Mom In Waiting. Maureen Child

rivaled a church organ. And, since moving in six months ago, she hadn’t had time to have it replaced.

      She’d been too busy establishing her at-home business and then getting herself in shape for what promised to be a very interesting high school reunion. With any luck.

      Half stumbling down the stairs, Tracy muttered curses as behind her hand, her eyeball watered and itched. She ached to rub it but was afraid she’d send that new lens into what was left of her brain.

      The bell pealed again and the reverberations had hardly faded away before she opened the door and came face-to-face with a big part of her past.

      He still looked blurry.

      But her memory filled in the blanks and her stomach did a quick series of twists and flips. Just like the old days.

      Oh, this was going to be a long road trip.

      “Tracy?”

      “Hi,” she said and winced at the squeaking sound coming out of her mouth instead of her normal voice. Lord, his voice still had the power to rumble along her spine with mind-numbing speed. Tracy swallowed hard to dislodge the sudden lump in her throat, but didn’t try to speak again just yet. Instead, she stepped back and waved him inside with her free hand as she tried to remind herself she was not fourteen anymore. That shy, gawky teenager had grown into a widely sought-after computer wizard.

      So why, she wondered, could she almost feel the tin wires of her braces digging into her lips? “Come on in,” she finally managed to say.

      Rick Bennet had not been looking forward to this. He’d only agreed to give Tracy a ride as a favor to Meg, his high-school girlfriend. But the Tracy he remembered was nothing like the woman standing in front of him now.

      In his memory, she was a shy, slightly overweight, fingernail-chewing, ponytail-wearing irritant. The younger sister he’d had to put up with every time he’d arrived at the Hall house to see Meg.

      The girl who used to walk past his parents’ house a dozen times a day. The girl who had trailed after him like a smaller shadow.

      Obviously though, times—and Tracy—had changed.

      He experienced a quick, hot jab of pure male admiration. It had been a long time since a woman had so instantly affected him. A flash of desire spurted into life as his gaze swept over her.

      Her short blond hair was a fluffy tousle of curls that made him want to reach out and touch them, to test their softness against his skin. She wore a simple yellow blouse tucked into a calf-length, filmy looking summer skirt and small strappy sandals on her dainty feet. Pale pink nail polish decorated her toes, and with surprise he noted her tiny silver toe ring. Long, abstract silver drops hung from her earlobes, glinting in the afternoon sunlight. A honey-golden tan accentuated her blond hair and blue eyes, making her look like a magazine ad for youthful living in Southern California.

      She made his mouth water. And though his brain had a hard time believing this desirable creature was really Tracy Hall...his body didn’t care.

      “Wow,” he muttered. “You look great,” he said, yet noted the hand she kept clamped over one eye and the fact that she was squinting with her other eye.

      “Yeah,” she grumbled just under her breath. “For a one-eyed pirate princess.”

      “Something wrong?”

      “No,” she said, as he stepped past her into the entry hall. “It’s just these darn contacts.”

      Well, that explained the absence of the thick, wirerimmed glasses he’d recalled. But what explained the rest of her transformation? he wondered silently. Like a butterfly from a little caterpillar, Tracy Hall had become a stunner.

      His gaze followed her as she shut the door and turned to face him.

      “Look,” she said, keeping her hand firmly clasped over her eye. “Why don’t you go into the living room while I run upstairs and see if I can get this darn thing out without blinding myself?”

      Grabbing a fistful of skirt, she hiked the hem up to her knees and raced up the steps leading to the second story. Rick watched her, idly admiring the flash of her legs and the sweet curve of her behind.

      That thought caught him up short. Tracy’s behind? Little Tracy? Bookworm and math whiz? “Whoa,” he told himself and rubbed the back of his neck. Shaking his head at this unexpected development, Rick turned and walked toward the doorway opening into the living room.

      Another surprise.

      He didn’t know why, but he hadn’t imagined Tracy living in such quiet elegance. Twin white sofas, their stark surfaces brightened with boldly colored throw pillows, sat facing each other. A low-slung coffee table that looked like a polished redwood stump lay between them and held a scattering of magazines neatly fanned out on its surface. A couple of overstuffed chairs, small decorator tables and reading lamps made up the rest of the furniture in the large, airy room. Two of the four walls were completely covered by bookcases. Another wall boasted floor-toceiling windows with a view of the ocean in the distance. On the last wall was a fireplace with a basket of wood sitting on its hearth. The wide plank floors gleamed in the splash of sunlight streaming through the uncurtained windows.

      Just one surprise after another. When he had agreed to give Tracy a ride home to Oregon, he’d somehow expected to find her in a small apartment, locked away from the world. Stupid, he supposed, to assume that a grown woman would be much the same as she had been at fourteen. Just because she had spent most of her time then hidden behind the pages of a book didn’t mean the same would hold true now.

      He couldn’t help wondering if her personality had changed as thoroughly as her appearance.

      

      Upstairs, Tracy raced into her bedroom, clipped her hip on the edge of her dresser and ran into the bathroom, wincing at the low throb of pain. Another bruise soon, she thought. Honestly, she was black and blue enough to convince anyone that she was being abused regularly.

      But in her own defense, she wasn’t really clumsy. She was simply always rushing, thinking ahead to what her next move would be to the extent that she didn’t pay attention to what she was doing at the moment.

      And right now, she was thinking about the next three days spent in a car—and motels—with Rick Bennet.

      Setting both palms down flat on the edge of the sink, she leaned forward and dragged several deep breaths into lungs that felt starved for air. “Jeeezzz, why’d he have to be so good looking still? Why couldn’t he have developed a hunch back, adult acne and bad teeth?”

      The butterflies in her stomach had butterflies of their own. One look at him and her heartbeat had quickened until she wouldn’t have been surprised to see it fly right out of her chest.

      Just imagine what her reaction might have been if he’d arrived wearing his Marine uniform. Ooohh... the thought of that had her toes curling tightly into her new sandals.

      What was it about Rick Bennet that got to her? Even as a kid, Tracy had watched his every move and daydreamed about him breaking up with her sister, Meg, in favor of her. She’d gone to sleep every night kissing a pillow, pretending it was him. She’d filled dozens of diaries detailing every word he ever said to her, which wasn’t difficult since most of their conversations had been limited to... “Hi, Rick,” from her and “Hey kid, where’s Meg?” from him.

      Not much, true, but enough to warm every corner of a nerdy fourteen-year-old girl’s heart.

      And now...he had actually paid her a compliment. Obviously, the professional makeover she’d sprung for had been worth every penny.

      She lifted her head, stared into the mirror and groaned. “Oh, yeah. You’re a real beauty, you are.”

      Prying open her eyelid, she fumbled for a minute or two, then finally managed to adjust the annoying contact lens.

      Studying her reflection, she had to wonder if this was worth all the trouble.