AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For that matter, both of her neighbors loved to gossip. People affectionately called them the Busybody Twins. Between the two of them, they prided themselves on knowing everything about everyone who lived in the sixty units at Lake Celebration Landing Condos. What they didn’t know, they made up.
Once they learned of Becca’s pregnancy, word would be all over the tiny condo complex.
Becca shouldn’t care. She shouldn’t let other people’s opinions of her matter. But it did matter. She’d always been the good girl, the one people could count on, the community-minded good example.
Now she’d be known as the one who got knocked up.
Well, it is what it is.
She just needed to make sure her baby didn’t grow up feeling like a mistake.
“I’m going to have a baby,” she said. “Tomorrow, Nick is coming over, and we’re going to figure it out.”
* * *
Nick steered his motorcycle into a parking space at the Lake Celebration Landing Condominiums, a neatly landscaped, compact grouping of townhomes on the east side of Celebration.
His gaze picked out unit four. Becca’s place. Glossy ceramic planters with yellow and rust-colored flowers flanked the red front door, which sported a wreath of wheat stalks and small pumpkins—or were those gourds? It was hard to tell. Whatever they were, they screamed fall and hinted that Becca took a lot of pride in her home.
The amber porch light glowed in the dusk. She was waiting for him. Or she was home, at least. Of course she was; she was expecting him, even if last night as he’d signed her discharge papers she hadn’t seemed overly eager to see him. He swung his leg over the bike’s seat and stood, hesitating a moment.
Was a person ever really ready for a conversation like this? Yesterday morning when he’d opened his eyes, he’d had no idea how his life was about to change.
But they had a lot to talk about. He’d made a list. Because he knew if he didn’t write down the important things he might get distracted. Becca Flannigan made him stupid like that.
Nick hated acting stupid. Stupid equaled out of control, and out of control usually ended in disaster.
He reached in the storage console on his bike and pulled out a paper grocery bag. It contained chicken noodle soup and a small box of saltines. Becca was probably sick of bland food by now. But at least it was something. He wasn’t showing up empty-handed, he thought as he knocked on the door above the wreath.
He heard a dog bark and then a soft murmuring he imagined was her way of gently quieting the animal.
Funny, he knew so little about this woman. As he stood on her front porch, it almost felt like a blind date. However, when she answered his knock, and he saw her there, looking much more like herself, or at least more like the woman who had swept him away when they’d met, he felt that attraction, that visceral pull that had hit him hard that first night.
She wore blue jeans and a simple blue blouse that brought out the color of her eyes. She’d pulled her golden-brown hair away from her face with a black headband. She didn’t wear much makeup. The color had returned to her cheeks, and her skin looked so smooth he had to fight the urge to reach out and touch her.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi, Nick.” The dog, a red-and-white, low-to-the-ground model, barked a greeting and jumped up on his leg.
“Hey, there, buddy,” Nick said.
“Priscilla, get down. I’m sorry about that. Just tell her no, and she’ll stand down.”
“It’s okay.” He dropped to one knee, setting the bag down so he could use both hands to scratch the dog behind her ears. The animal showed her appreciation by jumping up again and licking Nick’s nose.
“Priscilla. Stop it,” Becca said. “Mind your manners.”
“She’s a corgi?” Nick asked as he got to his feet.
“Yes. A very spoiled corgi who needs to learn how to listen.”
Nick smiled. “We had a corgi when I was growing up. They’re great dogs.”
“Yes, they are. Come in.”
She stepped back to allow him room to pass. As he stepped into the foyer, he could smell the faint scent of her perfume—something floral—which brought him back to that night. As it had before, it tempted him to lean in closer and breathe in the essence of her. His mind flashed back to how she’d looked as he’d made love to her—soft and sweet and incredibly sexy in an understated way that had driven him mad.
He blinked away the thought and held out the bag.
“What’s this?” she asked.
