The Black Sheep’s Baby

“What do you mean, ‘they must have’? Don’t you remember?”

“No, actually, I don’t.” She said it absently as she paused, pretending to study the revolving rack of tapes and CDs on the battered wooden desktop. But she was too aware of her own heartbeat. She felt a curious sense of uneasiness, and wondered if this was what animals felt when they caught the distant odor of fire.

“You have an interesting assortment of musical tastes,” she remarked as a means of changing the subject. Though not only for that reason. It was interesting to her, what kind of music he liked. At the very least, she reasoned, it was a way to learn more about the man who was to be her adversary. A way of finding out what made him tick. CDs-rock bands and country music stars from roughly ten years ago-took up most of the space in the carousel, but there were also some older tapes, folk and gospel music, mainly. And one cluster of CDs from the Vietnam era that particularly intrigued her.

“Had, you mean.” Eric was leaning sideways to look over her shoulder. “Those are at least ten years old. And some of ’em aren’t even mine.”

She hadn’t realized how close to her he’d come with his relaxed, baby-rocking stroll. Now she inhaled his scent with every breath, and it flooded her system like high-test fuel, kicking her pulse into a new and faster rhythm. It struck her first how clean he smelled-not just freshly showered, but wholesome, without any hint of either nervous sweat or cologne, cigarette smoke or booze or artery-clogging fast foods-compared to the people who inhabited the courtrooms and law offices and jail meeting rooms she was accustomed to.

And that wasn’t all. There was something else, too, something unfamiliar to her, something warm and sweet and faintly earthy that could only be coming from the sleeping baby.

“Those are Mom’s-the gospel stuff,” Eric was saying. “And the Parish Family tapes, too-that’s Dixie’s family, you know? The folk singers?” He made a disgusted sound when Devon only looked blankly at him. “Jeez, I thought everybody knew them. Their stuff is in the Smithsonian.”

Devon muttered something vague. Her head was swimming; she couldn’t think. It had to be his nearness- something to do with his animal heat, his masculine scent, maybe even something to do with the baby in his arms. She snatched a CD from the carousel and thrust it at him. “What about these? You must not even have been born when they were popular.”

He leaned closer, brushing her arm with his. “Creedence Clearwater Revival? Those are my dad’s.”

Something in his voice made her risk a glance at him. And she wished she hadn’t. His brown eyes seemed to flare with a golden light, giving the gaunt features so close to her own a hawklike fierceness so unnerving she wished with all her heart she could tear her gaze away. But she couldn’t.

“I bought him a bunch of those Vietnam-era CDs for Christmas one year. I was really into the period-because of my grandfather, you know?-and I knew Dad had lost all his stuff in a fire, way back before he met my mom.”

“That was thoughtful.” Devon could barely hear herself. Her voice had gotten lost somewhere in the thundering pulses inside her own head. “I’ll bet he really liked it.”

“Yeah, he did.” His eyes, gentle again, dropped to the baby in his arms. Released from that strange golden spell, Devon realized then that Emily had begun to squirm and scrunch her face into alarming expressions and make angry, snorting noises.

“Ah…ready for the second course, are you?” Eric was speaking again in the crooning voice that reminded Devon of a tiger’s purr. It resonated under her breastbone, and she surprised herself with a nervous sound that was horrendously close to a giggle. He shot her a look. “You want to hold her?”

“Oh-God,” she gasped, cringing away from him. “No-that’s okay, you go right ahead-”

“Come on, she’s not going to bite you.”

“Oh, but I-”

“Here-hold out your arms.”

“What? How-”

“Just hold ’em out-you know, like somebody’s trying to hand you a load of laundry. A pile of legal briefs-I don’t know. Something. Hell, anything but a baby, I guess.”

“Oh, God,” said Devon faintly. “I think I’d better sit down.” She backed up until she felt the bed come against her knees.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never held a baby before,” Eric teased as he followed her. His smile was sardonic, though his eyes held a softer gleam.

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t,” Devon bristled in her own defense, glaring at him. “I’m a lawyer, for God’s sake! I don’t think I’ve ever even touched a baby. When would I have?”

He chuckled, in a way that made her think instantly and vividly of his father. “Don’t feel bad. Neither had I, until they put Emily, here, in my arms, right after she was born. You’d be surprised how easy it is. I know I was. Pure instinct. Here-let me show you.” He bent toward her with the pink and yellow bundle in his arms.

Trembling, Devon tried to think of all the other times she’d been scared nearly out of her wits and somehow found the courage to hang on to them in spite of it-taking the bar exam, facing a judge and jury in open courtroom for the first time, interviewing a serial killer… She took a deep breath and forced herself to lift her arms.

“No, no-the other way-the left one. They like to hear your heartbeat. That’s right. Now, you kind of make a cradle…yeah, that’s it. Hold her against you…not too tight.” He looked up at her from his half crouch and smiled. “See? What’d I tell you? Like rollin’ off a log.” He straightened up and folded his arms on his chest, looking as if he’d just won a case. “Instinct,” he said smugly.

What instincts? I don’t think I have any-not the mothering kind, thought Devon wildly. She was too overwhelmed to speak. Emotions of so many different kinds and colors were careening around inside her, out of control and bumping into one another and creating unimaginable chaos and confusion.

In all that confusion she was sure of one thing: the baby in her arms wasn’t any happier about the situation than she was.

“I think you’d better take her,” she said in a choked voice, gazing in utter horror at the baby’s red, contorted face. “Here-quick! She’s going to cry.” She said that the same way she might have said, She’s going to explode.

“She just wants her bottle,” Eric said easily, reaching with one long arm to snag it from the nightstand. “Yeah…there you go.” He spoke in his ratchety croon as he popped the nipple into the baby’s already-open mouth. Instantly, the angry, alarming noises were replaced with greedy gulps, snorts and snuffles. Eyelids tipped with barely visible red-gold lashes drifted half-closed in blissful satisfaction. “What’d I tell you?” Eric said, smug again. And then added, “Here-take over.”

And somehow or other she was holding the bottle and he was beaming down at her as if he’d just created a miracle, something on the scale of the discovery of fire. All she could do was glare up at him, first in panic, then confusion. Because, in some indefinable way the smile had blurred the sharpness and softened the shadows that made his face sometimes seem so forbidding…and in that same indefinable way she felt something soften and blur inside herself. In panic she tore her gaze from that disturbing, utterly mesmerizing face and fastened it instead on the tiny pink one nestled in the crook of her arm.

“Hold her snug against you-they need the body contact while they’re nursing,” she heard Eric murmur.

I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t. Oh, how she hated feeling soft and blurred. Vulnerable. She hated the quivery awe in her chest, the peppery sting of tenderness in her nose and eyes, the ache in her breasts. And most of all she hated the sudden and terrible longing…the inexplicable wish…that Eric would come to sit beside her on the bed, that he would put his arms around her and enfold her and the baby both in the warmth and safety of his masculine protection.

Ridiculous! What was this? Hadn’t she spent her entire adult life making herself strong enough, powerful enough, and feared as any man, just so she wouldn’t ever have to feel like this-helpless, vulnerable, longing for a man’s protection? This isn’t supposed to happen!

She rose abruptly, just as Eric was saying, “Probably ought to stop and burp her-she’s a real little pig-”

“You take her,” she said in a tight, airless voice. With more deftness than she’d thought herself capable of, she thrust baby and bottle into Eric’s arms, turned and fled from the room.