Do You Take This Baby?

There was silence. The heaviest silence Gemma had ever heard. She worked at her corner of the center island, her face turned away from Ethan, wondering if she should speak. She had no idea what the phone call was about, but his distress was obvious, and she felt a strong desire to say something comforting.

When the silence had lasted long enough, Gemma finally turned to catch Ethan staring at the floor.

Suddenly he didn’t look like Ethan, King of Thunder Ridge High, or Ethan the Football Star, or Ethan the Sex Symbol, or Ethan the Boy Who Made Gemma Gould Feel Like an Ugly Duckling Loser in High School. He was, perhaps for the first time in her eyes, just a regular human being. And he looked really, really alone.

“Are you all right?” she ventured. “If you need to talk—”

Her voice seemed to bust him out of his spell. “I have to go.” He didn’t look at her directly. “Tell Elyse and Scott I’ll call them.”

He seemed to hesitate a moment longer, or maybe that was her imagination, then exited through the kitchen door. And that was that.

Returning to her edible flowers, Gemma told herself not to feel compassion for the big boob. He’d just rejected her friendly—no, not friendly, simply humane—overture, and, let’s face it, rejection pretty much summed up her relationship with Ethan Ladd through the years.

She shook her head hard, jiggling some sense into it. She was over thirty, had a great career, good friends. She’d had a fiancé and would surely date again. Someday. Ethan Ladd did not have the power to make her feel valuable, attractive and worthwhile or rejected and unwanted. That was so fifteen years ago.

All she had to do was get through this wedding. Then he would be gone again, her regular life would resume and her heart would stop beating like a hummingbird in flight every time she thought about weddings and true love, or about the first man who had broken her heart.

Chapter Two (#u5a0e35c3-92e3-5665-b49c-5ed9c141cfdf)

Two months after Elyse’s bridal shower, Gemma was in Thunder Ridge again, staying at her parents’ place over the weekend, so Minna Gould, mother of the bride, would have an audience while she fretted over last-minute preparations for the wedding.

“You need to decide whether you’re bringing a date,” Minna insisted as they carried the dinner plates to the Goulds’ cozy pale-blue-and-white kitchen. “This is the last chance to order another meal from the caterer. After this, she’ll serve my head on a platter.”

“I’m not bringing a date, Mom. I don’t want your head on my conscience,” Gemma assured her, taking the plates from her mother and plunking them in a sinkful of suds.

“Don’t be silly! If you want to bring a date, then by all means—”

“Mom, I was kidding. I’m not seeing anyone.”

Only twenty-four years older than her second child, Minna Gould, née Waldeck, was still a beautiful woman. Most of the Waldeck women married young, started their families young and stayed beautiful without artificial enhancements well into their fifties.

Gemma, unfortunately, took after the Gould side of the family. The women on her father’s side were outspoken with above-average intelligence, very average looks and way-above-average bustlines and butt, and they tended to marry later in life—so much later that children were often out of the question—or they never married at all. Depressing.

“I’m just saying, Gemma, that if you do want to bring someone so you can have more fun dancing, for example,” Minna suggested, picking up a dish towel, “I’m not really afraid of the caterer. I’ll dry,” she said, holding out her hand for the first dish Gemma washed. Minna’s hazel eyes, the only physical characteristic Gemma had inherited from her mother, sliced her daughter’s way. “Maybe William would like to come with you?”

The mention of her former fiancé nearly made Gemma drop the plate. “Absolutely not.”

“But you’re still friends. You still work together.” It was impossible to miss the hopeful note in Minna’s voice.

“Mom, William and I decided our engagement was a mistake.” Lie. William had decided they were meant to be friends only. Gemma had been perfectly (or pathetically, depending on how you looked at it) willing to accept friendship as a solid basis for marriage. “We are not getting back together.” When Minna opened her mouth to interject, Gemma cut her off. “And he is not coming to the wedding.”

In all fairness, Minna had no idea that a scant two weeks after he broke up with Gemma, William started dating the new, adorable French lit teacher at school, and that they were now “serious.” It had seemed kind to spare her family that bit of information. They worried about her, she knew. None of her siblings, who favored Minna in looks and in character, had ever lacked a date on weekends. Only Gemma, with her Gould-given averageness and her keen interest in historical novels and theater versus, say, sports, pop culture and who won Dancing with the Stars, tended to struggle in the dating arena. True, she lived in a busy, exciting city, but Portland tended to skew more toward families and the twentysomething indie-music crowd. Gemma knew her options were decreasing, but she just couldn’t bring herself to look online for a mate.

Okay, lie. She and her friend Holliday had imbibed a mimosa or two one Sunday brunch at Gemma’s place, and Gemma had allowed Holly to make a dating profile for her on one of the more popular sites. In the light of stone-cold sobriety, however, Gemma had deleted it.

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll have a great time going stag to the wedding.” She bumped her mother’s hip. “When Dad’s doing the Cupid Shuffle with Grandma, you and I can practice twerking.”

“Oh, stop it, you!” Minna snapped Gemma with the dish towel. “Do you happen to know if Ethan wants to bring someone? I can’t get Elyse or Scott to slow down long enough to tell me anything these days, and I can’t imagine he would come alone. I saw on the cover of In Touch that he’s been dating that redhead from the TV show about vampire cheerleaders. What’s her name?”

Gemma felt a little pinch to her heart. “I have no idea.”

“Well, do you know if he’s bringing someone?”

“How would I know that?”

“You dated him in high school.”

The pinch felt tighter. “I wouldn’t call it a date,” she mumbled, “exactly.” Had nobody in the family ever told Minna the truth about the single evening Gemma had spent with Ethan? Elyse knew all about the disastrous homecoming event, since she had set the “date” up to begin with. And their sister Lucy knew, because she’d seen Gemma crying, and Elyse had blabbed all about it. Even their older brother, David, knew. “Mom,” Gemma said carefully, “that night with Ethan...that was more of a high school convenience thing.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You primped for two hours, and he brought you a corsage.”

Amazing how the memory could induce a flood of embarrassing heat all these years later. Yes, she had primped. Yes, she had been excited. No, he hadn’t given her a corsage. Elyse, as it turned out, had provided the corsage for Ethan to give to Gemma. The entire evening had been Elyse’s brainchild, not Ethan’s.

Keeping her eyes on the sudsy dishwater, Gemma said, “Everyone primps for the homecoming dance, Mom. It didn’t really mean anything.”

Minna shook her head, exasperated. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Three daughters, and not one of you interested in Ethan. I don’t understand it. If he’d been in town when my friends and I were in high school...”

Gemma didn’t have to listen to know what came next—we’d have been fighting over him like cats and dogs.

Well, who said she hadn’t been interested? And girls had fought over Ethan like cats and dogs; it was just that Gemma had never had a prayer of winning that particular battle.

“Fine.” Minna shrugged. “It didn’t work out, so that’s that, but he always liked talking to you.”

Yes, I am a sought-after conversationalist, all right. Even William still dropped in at her office for the occasional chat.

“You were the only person he spent any time with at all at the wedding shower,” Minna continued. “Really, I can’t imagine what would have made him run off the way he did. Are you sure he didn’t give you a clue?”

It didn’t feel right to repeat a conversation she probably shouldn’t have overheard in the first place, so Gemma muttered, “He didn’t tell me anything.” That was the truth. “He said he’d talk to Elyse and Scott.”

“Oh, they’re both so busy, they’re useless when it comes to—” Her mother cut herself off.

“Feeding you juicy gossip about Ethan?” Gemma teased.

“Oh, fine. We’ll definitely see Ethan next week. I’ll ask him for some gossip myself.”

“Next week?” Gemma heard the panic in her own voice. She hadn’t seen or heard a word about Ethan since the bridal shower, and life was much more peaceful that way.

“Gemma,” her mother chided. “Please say you didn’t forget the rehearsal dinner. I told you to write the date down immediately. You’re not going to tell me you have one of those endless work functions or dinner with the dean.”

“No, I remember the rehearsal dinner. I just forgot Ethan would be there.”

“Well, of course he’s going to be there. He’s the best man. I’m giving you the job of calling him to confirm.”

“What? Why me? Why not—” Gemma stopped herself. The more she protested, the more she would draw her mother’s attention. And she couldn’t claim not to have Ethan’s number; it had been her job to text the wedding party to give them the time of the fittings for their gowns and tuxes. “All right.”

She’d merely text him again. Wouldn’t have to trade actual words until the rehearsal dinner.

* * *