Peggy Nicholson - The Baby Bargain

“Tell her I’m not here,” he blurted desperately.

“Ha! I’m not your press secretary, Mr. President. Tell her yourself.”

He kept his eyes on his sneakers as he casually crossed the room, but he stole a glance over his shoulder as he reached the hallway.

The three girls in the booth were all primped up, wearing fancy dresses in bright colors. The St. Patrick’s Day dance was tonight, he remembered. Another reason he’d felt blue today. I wonder if I’ll ever have a date. The few friends he’d made in his first year at the high school he’d lost, because he just couldn’t make himself care. The only girl he really talked to was Zoe, but she was a senior and his boss on the yearbook. The head editor. Nobody a sophomore could ever date.

The receiver of the wall-mounted pay phone dangled at knee level. He sighed and picked it up. “’Lo.”

“Sean?” Dana’s low voice hummed with tension.

“Yeah.” He should have just hung up on her. He sighed again and swung around to slouch against the rough plaster.

“You…didn’t come home.”

Yeah, no fooling, Sherlock. He didn’t say anything.

“Did you miss your bus?”

I gave it a miss, right. If there was one day of the year he couldn’t stand the sight of Dana…that he needed to spend by himself, this was it. Crappy St. Patrick’s Day. “Looks like it, doesn’t it.”

He heard her sigh down the telephone line. “I can’t pick you up, Sean. We have guests tonight—for the whole week—skiers. I’m just about to put supper on the table.”

“Doesn’t matter.” In San Diego he could have taken a cab home, the way his mother always did when she’d partied too much. In Trueheart, Colorado, it’d be easier to catch a coyote and ride it home. Or hitch. “I’ll manage.”

“Judy gets off work at ten. She said she’d be happy to give you a ride.”

No way. He’d rather walk ten miles in the snow and slush than listen to one of Judy’s pull-up-your-socks pep talks. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.”

“Sean, honey, please. Come home. I know what you’re—”

“No. You don’t.” He replaced the receiver on its hook with stony deliberation—it was that or smash it against the phone, then keep on smashing till he held nothing but splinters. No, you don’t. He was standing, staring at his fingers curled around the black plastic, when an icy draft brushed his cheek.

Someone coming through the fire exit at the end of the hallway, he saw from the corner of his eye. She slammed the door behind her and stood panting, one hand pressed to her throat—long, tall Zoe Montana, reminding him of a Christmas tree with her shiny green dress and her carrot-red hair. He felt better already, just looking at her.

“Oh, rats!” she said. Her fine, goldy-red eyebrows drew into a scowl. “You didn’t see me.”

“I didn’t?” She was hard to miss. She was taller than his five foot six-and-a-half inches by several more, though he was all muscle while she was all freckly skin and bones—most of that leg, like one of those big wading birds. A stork on fire, the captain of the football team had called her once in the cafeteria, and everybody had laughed.

She let out a long-suffering sigh, the way she did when one of the airheads on the yearbook staff failed to meet a section deadline, and hooked a thumb at the door to the ladies’. “Is anybody in there?”

“Uh, don’t think so.”

“Thank God.” She slipped around the door and vanished.

Sean crossed his arms, leaned back against the wall and waited. Zoe Montana was maybe the only person in True-heart worth talking to.

She came out a few minutes later, looking less wild eyed. More like the yearbook editor about to give her most junior photographer a shooting assignment. But then, Zoe’s assignments were always interesting. She was the smartest girl—the smartest person—in their whole regional high school, and that probably included the teachers.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. And in a long, silky dress. She always wore slacks or jeans to school, with bulky sweaters and funky lace-up knee boots. Or clunky Steve Maddens, which raised her height to over six feet, when she was in a mood to kick butt. Idly he lifted his fingers, shaping a square to frame her, and wished he had his camera. It was the first time he’d ever realized Zoe was more than funny looking. Snckk. He took a mental photograph.

“Is there anybody out there?” Zoe nodded toward the café. “Anybody from school, I mean?”

“Some jocks and jock-bunnies, eating supper before the dance.” The dance that Zoe must be going to, also, Sean realized with quickening interest. He didn’t know she had a boyfriend. Who would be sharp enough to keep up with her?

“Shoot. I’m dying for a cup of coffee.” She sagged back against the opposite wall.

“Then come have one with me.” He was astonished at his own daring—then his heart sank as he remembered. Crap! He had less than a dollar left.

“Thanks, but…” She shook her head. “I’m not in the mood for company.” Her eyes sharpened on his face. “I mean the kind of company in there.” She crossed her forefingers between them. “No clowns tonight. Not one more.”

“Oh.” He had clowning down to an art form, but he didn’t think she meant him. Still, Sean felt like a bozo, with nothing more to say. “I guess you’re going to the dance?” He threw out the question at random.

“I guess I’m not.”

“But you’re all…” He waved his hand, taking in her finery. She even had boobs, he realized, stealing a peek at the gap between the long lapels of the coat that matched her party dress. Not honkers, but somehow right for Zoe. Her clothes had always disguised them before.

“The creep stood me up—okay?” she said between clenched teeth.

“Or maybe he had car trouble,” Sean suggested, wanting to wipe that look of angry humiliation off her face. She didn’t deserve to be stood up just because she was too tall and too smart for her own good.

“No, I finally called his house. His little brother told me he had a date with Amanda Clayton and that he’d already left.” Zoe stared blankly down at the toes of her green high heels.

Amanda Clayton? A babe, if Sean had ever seen one. Little and brunette and cuddly. And dumb as a post. Her longtime steady had rolled his car after a party last weekend, Sean had heard, and was in the hospital down in Durango with both legs in casts. High school dances were like a game of musical chairs, he’d always thought, and this time poor Zoe was left standing. Stork ablaze. “So why didn’t you just…” Call me? He’d have been happy to help her out.

“Stay home? Right, and tell my dad why? He’d have stomped down to the gym and dragged Bobbie out by his ear. Or maybe shot him. I have enough to live down without that, thank you. So I—” Zoe shrugged and turned toward the fire exit. “I’ve got to go.” She spun back again, tottered on her heels, and braced one long arm out against the wall. “Oh, and Sean, do me a favor? You never saw me.”

She must be just riding around, he realized, killing time till it was safe to go home. “Then how about a favor for a favor?” Her embarrassment made him feel bolder. “Could you give me a ride out to the ranch? There’s no hurry,” he added, as she opened her mouth. “You could drop me at my turnoff out on the highway—any time tonight at all.”

She closed her soft pink lips and cocked her head, studying him. Being Zoe, he knew, she saw more than he wanted to show. He shrugged and held her blue-eyed gaze with an effort.

“Yeah, I could do that,” she said thoughtfully, her eyes turning inward in that look that usually ended in another crazy assignment for him—like the time she’d hidden him in the ceiling above the teachers’ lounge to take candid photos. “I’d be happy to.”