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“It’s too early,” she said. “I’m not due for two more weeks.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “What are you doing out on the road? Are you alone? Where is your husband?”
She started to cry even harder, which didn’t help her control her breathing. There was no husband. No one. Even the young lawyers she once worked with no longer glanced at her with desire in their eyes. She was a big, fat, undesirable pregnant woman.
Breathing through her nose, she ignored the woman’s question until she had her emotions and the pain under control.
“The father doesn’t know,” she finally gasped. “But it’s all right. This baby is mine.”
The woman held onto her arm and walked her across the lobby and back.
“Men can be heartless,” she said.
Amelia didn’t want to think of the baby’s father that way. He had no idea that during their celebration they’d created this life.
“True,” Amelia said. “But it was a complete accident. Only I decided to keep her. She’s my little accident.”
The woman grinned. “Have you chosen a name?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I want to name her after my grandmother. I’m waiting until I reach home. Until I talk to my mother and father.”
The tears welled again and she started to cry. All she’d wanted to do was reach Whitefish. Talk to her mother. Be comforted by her. Her parents would love her little accident as much as she did and she knew they would surround her with their love. And right now, that’s what she needed the most.
The doors to the hotel lobby swished open and a man wearing a Santa suit walked in with a walkie-talkie. Two other men dressed as elves walked in behind him with a stretcher between them.
Everyone in the lobby started clapping.
The man came up to the clerk. “Did someone call an ambulance?”
“Yes, Santa, I did. I think she’s gone into labor,” the clerk said.
He turned to face her and she gasped.
“Ryan?”
“Amelia? What the hell?”
Why hadn’t he told her he was from Missoula? So close to her home. And now he was about to become a father. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She should be happy, but suddenly she was afraid.
“I’m pregnant,” she said crying.
CHAPTER5
Dear God, the woman he’d spent the last nine months searching for was here. Right here in Missoula and she was pregnant. And unless she’d gone out and gotten pregnant immediately after the cruise, that baby she was carrying was his.
Happiness and terror gripped him and he realized that everyone in the hotel lobby was staring at them. This was not the place for them to talk, and yet, it was all he could do to keep from screamingis that child mine?
“Are you certain these aren’t Braxton Hicks?” he asked her, doing his best to remain professional. “Has your water broken? How far along are you?”
“I’m thirty-eight weeks,” she said. “And no, my water has not broken.”
Thirty-eight weeks. That sweet child nestled in her belly was his. But they’d used condoms that night. No, condoms were not foolproof and it appeared that they were going to experience what a broken condom could create.
Focus. He had to focus on his job.
“Do you mind if I listen to your stomach?”
“Go ahead,” she said.
