Emerald Fire (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) (19 page)

Maxine nodded. “Robin and I went there together. That was our fourth home in less than two years. He wasn’t entirely fond of someone with mixed blood living under his roof and had all sorts of ways to show me.”

“What happened?”

She smiled, still remembering absolute shock entering those evil eyes. “Robin caught him in the act one day and stabbed him with his own knife.” Maxine shuddered. “I was covered in his blood when the cops got there. The paramedics took me, too, because I was so bloody and hysterical they couldn’t figure out if I was hurt or not. Thankfully, the doctors examined me thoroughly and found enough physical evidence on me to put Monty in prison for a while.” She tore her gaze from his and looked at the floor in front of her. “The hard part was getting separated from Robin after that. They sent her to a home for girls, and kept me in the foster system. It was a terrifying year before she was able to get out and several more months before she could get me.”

Barry swallowed. Rage and pain boiled inside his chest, choking him. “Maxi … ”

She turned her head back around. “Hey, it’s all a long time ago, now. I had an outlet for all of it. I never even dream about it anymore.” She shook her head. “Well, sometimes I do. The other night I watched a bad scene in a movie at Robin’s. So I did what I do. I drew it out, gave it its own life, and then let it die again.”

“How can it be that easy?”

She laughed and turned to kneel, covering one of his hands with both of her own. “You think any of this was easy? This was twelve years ago. I still …a man trying to touch me –“ She paused and looked down, a flush covering her cheekbones. “Barry, you’re the first man who has ever even kissed me.” She shifted until she faced him, both of them kneeling on the wooden floor, the sketchbook the only thing separating them. Without thinking twice, she took it from his hands and tossed it on the floor next to her. “You’re the only man who has never once made me feel terrified.”

“There’s no way for this to work, Maxine,” he said as her arms went around his neck. She felt his pulse beneath her touch, his heart pounded so fast and hard she could almost hear it. Despite his words, his hands skimmed up her sides and hauled her closer to him.

“Shut up, Barry.” Her legs hooked around his waist, her arms locked behind his thick neck, and she dragged his mouth to hers. For a moment, he remained completely still, fighting it with all of his will. It was a worthless battle and, with a groan of surrender, he wrapped his arms fully around her in return and kissed her back.

Maxine felt everything become right and perfect in the world the second his arms went around her. She sighed and hummed, feeling her love for Barry flow through every nerve ending in her body, making her head reel and her fingertips ache to touch his skin.

The second his lips softened against hers and he deepened the kiss, she heard her phone ringing. Maxine didn’t move, didn’t make a move to stop, so Barry ignored it too. Until his phone rang. From his pocket, the tones of a special ring broke through the fog that enveloped them. He lifted his head and shifted her away from him. “That’s Tony.”

Maxine shook her head as if to clear it and jumped up. “My phone’s ringing, too.” She dashed out of the room while he took the call. “Hey, brother.”

Without preamble, Tony said, “It’s time. St. Mary’s.”

Knowing without asking for clarification, Barry stood. “I’m close by. See you there.”

Maxine came rushing back into the room. “That was Sarah. Robin’s in labor.”

“I know. I’ll drive. My Jeep will do better on these roads.” He held out a hand and she placed her slim one in his. “Let’s go have a baby,” he said, leading her from the room.

AFTER
waiting with nothing to do with her hands for nearly an hour, Maxine begged Derrick to run to her apartment and retrieve her boards and colored pencils. If the baby came between now and eight, she’d have to go to the meeting. If not, someone from her office would need to have them, anyway. She might as well get them ready.

Normally, she’d have everything scanned into the computer for an electronic presentation. Due to the rescheduling, there was no time for that, so they’d go the old fashioned route and present with just her boards. The hard part, getting her ideas down, had been accomplished. Coloring in was mindless, but it kept her hands busy and at least part of her mind occupied.

She sat with Barry and Derrick in the private waiting room connected to the room Robin occupied. Occasionally, Tony came in for a break, and twice Sarah stepped in to give them a brief update, only to go back into the room almost immediately.

Eventually, activity increased through that door, and every so often the sound of Robin’s voice reached them. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she screamed. Maxine’s fingers gripped the pencil tighter and tighter as the hours passed.

She sat on the vinyl couch, supporting a large board on her thighs with her feet propped on the table in front of her. She glanced out of the corner of her eye as Derrick sat on the cushion next to her. “We never talked about it this weekend. How’s school going, Derrick?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Half of it is a complete waste of time. The other half is only mostly a waste of time. I guess it was my mistake telling Tony I wanted to manage hotels. I should have picked something that didn’t require a degree.”

“Nah. He would have sent you anyway. Besides, college was fun.” She threw down the yellow pencil and selected the shade of red she wanted to use to color in the gingham cloth on the emerald green grass. Emerald green was her trademark color. All of her ads had it in there somewhere. “Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t in the nine-to-five world and I still had Art 101 at ten.”

“Hmm. Well, I happen to know that most of what they are teaching is obsolete and I already have practical experience with the few things they teach that are useful. Usually, I feel decades older than the other kids. And, there’s the fact that my idea of a good time isn’t going to O’Malley’s Pub and getting falling down drunk three nights a week. That’s a bit of a problem.”

She laughed. “Yeah? What is your idea of a good time, Derrick?”

He shrugged, a habit brought from his life on the streets that he never shed. “A quiet evening, an intelligent woman, good food, stringed instruments.”

“Well, there’s that fiddle some nights at O’Malley’s.”

His smile looked strained. “How can you sit there and color like that?”

With a smile, she colored in the blue eyes of the little girl happily munching on a chicken leg. “You nervous, Derrick?”

“Honestly? I’m very nervous.”

A piercing scream came through the door and the pencil Maxine held snapped in two. With a sigh, she set the board on the floor by her feet. “Yeah, me too.”

“Why don’t you go in there, Maxi?” Barry asked from the chair across from the couch. For the last hour, he’d pretended to find a two year old parenting magazine highly engrossing, but had actually surreptitiously studied Maxine, noticing how she gradually paled as the minutes stretched into hours, watched the lines around her lips slowly tighten.

She shuddered and shook her head. “No way.”

Another scream came, peppered with some rather ingenious colorful language. Maxine ran her hands through her hair. “Aren’t there drugs or something they can give her?”

“She didn’t want anything. She wanted to do this all natural.” Barry stretched in the little chair and contemplated going for a cup of tea from the coffee shop across the street.

Maxine surged to her feet and paced the small room, avoiding looking through the small window of the door separating her and the rest of her family. “How can you be so calm and collected? Can’t you hear that?”

“I have three sisters, Maxi, with seven kids between them.” His eyes followed her pacing around the room. “You’ll feel better if you would go in.”

She stopped in her tracks. “Um, no I won’t. Trust me.”

Barry laughed. “Why?”

“Because there’s pain in there. And blood. And probably needles. No way. I’m not going. I’ll just wait here until they get everything cleaned up and I’ll never know how the whole process happened.” She visibly jumped with another scream.

He grinned. “You don’t like blood?”

“What a stupid question. How can anyone actually like blood?”

“I’ll have to remember to tone down some of my football stories.”

She heard Tony’s voice this time, but he wasn’t speaking English. She whirled around and looked at Derrick. “What did he say?”

“Maxine, I don’t speak Italian.”

She snapped at him. “Isn’t your last name DiNunzio? How can you not speak Italian?”

Derrick shrugged again. Maxine snarled. Barry’s chuckle distracted her from her retort. She whirled toward him. If he did that one more time she was going to hit him over the head with something.

“You don’t plan on having children, Maxi?” Barry watched as she turned her back on him and paced the length of the room at nearly a jog. At the wall she stopped, tense and drawn. When she came to rest, she resembled still photographs of athletes taken the very instant before they spring into a sprint or set the world record for the longest jump. Her body nearly vibrated with restrained energy. She spun around and paced back to the table.

Barry’s question confronted her. At the notion of children, all of the thoughts she had ever had about children over the course of her life including her own childhood experiences, tumbled through her head as she paced. Her face turned to study the sketches she had brought to life of imaginary families enjoying a summer picnic. She mentally overlaid their generic faces with her face, Barry’s face, and the children became a blend of the two of them. His children. Her children. Their children. Children they would shelter and keep safe; children she could nurse, nurture, and feed; children he could teach, guide, and mentor. Children who would reach noble heights because, while they would understand the pain and horrors the world could bring to their doorstep, they would never personally experience it as long as blood beat through her veins.

Soundlessly, she studied Barry, and her possible future stretched out before her in the space of her glance. Then she remembered that Barry had some paperwork that would ensure none of those children would ever exist. Quietly, she said, “Maybe someday.”

The moment broke when Robin’s voice reached them again. Maxine began pacing again and offered, “But they have technology nowadays that makes all the pain just go away.”

Twenty minutes later, the door opened and three sets of eyes flew to Sarah. The smile on her face helped them all relax just before she spoke. “We have a boy!” she said with a grin.

“A boy. Oh, how fun. Robin wanted a boy.” Maxine rushed to her sister. “What about Robin?”

Sarah laughed. “She’s wonderful. A little hoarse, but fine.” She opened the door again and looked over her shoulder. “In a few minutes it will be safe for you to come in, Maxi. Just let me get some of this cleaned up.”

Maxine looked through the window and caught a glimpse of the baby as another nurse handed him to Robin. She felt a familiar hand on her neck and suddenly felt exhausted. Without a second thought, she leaned against Barry’s side and smiled.