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“Funny. Not. Why are you so sensitive over a trip to the doctor?”
Boggy wind whipped between them while she searched for a simple answer that would bring the fewest questions. “I didn’t want to draw any undue attention to myself that might tip off Kent.”
For all the good that had done her. If that false unicorn plant had been intentionally placed, which she firmly believed, Kent had known about her return within hours of her landing. She shuddered.
“There are a thousand ways around that and you know it. Not to mention we’ve been to the doctor, and you’re still so prickly on the subject you have cactus written all over you. Why?”
Because her mother’s calendar carried nothing but doctor’s appointments. Because she didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. Because Kent had parked her in more doctor offices during three years than most people saw in a lifetime.
She pitched those thoughts out the window with the salty breeze. Hadn’t she resolved only a few hours ago to reclaim her strength? She’d had enough morbidity for one day. Real worries would close in soon enough, and for now she just wanted to enjoy her time with Danny. “Like I said before, women have lived with this since the beginning of time, and the last thing we want is to discuss it with men who wince.”
“I’m sorry if I gave that impression.”
“Apology accepted.” She playfully snitched a piece of licorice from his hand as they traveled over a low rail bridge.
Awareness snapped along the air between them.
And they would be spending an indeterminate amount of time alone. No tiny chaperones. No secrets. And a teenage need that had matured into an adult hunger. Now all those memories swirled through the car, the medicine buzz not unlike the champagne buzz all those years ago that had led her to pitch her clothes off.
She sagged back against the headrest. With the lulling pass of each mossy oak, she fought the sensory overload draw of Daniel’s smile and bay-rum-tinged hydraulic fluid riding the ocean breeze….
She didn’t want to be pregnant. Mary Elise touched a bare foot to the ground and launched her old tire swing into motion under the ancient oak while watching Danny’s back door. He’d just pulled into the driveway, home for the summer, and she knew he wouldn’t wait long to see her.
To find out if their night together—long, hot hours—had left her pregnant.
Who wanted to be pregnant and unmarried at nineteen with three years of college left to finish? And it wasn’t like she even loved the baby’s father. Well, shelovedhim. She just wasn’tinlove with him. Like, geez, it was Danny. Her best friend.
Her best friend who really knew how to do it.
Well, as best she could tell then, from her limited—okay, nonexistent— experience. Now she had a weekend of experience under her tightening belt, along with a growing baby. No Air Force Academy graduation for Danny. No journalism degree and crime-beat-reporter job for her.
And the part that sucked most was she hurt more over Danny losing his dreams than she did over losing her own.
She knew without a doubt he would offer to marry her. Would insist on marrying her. She wanted to tell him no, but the thing was, as much as she didn’t want to be pregnant, she was. And it was Danny’s baby, which made the kid already cute and special and deserving of the best she could manage.
So yeah, if he pushed, she’d marry him. Maybe they could work out one of those married-for-a-year deals so the baby would have his name.
But he’d still be booted out of the Air Force Academy. Would still lose his dream. And an ache started low in the pit of her belly at even the thought of pushing him out of her life in something so harsh sounding as a divorce.
Geez. They should be making plans to go to the beach, not wedding plans.
Then there he was. Danny, striding across the glass-enclosed back porch, through the screen door.The military precision slipped into his walk a little more with each year at the Air Force Academy. He could wear wrinkled clothes all he wanted. The walk gave him away.
Pushing up from the swing, she made her way past a blooming dogwood tree, through the ivy-covered gate. He looked older, too. His parents’ split hit him hard. He kept saying it didn’t matter, since he was grown. She knew better. Senator Baker’s trophy marriage shrieked cliché to a son who personified uniqueness.
That had to be the reason worry lines creased Danny’s face. Not because they both knew they’d been stupid, stupid, stupid not to use birth control.
“Hey, Mary ’Lise.” His smile pulled tight as he drew her in for a hug.Are you?
She could feel his unspoken question reach to her. His arms wrapped around her with the familiarity of a hundred other hugs. The awareness tinged with fear, however, was all new.
Are you pregnant?Again, the silent question pulsed from him.
Mary Elise swallowed and forced the words out. “I am.”
She didn’t have to say anything else. He would know what she meant. That unspoken connection between them was working just fine. She’d prepped herself for his proposal, knew Danny well enough to understand his sense of honor wouldn’t let him do anything else.
But please, please, please, with her hormones in an ungodly tangle she wasn’t sure she could handle seeing disappointment in his eyes, even though he had every right.
