“All right, then, what are you upset about?”

“You,” Jason said.

“Me?” He had completely lost her. “What about me?”

He turned away for a moment, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. Searching for words.

“Look, I don’t want to have to do without you.”

Was that it? He was afraid of losing his maid? Over the years she’d taken a relatively self-sufficient man and gotten him used to having everything done for him.

“I’ll still do everything I’ve always done,” she assured him, trying hard not to let her annoyance show. “Get up, throw up and move on. Your meals will still be made, most likely on time, you—”

“I don’t want to have to do without you,” Jason repeated, saying the words with more feeling. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to go on.”

For one of the very few times in her life, Laurel found herself truly speechless.

Marie Ferrarella

wrote her very first story at age eleven on an old manual Remington typewriter her mother bought for her for seventeen dollars at a pawn shop. The keys stuck and she had to pound on them in order to produce anything. The instruments of production have changed, but she’s been pounding on keys ever since. To date, she’s written over 150 novels, and there appears to be no end in sight. As long as there are keyboards and readers, she intends to go on writing until the day she meets the Big Editor in the Sky.

The Second Time Around

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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From the Author

Dear Reader,

Considering that I never liked playing with dolls, I was very surprised to discover that I loved being a mother. Loved the whole concept, from diapers to midnight feedings to reading bedtime stories and even to homework-helping at the last possible minute. I was blessed with two children, a girl and then a boy. Sadly, although they’ll always be my children, they are not little people anymore. They grew up (it was the daily watering that did it). I miss little fingers wrapped around mine, miss little bottoms nestled on my lap (my dog still sits on my lap, but it’s not the same).

And I have to admit, if it wouldn’t send my husband into something akin to anaphylactic shock, I would love to have another baby, even though both my kids have graduated college. I know a lot more now (or so I tell myself) and I would be a much more self-assured mother than the one who called the hospital hotline in a panic at two in the morning because her one-year-old was coughing.

But since I can’t have another short person of my own, I decided it might be fun to write a story about a couple who thought they had the rest of their lives completely planned and knew what was coming around every corner—only to find themselves pregnant. It’s not as upsetting a situation as you might think. After all, they don’t call it the miracle of birth for nothing.

As always, I wish you love and I thank you for reading.

Marie Ferrarella

To Dr. Anne Lai, for helping Rocky

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 1

If there was anything she looked forward to less than her annual visit to her gynecologist, Laurel Mitchell didn’t know what it was.

It wasn’t that her doctor was heavy-handed with the examination or made her uncomfortable. On the contrary, Dr. Rachel Kilpatrick, the same doctor who had seen her through all three of pregnancies, had a gentle touch and a fantastic bedside manner. And she was a kind, understanding woman to boot, someone she could talk to about anything that bothered her. Rachel Kilpatrick was not the kind of doctor who just roller-skated by, taking pulses and collecting fees. She genuinely cared for her patients.

No, it wasn’t Dr. Kilpatrick that she minded. What she found upsetting was the whole awful experience: sitting there in a cool room, wearing a vest that was made out of thin tissue paper with what could have passed as an extralarge paper towel draped around her lower torso. That was what she found so off-putting.

That and the stirrups.

Whose idea were they, anyway? Necessary or not, they made her think of something two steps removed from a torture rack from the Spanish Inquisition.

But she endured it all like a good little soldier. Because that was what women were supposed to do once a year: troop in, strip down and lie there, thinking of other things while cold steel instruments were inserted in places women of her grandmother’s generation never talked about.

Finally the probing and the scratching were over. Dr. Kilpatrick removed the instruments and put the prize she’d secured between two glass lab slides, then placed that on the side counter. Laurel lost no time in dismounting from the stirrups and sitting up. She tried her best to pull her dignity to her and ignore the goose bumps forming on her flesh from the room’s cold temperature.

When she raised her eyes to Dr. Kilpatrick’s face, she saw that her gynecologist was frowning.

Not a good sign, Laurel thought. The queasiness in her stomach increased, reminding her that the cereal she’d had for breakfast was not resting well. But then lately, very little had. She chalked it up to stress and told herself it would pass.

Dr. Kilpatrick pushed the stool she’d been sitting on back into the corner. She held Laurel’s file against her chest and moved closer to the examination table, and to Laurel.

Her eyes were kind as she asked, “How have you been feeling lately, Laurel?”

Laurel bit back a flippant answer. Whenever she was nervous, she tended to make jokes, a habit that drove her husband, Jason, and her sons, crazy. This time, she shrugged.

“Okay, I guess. A little run-down but that’s to be expected. I’m not twenty anymore.” Her suspicions began to multiply, conjuring up awful images. Her neighbor, Alexis Curtis, had been feeling run-down and she was diagnosed with cancer. The chemo treatments had made her chestnut hair fall out.

Laurel sat up straighter, drawing her shoulders back. “Why? Is something wrong? Tell me if something’s wrong,” she requested, hoping that wasn’t a tremor she heard in her voice. “I can take it.” She scrutinized her doctor’s face, trying to uncover what the woman was thinking.

Dr. Kilpatrick took in a slow breath, as if bracing herself to rip a Band-Aid from her patient’s arm. “Well, Laurel, as they used to say in the old days, you’re with child.”

“With child,” Laurel repeated, dazed. Numbed. Confused. She cocked her head, as if that would somehow shift everything in her head and make her better understand the words. “Whose child?”

Dr. Kilpatrick smiled, amused. “Your child, I’d imagine.”

Laurel heard the words clearly, but somehow, they just didn’t seem to register. She shook her head, confused. “I’m not getting this.”

An almost wicked smile curved the physician’s lips. “Apparently, you are, or at least did.” Leaning over, Dr. Kilpatrick placed her hand over Laurel’s. “Laurel, you’re pregnant.”

Laurel thought it was a miracle that she didn’t swallow her tongue from the shock. But then, this was a joke, right? Some bizarre April Fool’s prank just a couple weeks shy of its mark, since it was the middle of April. The doctor was apparently running behind in her attempt at humor.

Very emphatically, Laurel shook her head, never taking her eyes off Dr. Kilpatrick’s face. “No, I’m not.”

“You just left a specimen of your urine before the exam.” Dr. Kilpatrick flipped over a page to show her the results the nurse had gotten. “The test says you’re pregnant. Tests don’t lie.”

Again, Laurel shook her head, this time even more adamantly, refusing to accept this docilely. There was a mistake. This was all wrong. She was exhausted, she had the flu, maybe even walking pneumonia. There was a whole list of possibilities for her condition that didn’t have the word “baby” attached to it.

“Test me again,” Laurel pleaded. “I need a do-over. I was always careless on tests, always got the wrong answer the first time around.” She placed her hand on the doctor’s arm. “Please.”

“I don’t have to take another sample from you, Laurel,” Dr. Kilpatrick told her softly. “Your color’s changed.”

Laurel pressed her hand against her cheeks. Was she running a fever? Well, small wonder. The doctor had just scared her to death. “My color?”

The doctor’s smile turned into a broad grin. “Not there.” She indicated Laurel’s face. “There.” With a nod of her head, Dr. Kilpatrick glanced toward the blue “paper towel” that was inadequately pooled about her patient’s thighs, indicating the area she was referring to.

Laurel shifted uncomfortably, as if she could actually feel what the doctor was talking about. “It could still be a mistake.”

There was sympathy on the doctor’s face. “Could be,” she allowed skeptically. “But it’s really highly doubtful.”

Laurel blew out a breath. “Pregnant,” she said, still unable to absorb the implications behind the eight-letter word. Still holding it at bay with the last ounce of her strength.

The expression on Rachel Kilpatrick’s face was pure sympathy. And perhaps, just a touch of envy. “Yes.”

“Me.”

The doctor lifted her shoulders, then let them drop. “You’re the one on the examination table.”

Laurel laughed shortly. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t possibly be pregnant. She raised her eyes to meet the doctor’s. “I’ll gladly switch with you.”

“Laurel, this is a wonderful thing.” The doctor gave her hand another warm squeeze. “A miracle.”

Miracles were things that you hoped for, prayed for, Laurel thought haplessly. Miracles were things that happened despite impossible odds because you wanted them to. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever wanted to be pregnant at forty-five.

“You bet it’s a miracle,” Laurel said sarcastically. “It’s damn near close to being an immaculate conception. In the last six months, I can count the number of times Jason and I made love on the fingers of one hand.”

“Now there’s your problem,” the doctor teased with a laugh. “The bed’s much more comfortable for that sort of thing.” And then, because her patient looked so sober, so upset by the news that usually brought tears of joy to so many of her other patients, Rachel sat down on the examining table beside Laurel and placed an arm around her patient’s shoulders. There was compassion in her eyes as she asked, “Is there trouble between you and Jason?”

Jason was one of those easygoing men who was hard to ruffle. But this should definitely do it, Laurel thought. An ironic smile curved her mouth. “There will be once I come home with this.”

The doctor shook her head. “Besides ‘this.’”

Laurel knew she’d lucked out the day she’d haphazardly picked Rachel Kilpatrick to be her doctor. She could come to her with anything, even after hours. It made her wonder how the woman managed to maintain a private life. But somehow she did. Laurel knew for a fact that the woman had a husband and children.

“No ‘trouble.’ Jason’s just gotten caught up in his old hobby. Trains,” she explained.

Her husband had been a collector when they’d first met. At that time, he had only three engines to his name. Over the years, under the guise of building up sets for their sons, he’d bought more and more. But they hardly ever even got out of the box once he brought the trains home. He was storing them. And then suddenly, last Christmas, they’d all come out of their boxes, every last one of them, and began showing up in almost every room in the house. She’d managed to convince Jason that he needed to have them all in one place. He settled on two, the bonus room and the garage, both of which looked like miniature Grand Central Stations these days.

“We’ve got tracks all over the garage. The cars are parked outside.” She’d had to find a cover for hers because she didn’t want the elements getting to the paint job. “Now he’s talking about setting up something outside in the backyard.” Actually, he was doing more than talking about it, but she didn’t want to take up the doctor’s time.

“So, see, this will work out just fine.”

Laurel looked at her, not following the doctor’s reasons. “And how do you figure that?”

“Well, if you give him a son, Jason will have an excuse to play with the trains. Give him someone to run the trains for.”

They already had a son, Laurel thought. As a matter of fact, they had three of them. Three big, strong, strapping boys. None of whom were in that getting-on-their-knees-and-playing-with-trains stage anymore. Besides, Jason didn’t want another son—he wanted a heavy-duty transformer to help run his trains over longer distances without losing power.

Laurel looked at the doctor, feeling overwhelmed and helpless as well as exhausted. “What I’ll be giving him an excuse for is leaving home.”

Dr. Kilpatrick rose from the table. “I think you’re selling your husband short.”

It wasn’t so much a matter of selling Jason short as it was having been privy to his dreams all these years. He had a plan for their future. And that plan definitely didn’t include morning sickness and swollen ankles.

“You don’t understand, Doctor,” Laurel sighed. “Jason and I are in a different place now than we were twenty-five years ago.”

“Yes, for one thing, you’re far more experienced now than you were then.”

That wasn’t what she meant. “Twenty-five years ago, Jason wanted enough kids to populate his own professional baseball team. Now he’s satisfied with just enough to play four-handed poker with. Occasionally. What he wants to do is travel, do all the things we couldn’t do back then because we had kids.”

Oh God, pregnant. I’m pregnant.

“How am I going to tell him that after all these years, we’re back to square one again? Less than one. Zero. How am I going to tell him that he’s got to wait another eighteen years before we go on that road trip he’s been planning? By then, they won’t let him drive because they’ll have taken away his driver’s license.”

The exaggeration made Dr. Kilpatrick laugh. “Jason’s what, one year old than you?” Laurel nodded, letting another from-the-bottom-of-her-toes sigh escape. “That makes him forty-six. I don’t think he’ll be ready to be put on an ice flow just yet. Besides, haven’t you heard? Forty-six is the new thirty-six.” She patted Laurel’s shoulder. “Forget about this early-retirement business,” she advised, referring to something Laurel had told her earlier about her husband’s plans. “It’s highly overrated. Being involved keeps you young. Babies keep you young,” she emphasized. “This way, he still has retirement to look forward to.” Crossing to the door, Dr. Kilpatrick paused for a moment, a fond expression on her face. “Sometimes, the looking-forward-to-something part is even better than actually getting that ‘something.’”

“You want to come home with me and explain that to him? Maybe he’ll believe it if he hears it coming from you.”

Her hand on the doorknob, Dr. Kilpatrick stopped and turned around. “What, that you’re pregnant?”

“No, that looking forward to something is better than having it.”

Dr. Kilpatrick smiled. “Look at the positive aspects—”

What possible positive aspects could there be about being pregnant at forty-five? “Right, I’ll be the oldest mother in kindergarten.”

The look the doctor gave her said she knew it was just the shock talking, nothing more. “No, you’re better off financially than you were when you had your other children. And you’re definitely more experienced. You know what to expect.”

“Yes, morning sickness for five months.” And one hell of an explosion when she broke the news. She couldn’t think of one person who was going to be happy about this unexpected twist.

“Afterward,” the doctor gently prodded. “Remember how afraid you were when you brought that first baby home? How you thought you’d drop and break him? How everything was this big mystery? Every rash, every cough had you fearing the worst? Now you’ll have the advantage because you’ll know what you’re doing.”

Laurel remembered the early years and, yes, she’d learned from them. Learned that she could survive and, most of all, learned to expect the unexpected.

She laughed drily. “Obviously you’ve had an easier time with motherhood than I have. Each one of the boys was different. Each one refused to play by the rules his brothers set down.” She had great kids, but it had been an uphill battle with each one of them. There’d never been any coasting, not even with the youngest one, Christopher, who’d been the most like her.

He wasn’t going to be the youngest one anymore, she suddenly thought. How was Christopher going to like that? “Every time I thought I knew what I was doing, I didn’t.” And it had been exhausting, physically and emotionally. Laurel raised her eyes to the doctor’s. “How am I going to go through that again?”

The doctor answered her question with a question. “Would you change anything if you could?”

“What do you mean?”

Just for a second, Dr. Kilpatrick moved back into the room. “If you could erase one of your sons, go back and not have him, would you?”

Laurel didn’t even stop to think. “No.”

It was obviously the answer the doctor had expected. “Then how do you know you won’t feel that way about this one?”

Laurel shook her head. Things were getting jumbled, twisted. “Because with this one, I’ll be forty-five years old. Because with this one, I won’t be able to run and play.”

The doctor opened her chart and glanced down at the notation she’d made earlier. “You still get in a game of tennis now and then, don’t you?”

It had been an exaggeration. Wishful thinking on her part. She was too busy with the demands of her career and personal life to spend much time on the courts. “More then than now.”

The doctor closed the chart again, accepting the correction and going from there. “Running is not a requirement with children.”

The hell it wasn’t, Laurel thought. “I guess your kids were less active than mine. Mine were born running.” At least it felt that way. “I get tired just thinking about it.” And then it suddenly dawned on her. “Is that why I’ve been feeling so tired lately? Because I’m pregnant?”

Dr. Kilpatrick’s smile filtered into her eyes. “That would be my diagnosis.”

One mystery cleared up—and she wished with all her heart that it’d had an easier solution. “I beat you to it. That means you can’t charge me.”

“All right,” Dr. Kilpatrick agreed, tongue 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 mother’s idea of a joke, Laurel had thought at the time. “I know where babies come from, Mother,” she told the woman who had only given birth to two children herself. “They come from heaven, holding a small piece of it in their chubby little hands when they arrive.”

And she’d meant that with all her heart. Because holding her babies in her arms was like holding heaven.

But that didn’t mean life was peaceful by any stretch of the imagination. Her three, overactive boys had each been a trial in their own unique way, sending both her and Jason to the edge of their tempers and to the center of their ability to love.

It was, all in all, a trial by fire. Three trials by fire. But there wasn’t a minute of that hectic, insane life that she would have eliminated—with the possible exception of when Morgan had brought home that jar of black widow spider eggs and they had hatched overnight. The babies had gotten loose, crawling out of the holes he’d punched in the top of the metal lid.

Frantic, envisioning them all dying of spider bites in their beds, she’d almost insisted that they move out of the house. Jason had her agree to a compromise by getting an exterminator at a moment’s notice.

But even the black widow spider incident had had its upside. Because of that, when she’d gone to the local real estate agent, she wound up getting friendly with the man who ran the agency. So much so that she began to seriously think about getting a part-time job selling houses as a way to bring in extra money. True to his word, Ed Callaghan signed her up with his agency the very day she passed her course and received her real estate license.

She found that she was good at finding just the right house for people. And just like that, Laurel had a career. A career she still had and a livelihood she could easily count on. When the last of her boys had gone into the first grade, she began to put in more hours. Now she had three plaques on the wall of her cubicle proclaiming her to be the saleswoman of the year. Jason called her his go-getter.

Go-getters didn’t go get pregnant. Not if they didn’t want to be, she thought glumly as she drove onto the main drag within the city she’d called home for the past twenty years. Once upon a time Molten Parkway had been nothing more than a two-lane road that went from one end of the town to the other, the only path to either of the two freeways that went through Bedford. But now they were a city, not a town, and Molten was a major thoroughfare with three lanes whizzing by in either direction.

Whizzing, that was, in the off hours. During peak hours, the road was clogged with cars either intent on taking one of the two freeways back to wherever it was they came from each morning or returning home from some other region. Molten Parkway found itself the scene of the eternal Southern California shuffle of vehicles. And it was getting worse with each passing month.

Laurel had seen Bedford, like her family, grow over the years. Often she found herself wishing that Bedford would finally stop growing and stay the way it was.

She never thought that she’d find herself wishing the same thing about her family. Certainly not at this stage of her life.

She remembered right after she’d brought Christopher home from the hospital and she and Jason had captured a quiet moment to themselves after Luke and Morgan had collapsed into a fitful sleep.

The two of them had stood over the baby’s crib, absorbing the fleeting, rare silence, watching the brand-new third addition to their family sleeping.

And then, suddenly, Jason had broken the silence. “Three,” he’d said.

The single word had come out of the blue, surprising her as much as it confused her. She’d looked at him, puzzled, waiting for an explanation. When none came, she’d asked, “What?”

Jason had turned to her and then lightly kissed her forehead, his lips barely touching her skin. Tingling her soul.

“Three,” he repeated. “I like the number three.” And then, in case she didn’t get the reference, he added, “Three sons.”

She’d cocked her head, trying to discern something she thought she’d detected.

“Is that finality in your voice?” she’d asked, recalling how he’d talked about having a houseful of kids while they’d been in school.

“It is,” he replied, nodding his head as if reviewing his own thoughts and finding them good. “Any more and we might not be able to provide them with everything they’ll need.” He leaned over the crib, tucking the blue blanket around his small, new son. “Might not be able to give them enough of ourselves, either. Not if equal shares are being handed out.”

She’d laughed then and kissed his cheek. As always, he was the soul of reason. And she agreed with him. Three was a good number, even though it was one more than she had hands.

“I do love you, Jason Mitchell.”

He’d put his arm around her shoulders then, pulling her closer to him as he murmured, “Yes, I know,” into her hair.

“We’ll have that road trip someday soon,” she’d promised.

She sighed now.

Someday just got a little further away.

CHAPTER 3

Laurel’s already overworked heart rose up to her throat as she pulled up before the two-story Colonial house that highlighted their steady rise in the world. It was their third house in twenty years. They’d lived here for a little over seven years now.

It felt like home. More so than the other two, smaller houses.

But it wasn’t sentiment that had her heart lodging itself in her windpipe. It was the sight of Jason’s navy-blue sedan. The sedan he’d been talking about trading in for a sportier two-seater. He’d been talking about doing this since Christopher had gone off to UCLA almost two years ago. She thought it was her husband’s way of coping with empty-nest syndrome. Hers was to look forward to the next visit from one or more of her sons.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. What was her husband doing home?

Damn.

That wasn’t the word that usually came to mind when she thought of her husband. But she’d counted on having more time to pull herself together, to figure out what words to use in order to break the news to Jason—that there would be a baby in their future and it wasn’t because one of their sons had accidentally dropped his guard and gotten a girl pregnant.

How could this be happening to her?

Laurel pulled up into the driveway and left the car parked next to his—she had no choice since he’d taken up every square inch of the garage with his train layout. After a deep, fortifying breath, she got out of the vehicle. She took her time locking the door and activating the antitheft alarm.

Of course, she was stalling. Eventually, she was going to have to go in and face the music.

For the time being, Laurel decided to table the “big revelation” in favor of finding out just what Jason was doing home in what amounted to the middle of the day. He rarely came home before six o’clock, usually closer to seven. It seemed to her that the higher up he went in the advertising agency where he worked, the less time he actually had for himself. For them.

Which was why he’d sounded so wistful lately when he talked about chucking everything and taking an early retirement.

Still moving in slow motion, Laurel unlocked the front door. Her hand on the doorknob, she paused to take another deep breath before turning it. She might have leaned on it a little too hard. The next thing she knew, she found herself pitching forward into the house, thrown off balance because the door was being opened from the inside.

“About time you got here,” Jason declared, catching her.

He was grinning the grin that transformed him from the forty-six-year-old ad executive to the young man she’d fallen so hard for the first time she laid eyes on him. He’d been grinning then, too. But at Bernadette O’Hara, who wore her sweaters so tight everyone in high school used to wonder how the five-foot-five dark-haired girl managed to keep her circulation from being literally cut off. At least, all the girls wondered. The boys were all too dazed to be able to put together more than three words into a semicoherent thought without drooling.

All except Jason, she’d discovered, much to her delight.

Jason was deeper than that, deep enough not to be taken in by such superficial things as overdeveloped mammary glands and the underdeveloped material that strained to cover them.

With his hair a deep chestnut-brown as yet unassaulted by any stray gray hairs, Jason was still as boyish looking as he’d been back then. Still as trim and muscular, too, even though a few more pounds had found their way onto his torso. They’d settled in across his chest and biceps, not his waist. She still bought all his pants from that same small section marked “size 30 waist.”

Won’t be able to say that about you pretty soon. You’re going to be size elephant.

“I didn’t realize you’d be here,” she told him now, slipping off her coat. She tucked it into the hall closet, leaving it on a hook. Right now she didn’t think she could handle something as complicated as a hanger. “What are you doing home?”

“Waiting for you.” Jason brushed his lips against hers. It was then that she realized he was holding a bottle of champagne in his hand. Backing up, he held it aloft like the first rider across the finish line at the Kentucky Derby. “I almost started celebrating without you.”

“Celebrating?” she echoed.

He knew?

Laurel tried not to sound as nervous, as unsettled, as she felt. It took effort to keep her voice calm. “What are you celebrating?”

There was a smattering of disappointment in his eyes, as if he was surprised she could have forgotten, what with all the hours he’d put in and all the Saturdays he’d spent in his office at home, trying to make things come together for him.

“The Aimes Baby account. It’s ours,” he declared, referring to the project for the agency he’d been working for these past fifteen years. Then he gleefully corrected, “Mine.” Jason let the words sink in before embellishing. “The baby food, the diapers, the toys, all mine.”

“We’ll have to add on to the house,” Laurel quipped, trying very hard to focus on his joy and not her own dread.

“Very funny. I’m talking about the account.” As if she didn’t know, he thought with affection. Laurel had always taken an active interest in his work. More than he did in hers, he was sorry to admit. But then, he was the one who needed bolstering at times. She had always been tireless, always confident. He didn’t know how she did it. “They loved my ad campaign,” he told her needlessly since he was the main one pitching to the company. His dark green eyes were shining as he went on. “This means a bonus, a raise and a lot of other perks. Jon Aimes approved the campaign personally. You know what this means, right?”

Her brain felt like Swiss cheese. She didn’t even know her own middle name right now.

“Tell me what it means,” she coaxed in a voice that wives had been using for centuries to humor husbands who were dying to disclose details.

“It means that we have an in with his other companies, as well. I have an in with his other companies as well,” he emphasized. “This makes me a very important asset to Chandler, Wallace and Mitchell.” His grin was so wide now, it threatened to split his face. “Sky’s the limit, Laurie,” he declared.

His enthusiasm about to overflow, Jason propped the bottle against his thigh and began working the cork loose. “I told them I needed some time off before I could throw myself headlong into the work. They were a little skeptical at first, but I convinced them. I told them I’d take a laptop with me and e-mail them anything I came up with.”

“Laptop?” Laurel repeated. Every second, her brain was shrinking, reducing in size to whatever might reside in a single-cell amoeba.

“Yeah. I figured we’d take it on our road trip. You didn’t think I’d forget about the road trip, did you? I know it’s not going to be for as long as we anticipated, and I will have to do some work, but it’ll be great, I promise, honey.” He saw the look on her face and put his own interpretation to her expression. “I know, I know, I was going to taper off, working toward an early retirement, but this just fell into my lap.” He conveniently forgot about the long hours he’d put in to get this to fall into his lap. “This was just too good to pass up, you know? And we’ll take that longer road trip once all this is squared away. Scout’s honor.”

The cork finally came loose and went shooting into the living room like a large, beige-colored bullet. Jason laughed as foam came pouring out.

“Wow. I had no idea those things could go that far. C’mon, honey, follow me,” he urged, hurrying into the living room, a trail of foam marking his path.

There were crystal glasses on the coffee table and he quickly filled first one, then the other. Once he put down the champagne bottle, he picked up both glasses and offered one to her.

“Here.”

But Laurel kept her hand at her sides and she shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

Jason was nothing if not tolerant. “I know, I know, it’s not five o’clock yet, but this is a special occasion, honey. I promise I won’t tell the alcohol police. They won’t bust you.” Picking up her hand, he tried to press the glass into it.

But she kept her hand clenched, refusing to take the glass even though there was nothing she would have rather done right now than down its contents—maybe even the whole bottle. But the reason she wanted the drink was the very reason she couldn’t have it.

“No, Jason, really, I can’t. I can’t have a drink of champagne. Or anything alcoholic.”

The perfectly shaped eyebrows she had always envied drew together in a concerned line as Jason looked at her. “Why? Aren’t you feeling well?”

She felt inches away from recycling her lunch. “So-so.”

And then he remembered. The excitement left his voice. “That’s right, you went to see Dr. Kilpatrick today. What did she say? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” he guessed, afraid to let his imagination go any further. “Can you take something for it? Can it be cured?”

Terminated, maybe, but not cured. And she wasn’t about to consider the former. So she shook her head. “Not really.”

Jason’s festive mood was gone. “Honey, is it something serious?”

She pressed her lips together. The moment of truth was here. “That all depends. Do you think a baby is serious?”

It was his turn to repeat words in confusion. “A baby?”

Laurel nodded. It was time to drop the bomb. She couldn’t stall any longer. “Jason, I’m pregnant.”

The glass he’d been holding slipped from his suddenly numbed fingers. Champagne pooled on the light gray carpet, then slowly sank in.

Like a drowning man going down for the fourth time.

CHAPTER 4

Laurel swallowed the few choice words that sprang to her lips regarding the pool of champagne swiftly vanishing into her recently steam cleaned rug. Hurrying into the kitchen, she made a beeline for the sink and opened the cabinet doors beneath it. Housed there were all the cleaning products she needed for any emergency.

She snatched up her ever-faithful can of extrastrength rug cleaner and a clean cloth. The red can and its brethren had served her in good stead, eradicating pizza, spilled cans of soda and beer and the very pungent evidence of not one but three very intense cases of stomach flu.

Stunned and overwhelmed, Jason came to and followed her into the kitchen. He moved like a lost traveler in a foreign land.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Turning on her heel, Laurel narrowly avoided colliding with him as she went back into the living room. Time was of the essence when it came to fighting any and all stains. The carpet was no longer new and not nearly as resilient as it’d once been.

Moving around Jason, she dropped to her knees by the coffee table and sprayed the stain. She knew he was waiting for an answer and wished she could give him the one he wanted. But that wasn’t possible.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Jason found himself addressing the top of her head. “You look frazzled,” he told her quite honestly. “But it’s not a look I haven’t seen before.”

Dabbing at the stain, she glanced up at him. “I’m frazzled because I’m pregnant.”

Jason seemed about to slip into shock. “Stop saying that.”

She began to rise to her feet again. He took her elbow and helped her up.

She didn’t feel pregnant, Jason thought, remembering how heavy Laurel had been during the last pregnancy. She’d gotten so large, he was afraid she’d never get her figure back. But she had. And he liked it. Liked having her as shapely as she’d been the day they got married. Ralph Peters, one of his associates, lamented that his wife looked twice as large as she had when they were first married. Ralph always spoke about Laurel wistfully, telling Jason what a lucky dog he was. He was lucky, no matter what her size.

Laurel drew her elbow away from him. As she’d left the doctor’s office, she’d been ambivalent. More in shock than anything else. She certainly hadn’t wanted to get pregnant again. Didn’t want to be pregnant. But listening to Jason, she suddenly felt very protective of this tiny seed within her. Protective and defensive. And suddenly, despite her condition, very alone. She and Jason had always been on the same page no matter what the issue. Sometimes he was at the top and she at the bottom, or vice versa, but always the same page. The look in his eyes told her they were volumes apart.

She didn’t like the feeling.

“The baby’s not going away if I stop saying I’m pregnant, Jason.” She went back to the kitchen to return the can and the cloth to their rightful place. Housework could be handled better if it was divided into a thousand small components rather than tackled on a grand scale.

“Pregnant,” Jason echoed again, shaking his head. “How could this have happened?”

“The usual way, Jason.” Laurel shut the cabinet again and returned to face him. “There’s a mama bee and a papa bee and the papa bee pollinated the mama bee.”

He still couldn’t believe it. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure you’re pregnant? There’s no mistake?”

There was no mistaking the hopeful note in his voice. She closed her eyes, feeling increasingly alone by the second. Maybe she should have told her best friend or her sister first. Or her mother. But Jason had given her no choice. He’d been here when she hadn’t expected him to be.

“The doctor’s sure.” She opened her eyes again. “The stick turned blue, the rabbit died, how many different ways do you want me to say it? I’m pregnant.”

He stared at her, confused. “The rabbit died? They still use rabbits?”

He would latch onto that, she thought. He did things like that when he didn’t like what he was hearing. Focus on a minute, extraneous tidbit and blow it out of proportion.

“It’s just a figure of speech, Jason. But I am pregnant.” She took a breath to try to calm down. Her stomach remained queasy. “Now that I think of it, this is just the way I felt with Luke.”

Jason tried to put the cork back into the bottle and failed. A perfect afternoon had suddenly fallen apart. He gave up with the cork, tossing it aside. “You had Luke over twenty-three years ago.”

She waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she pressed, “Your point being?”

Jason shrugged uncomfortably. He felt like a man walking through a minefield. But he had to make her understand. “My point is that women with twenty-three-year-old sons don’t get pregnant.”

And what the hell was that supposed to mean? she thought, struggling to keep from losing her temper. She began to pace back and forth around the sofa. She’d been through this often enough to know that it was the hormones talking. They were playing Ping-Pong with her emotions. Having her husband say asinine things didn’t help, of course.

“Is that some kind of a law?” she asked. “Because if it is, I was out of town the day Congress passed it.”

“Laurel, stop pacing.” Then, when she didn’t, he caught hold of her shoulders and held her in place. Or tried to.

She pushed away his hands. “Why? So you can get a clear shot at me?” Okay, that was over the top, she told herself. “Sorry, I can’t help it. I’m exhausted and yet, there’s all this pent-up energy inside of me. Just like with Luke,” she repeated, her tone daring him to deny her statement.

“Pregnant,” he repeated again. The word kept attacking him from all angles, seeking entrance into his brain. He just couldn’t handle it and he sank onto the sofa.

Because she had nowhere else to go, Laurel lowered herself down beside him. Deep within her soul, she wanted her husband, her partner, her best friend of so many years, to tell her everything was going to be all right. That he wasn’t upset or angry about this bizarre twist their lives had taken. And that he was going to stand by her, no matter what. Stand by her and rub cocoa butter onto her swiftly expanding abdomen to prevent stretch marks, the way he had all the other times.

All the other times, she reminded herself silently, they had been much younger. Jason had been much younger.

Oh God, this was going to be a nightmare. And when she woke up, she was going to be alone. In her mind’s eye, she could see Jason running for the hills. Who wants to be married to a forty-five-year-old pregnant woman?

She blew out a breath. “So.”

The word hung in the air between them, waiting for more. Begging for more.

“So,” he finally echoed, then turned to look at her. As she watched, his expression changed from that of a man who had just dived into a foxhole, shell-shocked, to that of a man who had suddenly seen the course of action opening up before him. “You can’t have it,” he told her, his voice firm.

She blinked, stunned.

Jason was the type who refused to kill crickets in the house. He captured them and set them free on the patio. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t have it,” he repeated, his voice carrying just a shade less conviction than it had a moment ago.

“What do you mean, I ‘can’t have it’?” she demanded. “This isn’t some rich piece of cake that’s going to send my diet into a tailspin—this is a baby. I already have it. I’m pregnant. With child,” she added, using the terminology Dr. Kilpatrick had used when breaking the news to her. She fought back the wave of horror that was mounting within her. “Jason, you’re talking about a human being here.”

There were a score of theories as to when a fetus became a living being. He couldn’t summon one to back him up. “There’s a debate over that at this stage.”

She stood up indignantly. “Not to me. You can’t just sweep it away like that.”

Didn’t she understand what was at stake? He rose, trying to put his hands on her shoulders. Trying to form a unit. “Yes, I can.”

There was anger in her eyes, anger mixed with disappointment and deep, deep hurt. “Look, I’m sorry this messes up the plans you’ve been dreaming about these last few years. They were my plans, too, but—”

“Is that what you think? That I’m upset because we can’t take a—a stupid road trip?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“Hell, no.” And then because his denial wasn’t strictly true, Jason backtracked a little, correcting himself. “I’m disappointed, sure, but the whole road trip idea is becoming sort of an unattainable goal, like Shangri-la.”

“Is it the summer home?” she asked. “Because we could still build one, just not as big and maybe not quite in the location you wanted—”

He cut her short. “It’s not the summer home.”

She’d run out of things to guess. “All right then, what are you upset about?”

“You.”

“Me?” He had completely lost her. “What about me?”

His gift of gab, the very thing that helped him pitch the ads he so cleverly constructed, left him when it came to speaking from his heart. He wasn’t a man who bared his emotions. He turned away for a moment, shoving his hands deep into his pocket, searching for a way to anchor himself. Searching for words.

When he spoke, he addressed the words to the wall. “Look, I don’t want to have to do without you.”

Was that it? He was afraid of losing his maid? Over the years, she’d spoiled him and she knew it. She’d taken a relatively self-sufficient man and gotten him used to having everything done for him.

Her own fault, she thought.

“I’ll still do everything I’ve always done,” she assured him, trying hard not to let her annoyance show. “Your shirts will still be ironed, your meals will still be made, most likely on time, your—”

“The hell with my shirts. The hell with the meals,” he retorted.

For a second, because he had her really confused, Laurel stopped talking. Confusion had her resorting to quips.

“Okay, you’ll be wrinkled and hungry. I wish you’d told me that years ago. You would have saved me so much time every week—”

“I don’t want to have to do without you,” Jason repeated, saying the words with more feeling. And then, because his wife eyed him as if he had suddenly started speaking in several foreign languages, all at once, he was forced to elaborate. He hated being made to say every word. She was supposed to be able to read between the lines. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to go on.”

For one of the very few times in her life, Laurel found herself truly speechless.

CHAPTER 5

The silence in the living room continued, stretching out like a long, silken thread until Jason couldn’t take it anymore.

“Say something,” he urged.

Laurel felt tears stinging her eyes, threatening to spill out. She knew they were there partially because of the king-size hormonal blender into which her emotions had been tossed. But the tears had also sprung up because words of affection from Jason, any sort of affection, were as rare as a blizzard in July in Southern California. It had been years since he’d said anything romantic. He rarely expressed his feelings for her, he just expected her to know.

The breath she let out was ragged. “I think that’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”

Jason looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I’m talking about you dying.”

“No,” she contradicted, “you’re talking about love.” She wasn’t going to let him bluster his way out of this. He’d said something nice and she was holding him to it. Laurel touched his face, every single available space within her welling up with affection. “I’m not going to die in childbirth, Jase.”

He took her hand, but rather than pushing it aside, he pressed it to his cheek. Just for a moment. And then he moved it aside. “How do you know?”

“All right.” She inclined her head as if to give him his due. “I can’t give you a written guarantee. But I also can’t give you one that says I won’t die in a traffic accident because I got hit by a car while driving down to Newport Beach. Or that I won’t die choking on your mother’s extra dry turkey next Thanksgiving. But,” she went on, a smile curving her mouth, “I’m reasonably sure I won’t die in childbirth. More sure of that than I am about not getting hit by a car or choking on your mother’s turkey,” she added for good measure.

Jason sighed, taking her hands in his. He forced himself to look her straight in the eye as he tried to make her understand the full extent of his concern. “Laurel, don’t take this the wrong way.” She looked at him warily, waiting. “But you’re old.”

She pulled her hands away and turned from him all in one motion. It turned out to be a little too fast, because the sudden movement made her feel dizzy. Shutting her eyes made it worse, and she swayed. The next thing she knew, Jason had his arms around her, holding her steady. Getting her bearing, she pushed him away from her.

“I’m all right,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “And I am not old.”

Jason held his hands up before him, as if to push away what he’d said, or at least the way he’d said it. “Okay, bad choice of words.”

“Horrific choice of words,” Laurel corrected vehemently. “Forty-five is the new thirty-five,” she told him, echoing Dr. Kilpatrick again. “And thirty-five is not old.”

“What I’m trying to say is that you’re too old to have a baby.”

Even though she’d said the same thing to her doctor not more than an hour ago, hearing her husband say it to her had Laurel up in arms. Suddenly, she didn’t feel too old to be a mother. She didn’t feel any older than she had when she’d had Luke, Morgan or Christopher. Why was he behaving this way now of all times, when she needed him to be supportive?

News stories she’d read came to her out of nowhere, backup statistics she now lobbed at Jason. “There was a Russian woman who gave birth to a baby at sixty-seven last year. Five years ago, there was an actress in Hollywood who used to be on a sitcom in the seventies. She gave birth to twins. Guess how old she was?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

No, she thought, he didn’t. In so many ways.

“She was fifty-one years old. And the babies are fine,” she told him triumphantly, as if their condition was her own personal victory. “Women are giving birth to their first babies later these days. And that’s where the real risk lies, with first-time births. I’ve already had three babies. My body’s broken in.” She saw the look in his eyes. “Not broken down,” she informed him tersely, second-guessing what he was thinking. “Broken in. This’ll be a piece of cake for me.”

He wasn’t convinced. She could see that by the way he set his jaw. She loved the man dearly, but when Jason came to a conclusion, he stuck by it as if he’d been put there with crazy glue. “Would you like to talk to Dr. Kilpatrick?”

This was a losing battle. He’d been with her long enough to know that. It wasn’t that he relished the idea of what he was proposing; it was just that if he had to make a choice between Laurel and a baby, it would be Laurel each time. He didn’t want to look back and find himself wishing that he had made a choice when he had the power.

“What I’d like to do,” he told her, “is talk some sense into you.”

He made it sound as if this was all on her. As if she’d somehow done this all by herself. Maybe he needed to be reminded of how this kind of thing worked. “Hey, this isn’t my doing alone, buster. As I remember, I had help.”

These days, by the time he got home from work, he was far too tired to think of making love with his wife. The job drained him. And when he did have spare time, he wanted to use it putting together the train layouts that had been sitting in boxes for, what was it, almost two decades now?

But every so often, Laurel would come to him with that look on her face, wearing something sexy and sheer. And there was this particular perfume she wore on those occasions. A man couldn’t think when the space in his head was all taken up with that scent.

“You seduced me,” he accused.

She threw her hands up. “You found me out. I put engine oil behind my ears and made noise like an AmTrak passenger train leaving the station.”

The deadpanned statement brought a laugh out of him.

Laurel breathed a sigh of relief. At least he was laughing again. The sound instantly made her feel more mellow.

“It’s going to be all right, Jason,” she promised, putting her arms around him and leaning her head against his chest. “Really.”

Funny how things turned out, she thought. She’d been hoping Jason would comfort her about what was ahead and here she was, reassuring him instead.

Jason kissed her forehead. His breath lightly fluttered against her skin as he asked, “So, how far along are you?”

She did a quick mental calculation, remembering the last time they’d made love. The time before that was too far in the past to count. “Three weeks.”

He glanced at her, surprised at her precision. “There’s room for error.”

She moved her head slowly from side to side. When it came to their life together, the man remembered nothing. While she, on the other hand, remembered everything. “There’s no error.”

Jason pressed his lips together in a reproving frown. “I want you to get a complete checkup.”

“That was what today was supposed to be about,” she reminded him, not that she expected him to remember that, either. Jason had a habit of not retaining information unless it had to do with either his work or his hobbies. She counted herself lucky that he remembered the boys’ birthdays, although he tended to forget the years. As far as listening went, her husband had gotten “uh-huh” down to an art form. “Dr. Kilpatrick gave me a complete physical.”

“More complete,” he insisted. “Blood work, an amniocentesis.” He saw her frowning. “You know, like you did with Christopher.”

With Christopher, there had been some complications at the outset and she’d wanted to make sure the baby she was carrying was all right. Personally, she’d thought it was like being harpooned. She didn’t see a need to go through the ordeal the test represented this time around, since all she felt was queasy.

But she kept that to herself because she didn’t want to create too many waves right now. Now that she’d calmed down, she could see that Jason was obviously trying to come to terms with the bombshell she’d just dropped on him.

That made two of them, she thought. “Yes, sir, Dr. Mitchell, sir.” She saluted.

His eyes narrowed even further. “I’m serious, Laurel.”

“I never thought you weren’t.”

He couldn’t tell if she was deadpanning again, being sarcastic or for once, being serious. He changed the subject. To a degree. “Did you tell your mother?”

“Not yet.” She’d been too dazed to call anyone. And then she smiled as she thought of her mother. “This is going to knock her for a loop. She thought we were going overboard when we had Christopher.” Her mother’s philosophy had always been simple: two hands, two kids. According to her, there was a divine message there.

He looked down at her flat stomach. “This time, she’s right.” When he raised his eyes again, the sad expression on Laurel’s face tugged at his heart.

“Aren’t you the least little bit happy about this?” she asked.

“So little I might be overlooking it.” And then, because he could see that his flippant answer really bothered her, he made an effort for Laurel’s sake. “I love kids, Laurie, I always have. You know that. It’s just that I thought, at this stage of our lives, we were done with diapers, baby food and toys all over the living room, and were moving on to the next chapter of our lives.”

“Just think of this as a slight detour. A chance to relive a piece of our lives.”

“Why? We did it right the first three times,” he told her.

“We’ll do it right again,” she said with more conviction than she actually felt. “Besides, now that you’ve landed the Aimes Baby account, we can get a few free toys and perks,” she teased. Forcing a smile to her lips, she threaded her arms around his neck. “It’s going to be all right, Jason,” she assured him again. “It really is.”

“Right,” he echoed.

Jason did his best to infuse his voice with feeling, but he just couldn’t seem to manage it. The word came out so flat that had it been a reading on a hospital monitor, the patient attached to it would have been pronounced dead.

But that, he supposed, was to be expected. Men who were in shock often registered no emotions.

CHAPTER 6

The office of Bedford Realty Company looked like a miniaturized Swiss chalet, inside and out. The scent of wood, finely crafted and highly polished, greeted the client the moment he or she entered the small, two-story building. Those who worked there were completely oblivious to the scent, having long since lost the ability to detect either the wood or the lemon polish applied nightly.

When Laurel walked in that morning, only Jeannie Wallace, her best friend of ten years, was in the office, seated at her desk. Because of the Mercedes parked in the reserved spot, she knew that the manager, Ed Callaghan, was in the back, most likely looking over the number of sales that had been brought in this month. Beyond that, the office was empty.

She’d debated keeping her news to herself for a while, thinking it might be better that way. But Jeannie only needed to take one look at her face to know something was up.

“C’mon,” she urged in her no-nonsense voice, “spill it.”

So she did.

For a total of ten seconds, Jeannie said nothing. And then she found her voice. “You’re kidding.”

Laurel laughed softly to herself. “Funny, that’s the same thing Jason said when I told him.”

Jeannie’s wide mouth curved ever so slightly. She and her husband, Jonas, socialized with Laurel and Jason on a fairly regular basis. She knew all about Jason’s plans for the future. “Before or after he got up off the floor?”

Laurel turned on her computer out of habit rather than any specific need to view anything. She kept her schedule in her head as well as on the hard drive. Other than putting in a call to the First Escrow Company of Bedford to find out what was holding up the process for the Newtons, one of her recent sales, she didn’t have anything on her agenda.

“After.”

Jeannie pursed her lips and shook her head. There was humor in her eyes. “Pregnant, huh?”

Laurel was really having a hard time getting accustomed to the idea. She’d had the same problem the first time around, but then it had been because she was walking on air. That wasn’t exactly the case this time. “You don’t have to grin like that.”

Jeannie leaned back in her chair, which creaked its protest. “I’m just thinking better you than me.” Her eyes swept over her friend’s petite frame. “I always thought you could stand to gain a few pounds. If I was the pregnant one, they’d have to start reinforcing the chairs around here.” The idea made her laugh. At close to six feet, Jeannie was what was politely referred to as heavyset. It never seemed to bother her. Jeannie had always seemed comfortable in her own skin. “I’m lucky Jonas likes his women big.” And then her grin widened. “Or maybe he’s the lucky one.” Pushing away from her own desk, Jeannie, still seated, brought her chair around closer to Laurel. Her eyes were a tad more serious as she asked, “So, how do you feel about it?”

She kept asking herself that same question, Laurel thought. She shrugged in response. “Numb. Nauseated.”

Jeannie waved her hand at the words. “Besides that. Those are givens.”

Laurel paused for a moment, thinking. Examining. She raised her eyes to Jeannie’s. “Happy, I guess. Scared.” Despite the fact that they were alone in the front office, she lowered her voice in case Callaghan entered in. “I mean, when I had the others, my body was pretty resilient. Back then, my skin bounced back.” She looked down sadly at her flat stomach, knowing that was just a temporary state. “This time around I might end up looking like a stretched-out alligator bag by the time all this is over.”

“Not you, Laurel. If I know you, you’ll be exercising right through the whole ordeal.” Realizing that the word had the wrong connotation, she corrected herself. “I mean, experience.”

They’d been friends too long to start pretending now. “No, you got it right the first time. Ordeal’s the right word for all this.” Laurel sighed, shaking her head. Thinking of the months ahead. The distended stomach, the swelling of every part of her that made rings and shoes too tight. As for the clothes…“I’m going to have to get all new clothes,” she realized suddenly. “I gave away the last of my maternity clothes after Christopher was born and we decided that three kids were just about as far as we wanted to go.”

Jeannie chuckled. She reached over and patted Laurel’s hand. “Well, looks like you’re going to have to go shopping, girl.” As always, she focused on the bright side. “Shopping’s fun. They’ve got a lot cuter clothes now for pregnant women than when we were at that stage. Originally,” she tactfully added. “Wendy and I went shopping just the other Saturday,” she went on, mentioning her five-months-pregnant daughter. “I can take you to this new boutique—”

Laurel held up a hand. She wasn’t ready to start thinking about buying maternity clothes yet. According to the doctor’s scale, she was three pounds lighter than she was when she’d come in for her last checkup. “This isn’t another excuse for shopping.”

“Sure it is. Everything’s an excuse for shopping.” Jeannie adored shopping. It had long since been decided that Jonas, an actuary with a major insurance company, was the breadwinner of the family. Her salary went for the frivolous, non-essentials. Once in a while, there was something in it for Jonas. “Shopping is therapeutic, and it helps the economy.” She drew herself up as if delivering a proclamation. “Shopping is almost a patriotic duty.”

Laurel grinned as she shook her head. “You should have been a lawyer.”

Jeannie tossed her head. Newly colored strawberry-blond tresses bounced over her ample shoulders. “I thought about it, but there was too much studying involved. Selling houses is a lot more fun.” She leaned in, her voice lowering. “Have you told anyone else yet?”

Laurel shook her head again. She’d thought about it, several times. Had even reached for the phone more than once last night. But ultimately, her courage had flagged. “Not yet.”

Jeannie looked at her, puzzled. “Mother, sister, sons?”

The answer didn’t change. “No.”

“Why?” Confusion gave way to suspicion. “Are you thinking of—?”

“No,” Laurel cut her off, not wanting to even hear the option mentioned. By the end of yesterday afternoon, she’d firmly made up her mind to have this baby. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. “I’m not. I just don’t have the oomph to go through this five separate times and face those surprised, skeptical and maybe disapproving looks five times over.”

Jeannie’s solution was simple. “So, don’t.”

That didn’t solve anything. “Right. And what, just tell them I’m gaining all this weight around my middle because my metabolism suddenly decided to die?”

“No, tell them all at once. The whole family. Five with one blow. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. It’ll be quick. Just call a family meeting, or whatever it is those gatherings are called. That way, if someone in the group starts asking you what the hell you were thinking, hopefully someone else will jump in to your defense and tell them where to put their opinions.”

The thought made Laurel laugh. Jeannie always had that effect on her. Nothing every fazed her. “Safety in numbers, huh?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

Laurel thought about it for a moment. She knew that Christopher had classes, but he was free in the evening, as were her other two sons. Her mother was busy with her clubs, but she could set aside a few minutes for her oldest born. And as for Lynda, well, she didn’t do much of anything except go to work and come home these days. She was still reeling from her divorce, something that had come upon her totally out of left field.

All five at once. She liked the idea, Laurel thought. It would be a lot easier this way. “Maybe you have something there.”

“Of course I do,” Jeannie answered cheerfully. “Haven’t you noticed? I’m brilliant.” The sound of a small bell was heard ringing. They both looked over toward the front door. A lone man entered. “Speaking of being brilliant, looks like we’ve got ourselves a live one. Why don’t you take him?”

They each took turns with clients. She’d been up yesterday afternoon before she’d gone in for the exam that changed everything. “Isn’t it your turn for the walk-in?”

“Yeah, but I’m feeling generous. Consider it your first baby present.” She looked back at the handsome stranger. He was standing near the door, his hands clasped behind his back as he glanced from photograph to photograph. “Besides, I’ve got a feeling he’s just interested in getting the lay of the land, so to speak.” Her lips twitched. “If he were serious, he would have sent his wife ahead first.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have a wife.”

Jeannie pretended to reconsider. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given him away so fast.”

“Too late,” Laurel said, rising to her feet. Sparing her friend one last grin, Laurel walked toward the potential client.

Tall, tanned, with a beautiful thick head of almost black hair with a few distinguished strands of gray, the man was wearing a pair of crisply ironed navy slacks and a striking blue shirt beneath his sports jacket. The shirt was just vivid enough to bring out his eyes. He was examining the array of properties currently up for sale as displayed on the long bulletin board.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Laurel asked as she approached him.

He turned toward her after a beat, pausing just long enough to finish reading the description beneath one of the houses. The smile that came to his lips as he saw her spoke of many things. Houses was not among them.

Laurel felt something electric shoot through her.

“I can think of a few.”

His voice, low and rhythmic, was vaguely familiar. But it was like a fleeting thought that wouldn’t allow itself to be pinned down. The man’s voice probably reminded her of someone else, she decided.

She put on her most cheerful customer-friendly face. “Are you looking for a house?”

“That would be why I’m here,” he replied, amusement highlighting his features.

“To buy or rent?”

“To buy. I always buy.”

It was probably her imagination, but she could have sworn he was looking at her as if she were a property he was considering owning.

CHAPTER 7

There was nothing going on, Laurel silently insisted the next moment. Just more of her hormones going berserk. The man was merely looking at her, nothing more.

“Sounds promising,” she heard herself saying. “Just what did you have in mind?”

The prospective buyer’s eyes swept over her, seemingly taking measure of her from head to foot. “Something nice.”

Okay, maybe she wasn’t imagining it. The man was obviously kibitzing. Out to kill a few hours for whatever reason. And she wasn’t all that sure she liked what he was thinking—even though a small part of her was flattered and the truth of it was, she was desperate for a compliment.

Just a sign of things to come, the little voice in her head taunted.

Laurel could remember the tail end of each of her three pregnancies, when she felt as if she was doomed to be eternally round and distended. Eternally fat. She could remember being desperate for someone to look at her eyes when they spoke to her instead of her stomach. Even more desperate for a kind word about her appearance that didn’t include the phrase “You’re positively glowing” in it. Every pregnant woman knew that wasn’t glow—that was sweat from being forced to carry around so much extra weight.

“I’m afraid that you’re going to have to be a little more specific, Mr.—” Laurel stopped abruptly, realizing she’d neglected something. Three weeks pregnant and she was getting forgetful already. “I’m sorry, you never told me your name.”

“Manning,” he told her. “Robert Manning.” He said it using the same cadence that James Bond employed whenever he introduced himself to someone.

Her eyes narrowed as the name nudged something in the back of her brain. Just as his voice had. What was it she was trying to remember?

Rather than drive herself crazy, she tucked the thought away and put her hand out. “I’m Laurel Mitchell.”

Strong tanned fingers enveloped hers. And held her hand a beat longer than was comfortable. He was staring into her eyes as if he was searching for something. Or someone.

Laurel felt her breath shortening even as it lodged itself in her throat.

“Laurel,” he repeated slowly. There was warmth in his voice. Warmth that seemed to be spreading out all around her. “I used to know a Laurel. Laurel Taylor.”

Who was he? “I used to be Laurel Taylor,” she heard herself saying, the words dripping from her lips in slow motion as she frantically searched through her sluggish memory banks.

He nodded, pleased. “I thought so.” And then his smile grew as if he’d just told himself an amusing private joke. “You don’t remember me.” It wasn’t a question.

She should have. God knows, she should have, since there was no earthly way she could have possibly forgotten someone who looked like this man. But there was no clear recollection of him in her memory.

Someone else in her position might have attempted to bluff her way through this, but that would only be buying embarrassment further down the line.

Laurel shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t.”

He looked pleased that she hadn’t pretended otherwise. “I was Bobby back then. Bobby Manning,” he said in case she’d forgotten his last name. “And about a foot shorter than I am now.” He laughed, recalling. “With the body of a beanpole. Glasses, a haircut that would have made Prince Valiant proud, courtesy of my mother. I was the class geek,” he added, making it sound like an afterthought rather than the painful experience it had once been.

It came back to her.

Laurel’s mouth dropped open. The man before her was much too good-looking to have ever been Bobby-not-the-man Manning as the boys in her high school class had always taunted whenever he was around.

Robert laughed then, the sound of which brought to mind a cup of rich, dark hot coffee on a cold winter morning. “I see you remember.”

She felt a slight blush creeping up her neck and cheeks, although for the life of her, she couldn’t have said why. She’d never been among the ones who’d taunted him. She’d even taken a few to task for being cruel, not that it had gotten her anywhere or made them stop. There was no reason for her to be embarrassed. And yet, the feeling that she was a glowing shade of bright pink wouldn’t abate.

Laurel forced a smile to her lips. “I would have never recognized you.”

“That was the whole idea.” He looked like a picture of confidence. What an incredible difference, she thought. “Money lets you do those kinds of things.”

Was he talking about plastic surgery? Not that she’d ever thought there was anything wrong with that. If you could fix something, fix it. Now that she thought about it, his nose seemed smaller than she remembered. But the rest of him looked to have benefited from nature and hard work.

She replayed his words in her head and realized she’d glossed right over the most startling part. “Money?” The Bobby Manning she’d known had worn hand-me-downs. That was part of the reason he’d been the butt of so many cruel jokes.

He nodded. When he spoke, it was matter-of-factly rather than bragging. It reminded her that he’d always been modest. Brilliant, but modest. She was glad he’d done well for himself, especially after what he’d gone through as a kid.

“I created a few dot-com companies that didn’t go under once the craze was over. I sold a couple, kept one. Things have been good for me.” Crossing his arms before him, he leaned a hip against the counter. His focus was completely on her. “And for you, too, I see. You’re just as beautiful now as you were in high school.”

She could feel the pink hue getting darker. With effort, she shrugged off his compliment, wishing with all her heart Jason could say something like that to her.

“I have a few miles under the hood.”

He laughed softly, shaking his head as if to deny what she’d just said. “Must be way under the hood, because it doesn’t show.”

Laurel continued to feel warmer, so much so that she was surprised she wasn’t perspiring. Was she feeling like this because of her new condition, or because the faulty thermostat Callaghan kept promising to have fixed “any day now” was still acting up?

She refused to believe it was because the frog-turned-prince was gazing at her with bedroom eyes.

Laurel cleared her throat and took a step back, creating a little more space between them.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jeannie watching her, watching them, as intently as she watched her bevy of soap operas on her days off.

Business, Laurel thought. She needed to get back to business.

She turned her back on Robert and referred to the wide bulletin board. It represented their best listings, but it was only a fraction of what they had to offer. “You said something about wanting to buy a house. How many bedrooms were you thinking of?”

When he didn’t answer immediately, she turned back to him. The smile on his lips seemed to say that he was only thinking of one bedroom. The master bedroom.

What’s the matter with you? Are you pregnant with a demon child? You never used to think like this.

Maybe she was having her own midlife crisis, she thought. God, what a time to have one, while she was pregnant.

“There’s just me now,” Robert finally replied. “So two, three. Nothing very overwhelming.”

He’d said “now,” which meant the condition had been different before. He’d been married. Recently? “Divorced?” she guessed.

Robert pressed his lips together just for a moment before answering, as if the word was still difficult for him to say. “Widowed.”

She felt terrible about stirring up the pain she saw in his eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

Robert nodded, accepting her condolences. He took in a breath, using it as a buffer between himself and the past. “It’s been a little over a year now. I’m trying to move on.”

She nodded, thinking she must seem like a dummy to him. “Best thing to do.” It was a lame thing to say, but nothing else came to mind.

“New house, new location.” He looked at her for a moment before adding, “New challenges.”

She was imagining that, right? That bit of eye contact, the zip that shot through her? The man was a grieving widower. He wasn’t hitting on her. “Starting up a new dot-com company?”

“It’s on the books,” he admitted. “Something I’ve been noodling around with. In the meantime, like I said, I still have one left and it has been giving me and mine—my parents—” he clarified, “a good yield.”

He mentioned his parents, but no one else. “No children?”

“No, why?”

She moved toward the nearest computer and pulled up a file that had a number of nearby listings. “Well, if there were children, I’d show you some good locations near the schools. But if that’s not a factor, I can show you properties that are situated away from the schools. It would be quieter for you.”

“I like quiet,” he told her. “Although not too much quiet,” he qualified. “Too much usually lulls me to sleep.”

Laurel crossed to her desk and picked up the leather-bound notebook Jason had given her when she’d sold her first house. She tried not to notice the smirk on Jeannie’s face.

Opening the notebook, she began to make notes as she crossed back to Robert. “Price range?”

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

Well, that was certainly cavalier, she thought. “Excuse me?”

“Money is not a consideration here,” he told her. “Like I said, I’ve been very lucky. I can afford to buy whatever pleases me.”

It sounded like a proposition.

Or maybe she just wanted it to. Laurel banked down her runaway thoughts and told herself to act like a Realtor.

“We have houses that start anywhere from six-hundred thousand dollars to ten times that,” she informed him. “Care to narrow down the neighborhood just a little?”

“Why don’t we start somewhere in the middle and work our way up?” he suggested.

“Sounds like a plan,” she answered glibly, wishing her imagination would stop getting carried away with every word Robert Manning uttered. He was looking for a house and she, apparently, was looking for affirmation. Affirmation that should be coming from Jason, Laurel reminded herself, not from a man who had triumphed over his shortcomings and made good.

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