers?

  “Come here, darling,” Keely urged the baby, holding out her arms to her. “Let me dry you off.”

  Candy turned her head, buried her face against Jack’s chest. “It would appear she isn’t ready to get out. Do you have a bathing suit? Why don’t you join us? We’ll use the buddy system. Then, when I get that cramp and sink to the bottom, I can first toss Candy in your direction.”

  Keely bit her bottom lip, devastated, knowing she was being silly but still devastated. Candy had turned away from her. In truth, that was a good thing. After all, she wouldn’t be here forever, probably wouldn’t be here for more than a few more weeks, tops. Getting Candy attached to Jack, and Jack to her, was just what Keely wanted.

  So why did it hurt so much?

  “Keely? Come on. The pool’s heated, you know, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought Candy in here with me.”

  Keely nodded, not trusting her voice, and returned to the house, carrying her suitcase upstairs. She had thrown a bathing suit into it at the last minute, telling herself she’d swim at night, when Jack wasn’t in the pool.

  She really had to stop telling herself lies.