She wanted to do something normal, damn it. More, she wanted to feel like doing something. Anything.
And an absent glance to her right stopped her in her tracks.
Something that was both panic and nausea, with a helping of dull realization spurted into her belly. It continued to rise as she did hasty calculations in her head.
While everything inside her sank, Hayley closed her eyes. She opened them again, looked into Lily’s happy face. And reached for the home pregnancy test.
SHE DROPPED LILY off, kept a smile plastered on her face until she walked out the door to her car. Afraid to do otherwise, she kept her mind blank while she drove home. She wouldn’t think, she wouldn’t project. She would just go home, take the test. Twice. When it came out negative, which of course it would, she’d hide the packages somewhere until she could dispose of them without anyone knowing she’d had a panic attack.
She wasn’t pregnant again. She absolutely couldn’t be pregnant again.
She parked, and made certain the boxes were buried at the bottom of her bag and well hidden. But she’d taken two steps into the house when David appeared like some magic genie.
“Hi, sugar, want a hand with that?”
“No.” She gripped the bag to her chest like a cache of gold. “No,” she repeated more calmly. “I’m just going to take these things up. And I have to pee, if that’s all the same to you.”
“It is. I often have to pee myself.”
Knowing her tone had been nasty, she rubbed a hand over her face. “I’m sorry. I’m in a mood.”
“Something else I often have.” He pulled an open tube of Life Savers from his pocket, thumbed out a cherry circle. “Open up.”
She smiled, obeyed.
“Let’s see if that sweetens your mood,” he said as he popped the candy into her mouth. “Can’t help worrying about you, honey.”
“I know. If I’m not back down in fifteen minutes, you can call out the cavalry. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She hurried up, then dumped the contents of the bag on her bed—for God’s sake, she’d forgotten the diapers. Cursing, she snatched both pregnancy tests and bolted to the bathroom.
For a moment she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to pee. Wouldn’t that just be her luck? She ordered herself to calm down, took several long breaths. Added a prayer.
Moments later, with the sweetness of cherry candy still on her tongue, she was staring at the stick with PREGNANT reading clear as day in its window.
“No.” She gripped the stick, shook it as if it were a thermometer and the action would drop things back down to normal. “No, no, no, no! What is this? What are you?” She looked down at herself, rapped a fist lightly below her navel. “Some kind of sperm magnet?”
Undone, she sat on the toilet lid, buried her face in her hands.
THOUGH SHE MIGHT have preferred to crawl into the cabinet under the sink, curl up in the dark, and stay there for the next nine months, she didn’t have much time to indulge in a pity fest. She washed her face, slapping on cold water to eradicate the signs of her bathroom crying jag.
“Yeah, crying’s going to make a difference,” she berated herself. “That’ll do the trick, all right. It’ll change everything so when you look at that stupid test again the damn stick will read: Why no, Hayley, you’re not pregnant. You just needed to sit on the toilet and bawl for ten minutes. Idiot.”
She sniffled back what felt like another flood of tears and faced herself in the mirror. “You played, now you pay. Deal with it.”
A quick makeup session helped. The sunglasses she grabbed out of her purse helped more.
She buried the home pregnancy test boxes in the bottom of her underwear drawer, jumpy as a drug addict hiding his stash.
When she went out, David was already halfway up the stairs.
“I was about to get my bugle.”
She stared at him. “What?”
“To call the cavalry, honey. You were longer than fifteen.”
“Sorry. I got . . . Sorry.”
He started to smile and brush it off, then shook his head. “Nope, not going to pretend I don’t know you’ve been crying. What’s the matter?”
“I can’t.” Even on those two words her voice shook, broke. “I’m going to be late for work.”
“Somehow the world will keep turning. What you’re going to do is sit right down here in my office.” Taking her hand, he tugged until she sat on the steps with him. “And tell Uncle David your troubles.”
“I don’t have troubles. I’m in trouble.” She didn’t mean to tell him, to tell anyone. Not until she had time to think, to deal. To bury her head in the sand for a few days. But he draped an arm around her shoulders to hug her, and the words leaped out of her mouth.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Oh.” His hand stroked up and down her arm. “Well, that’s something my secret horde of super chocolate truffles won’t fix.”
She turned her head, pressed her face to his shoulder. “I’m like some sort of fertility bomb, David. What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?”
“What’s right for you. You’re sure now?”
Sniffling, she boosted her butt off the steps, tugged the stick out of her pocket. “What’s that say in there?”
“Mmm. The eagle has landed.” Gently, he caught her chin in his hand, lifted her face. “How are you feeling?”
“Sick, scared. Stupid! So damn stupid. We used protection, David. It’s not like we were a couple of lust-crazed teenagers in the back of a Chevy. I think I have some sort of übereggs or something, and they just spit on barriers and suck the sperm in.”
He laughed, then gave her another squeeze. “Sorry. I know it’s not funny to you. Let’s calm down here and take a look at the big picture. You’re in love with Harper.”
“Of course I am, but—”
“He’s in love with you.”
“Yes, but—Oh, David, we’re just getting started on that. On being in love, on being together. Maybe I let myself imagine how it might be down the road some. But we haven’t made any plans about the long-term. We haven’t talked about it at all.”
“That’s why sooner comes before later, honey. You’ll talk now.”
“How can any man in the world not feel trapped when a woman comes up and tells him she’s pregnant?”
“You manage to get that way all by yourself?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Hayley.” He drew back, tipped her sunglasses down her nose so he could look into her eyes. “That’s exactly the point. With Lily, you did what was right for you, and what you felt in your heart was right for the father, and for the baby. Right or wrong—and personally I think it was right—but either way, I think it was brave. Now you’ve got to be brave again, do what’s right for everybody concerned. You’ve got to tell Harper.”
“I don’t know how. I get sick thinking about it.”
“Then you might love him, but you’re not giving him credit for being the man he is.”
“I am, that’s the trouble.” She stared back down at the stick and the word in that window seemed to scream in her head. “He’ll stand up. How will I know if he did because he loves me, or because he feels responsible?”
David leaned over, kissed her temple. “Because you will.”
IT ALL SOUNDED good. It sounded reasonable, logical, and adult. But it didn’t make it any easier to do what she was about to do.
She wished she could delay it, just ignore it all for a few days. Even pretend it would go away. And that was small and selfish and childish.
When she reached the nursery, she slipped into one of the employee bathrooms to take the second test. She glugged down most of a pint of water, turned the spigot on for good measure. She started to cross her fingers, but told herself not to be a complete ass.
Still, she read the results with eyes squinted half shut.