Sweet Expectations (8 page)

“They are a pregnant woman's trait. And you've always wished for boobs.”

“Yea, well, Mom always said be careful what you wish for.”

“Have you told Gordon?”

“I received the confirmation this morning.”

A brow arching, a conspirator's smile curled the edges of her lips. “The early morning appointment?”

“Yeah. I had a blood test yesterday and the results came in this morning.”

“So you'll tell Gordon this afternoon when he gets back?”

“Yeah.”

The smile faded and blue eyes darkened. “Where's the enthusiasm? Gordon seems like a nice guy.”

“He is.” My voice cracked a little.

Her head cocked, and I could imagine her radar beeping. “So he might be surprised, perhaps shocked, but he'll adapt.”

“Maybe.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, maybe?”

Why did life always have to be so complicated? I laid my head on the steering wheel, gripping it as if it were a life raft.

“What's wrong?” Rachel rubbed her hand over my shoulder muscles strung as tight as a bowstring. “Is the baby all right?”

“Yeah, sure. The baby seems fine.” I eased my grip on the wheel. “I'm four months pregnant, Rachel. The baby is not Gordon's.”

Her finger gripped my shoulder in a firm, gentle hold. “Are you sure?”

“We haven't done
it
since we got back together.”

“It. By that, Miss McCrae who sounds like she's in the seventh grade, do you mean sex?” Without Simon staring at her as if he were starving, she could be adult about sex.

“Correct. In the past,
it
complicated things between us and blurred our good judgment. This time we wanted to take it slow. Be friends first. “

“Okay.” She sat a little straighter, as if readying for trouble. “Then who?”

“You've never met him. His name is Roger Traymore. He worked at my D.C. firm. My last night in my apartment I had a party. He showed up after everyone left and stayed a little longer.”

She raised a brow. “So have you told him?”

“He's in China. He landed a teaching job with a university in Beijing, I think. He left the day after the party. And even if he lived next door, he's not the daddy kind of guy.”

“Doesn't matter what kind of guy he is, he's going to be a father.” Resolve had pushed past the effects of her hangover. “Daisy, you need to tell him.”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe one day soon. One tsunami at a time. I'm still trying to wrap my own brain around this, and I do have to talk to Gordon today.”

She squeezed my shoulder a little tighter. “One way or another it's going to be okay, Daisy.” Her grin wasn't exactly happy but more the stiff-upper-lip kind. “You are going to have a baby, and it's really scary now, but it's going to be a blessing.”

Unshed tears clogged my throat. Oddly, the lion's share of my worries weren't for myself but for the kid. Was having me as a mom going to be good or bad? “Is it?”

“Of course, it is! Once you cradle your child all the worries will fade. This will work, and you will be a great mother.”

Dark fears clawed and howled like a caged animal. “It didn't work out so well for my birth mother. She kept me for three years and then she bailed on me. What if I can't hack it as a mother?”

“You may look like Terry, but you are not Terry. She was seventeen when you were born and you are thirty-four. You have a deep sense of responsibility, and though she may now, she didn't when she was with you. You cannot make a comparison.”

I thought back to our awkward meeting at the Alexandria hotel last month. We'd both been nervous at our reunion and neither of us knew how to negotiate the tempestuous waters. “When we met last month, she gave me a picture taken of us the day I was born. She held me close, my face touching hers. She was smiling and she looked tired but happy.” Later, I'd studied her face, searching for clues hinting of my eventual abandonment. There'd been none. “Somewhere along the way it went wrong.”

“She was a single, isolated teenager. She didn't have family. And she had a drug problem. The choices she made had no bearing on you. Don't allow yourself to think like a lost child. You are a strong woman.”

I raised my chin. “I'm not thinking like a lost child. I'm thinking like an expectant mother who fears she's going to screw up her kid if she bolts.”

“You won't bolt.” Steely certainty underscored the words.

A sick feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. “Terry did a number on me when she left. I know Mom and Dad are the best parents, but no amount of love will ever totally fix Terry's damage. I don't want to screw up the kid.”

Rachel shook her head. “You can be odd, demanding, and a little bitchy at times, but I never thought of you as damaged.”

I arched a brow. “Really? Remember all the meltdowns I had as a kid. Hide and go seek? Fine when I was hiding but a mess when everyone hid from me. Or what about when we had to do the family tree in sixth grade? We had the same tree but the teacher put an asterisk by my name and wrote:
adopted
. I didn't take the notation well.”

Rachel scrunched up her nose. “That old biddy deserved it. And as I remember Mom blew a fuse over that as well.”

“I don't sweat my quirks and fears so much these days. Abandonment and rejection are kind of like my pals now. For the most part they don't bother me. But I'd sure hate them to burden the kid.”

“You won't.”

“I'm not off to the best start, Rachel. I got knocked up during twenty minutes of good-bye-feeling-sorry-for-myself sex to a guy now living in China and who is not my boyfriend. How messed up is that?”

Rachel smiled. “I don't care who the father is. All I care about is that
you
are
going to have a baby, and I think you are going to be fine.”

Nodding, I swallowed. “Keep saying that. One day I might halfway believe it.”

“I can't tell you how many times I worried about screwing up my kids. Hell, I still worry about it.”

“You do a great job with Ellie and Anna.”

Genuine doubt radiated in her gaze. “I work crazy hours. I'm always tired, and now Mike's gone and it's just me. I really have the potential to mess up two people.”

“So being a paranoid mess is normal?”

“Totally. If you weren't worried then you'd be in trouble.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A bit of the stress knotting my back eased. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

We sat silent for a minute, watching people stream in and out of the hamburger joint. “Hang on to those single-mother tips for me, because I'm going to need them.”

She offered a bright, if not hungover, smile. “You don't know how Gordon will react. He might be okay with this.”

“Would you have been cool if Mike announced he'd gotten another girl pregnant before he dated you?”

She frowned. “I might be okay with it. Nobody cheated on anybody.”

I shook my head. “I've done a lot of emotional work for Gordon. I hurt him when I left him last year. Asking him to raise or accept another man's baby is asking too much.”

My phone buzzed and Gordon's name flashed on the display. He texted
, I'M BACK. CAN YOU COME OVER?

Rachel nibbled her lip. “You better go.”

“I don't want to do this.”

“Talk to him. It might not be so bad.”

Laughing as tears pooled in my eyes, I shook my head. “Right.”

“Hang tough.”

“Let's get the paint and then you can drop me off at Gordon's.”

“We can get the paint later.”

“No, now is best.”

“This is a delay tactic.”

“You are very right.”

And so I texted Gordon and told him I'd be by as soon as we got the paint. Rachel and I spent the next hour wandering through the paint section at the hardware store. In the end we'd settled on a buttercup yellow, which we both agreed was a happy color.

Rachel and I unloaded the paint, and I promised to return after my talk with Gordon. I made a joke about seeing her in minutes, suggesting Gordon would toss me out. Neither of us laughed.

The one-and-a-half-block walk to Gordon's bike shop might as well have been a thousand miles. It took effort and thought to put one foot in front of the other as I walked down the rough brick sidewalk. Ahead, Gordon's yellow bike shop looked so shiny and clean. He'd worked hard to rebuild his life after our breakup and then the demise of our company.

I twisted the handle and pushed open the door. As bells jingled over my head, Gordon glanced up. He held on to his smile for a couple of beats until he sensed trouble.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” He set down a bike part, which I now recognized as a derailleur, and stopped within inches of me. He didn't touch or hug me because he knew me well enough to know when I bore bad news.

“You're breaking up with me, aren't you?” He shook his head. “I've been getting a bad vibe off you for at least a week.”

“I've been sick.”

His head cocked, asking. “It's more than that, Daisy. I know you well enough to know when you're hiding. And you've been sinking deeper and deeper inside of yourself for at least a week.”

I'd not considered pregnancy until a couple of days ago, but on some level I must have known I carried a baby that was not Gordon's. “I don't want to hurt you. I love you.”

His bitter, sad smile cut into me more than angry words. “You didn't the last time either. At least I should be grateful you didn't write a note and run this time.”

When I'd left him last year, I'd scribbled a note. My hands had trembled, and I'd been crying when I'd been ready to tape it to the front door. He'd arrived home early and surprised me. He'd wanted to talk. But facing him had been too much. I'd simply run.

I took several steps toward him. “I'm not running away from you.”

“You're not?”

“No. Not this time.”

Blue eyes narrowed. “Then what is it, Daisy?”

And here it was, the moment I'd dreaded for days.
The
moment. I sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly. My skin prickled and pinched as if it shrunk two sizes. “I'm pregnant.”

For a moment he simply stared. He didn't blink. He didn't breathe. “What?”

Suddenly another underlying ramification struck me. “It's not what you think.”

His shock vanished as anger flashed. “Really?”

I tipped my head back wondering when my life would ever feel easy and natural. “I'm four months pregnant. I accomplished the deed while we were broken up. A day before I moved back to Alexandria. I didn't cheat on you.”

His jaw worked.

“It was my last night in D.C. at my going-away party. I got drunk.”

He rolled his eyes. “The classic excuse.”

I lifted my chin. “No excuses. I screwed up.”

He shoved balled fists into the pockets of his khakis. “Who's the father?”

“Roger Traymore.” Roger had been one of the vice presidents at our company. Bad blood flowed between Gordon and Roger but he'd never told me why.

“Roger?”

An attempted smile fell flat. “When I screw up I go big.”

My very lame attempt at humor went unnoticed. “You're sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure.”

Cursing, he shook his head. “Roger is an ass.”

I agreed but had to defend my kid's biological father. “I didn't come here to debate. I came here to tell you honestly what is going on. I owed you the truth.”

“Well, you've given it to me with both barrels.” He shook his head and paced back and forth before he stopped to face me again. “I can always count on you for the unexpected left hook.”

I could have marched off in a huff, but I had pulled the rug out from under Gordon and I owed him a moment to say his piece. “This one clipped me, too.”

He shook his head. “When you didn't answer the first couple of texts I assumed you were busy. By the fourth I realized there was a problem, and I've spent the better part of the weekend trying to guess. I catalogued all your moods for the last weeks searching for a clue. Moody. Distant. Quiet.”

With no way to soften the moment, I relied on the truth. “Par for the course with me.”

Blatant honesty didn't win me any points either. “Disconnected. That was the new piece of the puzzle. You were disconnected.”

Shrugging my shoulders, I wrestled with tears. “I kept telling myself it was stress or the flu.”

“When did you find out for certain?”

“This morning. The clinic doc gave me the results.”

His face, a still, emotionless mask, mirrored the expression he'd worn after our breakup. He'd tracked me to my office and gently closed my door. He'd been quiet and logical as he'd asked me questions, but he'd not railed, begged, or ranted for my return. I remember wishing that he'd get mad. Yelling, screaming, or ranting would have been better than the wounded silence. I wished he'd get upset now. At least if he released his temper I could hide behind a little righteous indignation and not feel so much like I'd kicked a puppy.

“Have you told Roger?” His tone sharpened each word.

“No. Honestly that's the least of my worries right now.”

Challenge darkened his eyes. “Shouldn't he have been your first call? Doesn't he have a right to know? I'd want to know.”

“Roger isn't you. This is not the kind of info he'd like to read in a morning e-mail. Nor would he wish to receive it in any other form.”

“Where is he these days?”

“China, last I heard.”

All polite and all so controlled, and I wanted to scream. I wanted Gordon to get angry. I despised being shut out more than dealing with someone else's anger. Bad attention beat no attention every time.