Close to Her Heart (5 page)

The one and only time they’d taken no precautions.

She’d expected him to pull out in time, but he hadn’t. “I’m sorry,” he’d whispered. “That just felt too good.”

Well, how was it feeling now? she wondered. He still hadn’t said a word to her.

“That was—four months ago,” he finally said.

“Yes. I’m sixteen weeks along.”

He brushed a hand through his hair, a familiar gesture when he was confused. “You haven’t said a word.”

“I was—” She ran her finger around the rim of her wineglass. “I think I was sort of in denial.”

“Being pregnant isn’t the sort of problem that gets smaller with time, Danielle.”

Problem.
“I know.”

“Have you—do you know how you want to deal with this?”

He looked anxious. A fine sheen of moisture had popped out on his brow and upper lip.

He began fiddling with the white linen napkin, folding it first one way, then the other. His gaze had dropped to the table, too. No matter how hard she stared at him, willing him to raise his head, she couldn’t get him to look at her.

“Obviously, an abortion would erase the entire
problem
for you,” she said.

For just a second, his eyes flashed up and she saw the hope in them.

“But it’s not that easy for me,” she added.

“Danielle, you’re an academic. One of the brightest people I know. So far you’ve made very smart decisions in your life. You’re only thirty-five and already you’ve earned a reputation with your research. In five years, you’ll be eligible for tenure.”

Actually, she was thirty-four, she wanted to say. But she was too focused on the way he’d said,
your
life. Not
our
life.

“Having a baby wouldn’t stop me from going back to work, continuing my research. It wouldn’t disqualify me for tenure.”

“No.” He was quiet for a while, waving away the waiter when he tried to approach for a food order, sipping down half a glass of wine. His gaze went to the untouched glass on her side of the table. “Are we having a discussion here? Or have you already made up your mind?”

She felt as if he was underscoring a line he’d already drawn between them with words like “problem” and “your life.” And it hurt. She’d finally come to him with this, hoping to share some of the burden. But he was handing it right back to her.

“As you’re the father, of course I care what you think.”

“To a point,” he said with some bitterness.

“Is there no part of you that sees this as good news?”

“God, you make me feel like a monster for saying no. But the last two years have been hard. Dealing with Vanessa’s death. Trying to be a good father to Ava. Let me tell you from experience, being a single parent isn’t easy.”

Did it not even occur to him that there was another answer here? That the two of them could make a life together? Raise his Ava and their baby as one family?

“I guess I should have asked this sooner. But what have the past six months meant to you? What do
I
mean to you?” From under the table, Dani clenched her hands, preparing herself for some hard-hitting truths, and the fact that Eliot and Miriam may have been right about this relationship all along.

“Danielle, I adore you. I truly do. I think about all the time. I
want
you all the time. But after six months, I’m not ready to say we should get married. And I’m not going to let an unplanned pregnancy rush me into making such a serious decision. Especially not when I should be putting Ava’s best interests ahead of everything.”

This time it was Dani who bowed her head, Dani who couldn’t lift her gaze to meet his.

Everything he said was perfectly sensible. She understood instinctively that he wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was being careful and protecting his daughter.

“So—if I decide to keep the baby—do you want to stop seeing one another?”

He sighed. “I’m not going to desert you. Or walk away from my share of responsibility.”

Was he talking money now? She hesitated to ask, in case he started to think that was what she’d been after all along. When it totally wasn’t. Sure, they’d only been seeing each other for half a year. But it was long enough for her to know she loved him. Where would he find anyone more perfectly suited to him, than her? They shared common interests, enjoyed spending time together and had great chemistry.

So what was missing?

Why wasn’t six months long enough for him to love her, too?

*

Dani and Adrian eventually ordered food, which they ate with little enjoyment. Adrian didn’t finish the bottle of red. But he came close. He didn’t mention the boutique hotel again, and Dani didn’t dare remind him of the idea. Her news had been a real mood-buster. She got that.

She saw now how totally naïve she’d been to hope that on some level Adrian might see the baby as good news.

He’d made it pretty clear that he’d prefer the problem to just—disappear. And he’d be even more determined for her to have an abortion if he knew there was a chance the child had Downs.

So easy for him to say. But to him the abortion was an abstract procedure. He wouldn’t have to book time off work, submit his body for the surgery—and feel the loss of the life that was currently inside her.

Tears dripped down to her eggs Florentine. Adrian didn’t notice. He was on his phone, scrolling through emails or something.

She could imagine how Miriam and Eliot would react if they were here, witnessing this scene. They’d be so angry on her behalf. And they’d wonder why she wasn’t angry, too.

But how could she be, when it was easy to see Adrian’s side? He was right when he said keeping the baby didn’t make sense for her from a career or financial viewpoint. Normally she was a logical person. So she understood where he was coming from.

Yet, every instinct in her body was urging her to protect and nurture the little life within. At age thirty-four this wasn’t necessarily her last chance to have a baby. However fertility rates in women dropped sharply after thirty-five, so it might be.

After Adrian paid the bill, he accompanied her outside, where a gentle drizzle had them lingering under the awning to say their goodbyes. Adrian took her hands. “We need to talk about this some more. But first I want you to think. Life is good for you—for us—right now. All of that will change if you decide to keep this baby.”

This
baby. Not
our
baby.

“Fair enough. But I’d like you to try and see this from my point of view. It’s easy to tell someone to have an abortion. But actually
doing
it…?”

“That would be hard. I understand. But sometimes doing the right thing
is
hard.” He swallowed, then squeezed her hands. “
Very
hard.”

Dani thought of the barn cats at the Circle C, how sometimes they’d given birth to unexpected litters and her father had taken the unwanted kittens down to Serendipity Creek. How she and her sisters had cried. Her mother, too, turning her back so she wouldn’t see.

But Dani had.

It was one thing to say you believed in a woman’s right to choose. She did believe that. As had her mother, and the minister at their church. But when the choice was yours to make, then it got personal.

“Let’s have dinner on Wednesday,” Adrian said. “Your place. I’ll order Thai food, if that’s okay.”

She nodded. If the conversation had gone differently, she would have told him that she had a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday afternoon and invited him to come with her.

As it was, she didn’t.

*

Dani was so nervous the day of her doctor’s appointment, she could hardly eat. She’d been lucky enough to have only brief periods of nausea so far in her pregnancy, so she didn’t blame hormones. This was all nerves.

She had a class to teach in the morning, her Intro to Psych class. It was held in an auditorium-style lecture hall holding hundreds of students, one of whom was her niece, Portia. Mattie’s daughters were both beautiful and petite like their mother. While Wren was the more studious of the two, and in this way so much more similar to Dani, for some reason she had always had a closer connection to Portia who was sweet and loved fashion and boys more than she seemed to care for books.

Dani knew that while her sister had encouraged her daughters to move away from their home at Bishop Stables near Big Arm, Montana, to go to college, she’d hoped that they would both pick the University of Washington where they would have each other—and their Aunt Dani—for moral support.

But Wren had chosen to go her own way, moving to Boulder where she attended the University of Colorado. Besides being academically inclined, Wren was also the more self-sufficient of the twins, something Dani didn’t think Mattie had appreciated until after the twins had left home.

And maybe that was why Dani felt a stronger connection to Portia. Portia
needed
people and she liked being around family. She also sort of hero-worshipped Dani, always commenting on how much she liked the clothes her aunt wore, the Volvo coup she drove, her elegant condo. Portia went so far as to copy the way Dani styled her hair and applied her make-up.

The first time Portia had been in her luxury condo she’d exclaimed, “I feel like I’m in a movie!”

Before Christmas, when Portia’s parents had first decided to split up, Portia had gone through a rough patch. She’d spent too much time partying and hanging out with the wrong friends. Her grades had suffered, too. But over the holidays, she’d had good visits with both of her parents, and had come back to college a more mature young woman.

Dani had been relieved when she stopped hanging out with the party animals and began focusing more on her studies.

She also seemed to have a new guy in her life, and often sat beside him in class. A tall, skinny, dark-haired boy named Austin Bradshaw. The kid’s hair was always in his eyes but he had a disarmingly nice smile. Dani could only name a handful of her students, but she knew Austin. He had the best grades in the class.

He was also, she understood from Portia, a novice rodeo competitor. This summer he planned to earn money on the circuit, riding bulls and bareback broncos. Dani had been meaning to invite the two of them for dinner one night. But the pregnancy had derailed her in more ways than one. She really needed to be a better aunt.

After class, Dani waved at her niece, indicating that she wanted to talk. This was a lot easier to do now that Portia no longer to chose to sit in the far back rows. Portia said a few words to Austin, who nodded then took off. Portia waited until the stream of students leaving the hall had ebbed before making her way down to the lectern where Dani was slipping her notes back into her briefcase.

Dani gave her niece a hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you this Sunday. It’s been a while since we’ve had one of our dinners.”

“That’s okay. I went over to Austin’s. He lives with his dad and they’re both really good cooks.”

“You and Austin seem to be getting along well.”

Portia’s cheeks pinkened. “Yeah. Though sometimes I wonder if he likes my dad more than me. He knows more about Dad’s years in the rodeo than I do.”

Wes Bishop had been a rodeo cowboy when Mattie met him, and he’d remained one throughout their almost twenty years of marriage. There was no doubt all the travel and time apart had put a strain on their marriage and had led to its ultimate break-down.

But Dani felt that the two of them were at their core incompatible, both wanting something different out of life. It seemed like they were in the process now of working that out. She hoped they would both end up happier—and not hurt Portia or Wren too much in the process.

“Have you talked to your sister and mom lately?”

“Wren is good. With Mom it’s hard to tell. She and dad, well…you know.”

Dani felt a twinge of guilt. Sage had gone to visit Mattie when her marital problems first started. She should try to take a trip out to Montana, as well. But given what was going on in her life, she just couldn’t see how to make it work. Perhaps the best she could at this time was make sure Portia was doing okay.

“Would you and Austin like come over to my place for dinner this coming Sunday?”