For a Baby

Well, Russell and Julie knew now, too. Two falls ago, when Russell had moved his family back to Chatsworth and she’d been faced with his presence every day at work, something inside her had cracked. The old pain of giving up her baby had returned, until finally she’d confessed the truth.

Russ had been shocked at first, but eventually he’d come to accept what she had done. And he’d agreed with her decision not to try to track down their child. She’d picked out the parents. The father was a pediatrician, the mother was willing to stay home full-time. They were good people. Their baby would be happy.

Then Julie had become pregnant with their second child, and Russell’s focus had shifted inward, toward his family once more. Heather had tried not to be resentful. Or to wonder what might have happened had she told Russ she was pregnant before he’d asked Julie to marry him.

Old questions. Old heartbreaks. She was sick of them. This baby inside her represented her future. She wasn’t going to live in the past anymore.

She wondered how T.J. planned to convince her he wouldn’t be a good marital risk. She doubted he could come up with anything to change her mind. He was pretty much her last option anyway.

CHAPTER FOUR

AT FIVE MINUTES TO SIX, Heather left her small bungalow and walked the short distance to the Handy Hardware on Main Street. Since Julie Matthew had come to town, the central drag of Chatsworth had undergone a quiet, but impressive, transformation. Beginning with the café owned by Donna and Jim Werner, and more recently a community project to create a mural on the side of the post office, the local business fronts had been refurbished. New signs, fresh paint, a green and white awning for Lucky’s grocery store and pretty wrought-iron benches on the sidewalks flanked with concrete urns spilling geraniums and alyssum were among the many changes.

The fresh look was attracting visitors, and also entrepreneurs. In the past six months alone, two new businesses had started. An energetic young woman from Yorkton, Leigh Eastbrook, had opened a small ice-cream and sweet shop next to the bank. And a middle-aged couple from Manitoba had converted an abandoned home on the other side of the hardware into Nook and Cranny, a store specializing in farm-home antiques.

Both new enterprises had employed Julie Matthew to help with the design of their stores. And Heather had to admit Julie had done a beautiful job for each of them, creating an ambiance that suited the nature of the individual businesses.

Heather bypassed the main door of the hardware—which had been “distressed” to appear old and full of character—and headed for the unobtrusive side door that led to the two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of the building.

T.J. had lived here ever since he’d moved back to town to look after the store for his dad. His folks had finally retired—his mother had been anxious to do some traveling in the motor home she’d convinced her husband to buy. Right now the couple were somewhere in eastern Canada. T.J. tacked their postcards on the counter next to the cash register so that the couple’s many friends and customers—including Heather’s own parents—could keep track of their progress.

Heather ran up the narrow stairs. She could hear strains of a Spanish guitar recording and smell something grilling. At the landing she found the door ajar. When she tapped on the wooden frame with her knuckles, it inched open.

The living room was empty. She passed through to the kitchen and spied chopped vegetables on the counter, an open bottle of wine, two plates, but no T.J. The sliding door to the balcony at the back of the building was open.

“T.J.?”

He stood at the barbecue, grilling chicken, red peppers and onions. He wore a pair of shorts and a white T-shirt. His feet were bare and as tanned as the rest of him.

Even though she’d known him all her life, sometimes his startling good looks caught her off guard. Now they made her wonder why she’d ever thought he might be willing to marry her. If a man like T.J. wanted to get married, he’d have his choice of women.

“I brought wine.” She held out the bottle. “But I see you have some open on the counter.”

“I do. Would you mind pouring? I don’t want these veggies to burn. The glasses are in the cupboard over the sink.”

He had real crystal, she was surprised to note. She poured the rich red wine into the large glass goblets, then went back out to the balcony. Space was tight, especially with the barbecue and a small wrought-iron table and two chairs. She decided to sit in one of them.

“How do you like being back in Chatsworth?” Though she loved the place, she knew small towns weren’t for everyone. And T.J. had been a partner in one of the big law firms in Calgary before his divorce. It wasn’t like the guy didn’t have options to running a small hardware store in a town of five hundred people, max.

“It’s fine.”

“Do you miss the city?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see much of Calgary when I lived there. I traveled from home to the office and that was pretty much it.”

He had to be exaggerating. “Didn’t you go to the mountains—to Banff?”

“Only for conferences.”

“So you don’t have plans of moving back there?”

“No. Dad’s already handed over the controlling shares of the business.” He frowned. “Won’t even let me pay for them.”

“How do you feel about working in a hardware store when you have all that legal training?”

“I like the business more than I thought possible,” T.J. admitted. “The strange thing is, when I was a kid I had such bitter fights with my father about this place.”

Heather remembered. Many times T.J. had come to school absolutely furious with his father. On a couple of occasions he’d gotten into serious trouble when he’d tried to run away.

“What did you two fight about?”

“If you asked me fifteen years ago, I would have said everything. Now I think Dad was just so desperate for me to take over the family business that he pushed too hard. As a result, I became determined to move away and get into anything but the hardware business.”

“How did you ever agree to come back here?”

“It was Mom’s suggestion, after my divorce. Initially I was only supposed to stay long enough for them to go on one trip.”

T.J. scraped the chicken and veggies off the grill onto a chopping board, then proceeded to dice. “I don’t know which of us is more surprised about the way it’s ended up. Me, that I like my father’s business, or my dad that he’s actually enjoying driving that motor home all over the country.”

“Well, he’s worked hard. He deserves a break.” T.J.’s parents were both in their early seventies, a little older than her own mom and dad who still ran their own farm about five miles out of town.

Finished with the chopping, T.J. carried the wooden carving board to the kitchen. Heather followed and watched as he tossed all the food into a large ceramic bowl.

“I’ll let that cool a bit. It’s too hot for a warm meal, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.” He had an air-conditioning unit running somewhere in his apartment—probably in his bedroom. She could hear the distant hum of the motor. Still, the temperature inside was probably in the high eighties. She pressed her wineglass against the bare skin at the top of her chest, enjoying the cooling sensation.

From across the counter, T.J. watched. She felt a different kind of heat knowing he was familiar with every curve on her body. She wondered if that’s what he was thinking about now, too. When their gazes met—and held—she knew he was.

“You look nice in that dress.”

The words were bland. The expression in his eyes wasn’t.

“Thanks.” She swallowed a sip of her wine and backed up a step. He’d looked at her this way before, and she could remember only too well how those situations had ended. She hadn’t come here to wind up in his bed. This time she wanted his ring on her finger.

WITH SOME EFFORT, T.J. turned from Heather and concentrated on the meal again. In the years he’d gone to university and worked in Calgary, he’d never met a woman with the particular combination of sweetness and sensuality that made her so irresistible to him.

He added slices of avocado and chunks of lettuce to the meat and veggies in the bowl, then drizzled olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top. Finally he crumbled goat cheese into the bowl and tossed everything together. “That’s it.”

“It looks delicious.”

They went out on the balcony to eat. T.J. tried not to notice Heather’s generous cleavage in her strappy pink sundress, or to remember how erotic he’d found the bra she’d been wearing the last time he’d been with her.

Unlike many redheads, Heather had a thing for pink. Even her underwear…

Oh, God. He couldn’t focus when he was around her. He’d never been able to. What was it about Heather? Not just her looks, but everything about her from her soft voice to her kind, generous nature had always appealed to him.

Maybe because she was just so different from him. She always found it so easy to laugh, to praise, to offer help. Whereas he tended to be critical and caustic and reserved. No wonder Lynn had left him…

T.J. pushed aside his half-eaten meal and strode into the house. He found what he was looking for in the filing cabinet in his spare bedroom. When he returned, Heather put down her fork and looked at him anxiously.

“Finished?” he asked.

Her plate wasn’t empty, but she nodded. “I guess so.”

“Good.” With one hand, he pushed aside her plate to make room for the file folder. “I want you to look through these photographs. Tell me what you see.”

He cleared their dishes to the kitchen and took his time cleaning up from the meal. After fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, he carried the bottle of wine out to the balcony and topped up both their glasses.

“Well?” he asked, once he was back in his chair.

“These are lovely, T.J., I’m not sure what you expect me to say.” She picked up one photo, of a man in his early thirties, pushing a preschool girl on a swing. “This is your daughter?”

“Sally. Yes. With her stepdad. Do you see the way she’s looking at him?” Without glancing at the photograph, he could. Sally was smiling with delight, her gaze on the man who had replaced T.J. in her life.

“I see,” Heather said quietly.

“About a year ago I hired a private investigator. I wanted to make sure my daughter was doing okay. Turned out she was fine. Better than fine. They make a nice family, don’t you think?” He saw Heather pick up a picture of the three of them walking along the boardwalk on the edge of Lake Ontario. Sally was in the middle, gleefully skipping, while his ex-wife and her new husband smiled with delight and pride at each other.

“I suppose so, T.J., but—”

“No buts,” he said, interrupting her and not caring. “Lynn and Sally were never that happy when they were living with me.”

He took the file from her hands and closed it firmly. He couldn’t stand to look at the photographs. Sometimes he wondered why he hadn’t burned the entire portfolio the minute after he’d received it.

“When I was married to Lynn, I barely saw her. I worked twelve-hour days at the office and weekends, too. I told myself I was doing it for my family, but I really wasn’t.” With hindsight, he knew he’d been addicted to his job, to the rush he got whenever he closed a deal or made a client happy.

“You were trying to make a name for yourself.”

Trust Heather to make excuses for him. “I was a workaholic. Whenever I was at home, I secretly wished I could be at the office. I hardly saw my daughter. I can count on one hand the number of times I changed her diaper.”

Finally he saw doubt shadow Heather’s eyes. “But you loved her…”

“Frankly, I’m not sure I did. I sure didn’t act like it. As for my wife, I figured a diamond bracelet would do when I didn’t have time to take her out for dinner to celebrate her birthday.”

“T.J.!”

At last, she was hearing what he was trying to say. “I really was a lousy husband, Heather. And even worse as a father. The reason I showed you these pictures is to make you understand. You want what you see in those photos, don’t you?”

Heather glanced down at the happy trio by the lake—mom, dad, child—and nodded.

“But if you marry me, you’ll never get it.”

CHAPTER FIVE

August

“LOOK AT THAT. They’re starting to frame the Matthew place.” Adrienne dismounted her bike to watch.

Heather stopped, too, leaning over the handlebars and thinking she wasn’t going to be able to do this much longer. Already she could only wear shorts with elasticized waistbands.

She noticed a few of the workmen stop and look in their direction. She supposed they had their eyes on Adrienne. With her dyed hair—a shade between burgundy and purple—and eccentric wardrobe, Adrienne always stood out in a crowd.

“I’ve seen the plans. They’re going to be using cedar shingles and lots of river rock for the veranda. Arts and Crafts style, I think it’s called.” Adrienne read a lot of decorating magazines when business was slow at her hair salon.

“I’m sure it will look wonderful when it’s finished.”

“Don’t all of Julie’s projects?”

Was there just a hint of rancor in Adrienne’s voice? Heather was glad she wasn’t the only one who found the perfection of Russell’s wife a little tiresome. She tilted her head to one side, watching as a shirtless Russell nailed a two-by-four into place. Surely he’d be quitting for the day soon. It was almost six o’clock on a hot, humid Sunday. She bet Russ would really enjoy a swim about now.

Down the street a few houses, his son, Ben, was kicking around a soccer ball with one of his pals. He’d probably started out helping, Heather figured. This house had been a family project from the start. Julie, an interior designer by training, had drawn the plans. Russ had brought them to work and shown the entire teaching staff: a two-story home with a large porch out front, supported by four tapered columns, two on either side of the generous doorway.

In June the original home had been razed and work started shortly thereafter. Since school had let out for the summer, Russ had worked with his contractor and his crew, his son often by his side.

“Hey there, Ms. Sweeney.”

Heather waved at the boys. Of course, their calls alerted Russell to her and Adrienne’s presence. She tried not to feel self-conscious when he smiled around the nail in his mouth and raised his hammer in salute.

Worried Adrienne might attempt to start a conversation, Heather gave her friend a shove at the small of her back. “Keep pedaling. Your family’s going to be starving by the time we get there.”

Sunday was the one day of the week when Adrienne closed her beauty salon. Her husband and kids were already across the lake at a ball game. Heather and Adrienne were supposed to meet them with a picnic dinner of fried chicken and potato salad, but those plans had been sidelined when Adrienne decided to give Heather an impromptu manicure—which Heather considered a waste of time. In twenty-four hours the polish would be chipped and she’d have broken at least one nail. But Adrienne, once her mind was fixed on something, could be difficult to dissuade. So instead of the chicken feast they’d planned, they had ham and cheese sandwiches in their saddlebags, fresh brownies and fruit.

“My family will survive another fifteen minutes.” Still, Adrienne pushed off from the curb and the two friends cycled in tandem down the quiet street. They passed the kids playing soccer and were soon out of town, winding their way along graveled Willow Road.

Heather thought of the last picnic she’d had across the lake. T.J. had been avoiding her since. She didn’t blame him. She still groaned whenever she thought about how she’d practically begged him to make an honest woman out of her. She’d really put her pride on the line. Talk about embarrassing.

Somehow Heather’s parents had heard about her dinner at T.J.’s apartment and been full of questions. They knew T.J., of course.

Heather had made light of the dinner, refusing to call it a date, all the while realizing that one of these days, she’d have to tell them T.J. was the father of her baby. First she’d have to tell them she was pregnant again.

As if reading her thoughts, Adrienne picked that moment to ask, “Seen anything of T.J. lately?”

Heather grunted.

“I stopped in the other day to buy a new chain for Davey’s bike. If you ask me, he looked like a man with a lot on his mind.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I still think you two should get married. In my opinion—”

“Adrienne. Give up on it already, would you?”

She sighed. “Well, you’re going to have to do something. And soon. You won’t be able to keep your pregnancy a secret much longer.”

Heather felt her friend’s eyes on her waistline. Self-conscious, she sucked in her stomach. “Am I showing?”

“Not really. Though your bust is even bigger than usual—lucky you.” Adrienne had a pear-shaped body, with slim shoulders and small breasts. She’d tried every exercise program she’d ever heard of to try to redistribute her weight, to no success.

Rounding the final curve in Willow Road, they cycled past a family pulling their motorboat out of the lake. From the baseball diamonds on the right came the distinctive hollering and cheering of a good-natured game. A small crowd was gathered on the bleachers behind the fence at home base. Heather spotted ten-year-old Davey in left field. He smacked his fist into his glove, then waved at them.

“Why don’t you watch the end of the game?” Heather suggested. “I’ll see if I can nab one of the picnic tables on the hill behind the concession stand.” They’d have a view of the lake up there, and with all the trees, some privacy, too.

“Sounds good.” Adrienne veered off the road on her mountain bike, already hollering at the umpire who’d just walked the last batter.

Heather kept pedaling past the other ball diamonds, where yet more kids were engrossed in the last innings of their games. She passed the concession stand, waving at Herb who was scooping ice cream for the twins who’d be in her class next year. Coward that she was, she snuck past the boys hoping they wouldn’t waylay her. She wanted to nab that table….

The hill was steep and she eventually had to get off her bike and start pushing it up the incline. She passed a couple necking in a discreetly shaded area, and wondered if it wasn’t Karen and Ryan again.

Funny how fast time went by. It didn’t seem that long ago that she and Russell were the ones making out at the lake.

But it was a long time ago. She had to stop letting every little thing remind her of those happy, carefree days. Maybe if she’d moved away from Chatsworth forgetting would have been easier. But Heather couldn’t imagine leaving the small town where she’d grown up.

She was huffing now. At least the picnic table was free. She could see it, tucked into a clearing, surrounded by poplars. There was one other table up here, off to the right and down a little. Maybe she could grab that one, too, so that the kids and their friends—

“Oh.”

T.J. was sitting on the second table, his feet planted on the bench, an open book in his hands. He was at least as surprised to see her as she was to spot him.

“Heather?”

She dropped her bike to the grass. “That’s some hill.”

He eyed her midriff and frowned. “Should you be doing something so strenuous?”

“I’m fine.” She put a hand on her hip, wishing she didn’t need to draw a breath after every word she spoke and that her T-shirt wasn’t clinging to her chest with perspiration. Sunday was also the one day of the week when T.J. closed the hardware. Just her luck to find him up here.

“So what are you doing? Besides taking your bike for a stroll?”

“Looking for a picnic spot.” If you must know. “Adrienne and her family are joining me after Davey’s ball game. But I don’t want to disturb you.” She bent to retrieve her bike, not looking forward to having his eyes on her as she wheeled the darn thing back down the hill.

“What’s wrong with that table?” He pointed to the free one she’d originally planned to stake.

“You’re reading. We’ll be noisy. I’ll see if there are any free tables by the playground.” It wouldn’t be as scenic, but at least she wouldn’t have to endure the scrutiny of the man who’d spurned her proposal of marriage.

Oh, why had she thought about that? She could feel the backs of her ears start to burn.

“Put the bike down, Beatrice.”

Heather chafed at his use of her middle name. For some reason he’d latched onto it on her very first day of grade one when the teacher had been doing a very thorough job of roll call.

T.J. jumped to the ground and took the handlebars from her. He pushed the bike to a tree and chained it up so it wouldn’t fall.

“What are you doing with my bike?”

“Don’t be so damn stubborn. Take the picnic table. Take both of them. I was about to leave, anyway.”

“It didn’t look like you were planning to leave.”

T.J. glanced up into the branches of a nearby tree and spoke as if to someone he saw hiding there. “Even when I try to be nice to her, it doesn’t work.”

“Your definition of nice doesn’t jibe with my definition of the word.” She thought of all the teasing she’d endured. She didn’t think he’d meant to be mean. But some days she had truly dreaded being in the same classroom as him. “It never has.”

“You’ve always been tough enough to take it.”

Under his observation she could almost feel her waistline and boobs expanding. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Told anyone yet?” he asked.

“Adrienne,” she admitted, uncomfortably.

“Not your parents.”

Her gaze sank to the ground. “Not yet.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve found a prospective groom, either?”

“T.J.!” As usual, he had to push until she snapped. “Just leave me alone, okay?” Out of all the single men in Chatsworth—and there were a few, if not many—why had she chosen him to go to bed with?

“Hey, why so touchy? Just wondering if that marriage proposal was still open. That’s all.”

“Why would you care?” The heat of embarrassment spread from her ears to her face. Trust T.J. to milk this for all it was worth.

“I’ve been thinking the situation over.” He stood formally in front of her, arms behind his back, feet splayed.

Heather froze, confused by his change in tone. Suddenly he looked, and sounded, just like the lawyer he’d been trained to be.

“Upon some reflection,” he continued, “I’d like to reconsider my reply to your offer of the other day.”

It took a few seconds for what he was saying to sink in. “T.J.? Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. I think getting married is the right thing to do. If you’ll still have me?”

HE’D DONE IT. Choked out the words he knew he had to say. After thinking about their situation for weeks, he’d accepted he didn’t really have a choice. Heather was pregnant, with his child.

So what if the marriage didn’t last more than a few years? As a married woman, Heather would retain her reputation and respectability in the small town she’d always loved. She could hold her head high when she had this baby—their baby.

As for the child, well, he or she would be legitimate under the law. If that wasn’t as important in today’s society as it had once been, T.J. knew it was still worthy of consideration.

“I want to give our child a name, Heather. And I can promise to be a faithful husband and a good provider. Beyond that—no guarantees. I think I’ve been pretty open with you about my flaws. As if you weren’t already familiar enough with them.”

When she didn’t say anything right away, he stuck on a proviso. “Of course, if you’ve changed your mind and don’t want to go through with marriage after all, I’ll understand.”