Lost Cause. Janice Johnson Kay
limb?”
“It’s not very far to Mountlake Terrace.”
“Wear the helmet anyway. You’ll feel safer.” He unhooked it from the handlebar, brushed her hair back from her face and settled the helmet on her head. She clutched her briefcase to her bosom and stood like a child being dressed as he matter-of-factly fastened the chin strap and then stepped back. “You may have to hike your skirt a little to get on.”
A dignified, professional woman wouldn’t be nodding obediently and letting him stow her briefcase in a leather bag that was strapped to the motorcycle carriage. He climbed on and watched as she lifted her snug skirt, first a little, then more. Cheeks hot, she finally freed her leg enough to get on with all the grace of a newborn colt trying to stand for the first time.
“Hold on,” he said, and started the engine with a roar that made her jump.
Her first grip at his waist was tentative, but as the motorcycle started to move, she grabbed hold tight while still trying to keep some distance between them. By the time he reached freeway speed, she was plastered to his back, her cheek pressed to him and her arms locked around him.
She’d no sooner dared open her eyes than the bike headed onto the exit and began to slow.
At a red light, she loosened her grip and pulled back.
“Doing okay?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Fine,” Rebecca said, as if she rode one of these every day instead of never. Her mother would have a heart attack if she could see her.
“Good. Hold on,” he warned, as the light changed.
She grabbed tight again as he accelerated. For a moment they proceeded sedately, but then he swerved and shot through a gap that seemed frighteningly small to her to pass the car in front of them.
“Where are we going?” he shouted.
She yelled directions at the back of his head, and he nodded. Half a dozen turns, and he drove slowly down a winding street lined with modest but well-cared-for houses. Lawns were neat, and jack-o’-lanterns, scarecrows and dried cornstalks decorated doorsteps. The Coopers didn’t make a great deal of money, she knew; the husband drove a bus for Snohomish County Transit and the wife was a hairdresser. Neither was especially articulate, but she’d liked their answers on the questionnaire in the file. They sounded like good people.
Fortunately, she’d memorized the street address, and he pulled to a stop on the gravel strip in front of a white-painted rail fence. He turned the engine off.
“Safe and sound.”
She felt the rumble of his words in her hands, locked around him. She let go and straightened. “Thank you. This was really nice of you….”
He turned, eyes narrowed and the skin crinkled at the corners in what she thought was a smile of sorts. “Want me to give you a lift back to the office or home, too?”
In the act of lifting the helmet off, she stared at him. “You’d wait for me?”
“Come back,” he corrected. “I have a cell phone. You can call.”
“I can get a taxi.”
His voice was sexy, too, husky and tempting. “But they’re not nearly as much fun.”
No. They weren’t.
“You’re serious?”
“I don’t have anything better to do,” he pointed out. “I can’t do much for Suzanne at her knitting shop.”
A tiny giggle rose in her throat at the image of him sitting with a circle of ladies, demonstrating the purl stitch. “No, I guess you can’t.”
“So, what do you say?” One brow rose. Of course he was the kind of man who actually could lift one eyebrow.
“If you mean it,” she said weakly.
He took the helmet from her. “Got something to write with? I’ll give you my number.”
“Oh. Okay.” Horribly conscious of him watching, she scrambled off the bike and then tugged down the hem of her skirt before she pulled her briefcase and purse from the leather bag. When she found a pad of paper, he scribbled the number in dark, slashing lines. “I usually spend at least a couple of hours,” she warned.
“No problem.” His mouth crooked. “You might want to brush your hair.”
Her hand went to her head in instant reaction, and he grinned, then put the helmet on his own head and started the motorcycle, raised a hand as if to say, See ya, and took off with a small spurt of gravel.
She was left gaping after him, stunned by that smile. She’d been wrong. Oh, so wrong. His smile was devastating. Cocky and yet also somehow sweet.
Which was a very strange word to use about a man who looked as tough and self-sufficient as he did.
Shaking her head, Rebecca walked to the front door and rang.
The Coopers were as nice as she’d anticipated, accepting with apparent equanimity her explanation of a car breakdown and a chance ride to explain windblown hair. Beth Cooper showed Rebecca to the bathroom where she discovered her skirt had swiveled so that the zipper was to one side instead of in back where it belonged. She turned it, smoothed wrinkles without much success and brushed her hair, then returned to the living room.
Beth smiled. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“I would love coffee,” she agreed, with more fervency than was probably appropriate.
Her hostess laughed and went to get it, leaving Rebecca to chat with Ronald Cooper.
In the next couple of hours, she coaxed them to talk about their own childhoods, their parents and the family gatherings that Beth admitted had begun to depress her these last five years as they struggled to get pregnant and her two sisters had three kids each.
“Mary Ellen once said just thinking about getting pregnant is dangerous for her.”
Her husband rumbled.
“She didn’t mean to be tactless,” Beth said hastily. “But it stung. Because I’m the one with the problem.”
Ronald laid his hand over hers.
Rebecca knew from their file that Beth couldn’t carry a baby to term, so in vitro fertilization wasn’t an answer for them. “Did you consider finding a surrogate mother?” she asked. “Perhaps one of your sisters?”
“They haven’t offered,” Beth said.
Her husband said firmly, “I don’t care that much about having a son who is mine. You know? We just want a child.”
“Do you have a preference as to gender?” When they didn’t answer immediately, she amended, “A girl or a boy?”
Their heads shook in unison. Neither cared. Yes, they’d consider a child of mixed race, although they guessed their druthers were for a Caucasian baby just so he or she didn’t stand out at those family gatherings and so people weren’t always thinking, Oh, she must be adopted, when they saw the Coopers together.
The agency’s policy was to, whenever possible, place babies with parents of their dominant race. It took unusually committed parents to provide a child of another race some sense of identity with his biological roots. In the 1970s, many black children had been placed with white parents, but in the decades since, there had been a shift in attitude. In any case, too few babies of any race were available for adoption to satisfy the hunger of childless couples. Many, frustrated, chose to go overseas.
Beth’s parents had been sterner than Ronald’s, but the couple agreed on how they wanted to raise their children.
“We’ve spent years shaking our heads and saying we wouldn’t say that or do that, so confident we’d be having kids when we were ready,” Beth confessed. “There’s never