A Little Change Of Plans

She recovered from her surprise quickly. “I expect it to be part of the ceremony.”

“I mean, let’s do it now.”

“What?”

“Molly,” Adam said, urgency rising from his core. “I don’t want our first kiss to be in front of an audience. Even a small select audience. It wouldn’t—it won’t be right. Besides, it will take the pressure off the actual moment, right?”

Molly stilled. “Well—all right.”

Adam stepped over to his best friend—his bride-to-be. He lifted his hands and brushed her hair off her shoulders.

He’d dated a lot of women, kissed the majority of them, at the very least. But he hadn’t had any idea that he compared any of them to Molly until this moment, when she stood before him. And that’s when he knew—he was in big, big trouble.

Dear Reader,

In writing A Little Change Of Plans, I had to throw the hero and the heroine for a big loop. They thought they had their futures figured out long ago.

Uh-huh. Well, life may be about a lot of things, but I don’t think it’s ever about certainty.

As soon as I met Molly and Adam, I decided they would each have to let go of their illusion of what they thought they always wanted if they were to find real and lasting love and happiness. (And because I’m their author, what I say goes!)

I really hope these characters inspire you the way they inspired me, to live with an open heart and embrace all the surprising possibilities that inevitably appear.

All the best,

Jen Safrey

A Little Change of Plans

Jen Safrey

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JEN SAFREY

is a back-to-back recipient of the 2004 and 2005 Golden Leaf Awards for Long Contemporary Romance. She’s steadily moving up the belt ranks in tae kwon do, although her back kicks still need some work. She’s also learning to cook (finally), so feel free to e-mail her your recipes—easy ones—through her Web site at www.jensafreybooks.com.

Motherhood is a path I chose not to travel,

so this book is dedicated to the brave women

in my life who did, and shared their adventures with

me—particularly my sister, Elizabeth Markman,

and, of course, my own terrific mom.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Prologue

June 1992

“Molly, you have been an asset to Saint Cecilia’s Girls’ Academy. I guess this is the last time I’ll meet with you as your guidance counselor.”

Molly crossed her legs at the ankle and straightened her spine. Ms. Glass regarded her, and Molly basked in the pride reflected through the woman’s thick glasses.

“Now,” the administrator continued, “I know I don’t have to ask you if you’ve given serious thought to what you want to study next year. I have a little feeling you’ve been mulling it over since you were in pigtails.”

“I’m going to earn a bachelor’s degree, then an MBA, and then start my own business,” Molly said with a smile.

The smile was returned by the older woman, but in it Molly detected a jaded tinge.

Molly didn’t take it personally. She imagined plenty of Saint Cecilia’s alumni returned every year with careers and lives miles and miles off the fast track, so far from what they’d once envisioned for themselves at this elite private school.

She, Molly Jackson, would not be among them. When she returned—if, of course, she had time to make the trip back to California from New York between power lunches and business-class trips to Europe—she would be feted as a success, maybe even with a scholarship founded in her name….

“Remember your first day as a freshman, Molly?” Ms. Glass asked, interrupting her reverie. “When I first met you? You walked into this office wearing a lovely, smart pink blazer. The rest of the girls were in jeans.”

Molly nodded, not really recalling her wardrobe that particular day and now wondering what the point of this discussion was going to be.

“You marched in here, sat down in that same chair there, and said, ‘I’m going to earn my bachelor’s, then an MBA, then start my own business.’”

Molly waited. She probably did say that.

“You were so sure of yourself then,” Ms. Glass continued, “and even more sure of yourself now.”

“Excuse me,” Molly said, frowning, “but it sounds like you think that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s a wonderful thing,” Ms. Glass said. “I have no doubt you’ll go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do. But I give every student of mine a piece of advice to take into the real world, and here’s yours: Let life just happen to you once in a while, Molly.”

Molly pulled her chin in, taken aback.

“Things are different after high school,” Ms. Glass went on. “Life may not turn out the way you expect, and you need to be able to adjust, relax, go with the flow.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. “This sounds like the opposite of normal guidance counselor advice.”

“Normal guidance counselor advice has never been something you really needed, Molly. I’m giving you woman-to-woman advice. Be spontaneous at least once in a while. Maybe once a year? Have fun. Meet boys.”

Molly had given boys some thought over the last few years, and she didn’t want to tell Ms. Glass that it happened to be another area in which she was quite sure of herself and of what would happen.

Out there was a boy just like herself.

A boy who worked hard, who put achieving first. A boy whose parents taught him how to strive to be the best. A boy who participated in student government, band, mathletes and excelled in a varsity sport. Maybe track and field.

Molly was going to find that boy, the one who was destined to be the man for her. A driven, ambitious man, exactly like the woman she was about to be.

She’d find him, and he wouldn’t be hard to find. They’d be drawn to one another without effort, ready and able to support one another, work side by side forever in perfect synchronized partnership.

College started in three months. He could be anywhere.

Molly stood, smoothed out the wrinkles in her black pants the way she knew her mother did and put out her hand. “Thank you for everything, Ms. Glass. I’m proud to have attended this school, and I promise, I won’t let Saint Cecilia’s down.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Ms. Glass said, clasping Molly’s hand and looking deep into her eyes. “Just think about yourself. And be happy.”

June 1992

“Well, Adam, it’s that time for you. This will be our last meeting.”

“Yup.”

“So, I beg you, please tell me you’ve decided what you plan to study next year.”

Adam leaned back and eyed Mr. Fisher. His guidance counselor stared back at him with a stern expression that Adam was certain had to have been a course requirement for the man to earn his education degree. The thought of a roomful of men and women staring each other down, practicing and perfecting their faces for the final exam, made Adam grin.

“I’m glad you’re so unconcerned and amused,” Mr. Fisher said, sitting back in his chair and lacing his fingers together on the blotter in front of him. “I wouldn’t want you to be losing sleep over your unclear future.”

“I’m not, Mr. F.,” Adam said, pretending he didn’t understand the sarcasm so as not to prolong the argument.

Adam didn’t take it personally. It was Mr. Fisher’s job to make sure his students didn’t return to Grover Cleveland High School year after year and tell him about their miserable rat-race lives of drudgery and nine-to-five-plus-overtime.

He, Adam Shibbs, would not be among them. When he returned—if he had time between checking out jazz clubs, discovering Middle Eastern restaurants and getting the local guys together to shoot hoops—he would have an easy smile on his face, a man happy with life and free to sample all the world had to offer.

“I know you’ve had a very difficult year,” Mr. Fisher said after a pause. His voice and face softened. “Losing a parent is a terrible experience.”

Adam, his levity fading away, looked down at the dusty floor, and wondered what the point of this discussion would be.

“But I don’t want to see you permanently stunt your growth as a person, Adam,” Mr. Fisher said. “Your grades are pretty good for an average student, but for a boy as bright as you, they’re a definite underachievement. Still, they were enough to get you into a good college, and my advice to you is to consider buckling down for a few years. Get motivated. See what your brain can do.”

“I use my brain,” Adam said. “I just don’t use it in the way you think I should. I don’t use it thinking of ways to get ahead and be great at everything, and earn a million dollars a year and make mergers and whatever else. I use it to try to learn about things that amaze me or make me laugh, so I can have a good time.” He paused. “You only live once.”

“I agree,” his guidance counselor said. “And sometimes, as I know you learned the hard way, your one life can throw you a lot of curveballs. You’ve got to know how to hit them, even if you don’t want or expect them to come at you. You coped this time around by easing up and relaxing, and that was fine, but maybe now it’s time to work hard for a while. Find your potential. Prepare yourself to face anything in the real world, and to meet anyone.”

Adam didn’t want to admit it, but he had been giving the part about meeting people a lot of thought.

Out there were many women just like himself—fun, carefree, exciting, adventurous. He planned to meet as many women as was possible and enjoy the wide, beautiful variety the world had to offer. And if he ever got to the point where it was time to settle down—although he couldn’t imagine that, really—he’d be acquainted with many to choose from. Women who didn’t work themselves to death, so that he wouldn’t have to love and lose someone again.

Women exactly like him. It was a huge planet. They wouldn’t be hard to find.

College started in three months. They could be everywhere.

Adam bent to retie the tattered lace on his sneaker, then stood and put out his hand. “Thanks for everything, Mr. Fisher. I did have fun most of the time here at G.C. High. I promise I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t promise me anything,” Mr. Fisher said, clasping his hand. “You’re the one with the promise. Just don’t ignore it.”

Chapter One

Molly Jackson’s pros/cons for keeping her birthday to herself—

Pros:

1. Don’t have to laugh weakly at lame jokes that go, “Let me guess. twenty-nine again, right?” Thirty-two is not only chronologically correct but absolutely acceptable.

2. Don’t have to worry about getting dragged out to a bar or restaurant by well-meaning Danbury Way women only to quietly obsess for three hours that I could be at home preparing that report for my newest client and worry that I’m wasting valuable time.

3. Don’t have to deflect curious, endless questions about my getting-bigger stomach. Don’t have to smile distantly and nod vaguely when the words “sperm bank” inevitably come up. Don’t have to feel guilty, and then extra guilty that I feel guilty.

4. Staying indoors all day means my hair won’t frizz up in the rain.

Cons:

1. Have to make my own cake.

The rain splattered down harder, startling Molly from her thoughts for a moment, but as she watched water stream down the windowpane, she was pulled back into the haven of her organized mind.

Molly was never off task for long, whatever the task happened to be.

Ten minutes later, she was con-less and convinced she’d made the right gut decision about her birthday. Plus, she was itching to get in to her office to start plowing through her in-box. She glanced up at the kitchen clock, which she could see from where she sprawled in the center of her soft, bouncy sofa—8:00 a.m. on the dot. She rose—or tried to rise. Her new weight unbalanced her and she fell back down, her behind sinking into the crevice between the sofa cushions. She was surprised it fit in there, because lately, she’d noticed her back end widening inch by inch, minute by minute. At this rate, by next week she’d be turning sideways to go through doorways. Someone would have to slap a Wide Load sign on the butt of her heather-gray sweatpants, the only item of clothing in her closet that she could still breathe in.

In what was becoming a common occurrence, her noncuddly, nonmaternal thoughts dissolved into guilt. “Sorry, baby,” she said, patting her stomach gently. “I’m just not used to you being so—so there.” She sighed. “Every day, you take me as much by surprise as the day I found out about you.”

Thinking about that, and thinking about how every day for the rest of her life would contain a persistent element of unexpectedness, Molly felt love. And hiding just underneath that thick cozy cover of love, a thinner, shakier stranger of a feeling that could possibly be—

No. Not fear. Molly refused fear. Never let it in.

She planted both palms on the couch and hurled herself up so efficiently she almost flew across the room into the wall. She walked to the staircase and ascended it, each deliberate step taking her away from the moment where she might have given in to her feelings, admitted what the fear did to her, welcomed this emotion she so rarely experienced.

And she refused to experience it, to surrender to it now. She was a single, pregnant career woman, and she couldn’t afford to give in to—that emotion.

She pushed through the door to her office and sat down. She glanced around at the clutterless desk, the efficient file cabinet, the dust-free computer monitor. This was control. She was in control. She could do anything she put her determined mind to.

The phone rang, and she donned her headset. She switched her computer on with one hand as she clicked onto the phone line with her other hand. “M.J. Consulting,” she said, her tone crisp.

She smiled, the same way she did after answering every first phone call of the day. She so loved the name of her own one-woman company. She particularly loved the name of her own company spoken by her in her own office, in her very own still-felt-like-new home.

“Yes, Mr. Trent, how are you?” she asked, leaving the smile on her face so it would come through the receiver on her client’s end. She reached for a pen out of her pencil cup and her hand came up a half-inch short.

Listening intently, Molly leaned forward. She tried not to groan into her headset as her stomach pressed against the desk, holding her back, keeping her capable fingertips just out of reach.

Busy, busy, busy all day long and that was just fine with Molly. By a quarter to four, she was famished, even after having eaten a massive roast-beef sandwich just a few hours ago. She stretched her arms over her head and contracted her tight lower back. Through the narrow break between the filmy lilac-colored curtains, she spied Sylvia Fulton walking back from her mailbox with a pile of magazines and catalogs, a filmy pink scarf tied over her gray hair. Molly waved one of her hands over her head and, squinting, Sylvia waved back, even though she probably couldn’t see Molly, just the shadowy motion of her greeting.

Molly got up and rubbed her lower back. Getting the mail was a good excuse to get blood circulating in her legs again.

She went downstairs and grabbed her umbrella from the pail beside the front door. It was only about twelve paces to the mailbox, but she might as well try to minimize the inevitable hair frizz.

The wind sent a spray of rain into her face, so she tilted her umbrella in front of her—which was why she didn’t see Irene Dare and Rhonda Johnson loitering in front of her house until it was too late to ignore them.

“Hi,” Molly said neutrally, sliding her unimportant-after-all mail from her box and turning to go.

“Molly!” Irene said. “You look just wonderful.”

“Wonderful,” Rhonda echoed.

Molly laid a hand on her stomach and silently apologized to her baby for exposing it to the nasty elements so early in its development. And she wasn’t thinking about the weather.

Rhonda smiled at Molly from under a bright blue umbrella, Irene from a light pink one. Despite the miniature terriers each woman carried like infants, their two smiles reminded Molly of the sly Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp.

“I was just saying to Irene as we passed your house, ‘I wonder how Molly’s doing,’” Rhonda purred—er, said. “And I said, ‘She’s so brave.’”

“Not that brave,” Molly said. “It’s probably safe to assume that women have been having babies since the dawn of humanity.”

“I mean, brave for doing it without a man around to help you.”

“Oh, I don’t think a man will be able to push better than I can when the big day comes.”

Undaunted, Irene chimed in, “You know, there are some people who say that going to a sperm bank is, well, desperate. But I don’t agree with that at all.”

“No?” Molly asked, echoing the sarcasm.

“No, of course not,” Irene went on. “In fact, if I were in your shoes— What I mean is, just getting to the age where it was time to finally give up on finding a man and have a baby on my own—it might be nice to be able to pick and choose what sperm I wanted. Custom-built baby.” She grinned.

“Irene? A baby?” Molly heard someone say, and all three women turned to find Rebecca Peters had walked two doors down from her place. “First of all, one can only assume you’re speaking theoretically.”

Irene, who Molly knew full well was obsessive about preserving her gym-toned looks, sputtered at the not-so-subtle insult.

“Besides,” Rebecca went on smoothly, “would you really be able to handle one more big mouth to feed?”

The grin flew off Rhonda’s face and landed on Molly’s. She covered it discreetly with her hand.

“Rebecca, how lovely to see you,” Rhonda said. “Too bad we were just leaving.” They turned their backs, but before they walked away, Rhonda said over her shoulder, “Molly, you should run inside now if you want to save your hair. Although it looks like it might be too late.”

Rebecca put two fingers in her mouth and made a vomiting sound. “Those two rats. And I’m not even talking about their scrawny little dogs.” She laid a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “I saw them waylay you from my window, so I figured I’d come to your rescue before your hormones made you do something you’d regret.”

Molly reached up and squeezed Rebecca’s long, graceful fingers. “Thank you. Although I’m not sure I would have ever regretted it.”

“Good point.” Rebecca’s sharp blue eyes flashed with leftover rebellion. “I seriously can’t believe their nerve. You know, people insist the city is cold and rude. But let me tell you, I never had to deal with anyone like that before I moved to quiet little Danbury Way.”

“Please don’t let them spoil Rosewood for you,” Molly said. “No one else is like them, you know that.”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“Besides, they live around the corner on Maplewood. They’re not Danbury Way-ers.”

The two women surveyed the wet street companionably from their dead end of the cul-de-sac. Now that Irene and Rhonda had slunk off, they were the only ones out in the dismal weather. After a few moments, Rebecca turned around. “It’s hysterical how from this spot, our places look like little out-houses for Carly’s mega-mansion.”

Molly giggled. As much as she loved her home, and as nice as the house was that Rebecca was renting, they unfortunately flanked the ostentatious brick edifice.

“Good thing I adore Carly so much,” Rebecca said, “or I might be jealous.”

“No, I think if I was going to bother being jealous, it would be of that new man of hers.”

Rebecca grinned. “Yeah, Bo’s something else. I’m happy for them. Listen, you’d better get back inside. You don’t want to catch a cold.”

“I’m fine. But it’s my hair, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re gorgeous and you know it.”

“And for that, you’re invited for lunch tomorrow.”

“Cool. I’ll come by around noon.” She turned to go.

“Rebecca.”

She swiveled back around. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Her friend waved it off. “Please. Don’t you know we city girls are always looking for a fight?” She put up her fists and gave a one-two punch to the air in front of her.

Molly laughed. Rebecca waggled her fingers on both hands, then jogged by Carly’s massive lawn and disappeared around the back of the house.

Molly’s smile lingered even on her getting-harder-every-time climb up the stairs back to her office. She was glad to be getting closer to Rebecca, who worked for a fashion magazine and had a lot of Molly’s own ambition and drive. She wondered what Rebecca would say if she knew the truth about the baby’s father. She had a strong feeling that she could trust Rebecca to keep it to herself, and that she wouldn’t judge Molly, but even still, Molly was too ashamed to say it out loud to anyone, to hear herself admit the facts.

Even her own parents back in California assumed she went to a sperm bank. It didn’t surprise them in the least. They were used to their daughter doing things the unconventional way—buying her own house, starting her own business. They were also used to their daughter’s success—being as they had such an influence on instilling it in the first place—so they had no doubts about Molly’s decisions. They stood behind her, but at a distance. Just like they always did.

The person who’d stood closest to her for so long was Adam, her unlikely best friend. He didn’t know anything about the baby, either. She hadn’t seen him since the reunion, where, preoccupied, she’d inadvertently left without saying goodbye. They’d only exchanged a few innocuous “hi, how are you? I’m still alive” e-mails since then. Molly didn’t question Adam’s lying low because she was too busy doing it herself. She’d tell him she was pregnant the next time they really talked, but she didn’t imagine she could bring herself to tell even him the truth.

Molly’s stomach growled, and when she scowled down at it, she saw the baby move. It was bad enough she ate more in a day than she did in a week pre-pregnancy, without her own body and the extra person occupying it rebelling against her.

She contemplated what was left in her kitchen, and after a minute or so, the phone rang again.

“I’ll make this quick, baby,” Molly said to her middle. “Then I’ll feed us.”

It was Friday afternoon, and she was anticipating a weekend of planning her eventual spring garden. Today she’d lined all her business ducks up in a harmoniously quacking row for next week. Whatever this was, it couldn’t set her too far back.

“M.J. Consulting,” she said, smiling again.

Less than two minutes later, her smile was gone.

Chapter Two

Adam propped his feet up on his second-floor balcony railing, and watched the rain drip onto his bare toes. He’d been planning since yesterday to pick up pad thai on the way home from work today and eat dinner al fresco. September 1 meant summer was on its way out, and he wanted to breathe in the warm air as long as it still surrounded him. Winter in upstate New York had its different snow-covered enjoyments, but it wasn’t time for that just yet.

So with these ambitious plans—and with Adam, this was as ambitious as it got—a day-long deluge wouldn’t change anything. The overhang from his upstairs neighbor’s balcony kept his head and his dinner dry. A few raindrops on his ankles were no hardship.