The Marriage Solution

“I didn’t know it at the time,” she said quickly. “I didn’t know until I checked the box when I got home.”

“Why didn’t you check the box before you bought them?”

Her cheeks colored. “I did. But I bought them a couple of years ago—when Roger and I first started dating. But he always took care of protection and I never really thought about it afterward.”

“You’ve been carrying those condoms in your purse for two years?” he asked incredulously.

She shook her head. “I only opened the box a couple of months ago when I decided that I was going to prove to myself that I was over Roger. But I didn’t have any need for them…until that night.”

“Not until that night, huh?” He couldn’t fight the smile that tugged at his lips.

Tess eyed him warily. “You’re not mad?”

Maybe he should be angry, at least annoyed. But he knew Tess, and he knew, despite her own concerns to the contrary, that she would never have gotten pregnant on purpose.

“Do you believe in fate?” he asked.

Her expression grew more wary. “I’m not sure.”

“I’m not sure, either,” he admitted. “But I can’t help thinking that fate has been sticking her nose into things since you broke mine.”

“That wasn’t fate,” she scoffed. “That was you staring at Barb MacIntyre instead of paying attention to the baseball game.”

His smile widened. “I was fifteen and Barb MacIntyre had breasts.”

Tess shook her head, but she was smiling now, too. “You should have been paying attention to the skinny kid with the bat.”

“I’d never known a girl who could smack a line drive like that,” he told her, wincing a little at the memory. But he’d sure as hell paid attention after that. Not just because he’d been impressed by Tess’s athletic abilities, but because something in her wide blue eyes had tugged at him when she stood over him—as he’d lain bleeding all over the dirt at third base—and asked if he was going to die, too.

Several weeks later, he’d learned that was the same day she’d buried her mother—and been taken directly from the funeral to her new foster home. She was a fourteen-year-old orphan with more guts and attitude than he’d ever seen, but he recognized that the stubborn tilt of her chin and the angry glint in her eyes only masked the pain she carried inside. And he knew— even then—that she would wreak havoc on his life. What he didn’t know and couldn’t have guessed, was that she’d also become the best friend he’d ever had.

He rubbed a finger over the bump on the bridge of his nose.

Tess’s eyes followed the motion and the corners of her mouth twitched as she tried, not entirely successfully, to hold back a smile.

“You’re not still mad about that, are you?” she teased.

He shook his head. “That broken nose was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I didn’t think so at the time, of course,” he confessed. “But in retrospect, I can appreciate that it’s the reason we became friends.”

“What does any of that have to do with now?”

“I think in another fifteen years we’ll look back on this and realize your pregnancy was the best thing that could have happened.”

“I already know it is,” she confessed softly.

“Then why is it so hard for you to imagine that us getting married could be another one of those things?”

He didn’t quite manage to disguise the impatience in his voice, and Tess sighed.

“It’s not that I can’t imagine it,” she admitted.

In fact, it was almost too easy to picture herself married to Craig, sharing the joys and responsibilities of parenthood with him, building the family she’d always wanted with him.

But although her heart yearned for the whole fairy¬ tale package, she knew it could never exist outside of her dreams. Because he wasn’t her Prince Charming and her pregnancy wasn’t something they’d planned for or dreamed about together. As far as she knew, Craig didn’t even want kids—it was just his deeply-ingrained sense of responsibility that refused to let him walk away from their baby.

“Then what is it?” he demanded.

She didn’t know what to say, how to explain the battle that had been waging inside her since she’d seen those two lines on the stick. She could do what was easy—or she could do what was right. And she really wanted to do what was right.

The buzz of the intercom saved her from answering, at least for now.

“Carl’s on line three,” Elaine, the receptionist, announced.

Carl Bloom was one of the owners of SB Graphics and, therefore, one of Tess’s bosses. Which meant she needed to get Craig out of her office and her mind back on the job.

“Thanks,” Tess replied. Then to Craig, she said, “I have to take this call.”

“I can wait,” he said.

“I’d rather you didn’t. This is probably going to take a while and I have a meeting with Owen Sanderson—” Carl’s business partner and her other boss “—later this afternoon that I still need to prepare for.”

“We need to finish this conversation,” he said.

“I know,” she agreed. “But not now.”

“Then come to my place tonight for dinner.”

She stared at the blinking light on her phone as she considered his invitation, the light flashing like a neon “danger” sign inside her head. But what was the danger in sharing a meal with a friend?

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll see you later for dinner.”

“Seven o’clock,” Craig said as he rose from his chair. “I’ve got steaks we can barbecue—red meat has lots of iron, it’ll be good for both you and the baby.”

She shook her head as he walked out the door.

When she’d first suspected she might be pregnant, she’d worried about telling Craig. She’d tried to anticipate his reaction and had guessed that he would either balk at the idea of being a father and slowly but inexorably distance himself from her and the child she carried, or he would resign himself to the consequences of their actions and fulfill his responsibilities with respect to child support and weekly visitation. She hadn’t expected him to embrace the idea of parenthood.

Then again, the idea might be easier for him to embrace than the reality. Once their child was born, he might change his mind about what he wanted.

Or he might not, she admitted on a sigh. And that was an even greater concern for Tess, because she’d never known Craig to give up on something he really wanted.

She pushed these disquieting thoughts aside and reached for the phone to talk to her boss.

The software program Tess was revising was being especially stubborn, and the last couple hours of fighting with it had caused her hands to cramp from too much keyboarding. She raised her arms over her head to stretch out the tight muscles and glanced at the clock above her desk, surprised to note that it was already quarter to seven. She was supposed to be at Craig’s for dinner in fifteen minutes.

She saved the program, then shut down her computer and called to let him know she’d be there soon.

Making a quick trip to the ladies room, she wasn’t surprised to find that all her coworkers had gone and the outer office was empty and dark. When she’d first graduated from DeVry University, she’d accepted a position at a huge software company in Arizona. She’d enjoyed her work there, but the hours had been long, her bosses demanding. She’d come back to Pinehurst even knowing that her chances of landing a job as a programmer were less than slim because she’d wanted to have a life outside of her work and because she’d wanted to be closer to her stepsister’s family and Craig. She’d been thrilled—and very lucky—to find SB Graphics.