Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey by Charlaine Harris Page B

the magic to make me lost in the act of love; but now he was rougher, more demanding. It was as if he was reasserting his exclusive right to me, daring some cosmic force to just try to separate us. You woman, me man, his body said: and mine gasped, Hoo boy.

Chapter Six
    We started out in the dark early the next morning. We didn’t want anyone to see Rory in the car with us. He was sitting in back with the baby for now, though I planned on switching seats with him later, at least for a little while. Martin would do the driving: He much preferred to be in the driver’s seat. What a shock, right?
    We didn’t even go through a drive-through to get coffee until we’d been on the road an hour.
    Rory was asleep, and after a sip or two I woke up enough to want to talk to Martin.
    “What did you do about Shelby and Angel?” he asked.
    “I left a message on the answering machine at Buds ‘N Blooms,” I said. I inhaled the coffee vapor. “They’ll take her a huge pink bouquet today.” Shelby had called at midnight to tell us that Angel had had a baby girl, a seven-pounder. He had been exhausted and elated; I could never have imagined hearing Shelby sound so grateful.
    “Gift?” Martin asked tentatively, aware he was on shaky ground here.
    “I gave her a baby shower,” I reminded him, noticing a warning edge in my voice. “Mother and I gave her a playpen.”
    “And how is John?”
    “Mother called at ten last night to tell me John would be in the hospital for a day or two more.
    The doctors are sure he had a heart attack, and they’re still talking about treatment options.”
    “How’s he feeling?”
    “Scared.”
    “And Aida?”
    “She’s scared, too, but you would find it hard to tell.”
    Martin was closer to my mother’s age than mine, but it still felt strange to hear him call her by her first name.
    “I know how hard this is on you.” In the lightening gloom, I could tell Martin had turned briefly to look at me, before refocusing on the highway. “I expected you to tell me any minute to take Hayden back up to Ohio myself, that you were staying with your mother.”
    “Martin,” I said, “it never occurred to me to do that.”
    We rode in silence for at least half an hour after that.

    A long car trip in the winter with a baby . . . when you’ve never had a baby . . . the formula for disaster, right?
    The best I can say is, it could’ve been worse. For example, someone could have pulled out my eyelashes one by one.
    We stopped to feed and change the baby . . . well, we stopped so I could feed and change the baby. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the physical work of caring for Hayden that was so exhausting, though that was tough, too. What was most difficult was an unexpected aspect of traveling with a child: the observations of strangers. I hadn’t realized every mother learns to discuss her child with every waitress, restroom customer, and Tom, Dick, and Harry that walks by. The restaurant where we stopped for lunch gave me my first sampling. I carried Hayden in his infant seat, found it was impossible to fit it anywhere on the table or on one chair, and finally discovered that if Martin and Rory sat on one side of a booth, I could put the infant seat and myself on the other side. This did not make Martin happy, but at that point, making Martin happy was low on my priority list.
    The waitress, a plump black woman with gorgeous up-slanted eyes, gave me my first taste of what was to come. “Oh, he so cute!” she said, with apparent sincerity. “How old is he?”
    “A month,” I said, as Rory said, “Two and a half weeks.”
    She laughed as Rory and I glared at each other. “He a big baby,” she said admiringly. “How much was he?”
    I stared at her blankly. Cost-wise?
    “He weighed eight pounds, five ounces,” Rory said firmly.
    So the correct answer was his birth weight. I’d try to remember that. I smiled at Rory.
    “Oh, that’s sweet,” the woman (“Candra” her name tag read)