Once again the enormity of what she had done struck her. How could she have been so like her mother? How could she have thrown over all her caution when she had spent a lifetime being cautious? The man could charm the proverbial birds out of the trees, but that was no excuse. She had met charmers in college and had managed easily to say no. What was it about Aaron Black that twisted her into knots, melted her reserve, dissolved all barriers she kept up?
She clutched her middle again, aghast when she thought about how easy she had been, how careless, and what Aaron must think about her.
“Are you feeling better, Pamela?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” she said, aware of the waitress approaching the table. Sheila’s pink uniform was bright and her gaze was sharp.
“What happened was scary. I guess you’ll get over it as time goes by. Sorry you won’t get to go to Asterland to teach this semester. I heard the program was suspended.”
“That’s right, but with my ankle hurt, I wasn’t able to teach right after the crash,” Pamela said, wishing they could stop talking about it.
Sheila turned away, and Pamela stared at the giant burger and golden fries on her plate and knew she couldn’t eat a bite. Nor could she leave the entire burger and fries without stirring up a storm of comments. She sipped some of the chocolate malt, ate two bites of the burger, and then she couldn’t get down another morsel. She wrapped the burger and a few fries in her napkin and jammed them into her purse. Her purse would reek of hamburger, but she didn’t want any gossip starting now. No one ordered one of Manny’s juicy burgers and then left it with only a couple of bites taken out of it.
Thank heavens, so far, both she and Thad Delner led such straight and square lives that no one could conjure up gossip about them going together to the ball. And everyone in town knew he went to represent the school. Also, everyone in town was sorry about the loss of his wife, whom he had deeply loved. But once word got out that she had left the ball with Aaron Black, that would be another matter.
She slid out of the booth, paid and rushed from the diner before she had another conversation with anyone else. A few people were beginning to appear for lunch and she greeted them perfunctorily without even seeing who they were.
She drove home, her thoughts still churning, but an absolute determination growing within her that Aaron Black should never know about the baby. Their baby. She would call Jessica to tell her to watch for teaching jobs in Midland. The teaching position in Asterland was suspended this semester and by the next term, she would be very pregnant and she wouldn’t want to go to Asterland even if it were possible. She wanted her baby born here in Texas where she had friends.
Midland was larger than Royal, far enough away that her life would be her own, yet close enough she could get back to see her friends in Royal when she wanted to.
At least she didn’t have to worry about running into Aaron. He was halfway around the world and most likely had forgotten about her by now. She could imagine the kind of women in his life and wondered whether, while home in Texas, he had simply been amusing himself with the country girl that she was. In many ways Royal wasn’t a typical small Texas town because of oil money and all the wealth it produced. Basically, though, Royal was a small West Texas town and she was pure country.
She turned onto her street and saw her two-story brick apartment complex. She drove through the open wooden barriers that never closed and turned down the row to the back of her tiny apartment and her carport. As she approached her carport, her heart thudded. Seated on the tailgate of a shiny black pickup was Aaron Black.
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