and useless here, can’t you understand that?”
Cal slammed his palm against the car’s roof. “And how the hell do you expect to raise a child together if we don’t live in the same place?”
“I don’t know! But I can’t just give up my life!”
“Your work comes before your child, in other words.”
“No!” Anguish swam in her eyes. “Oh, God, Cal—I may be totally clueless, and I’m still in shock, too, and I may not know what kind of mother I’ll make, but there’s a reason I never got beyond looking at the front door of that clinic! It takes my breath, how much I already love this kid. And I’m prepared to give it anything it needs. But is it so wrong to not want to lose myself in the process?”
He felt his eyes blaze into hers. “Is it so wrong for me to want to be a real part of my child’s life?”
“Of course not, but—”
“A kid shouldn’t have to grow up without its father, Dawn! And I’d think you’d be the last person to want to see that happen to your kid!”
Her face went rigid. Then she threw up her hands, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m too tired to talk about this anymore right now.” He didn’t hinder her when she climbed into the car. “Maybe tomorrow?”
His chest all knotted up, Cal propped his now-stinging hand on the roof. “You plannin’ on changing your mind overnight?”
After a moment, she shook her head again.
“Well, honey—” he let go and stood up straight “—neither am I. So I’d say we’re at an impasse, wouldn’t you?”
He watched her peel out of the drive, wondering if it would have made things better or worse to admit he was every bit as scared as she was.
If not more.
Chapter 2
After he’d put up the horses for the night and returned to the house, all he did was prowl from room to room. An activity which finally drove Ethel, who was crocheting something or other in the living room because the TV reception was better in here, she said, over the edge.
“For pity’s sake, boy! Either sit your backside down and talk to me or take it someplace else! And I already figured out she’s pregnant, so there’s one decision out of your hands.”
He stared at the top of her pin-curled head—she was already “in for the night,” as she put it. “How’d you know that?”
“Because it’s true what they say. About pregnant women glowing. Even if her particular glow looks more like it’s due to radioactive waste. Besides, why else would she be here?”
Cal sighed. Ethel clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her crochet hook a blur. Whatever it was she was making, it was frilly and the most godawful shade of pink Cal had ever seen. Suddenly she plopped the whatever-it-was in her lap and peered at him over her reading glasses, with as much concern in those button eyes of hers as if she’d been his real mother. Which, considering she’d pretty much filled that gap in his life from the time he was nine, wasn’t surprising. “Why don’t you go see your brother?”
“Which one?”
“Does it matter?”
He almost cracked a smile at that. “And what good would that do?”
“Other than getting you out of my hair? I have no idea.” She picked up her work again, weaving the hook in and out of all those little holes so fast it made him dizzy to watch. “But that’s what big brothers are for—to talk things over with. Now that the two of them’s finally figured out a thing or two about women, maybe they can share their wisdom. Besides, you’ll be tellin’ ’em the truth soon enough. Might as well get a jump on it.”
Well, maybe she had a point at that. Not that he relished the thought of being around either just-married Ryan or about-to-be-married Hank, but since he was fresh out of bright ideas, what did he have to lose?
“Don’t wait up,” he said, heading out the door.
“I don’t intend to,” she said, adding a row of lime green to the godawful pink.
He’d stopped by Ryan’s place first, but Maddie, his new wife—who, judging from the scent of warm fruit and fresh-baked pie crust rushing out the kitchen door from behind her, was busy making her next batch of pies to sell to Ruby’s Café—had said he was on duty at the clinic tonight until ten and was there anything she could help him with? But Cal said, no, he didn’t think so, and went on to Hank’s.
His oldest brother, an ex-cop, ran the Double Arrow Motel and Guest Lodge on the outskirts of town, a fixer-upper he bought as a sort of therapy after his first fiancée’s death a few years back. Not only had Hank made the dump into someplace respectable, but he even had a developer seriously interested in turning the place into a bona fide resort. And a few months back, damned if a second chance at love hadn’t come along and crashed his pity-party.
And then stayed until every last guest was good and gone.
Now living in a modest two-story house at the edge of the motel property, Hank seemed understandably surprised at Cal’s showing up unannounced, especially since the three brothers had grown apart after their father’s death when Cal was fourteen. Ryan’s and Hank’s trials and tribulations on the road to true love during the past year, however, had driven the three brothers to talk to each other more than they had in the fifteen years before that.
Now it was Cal’s turn.
Hank led Cal through the living room—painted some orange color that only Ethel could love—to the kitchen where he offered him a beer, which Cal gratefully accepted. Hank’s teenaged daughter, Blair, sat at the kitchen table, her coppery hair gleaming under the lamp as she pored over what looked like an album.
“Wedding invitations,” Hank said by way of explanation. He took a long swallow of his own beer and swept a hand through his short black hair. Falling in love with Jenna Stanton had worked miracles on a mug few people would ever have called good-looking, with its craggy features and twice-broken nose. Hank hadn’t even known about his daughter until a few months ago, when Jenna, a widow herself, had come looking for him after her sister’s—Blair’s mother’s—death and her subsequent discovery that Hank was Blair’s father. The romance had just been a real nice, and totally unexpected, bonus.
“Lord help us,” Hank said, “but I think we’ve got a wedding planner on our hands.”
“Da-ad,” the freckled teenager said, rolling her blue eyes and flashing her braces. “You think Jenna’ll like this one?” She turned the album around. Both men stared at the prissy invitation she was pointing to, trying to figure out what set it apart from the eight other equally prissy invitations on the same page.
“I suppose you’ll have to ask her when she gets back,” Hank said, clearly already well-versed in how to take the easy way out.
“Where is Jenna, by the way?” Cal asked.
“Back in D.C., taking care of loose ends before moving here for good.”
