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Vanessa signs with a flourish and doesn’t argue about the salary. We both know it’s only a matter of time before it’s all going into one combined household. I stand there another second just to look at her, then make myself leave before the crew comes to see what I’m up to.

The rest of the morning behaves. It's the afternoon that gets me.

Marcus says something on his way past the office, I don't catch the actual words, only her laugh coming out the open door and all the way across the yard, loud and completely unguarded. I put the grinder down and stand there, caught in the sound of her laughter.

That laugh's been happening for ten days and my body still hasn't built up any tolerance to it. Hearing it makes me feel absurdly, stupidly happy and aroused. Heat drops straight down through me, and behind my eyes there's an image I've been carrying all week with no plans to put down.

Her in my kitchen this past Sunday, wearing that ancient flannel and nothing else, bare legs, hair a wreck, stealing bacon out of the pan. I want it again. Tonight. I want to unbutton that shirt one button at a time and have her on the kitchen table while our dinner burns. I spend a genuinely embarrassing stretch of the afternoon planning it out in exact order of operations before I get my head back into the fuel system where it belongs.

Nobody warns you that being happy is a productivity problem. More than a decade of running this yard on misery, efficient as a Swiss watch. Two weeks of being with her, and I'm standing around holding a grinder like I've never seen one.

She finds me at closing, after the crew's gone. I know something's different before she says a word, because she's got both hands wrapped around her elbows and the too-bright voice is back for a guest appearance.

"So," she says. "I don't want you to read anything into this, because it's probably the novelty of the best two weeks of my life, and it's genuinely too soon for a test to mean much."

Everything in me goes very still.

"But I'm late. Three days now."

The wrench I’m holding ends up on the bench. I don't remember putting it there. There's a roaring in me that isn't panic, isn't anywhere near panic, has never met panic, and I take her face in both hands because it's the only thing I trust myself to hold right now.

"Tomorrow morning," I say. "The pharmacy in town opens at eight. We'll be there at seven fifty-five."

"It might be nothing."

"It might be everything."

Her eyes fill and she gives me the most achingly beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. "Either way, you're coming over for dinner. I'm cooking. You can sit in my kitchen and be late at me. Then I’m going to make love to you at least twice. If this is nothing, we’ll keep practicing to turn it into something."

The pharmacy's got exactly one customer at eight on a Saturday morning, and it isn't her, because she took one look at the door and couldn't make her legs do it. So I went in alone and came out with three tests, three different brands, ignoring the questioning look Maureen behind the cash register was giving me. I could see she was dying to ask but too wary of my temper. Being a curmudgeonly bastard comes in handy during times like this.

Now the bag is sitting in Vanessa’s lap and neither of us are talking.

"Why three?"

"Different brands. If the first one’s negative you take another. If two agree, you can trust the reading. If they don't, we go to a doctor and do it properly."

She tilts her head at me. “So we’re accepting a positive result and questioning a negative?”

I grin, “Obviously.”

She nods at the windshield, easily accepting my answer because we’re on the same page here. "I've been holding it since six, by the way. Everything I read says first thing in the morning is the most accurate. So I've been lying in your bed since six, wide awake, not peeing, like a lunatic."

God, I love her.

"Shouldn't you be opening the yard?" she asks, when the silence gets too big for the truck.

"Marcus can handle it. The yard ran on Saturdays before I was born. It'll survive one more."

She's out of the truck before I've got the key out of the ignition. Diesel's waiting at the door and she goes past him at a trot, reaching down to stroke his head once in passing. She heads straight down the hall and then stops at the bathroom door because the wrapper beats her. Her hands are shaking too hard to find the notch. She holds the test out to me without a word. I tear the foil and hand it back.

"Cap it, lay it flat on the counter, and leave it alone. Don't hold it in your hand, it can skew the result. I read it online. Do you want me to come in with you?"

Her eyes widen. “No! You’re not watching me pee. You can come in when I’m done. Did you seriously Google how to best take a pregnancy test?"

"I did. Several times. That’s how I know false positives are very rare, but false negatives can happen quite often."

"Of course you did." Her mouth wobbles into something that's almost a smile, and the door shuts.