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
