The Second Time Around

The best-laid plans of mice and men…

When Dr. Kilpatrick had told her she was pregnant, her reaction had been bittersweet. Being pregnant meant closing the door on being young and carefree. It meant opening the door to parenthood, which was something both of them wanted and anticipated with relish—sometime in the near future, but not right at that moment.

“So we’re a little ahead of schedule,” Jason had laughed when she’d told him the news.

She’d come home with a loaf of French bread and candlesticks, intent on creating as much of a romantic setting as she could before telling him. Jason had gotten the news out of her within ten seconds of her closing the door to their tiny furnished apartment.

He’d hugged her, lifting her off the ground. He’d stopped short of spinning her around when she’d protested, saying her stomach contents were threatening to revisit the outside world.

“What about the road trip?” she’d reminded him when her feet were firmly planted back on the floor again. She knew he’d had his heart set on it and had spent weeks planning it, in between going to work. There were maps littering every available flat space in the apartment, many of them with red lines marking possible routes to take.

With a wide grin, he’d shrugged it off. “Plenty of time for a road trip once this little fella makes his debut.” He’d patted her stomach, then suddenly dropped to his knees, resting his cheek against her abdomen and talking to her belly button as if it was a direct connection to the baby within. “Don’t give your mom any trouble, now. She really doesn’t look very good in green.”

She’d loved Jason so much at that very moment, she’d thought her heart was going to burst. “We’ll go on that road trip as soon as the baby’s old enough to travel, honey,” she’d promised him with feeling.

Jason rose to his feet, a dazed, happy look of disbelief on his face. “It’s a date.”

And then he’d gone on to seal the bargain with a deep, amorous kiss that had made her recall just how it was that she’d gotten into this state to begin with. Because Jason had undone her so quickly, she had completely forgotten all about taking any precautions against this very thing.

But as soon as Luke—named after Jason’s late father—was old enough to take on the overdue road trip, Morgan was more than just a gleam in Jason’s eye. He was a bump in her stomach. A rather large bump.

Christopher came two years later.

Within a few months after her twenty-fifth birthday, Laurel found herself the harried mother of three children, all under the age of five. Her own mother presented her with a large eleven-by-fourteen book meant for the elementary-school set entitled, Where Babies Come From.

Her mother’s idea of a joke, Laurel had thought at the time. “I know where babies come from, Mother,” she told the woman who had only given birth to two children herself. “They come from heaven, holding a small piece of it in their chubby little hands when they arrive.”

And she’d meant that with all her heart. Because holding her babies in her arms was like holding heaven.

But that didn’t mean life was peaceful by any stretch of the imagination. Her three, overactive boys had each been a trial in their own unique way, sending both her and Jason to the edge of their tempers and to the center of their ability to love.

It was, all in all, a trial by fire. Three trials by fire. But there wasn’t a minute of that hectic, insane life that she would have eliminated—with the possible exception of when Morgan had brought home that jar of black widow spider eggs and they had hatched overnight. The babies had gotten loose, crawling out of the holes he’d punched in the top of the metal lid.

Frantic, envisioning them all dying of spider bites in their beds, she’d almost insisted that they move out of the house. Jason had her agree to a compromise by getting an exterminator at a moment’s notice.

But even the black widow spider incident had had its upside. Because of that, when she’d gone to the local real estate agent, she wound up getting friendly with the man who ran the agency. So much so that she began to seriously think about getting a part-time job selling houses as a way to bring in extra money. True to his word, Ed Callaghan signed her up with his agency the very day she passed her course and received her real estate license.

She found that she was good at finding just the right house for people. And just like that, Laurel had a career. A career she still had and a livelihood she could easily count on. When the last of her boys had gone into the first grade, she began to put in more hours. Now she had three plaques on the wall of her cubicle proclaiming her to be the saleswoman of the year. Jason called her his go-getter.

Go-getters didn’t go get pregnant. Not if they didn’t want to be, she thought glumly as she drove onto the main drag within the city she’d called home for the past twenty years. Once upon a time Molten Parkway had been nothing more than a two-lane road that went from one end of the town to the other, the only path to either of the two freeways that went through Bedford. But now they were a city, not a town, and Molten was a major thoroughfare with three lanes whizzing by in either direction.

Whizzing, that was, in the off hours. During peak hours, the road was clogged with cars either intent on taking one of the two freeways back to wherever it was they came from each morning or returning home from some other region. Molten Parkway found itself the scene of the eternal Southern California shuffle of vehicles. And it was getting worse with each passing month.

Laurel had seen Bedford, like her family, grow over the years. Often she found herself wishing that Bedford would finally stop growing and stay the way it was.

She never thought that she’d find herself wishing the same thing about her family. Certainly not at this stage of her life.

She remembered right after she’d brought Christopher home from the hospital and she and Jason had captured a quiet moment to themselves after Luke and Morgan had collapsed into a fitful sleep.

The two of them had stood over the baby’s crib, absorbing the fleeting, rare silence, watching the brand-new third addition to their family sleeping.

And then, suddenly, Jason had broken the silence. “Three,” he’d said.

The single word had come out of the blue, surprising her as much as it confused her. She’d looked at him, puzzled, waiting for an explanation. When none came, she’d asked, “What?”

Jason had turned to her and then lightly kissed her forehead, his lips barely touching her skin. Tingling her soul.

“Three,” he repeated. “I like the number three.” And then, in case she didn’t get the reference, he added, “Three sons.”

She’d cocked her head, trying to discern something she thought she’d detected.

“Is that finality in your voice?” she’d asked, recalling how he’d talked about having a houseful of kids while they’d been in school.

“It is,” he replied, nodding his head as if reviewing his own thoughts and finding them good. “Any more and we might not be able to provide them with everything they’ll need.” He leaned over the crib, tucking the blue blanket around his small, new son. “Might not be able to give them enough of ourselves, either. Not if equal shares are being handed out.”

She’d laughed then and kissed his cheek. As always, he was the soul of reason. And she agreed with him. Three was a good number, even though it was one more than she had hands.

“I do love you, Jason Mitchell.”

He’d put his arm around her shoulders then, pulling her closer to him as he murmured, “Yes, I know,” into her hair.

“We’ll have that road trip someday soon,” she’d promised.

She sighed now.

Someday just got a little further away.

CHAPTER 3

Laurel’s already overworked heart rose up to her throat as she pulled up before the two-story Colonial house that highlighted their steady rise in the world. It was their third house in twenty years. They’d lived here for a little over seven years now.

It felt like home. More so than the other two, smaller houses.

But it wasn’t sentiment that had her heart lodging itself in her windpipe. It was the sight of Jason’s navy-blue sedan. The sedan he’d been talking about trading in for a sportier two-seater. He’d been talking about doing this since Christopher had gone off to UCLA almost two years ago. She thought it was her husband’s way of coping with empty-nest syndrome. Hers was to look forward to the next visit from one or more of her sons.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. What was her husband doing home?

Damn.

That wasn’t the word that usually came to mind when she thought of her husband. But she’d counted on having more time to pull herself together, to figure out what words to use in order to break the news to Jason—that there would be a baby in their future and it wasn’t because one of their sons had accidentally dropped his guard and gotten a girl pregnant.

How could this be happening to her?

Laurel pulled up into the driveway and left the car parked next to his—she had no choice since he’d taken up every square inch of the garage with his train layout. After a deep, fortifying breath, she got out of the vehicle. She took her time locking the door and activating the antitheft alarm.

Of course, she was stalling. Eventually, she was going to have to go in and face the music.

For the time being, Laurel decided to table the “big revelation” in favor of finding out just what Jason was doing home in what amounted to the middle of the day. He rarely came home before six o’clock, usually closer to seven. It seemed to her that the higher up he went in the advertising agency where he worked, the less time he actually had for himself. For them.

Which was why he’d sounded so wistful lately when he talked about chucking everything and taking an early retirement.

Still moving in slow motion, Laurel unlocked the front door. Her hand on the doorknob, she paused to take another deep breath before turning it. She might have leaned on it a little too hard. The next thing she knew, she found herself pitching forward into the house, thrown off balance because the door was being opened from the inside.

“About time you got here,” Jason declared, catching her.

He was grinning the grin that transformed him from the forty-six-year-old ad executive to the young man she’d fallen so hard for the first time she laid eyes on him. He’d been grinning then, too. But at Bernadette O’Hara, who wore her sweaters so tight everyone in high school used to wonder how the five-foot-five dark-haired girl managed to keep her circulation from being literally cut off. At least, all the girls wondered. The boys were all too dazed to be able to put together more than three words into a semicoherent thought without drooling.

All except Jason, she’d discovered, much to her delight.

Jason was deeper than that, deep enough not to be taken in by such superficial things as overdeveloped mammary glands and the underdeveloped material that strained to cover them.

With his hair a deep chestnut-brown as yet unassaulted by any stray gray hairs, Jason was still as boyish looking as he’d been back then. Still as trim and muscular, too, even though a few more pounds had found their way onto his torso. They’d settled in across his chest and biceps, not his waist. She still bought all his pants from that same small section marked “size 30 waist.”

Won’t be able to say that about you pretty soon. You’re going to be size elephant.

“I didn’t realize you’d be here,” she told him now, slipping off her coat. She tucked it into the hall closet, leaving it on a hook. Right now she didn’t think she could handle something as complicated as a hanger. “What are you doing home?”

“Waiting for you.” Jason brushed his lips against hers. It was then that she realized he was holding a bottle of champagne in his hand. Backing up, he held it aloft like the first rider across the finish line at the Kentucky Derby. “I almost started celebrating without you.”

“Celebrating?” she echoed.

He knew?

Laurel tried not to sound as nervous, as unsettled, as she felt. It took effort to keep her voice calm. “What are you celebrating?”

There was a smattering of disappointment in his eyes, as if he was surprised she could have forgotten, what with all the hours he’d put in and all the Saturdays he’d spent in his office at home, trying to make things come together for him.

“The Aimes Baby account. It’s ours,” he declared, referring to the project for the agency he’d been working for these past fifteen years. Then he gleefully corrected, “Mine.” Jason let the words sink in before embellishing. “The baby food, the diapers, the toys, all mine.”

“We’ll have to add on to the house,” Laurel quipped, trying very hard to focus on his joy and not her own dread.

“Very funny. I’m talking about the account.” As if she didn’t know, he thought with affection. Laurel had always taken an active interest in his work. More than he did in hers, he was sorry to admit. But then, he was the one who needed bolstering at times. She had always been tireless, always confident. He didn’t know how she did it. “They loved my ad campaign,” he told her needlessly since he was the main one pitching to the company. His dark green eyes were shining as he went on. “This means a bonus, a raise and a lot of other perks. Jon Aimes approved the campaign personally. You know what this means, right?”

Her brain felt like Swiss cheese. She didn’t even know her own middle name right now.

“Tell me what it means,” she coaxed in a voice that wives had been using for centuries to humor husbands who were dying to disclose details.

“It means that we have an in with his other companies, as well. I have an in with his other companies as well,” he emphasized. “This makes me a very important asset to Chandler, Wallace and Mitchell.” His grin was so wide now, it threatened to split his face. “Sky’s the limit, Laurie,” he declared.

His enthusiasm about to overflow, Jason propped the bottle against his thigh and began working the cork loose. “I told them I needed some time off before I could throw myself headlong into the work. They were a little skeptical at first, but I convinced them. I told them I’d take a laptop with me and e-mail them anything I came up with.”

“Laptop?” Laurel repeated. Every second, her brain was shrinking, reducing in size to whatever might reside in a single-cell amoeba.

“Yeah. I figured we’d take it on our road trip. You didn’t think I’d forget about the road trip, did you? I know it’s not going to be for as long as we anticipated, and I will have to do some work, but it’ll be great, I promise, honey.” He saw the look on her face and put his own interpretation to her expression. “I know, I know, I was going to taper off, working toward an early retirement, but this just fell into my lap.” He conveniently forgot about the long hours he’d put in to get this to fall into his lap. “This was just too good to pass up, you know? And we’ll take that longer road trip once all this is squared away. Scout’s honor.”

The cork finally came loose and went shooting into the living room like a large, beige-colored bullet. Jason laughed as foam came pouring out.

“Wow. I had no idea those things could go that far. C’mon, honey, follow me,” he urged, hurrying into the living room, a trail of foam marking his path.

There were crystal glasses on the coffee table and he quickly filled first one, then the other. Once he put down the champagne bottle, he picked up both glasses and offered one to her.

“Here.”

But Laurel kept her hand at her sides and she shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

Jason was nothing if not tolerant. “I know, I know, it’s not five o’clock yet, but this is a special occasion, honey. I promise I won’t tell the alcohol police. They won’t bust you.” Picking up her hand, he tried to press the glass into it.

But she kept her hand clenched, refusing to take the glass even though there was nothing she would have rather done right now than down its contents—maybe even the whole bottle. But the reason she wanted the drink was the very reason she couldn’t have it.

“No, Jason, really, I can’t. I can’t have a drink of champagne. Or anything alcoholic.”

The perfectly shaped eyebrows she had always envied drew together in a concerned line as Jason looked at her. “Why? Aren’t you feeling well?”

She felt inches away from recycling her lunch. “So-so.”

And then he remembered. The excitement left his voice. “That’s right, you went to see Dr. Kilpatrick today. What did she say? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” he guessed, afraid to let his imagination go any further. “Can you take something for it? Can it be cured?”

Terminated, maybe, but not cured. And she wasn’t about to consider the former. So she shook her head. “Not really.”

Jason’s festive mood was gone. “Honey, is it something serious?”

She pressed her lips together. The moment of truth was here. “That all depends. Do you think a baby is serious?”

It was his turn to repeat words in confusion. “A baby?”

Laurel nodded. It was time to drop the bomb. She couldn’t stall any longer. “Jason, I’m pregnant.”

The glass he’d been holding slipped from his suddenly numbed fingers. Champagne pooled on the light gray carpet, then slowly sank in.

Like a drowning man going down for the fourth time.

CHAPTER 4

Laurel swallowed the few choice words that sprang to her lips regarding the pool of champagne swiftly vanishing into her recently steam cleaned rug. Hurrying into the kitchen, she made a beeline for the sink and opened the cabinet doors beneath it. Housed there were all the cleaning products she needed for any emergency.

She snatched up her ever-faithful can of extrastrength rug cleaner and a clean cloth. The red can and its brethren had served her in good stead, eradicating pizza, spilled cans of soda and beer and the very pungent evidence of not one but three very intense cases of stomach flu.

Stunned and overwhelmed, Jason came to and followed her into the kitchen. He moved like a lost traveler in a foreign land.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Turning on her heel, Laurel narrowly avoided colliding with him as she went back into the living room. Time was of the essence when it came to fighting any and all stains. The carpet was no longer new and not nearly as resilient as it’d once been.

Moving around Jason, she dropped to her knees by the coffee table and sprayed the stain. She knew he was waiting for an answer and wished she could give him the one he wanted. But that wasn’t possible.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Jason found himself addressing the top of her head. “You look frazzled,” he told her quite honestly. “But it’s not a look I haven’t seen before.”

Dabbing at the stain, she glanced up at him. “I’m frazzled because I’m pregnant.”

Jason seemed about to slip into shock. “Stop saying that.”

She began to rise to her feet again. He took her elbow and helped her up.

She didn’t feel pregnant, Jason thought, remembering how heavy Laurel had been during the last pregnancy. She’d gotten so large, he was afraid she’d never get her figure back. But she had. And he liked it. Liked having her as shapely as she’d been the day they got married. Ralph Peters, one of his associates, lamented that his wife looked twice as large as she had when they were first married. Ralph always spoke about Laurel wistfully, telling Jason what a lucky dog he was. He was lucky, no matter what her size.

Laurel drew her elbow away from him. As she’d left the doctor’s office, she’d been ambivalent. More in shock than anything else. She certainly hadn’t wanted to get pregnant again. Didn’t want to be pregnant. But listening to Jason, she suddenly felt very protective of this tiny seed within her. Protective and defensive. And suddenly, despite her condition, very alone. She and Jason had always been on the same page no matter what the issue. Sometimes he was at the top and she at the bottom, or vice versa, but always the same page. The look in his eyes told her they were volumes apart.

She didn’t like the feeling.

“The baby’s not going away if I stop saying I’m pregnant, Jason.” She went back to the kitchen to return the can and the cloth to their rightful place. Housework could be handled better if it was divided into a thousand small components rather than tackled on a grand scale.

“Pregnant,” Jason echoed again, shaking his head. “How could this have happened?”

“The usual way, Jason.” Laurel shut the cabinet again and returned to face him. “There’s a mama bee and a papa bee and the papa bee pollinated the mama bee.”

He still couldn’t believe it. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure you’re pregnant? There’s no mistake?”

There was no mistaking the hopeful note in his voice. She closed her eyes, feeling increasingly alone by the second. Maybe she should have told her best friend or her sister first. Or her mother. But Jason had given her no choice. He’d been here when she hadn’t expected him to be.

“The doctor’s sure.” She opened her eyes again. “The stick turned blue, the rabbit died, how many different ways do you want me to say it? I’m pregnant.”

He stared at her, confused. “The rabbit died? They still use rabbits?”

He would latch onto that, she thought. He did things like that when he didn’t like what he was hearing. Focus on a minute, extraneous tidbit and blow it out of proportion.

“It’s just a figure of speech, Jason. But I am pregnant.” She took a breath to try to calm down. Her stomach remained queasy. “Now that I think of it, this is just the way I felt with Luke.”

Jason tried to put the cork back into the bottle and failed. A perfect afternoon had suddenly fallen apart. He gave up with the cork, tossing it aside. “You had Luke over twenty-three years ago.”

She waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she pressed, “Your point being?”

Jason shrugged uncomfortably. He felt like a man walking through a minefield. But he had to make her understand. “My point is that women with twenty-three-year-old sons don’t get pregnant.”

And what the hell was that supposed to mean? she thought, struggling to keep from losing her temper. She began to pace back and forth around the sofa. She’d been through this often enough to know that it was the hormones talking. They were playing Ping-Pong with her emotions. Having her husband say asinine things didn’t help, of course.

“Is that some kind of a law?” she asked. “Because if it is, I was out of town the day Congress passed it.”

“Laurel, stop pacing.” Then, when she didn’t, he caught hold of her shoulders and held her in place. Or tried to.

She pushed away his hands. “Why? So you can get a clear shot at me?” Okay, that was over the top, she told herself. “Sorry, I can’t help it. I’m exhausted and yet, there’s all this pent-up energy inside of me. Just like with Luke,” she repeated, her tone daring him to deny her statement.

“Pregnant,” he repeated again. The word kept attacking him from all angles, seeking entrance into his brain. He just couldn’t handle it and he sank onto the sofa.

Because she had nowhere else to go, Laurel lowered herself down beside him. Deep within her soul, she wanted her husband, her partner, her best friend of so many years, to tell her everything was going to be all right. That he wasn’t upset or angry about this bizarre twist their lives had taken. And that he was going to stand by her, no matter what. Stand by her and rub cocoa butter onto her swiftly expanding abdomen to prevent stretch marks, the way he had all the other times.

All the other times, she reminded herself silently, they had been much younger. Jason had been much younger.

Oh God, this was going to be a nightmare. And when she woke up, she was going to be alone. In her mind’s eye, she could see Jason running for the hills. Who wants to be married to a forty-five-year-old pregnant woman?