One Night

  Kyle glanced around the compact apartment, hoping Carrie might be there, but if so she was hiding in the bedroom.

  “I take it you’ve talked to your sister.”

  “This morning.” Cathie motioned for him to sit down. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Nothing, thank you. Was Carrie upset?”

  “You might say that. She babbled on about a number of things. To be honest, she wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.”

  Kyle sat closer to the edge of the sofa cushion. “What was she saying?”

  “Something about wearing nun’s clothes, and hocking Grandma’s opal ring because you’d gotten yourself thrown in jail. There was more about wishing she’d left you in the slammer, but I don’t think she was serious.”

  Don’t be so sure, Kyle thought.

  “The part that completely baffles me is this felon she thought she saw on Unsolved Mysteries who took your traveler’s checks. Does any of this make sense to you?”

  Reluctantly Kyle nodded. “Every word of it.”

  “In between all this you two got involved?”

  “Exactly.” He steadily held her gaze. “Did Carrie tell you about last night?”

  Cathie nodded. “Carrie likes to give the impression she’s something of a free spirit, but beneath all the bold talk and the crazy way she does things, my sister has strong values. She isn’t nearly as different as she wants everyone to believe. You’d need to meet our father to fully appreciate what I’m saying.”

  “What’s your father got to do with this?”

  Cathie folded her legs Indian style beneath her. “He’s great, don’t get me wrong, but he’s got these old-fashioned ideas about women and what role they should play in society. Dad thought Carrie should be a nurse.”

  “Carrie?” For the life of him, he couldn’t picture her in a white uniform. Kyle admired Carrie’s talent as a deejay. She was bright and witty and fun. Her personality was ideally suited to radio.

  “I know. Carrie goes weak in the knees at the sight of blood, but Dad was convinced she’d overcome that in time. It came as a real shock to him that his daughters had minds of their own.”

  “What about you?”

  Cathie laughed softly. “He thought I should be a schoolteacher. I’m not as strong-willed as Carrie, and I didn’t defy him quite as openly as she did. The thing is, Dad and Carrie might argue, but they’re close. He’s long since forgiven her for majoring in communication. And with Carrie blazing the trail for me, life was much easier.”

  “So you’re a teacher, then?”

  “Not exactly,” Cathie said, shaking her head. “I’m a nurse.”

  The irony produced an involuntary smile. “Carrie told me once that I was a lot like her father.”

  “From what she said about you, I think that must be true,” Cathie responded. “You’re like Dad in more ways than even Carrie realizes. But you aren’t here to listen to talk about our father. You want to know about Carrie.”

  “Yes, please. Where is she?”

  Cathie looked at her watch. “If the flight landed on schedule, she’s back in Kansas City. I dropped her off at the airport earlier this afternoon.”

  Kyle was on his feet. “She flew back?”

  “Yup. I don’t know what you said, Kyle, but I’ve never seen Carrie more upset.”

  Carrie let herself into her house, picked up the mail on the floor, and sorted through it as she made her way into the kitchen. The red light on her answering machine winked at her, and she absently pushed the switch. Four days of messages played back one by one, interspersed with a number of hang-ups.

  Then Kyle’s voice captured her attention. The mail slipped from her fingers and spilled onto the countertop.

  “Carrie, it’s Kyle. Listen, whatever it was I said, I apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I know an answering machine isn’t exactly the way to be telling you this. God knows I should have said it much sooner.” He paused and she could almost picture him squaring his shoulders. “I think I love you, Carrie. I don’t know when it happened, probably when you pawned your grandmother’s ring to bail me out of jail. All I can tell you is that I’ve never spent a more miserable day in my life than this one.

  “I drove out and met your sister. It took a little persuasion, but I finally convinced her I wasn’t a monster and we had a nice long talk. I didn’t get your note until I got back from Euless. It would have saved me a trip, but that’s all right, because I was happy to get to know Cathie.

  “If you’d like to talk to me, and I’m hoping you will, I won’t be at the hotel. I’m checking out as soon as I’m finished here and will be driving directly to Kansas City. Maybe by then you’ll have had a chance to think matters over and will be willing to sit down and talk things out.”

  Carrie slumped down into the kitchen chair and covered her face with both hands. She’d been impulsive most of her life, but it had been a mistake to leave Kyle like that. Her note had been brief and to the point. All she’d said was that she was flying home and hoped he enjoyed the rest of the conference.

  The phone rang. Thinking it might be Kyle again, she leaped up to answer it.

  “Hello.”

  There was a pause, followed by a click. Carrie stared at the receiver and then slowly replaced it. With an unlisted number, she didn’t often receive crank calls. Yet there’d been a series of hang-ups on her answering machine. Odd.

  Tired and emotionally spent, Carrie ran her bathwater and soaked for a long time in the scented tub. Then she climbed into bed, convinced she was exhausted enough to sleep for a week.

  For the better part of the night, Kyle drove from Dallas to Kansas City, arriving early Sunday morning.

  He started rehearsing what he intended to say to Carrie the minute he hit the Kansas state line. He didn’t want to fight with her, not when they could be making love.

  Instead of stopping off at his house, he drove directly to Carrie’s. That might not be the wisest thing to do, but he couldn’t bear to wait any longer.

  When she didn’t answer the front door, he walked around to the back of the house and found her squatting on the grass, sticking Martha Washington geraniums in a redwood planter on the patio. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a cotton shirt with the tails tied at her midriff. Her hair was held away from her face with a red bandanna. Kyle thought he’d never seen a more beautiful woman.

  “Hello, Carrie.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and froze. “Kyle.” She rubbed her forearm across the perspiration that moistened her brow. “I see you got back all right.”

  He nodded, his carefully prepared speech lost. “I just got in.”

  She nodded and stood, looking uncertain, unprepared. “Would you like to come inside for some iced tea?”

  “Please.” He followed her and removed his sunglasses, folded them, and stuck them in his shirt pocket. After driving for the last ten hours, he wasn’t inclined to take a seat, so he stood while she took a glass pitcher from the refrigerator.

  “I realize I can be obtuse at times,” he said, smiling his thanks when she handed him the glass. He paused long enough to take a deep swallow. “That comment about birth control pills was stupid. You’re right, Carrie. The responsibility should be shared.”

  “That wasn’t what upset me.” She inhaled deeply and raised her head so that their eyes met. “It was the implication that I’m routinely involved with men when you should know I’m not.”

  “Carrie, don’t be insulted, but I honestly haven’t paid any attention to your social calendar. For all I know, you could be going out with four or five different guys.”

  “Sleeping with them too, apparently,” she muttered under her breath.

  “I wouldn’t know, that’s the point,” he argued. “What do you know about my love life? Nothing, right? I’m not holding that against you. Carrie,” he said, taking a step toward her, “I don’t care if you’ve had ten lovers—”

  “You don’t care?” She stare
d at him as if seeing him for the first time and finding plenty to fault.

  “I’d care,” he replied heatedly. “I only want you to have one lover. Me.”

  “What kind of woman do you think I am?” she asked softly.

  He’d been deceived by that calm, reasonable tone before. It spelled danger. Frantically he struggled for a way of combating her anger. “You’re warm, generous, loving—”

  “Loose, immoral, unprincipled,” she concluded.

  “I said nothing of the kind,” he said calmly. One of them needed to remain level-headed. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”

  “You seem to believe I’d make love with you while involved with someone else.” Each word was spoken distinctly as if she wasn’t leaving room for misunderstanding. “Worse, you know how many hours I put in at the station. You’ve seen for yourself the hours upon hours that go into scheduling interviews, promos, and public service announcements, yet you think I can keep a handful of lovers happily satisfied on the side.”

  “What I was trying to say is that it doesn’t matter to me how many lovers you’ve had—in the past.”

  Carrie briefly closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “How generous of you. Your previous lovers don’t concern me either.”

  “You’re twisting everything I say into an insult. I didn’t drive all this way to fight with you.”

  “This isn’t what I want either,” Carrie admitted. “But I swear, every time you open your mouth you make it a thousand times worse.”

  Frustrated, Kyle stretched out his hands, palms up. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I think it’ll probably be best if you left. We both need time to think this out.”

  “All right,” he responded stiffly. He had his pride, and if she didn’t want him around he could accept that. Forget the fact that he’d driven like a madman to get back to her. “Answer me one thing,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Is there a chance you could be pregnant?”

  Carrie blinked as if she’d never considered the prospect of there being consequences to their one night together. “Heavens, I don’t know.” She counted days and stopped when she reached the night she’d spent with him.

  “Well?” he asked, anxious to know.

  “On a scale of one to ten?”

  “However you want to put it,” he said.

  “One being no chance of my getting pregnant, and ten being the day I was at the peak of the fertility cycle.”

  “All right, tell me on a scale of one to ten.”

  Long before she spoke, Kyle saw her reply working its way up her throat. The word seemed to have to fight its way past some restriction.

  “Ten.”

  Kyle pulled out a chair and fell into it.

  “That doesn’t mean I am pregnant,” she was quick to say, but he noticed that she promptly scooted out a chair and sat down herself. Bracing her elbows against the tabletop, she buried her face in her hands. “I wish you hadn’t asked. Now it’s going to worry me.”

  Kyle felt the same way. “How soon will we be able to tell?”

  “How am I supposed to know? A couple of weeks, I guess. I’ve never been pregnant before, and this might come as a shock to you, Kyle Harris, but I’ve never been at risk either.” She turned to him, her eyes wide and appealing. “What will I do if I’m pregnant?”

  “You? We’re in this together. As I recall, I was there as well.”

  “True, but as you so eloquently pointed out, I was the one who came to your room, and you were under the impression I’d accepted full responsibility for birth control.”

  “Why don’t we wait until we know what we’re dealing with before we start fighting about whose responsibility a pregnancy is?” He stood and rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll see you Monday morning.”

  “Okay,” she murmured and walked him to the door.

  He hesitated. Neither of them had felt comfortable enough to convey how they felt about the possibility of Carrie’s being pregnant. It was still too new, too shocking. Like Carrie, he’d never been in this situation before. Frankly, he didn’t know what he was feeling, other than wanting to kick himself for being so stupid.

  “May I kiss you?” Kyle didn’t know where the question came from, but all at once it was there. It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten the taste of her. It had haunted him for over five hundred miles. He was curious, he guessed, to discover if their time together had been a joke fate had played on him. He needed to know if what they’d shared was real.

  “Kiss me?”

  “Just once,” he coaxed.

  “But I’ve been working in the yard. Good grief, I’m all sweaty and—”

  “I’ve kissed you when you were dripping mud,” he reminded her.

  A soft smile turned up the edges of her mouth. “I suppose one kiss would be all right.”

  “Nothing more,” he promised and gathered her in his arms. She stood on her tiptoes and raised her arms to him. Her breath felt moist and warm against his throat. The mere act of touching her produced a deluge of achingly familiar feelings.

  He’d meant the kiss as an experiment, but his need for her far outweighed his curiosity. She opened her lips to him and Kyle instantly deepened the contact, seeking her as a political prisoner yearns for freedom, as someone freezing reaches for a blanket.

  Leaving her arms was hell. Kyle stepped away from her and exhaled sharply. “That pretty much answers that,” he murmured.

  “You had a question?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t anymore.” Blindly he turned away from her and stumbled out the front door.

  “I’ll see you Monday?” she called after him.

  He reached his car, raised his arm, and nodded. Monday. A whole day away. Only heaven knew how he was going to last that long without being with her.

  10

  Carrie was trying to rest, but that was impossible. The fact was, she might very well be pregnant. In the last few days she’d attempted to convince herself otherwise, but it was time for her to face the truth.

  The first person Carrie thought who might help her was Cathie. Her sister worked rotating shifts at the hospital, so keeping track of Cathie’s schedule was next to impossible. If luck was with Carrie, which it hadn’t been up to this point, she just might catch her sister at home. Carrie sat down on the sofa, tucked her feet beneath her, and dialed Texas.

  After four rings the answering machine automatically came on. Carrie listened to her sister’s short recorded message, drew in a deep breath, prayed she sounded cheerful, and said, “Cath, it’s me. I thought I’d check in and let you know everything’s hunky dory on my end. I do have one itty bitty medical question for you to answer, though. Nothing important, mind you, just some information I need…for a good friend of mine who might be in a family way. My question is, How soon after conception is it possible to tell if a woman’s pregnant? I’lltalktoyousoon.” The last words were spoken so fast they jumbled together, and Carrie wondered if her sister would be able to make sense of them. Or the phone call itself.

  Replacing the receiver, Carrie wandered back to the bedroom and lay down. When she woke, it was midafternoon. To her surprise and delight, her first thought was food. Her appetite had been absent these last few days, and all at once she felt as if she could eat her way through every fast food restaurant in town.

  Her phone rang while she was layering cheese on bread for a toasted cheese sandwich.

  “Hello,” she mumbled distractedly, thinking it might be Kyle. She’d been avoiding him. She wasn’t sure how to deal with the newscaster just yet. That decision would need to be faced soon but not now, when her head was muddled with other matters.

  Whoever was on the other line hung up. Glaring at the phone, Carrie replaced it in its cradle and went back to assembling her sandwich.

  Within a minute the phone rang a second time. Sighing, Carrie looked over to the wall and decided to let her answering machine pick up the call. She wasn’t interested in pl
aying silly hang-up games with some weirdo.

  The machine clicked in with her sister’s frantic voice. “Carrie, I just got home and heard your message. You’re pregnant, aren’t you? You didn’t honestly expect me to believe that business about needing information for a good friend, did you? That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

  “Cathie.” Carrie spoke into the telephone receiver. “Hold on a minute.” She walked over and turned off the answering machine. “Hello,” she said, making sure she sounded downright chipper.

  Now that Carrie was on the line, Cathie stopped speaking.

  “I’m here,” Carrie said, wondering what had gone wrong with the connection.

  “Yes, I know,” Cathie said, sounding nothing like her usual cheerful self. “You’re pregnant?”

  There wasn’t any need to hide it, Carrie decided. The truth would come out soon enough. “I don’t know yet, but I think I might be.”

  “You think you might be!” Cathie echoed, aghast.

  “It’s too soon to be sure. That’s why I asked you.”

  Once more Cathie was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Are you all right?” Carrie asked, growing concerned.

  “Of course,” Cathie snapped, sounding oddly hysterical. “But then I’m not the one who’s pregnant. You apparently have had some time to get used to the idea. I haven’t. How far along are you?” The last question came out breathless as if her sister were badly in need of oxygen.

  “It’ll be two weeks on Friday. You didn’t honestly think Kyle and I were up playing pinochle all night in his hotel room, did you?”

  “No, but I figured if you spent the night together, one of you was smart enough to use some form of birth control.”

  “We didn’t.”

  “Obviously. Now let me think about this.”

  “I should tell you what’s been happening to me,” Carrie said, and went about describing the symptoms she’d experienced since her return from Dallas.

  “What’s Kyle got to say?”

  “He hasn’t said anything yet.”