income from teaching, very soon there wasn’t going to be enough money to pay all the bills. Not to mention the need for health insurance to cover her pregnancy. In seven months, Molly would have another life to provide for, and that meant putting aside as much money as she could between here and then.
Another life.
The words hit her again, and she still couldn’t quite comprehend her situation. A baby.
The one thing she had dreamed about for so many years, imagined having when she’d married Doug—
But then Doug had made it infinitely clear children weren’t on his agenda, not now, not later, not ever. That had been the beginning of the end for them, the moment when she’d realized she’d married a man who didn’t share any of her dreams for the future.
Now she had the future she wanted. Except she was alone. And about to become penniless. Not the dream she’d envisioned. How could she, of all people, have ended up in this position?
She’d always been so careful with her life, so conservative. The one time she’d stepped out of those boundaries she’d ended up pregnant, alone and unemployed.
Boy, karma had a heck of a sense of humor.
Molly sighed. She reached for another tissue in her purse and faced issue number two.
The baby’s father.
She might not want to see him again, might want to pretend that night in Vegas never happened, but she couldn’t.
She had to tell him. Somehow. And sometime in the next few months.
How would Linc react? She didn’t know him well enough to predict how he ordered his coffee in the morning, much less something as huge as this.
Oh, what had she done?
Either way, whether he wanted anything to do with the baby or not, she had to know, if only for the baby’s sake, who this man was. What if there was a medical problem? What if their child asked her a question someday down the road?
She thought back to that crazy, heady night two months ago. Did Linc ever think of her? Did he ever wonder whether there had been consequences to their temporary insanity? If he saw her again, what would he do? Say? He’d probably forgotten all about her, and if he saw her again wouldn’t even remember her name, much less what had happened between them.
With a man that handsome, in a city like Las Vegas, the chances were good that he had dozens of women in his life. Molly could have just been one more in a long string of quick dates.
Or not.
She had no idea what kind of man he really was because they’d agreed to keep everything easy, fun. No personal details, no heart-to-heart connections, no relationship-building.
Did she want to see him again? That was a bigger question. Did she really want to face her dumbest decision again? No.
But wanting to and having to were two totally different things.
And finally, decision number three.
She needed to keep this entire situation to herself for as long as possible, until she had it all figured out. She could just imagine her mother’s reaction—she’d be calling Doug and trying to fix Molly back up with her ex-husband, regardless of whether the two of them should be together or not or whether he wanted anything to do with children. Never mind a child that wasn’t even his.
Yeah, she was not going to tell anyone about this. Not until she had to.
Molly got out of her car and headed into the house. Rocky greeted her with the same enthusiasm as always, licking, barking, jumping all over his mistress. She let him out, then went back into the living room to dump her tote bag and purse on the scarred maple coffee table. Jayne was at work, so Molly had the house to herself and had some more time to process the day. Thank goodness.
As she passed her desk in the corner of the living room, she glanced at her desktop computer. Her gaze strayed to the stack of software piled beside the monitor.
Software.
Linc.
That night in the bar.
No…that was a crazy idea. Absolutely crazy. One that could lead to heartbreak, especially if Linc said he didn’t remember her, or their conversation about the software product he wanted to launch. Then again, could the idea be any crazier than the one that had gotten her into this situation in the first place?
The dry Vegas air slammed into Molly as soon as she got out of the taxicab. The August heat seemed to weigh on her, like a thick, suffocating blanket. Dry or not—it was hot.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked the cab driver.
The older man at the wheel of the car gestured toward the towering glass buildings, twin mirrors of each other, connected by an all-glass skybridge. The building was impressive, with neat linear lines and a clean silver-and-glass exterior, a stark contrast to the colorful noise of the Vegas strip a little ways behind them. “Curtis Systems, yes, ma’am. Can’t miss it.”
Molly thanked and paid the driver. She stepped into the shadow of the Curtis Systems building, dwarfed by the twenty-plus stories above her. Now that she was finally here, trepidation held her rooted to the spot.
She should go home. Forget the whole idea. Come up with another plan.
Except there wasn’t really another plan, at least not one that could solve both the job and getting to know the father of her baby dilemma all at once.
She just hadn’t expected that the Linc she met in a bar two months ago was this Linc.
When she’d search the Internet for Linc, with what little information she had, she’d come back with two different possibilities for software companies in Las Vegas. There’d been many software companies, of course, but only two that returned results with an employee named Linc. The first was no longer in business—all she’d found had been a weedy lot with a “For Sale” sign. That left Curtis Systems.
The company name had returned hundreds of Google hits, link after link showing the meteoric rise of the company’s success. Google hadn’t lied. She peered up at the monolith of a building. A success story on a mega level. And, according to the information she’d read on the Internet, Linc didn’t just work here—he was the owner and CEO.
The man she’d met, the one who seemed so…normal, so guy-next-door, was the same one at the helm of this massive, multi-national, multi-million-dollar corporation?
Again she considered turning around, heading back to San Diego. Then her hand drifted to her stomach, to the new life growing inside her, and she knew she had to go inside that building.
Not just for the job she needed, but for her baby.
Only two days had passed since she’d taken that first pregnancy test, and already she’d come to call this life “her baby.” To picture the tiny boy or girl someday living in the little bungalow on Gull View Lane. And to look forward to that event.
People streamed in and out of the Curtis Systems building. Molly fanned herself,
