“Yeah, guess so. They say it’s snowin’ as far south as Dallas.”
Geography not having been one of her best subjects, Mirabella wasn’t sure precisely what that meant. She did, however, know that Texas was where she was heading. And furthermore, that she was going to have to get through it in order to reach her final destination. She drew a vexed breath and said, “Texas. Lovely.”
“Yes, ma‘am,” muttered the trucker humbly. Then, aiming his beautiful dark brown eyes right at her and narrowing them into a frown of what looked like genuine concern, he ventured, “Ma’am, it looks like the Panhandle might be pretty rough goin’. You might want to think about headin’ south-take I-25 out of Albuquerque, swing on down to ten. Whereabouts you headed?”
“Florida,” Mirabella told him without even thinking whether or not she should. “Pensacola.” Oh, Lord, she thought, those eyes…
The trucker nodded and looked relieved. “Oh, yeah. That’s what I’d do, if I were you. Look here-” he touched her elbow in a deferential way, just enough to guide her closer to the map as he pointed “-this here is 1-25, see that? Goes right on down to I-10. You’d miss all the mess that way-be a lot safer.”
A lot longer, too. From what Mirabella could see, just doing a rough calculation in her head, it had to be four hundred miles longer that way, at least. A whole extra day. No way she would make it by Christmas, then. “Which way are you going?” she asked, angling a look at the trucker.
“Me?” He shrugged. “I don’t have much choice. Got to stay on forty-got a load to deliver in Little Rock. But if I was you…”
“Thanks for the advice,” said Mirabella, who wasn’t in the habit of taking advice from anybody, especially men- not even cute ones with big brown eyes and dimples.
She was thinking, Hey, guy, if
From the look on his face, the trucker obviously didn’t think so, but Mirabella was used to seeing that look on men’s faces and, if anything, it only made her more determined to prove him wrong.
“Well, good luck, ma’am.” He was giving her his halffrowning, concerned look, but with more intensity this time. Enough to make Mirabella’s heart do that little skip again, which she really wished it wouldn’t. “You have a safe trip now-drive carefully.”
“Thanks,” said Mirabella crisply. “I plan to.”
Chapter 2
1-40-New Mexico
As she pulled out of the travel-stop parking lot and back onto 1-40, Mirabella’s thoughts didn’t dwell on the cute blond trucker with the heart-stopping dimples. She was thinking about what lay ahead of her, and feeling not nearly as confident about it as she would have liked.
Not about the weather or the road conditions in Texas-the way she figured it, people must drive around in snowstorms all the time; otherwise, life would pretty much come to a screeching halt for half the year in the northern half of the country. Besides, she had more than enough confidence in her Lexus and in her own driving skills, and if worse came to worst, she could always pull into another truck stop and pick up a set of tire chains. No way was she going to let a little old blizzard keep her from getting to Pensacola in time for Pop’s Christmas.
No, what was worrying Mirabella was something a. lot smaller than a blizzard and probably a lot more common, too. Although she never liked to admit to being afraid of anything, lately she’d begun to notice a queasy feeling in her stomach whenever she thought-really thought-about this business of having a baby.
She’d had no doubts about it before. None at all. After all, she’d planned this pregnancy down to the last detail, and it wasn’t in her nature to second-guess herself. Besides, it had been fun, at first. There’d been the exhilaration of knowing she’d succeeded-not that she was accustomed to settling for anything less, or had ever
For a while after that, she’d kept it her own delicious secret. Never much of a reader, she’d devoured every baby magazine in the doctor’s-office waiting room, then had gone out and bought every book she could find on pregnancy and child care. Mirabella never did anything by halves. Thus informed and prepared, she’d been fascinated rather than dismayed by the sequence of changes taking place in her body, for once not minding when her breasts suddenly grew three cup sizes. Hey, this was great-suddenly it was okay to gain weight!
The night she first felt movement, she’d called up Charly and they’d gone out for frozen-yogurt sundaes at two in the morning to celebrate.
She’d really loved putting her talent and training as an architectural interior designer to work turning her guest room into a nursery and redesigning the rest of the house to make it absolutely babyproof. She’d delighted in having an excuse to dress for comfort, which she preferred anyway. She’d enthusiastically enrolled in natural childbirth classes, having coerced a somewhat less-than-enthusiastic Charly into being her coach. After that, she’d felt confident and ready for whatever came next.
Nothing to it, she remembered thinking. This was going to be a breeze.
But lately, in the past week or so, things had begun to…well, change. Radiantly healthy up to now, she’d suddenly become extremely uncomfortable. That was because the baby had “dropped,” the doctor told her. Nothing to worry about; perfectly normal, she’d insisted. But to Mirabella it had an ominous sound. Plus, the pressure pains in her groin really did hurt. She wasn’t sleeping well at night. And in the past couple of days she’d noticed, to her horror, that she’d developed a tendency to
It was very hard, she’d discovered, to maintain your dignity when you were shaped like a Weeble.
And dignity was important to Mirabella, which was something few people seemed able to understand. For most of her adult life, people-her female friends and sisters, mostly-had been telling her how beautiful she was, and, they were sure to add, how much more appealing she would be to men if she would only let her guard down and lighten up more. But they’d never understood about the dignity thing. How could they? Eve, Mirabella’s younger sister, had been blessed with the face and body of Princess Grace, so who cared if she had all the dignity of Soupy Sales? And Sommer, the oldest, designed more along the lines of Princess Di, seemed to have been born with a shy and coltish awkwardness that somehow made the whole concept of dignity irrelevant.
How could they ever understand Mirabella, who had had the misfortune to be born short, stocky, red-haired, freckle-faced and nearsighted, or know that there had been times when she was sure pride and dignity were all that had kept her from dying of humiliation?
It was just beginning to occur to her that giving birth might be a difficult thing to accomplish with one’s dignity intact.
It had also occurred to her recently that it wasn’t something she cared to go through alone. But Charly was… well, she was a dear and loyal friend, but she just wasn’t… For some reason she just didn’t have what Mirabella needed right now. Neither did her sisters, preoccupied as they were with their own busy lives. So when her mom had announced plans to fly out for Christmas and stay until after the baby was born to help out for the first weeks and get acquainted with her new grandchild, she’d been profoundly and unexpectedly relieved.
But then Pop had had his heart attack.
“Of course, you can’t leave him.” Mirabella had been astonished her mother would even think of it. And with characteristic decisiveness had promptly added, “I’ll go there instead.”
It was only later that she’d acknowledged the squeezing sensation in her chest that had prompted her to say it, and to recognize it for what it was: pure panic.
And it was only now that she could admit to herself that the real reason she was so anxious to get to Pensacola had nothing to do with Christmas, or even her father’s heart attack. She was having a baby, dammit. And like countless women before her, she wanted someone wise and nurturing to guide her through the experience. In short, she wanted her mother.
