When Joe arrived back in the apartment on the eleventh floor, Rachel was sitting on the couch in the midst of a fascinated group. She was feeding the baby and retelling with much animation the story of how she found Chrissy.
“What I want to know,” Ivan said loudly when Rachel had finished, “is where did the baby come from?”
“We should not question Christmas miracles, Mr. O’Toole,” Ynez reminded him gently.
“Christmas or no Christmas, babies don’t just happen.
“Well, Ivan, it appears that this one did. Goodness,” said Gladys, glancing at her watch, “I still have to call my son in Seattle. I’d better get going. Rachel, are you sure that’s going to be enough diapers?”
“They should get us through the night.”
“You’re planning to keep the baby here all night?” Joe asked, somewhat disconcerted.
“If the HSS is shut down for the holiday, I may have no choice,” Rachel said. Something in her tone, something raw and revealing, made him shoot her a keen look. In that moment he thought he saw desperation flare behind her eyes and a pain that surprised him. He would have thought that Rachel Hirsch, in her snug T-shirt and wild blond hair and short flippy shorts, didn’t have a care in the world except whether, say, the latest shades of fingernail polish complemented her suntan.
Gladys gathered herself together and patted Rachel’s shoulder. “Well. I’m sure the baby will be safe with you. Good night, Rachel, dear. See you tomorrow.”
“Now, Rachel, you call me, I’m just a few doors away, and you have my number if you need anything at all.” Ynez Garcia spared Rachel a nervous smile and headed for the door.
“Good night, and merry Christmas,” said Ivan. He chucked the baby lightly under the chin before following the others out.
“Whew,” said Rachel dispiritedly after Joe had closed the door behind them. “I’m sure my neighbors mean well, but I’m glad they’ve gone.” With her left hand she brushed her hair back behind her ear. Joe had noticed before that she wore no rings, and there wasn’t even a telltale white band of skin where one had been recently removed.
He took off his tool belt and slung it over a chair back, then sat down opposite Rachel and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “How’s the baby doing?”
“She seems healthy. And she’s eating well. The doll’s bottle works fine.” She grinned over at him, her face lit with pleasure. Her skin had the texture of a sun-burnished apricot, and her lips were luscious and full.
“I don’t know when the HSS people will call back. We’ve got to keep in mind that it’s Christmas Eve, you know.”
“I know,” she said softly. For a moment she looked inexpressibly sad. The expression was a fleeting one. Was she sad because she was alone? He saw no signs of the season in the apartment at all. Most people he knew went overboard with decorations—wreaths made of seashells were big this year, and so were electric candles in windows and Christmas trees trimmed all in one color.
While he was pondering the lack of ornamentation in the apartment and its possible relation to the sadness he sensed in Rachel, she arranged the newly named Chrissy over a clean dish towel spread across her shoulder and began patting her back. Rachel handled the baby with gentle competence as if she were well experienced at motherhood. That was odd, too. Joe didn’t peg Rachel for a mother, since her personality was anything but matronly. He detected a mystery about her. A mystique. He considered himself a down-to-earth kind of guy, but he liked mystique.
Chrissy began to wriggle. “I can’t get her to burp,” Rachel said.
“Give her to me,” Jœ said with assurance born of long experience with all his nieces and nephews. He took the baby from Rachel and propped her on one of his knees in a sitting position, one big hand gently cupping the baby’s chin. With the forefinger of the other hand, he rubbed Chrissy’s delicate little spine up and down, producing a burp after only a few seconds.
Rachel shot him a frankly admiring look. “You know your stuff, Marzinski. You must have a couple of kids of your own.”
He felt slightly abashed. “No. I’m not married,” he said, and the conversation paused a beat until he jumped into the awkward silence and told her about his big family and how all Marzinskis pitched in to help whenever one of them had a new baby.
“You know, it must be nice to have so many sisters,” Rachel said, looking wistful. “I was an only child, and my father died a long time ago. My mother’s in a nursing home and doesn’t even recognize me anymore.”
This, then, could account for the sadness. But before he could reply, Rachel glanced down bemusedly at a damp spot on the front of her shirt. “While you’re holding Chrissy, do you think you could feed her what’s left in the bottle? Before I changed her diaper, I got a little wet. I’d like to put on dry clothes.”
The mention of clothes caused a vision to flit across Joe’s mind of Rachel wearing that pretty satin bra he’d seen in the bedroom. Ho-ho-ho, he thought.
“I don’t mind feeding the baby,” he said. “The guys have finished with the mess in the lobby, and it’s not as if I have to go anywhere.”
Rachel’s eyes held a teasing light. “Don’t you have to put together a swing set or something? For one of those nieces or nephews of yours?”
“I wiggled out of helping my brother-in-law assemble bikes for his twins after Sherman called about the leak from the fourth floor. So, no, I don’t mind bottle duty.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks, Joe. I’ll be right back,” she said, and her bare knee brushed the leg of his jeans as she headed toward the bedroom. He caught a whiff of the fresh fragrance of her skin as she passed. She smelled like rain-drenched flower buds—the heady scent of night-blooming jasmine, maybe.
While she was gone, he allowed himself to imagine Rachel walking toward him carrying great bunches of jasmine, her hair loose and free, and she was wearing—well, she wasn’t wearing much. She wasn’t even wearing the satin bra. As she was bending over to kiss him, the phone rang.
Almost immediately Rachel, the real Rachel, strode out of the bedroom wearing jeans and a loose, yellow shortsleeved sweatshirt so short that it left a band of skin exposed at her midriff. A cordless phone was pressed to her ear, and she looked distressed.
“Oh. Okay. Right” she said. She hung up with a beep.
She stared at Joe blankly. “It was a social worker from HSS. She says she’s the only one on call tonight, but she’ll be over soon to take the baby.” She seemed agitated, on edge. She hadn’t been that way when she’d left to change clothes.
“The HSS people are trained to deal with situations like this one,” he said, thinking that she needed reassurance. “The baby will be fine. They’ll find a foster home with people who will love and care for her, and—”
To his dismay Rachel’s face crumpled, and her brown eyes, her beautiful eyes, filled with tears.
“Rachel?” He couldn’t believe this.
Tears ran down her cheeks, and she buried her face in her hands.
Joe let her cry, not knowing what else to do. His instinct was to go to her and wrap his arms around her, but he intuited that she wouldn’t welcome such familiarity. Besides, he was sure he couldn’t put the baby down without her starting to cry, too. That would mean he’d be trying to calm two weeping females, and after growing up with five sisters, it was a task to which Joe knew himself to be unequal.
Finally he shifted the baby over to one arm, hanging on to both baby and bottle with one hand as he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket. He silently offered the handkerchief to Rachel, and she accepted it and mopped her eyes.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I think I’ve bonded with this baby, believe it or not. You wouldn’t think I’m be so emotional about her, would you?”
“Don’t apologize,” he said sharply. He softened his tone. “What I mean is, you don’t have to hide the way you feel. You seem very real to me because you’re being yourself.”
“Yep, this is the real me, all right.” She didn’t sound happy about it.
“In our big Polish family,” he said, “emotion is standard. For instance, you should hear my mother every time one of us gets on a plane. You’d think we were going to the North Pole instead of Atlanta or Denver. She cries and brings fried chicken to the airport so we won’t have to eat airline food. It’s not good for us, she says. And she’s totally oblivious to the fact that fried chicken isn’t the most healthful of foods itself. What makes this all so funny is that Mom has no firsthand knowledge of airline food because she’s never been on a plane in her life.”
Rachel managed a tentative smile before she sank down on the couch beside him. She looked drained.
“Rachel,” he said carefully. “I don’t mean to minimize what you’re feeling. I only want you to know that you’re entitled to feel it and to express it. Okay?” He was touched that she could feel so much for this baby after so short a time.
She looked rueful and studied his expression for a long moment before she spoke. “All right.” She made a visible effort to pull herself together. “How about letting me hold her again?” she asked in a small voice.
If that was all it would take to make Rachel feel better, then she could hold the baby. She could hold a million babies as far as he was concerned.
“Sure,” he said easily. “I think this kid’s eaten all she wants for the time being.” He carefully massaged Chrissy’s back until she brought up another air bubble, then he checked her diaper and settled the baby in Rachel’s outstretched arms. Chrissy made little smacking motions with her mouth, and he was prepared to pop the pacifier into her if necessary, but the motions subsided and the baby looked around wide-eyed until her eyes fixed on Rachel’s face.
“She’ll probably fall asleep now,” Rachel said. She gazed at the baby with an expression of such devotion that Joe might not have been there at all. Rachel’s long eyelashes curved shadows on her cheek; Joe had never seen such abundant lashes.
Suddenly restless, Joe stood up and walked over to the sliding-glass door leading to the balcony.
“Nice view,” he said.
Rachel glanced up. “I know. I feel really lucky to be here for the season. Mimi won’t be back for another month or so.”
He kept his back to Rachel, but he could see her reflection in the glass.
“Where are you from?” In the mirror of dark glass, he watched her.
“North Florida originally. New Jersey lately,” she said. She left it at that.
He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. Suddenly he remembered something. “I brought a package upstairs. Andy found it near the Nativity scene.”
“Oh, it’s my printer paper. I was going to work tonight. That’s before I found you,” she said to the baby. Her voice changed when she talked to Chrissy: it became gentle and solicitous. She sounded the way his sisters sounded when they talked to their babies.
“You work at home?” Through a door to the left of the kitchen he’d spotted a computer monitor and stacks of papers strewn across a desk.
“I have my own secretarial service. In the past couple of months I’ve developed a steady client list of businessmen who live in Coquina Beach during the winter season and need a personalized typing and faxing service. One of the men I work for has a major report due on the last day of the year, so I’ve been working steadily for the past couple of days.” She looked worried for a moment. “I should be working now,” she said.
“I’ll be glad to look after the baby until the social worker gets here if you need to be doing something else,” Joe offered.
“Thanks, but I really want to hold her until she leaves.” Rachel nuzzled the baby’s cheek. “She’s so adorable. So sweet.”
“Who could leave a child like this, that’s what I’d like to know. If you hadn’t come along, there’s no telling what could have happened.”
“It was a good thing I had to go buy paper,” she said. She paused, and then her eyes widened. “Oh, Joe, I’m not much of a hostess am I? Would you care for a drink? There are drinks at the bar.”
Joe had noticed the well-stocked wet bar in the corner earlier. He shook his head. “Nothing for me.”
He wanted to add, I could be happy looking at you all night. He wanted to say, When the baby’s gone, don’t kick me out, too. But he said nothing. He only watched Rachel, admiring the curve of her high cheekbones and the swanlike elegance of her long neck. He had pegged his initial reaction to Rachel Hirsch as primal, a born instinct. But what had kept his attention after the first few minutes was his sense that she needed someone, that she was lonely. And vulnerable. And she was immensely appealing to him because of that.
She saw that he was staring at her, and he thought she flushed slightly. “Tell you what,” she said. “You deserve a reward for not leaving me in the lurch with the baby. After Chrissy is gone, we’ll see if we can do justice to those brownies I made earlier today. I used Mimi’s recipe, double-chocolate-chunky everything. How does that sound?”
“Like dessert. I didn’t eat tonight. How about if I order out for dinner first?”
She looked taken aback. “I didn’t think to offer you a meal.”
“No matter. I like Chinese food. How about you?” He reached across for the phone and sat down facing her. He didn’t want to position himself where he couldn’t see her.
“I ate earlier.”
“You might want a midnight snack. Do you like moo goo gai pan?” he asked as he dialed Fat Choy’s Chinese Take-Out.
“Oh, I don’t think—” she began, and he thought that maybe she didn’t want him around that late. But then, “I am a little hungry,” she admitted.
“Egg roll?” he asked. She nodded.
“You knew the phone number by heart,” she remarked after he’d hung up.
“I eat a lot of take-out.”
“Don’t you cook?”
“I often get home late from a job and don’t feel like making a mess in the kitchen. Especially since it’s only me.
She treated him to a measuring glance. He wasn’t sure what it meant. “Don’t you have girlfriends?”
He shook his head. “Not lately. The women I meet aren’t usually willing to wait around while I rescue some condo’s swimming-pool pump or track down the only repairman in town who knows how to fix a certain kind of card-system entry gate.”
“You must have a terrific business,” she said.
He warmed to this topic. “It’s growing,” he said. “I have three offices now along the coast.”
“So many! How’d you get into this line of work?”
“I started from scratch when I realized that these big buildings on the beach had a real need for someone they could call when things break, as they inevitably do. We handle plumbing failures like the one tonight as well as electrical problems and air-conditioning malfunctions and, well, almost anything that can go wrong. Usually it happens on holidays. Like Christmas Eve.” He didn’t tell her that he planned to be a millionaire before he was forty. And would be, barring unforeseen circumstances.
“Wouldn’t you rather be with your family tonight?” she asked. He couldn’t help noticing that she had a way of cocking her head to one side when she listened, her eyes fixed on his with an intensity that signified total interest. It made him want to talk to her for a long time, to bask in her approval.
“I’m not leaving until after the baby’s gone.” And hopefully much later, he added to himself.
“But—”
“There’ll be time for my family later.”
Rachel caught her lower lip between her teeth, clearly unsure what to make of this. Of him. At that moment the baby stirred in her arms, restlessly tossing her head from side to side. “Is anything wrong, little Chrissy?” Looking grateful for the distraction, Rachel pressed her lips to the fuzz on top of the baby’s head.
“You and the baby,” Joe said suddenly. “You’re a lovely picture. You look like a composite of every Madonna and child painting I’ve ever seen.”
Rachel’s eyes, startled now, focused on him. They held his for an endless moment before she glanced away in confusion. She didn’t seem to know what to say.
Joe was afraid he’d made her uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, you’re beautiful when you look at the baby the way you do.”
Rachel started to shake her head in denial.
“No, I mean it,” he said. “If I’ve offended you in some way—” Perhaps he was pushing too hard.
She flushed, whether with pleasure or not he wasn’t sure. “I don’t hear many compliments,” she said. Her features seemed softly etched in the dim light from the lamp on the other side of the room.
“I can’t imagine why not.”
“Are you always this nice?”
He hadn’t expected a blunt question. He smiled at her. “Am I nice?” he said.
“Very.”
“Let’s just say I’m glad to help.” Their eyes held for a long moment of understanding, and Joe thought, Where did that come from? And he knew that it didn’t matter why they could reach out to each other in these unusual circumstances. It only mattered that they had.
The delivery girl from Fat Choy’s brought the food, and Rachel refused to put the baby down even to eat. She held Chrissy carefully in her lap and brandished a plate off to one side so that moo goo gai pan wouldn’t fall on the sleeping child, and when she couldn’t open the little packet of hot mustard for her egg roll because her hands were full, Joe opened it for her.
“This is good,” she said. “Really good.”
“I’m glad to see you chowing down.”
“I haven’t had Chinese food in a long time. I didn’t know the best place to get it here.”
“Fat Choy’s has the best take-out, but if you want a restaurant, then we should go to the Oriental Garden,” he said without thinking. He realized too late that this implied a continuing relationship with her, but she had given him no signal that she would want to see him again.
She glanced at her watch. “I wonder what happened to that social worker,” she said.
Chrissy opened her eyes.
“There, there,” Rachel said in that solicitous tone of hers. “We’re not trying to get rid of you. No, we’re not. We’re not, I promise.”
Chrissy sighed, brought her knees up, screwed up her face and began to wail.
“Shh,” Rachel said. “Hush now.” She offered the pacifier, but the baby spit it out.
Joe bent over them. “Could she be hungry again?”
“She only ate an hour ago.”
“Maybe she needs water,” Joe said.
“Would you mind getting it?”
Joe went into the kitchen and after a while came back with a bottleful of water, which they tried to give to the still-screaming infant, who only thrashed her head back and forth and screamed with even more gusto.
“Maybe she needs to lie on her stomach,” said Rachel, looking worried. She eased the baby onto her lap, stomach down, but the baby cried harder than ever.
“She must have colic,” Joe said bleakly. Not that he thought Rachel could hear, the baby had a marvelous set of vocal chords that seemed to be stuck on high volume.
“I’d better try calling the HSS people again,” Joe muttered. He picked up the phone and stalked into the bedroom. If he hadn’t closed the door, he wouldn’t have been able to hear the number on the other end ringing.
He was forced to listen to HSS’s full recorded announcement in order to leave a message of his own.
“This is Joe Marzinski again,” he bellowed into the recorder without much patience. “I called earlier. We’ve still got the baby we found in the manger, and we’re waiting for the social worker who said she’d come and get her. The baby is crying.” He opened the door to the living room and held the phone out so that the cries would be recorded. “Hear that? The baby is crying! hardy A thought occurred to him. “You can hear the baby crying, right? So you know this isn’t a sick joke. Uh, goodbye.” He hung up, wishing that social worker would show up now. Or a minute ago. Or a half hour ago.
“Any luck with the HSS?” Rachel asked when he returned.
“The recorded message again.”
They exchanged a look of pure futility.
“Well, Rachel, do you happen to know what we need to do for colic?” He balanced his hands on his hips and stood looking down at the two of them, Rachel and the baby. The neckline of Rachel’s shirt had slipped sideways, revealing a seductive bit of cleavage. He realized with a start that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“I always—” Rachel began, then clamped her lips together. It was a long moment before she spoke again. “In Mimi’s linen closet is a hot water bottle. We could try that.”
Joe was barely paying attention to what she was saying. No bra. Why wasn’t she wearing one? Maybe she hadn’t had time to put one on when the phone rang earlier. He imagined her shrugging into the sweatshirt, yanking it down over her bare breasts as she grabbed the phone. He was tantalized by the thought of her loose breasts shifting under the fabric, rubbing against the soft nap of the sweatshirt.
“The linen closet is the door next to the bathroom,” Rachel said.
Linen closet. Bathroom. Hot water bottle. Right. Joe hurried to get the hot water bottle as he willed his anatomy to calm down.
Joe had just filled the hot water bottle with water from the bathroom sink when Rachel called, over the sound of the baby’s wails, “I love holding her, but maybe Chrissy would be more comfortable in a crib. I wish we had one.”
Joe looked around the apartment, eager for something, anything to do. There was nothing that could be pressed into service as a baby crib. “How about a dresser drawer?” he asked with sudden inspiration.
Rachel waved him toward the bedroom, with which he was becoming very familiar. Although not in the way he would like, he thought to himself.
“Will any drawer do?” he called toward the living room, but Rachel was cooing to the baby and the baby was still screaming, so in the end he pulled out the top drawer of the dresser and dumped everything in it on the floor. Out rolled skimpy bikini panties in rainbow colors and bras to match and panty hose in unopened packages and a fragrant sachet packet. Jasmine. Just as he’d thought.
A folded blanket from the closet made a cushion for the bottom of the drawer, and he grabbed a pillowcase out of the linen closet for a sheet. He would have liked to add something waterproof between sheet and blanket, but he couldn’t find anything that would do, so he carried the drawer out into the living room where Rachel was now pacing back and forth with the squalling child draped over her shoulder. He set the hot water bottle on top of the makeshift mattress.
Together they eased the baby onto the hot water bottle, and she settled down to an occasional whimper. Joe brought an afghan from the foot of the bed to cover her, but it turned out to be too big. Rachel produced a crocheted shawl of Mimi’s and tucked it around the now-sleeping infant. They were sharing a smile of triumph when the phone rang.
“Get that, will you, Joe?” Rachel said.
He clicked the phone on and crooked it between his neck and shoulder as he smoothed the shawl down over the baby’s feet. He listened while the person on the other end talked.
“Oh. I see,” he said, his hopes for a romantic evening fading.
Rachel glanced up at him as he hung up. One hand rested on the baby’s back, and the other was gathering her hair back from her face, exposing the smooth and delectable line of her jaw.
“Who was it, Joe?”
“A police officer. She says that the only social worker on duty has been in an automobile accident and has been taken to the hospital emergency room. They don’t think it’s a serious injury, but she won’t be here tonight. Police headquarters is going to send a policeman over to talk to you about how you found the baby as soon as they get a chance. They’ll probably take the child into custody.” He glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes before midnight.
“Well,” he said, a little too heavy on the irony. “Merry Christmas, Rachel.”
“Merry Christmas,” she replied faintly. But her voice held a sense of wonder, and there was nothing ironic in the way she said the words at all.