"I don't know. I prefer showers."

She chuckled. "Poor lady friend. A gift which is never used."

"She and I went our separate ways shortly after that. I began to wonder what sort of woman would think that I was the bubble bath type."

She smiled broadly. "You are making this up, just to make me laugh."

"Would I do that?" I asked.

"Only if you thought that there was a s...o...b..ll's chance of getting by with it. What would you have done if I had wanted the bath salts?"

"Look in the linen closet. There are really some there. Still in the sealed packages. Everything was true except why the lady and I parted company."

She looked at me curiously. "Why? Forget it, I have no right to ask. Forgive me."

"No problem. She threw me over for another man." "She must have been blind, deaf, and stupid. I can't imagine any woman stupid enough to let you get away from her," Al replied. "You are well rid of her. You deserve a woman who can appreciate all of your fine qualities." If she had known how much her words had meant to me. But, she didn't have a clue. "Alicia, you are good for my ego." "As though your ego needed helping. You have to be one of the most self-a.s.sured men whom I have ever met." "The feeling is quite mutual, woman." "I don't feel very self-a.s.sured, lately," Al replied, looking away from me. "In fact, I feel about as far in the opposite direction as possible. I'm so scared most of the time that I can hardly think straight. I don't liked feeling this way."

"But, you carry on, anyway. That's courage."

"I've never been one to sit around and feel sorry for myself." She made a disgusted sound from the back of her throat. "However, I am seriously considering changing that."

I laughed at the dryness of her words. "Never. Never."

"Probably not."

"Back to the matter of your bath. There should be plenty of clean towels and such.

The timer for the whirlpool jets is on the north wall. Don't give yourself anything less than ten minutes. You need it. But, don't stay in any longer than fifteen, or you won't be able to crawl out of the water."

"Thank you, Phil."

"I'll leave a large brandy on your night stand. Drink it, then go to sleep. I'll wake you

at seven. Now, go on."

She smiled at me. "Somehow, I never imagined you playing mother hen."

"I almost hate to ask how you had imagined me."

"Good. I'd hate to have to tell you."

"That bad, eh?"

"Let's just say that it wasn't as the bubble bath type."

"And you aren't going to elaborate further?"

Alicia shrugged. "I can't think of any reason that I should." Then she added suddenly, "Why are you opening your house to me, Phil?" "Geoff is my best friend. You are his woman. He asked for this favor. Why are you here?"

"Because I'm scared, Phil. I'm so scared. I hate feeling this way. I just hate it."

"I can understand that."

"Could we just sit and talk for a few minutes. I really don't want to be alone, just now."

"You need to relax. I'm worried about you," I confessed.

Alicia sighed. "Can we sit and talk?"

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Anything, nothing. I don't care. I just don't want to be alone right now. Please. I don't think that I could face being alone in a small room right now."

I nodded. "Okay. Let's go into the living room."

"Sounds good to me."

I poured her a brandy. She had kicked off her shoes and was sitting on the sofa with her legs curled up beneath her.

"Here."

"You aren't having anything?"

"No. I need to keep my wits about me."

"But you would like to see me witless?" Alicia asked, with a smile, as she took the snifter from me. She sat the gla.s.s down on the end table without sipping it.

"Maybe. Maybe I would like to see a bit more of the real Al. She fascinates me. I can see now why Geoff was so taken with you. Now, drink up."

"No. I really shouldn't."

"I know that you don't drink, much, Al. But, make an exception."

"No. It isn't good for the baby."

I did a double take. "Baby?"

Alicia blushed brightly. "We weren't going to say anything about that to anyone yet.

It's early days, yet. In fact, we just found out for sure before we went up to Chicago."

"You are sure that you are pregnant?"

"I can tell you almost to the hour when this child was conceived. The pregnancy has been confirmed by both a serum pregnancy test and an ultrasound."

"How pregnant are you?"

"Less than a month."

"Are you happy about it?"

"Phil," she said, "I'm thirty-seven-years-old. Do you think that I would be marrying at this stage of my life, if babies weren't a primary concern? I may only have a couple of years, if that long, left to have a child. The biological clock is ticking away, and it's ticking rather loudly. Yes, I am very happy about this baby. I am ecstatic about the baby.

"What?" Al demanded breaking the uneasy silence that had fallen following her statement.

"Is it Geoff's?"

I immediately regretted the question. My sister, Jan, had been a diabetic. Geoff had undergone a vasectomy, after Jan had agreed to marry him, because it would have been dangerous for her to ever have a child.

Al looked at me for a long moment as she visibly fought her growing indignation. "That was out of line," she said harshly. "What makes you think that it isn't Geoff's baby? Have I ever given you any indication that I wasn't faithful to Geoff?"

"You're right. It was out of line. I'm sorry."

"You ought to be!"

"I never apologize twice."

"Something's bothering you, if you could even ask that question. What is it?"

"Don't worry about it."

"How can I not worry about it? Something has shaken you. Don't you think that I would be a good mother?" Al demanded of me.

"Do you love Geoff, Alicia?"

"He's the man whom I am to marry. That should say everything."

"It should. Does it?"

She looked away from me for a minute. "Geoff is a good man. He's stable, well respected, good looking, and funny. He cares about me. He's more than capable of giving our children a strong father figure."

"It sounds like you are trying to talk yourself into loving him."

She blanched. "You're way out of line here, Philip."

"But, are you in love with him, Alicia?"

I hadn't thought that she could be any whiter than she had been a moment before, but I had been wrong. Al's face resembled nothing more than a just bleached white cotton sheet. I thought that she was going to be sick, faint, or something equally drastic. There were only two times that I had ever seen a woman turn that particular shade of white. The first time, the woman had gone into cardiac arrest. The second time, the woman had picked up a knife and had attacked her husband. I honestly didn't know what to expect from Al.

Slowly, the color came back to her face.

"Geoff is my best friend, Al. I love him as though he were my own brother. In fact, he was supposed to have been my brother-in-law. He would have been my brother-in-law, except that Jan died less than a week before their wedding. I would hate to see you and he walk into a marriage which would make both of you miserable."

Al sighed.

I lightly touched her face. "I'm sorry, Al. You've been going through all this stress. You don't need me giving you more problems to think about, especially now, in your condition."

Al nodded negatively as she raised her hand to mine. "No. I only want honesty from people. Thank you for caring enough to share your fears with me. That means a good deal. Geoff and I will be very happy together. Thank you for loving him enough to speak your mind."

"I love you, too, Al. You are very special to me, not only because of how Geoff feels about you. I don't want to see you making a mistake which will ruin your life."

Al sighed. "I don't want to be making a mistake either. But, I don't see this marriage as a mistake. In fact, it may be the best thing that I have ever done."

"You just relax a little. I'll go make a pot of herb tea for you. You've probably given up caffeine, too, right."

"Not entirely. Coffee smells rank, these days, as I discovered recently."

"I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Want some help?"

"No. You just rest."

I stood in my kitchen. I rinsed the teapot with hot water, then filled it from the tap of "instant" hot water I had installed because I hated to wait for hot water to boil. I added two bags of a tea that Tommy Liguori down at the health food store had recommended as a mild sedative. Then I added a generous measure of very good vodka. She needed to unwind. Surely a little alcohol wouldn't harm anything? Would it? Oh, I knew the talk about fetal alcohol syndrome. But surely one drink wouldn't harm anything?

"I can remember sneaking down the stairs on long winter nights when I was very young to spy on my parents. Daddy would always pour them each a brandy. Then they'd sit on the floor in front of the fireplace. Most of the time, Mom would sit and Daddy would lie with his head in her lap. She would stroke his blond hair and they would talk softly with one another. I never could hear the conversation, but I didn't need to. It was enough that I could see how much they cared about each other," she said as she brought the old image to her mind.

I smiled at her. This side of Al was something that I had never seen. "Where did you grow up?"

"Lake Forest, until I was six. Then here and there around the Chicago area. After my parents died."

"You lost your parents when you were six? That's tough."

"It felt that way at the time. Looking back on it, I had a good series of foster homes. No one abused me. I was always clean, well fed, and cared for." Then she added with a large measure of self-derision in her voice, "But I wouldn't let too many people close to me. I guess that I was good at building walls even back then."

"How many foster homes?"

"In the twelve years between my parent's deaths and my eighteenth birthday, I was in seventeen foster homes."

"Seventeen?"

"I was a bit of a terror, I'm afraid," Al confessed with remembered pain and mischief in her eyes.

"So what happened to Alicia the Imp?"

"She grew up. The imp seldom appears these days. Because I've learned to suppress my rage, to channel it, to master it," Al said starkly. "It doesn't control me, any longer. There was a time when the rage did control me. But, I've grown past that."

"Rage?" She always picked her words carefully. Rage wasn't a term that she would have used lightly. "I can't even envision you enraged."