Not Through Loving You by Patricia Preston (2)

Lia looked into Aaron Kendall’s irate blue eyes. She hadn’t expected handsome. She had thought he would be older, bald on top, definitely glasses, reserved with an adoring chubby wife at his side. She had pictured them as a sweet couple who were thrilled by the prospect of having a son and who would give Candace’s unwanted baby the home he deserved.

How could she have been so wrong?

“All right. Tonight.” She needed time to think through this latest wrinkle in her life. “I’m staying at the Lansdale Hotel. There’s a small restaurant in the hotel. We can meet there.”

She glanced at his hand that was still on top of hers. He was the kind of guy who was available because that’s the way he wanted it. Why else would he be single? He was attractive. Tall with the lean, athletic build of a man who was no stranger to physical activity.

The deep crow’s feet on the sides of his eyes revealed that he was in his mid to late thirties. He had a little scar on the side of his chin. She wondered how he got it. She wondered why his wife had left him, and when she met his gaze, she wondered if he realized they were close enough to kiss.

“I’ll see you at eight.” He released her hand and stepped back. The tension rolled off him in waves. “It would be good if your sister joined us as well.”

“Yes, that would be good,” she said before she slipped inside the Jag. She let down the window. “Unfortunately, Candace is dead.”

She left Aaron Kendall standing speechless in his driveway. Four days ago, that news had left her speechless, too, when a scruffy girl named Kelly had shown up on her doorstep with a duffel bag containing Candace’s belongings as well as a box holding her ashes.

According to Kelly, she and Candace, along with a guy named Shane, had lived a nomadic existence for the past few years, moving from place to place over the Southwest, doing odd jobs. Lia assumed they were grifters.

Kelly admitted that she and Candace would sometimes work street corners and make some cash on the side. It was crappy luck when Candace got pregnant by one of those nameless customers.

A few weeks ago, after Shane finished a contract job on a Santa Fe construction site, they had headed for Nashville. Candace told them she had a half-sister who had connections in the music industry and who would probably know a wealthy couple who would like to have the baby. Candace had hoped to make a good score financially off the adoption.

“Shit happens,” Kelly said. “Me, Candy, and Shane hitched a ride to a motel outside this town called Lafayette Falls, and Candy started having labor pains. The baby was coming early, and Candy got pissed off. She said it’d die and not be worth nothing. She said she was gonna dump it in the woods.

“Me and Shane didn’t like that idea at all, and I told her we had to go to the hospital. She didn’t want to go because hospitals suck, but I made her go because I didn’t want no trouble with the law. You know, you can leave a baby at the hospital if you don’t want it, and you don’t get in trouble. By the time we got to the emergency room, the baby was half out. When it came out, it wasn’t breathing. He was like tiny, and I thought it was dead for sure.

“The baby doctor at the hospital said the baby was in bad shape and not breathing good, but he’d do everything he could to save it. Candy told him she didn’t want the baby. Then he said he wanted it, and she was all for that. Anything to get rid of it. Me and Shane were totally relieved.

“The doctor put us up in a nice hotel for a couple of days and gave us some money. He got Candy a lawyer to talk to her about the baby and all the legal stuff. She was like, ‘I just wanna go to Florida. Show me where to sign.’ He gave her copies. They’re in the duffel bag.

“Candy told the doc we needed money to get to Florida, so he let us have a couple of thousand, and we got a rental car and took off. That evening we stopped at a truck stop near the Alabama state line, and we met a dealer selling snowballs. A mix of pure H and coke, he claimed. Me and Shane have been clean for over two years, and Candy had been clean, too, even before she got knocked up.

“But she said having a baby had been a downer, and she wanted to get high. I told her not to do but one hit. Either she didn’t listen or she got a batch of bad stuff. I found her a couple of hours later dead,” Kelly concluded. “I didn’t know what else to do with her ashes and her stuff. I figured you’d want to bury her.”

Lia had sat alone that night with Candace’s ashes. She had barely known her half-sister, much less her mother. Lia was the product of her mother’s first marriage to Nashville music mogul Julian Montgomery, who had been awarded full custody of his three-year-old daughter when his marriage ended and her mother, a failed singer, returned to LA where she eventually remarried a couple of times. During her last marriage, she’d given birth to another daughter.

By the time Candace was a teenager, she was a self-centered hellion, determined to do as she pleased. At her mother’s funeral four years ago, Lia had found out Candace, who had gotten married when she was seventeen, was now divorced and living with friends. Candace hadn’t been at the funeral because none of her late father’s family knew where she was.

Now Candace was dead, and Lia couldn’t say she felt the profound grief that many felt when they lost a sibling. There was a sense of sadness in her heart and some deep-rooted guilt. Candace was the only sister she would ever have, and they’d had no relationship.

There were no big sister–little sister moments. She had maybe a half-dozen photographs of them together, taken during Lia’s awkward weeklong visits to her mother’s home in the summers when she was a teenager. She had hoped to build some kind of relationship with them. But, mostly, her mother and Candace fought constantly. After a couple of summers, Lia hadn’t gone back.

Nevertheless, she regretted she had not been a better sister. She should have tried harder to have a relationship with Candace. She wished she had attempted to find Candace after their mother died, but she had been consumed with her career and her own personal problems.

Candace had been the least of her worries. Lia wasn’t going to let that be true when it came to Candace’s baby. She was going to be the best aunt ever, and she had started that quest early this morning.

She had gone to the waterfall for which the city was named. Surrounded by a forested hillside, the waterfall was a beautiful, serene place, and that is where she scattered Candace’s ashes. She knew it probably wouldn’t have mattered to Candace, but she sang “Amazing Grace” and assured Candace that someday she would bring her son to the waterfall and tell him that his mother’s spirit was here. He could visit her anytime.

Then came the trip to Dr. Aaron Kendall’s home.

At the Lansdale Hotel, she entered the two-room suite she had rented. On the top floor of the new hotel, the executive suite was comprised of a living room and adjoining bedroom, decorated in customary neutral tones of beige and brown with festive accents in red and gold. You got festive when it came to the executive suite as well as other amenities such as a private balcony, a stocked wet bar, fiber-optic internet, and a crystal bowl of chocolates wrapped in gold foil on the coffee table.

Lia eyed the chocolates as she kicked off her heels and changed into a pair of shorts and a tank top. She checked her smartphone that was plugged into a charger beside her laptop on a small, functional desk. Gilda Lentz had left her a text message.

When Lia was five years old, Gilda had bought the house across the street from where Lia and her father lived with her grandmother. The houses all dated back to an era when people lived in big bungalow houses with huge porches, dormer windows, and plenty of shade trees, and everyone knew who their neighbors were.

Lia loved that Gilda dressed like a gypsy and had really cool stuff on her front porch. Ferns, chimes, a little fat guy called a Buddha, and round things with feathers that were dream catchers. When she turned up on Gilda’s porch with a bunch of flowers she had cut from her grandmother’s flower garden, Gilda decided they should have a tea party. That day Lia had begun a lifelong friendship with Gilda, a professor of Eastern religions, New Age mystic, and ageless hippie.

Lia read the message Gilda had left her an hour ago.

Lia called Gilda. “You can forget the rainbows. There are no rainbows here. Trust me,” Lia said. “Nothing here but disaster and the porn version of Mordor.”

“What?”

“I met the doctor,” Lia wailed.

“Already?” Gilda sounded surprised by Lia’s expediency.

“Yeah. After I checked into the hotel, I decided to have a looksee. I put his address in the GPS, and I drove by,” she said. “I was impressed. It’s a beautiful place. Big log-and-stone house, huge yard bordered by woodlands. I could imagine a kid being happy there. Lots of room to play and everything.”

“What happened?”

“I saw a guy outside, and I decided to stop. I was so eager to meet them and introduce myself.” She let out a groan. “It was awful, Gilda. I’m not kidding you. The guy was the doctor’s brother. Typical college kid, joint and all. Then he starts trying to hook up his brother, the doctor, who is—wait for it—divorced and available.”

“Divorced?” Gilda sounded shocked. Lia knew the feeling only too well.

“It gets worse. A stripper answered the front door. A stripper. I swear I’m not kidding. All she had on were patches over her nipples and a thong. I was like, ‘Ohmigod! I’m hallucinating.’

“But she’s really sweet and invites me in. She says they’re having a bachelor party, and she’s part of the entertainment. So we’re walking through the house.” Lia let out a moan. “Gilda, I have been in frat houses that were really disgusting. Unfortunately, the doctor’s house would make those frat houses look like something from Better Homes and Gardens.

“I got a glimpse of the kitchen, and I’m thinking, ‘How gross.’ I can’t imagine what was probably growing in the refrigerator, and there’s fishing stuff and baseball gloves and tools on the floor in the hallway. The place smelled funky, too, if you know what I mean. Like a locker room.”

Gilda sniffed. “Ewww.”

“I haven’t gotten to the good part yet.” Lia flopped on the sofa and let out more frustration. “I was looking at all this junk and thinking, ‘This is not baby proof.’ I’ve never had a baby, and I don’t know anything about babies,” she stressed. “But I know that’s not baby proof. A baby could choke on some of that stuff.

“Then the stripper ushers me into this enormous den with open ceiling beams and a wall of glass windows. It looked sorta like the ski lodge in Aspen we went to last year.”

“That’s sounds nice.”

“Nooo.” Lia ruled out nice. “The furniture had seen its best day, and there were old men sitting around all over the place, holding naked blow-up dolls. I kid you not, and the dolls were life-size and totally creepy, too. It was like the nightmare just got worse and worse.

“They were watching a porn movie on this gigantic TV. Can you imagine what a vagina looks like on a six-foot screen? I’m scarred for life.”

“Dear mother of Zeus,” Gilda gasped. “What about the doctor? What was he like?”

Absently, Lia thought of his blue eyes, the color of the sky at sunset. “He is definitely single by choice, and from the looks of his house, he’s living the bachelor life. Playboy calendar and all.

“Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a party guy and playing with blow-up dolls if that’s your thing. But a party guy adopting a baby? No. Not my nephew. That is so not happening. I’ll have to get a lawyer and find the baby a good home myself.”

“Lia, don’t do anything rash.”

“I’m not going to do anything rash.” She had already done her one rash thing for the day. She’d whipped into the doctor’s driveway on the spur of the moment with less than stellar results.

“The baby’s welfare has to come first. Whatever you do, you have to do what’s best for him,” Gilda advised. “For starters, you need to find out about the baby’s condition and how he’s doing.”

“I’m supposed to meet the doctor here at the hotel restaurant this evening. He demanded that we talk.” Lia reached for one of the chocolates.

“That’s good. The doctor can tell you how the baby is. And you need to take some time to find out about this doctor. Maybe he’s not a party guy. Find out why he wants to adopt the baby and what his plans are.” Gilda was always the fountain of practical thinking, despite being a self-proclaimed mystic. “Perhaps he’s planning on getting married. The stripper said they were having a bachelor party, so someone’s getting married.”

“I don’t think it was for him,” Lia said, feeling a bit rattled by that prospect.

“Perhaps not, but he might have plans to get married. Either way, there’s nothing wrong with being a single parent. You were raised by a single father.”

Lia let out a sigh. That was one reason she wanted Candace’s baby to have a mother. Her mother had never been there to tuck her in, give her a hug, and remind her that she was loved. Sometimes she had needed that.

“I just had things pictured so differently,” she admitted with disappointment. She had pictured the perfect couple who would welcome her as the baby’s aunt.

“See what you can find out about the baby, and I’ll meditate,” Gilda said. “Keep an eye out for those rainbows.”

Lia sighed. She’d have better luck seeing a storm cloud. “I’ll let you know what happens.”

With a couple of hours to kill, Lia stepped onto the small private balcony carrying a pen, her song notebook, and her guitar. The summer breeze carried the scent of freshly cut grass, and there was the distant sound of kids playing in the swimming pool six floors down.

She sat at a metal bistro table and picked out a couple of notes on her guitar. “Is it too late to make all the wrongs right?” She half-sang the words that came to her mind as she thought of her sister. “If I could only change the story of my life. I’d take your hand, and love would lead us to the light.”

* * *

At the hospital, Aaron placed a rocking chair beside John’s incubator. For privacy, he pulled the curtain around the incubator and chair. He took off the navy polo shirt he wore with chinos, and then he removed the plush blue blanket, decorated with yellow suns and bright rainbows, from the top of the incubator and laid it on his shoulder.

He opened the incubator. “Hey, John Aaron. It’s Daddy.” He eased a beanie cap on the tiny, dark-haired baby and lifted him into his arms.

Careful with the monitor wires and tubing, he positioned John against his bare chest. He draped the blanket over his chest and the baby’s body. He sat down in the rocker and pushed back with his foot to start the rocking motion. For the past few days, Aaron had been providing the infant with kangaroo care.

He advocated kangaroo care for preemies. Nearly all babies were able to maintain their body temperature when held against their parents’ bodies, and it was a way to give the preemies the physical contact and nurturing they needed. Because preemies were poked and prodded so much, it was easy for them to assume that human touch was always painful. Aaron wanted John to know that physical touch could also be loving and soothing. After kangaroo care, babies often slept better and seemed happier.

The baby snuggled against Aaron’s chest, absorbing the warmth of his body as they bonded. Aaron had been to see John earlier in the morning, and they had done kangaroo care then. Now, this impromptu session was more for Aaron than it was John. He needed to hold the baby he had come to love.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he told John Aaron as the rocker squeaked on the tile floor. He knew he was trying to reassure himself. “Life threw us a curve ball today, one I never saw coming. One minute you’re up at bat, and you’re feeling great about life. Like you can see the home runs in your future. Then you’re out. Time to go sit on the bench and wonder what the hell happened.”

Amid the beeps and clicks of the monitors surrounding him and the baby, Aaron said, “Your Aunt Lia happened today.” He had spent the last couple of hours pulling himself together, running three miles, drinking coffee, and finding out all he could about the enemy.

“The good thing about having security cameras monitoring the premises is they photograph everything, like the license plate on that red Jag.” Aaron continued to talk to the baby as they rocked. Talking was another bonding technique. John was already showing signs that he recognized Aaron’s deep voice and found it comforting.

“It’s also good when your father was in law enforcement and still has a lot of connections who can run an ID check on the license plate, just in case you’re suspicious of the driver. It’s not so good when you find out the car is licensed to Dallas Peyton.”

The day had been filled with first-rate surprises.

Aaron had recognized the name as belonging to a country music singer, one who had some top-ten hits he liked. Via Wikipedia, he had found out that Dallas Peyton, who had grown up on a ranch in Colorado, hadn’t turned thirty yet but had already amassed a wall of gold records along with collecting awards, including CMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year. According to the press, he had been born with a soulful voice that was as pristine as a mountain lake, and the love of his life was Lia Montgomery.

“Dallas Peyton lucked up when he met your aunt,” Aaron told John. The story read like a fairy tale. Dallas had been working in a stable, singing while he groomed a horse, when Lia Montgomery discovered him. Lia had been born into the music business.

Her great-grandfather had played at the Grand Ole Opry in the thirties and had helped make bluegrass music famous. Next, her grandfather had opened a music studio and production company known as Coldwater Hills Music and had helped found the Nashville sound, a genre of music made popular by singers like Patsy Cline and Eddy Arnold. Coldwater Hills Music was now in the hands of music mogul Julian Montgomery, Lia’s father.

From reading articles and biographies of the Montgomery family, Aaron had pieced together a snapshot of Lia’s life. She was twenty-nine years old, and music had played a huge role in her life. She had started voice, piano, and guitar lessons when she was five, and she now held a degree in music. According to one interview, her true passion was songwriting, and that’s where she had found success alongside Dallas Peyton. She had written the songs that had propelled Dallas to the top of the country music charts.

She had been raised by her father, Julian, who had been in the music business all his life. Her mother was a singer and actress from LA named Tessa Hodges. There had been no mention of Julian Montgomery having any other children besides Lia.

Aaron found a brief bio for Tessa Hodges on a movie industry website. She had moved to Nashville, and her singing career had gone nowhere. She had had a few small guest roles on TV. No movies. It appeared success eluded her, and she eventually left the business to help her husband operate a catering business. Then Aaron found the information he wanted. Tessa had a daughter during that marriage. Candace.

“Lia was telling the truth. She is your aunt,” Aaron told the baby. “She’s your half-aunt. More or less. She said your birth mother was dead.” He was more inclined to believe that now since he had found proof that Lia and Candace were half-sisters.

“It doesn’t change anything, and it’s not going to change anything. She may have some sort of misplaced obligation to you because of her sister, but that’s her problem.”

The dark-haired baby splayed his hand on Aaron’s chest, directly above his heart, and Aaron smiled. “She’ll have to pry you out of my cold, dead hands. Tomorrow we’re going to repeat your chest X-ray and see if your lungs are clear now.” John Aaron’s latest struggle was with pneumonia.

“Dr. Kendall.” John’s primary nurse, Helen Craig, interrupted their visit. A short, stout woman, she was the nursing supervisor in charge of the special-care nursery and the one who had inadvertently named the infant John. At the time of his emergency admission to the nursery, he had no name, so she had called him Baby John Doe. The name Baby John had stuck, and Aaron had decided to keep the name John since everyone in the nursery called the infant Baby John.

“It’s time for his feeding.” Helen had John’s bottle. The baby was now on alternating tube and bottle feedings as his sucking reflex grew stronger.

“I’ll do it.” Aaron took the bottle from Helen. John fussed when Aaron moved him. “I know it’s rough when you’re sleeping and somebody disturbs you.”

Aaron set the baby in his lap with his hand supporting John’s back, neck, and head as he put the nipple in John’s mouth. After a moment’s hesitation, John started to suck vigorously on the nipple, and Aaron smiled. “He’s getting the hang of it. Another couple of days, I think we can go to bottle feedings only.”

“Sounds good to me,” Helen said. “I was talking with the rest of the staff, and we’ve decided to give you a baby shower.”

Aaron looked up. “A baby shower?”

“Sure.” Helen tucked her hands into the pockets of her Mickey Mouse scrubs. “Maybe the week after next. We’re not rushing it, just in case, but everyone wants to buy Baby John something.”

The unwanted baby had generated a lot of sympathy from the nursing staff. “And when Dr. Vance heard about it, she came by and told us to count her in, along with the staff in labor and delivery.”

Aaron grimaced at the thought of a baby shower. What would a guy do at a baby shower? “I appreciate everyone wanting to help out, but it’s not necessary. I can buy him what he needs.”

“We are having the shower, Doc. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.” Helen didn’t raise her voice when she said it, but she cocked her head. Like everyone else on staff, Aaron knew that when Helen cocked her head, she meant business, and that was that, whether you liked it or not.

“All right,” he agreed, as if he had a choice.

At ten minutes to eight, Aaron walked into the lobby of the Lansdale Hotel. The new hotel sported a modern lobby that was done in placid shades of taupe and brown with glass-top tables and odd-shaped art on the walls. He walked toward the curved reception desk.

“Can I help you?” The desk clerk gave him a quick glance.

“Yes. I’m Aaron Kendall, and Lia Montgomery is a guest here. Could you give her room a call and let her know I’m here? She’s expecting me.”

The desk clerk lifted her brows. In the era of text messages, his request had to sound odd.

“I forgot my phone,” he lied quickly.

As if that explained everything, the desk clerk smiled and made the call. “She said she’d be down shortly and to go ahead and get a table.”

“Thanks.” Aaron headed across the lobby to where double doors stood open. They led into a restaurant and lounge area where recessed lighting along the sides of the room provided a gentle haze of light. He followed a male server to a table beside a wide window that offered a view of a small courtyard crowded with ferns, vines, and summer flowers.

While Aaron seated himself at the table covered in a white linen, the server lit the candle on the table before Aaron could tell him that wasn’t necessary. There’s nothing romantic going on at this table tonight.

The server offered Aaron the wine menu.

“Just coffee. Black.” He was absolutely sober, and he was staying that way.

He leaned back in the padded chair, upholstered in dark red, and laced his fingers together. The restaurant was quiet. Only three other tables were taken. A couple of businessmen were looking at their tablets. An older man and woman, dressed in shorts, were eating and sharing travel brochures. To add to the ambiance, soft piano music flowed from overhead speakers. The songs were mostly movie themes.

Aaron stirred restlessly in the chair. He looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock. Come on, let’s get this over with. He glanced impatiently at the entrance just as Lia appeared. For a moment, he didn’t recognize her.

She was no longer dressed in the conservative navy suit and heels she’d been wearing at his house. She wore a strapless white eyelet dress with a full skirt that breezed about her knees and whispered of lazy summer days and a back porch swing. Her long black hair draped over her shoulders, and an antique gold locket hung against the center of her chest.

He decided she personified the image of the country girls in her songs. Unpretentious and old-fashioned but inviting and passionate, too. She definitely owned the look, and as she followed the server to the table, Aaron came to a solid conclusion.

Dallas Peyton was a lucky man.