in cheek. “I’ll just bill you for the urinalysis. And the friendly advice.”
She could use some advice, Laurel thought. Real advice. “Which is?”
“Enjoy.”
Laurel rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms before her. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to face a man who’s stockpiling tons of brochures on summer cabins from three different states.”
“He’ll be thrilled,” the doctor promised.
“He’ll be in shock,” Laurel countered. Real concern began to set in. What if the news was too much for Jason? “Got any smelling salts I can take with me?”
Dr. Kilpatrick opened the door. “You have my number. Call if you need me.”
Laurel laughed. “That’s all Jason needs. An ob-gyn attending to him.”
Laurel’s smile faded the moment the door was closed again. She slid off the table, trying to stay one step ahead of the numbing shock that threatened to completely swallow her up.
This was absurd.
Unreal.
How in heaven’s name could she be pregnant? Weren’t eggs supposed to dry up at her age? She slipped on her underwear, then hooked her bra. Wasn’t that what the whole ticking-biological-clock thing was all about? Having babies before it was too late? Before she couldn’t have any? It looked as if she could go on having babies until she was an octogenarian.
Laurel pulled her turtleneck sweater over her head, then punched through her arms.
“This breaking news,” she mumbled to herself in disbelief. “Eighty-seven-year-old Laurel Mitchell has just given birth to her twentieth baby. Someone stop this woman for the good of humanity.”
With her panty hose still in her hand, Laurel leaned her hip against the table and sighed. How had this happened? She knew how it happened, she upbraided herself, putting on first one leg, then the other. She’d gotten lax. At the end of last year, she’d given in to Jason’s pressure and finally stopped taking her birth control pills. He thought it wasn’t too much of a risk.
Well, guess what, big guy, we’re pregnant. How’s that for a risk?
She was on the cusp of menopause, experiencing her own personal heat waves while others were bundling up in sweaters and jackets. She’d assumed that her birthing years were over. That any occasional romp she enjoyed with her husband was deemed safe for all concerned.
Well, you deemed wrong, Laurie old girl.
Old girl.
God, she was too old for this. Too old for morning sickness. Too old for prenatal vitamins and too old to be chasing around after a toddler.
Yet, here it was, happening.
She spread her hand out over her as-yet-flat stomach. There was a teeny-tiny occupant inside now, no bigger than a speck. But he was growing. Growing by the moment. Frowning even as she stood here in this nice, pastel-colored room, agonizing over it.
Him, she corrected herself. Agonizing over him. All she’d ever managed to produce was boys. There was no reason to believe this newest passenger would be any different.
Oh God, this was different.
She was forty-five, for crying out loud. What was God thinking, letting her get pregnant?
“This isn’t funny,” she murmured, looking up toward the ceiling. “Not funny at all.”
And the one who would be laughing the least would be her husband.
Slipping on her shoes, she closed her eyes. How was she ever going to explain this to Jason?
CHAPTER 2
Pregnant.
She could remember the first time she’d ever heard that word applied to her. She and Jason had been married just a little over a year. Jason had graduated from UCLA just that past June and she was set to get her liberal arts diploma that coming June. They felt empowered, as if nothing could stop them. The whole world was wide open for them and they were going to take advantage of it. Right after they took a little time off to do some traveling. That had always been the plan: graduate, then travel a little bit before settling down to a job and starting a family.
The best-laid plans of mice and men…
When Dr. Kilpatrick had told her she was pregnant, her reaction had been bittersweet. Being pregnant meant closing the door on being young and carefree. It meant opening the door to parenthood, which was something both of them wanted and anticipated with relish—sometime in the near future, but not right at that moment.
“So we’re a little ahead of schedule,” Jason had laughed when she’d told him the news.
She’d come home with a loaf of French bread and candlesticks, intent on creating as much of a romantic setting as she could before telling him. Jason had gotten the news out of her within ten seconds of her closing the door to their tiny furnished apartment.
He’d hugged her, lifting her off the ground. He’d stopped short of spinning her around when she’d protested, saying her stomach contents were threatening to revisit the outside world.
“What about the road trip?” she’d reminded him when her feet were firmly planted back on the floor again. She knew he’d had his heart set on it and had spent weeks planning it, in between going to work. There were maps littering every available flat space in the apartment, many of them with red lines marking possible routes to take.
With a wide grin, he’d shrugged it off. “Plenty of time for a road trip once this little fella makes his debut.” He’d patted her stomach, then suddenly dropped to his knees, resting his cheek against her abdomen and talking to her belly button as if it was a direct connection to the baby within. “Don’t give your mom any trouble, now. She really doesn’t look very good in green.”
She’d loved Jason so much at that very moment, she’d thought her heart was going to burst. “We’ll go on that road trip as soon as the baby’s old enough to travel, honey,” she’d promised him with feeling.
Jason rose to his feet, a dazed, happy look of disbelief on his face. “It’s a date.”
And then he’d gone on to seal the bargain with a deep, amorous kiss that had made her recall just how it was that she’d gotten into this state to begin with. Because Jason had undone her so quickly, she had completely forgotten all about taking any precautions against this very thing.
But as soon as Luke—named after Jason’s late father—was old enough to take on the overdue road trip, Morgan was more than just a gleam in Jason’s eye. He was a bump in her stomach. A rather large bump.
Christopher came two years later.
Within a few months after her twenty-fifth birthday, Laurel found herself the harried mother of three children, all under the age of five. Her own mother presented her with a large eleven-by-fourteen book meant for the elementary-school set entitled, Where Babies Come From.
Her
