LITMIR.BIZ

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heartbeat. “Just a precaution, of course. We have no reason to think anything’s wrong with the little guy. Or gal.”

      Arden had grown accustomed to the use of fetal dopplers in her OB appointments and the reassuring whoosh-whoosh sound, but she’d forgotten this was Garrett’s first time. He went completely still, the restless anger that had been palpable a few minutes ago fading into wonderment. His eyes widened.

      “That’s the heartbeat?” he asked reverently. “It’s fast.”

      “Well within the standard range,” Dr. Wallace assured them. But as Nurse Sonja had predicted, the doctor wanted to monitor Arden and the baby for some readings before letting them leave the hospital. He pushed Arden’s gown up farther, the preliminary gel a cool tickle against her skin.

      Although the sheet on the hospital bed kept her lower half covered, embarrassment heated her face. The last time Garrett had seen her unclothed, she’d looked a lot different than she did now.

      When she was younger, Arden had stayed in shape by trying to keep up with her two athletic brothers. She’d been trim most of her life, and grief after Natalie’s and Danny’s deaths had robbed her of her appetite. Since her pregnancy had begun to show, she’d often felt awkward, but never fat—a growing baby was a healthy one. At the moment, however, vanity reared its head. Would Garrett be repulsed by her swollen body?

      Why should you care if he is? Their night together had been amazing, but it had also been a one-time occurrence. It wasn’t as if she wanted him to find her attractive. Even if she did, she suspected not contacting him about the baby had forever tarnished her in Garrett’s eyes.

      Within moments, the doctor had the sensors in place. “You try to relax, young lady, and I’ll be back to check on you later. Meanwhile, I’ll have the nurse bring you some water. It’s important to stay hydrated.”

      All too soon, he was gone, leaving her and Garrett alone once more.

      “You want to have a seat?” she offered. It was a small room, and the only chair would put him in uncomfortably close proximity to her. Yet almost anything seemed preferable to his earlier pacing. His taut strides made her think of caged predators.

      He sat, but kept shifting position, obviously ill-at-ease. “Have you, um, had other problems during the pregnancy? Everything okay with you and the baby?”

      “The doctors say everything’s normal, even my being sick as a dog well into the second trimester.” But she worried sometimes. It was frustrating to wake up with a sharp pain at three in the morning and have no one she could talk to about her fears. Early on, she’d posted a question to an online forum for soon-to-be-mothers. Despite a couple of helpful responses, the possibility of misinformation and the discovery that some people were far too willing to share horror stories had kept her from doing so again. “Apparently nausea can be a good sign that the baby’s nice and strong. Plus, my being too sick to run the office alone led to hiring Layla, and she became a good friend. I...needed a friend.”

      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,

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