A Baby for the Bachelor
Victoria Pade
From perfect strangers… to fairy-tale ending!When a shattering loss took away her chance at happiness, Marti Grayson took comfort in the arms of a gentle stranger. Now, pregnant and alone, she’s returned to her home town to raise her baby – until the stranger unexpectedly arrives at her door!Noah Perry’s wild ways had cost him a chance at parenthood once before. Now given a second chance, he’s determined to be a good father to his child. But Marti’s beauty and strength make Noah want to give her all of his love – and build a forever family!
“I’m sorry if I brought up bad memories tonight,” Noah said.
“It’s OK.” Marti assured.
He smiled. “Great date, huh?”
“You do know how to show a girl a good time.”
Noah tilted her face ever so slightly upward as he leaned in and met her mouth with his. Her arms went around him. His hand moved from her face to cradle the back of her head as his mouth opened even wider over hers. His tongue plundered and claimed and made her his, kissing her until nothing existed but the two of them and that kiss that drew her in, absorbed her and breathed new life into her all at once.
Available in July 2010
from Mills & Boon
Special Moments
From Friends to Forever by Karen Templeton & The Family He Wanted by Karen Sandler
Baby By Surprise by Karen Rose Smith & Daddy by Surprise by Debra Salonen
A Kid to the Rescue by Susan Gable & Then Comes Baby by Helen Brenna
The Sheikh and the Bought Bride by Susan Mallery
A Cold Creek Homecoming by RaeAnne Thayne
A Baby for the Bachelor by Victoria Pade
The Baby Album by Roz Denny Fox
A Baby for the
Bachelor
BY
Victoria Pade
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Victoria Pade is a native of Colorado, where she continues to live and work. Her passion – besides writing – is chocolate, which she indulges in frequently and in every form. She loves romance novels and romantic movies – the more lighthearted the better – but she likes a good, juicy mystery now and then, too.
Chapter One
“Wake up, Marti. I think we’re close and I need guidance.”
Marti Grayson opened her eyes at the sound of her brother’s voice and sat up from her slump against the inside of his car door.
“Sorry. I wasn’t much company, was I?”
“None,” Ry said good-naturedly. “You fell asleep two miles from Missoula and you’ve been out ever since.”
“That’s been happening a lot lately. I’m told it comes with the territory—pregnancy hormones or something,” she said before focusing her attention outside of the vehicle. “Northbridge?” she asked.
“That’s what the sign said. But you tell me, you’re the one who’s been here before.”
“For one night, three weeks ago. I got in late that Monday afternoon and left Tuesday morning.”
Still, as Ry drove down Main Street in the small Montana town she recognized it as the street she’d driven in—and out—on.
“Take a right when you get to South Street,” she instructed. “Gram’s house is the last one before South Street goes out into farm- and ranchland. The driveway veers up a steep hill to the house.”
In mid-April their elderly grandmother had escaped her nurse and surprised everyone by making her way to Northbridge. Theresa Hobbs Grayson had been born and raised there. The three grandchildren who made sure she was cared for in her mentally and emotionally unstable state hadn’t known about the town or the house before that. But because Theresa was determined to remain there now, her grandchildren—Marti, Ry and the third triplet, Wyatt—were accommodating her.
Wyatt had been the first to come to Northbridge after Theresa was discovered in the old abandoned house. The plan had been for Marti, Ry and Wyatt to rotate spending time there with Theresa. But when Marti had arrived to relieve Wyatt, Wyatt had suddenly decided he wasn’t leaving. He was going to relocate permanently in order to marry the local social worker who had been Theresa’s case manager with Human Services.
Marti had needed to do a fast turnaround to get back to Missoula and the headquarters of Home-Max—the chain of large home-improvement stores owned by the Gray sons. She’d had to take over for Wyatt there and so had not seen anything of Northbridge except what she’d driven through.
Now Wyatt was about to marry Neily Pratt and so both Marti and Ry were making the trip.
Ry had followed her directions and the house came into view in the distance. “Is that it?” he asked.
“That’s it,” Marti confirmed.
“It’s a lot bigger than I thought,” he said of the stately stone house that stood a tall two stories.
“I told you it was,” Marti said. “The inside is goodsized, too, but barely livable.”
“Who’s that?” Ry interjected as they got closer. “Not Wyatt.”
The house had a wide covered porch that ran the entire front and wrapped around one side to stretch all the way to the rear. Near the corner of the wraparound there was a man hanging a wooden bench seat that hung from chains.
His back was to them but Marti couldn’t help noticing that it was quite a back—he was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt so tight it might as well have been painted on his V-shaped torso and shoulders that were a mile wide and extremely well muscled.
“That must be the contractor Wyatt hired to work on the place,” Marti said, taking in what was undeniably an impressive view—especially when she factored in the narrow waist, tight rear end and long, thick legs.
“Noah Perry—isn’t that his name?” she went on. “I never got a chance to meet him. The remodel and update is no small job, though, and now with the wedding this weekend Wyatt said they’re in a crunch to have at least enough of the downstairs finished to be presentable. He said this Perry guy is putting in a lot of hours.”
“Looks okay from out here.”
Looks better than okay, Marti thought before she realized Ry was talking about the house while she was thinking about the contractor’s butt.
And she shouldn’t be thinking—or looking—at the contractor’s butt. She pulled her gaze away.
“I still can’t believe he’s getting married again,” Ry said.
Apparently not looking at the contractor wasn’t enough to erase him from Marti’s mind because for a split second she thought Ry was talking about him. Then she yanked her thoughts back in line and realized her brother was referring to Wyatt.
“How hard is this wedding gonna be on you?” Ry asked with a sidelong glance at her.
“It’s okay,” Marti assured him, appreciating his concern. “I’ve made this huge decision in my life in order to move on and that’s what I’m going to keep reminding myself. Wyatt is having a new beginning, I’m having a new beginning.”
“Huh, and I thought you were having a baby,” Ry joked as he pulled into the driveway.
He turned off the engine and Marti stretched. It had been a long drive and she’d been sitting in one position the whole way. The stretch made her head spin slightly, though, and she stopped to take a deep breath. So far pregnancy was making itself known in extreme fatigue, more trips to the bathroom, some nausea and sudden bouts of dizziness.
Her head settled down after the third deep breath and she reached for the door handle as Ry got out of the driver’s side and headed around the front of his newest toy.
The sports car was so low to the ground Marti had to duck a little to get out before she could stand and wave to Wyatt, who had come out of the house to greet them. And on came the whirlies again. Much worse than in the car.
Everything started to spin and tilt. Her gorge rose, and she felt herself sway uncontrollably. Her knees buckled and down she went like a helium balloon that had just lost all its oomph.
She heard both Ry and Wyatt call her name in a panic and come running. She wanted to reassure them that it was nothing, but beyond shaking her head she didn’t have the wherewithal for more.
Deep breaths…Deep breaths…It’ll pass…
Her brothers were on either side of her by then, asking if she was all right, but it was as if their voices were coming from far away, and all she could do was sit there, bracing herself with one arm to keep upright while her head was in some sort of internal spin.
Another man chimed in, in a voice that was vaguely familiar although Marti couldn’t place it. He was suggesting they call for an ambulance.
“No!” she managed as she struggled not to lose her lunch.
“Mary Pat!”
That was Wyatt’s voice, yelling for her grandmother’s caregiver. Mary Pat must have already been on her way because a moment later the nurse was kneeling beside her, taking her pulse.
“It’s just…dizziness…” Marti whispered as the wave finally began to subside. Then she said, “I’m okay. Really.”
Embarrassment inched in behind the dizzy spell when she heard Ry say, “Maybe this artificial insemination thing wasn’t such a great idea. I’m not so sure pregnancy agrees with you.”
“Ry…” Wyatt chided. “Filter it, will you?”
“I’m just saying—”
“It doesn’t need to be said. Especially not out here on the lawn.”
With some stranger standing there, Marti thought as she put all her efforts into regaining herself.
She swallowed hard, closed her eyes for a minute and took a few more deep breaths before she repeated, “I’m really okay. I just keep getting this wicked dizziness thing.”
Then she opened her eyes and looked to her other brother, appreciating that he had the sense to curb Ry’s lack of discretion, and smiled feebly.
“Hi, Wyatt,” she said as if nothing had separated his greeting and that moment.
“Hi, Marti,” Wyatt said, alarm in his expression but his tone calm and understanding.
Marti looked to her grandmother’s caregiver. “Hi, Mary Pat. Could you tell these guys there’s nothing to this?”
“I think she’s fine,” the nurse confirmed. Then, to Marti she said, “Do you want to try to stand or shall we sit here a few minutes?”
“Why don’t we see if I can’t actually make it to the house.” Truthfully she would have preferred to stay put, if only everyone—including the handsome stranger—would stop staring.
“Here, let us get you up,” Wyatt insisted as he took one arm and Ry took the other.
That just made Marti feel like more of a spectacle. “I’m not an invalid, you know, guys.”
Neither of them commented, they just helped her to her feet.
And that was when her gaze went to the other onlooker—the man who had been hanging the chair swing on the porch and had obviously rushed down to her rescue along with her brothers.
“This is Noah Perry,” Wyatt said. “Noah, this is my brother Ry and our sister Marti.”
And that was when Marti swallowed hard a second time.
“Actually,” Noah said in a deep, rich voice she suddenly remembered all too well, “Marti and I have already met. At the Hardware Expo at the end of March.”
So she wasn’t hallucinating.
She’d almost hoped she might be.
“That’s right,” she confirmed weakly, not knowing what to do or say as her head started to spin for an entirely different reason.
While she hadn’t recognized the man from the back, now that she was face-to-face with him, she didn’t need an introduction. She knew that wavy chestnut hair, that slightly hawkish nose, those lush lips, those rich brown eyes. They’d been haunting her thoughts for the last six weeks.
“You better get inside, your color is draining again,” Mary Pat said, hooking her arm into Marti’s. “Come with me. I’ll get you some water and maybe a little sugar pick-me-up.”
Marti still hadn’t found any other words to say and Mary Pat was urging her to move so she just went, her thoughts on the man she’d thought she’d never see again.
The man who was the real father of her baby.
An hour after the late-afternoon excitement with the Gray sons, Noah Perry went home to a Friday night full of plans to pry off baseboards in his living room and possibly start to paint the walls.
Before he did either of those things he took some carrots and a cold longneck beer out of the refrigerator and went to his back porch to enjoy the warm mid-May evening and say hello to Dilly.
The three-year-old female donkey came over to the porch railing the minute Noah stepped outside.
“Yeah, you know what I have for you, don’t you?” Noah said to the animal as he gave Dilly one of the carrots.
He had two more but rather than give them to the burro right away, he put them in his pocket and leaned a shoulder against the post that braced the porch roof. Then he sipped his beer and did what he’d been doing for the last hour—he marveled at the fact that he’d just met up with Marti again. That she was Marti Grayson…
Last names hadn’t come up at the Expo. Sure, he’d known she worked for Home-Max—he’d seen her manning their booths and in their hospitality suite. But there had been Home-Max employees all over the place, and he’d just figured she was in their ranks. She hadn’t said she was one of the owners of the chain.
And in the three weeks he’d been working for the Graysons, there hadn’t been any mention of Marti by name or he might have put two and two together. On the occasions when he ’d talked to Wyatt—or on the fewer occasions when he’d talked to Theresa—there had only been occasional mentions of “my sister” or “my granddaughter,” never a name. So he honestly hadn’t had a clue.
He had been weighing whether or not to ask Wyatt about the Marti who worked for Home-Max, though. He just hadn’t made up his mind if he should.
Sure, he’d had trouble not thinking about her in the last six weeks. Who wouldn’t have? She was just damn gorgeous. She had long blond hair, shot through with lighter streaks of pure sunshine, falling to the middle of her back. She had the softest, smoothest, most flawless skin he’d ever seen—or touched. Her eyes were the dark silver-blue of his first car and her lips were the reddest, fullest, sweetest he’d ever kissed. And her body was just round enough, just full enough in the right spots, just lean enough in the rest. And it was all atop surprisingly long legs for someone who didn’t stand more than five feet four inches tall.
So yeah, he’d had trouble not thinking about her and even dreaming about her a time or two.
But he hadn’t inquired about a Home-Max employee named Marti because he’d been asking himself where it would go even if he did find out her full name or how to reach her. She’d told him she worked and lived in Missoula. He worked and lived in Northbridge—Missoula was on the other side of the state. And a one-night hook-up at a hardware convention was hardly enough to work from. For all he knew, an almost anonymous, one-night fling was all she’d wanted. Certainly the fact that she’d left the next morning without waking him to say goodbye or so much as scribbling him a note seemed to indicate that.
But damn, what a night it had been!
The Hardware Expo had been a chance for him to get away for a weekend and keep himself updated on the latest products and all things construction related that might make his job as a contractor easier. But that was the extent of what he’d been looking for. It wasn’t as if he’d been cruising for women.
Still, he’d noticed Marti more than once—how could he not have when she was such a knockout? They’d exchanged a little work talk in passing at the Home-Max displays. They’d spoken slightly more when he’d gone to the hospitality suite, and yes, his interest had been piqued by something other than the latest cupboards and countertops. But she’d been busy, he’d been interested in a lot of things at the convention and nothing had come of any of it.
Then, late on the last night of the Expo, they’d both happened to be in the nearly deserted coffee shop in the hotel where the convention had been held.
He’d nodded at her.
She’d nodded back.
He’d said hello.
She’d said hello back.
And there they’d been—Marti alone at one table, Noah alone at another table, only waitstaff and a single group of other customers in the entire rest of the place.
So Noah had invited Marti to eat with him.
And she’d accepted.
More small talk about hardware had accompanied two club sandwiches and despite the fact that the conversation was work related, there had been a few flirtatious undertones from them both. And when the check had come Noah hadn’t been eager to see her go.
So he’d asked her if she might like to have a nightcap with him at the hotel bar.
She’d hesitated long enough for him to have figured she was trying to find a way to let him down easy. But just when he’d been sure he was about to get the rebuff, she’d said a nightcap sounded good.
The bar had had live—and loud—music that had prohibited talking. So they had ended up dancing. And drinking. A lot. Enough so that when the bar had closed neither of them had been feeling any pain and not actually knowing each other just hadn’t seemed to matter. He’d felt comfortable with her. He’d sure as hell liked looking at her. The evening had become one of the best he’d ever had, and a playful kiss in the elevator had somehow led her to walk him to his door when they reached his floor.
A good-night kiss there had turned into a whole lot of good-night kisses. Good-night kisses that had moved from the hallway to the inside of his room, then to the bed.
Where a lot more than kissing had gone on…
Noah fed Dilly another carrot. “To tell you the truth,” he confessed to the donkey as if the animal had been privy to his thoughts. “I wish I remembered it better than I do. The details of things, you know? But I was really drunk…”
They both were.
So drunk that when things between them had gone pretty far and he’d told her he didn’t have any condoms, they’d stupidly decided to risk it…
Noah had forgotten that detail completely.
Now that it occurred to him—struck him, actually—everything seemed to stop cold.
He hadn’t used protection…
And now here she was, six weeks later, pregnant…
“Oh my God!” he said, loudly enough for Dilly’s ears to twitch.
No protection and now Marti was pregnant—it went through his mind again, sinking in enough for his mouth to go dry, for him to break into a sweat.
Her brother had said it was by artificial insemination, he reminded himself. Until that moment that’s what he’d assumed was true, and maybe it was.
But as much as he wanted to believe it, it didn’t seem likely. Had she spent the night with him, had unprotected sex that hadn’t gotten her pregnant and then decided to try artificial insemination? Somehow that was hard to buy.
But what if she’d already been pregnant at the Expo? What if knowing she was already pregnant had contributed to her willingness to forego the condom?
Okay, that did seem possible.
Possible enough to give him a little hope and let him at least breathe again.
“It might not be mine,” he said out loud even though Dilly was keeping her distance.
But it might be—he couldn’t help coming back to that. Especially when he factored in that Marti had been every bit as drunk—maybe more drunk—than he’d been. And if she’d been pregnant before that night, she probably wouldn’t have touched alcohol…
“Oh my God,” he said again. Marti Grayson wasn’t just a beautiful, hazy memory of a faraway night in a rustic hotel room at a hardware convention, but a flesh-and-blood person with brothers and a grandmother and who-knew-who-else to contend with and save face with by saying she’d gone to a sperm bank rather than admitting she’d had a one-night stand with a stranger and gotten pregnant.
But if he was the father of her baby, why hadn’t she come looking for him to let him know?
“Did I tell her I was from Northbridge?” he asked Dilly as if the donkey might know.
Truthfully he couldn’t remember. And if all he’d said was that he was from a small town in southern Montana and she hadn’t known his last name, she probably wouldn’t have been able to find him. Maybe it was only by some greater design or coincidence that they’d been brought back together after she’d done everything she could to locate him.
Or maybe the baby was his and she didn’t want him in on it so she hadn’t bothered to even look for him…
But thinking that just made things worse.
Was she another woman who wasn’t going to give him a say or any options as a father? Because if she was, that just wasn’t going to fly.
Sensing the anger that flooded through him then, the donkey backed up a few steps.
“It’s okay, Dilly. It’s not you,” he comforted the animal, offering the third carrot to make amends.
The burro came cautiously forward, keeping her big black eyes on Noah and getting only close enough to reach the carrot.
“It might not be mine,” Noah said once more in an attempt to calm the emotions that had him reeling. “But I’ll have to find out one way or another.”
Because if the baby was his, he was going to have to do something about it.
Something that could keep the past from repeating itself—again.
Chapter Two
Later that night, after Marti heard Theresa’s bedroom door close, she said to Wyatt, “How is she doing?”
“Gram?” Wyatt shrugged. “No better. No worse. She had a bad night last night. The nightmares have been happening on a regular basis and usually with that same theme—she says it’s crying for her, it won’t stop crying, she has to get it back.”
“Which is why we’re thinking it is not the land she wants back,” Ry contributed.
Since Theresa’s escape to Northbridge, Wyatt had been looking into their grandmother’s past there. What he’d learned so far was that Theresa’s parents had died when she was a young girl, and that Theresa had inherited the house and many acres of prime property in the heart of Northbridge. Because her only other relative—an aunt—had been ill and unable to take her in at the time, Theresa had spent eleven months after the deaths of her parents as the houseguest of local lumberyard owner Hector Tyson and his wife Gloria.
During those eleven months she’d had virtually no contact with any of her friends, and at the end of them—three months before her eighteenth birthday—she’d finally left Northbridge to live with her aunt in Missoula. Before she left she sold Hector Tyson her land for a quarter of its value. Hector Tyson had subsequently become wealthy dividing the land into lots, selling those lots, then selling all the building materials to erect the houses that now stood on them.
When Theresa had been discovered three weeks ago in the house where she’d grown up, she’d been demanding that what had been taken from her be returned. Originally Wyatt had believed she’d been talking about the land. But since the nightmares had begun—and since Theresa had dismissed the notion that this had anything to do with the land—her grandchildren had started to wonder what else she might be referring to. If it might even have been a baby she’d had by Hector.
“Which is why we’re not thinking it’s the land that she wants back, right,” Wyatt repeated what Ry had said.
“And why it seems like it might be a baby,” Marti said, summing up what they’d all touched on through recent phone calls. “But you still haven’t asked her straight-out if that’s what was taken from her?”
Wyatt shook his head. “It hasn’t seemed like a good idea. She’s been in one of her really bad funks—she’s weepy, withdrawn, disoriented. Her memory has been worse than usual—she even forgot who Mary Pat was last week. Today—knowing you two were coming—is the first really good day she’s had since that first nightmare.”
“And you still haven’t talked to this Hector Tyson?” Ry asked.
“He’s been out of town this whole time. I understand he gets back on Monday, so it looks like it’ll be up to you, Marti. Ry will be on his way to Missoula right after the wedding to take care of business there, and I’ll be on my honeymoon. Do you think you can handle it?”
Marti knew her afternoon dizzy spell had them thinking she couldn’t but she wasn’t about to accept that. “Of course, I think I can handle it,” she said as if it were ridiculous for him to ask. Then, because she wanted them to know that everything should be business as usual, she returned to the subject of their grandmother. “And Ry, you have a meeting with the lawyers to see if there are any legal options for restitution from the sale of the land, right?”
“Right,” Ry answered.
“Then you and I will take it from here while Wyatt lies on the beach,” she concluded.
Her brothers exchanged a glance that she would have been able to read even if they weren’t triplets and inordinately in tune with each other.
“Knock it off,” she ordered.
“Knock what off?” Wyatt asked.
“This whole can-I-handle-it, is-Marti-all-right thing. Because I am all right. Yes, Jack’s death hit me hard. Yes, maybe it’s a little over the top to decide to have a baby on my own. But seriously, I’m okay.”
“You didn’t look okay sitting on the ground this afternoon,” Ry said, never one to mince words.
“Dizziness—no big deal. I also sometimes throw up if I so much as get a whiff of breakfast sausage—it just comes with the territory.” That seemed like something Wyatt would know, since his first wife had been pregnant when a household accident had taken her life and the life of the baby. But she didn’t say that. Instead she said, “I’ve been to the doctor, I’m healthy as a horse, the baby is doing fine and having it is a sure sign that I’m moving forward. That I’m putting Jack’s death behind me.”
“It took Wyatt two years after Mikayla died to give in to his feelings for Neily,” a clearly concerned Ry put in. “It’s only been nine months—”
“Nine and a half, actually,” Marti corrected.
“Okay, nine and a half months since you lost the guy you’d been madly in love with since you were both kids,” Ry persisted. “The love of your life, Marti. The guy we all thought was your other half. Come on, if you were in our shoes, wouldn’t you be worried that you’re acting out of some kind of grief mania and maybe not thinking straight or handling anything well?”
“I know how it looks,” Marti said calmly. “It looks like I’ve gone a little nuts. But I haven’t. In spite of the dizziness and the rest of the pregnancy annoyances, I feel good about this baby. I feel better than I’ve felt since Jack died and I can’t believe that’s anything but positive, so that’s how I’m going to look at it. If you have qualms—”
“Keep them to yourself,” Wyatt advised.
“I was going to say get over them, but that’s good, too,” Marti said. “And as for staying in Northbridge a while to be with Gram, and checking out the site Wyatt found for the new store here, I’m as capable of doing all of that now as I was before I was pregnant. End of discussion!”
Neither of her brothers looked convinced. They both just sat there with worried expressions on their faces.
“I appreciate that you guys care. I really do. But I haven’t gone off the deep end. It was just meant to be that I have a baby at this point—with Jack or without him,” she said, pushing on to get through this. “Yes, it’s sad that it isn’t Jack’s baby or that he isn’t here to have it with me and make up the family we thought we’d have…” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with this new path. It’s just a new path.”
And with that she couldn’t possibly have said another word on the subject without breaking down. So she stood and said she was tired and was going to bed.
She’d made it to the bottom of the stairs when she heard Ry say to Wyatt, “I told you, ever since the Expo she’s been different.”
Marti pretended she hadn’t heard and went up the creaky old stairs, maintaining her air of confidence until she was behind the closed door of her current bedroom.
The first floor was beginning to show signs of im provement and after the wedding Marti intended to move into the downstairs den. But until then she was staying upstairs in what had been her grandmother’s room as a girl, and almost nothing had been done to that. While the room was clean, it showed its age in the canopy bed that was missing its canopy due to decay, an ancient, scarred bureau and matching dressing table and a large cheval mirror that was cracked in one corner.
Marti went to the bed and collapsed in a heap, letting a long sigh deflate that phony facade she’d been keeping up for the last few days since she’d invented the artificial insemination story for her brothers. The facade she’d had to kick up a notch since that afternoon when yet another curveball had been tossed at her in the form of Noah Perry.
“Am I the only one you can knock around?” she muttered to whatever unseen forces seemed to be at work in her life for the last nine-and-a-half months.
Regardless of how she was presenting everything to her brothers, underneath it all she was a wreck.
She’d hoped never to go through anything more stressful than the death of her fiancé. But the last few weeks had rivaled it.
Pregnant. She’d done one dumb thing in her life and had she been allowed to just get away with it? No. She’d gotten pregnant!
It wasn’t as if she’d planned to go to Denver that last weekend in March and sleep with a stranger. It wasn’t as if it had even crossed her mind. She’d volunteered to oversee the Hardware Expo just to escape for a few days. To escape the constant reminders of Jack everywhere she looked, everywhere she went, every which way she turned. To escape all the well-intentioned sympathy and pity of friends and family. To escape the awkward position of being a sort-of-but-not-really widow.
She’d just wanted a few days without anyone tiptoeing around her or being overly solicitous of her. A few days of not needing to assure everyone she spoke to that she was okay. A few days to interact with people who didn’t know her or Jack or what had happened. People who were just going about their lives the way they always had.
Which was exactly what she’d found and for the whole three days of the Expo she’d felt as if at least half of the weight on her shoulders had been lifted. It had actually been easier to endure the bouts of grief without all the coddling and fussing.
Bouts of grief—she realized as she thought that that’s what the grieving was becoming. That it wasn’t the constant, ever-present entity that it had been at the beginning. That now she was doing what Wyatt had said she would—that the times when she felt better and more able to cope, more as if she really was going to get through it, were increasing. That the times when she was blinded by it were becoming fewer and further between.
And the Expo had helped that along.
And so had Noah Perry…
She’d encountered him on several occasions over those three days. Not that she’d known his name. Until the night in the coffee shop he was just another face among the gazillion faces that had passed through Home-Max’s displays or visited the hospitality suite.
And yet here she was, having his baby.
Overwhelmed by that all over again, she lay on her side on the bed with her feet still on the floor.
The image of Noah’s face had stuck with her at least, she thought in a feeble attempt to somehow make this seem less awful than it did. He was memorably handsome, though. Which was why she’d noticed him even among the crowd at the Expo and amid a sea of other faces in the suite when he’d passed through.
He had rugged good looks—a sharply defined bone structure that gave him a square brow, high cheekbones, a razor-sharp nose and a jawline that was strong and prominent.
But it was his hair and eyes that had really stuck with her. There was nothing common or ordinary about them.
He had great hair. Dark and thick and wavy. And although he wore it a little longer than she’d liked Jack to wear his, it suited this guy. Full and carelessly combed away from that chiseled face, it touched his collar in the back and gave him an untamed, bad-boy air.
And his eyes—they were the color of melted bittersweet chocolate, shining and penetrating and patient. Eyes that looked as if they had intelligence behind them. That seemed to see past the surface.
She’d already thought that if her baby was born with its father’s hair and eyes it would be beautiful…
But she hadn’t just taken one glance at the man and said, “take me, I’m yours,” because he looked good…well, better than good, great. Still, that hadn’t been enough for her to spend the night with him. No, that had come out of a combination of things, including a few cocktails too many and an apparent weakness for the cute guy she’d repeatedly seen around the trade show.
Would she have agreed to join him for a bite to eat if her inhibitions hadn’t already been compromised?
Probably. Because in a way, by then the man she’d been thinking of for three days as The Cute Guy had become a part of the reason she’d gone to the Expo in the first place. He’d treated her normally.
He’d joked with her. He’d been friendly. He’d been funny and charming and clever. And yes, he’d even flirted with her a little.
Not that she’d wanted someone to flirt with her, but when he had, it had felt good. It had also felt good to discover that she could even flirt back—something she hadn’t known she could do with anyone but Jack. So she’d opted to allow herself one last brush with that before returning to reality in Missoula and had had a sandwich with The Cute Guy.
And she’d enjoyed herself.
Yes, she’d felt guilty. A part of her had felt as if she were being unfaithful to Jack.
But like her brother Ry, Jack had always been about living life, about grabbing it and shaking every last drop out of it. He’d said again and again after Wyatt’s wife had died that the living had to go on living. He’d even said that if anything ever happened to him, he wanted Marti to jump right back on the bandwagon, that he didn’t want her wasting any time wallowing.
Easier said than done.
Maybe her less-than-sober state that night in the coffee shop had also been a factor, but when The Cute Guy had asked her to go to the bar for a nightcap and she’d debated whether or not she should, in her mind she’d heard Jack’s voice urging her to go ahead…
So she had.
She’d gone to the hotel bar for more drinking. Some dancing. For some fun.
And when it should have been over, she hadn’t wanted it to be…
That was the last clear thing she remembered. The rest was far, far more fuzzy. A complete blur, actually. The kissing. His room. His bed. Clothes coming off in the dark. Letting herself just go with feeling good, with what she wanted at that moment…
The next thing she’d known, morning sunshine was coming in through the windows, she wasn’t drunk anymore and she was appalled by what she’d done. So she’d dressed in a silent hurry and slinked out of his room.
She hadn’t told a soul about that night and the further she’d gotten away from it, the more she’d begun to see it merely as something that had helped her turn a corner in her grieving for Jack. And she’d viewed that as a good thing because it had made her realize that she was going to survive losing him, that she just might be able to go on without him after all.
And then she’d missed her period.
For a few days she’d told herself it was just late, that it would start any minute.
For a few days after that she’d told herself there could be any number of reasons to miss a period—stress had caused her to miss the first one after Jack’s death.
By the time she was two weeks late she’d bought a home pregnancy test. When it had come up positive, she’d rushed to her doctor, hoping it was a false positive.
It wasn’t.
Shock, horror, fear, panic—she’d gone through them all since then. But when she’d been able to calm down and think it through, she’d decided that maybe the pregnancy, and the baby, were signs that she really did have to push on. To go forward. To leave the past behind. And so she’d decided to do just that. By having the baby.
She’d considered how she might track down The Cute Guy whose name she thought was Norm. She didn’t know anything about him other than he was a contractor from somewhere in southeast Montana and what floor of the hotel his room had been on. Still, those were starting points and she’d thought she might be able to use them to persuade the hotel to give her his full name and address. But for what? she’d asked herself.
She didn’t need financial help. She had no idea who he really was or what his background might be, or if he might have a family. She had no idea what kind of damage could be done if she pursued him with this, or what sort of reaction or response she’d be met with. So it just seemed better to leave things the way they were. To consider the baby hers and hers alone, to have it and raise it on her own and to leave the-Cute-Guy-from-the-Expo none the wiser.
So she’d concocted the artificial insemination story.
And even if it wasn’t true, she still liked the message it gave—that she’d taken control of her life again and was moving forward, albeit unconventionally. Plus, since telling her brothers and a few friends the tale and presenting it as something she’d actively gone after and achieved, it almost felt as if that’s what she’d done.
Then she’d looked up into the face of The Cute Guy again that afternoon…
Since then, relief was certainly not what she’d been feeling.
She rolled onto her back, flung her arms wide and let out a huge groan.
“What am I supposed to do now?” she asked the heavens.
No answer was forthcoming.
But seeing Noah again changed things and she knew it. She was going to have to rethink what to do from here.
“Only not right now. Tomorrow,” she said to herself, shying away from it because at that moment it just felt like more than she could deal with. Besides, wasn’t it better to wait to think about it all after a night’s sleep?
Of course it was. Especially when she was too tired to even trade the sweats she’d put on after her posttravel shower for pajamas or move up to the pillow.
Tomorrow was another day.
And who knew? Maybe she’d wake up and she wouldn’t be in such a mess.
Chapter Three
Saturday was hectic. There were last-minute wedding preparations for Sunday evening’s ceremony, rearrangement of the furniture to accommodate the reception, decorating to be done, deliveries of food and flowers and tables and chairs and other necessities. There was the rehearsal and the dinner, and the introduction of Neily’s sister, five brothers and their spouses and dates to Wyatt’s family.
Because of the commotion at the house, Noah Perry’s work on the remodel was suspended for the weekend. And while he wasn’t a member of the wedding party and so wasn’t included in the rehearsal or the dinner afterward, he was still on Marti’s mind almost constantly through Saturday and Saturday night. All without coming to any better conclusion than she had on Friday—she needed to do some fact-finding before she decided how to proceed.
Then Sunday evening came, and guests finally began to arrive for the seven o’clock ceremony.
Once Marti had carefully styled her hair in a French twist, applied her makeup and dressed in her curvehugging, short black dress, she stood at the window of her upstairs bedroom watching for Noah. And trying to make her stomach stop doing somersaults at the mere thought that she was going to see him again.
He arrived early because he was providing the transportation for his grandfather, who was the former town reverend and was performing the ceremony in the absence of the current, vacationing, minister. As Noah helped the elderly man get up to the house, Marti couldn’t keep from taking stock of her baby’s father.
Noah had been dressed casually at the Expo and he’d been in work clothes on Friday, but now he was wearing a navy blue suit over a cerulean blue shirt and a darker blue tie. The suit fit him so well he could have been an endorsement for the good tailoring to be found in Northbridge—his broad shoulders filled the jacket to perfection before it tapered to just hint at his narrow waist, and the pants whispered down long, long legs to break exactly where they should.
His hair still had that devil-may-care look to it, offsetting the clothes any Wall Street executive would have been proud to wear, and combined it made for a picture Marti just couldn’t take her eyes off of.
But tonight is just about getting some background in formation, she reminded herself of the only thing she’d come up with after two nights of not very restful sleep and a full day of consideration in between. She was going to take things in small steps, hoping that way she could handle it better and arrive at a rational, intelligent, best-for-everyone plan of action.
When it came time for the ceremony it was Ry who persuaded the agoraphobic Theresa to go down the back stairs and into the kitchen with Mary Pat where she could watch Wyatt and Neily say their vows without seeing or being seen by any of the guests.
Because Wyatt had wanted both Ry and Marti to be his grooms-people, as he called them, Neily had chosen her sister Mara and oldest brother Cam to give balance to the attendants. Standing with her brothers, her back to the onlookers, Marti wondered if Noah Perry was watching her the way she’d watched him on his way into the house. And just assuming that he might be did not help those stomach somersaults one bit.
His grandfather performed a stern but gracious ceremony that only lasted twenty minutes, and when it was over, Mary Pat slipped Theresa back upstairs to her bedroom and the reception began.
That was when Marti lost all awareness of anything or anyone other than Noah Perry, whose gaze was definitely trained on her as she congratulated Wyatt and Neily.
Noah didn’t approach her, though. He just kept an eye on her as the music began to play and guests started to mingle. And even when she caught him watching her, he didn’t cover it up by glancing away. He just went on looking at her, studying her, until she pretended that something else had caught her attention.
Go on, go over and talk to him, she told herself.
But instead she went upstairs to make sure her grandmother wasn’t too agitated in the aftermath of her foray to the kitchen.
The food was being served buffet-style and by the time Marti returned almost everyone was eating. Only a few stragglers were going through the line and Noah was at the end of it.
Maybe now’s the time, she thought. After all, she could step up behind him, fill a plate and say hello—belatedly, but exactly as she had with everyone else tonight. Then maybe she could nonchalantly sit with him to eat and use small talk to get into her fact-finding mission to learn about him before she made her decision as to whether or not to admit the baby was his.
So why didn’t she budge?
Because she was a great big fat chicken!
Maybe he didn’t really want to know if the baby was his, she thought. After all, he hadn’t made a beeline to her to ask—he could have come to the house just to see her yesterday if he was dying to know, and even tonight he could have cornered her immediately after the ceremony.
Or maybe he was obtuse and it hadn’t even occurred to him that the baby might be his. Maybe he’d accepted the artificial insemination story at face value. Maybe she could just go on the way she’d planned even though their paths had crossed again…
Or maybe not. Because when he reached the end of the serving table he turned to look out over the room, spotted her and headed toward her.
Marti was inclined to run again. To make a dash for the stairs and take refuge in her grandmother’s room as if she hadn’t noticed Noah’s beautiful brown eyes locked onto her with single-minded intent.
But she didn’t run. She forced her feet to stay planted right where they were. She breathed deeply. She told herself to act as if nothing was going on. She even managed a small smile—although she cut that short when she felt her lips quiver nervously.
“I took enough for two,” he said when he reached her, motioning upward with his plate. “I thought maybe we could share.”
Then he leaned in and said for her ears only, “If we can share that night in Denver, we can share a plate, can’t we?”
Openly referring to that night sent a wave of panic through her. “I’m not very hungry—”
“Sit with me anyway,” he countered, not allowing her any out.
Oh, he’s suspicious, all right…
But this was something she needed to do and he’d just initiated the process for her. She knew she had to push through, so she conceded, nodding over her shoulder at the entryway behind them. “Want to sit on the steps?” she asked hesitantly.
“Sure.”
It was quieter in the entry, away from everyone else gathered in the living room. Marti went to the large staircase that rose to the upper level and sat on the second step, hugging the wall so Noah could sit, too, but not too closely.
He took the hint, positioning himself at an angle with his back to the newel post. Then he set the plate on the step between them and handed her one of the two forks and two napkins he’d brought.
“I took some of everything since I wasn’t sure what you might like,” he said then, stabbing a small parsleybuttered potato for himself.
As he ate, he looked at her again the way he had been all through the evening, as if he were cataloging what he remembered and what he didn’t.
Marti pretended to be more interested in the cherry tomato she was trying to skewer than in him.
“How are you today?” he asked.
“Fine,” she was quick to assure him. “That was just a little dizzy spell yesterday. I’d been sitting in the car for so long and it was low to the ground and I got up fast—” That was all more information than he needed and she cut herself off before it went any further and said, “Today I’m fine,” and popped the tomato into her mouth.
Noah continued to look at her for a moment after she’d stopped babbling. Then, in a completely conversational tone, he said, “So. Pregnant, huh?”
He was definitely suspicious.
“Mmm-hmm, pregnant,” she confirmed as if it were no big deal. But that was as far as she was willing to go and she volleyed with, “So. Northbridge, huh?”
His agile mouth twitched with a tiny smile at her deflection but she had the distinct impression that he was going to let her set the pace, that he wasn’t going to force the issue. And he didn’t. Instead he merely said, “Northbridge, yeah. Born and raised.”
“You didn’t tell me that in Denver, did you? Didn’t you just say that you were from a small town in southeast Montana?”
“I think so. I didn’t think you would know Northbridge by name. Would you have?”
Marti shook her head. “No. I’d never heard of it before Gram showed up here.”
Noah glanced in the direction of the bedrooms on the upper level. “You couldn’t get her to come down tonight?”
“She was hidden in the kitchen during the wedding itself but not even Ry could get her to do more than that—and if anyone can ever talk her into anything, it’s Ry. She keeps saying she can’t face anyone here, that she’s too ashamed, but we don’t know what that means.”
Noah nodded and ate a bite of ham, again leaving the ball in her court.
Marti knew that while talking about her grandmother might seem like a safe subject, it wasn’t getting her the information she needed. So she didn’t take it any further, seizing something she hoped might. “The reverend is your grandfather?”
“Yep,” Noah confirmed. “For better or worse.”
“Why for better or worse?”
“He’s a tough old bird—so tough that not even the family dare to call him anything but Reverend. He’s not the most understanding or compassionate or forgiving person in the world.”
Was there a message in that? Was he saying that he was more understanding, compassionate and forgiving than his grandfather? And what exactly did he think he had to be understanding or compassionate or forgiving of? Marti thought, feeling a tweak of her temper.
It wouldn’t do her any good to get angry, though, she told herself. So she didn’t pursue that either, and instead, as if she hadn’t seen his arrival for herself, she said, “Did you only bring your grandfather tonight?”
“Who else was I supposed to bring?” Noah asked.
Marti shrugged. “Your wife…”
That made him smile and she knew he understood exactly what she was doing. But all she could think about was that it was a thousand-watt smile with perfect, straight, white teeth. A smile that put creases down his cheeks. A smile she remembered now that she’d seen it again, that transformed his face from handsome to striking. A smile that got to her more than any other smile she’d ever seen, including Jack’s.
“Now you’re asking me if I’m married?” he said.
His smile broadened, making her grin sheepishly in response.
“I don’t recall you asking me, either,” she accused in return.
“Are you?”
“No. Are you?”
“No,” he said.
At least there was that. Marti felt a miniscule sense of relief.
“What about a girlfriend or a significant other?” she asked.
“Nope. You?”
Marti shook her head and took one slice of bread from the plate, breaking off a pinch to eat and wondering if the next question she wanted to ask would open a door she wasn’t ready to have opened.
But she honestly did want to know who could be affected by her pregnancy if she told Noah he was the father, so she said, “How about kids? Do you have any of those around?”
He’d been looking down at the plate when she said that and while he didn’t raise his head, he did glance up at her from beneath his slightly full eyebrows. “No, no kids either,” he said with some gravity. And maybe the tiniest bit of a question in it, too.
Or was she only imagining that?
She couldn’t tell. And there he was talking again so she let it go.
“I do have a brother and two sisters, if you’re interested in my family tree. And three cousins—they’re sitting together over by the fireplace,” he said, pointing toward the far side of the living room where a group of people had convened at one of the rented tables. “That’s all of them except my sister Kate. She’s out of town and couldn’t come. And my parents and my aunt and uncle live in Billings now.”
He leaned slightly toward her to continue in a more confidential tone, “I also have a grandmother we’ve all just met—Celeste. She’s pretty notorious. She caused a huge scandal by ditching the Reverend to run off with a bank robber. See the heavyset lady sticking close to Neily’s sister Mara? That’s my grandmother and this is the first time she and the Reverend have been at the same social event in years. So if all hell breaks loose between them sometime tonight, you’ve been forewarned.”
Marti had to smile again at that, remembering that he could be very amusing, too.
“Wow, the whole family,” she said. “Skeletons in the closet and everything—nothing like putting it all out there.”
“I’m an open book,” he assured her, eating a forkful of green salad. “Ask me anything.”
Marti broke off another bite of the bread because that was the only thing she’d eaten that wasn’t threatening to upset her stomach. Food and nerves just didn’t mesh. And while talking to Noah like this again was reminding her why she’d been attracted to him in the first place that night in Denver, she was still on edge and undecided about what she was going to do about him, and that was making her queasy.
“Are you close to your family?” she asked, taking him up on his offer to tell her anything.
“Most of them are right over there—how much closer do you want us to be?” he joked.
“I know people who seem to be close to their families but aren’t. Just because you live near them—”
“No, I don’t just live near them. I like them, too. I’d run into a burning building for any one of them and they’d do the same for me.” He said that as if he truly meant it. Then he looked at her very intently, pinning her with those eyes of his as he added, “Family is important to me. Really, really important.”
Uh-oh…
Marti could see in his expression and hear in his voice where he was going with that. And she just didn’t know if she was ready for it. If she could be honest with him. If she should be. She didn’t have any more idea of where things might go from here than she had when they’d sat down, or if she should let him in, or what kind of havoc might be wreaked if she did.
It’s my baby, she suddenly wanted to make perfectly clear to him. Mine…
But before Noah seemed able to find the words to ask outright, his grandfather appeared from the living room pounding his cane on the hardwood floor to gain their attention.
“Noah!” the Reverend said, his voice booming despite his frail, spindly appearance.
Noah’s gaze remained on Marti for another moment before he turned to his grandfather. “Reverend,” he answered, sounding none too happy to be interrupted.
The old man didn’t seem to care. “I’m tired. Take me home,” he demanded.
“Could you give me a minute?”
“No! I want to go now!”
Noah sighed, obviously knowing the Reverend would have his way or else. “Okay.”
Marti watched as Noah grabbed his grandfather’s topcoat from the hall and helped him pull it on, her gaze fixed on Noah’s strong hands, recalling how they’d cupped her shoulders and let her feel their power in the most enticing way…
But thoughts like that had no place at the moment. She told herself that she should just be glad the old reverend had bought her a little more time to think through what she was going to do instead of being distracted by her attraction to Noah.
Embracing her reprieve, she stood to join the two men at the door to see them out.
“Thank you for the lovely ceremony, Reverend,” she said politely to the elderly man, despite his rude attitude.
In response he grumbled something she didn’t quite catch as Noah opened the door for him and he went out.
Noah didn’t follow him immediately the way Marti thought he would. He paused a moment to look at her, to let those dark chocolate eyes delve into hers once more.
Then, in a low voice that was again for her alone to hear, he said, “Is it mine?”
Panic shot through Marti stronger than before and a thousand thoughts ran through her head.
But the only one that stuck was that while she might not know much of anything about this guy, she knew he was nobody’s fool.
“Is it, Marti? Is the baby mine?” he reiterated after his grandfather had made another demand from outside to be taken home.
Please don’t let this turn out badly…
“Yes,” she whispered, still not sure it was the right thing to do.
Noah’s gaze dropped for just a split second to her middle, then rose to meet her eyes again.
He didn’t say anything. He merely stared at her a minute more, his brows beetled together in a dark, dark frown.
Then he nodded—really only a raise of his chin in acknowledgment—before he followed his grandfather out of the house.
Chapter Four
Noah was a no-show for work on Monday. He didn’t call. He didn’t send any kind of message saying he wouldn’t be there. He didn’t respond to the voice mail Wyatt left when Wyatt called to ask where he was before Neily and Wyatt left for their honeymoon.
“It’ll be fine. I’ll deal with it. It isn’t as if I haven’t handled contractors before,” Marti assured both of her brothers so Ry could get on the road to Missoula, too.
But underneath it all?
Marti was even more of a wreck than she’d been before.
She just didn’t know why.
So what if Noah had freaked out about the baby? So what if he didn’t want anything to do with her or the pregnancy or with his child once it was here? She hadn’t intended to make him a part of it before this, she’d intended to do it on her own anyway.
What difference did it make if he’d ended up knowing? It didn’t change anything. The baby was still hers. She was still going to have it, raise it, love it. If he didn’t want any part of that, fine, she told herself.
Absolutely fine. No problem whatsoever. All the better, probably.
Yet, for some reason, thinking that that was the reason he’d done a disappearing act today had thrown her off balance, and by the end of Monday afternoon she just wanted to get away from everything to have a moment to herself.
So she trudged up to her bedroom, feeling the weight of all she’d found in Northbridge bearing down on her. Wondering if she really could do what she’d convinced her brothers she could when it came to the conundrum surrounding Theresa, and taking the next steps in opening a new Home-Max in the small town and overseeing the renovations of the house by the contractor who had gotten her pregnant and now made himself scarce…
No, it was okay that Noah seemed to have vanished into thin air, she told herself again as she closed the bedroom door and pressed her forehead to it. At least nobody else knew he was the baby’s father. At least nothing on the surface had changed.
And if she’d gone to bed last night thinking about those deep, dark eyes and that smile that could spread out so slowly it was like waiting for Christmas and a voice as rich as hot fudge? Well, now she knew how Noah had gotten to her in Denver, but it didn’t have anything to do with here and now.
Here and now the fact of the matter was that Noah was not Jack—Jack who would have been thrilled with a baby, who would have marveled at every minute of the pregnancy they shared, who would never have left her hanging—and she needed to make sure she didn’t lose sight of that.
But yes, today she felt as if she was carrying a pretty heavy load on her shoulders, and despite her show of strength and confidence and invincibility to her brothers, she was feeling anything but.
The house phone rang just then and Marti held her breath, hating that everything seemed to pause as she waited to hear if the call might be from the sexy contractor.
And then Mary Pat yelled up, “It’s for you, Marti. It’s Noah,” and in that split second the dark clouds over her head seemed to part.
But that wasn’t good, either, she cautioned herself.
“He’s probably just calling to say he’s history when it comes to the baby and the remodel,” she muttered.
But if that was the case, she needed to get it over with so she would know exactly where she stood and could just get on with this new twist, too.
So she hollered back to Mary Pat, “I’ll be right there,” and pushed away from the bedroom door to open it.
As she retraced her steps downstairs to take the call there sprang to life a tiny ray of something she tried to ignore.
Something that felt a little like the hope that underneath Noah Perry’s laid-back charm and simmering sensuality she might find that he was a stand-up guy after all.
Marti arrived at the coffeehouse earlier than she’d told Noah she would be there. That had been the purpose of his phone call late in the afternoon—to ask her to meet him for coffee that evening. He hadn’t apologized for not coming to work, nor had he said anything about the baby. In a very serious, sober tone of voice, he had merely told her he wanted to meet with her. And she’d agreed.
Then she’d skipped dinner because her stomach had been too tied in knots to put food in it. Instead she’d taken a second shower, shampooed her hair and carefully chosen a pair of low-slung brown linen slacks and a cream-colored silk sweater set. She’d caught the sides of her hair in a clip in back and left the rest of it to fall free, added mascara, blush and a little lip gloss to finish her efforts, then drove Wyatt’s SUV to Main Street and the small establishment that served hot and cold beverages and a few pastries.
And there she was, trying to prepare herself for whatever was about to come her way. Anticipating the worst.
She didn’t have long to wait. Noah arrived five minutes after her. The front of the place was all windows so from her seat at a corner table where her back was to the wall, she saw him drive up.
He parked his white truck at the curb and got out. Marti couldn’t be sure, but she had the impression that he might have put some thought into his own clothes. He had on a pair of dark denim jeans and a tan V-neck sweater over a white crew-necked T-shirt. There wasn’t even the hint of a beard on his handsome face so she knew he’d shaved right before he left.
Looks can be deceiving, though, she thought when she couldn’t help the twinge of appreciation for the sight he presented. No matter how good a presentation he made, if he was there to tell her what she thought he was there to tell her, he was a creep.
He spotted her the minute he walked into the place and came over to her. “Hi,” he greeted her simply with a tightlipped impersonation of a smile that was clearly wary.
“Hi,” she answered just as guardedly.
“Thanks for coming.”
Marti nodded.
“What can I get you?” he asked with a glance over his broad shoulder toward the counter where orders were taken. “Can you drink coffee? Do you drink coffee?”
We don’t even know that about each other, Marti lamented.
“I’ll have a decaf nonfat latte.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said as he left again.
Marti watched him at the counter, unable to deny that the rear view was almost as good as the front because his jeans encased a derriere too prime not to notice.
Then he turned with their coffees and she quickly raised her gaze to his ruggedly striking face again.
When he reached the table, he set one of the two cups in front of her and kept the other in hand as he sat across from her.
Marti tasted her coffee and waited—he’d asked for this meeting, it was his show.
“I’m sorry about not working at the house today,” he began. “And for not answering the voice mails.”
Marti merely nodded.
“I had a lot of thinking—and some other things—to do after…the news I left with last night.”
There was nothing to be said to that so she just went on waiting.
“I don’t…” he began, stopped, restarted. “It occurred to me when your brothers said you were pregnant Friday that I could be…the cause. Not right away—I was actually slow on the uptake. But then I realized that it was a possibility. So I don’t know why it hit me like a ton of bricks last night when you said the baby is mine, but it did.”
“It has a way of doing that,” she allowed conservatively.
“I paced the floors most of the night and then today I went to see my lawyer—”
“Your lawyer?” she repeated, cutting him off as her mind started to race again.
Was he going to demand proof? A paternity test? What exactly was he implying about her? And if he had proof, would he be willing—reluctantly—to concede to being this baby’s father?
“Look,” Marti said then, ire echoing in her tone, “until I just happened to meet you again on Friday, I fully intended to do this on my own. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t need anything from you. If you want to tell yourself this baby isn’t yours, if that makes it easier for you, then be my guest. As far as I’m concerned—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Noah said in an angry tone of his own to go with the dark frown on his handsome face. “Who said anything about me wanting to think it isn’t mine?”
“Isn’t that why you went to a lawyer? To force some kind of paternity test in hopes that you aren’t the father?”
“That didn’t even cross my mind. Should it have?”
“No. There have only been two men on my dance card—the man I should be married to right now and you.”
That had probably not been the best way to put that and the minute the words were out, Marti regretted them. This was all just so hard and complicated.
But Noah didn’t seem to take offense. In fact, he did the opposite—his temper seemed to recede and in its place he became conciliatory.
“I’m not questioning whether or not the baby is mine. The timing is right. I don’t remember a whole lot about that night but I do remember that we were drunk enough to take the risk of not using protection. You’d already told that artificial insemination story to your brothers—I don’t think you would have done that if the father was someone you know or were involved with. And another one of the few things I recall is you saying more than once that night in Denver how that wasn’t something you’d ever done or ever did—and that struck me as true. Plus, while I don’t know much about you, what I’ve seen doesn’t make me think that you’re someone who would try to pass off someone else’s kid on me.”
Apparently he thought higher of her than she’d been thinking of him in the last several hours. It helped Marti to calm down slightly.
“Thanks for that at least,” she said. “And I didn’t faint on Friday, it was—”
“I know, it was a dizzy spell,” he said with the first hint of a genuine smile—and it was only a hint. “But when I saw you go down I thought you’d passed out.”
They both sipped their coffees and after a brief pause, Marti said, “So why did you go to a lawyer today?”
“To find out what I needed to do to protect my rights.”
“Your rights?”
“As the father. I’m not trying to figure a way out of this, Marti. I want to make sure I have a firm footing in it.”
That surprised her.
And then it alarmed her. In her wildest dreams she hadn’t thought there was any risk of the father of this baby doing anything that might take it away from her in some fashion.
“What does that mean?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“This is a big deal to me,” he said with enough gravity that she didn’t need any more convincing to believe he wasn’t taking this lightly. In fact, he said it with so much gravity that it made her wonder if there was more motivating him than she knew.
But he was still talking and this was all too important for her to let her mind wander.
“I realize that I’m as responsible for this as you are,” he was saying. “And I’m not one of those people who can ignore that I’ll have a kid floating around out in the world and just go on about my business as if I don’t. There’s no way I’d let you go through this alone, and once the baby is here, I want to be a father to it. I want to be a part of its life.”
“Okay…” Marti agreed with reservation because she still wasn’t sure exactly where he was going with this. “What did you have in mind?”
“First of all—I want to know that you aren’t going to have an abor—”
“No,” she said firmly. “I’m having the baby.”
“Great.” Noah looked relieved.
“And second of all?” she said.
His face broke into a bigger and even more genuine smile. “As long as there is
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