The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child

“Because it drives him crazy the way Harry flirts with you.”

“Harry’s been widowed for nearly ten years, he’s lonely, and he flirts with every woman who crosses his path.” She finished scooping chili into a bowl. “Do you want some?”

“Oh. No, thanks. I had a couple of slices of pizza earlier.”

She carried her bowl to the table and sat down. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Because you’re a lot later than usual getting home and you seem a little distracted.”

“Busy day at the office.” He helped himself to a bottle of beer from the fridge and sat down with her.

He’d moved in with them when he’d returned to Pinehurst because it was convenient and gave him the opportunity to look for a place of his own. What had surprised him was how much he’d enjoyed spending time with them. After living so far away for so many years, it was nice to reconnect again, and to realize that he actually liked his parents.

“That’s why Elijah needed to hire you,” she said. “So what was different about today?”

He took a long swallow from the bottle. “I saw Ashley.”

She paused, her spoon halfway to her lips. “Ashley Roarke?”

He nodded.

“How did that go?”

He thought about their kiss—the soft responsiveness of her lips, the yielding warmth of her body—and her abrupt and complete withdrawal from him. “Better—and worse—than I expected.”

“I’m … sorry?”

He smiled. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected that she’d be happy about my decision to come back to Pinehurst now.”

“I would think, if her feelings for you are well and truly gone, she wouldn’t have much of an opinion one way or the other.”

He mulled that over for a minute. “The implication being that if she cares, she must still have feelings for me?”

“Twelve years is a long time, and you were both so young when you went away. And yet—” she smiled “—a woman never forgets her first love.”

“Spoken like a woman with fond memories,” he noted.

“I fell in love when I was fifteen—much to the chagrin of both my parents and his. He was nearly twenty, already in college, and our families were united only in their desire to keep us apart.”

“What happened?”

Her eyes sparkled. “I married him.”

“Grandma and Grandpa disapproved of Dad?” He couldn’t believe it. His father was the epitome of responsibility and respectability—certainly not the usual type that parents warned their daughters about.

“I was fifteen,” she said again. “I don’t think they would have approved of anyone I brought home at that age. And he was so … sexy. He worked in construction in the summer to earn money for college and he had all these rippling muscles and—”

“Please.” Cam held up a hand, urging her to spare him the details.

“If I hadn’t been attracted to your father, you wouldn’t be here,” she pointed out.

“Still, there are some things a kid doesn’t need to know.”

“Well, my point,” she said, “is that parents always want what they think is best for their kids, even when it conflicts with what their kids want. That’s why your dad encouraged you to go away to school, to put some distance between you and Ashley before you got too deeply involved.”

“He knew how I felt about her.”

She nodded. “And he was afraid that you’d give up your dreams to stay in Pinehurst with her.”

“Why did he think that?” he asked curiously. “Was there something he felt he’d missed out on by getting married so young?”

His mother was silent for a long minute before she said, “He wasn’t thinking about his own dreams, but mine.”

It had never occurred to him that his mom might have sacrificed her own plans to be a wife and a mother, because she’d always seemed so settled and content in those roles. “What was your dream?” he asked her now.

“After I met your dad, I only wanted to be with him.”

But he recognized the evasion, and his curiosity was piqued. “Before you met Dad?” he prompted.

“I was going to be a doctor,” she finally admitted.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He couldn’t believe that he’d never known his mother had once envisioned having the same career that he’d chosen for himself.

“A doctor,” he echoed.

She nodded. “In fact, I’d just been accepted to medical school when I found out I was pregnant.”

He set his now empty bottle down. “You gave up your dream because of me?”

But she shook her head vehemently. “No. By the time I got pregnant, my dream had changed. Finding out that I was going to have a baby was the most incredible moment of my life. I had no qualms about giving up medical school for motherhood.

“But when you first expressed an interest in becoming a doctor, your father was adamant that nothing would cause you to make the sacrifice he believed I’d made. But what he didn’t think about—what neither of us really considered—was what would make you happy.”

“You shouldn’t worry about that anymore,” he assured her. “I am happy.”

“A parent always worries. Especially when her kids grow up and move away.”

He knew she wasn’t just thinking of him, but of his younger sister, Sherry, who was now married and living in Florida.

“Well, I have no doubt that you would have been a great doctor,” he said. “But you made the right career choice, because you are definitely the world’s greatest mom.”

She smiled through the sheen of tears in her eyes. “And when a mother’s grown son says something like that, she knows she’s done her job well.”

When Ashley returned to the doctor’s office for her follow-up appointment, she was prepared to see Cam. Not just to see him, but to prove that she was completely unaffected by him, that the scorching kiss they’d shared in her kitchen meant nothing to her. Less than nothing, in fact.

When the door opened, however, it wasn’t Cam who came in—it was Eli. She felt a slight pang but assured herself it wasn’t disappointment. After all, it wasn’t that she wanted to see Cam except to prove that he didn’t mean anything to her. Not anymore.

But Eli meant the world to her, and her smile came easily for him.

“How’s Ruby?” she asked, having learned about his wife’s heart attack from Megan, who worked with one of the doctor’s neighbors.

“She’s doing well. Thanks for the beautiful flowers. She was so tickled that you remembered gerberas are her favorite.”

“I was hoping they would brighten up her room and her spirits.”

“The did both,” Eli confirmed. “And remarkably well, I’d say, since she’s scheduled to come home tomorrow.”

“You must be so relieved.”

He nodded. “We’ve been married forty-two years. After that much time, you start to take certain things for granted. But I’m not taking anything for granted anymore.”

Ashley wondered if she would ever know that kind of deep and abiding love, and realized that she still hoped she would. She hadn’t completely given up on the idea of finding someone to share her life, she’d just decided not to worry about doing so. And, in the meantime, she would happily lavish all of her love and attention on the baby she was going to have.

“But I know you didn’t really come here to talk abut me,” the doctor continued. “So tell me how you’re doing.”

“I’m anxious to get these stitches out,” she admitted.

He scanned the notes in her file, closed the folder and reached for her hand. “Let’s take a look then.”

While he was bent over her hand, she stared at the calendar on the wall on the opposite side of the room, breathing slowly and carefully as she silently calculated the days and then the hours and minutes until it was time to go back to school. She felt a few little tugs, but no pain, and as long as she didn’t think about the fact that he was pulling threads out of her hand, she didn’t feel dizzy.

She hadn’t felt anything when Cam put the stitches in, either. Of course, she’d been given an injection to freeze the site, but even without the artificial numbing, she knew her awareness of Cam would have eclipsed everything else.

“How does it feel?”

She glanced down, saw that he’d finished removing the stitches. She carefully curled her fingers into a fist, nodded. “It feels good.”

“Cam did a nice job,” Eli said. “In a few more weeks, the scar will barely be visible.”

Ashley uncurled her fist and was pleased to note that there was no residual pain in her hand.

If only the same could be said about the scars Cam had left on her heart twelve years earlier.

Chapter Five

As a child, Ashley had always looked forward to the first day of school. As a teacher, she still did.

Maybe it would be different if she taught high school, where the students were more sullen and jaded. But for a group of five-and six-year-olds, entering first grade was as thrilling an event as Columbus’s discovery of a whole new world. They were all so young and eager to learn, and Ashley found their excitement and enthusiasm never failed to recharge her own.

She didn’t usually have supervision duty on Wednesday mornings, but like most other teachers on staff at Parkdale Elementary School, it was a tradition to meet on the playground behind the school so the students could catch a glimpse of their teachers before they entered the classroom, and vice versa. She knew most of the kids who would be in her class, of course, because the majority had attended kindergarten at the same school the previous year. But there were always a few new faces, children who had moved into the neighborhood over the summer and who were even more anxious about the first day because everything was strange and unfamiliar.

It was easy to spot the new ones, and Ashley liked to introduce herself before the first bell and to meet with the mother who was usually present and in whose hand a much smaller one would be tightly clasped.

She had three new students this year and she’d already made the rounds to say hello and invite the parents to come into the classroom. Some would accept her offer and, in doing so, would feel reassured about the environment in which they’d left their children. Others would decline, knowing that it would only make saying goodbye that much more difficult for the child. Ashley was supportive of either decision, trusting that the parent knew his or her child better than she did—at least on the first day.

She smiled at Adam Webber, one of the fifth-grade teachers and the boys’ basketball coach, when he came out of the school with the ever-present orange ball tucked under his arm.

“Look at them.” Adam shook his head. “So eager and enthusiastic.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll beat that out of them soon enough.”

He grinned easily at her teasing, because he knew he was one of the favorite teachers at Parkdale. “How does your class look this year? Or should I wait until the end of the day to ask you?”

“Twenty-three kids. Ten boys, thirteen girls.”

“Twenty-four,” he said.

“What?”

“Haven’t you seen Wendy this morning?” Adam asked, referring to the principal’s administrative assistant.

“No, I came directly around the back.”

“She told me she has an updated class list for you.”

“But I just picked up the list yesterday. And I did all of the name tags and locker magnets last night.”

He shrugged. “I’m just the messenger.”

Ashley turned to go into the school, and that’s when she saw her.

The child looked the right age for a first grader, with long, dark hair and wide, terrified eyes. She was wearing a sleeveless pink dress with tiny white daisies embroidered at the square neckline and along the hem, with matching pink canvas sneakers embroidered with the same flowers on the toes.

Obviously the newest addition.

Feeling an instinctive stir of empathy, Ashley had already started forward when she glanced from the child to parent—and froze.

The man holding the little girl’s hand was Cam Turcotte.

Ashley stopped by Wendy’s office and grabbed the new class list before ducking into her classroom and closing the door at her back. She just needed five minutes alone. Five minutes to assimilate the reality that had been shoved in her face. Five minutes to accept that Cam had a child—that the baby she’d once dreamed of having with him had been born to someone else.

She didn’t want to believe it. And yet she couldn’t deny it was true. There was no doubt the little girl with the shiny dark hair and wide green eyes clinging to his hand as if he was the center of her world could be anyone but his daughter.

But how could she not have known?

Cam might have moved away more than twelve years ago, but his parents had remained in town. In fact, it had been from his mother that she’d heard about his marriage to Danica, and that news had hit her the same way.

Gayle Turcotte, apparently recognizing how much the revelation had hurt Ashley, had been careful not to make any further mention of her son’s life in Seattle whenever their paths had crossed. She’d certainly never mentioned the baby girl that Cam’s wife had given birth to.

Madeline Carrington-Turcotte, according to the updated class list she’d inadvertently crumpled in her fist.

Cam had always been very traditional, so she would bet that the hyphenated name was his ex-wife’s idea. Just because Ashley had been foolish enough to doodle “Ashley Turcotte” inside the cover of her notebooks when she was in high school didn’t mean another woman would feel the same way about taking her husband’s name.

In any event, she and Cam had broken up more than twelve years earlier, so she knew it was ridiculous to feel so hurt by the knowledge that he’d had a child with another woman. But that knowledge failed to lessen her sense of betrayal.

Because when Cam had left her, one of the reasons he’d given for ending their relationship was that he didn’t want the life she’d envisioned for them—not yet.

“I’ve decided to go to Seattle,” he told her.

Ashley stared at him, feeling as if the very ground beneath her feet had begun to crumble. “Washington?”

He nodded. “Their School of Medicine is one of the best in the country.”

“But—” She didn’t quite know what to say, how to respond to something that he’d obviously already decided upon, and without even discussing it with her “—but you have at least three years before med school.”

“I know. But staying here, going to a university closer to home, it will only delay the inevitable.”

Inevitable? What was it that he thought was inevitable?

Ashley didn’t ask, because in her heart, she was afraid she already knew the answer. But she pushed aside her fears.

“There are good medical schools that aren’t on the other side of the country. Like Northwestern and Cornell. Even Chapel Hill would be better than Washington.”

“I want to go to Washington.”

She’d heard the finality in his voice, and her eyes had filled with tears. “You’re breaking up with me.”

He glanced away. “This is for the best, Ash.”

“Best for who?” she demanded.

“For both of us. Do you think this was an easy decision for me to make?”

“How would I know—since you never talked to me about it?”

“Because I knew you would try to convince me to stay. And because I was afraid I would let you.” He reached out and took her hands. “Because there’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to stay here with you.”

The seemingly heartfelt words and the warmth of his touch failed to thaw the icy numbness that had taken hold of her.

She managed to speak, though she didn’t manage to disguise the anguish in her tone when she asked, “Then why are you leaving?”

“Because we want different things, Ash. Being a doctor has been my dream for as long as I can remember.”

“You said you wanted to get married.”

“I do,” he agreed. “Someday. But I’m nowhere near being ready to make that kind of commitment yet. I’m not even close to thinking about being a husband or a father.”

As it turned out, that wasn’t exactly true.

Because only a few years later, before Ashley had even graduated from teacher’s college, he had married. He’d become someone else’s husband. And now she knew that he’d become a father, too.

He’d had the family she always wanted, and she was still alone.

Ashley wiped the tears from her cheeks, reminding herself that she wasn’t going to be alone forever. Despite her initial appointment at PARC having to be rescheduled, she was going to have a baby. And while she couldn’t deny a certain amount of disappointment that her child wouldn’t also have a father, she’d made her decision.

She wouldn’t regret that the baby she’d so often dreamed of having with Cam Turcotte would never be. And she absolutely wouldn’t let herself consider the possibility that his return to Pinehurst could change anything. Especially now that she knew he already was a father.

The ring of the bell jolted her out of her reverie. She hastily wiped the last of the moisture from her cheeks, pasted a smile on her face and opened the door to greet her new students.

She wasn’t sure how she made it through the day, but when the bell sounded at three o’clock, Ashley nearly wept with relief.

It took a few more minutes, of course, to ensure all the kids had their agendas and the assortment of documents that always went home on the first day. But the halls eventually emptied and quiet descended, and Ashley sank back into her chair.

“One day down, only one hundred and eighty-something to go.”

Ashley looked up, startled to see her sister in the doorway. Megan rarely ever came to the school to see Ashley, and the fact that she’d done so now indicated that she had something on her mind.

“One hundred and eighty-six,” Ashley told her. “But what dragged you out of the lab in the middle of the day?”

Megan practically floated into the room. She wasn’t usually the floating type, but she was obviously excited about something so Ashley tried to muster some enthusiasm for her.

“I had an appointment this side of town.” Megan came further into the room, some of the sparkle in her eyes fading as she looked more closely at her sister. “But let’s talk about what’s going on with you first.”

Ashley shook her head. She couldn’t talk about it. She didn’t know what to say, how to explain.

“Come on, Ash. You love the first day of school. I thought you’d be ready to go out and celebrate the beginning of a new year with a great big chocolate fudge brownie sundae at Walton’s.”

“Let’s just say that the day didn’t go exactly as planned.”

“I don’t understand.”

She sighed and pushed her class list across the desk. Megan picked up the page, frowning. Then her eyes widened.

“Madeline Carrington-Turcotte?”

Ashley nodded. “Cam’s daughter.”

“Oh, Ash.”

“She’s beautiful,” she said softly. “And very sweet and shy. She doesn’t say much, but she watches and she listens, her big green eyes taking everything in.”

“Of all the classrooms in all the schools in all the world, she walks into yours.”

Ashley managed to smile at the deliberate misquotation. “I just … I didn’t know how to react. I was completely unprepared. I had no idea that he had a child, never mind one I would end up teaching.”

“But he lives down the street,” Megan reminded her. “You never saw her?”

She shook her head. “He only moved in on the weekend. I saw the truck, saw furniture being unloaded, but I didn’t pay attention to anything else.” And she was regretting that now.

“Chocolate fudge brownie sundae?” Meg prompted gently.

Ashley managed to smile. “That sounds like the perfect way to end a crappy day.”

One of the reasons Cam had moved back to Pinehurst was to be able to spend more time with both his parents and his daughter. Another added benefit was that his parents were not just willing but happy to provide after-school care for Maddie on the days that he couldn’t get away from the office in time to pick her up. But he refused to let her first day of school be one of those days, and when she came racing across the grass and into his arms, he was more certain than ever that this move was the best thing for both of them.

He felt a slight twinge when he recalled the shock—and the pain—he’d seen in Ashley’s eyes when she saw him with Madeline that morning, and he realized the first-grade teacher might not agree. But he refused to worry about that while he walked home, hand in hand with his daughter, listening to her animated conversation the whole way.

He remembered her kindergarten teacher expressing concern that Maddie was too quiet in class, silent and withdrawn. But Cam knew it wasn’t a character flaw, just her personality. She’d always been shy with strangers, but at home and with her family, she was quite the little chatterbox.

“Do you want a snack?” he asked.

“Ice cream,” she said hopefully, hopping onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar.

“We don’t have any.”

She pouted. “You promised to get ice cream.”

“I know I did, but I forgot.”

His admission of guilt didn’t appease her and though Cam knew the dangers of being over-indulgent, he figured the first day at a new school warranted an exception to the rules.

“So why don’t you go wash up and we’ll go to Walton’s?”

“Who’s Walton?”

He smiled. “Walton isn’t a who but a where, and it’s where we go to get the very best ice cream in all of Pinehurst, New York.”

“Really?” Her eyes were almost as wide as her smile.

“Really.”

She hopped off of her stool and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Thanks, Daddy. You’re the best.”

Twenty minutes later, he handed a strawberry sundae to Maddie before accepting his double scoop of butter pecan from the teenager behind the counter and turned to look for a vacant table. A quick glance around the room revealed that there weren’t any.

“There’s my teacher, Daddy.”

Maddie’s words registered at the exact moment his gaze landed on Ashley, seated with her sister at a table for four on the other side of the room.

“Her name’s Miss Ashley,” his daughter reminded him.

Cam nodded.

“She’s very pretty,” Maddie said. “And she smiles a lot and she doesn’t yell. Not even when the skinny boy with the curly hair forgot to ask to go to the bathroom and went pee right in his pants.”

His lips curved. “Not even then?”

Maddie shook her head solemnly.

“So maybe first grade won’t be so bad, huh?”

“Maybe,” she allowed. “But it’s really too soon to tell.”

He was smiling at her comment as he guided her toward Ashley and Megan’s table.

“Looks like someone else decided to celebrate the first day of school with ice cream,” Ashley noted, her attention and smile focused on Madeline.

“It seemed appropriate,” Cam said.

“We thought the same thing,” Megan said, when Ashley failed to respond to his comment.

“But there don’t seem to be any vacant tables,” he pointed out. “So we were hoping you wouldn’t object to us joining you.”

“Of course not,” Megan said, though she cast a worried glance across the table.

Ashley still didn’t say anything to him, but she slid across the bench she was sitting on to make room for his daughter. Maddie smiled shyly at her and carefully set her dish on the table before climbing up beside her teacher.

“Thanks,” Cam said, taking the seat beside Megan. “I don’t remember it ever being so busy in here.”

“A lot changes in twelve years,” Ashley told him.