The Second Time Around

She blew out a breath. “So.”

The word hung in the air between them, waiting for more. Begging for more.

“So,” he finally echoed, then turned to look at her. As she watched, his expression changed from that of a man who had just dived into a foxhole, shell-shocked, to that of a man who had suddenly seen the course of action opening up before him. “You can’t have it,” he told her, his voice firm.

She blinked, stunned.

Jason was the type who refused to kill crickets in the house. He captured them and set them free on the patio. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t have it,” he repeated, his voice carrying just a shade less conviction than it had a moment ago.

“What do you mean, I ‘can’t have it’?” she demanded. “This isn’t some rich piece of cake that’s going to send my diet into a tailspin—this is a baby. I already have it. I’m pregnant. With child,” she added, using the terminology Dr. Kilpatrick had used when breaking the news to her. She fought back the wave of horror that was mounting within her. “Jason, you’re talking about a human being here.”

There were a score of theories as to when a fetus became a living being. He couldn’t summon one to back him up. “There’s a debate over that at this stage.”

She stood up indignantly. “Not to me. You can’t just sweep it away like that.”

Didn’t she understand what was at stake? He rose, trying to put his hands on her shoulders. Trying to form a unit. “Yes, I can.”

There was anger in her eyes, anger mixed with disappointment and deep, deep hurt. “Look, I’m sorry this messes up the plans you’ve been dreaming about these last few years. They were my plans, too, but—”

“Is that what you think? That I’m upset because we can’t take a—a stupid road trip?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“Hell, no.” And then because his denial wasn’t strictly true, Jason backtracked a little, correcting himself. “I’m disappointed, sure, but the whole road trip idea is becoming sort of an unattainable goal, like Shangri-la.”

“Is it the summer home?” she asked. “Because we could still build one, just not as big and maybe not quite in the location you wanted—”

He cut her short. “It’s not the summer home.”

She’d run out of things to guess. “All right then, what are you upset about?”

“You.”

“Me?” He had completely lost her. “What about me?”

His gift of gab, the very thing that helped him pitch the ads he so cleverly constructed, left him when it came to speaking from his heart. He wasn’t a man who bared his emotions. He turned away for a moment, shoving his hands deep into his pocket, searching for a way to anchor himself. Searching for words.

When he spoke, he addressed the words to the wall. “Look, I don’t want to have to do without you.”

Was that it? He was afraid of losing his maid? Over the years, she’d spoiled him and she knew it. She’d taken a relatively self-sufficient man and gotten him used to having everything done for him.

Her own fault, she thought.

“I’ll still do everything I’ve always done,” she assured him, trying hard not to let her annoyance show. “Your shirts will still be ironed, your meals will still be made, most likely on time, your—”

“The hell with my shirts. The hell with the meals,” he retorted.

For a second, because he had her really confused, Laurel stopped talking. Confusion had her resorting to quips.

“Okay, you’ll be wrinkled and hungry. I wish you’d told me that years ago. You would have saved me so much time every week—”

“I don’t want to have to do without you,” Jason repeated, saying the words with more feeling. And then, because his wife eyed him as if he had suddenly started speaking in several foreign languages, all at once, he was forced to elaborate. He hated being made to say every word. She was supposed to be able to read between the lines. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to go on.”

For one of the very few times in her life, Laurel found herself truly speechless.

CHAPTER 5

The silence in the living room continued, stretching out like a long, silken thread until Jason couldn’t take it anymore.

“Say something,” he urged.

Laurel felt tears stinging her eyes, threatening to spill out. She knew they were there partially because of the king-size hormonal blender into which her emotions had been tossed. But the tears had also sprung up because words of affection from Jason, any sort of affection, were as rare as a blizzard in July in Southern California. It had been years since he’d said anything romantic. He rarely expressed his feelings for her, he just expected her to know.

The breath she let out was ragged. “I think that’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”

Jason looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I’m talking about you dying.”

“No,” she contradicted, “you’re talking about love.” She wasn’t going to let him bluster his way out of this. He’d said something nice and she was holding him to it. Laurel touched his face, every single available space within her welling up with affection. “I’m not going to die in childbirth, Jase.”

He took her hand, but rather than pushing it aside, he pressed it to his cheek. Just for a moment. And then he moved it aside. “How do you know?”

“All right.” She inclined her head as if to give him his due. “I can’t give you a written guarantee. But I also can’t give you one that says I won’t die in a traffic accident because I got hit by a car while driving down to Newport Beach. Or that I won’t die choking on your mother’s extra dry turkey next Thanksgiving. But,” she went on, a smile curving her mouth, “I’m reasonably sure I won’t die in childbirth. More sure of that than I am about not getting hit by a car or choking on your mother’s turkey,” she added for good measure.

Jason sighed, taking her hands in his. He forced himself to look her straight in the eye as he tried to make her understand the full extent of his concern. “Laurel, don’t take this the wrong way.” She looked at him warily, waiting. “But you’re old.”

She pulled her hands away and turned from him all in one motion. It turned out to be a little too fast, because the sudden movement made her feel dizzy. Shutting her eyes made it worse, and she swayed. The next thing she knew, Jason had his arms around her, holding her steady. Getting her bearing, she pushed him away from her.

“I’m all right,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “And I am not old.”

Jason held his hands up before him, as if to push away what he’d said, or at least the way he’d said it. “Okay, bad choice of words.”

“Horrific choice of words,” Laurel corrected vehemently. “Forty-five is the new thirty-five,” she told him, echoing Dr. Kilpatrick again. “And thirty-five is not old.”

“What I’m trying to say is that you’re too old to have a baby.”

Even though she’d said the same thing to her doctor not more than an hour ago, hearing her husband say it to her had Laurel up in arms. Suddenly, she didn’t feel too old to be a mother. She didn’t feel any older than she had when she’d had Luke, Morgan or Christopher. Why was he behaving this way now of all times, when she needed him to be supportive?

News stories she’d read came to her out of nowhere, backup statistics she now lobbed at Jason. “There was a Russian woman who gave birth to a baby at sixty-seven last year. Five years ago, there was an actress in Hollywood who used to be on a sitcom in the seventies. She gave birth to twins. Guess how old she was?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

No, she thought, he didn’t. In so many ways.

“She was fifty-one years old. And the babies are fine,” she told him triumphantly, as if their condition was her own personal victory. “Women are giving birth to their first babies later these days. And that’s where the real risk lies, with first-time births. I’ve already had three babies. My body’s broken in.” She saw the look in his eyes. “Not broken down,” she informed him tersely, second-guessing what he was thinking. “Broken in. This’ll be a piece of cake for me.”

He wasn’t convinced. She could see that by the way he set his jaw. She loved the man dearly, but when Jason came to a conclusion, he stuck by it as if he’d been put there with crazy glue. “Would you like to talk to Dr. Kilpatrick?”

This was a losing battle. He’d been with her long enough to know that. It wasn’t that he relished the idea of what he was proposing; it was just that if he had to make a choice between Laurel and a baby, it would be Laurel each time. He didn’t want to look back and find himself wishing that he had made a choice when he had the power.

“What I’d like to do,” he told her, “is talk some sense into you.”

He made it sound as if this was all on her. As if she’d somehow done this all by herself. Maybe he needed to be reminded of how this kind of thing worked. “Hey, this isn’t my doing alone, buster. As I remember, I had help.”

These days, by the time he got home from work, he was far too tired to think of making love with his wife. The job drained him. And when he did have spare time, he wanted to use it putting together the train layouts that had been sitting in boxes for, what was it, almost two decades now?

But every so often, Laurel would come to him with that look on her face, wearing something sexy and sheer. And there was this particular perfume she wore on those occasions. A man couldn’t think when the space in his head was all taken up with that scent.

“You seduced me,” he accused.

She threw her hands up. “You found me out. I put engine oil behind my ears and made noise like an AmTrak passenger train leaving the station.”

The deadpanned statement brought a laugh out of him.

Laurel breathed a sigh of relief. At least he was laughing again. The sound instantly made her feel more mellow.

“It’s going to be all right, Jason,” she promised, putting her arms around him and leaning her head against his chest. “Really.”

Funny how things turned out, she thought. She’d been hoping Jason would comfort her about what was ahead and here she was, reassuring him instead.

Jason kissed her forehead. His breath lightly fluttered against her skin as he asked, “So, how far along are you?”

She did a quick mental calculation, remembering the last time they’d made love. The time before that was too far in the past to count. “Three weeks.”

He glanced at her, surprised at her precision. “There’s room for error.”

She moved her head slowly from side to side. When it came to their life together, the man remembered nothing. While she, on the other hand, remembered everything. “There’s no error.”

Jason pressed his lips together in a reproving frown. “I want you to get a complete checkup.”

“That was what today was supposed to be about,” she reminded him, not that she expected him to remember that, either. Jason had a habit of not retaining information unless it had to do with either his work or his hobbies. She counted herself lucky that he remembered the boys’ birthdays, although he tended to forget the years. As far as listening went, her husband had gotten “uh-huh” down to an art form. “Dr. Kilpatrick gave me a complete physical.”

“More complete,” he insisted. “Blood work, an amniocentesis.” He saw her frowning. “You know, like you did with Christopher.”

With Christopher, there had been some complications at the outset and she’d wanted to make sure the baby she was carrying was all right. Personally, she’d thought it was like being harpooned. She didn’t see a need to go through the ordeal the test represented this time around, since all she felt was queasy.

But she kept that to herself because she didn’t want to create too many waves right now. Now that she’d calmed down, she could see that Jason was obviously trying to come to terms with the bombshell she’d just dropped on him.

That made two of them, she thought. “Yes, sir, Dr. Mitchell, sir.” She saluted.

His eyes narrowed even further. “I’m serious, Laurel.”

“I never thought you weren’t.”

He couldn’t tell if she was deadpanning again, being sarcastic or for once, being serious. He changed the subject. To a degree. “Did you tell your mother?”

“Not yet.” She’d been too dazed to call anyone. And then she smiled as she thought of her mother. “This is going to knock her for a loop. She thought we were going overboard when we had Christopher.” Her mother’s philosophy had always been simple: two hands, two kids. According to her, there was a divine message there.

He looked down at her flat stomach. “This time, she’s right.” When he raised his eyes again, the sad expression on Laurel’s face tugged at his heart.

“Aren’t you the least little bit happy about this?” she asked.

“So little I might be overlooking it.” And then, because he could see that his flippant answer really bothered her, he made an effort for Laurel’s sake. “I love kids, Laurie, I always have. You know that. It’s just that I thought, at this stage of our lives, we were done with diapers, baby food and toys all over the living room, and were moving on to the next chapter of our lives.”

“Just think of this as a slight detour. A chance to relive a piece of our lives.”

“Why? We did it right the first three times,” he told her.

“We’ll do it right again,” she said with more conviction than she actually felt. “Besides, now that you’ve landed the Aimes Baby account, we can get a few free toys and perks,” she teased. Forcing a smile to her lips, she threaded her arms around his neck. “It’s going to be all right, Jason,” she assured him again. “It really is.”

“Right,” he echoed.

Jason did his best to infuse his voice with feeling, but he just couldn’t seem to manage it. The word came out so flat that had it been a reading on a hospital monitor, the patient attached to it would have been pronounced dead.

But that, he supposed, was to be expected. Men who were in shock often registered no emotions.

CHAPTER 6

The office of Bedford Realty Company looked like a miniaturized Swiss chalet, inside and out. The scent of wood, finely crafted and highly polished, greeted the client the moment he or she entered the small, two-story building. Those who worked there were completely oblivious to the scent, having long since lost the ability to detect either the wood or the lemon polish applied nightly.

When Laurel walked in that morning, only Jeannie Wallace, her best friend of ten years, was in the office, seated at her desk. Because of the Mercedes parked in the reserved spot, she knew that the manager, Ed Callaghan, was in the back, most likely looking over the number of sales that had been brought in this month. Beyond that, the office was empty.

She’d debated keeping her news to herself for a while, thinking it might be better that way. But Jeannie only needed to take one look at her face to know something was up.

“C’mon,” she urged in her no-nonsense voice, “spill it.”

So she did.

For a total of ten seconds, Jeannie said nothing. And then she found her voice. “You’re kidding.”

Laurel laughed softly to herself. “Funny, that’s the same thing Jason said when I told him.”

Jeannie’s wide mouth curved ever so slightly. She and her husband, Jonas, socialized with Laurel and Jason on a fairly regular basis. She knew all about Jason’s plans for the future. “Before or after he got up off the floor?”

Laurel turned on her computer out of habit rather than any specific need to view anything. She kept her schedule in her head as well as on the hard drive. Other than putting in a call to the First Escrow Company of Bedford to find out what was holding up the process for the Newtons, one of her recent sales, she didn’t have anything on her agenda.

“After.”

Jeannie pursed her lips and shook her head. There was humor in her eyes. “Pregnant, huh?”

Laurel was really having a hard time getting accustomed to the idea. She’d had the same problem the first time around, but then it had been because she was walking on air. That wasn’t exactly the case this time. “You don’t have to grin like that.”

Jeannie leaned back in her chair, which creaked its protest. “I’m just thinking better you than me.” Her eyes swept over her friend’s petite frame. “I always thought you could stand to gain a few pounds. If I was the pregnant one, they’d have to start reinforcing the chairs around here.” The idea made her laugh. At close to six feet, Jeannie was what was politely referred to as heavyset. It never seemed to bother her. Jeannie had always seemed comfortable in her own skin. “I’m lucky Jonas likes his women big.” And then her grin widened. “Or maybe he’s the lucky one.” Pushing away from her own desk, Jeannie, still seated, brought her chair around closer to Laurel. Her eyes were a tad more serious as she asked, “So, how do you feel about it?”

She kept asking herself that same question, Laurel thought. She shrugged in response. “Numb. Nauseated.”

Jeannie waved her hand at the words. “Besides that. Those are givens.”

Laurel paused for a moment, thinking. Examining. She raised her eyes to Jeannie’s. “Happy, I guess. Scared.” Despite the fact that they were alone in the front office, she lowered her voice in case Callaghan entered in. “I mean, when I had the others, my body was pretty resilient. Back then, my skin bounced back.” She looked down sadly at her flat stomach, knowing that was just a temporary state. “This time around I might end up looking like a stretched-out alligator bag by the time all this is over.”

“Not you, Laurel. If I know you, you’ll be exercising right through the whole ordeal.” Realizing that the word had the wrong connotation, she corrected herself. “I mean, experience.”

They’d been friends too long to start pretending now. “No, you got it right the first time. Ordeal’s the right word for all this.” Laurel sighed, shaking her head. Thinking of the months ahead. The distended stomach, the swelling of every part of her that made rings and shoes too tight. As for the clothes…“I’m going to have to get all new clothes,” she realized suddenly. “I gave away the last of my maternity clothes after Christopher was born and we decided that three kids were just about as far as we wanted to go.”

Jeannie chuckled. She reached over and patted Laurel’s hand. “Well, looks like you’re going to have to go shopping, girl.” As always, she focused on the bright side. “Shopping’s fun. They’ve got a lot cuter clothes now for pregnant women than when we were at that stage. Originally,” she tactfully added. “Wendy and I went shopping just the other Saturday,” she went on, mentioning her five-months-pregnant daughter. “I can take you to this new boutique—”

Laurel held up a hand. She wasn’t ready to start thinking about buying maternity clothes yet. According to the doctor’s scale, she was three pounds lighter than she was when she’d come in for her last checkup. “This isn’t another excuse for shopping.”

“Sure it is. Everything’s an excuse for shopping.” Jeannie adored shopping. It had long since been decided that Jonas, an actuary with a major insurance company, was the breadwinner of the family. Her salary went for the frivolous, non-essentials. Once in a while, there was something in it for Jonas. “Shopping is therapeutic, and it helps the economy.” She drew herself up as if delivering a proclamation. “Shopping is almost a patriotic duty.”

Laurel grinned as she shook her head. “You should have been a lawyer.”

Jeannie tossed her head. Newly colored strawberry-blond tresses bounced over her ample shoulders. “I thought about it, but there was too much studying involved. Selling houses is a lot more fun.” She leaned in, her voice lowering. “Have you told anyone else yet?”

Laurel shook her head again. She’d thought about it, several times. Had even reached for the phone more than once last night. But ultimately, her courage had flagged. “Not yet.”

Jeannie looked at her, puzzled. “Mother, sister, sons?”

The answer didn’t change. “No.”

“Why?” Confusion gave way to suspicion. “Are you thinking of—?”

“No,” Laurel cut her off, not wanting to even hear the option mentioned. By the end of yesterday afternoon, she’d firmly made up her mind to have this baby. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. “I’m not. I just don’t have the oomph to go through this five separate times and face those surprised, skeptical and maybe disapproving looks five times over.”

Jeannie’s solution was simple. “So, don’t.”

That didn’t solve anything. “Right. And what, just tell them I’m gaining all this weight around my middle because my metabolism suddenly decided to die?”

“No, tell them all at once. The whole family. Five with one blow. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. It’ll be quick. Just call a family meeting, or whatever it is those gatherings are called. That way, if someone in the group starts asking you what the hell you were thinking, hopefully someone else will jump in to your defense and tell them where to put their opinions.”

The thought made Laurel laugh. Jeannie always had that effect on her. Nothing every fazed her. “Safety in numbers, huh?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Laurel thought about it for a moment. She knew that Christopher had classes, but he was free in the evening, as were her other two sons. Her mother was busy with her clubs, but she could set aside a few minutes for her oldest born. And as for Lynda, well, she didn’t do much of anything except go to work and come home these days. She was still reeling from her divorce, something that had come upon her totally out of left field.

All five at once. She liked the idea, Laurel thought. It would be a lot easier this way. “Maybe you have something there.”

“Of course I do,” Jeannie answered cheerfully. “Haven’t you noticed? I’m brilliant.” The sound of a small bell was heard ringing. They both looked over toward the front door. A lone man entered. “Speaking of being brilliant, looks like we’ve got ourselves a live one. Why don’t you take him?”

They each took turns with clients. She’d been up yesterday afternoon before she’d gone in for the exam that changed everything. “Isn’t it your turn for the walk-in?”

“Yeah, but I’m feeling generous. Consider it your first baby present.” She looked back at the handsome stranger. He was standing near the door, his hands clasped behind his back as he glanced from photograph to photograph. “Besides, I’ve got a feeling he’s just interested in getting the lay of the land, so to speak.” Her lips twitched. “If he were serious, he would have sent his wife ahead first.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have a wife.”

Jeannie pretended to reconsider. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given him away so fast.”

“Too late,” Laurel said, rising to her feet. Sparing her friend one last grin, Laurel walked toward the potential client.

Tall, tanned, with a beautiful thick head of almost black hair with a few distinguished strands of gray, the man was wearing a pair of crisply ironed navy slacks and a striking blue shirt beneath his sports jacket. The shirt was just vivid enough to bring out his eyes. He was examining the array of properties currently up for sale as displayed on the long bulletin board.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Laurel asked as she approached him.

He turned toward her after a beat, pausing just long enough to finish reading the description beneath one of the houses. The smile that came to his lips as he saw her spoke of many things. Houses was not among them.

Laurel felt something electric shoot through her.

“I can think of a few.”

His voice, low and rhythmic, was vaguely familiar. But it was like a fleeting thought that wouldn’t allow itself to be pinned down. The man’s voice probably reminded her of someone else, she decided.

She put on her most cheerful customer-friendly face. “Are you looking for a house?”

“That would be why I’m here,” he replied, amusement highlighting his features.