Her Secret, His Baby

Did Garrett hear the ache in her voice, the echo of solitude that had plagued her for so many months? What he’d said down in the emergency room was true. She did owe him answers. Starting with the night they’d met.

“My brother Colin married my best friend several years ago,” she said haltingly. “Natalie and I had been best friends since kindergarten, the year my mom died. Colin’s a great guy, but he’s always had too much responsibility. He rarely laughed. Natalie changed that. She changed him. He doted on her and their baby boy. But then Nat and Danny were killed in a car accident.”

Garrett watched her silently, obviously unsure what to do with this information but not interrupting.

“It destroyed Colin and devastated me. The day your friend Hugh got married? That was Natalie’s birthday, the first one I didn’t get to spend with her as far back as I could remember. I was in a lot of pain that day. Meeting you was about the best thing that could happen to me. You were...” She broke off, assailed by memories that seemed excruciatingly intimate with him sitting only inches from her side. He’d been by turns tender and passionate, driving her need to such a sharp peak that there’d been no room in her for any other emotion.

On sheer impulse, she reached over and squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”

He looked taken aback. “Uh, my pleasure.”

“Having a baby was the furthest thing from my mind,” she added. “At first I was too shocked to be scared or happy. But I’ve been around death, too much of it, and the idea of bringing a new life into the world... This may sound insane to you, but it almost felt like a goodbye present from Natalie. Some sort of cosmic full circle.”

“And there wasn’t room in that circle for anyone else?” He abandoned his chair in favor of resumed pacing.

Six months ago, he’d helped heal her hurting. The last thing in the world she wanted was to wound him. Another apology hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she recalled his hostile reaction to her previous attempt.

“I hardly knew anything about you,” she reminded him. “I tried to imagine how my brother Justin would react if he discovered, completely out of the blue, that a near stranger was carrying his child. It was daunting. By the time the nausea and confusion subsided, months had passed. You could have had a serious girlfriend, plans for the future I would be ruining! Telling you seemed like too big a risk. After a lot of sleepless nights, I decided it would be best for my child to have no father than one who might resent it.”

He stopped his pacing and stared her down. “So you were protecting both me and the baby by keeping the news to yourself?” His chuckle was like broken glass. “I wonder if all mothers have this gift for rationalizing dishonesty.”

All mothers?

The slight knock at the door made them both jump, and a nurse entered with a pitcher of ice water and some plastic-wrapped cups. She drew up short, her smile fading as she registered the tension in the room.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said hesitantly. “Dr. Wallace asked me to bring some water.”

Garrett nodded his head at her, making a visible effort not to appear intimidating. “Much appreciated, ma’am.”

The nurse smiled at him before asking Arden, “Is there anything else you need?”

Yeah, a do-over button. Or, barring that, the words that would make Garrett understand what she’d been feeling, her belief that she was making the right decision for all three of them. What were the odds that the hospital stocked second chances and forgiveness alongside the antibiotics and lime Jell-O?

* * *

AFTER HER RELEASE from the hospital, Arden had tried to talk Garrett into driving her back to her car. “You can follow me home if you’re worried about me,” she’d proposed. But he’d categorically refused. Now, as she struggled to keep her eyes open, she found herself grateful for his inflexibility. If anyone had asked her a few hours ago, she would have sworn the day’s events had left her too shaken to sleep for a week. But one of the periodic side effects of pregnancy was a full-body fatigue so encompassing it bordered on paralysis.

By the time Garrett pulled his truck into her driveway, the September sun was dipping below the horizon.

“This is it.” She smothered a yawn. “Home sweet home.” In terms of square footage, the cozy two-bedroom house was actually smaller than her former apartment. But once she’d learned she was pregnant, she’d wanted to own something, a place that was all hers. Mine and the baby’s.

Besides, while walking up three flights of stairs every day might have been one of the lifestyle choices that helped keep her in shape, it would be more difficult to navigate while carrying boxes of diapers and an infant car seat. She’d traded all those steps for a neatly fenced-in postage stamp of a yard. Did it look sad and despondent to a rancher who was used to the open range, hundreds of acres of pastureland where cattle grazed beneath the Colorado sky? Based on Garrett’s grudgingly solicitous manner, from not leaving her side at the hospital to not letting her get behind the wheel, she wouldn’t be surprised if he insisted on walking her inside. Would he judge the meager surroundings inadequate for his child?

“This is a really good school district,” she blurted.

He quirked an eyebrow at the spontaneous announcement.

Her face warmed. “Just thinking ahead.” By five years, plus or minus. Even though she might not be living here when it came time for the baby to go to kindergarten, she was doing her best to make all the right decisions.

She slanted a glance at Garrett’s stony profile. Ironically, she may have already botched her biggest parenting decision thus far.

As he helped her down from the truck, she couldn’t help noting that his hand was warm and callused. How did a man with labor-roughened skin caress a woman with such silky gentleness? The way he’d touched her— Whoa. Where had that memory come from? She shook her head as if she could physically dislodge the mental image.

He frowned. “Everything okay? You look flushed.”

“Pregnancy comes with a lot of weird side effects.” Like hormones in hyperdrive. Mostly, those hormones had manifested themselves in very vivid, very detailed dreams that made her blush the next morning. One of the more anecdotal pregnancy books had mentioned the phenomenon, and the author advised women to enjoy the perk. But it was disquieting to experience that surge of lust in front of Garrett.

She yanked her hand out of his. When his expression grew even stormier, she tried to mitigate her action with a lame explanation. “I, ah, need to get my keys.” As she unlocked the front door, her stomach emitted an embarrassing rumble. Hunger ran a close second to exhaustion.

“I’m starving,” he commented. “Didn’t get around to eating lunch today.”

“Me neither.”

“Let’s get you situated and decide on a plan for food. Maybe I can whip up something for dinner.”

“I don’t know about that.” She stepped inside, flashing a sheepish glance over her shoulder. “My grocery shopping got cut short the other day. The kitchen’s not fully stocked.”

Should she mention the nearby pizza place that delivered? Would she be able to sit through a meal in Garrett’s presence, or would nerves keep her from eating? She appreciated how civil he was being, but the friction between them was as pointed as it had been when he strode into her office today. She was too drained to withstand much more.

Needing to get off her feet before she fell off them, she made a beeline for the ratty armchair she’d found at a rummage sale years ago. She’d had it steam-cleaned with the distant plan of someday reupholstering. Since she’d never gotten around to that part, the chair looked like blue-plaid hell, but it was inexplicably comfortable.

Garrett was slow to follow. After a moment, she realized he was examining the framed pictures on her wall.

“Did you take all of these?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Portraits of Justin and Colin were scattered among a jumble of other subjects, from a black-and-white shot of a stone well to a close-up of a light purple dahlia bud in midbloom. There was a landscape photo taking up too much space; she’d squeezed it in to replace the family picture of Colin with his wife and son that had been exiled to temporary storage in her closet.

“You’re very talented,” Garrett said. “Darcy and Hugh showed me their wedding album. They were thrilled with your work.”

She swallowed, briefly closing her eyes. “Do they know about the baby?” Had Garrett told them about how she’d jumped into bed with him, shared his suspicions that this baby was his? Lord, what they must think of her. “I mean, of course they know I’m pregnant, I’ve seen them in town. But do they know...?”

“That I’m a daddy? How the hell could I have told them when I didn’t even know?” he exploded. He began pacing, not that there was much more space here than he’d had in the hospital room. In a slightly calmer voice, he asked, “Does the idea of anyone knowing we were together bother you so much? I’ve never felt like a woman’s dirty secret before.”

“It’s not like that,” she said miserably. “It has nothing to do with you.” She recalled the pitying looks her teachers had given her after her father died, the local news stories after Natalie’s crash. She hated for anyone to have reason to talk about her and her family. But Garrett shouldn’t be penalized for her hang-ups.

He rubbed his temple absently. “It’s not as if your neighbors are gonna buy that the stork brought the baby. So who cares if they know it was me?”

“I’m handling this badly.” She sighed. “I’ve never...I’m pretty inexperienced.”

“You mean because you’re a first-time mom?”

“Inexperienced with men. And, um, sex in general.” At his startled look, she added, “I’d had sex before—just, infrequently. And only with long-term boyfriends I knew really, really well. I’m not ashamed of what happened between us. I’m just at a loss for... If I say ‘I’m sorry’ again, are you going to yell?”

His sudden grin was so unexpected and striking that it made her knees weak. Thank God I’m already sitting.

“No yelling,” he promised.