CHAPTER ONE
Oh my God. Maggie stared at the line of sticks laying on the bathroom counter. No way would she trust just one test. So there they were, lined up like soldiers, each proudly displaying their two lines, or plus signs, or whatever cutesy approach the manufacturers came up with to announce what to most women was good news. The one that sent her over the edge, though, was the test that proclaimed Pregnant. There was no rationalizing that result away.
She sank to the floor and her head slumped onto her knees. Rascal wound himself around her feet, begging for attention, but she shoved him away. How had this happened? This was… she wasn’t supposed to… Oh my God.
She beat her head against her knees a couple of times and then flopped back against the wall. What was she going to do? What about her practice? Her patients? There wasn’t room for a baby in her condo. Was she going to have to move? Where was she going to find the time to look for a place to live? And, oh God. The baby stuff. She had to buy lots of stuff for the baby. What did babies need?
Her head swam and a piercing pain set up right behind her left eye. She sat on the floor until the cold from the tile seeped through her skirt and chilled her. Sitting on the cold floor probably wasn’t good for the baby. The baby. Oh my God, I’m going to have a baby.
She climbed to her feet, and Rascal jumped on the counter, knocking all of the pregnancy tests onto the floor as he brushed up against her, begging for attention. Damn cat. She knelt to throw those bearers of her unexpected surprise into the trashcan. At least if she threw them away, they wouldn’t be staring at her, proclaiming the news she wasn’t ready to deal with.
On second thought, she should keep one. She might need to show it to… oh, crap. Michael. What in the hell was she going to tell Michael? It wasn’t like he was her boyfriend. They were friends with benefits, occasional lovers, who spent a few hours in bed whenever they could. Which hadn’t happened for at least a month. As a matter of fact, Michael hadn’t stopped by in quite a while.
She tapped her fingertips, one by one, as she counted back. Seven weeks. That was the longest they’d gone between visits in the eighteen months she’d known him. Since the day she’d met him in that nightclub in Philly and found out he’d grown up in Oak Grove, the town she’d just moved to, they’d rarely gone more than a couple weeks between hookups. How had so much time passed? He hadn’t even texted her. Not that she’d had time to contact him either since she’d been so busy.
She’d gotten so wrapped up in her patients and her work that her erratic periods hadn’t even been a blip on her radar. Not with all the struggles she’d had in that department. But add in sensitive breasts and feeling like crap to a missed period… or two, and she couldn’t ignore the answer. Not any longer.
She laid her hands over her flat belly. It wouldn’t be flat for much longer. Oh crap, she had to buy maternity clothes. She didn’t have time to go shopping for a new wardrobe. She barely had time to work, eat, and sleep, and sometimes eating didn’t happen. Had she hurt the baby by skipping meals already?
She rushed to the refrigerator and yanked the door open. Three containers of yogurt, a half empty bottle of wine, a bottle of ketchup, and two leftover containers from J.J.’s. She grabbed a yogurt and a spoon from the drawer. Yogurt was good. Babies need calcium, right? She shoveled a spoonful in her mouth and sank onto one of the three chairs at the table she’d tucked in the nook against the bay window. Rascal hopped onto his chair beside hers and curled up on the cushion. She didn’t know why she had three chairs, even, because no one ever came over. Except Michael. She didn’t have many friends in Oak Grove. She didn’t have the time to make them.
She ate another spoonful and had to choke that bite down.
What in the hell was she going to do about her practice? She shouldn’t have agreed to take on the sheriff and fire departments last year. Adding their referrals tacked another fifteen hours a week onto her already full schedule, giving her an overflowing roster. But she just couldn’t say no when they inquired.
She’d have to tell them she couldn’t take any more cases.
No new patients in her practice, either. What about her current patients? Her mentor Barry might be willing to take some of them on, but others would skip counseling before they’d drive to Philly. That just wouldn’t do. She’d need to convince Barry to come here a few days a week and lighten her load for a little while. She’d worked too hard to build her practice, her reputation, to risk all of it just because she was pregnant. Other professional women handled pregnancy without losing a beat. She could too.
Maggie brought the spoon to her mouth again and her stomach roiled. Dropping the yogurt and spoon, she hurried down the hall, barely reaching the bathroom before she threw up.
After she emptied her stomach, she wet a washcloth, swiped at the sweat on her brow, and cleaned her teeth. That explained the stomach bug she thought she had last week. Two of her patients had mentioned their kids were sick, so Maggie figured that was what she’d had, too.
A big ole nope to that.
Someone knocked on the door. Oh, God. What if it was Michael? After all this time. No way was she ready to see him or to tell him about the baby. She snatched the one remaining test off the counter and shoved it in her pocket on the way to the door. A quick peek through the peephole and she sighed.
She plastered a smile on her face as she swung the door open. “Mrs. Monroe. What can I do for you today?”
“Oh, dear. I’m so glad you are home. We are organizing dinners for poor Mrs. Fleming. She fell and broke her hip, you know.”
Maggie loved living in her condo building, with its low maintenance and easy access to work. She didn’t even mind Mrs. Monroe and Mrs. Fleming sticking their nose in her business from time to time. “Oh, no. I hadn’t heard. How is she?”
“She’s home from the hospital now but not getting around so well. I hope you’ll sign up for a dinner.” Mrs. Monroe held out a clipboard.
Maggie laughed. “I’m not sure she wants anything I make. I’m not a good cook. I’d better sign up to bring a meal from J.J.’s.” She pulled her hand out of her pocket to grab the pen, and the pregnancy test clattered onto the floor.
Mrs. Monroe’s gaze followed the object’s fall.
Maggie scrambled to block her nosy neighbor’s view and snatch the test up before Mrs. Monroe saw it. That was all Maggie needed, some meddling old lady sticking her nose in Maggie’s business. She could hear it now: In my day, honey, girls had babies a lot younger than you. When’s that man going to marry you?
No way was she going to marry Michael. She’d been taking care of herself for all of her adult life. Adding a baby shouldn’t be so hard, right?
Based on the expression on Mrs. Monroe’s face, Maggie hadn’t hidden the test in time. “I’m not sure the greasy food from J.J.’s would be good for her. And frankly, dear, in your condition, it’s not very good for you either.”
Maggie glared at Mrs. Monroe and snatched the list from her hand. After scribbling beside a day next week, Maggie shoved the clipboard under Mrs. Monroe’s nose. “I’ll figure something out.”
Mrs. Monroe patted her hand. “Thanks so much, dear. Make sure you take care of yourself… and that little one you’re carrying. Congratulations.”
“Uh huh,” Maggie mumbled before she slammed the door.
What was she thinking? How could she take care of a baby when she didn’t even have time to make Mrs. Fleming a meal, much less the know how to cook it. It wasn’t like she had a great role model in that department. Her mother spent her time jetting around Europe and Asia with her newest rich husband. She never cooked for herself or Maggie... dear old Mom had servants do that for her.
Maggie shoved a pile of clothes aside and slumped onto the couch, the pregnancy test still in her hand. Shoot, she couldn’t take care of her apartment… how was she going to care for a baby? She needed advice, and she needed it now.
She pressed a few buttons on her phone, and in no time, Cheryl, the one friend she’d managed to hold on to from her college days, was answering on the other end. “Hey, Maggie. Hold on a minute.”
While Maggie kept the phone pressed to her ear, Cheryl yelled at one child to stop drawing on the walls and another to leave her little brother alone. Maggie chuckled. Yeah, Cheryl was the perfect person to call when Maggie’s life was falling apart. Cheryl was Maggie’s voice of reason. Ironic, really, considering Maggie was a counselor. She was supposed to be the one who talked others off the ledge.
“Sorry about that. It’s been one of those days. What’s up?”
“It sounds like it’s not a good time. I can call back when you’re not busy.” Or maybe when she was done denying her condition. Was this what Maggie’s life was going to be reduced to? Shoving kids away while she tried to talk on the phone to clients? How in the hell was she supposed to do her job with a kid? This was why she’d never planned to have children. A career, she could handle. Throw a kid in the mix, and she was out of her league. She couldn’t do this. No way. Shrinks weren’t supposed to have nervous breakdowns, but here she was on the verge of one.
“No, really. This is a good time. I just shooed them off to the playroom. So what’s up?”
Maggie opened her mouth but no words came out. What the hell? It shouldn’t be that hard to talk to her best friend. Then again, she’d never had such shocking news to share. She cleared her throat.
“Maggie, what’s going on?”
Maggie gritted her teeth and then just spit out the words. “I’m pregnant!”
She sighed and collapsed.
“Oh, Maggie, that’s wonderful.” Cheryl grew quiet for a moment. “I didn’t think you were dating anyone. Have you been holding out on me, girl?”
“I’m not. I wasn’t. Wait, this isn’t coming out right… I’m not dating anyone. You know I would have told you.”
After a dramatic silence, Cheryl gasped. “Oh…”
Yeah, oh. Cheryl knew about Michael. She hadn’t approved of Maggie’s friends-with-benefits arrangement and had wanted Maggie to push for a real relationship. But Cheryl came from a home where her parents had been married thirty-five years and raised their two-point-five kids in a house with a picket fence. She was well on her way to duplicating their achievement with her own family.
Not Maggie.
Being raised in the city, cared for by nannies, while her parents ran around the world, and on each other, hadn’t provided Maggie with a great example of a productive family. Hell, her own father had another family somewhere. Siblings she’d never met. Neither of her parents could be held up as model parents. Being a counselor and often playing mediator between spouses didn’t exactly make it appear that great marriages were the norm, either. If her observations showed her the reality of what marriage was about, they could keep it.
“Yeah, it’s Michael’s. There’s no one else.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet.”
“How far along are you?”
“I’m not sure. Eight or nine weeks.” That sounded about right. Labor Day. How ironic.
“Eight or nine weeks! And you’re just now telling me?”
“I just found out. I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t you think the first thing you should do is tell Michael?”
“No way. He’s never talked about kids and his job keeps him crazy busy.” What was she saying? Her job kept her crazy busy, too. And she’d never planned to have kids either. But here she was.
Cheryl was right, though. Michael deserved to know. But when? He hadn’t contacted her since he last stopped by. It wasn’t like she could call him and say hey, remember when you came by a couple of months ago, well…. “Besides, you know I didn’t think I could have kids, so it’s not like babies ever came up. And we were careful. Always.”
“Just because he hasn’t talked about kids doesn’t mean he doesn’t want them. Maybe he just hadn’t found the right person… yet.”
“But what if he doesn’t… what if he…” All of a sudden, Michael wanting this baby became very important to her. Her baby would not be rejected by its parents, like she had been.
“Don’t even talk like that. You know him. You know his family. He’ll do the right thing.”
Yeah, he would. She shouldn’t have doubted for even one minute. But what did the right thing mean to Michael? Would he be expecting a long white gown and vows?
What about his family? None of his siblings knew about the two of them. There had never been a reason. Michael knew she’d counseled Lucas and Rachel. But as far as Maggie knew, Michael hadn’t told his family about their… arrangement. What would she tell Rachel and Lucas? Would they want another therapist because she was about to be the mother to their niece or nephew? She placed her hand over her belly. A boy or a girl. A baby.
“Hello, Maggie... Are you still there?”
“Huh, yeah. I’m still here. Just got distracted for a minute. I’m not going to marry Michael just because I’m pregnant.”
“So when are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t know. I have to think about the best time.” And figure out how to keep Michael from dragging her kicking and screaming to the altar.
“Hey, why don’t you come into the city this weekend and we can have a girls day? We can shop for some maternity clothes for you and check out a couple of baby stores. I love shopping for babies.”
Maggie chuckled. Typical Cheryl, always finding a way to distract Maggie. “What, you didn’t get enough of that with the three you already have?”
“It’s more fun when it’s for somebody else. Besides, it sounds like you need a break.”
She could say that again. Tonight was the first night in weeks Maggie’d gotten home at a decent hour thanks to a last minute cancellation.
Her stomach growled and bile rose in her throat. “Listen, Cheryl, I gotta call you back. I’ll let you know about this weekend. Okay?”
“Are you okay?”
“I will be.” Maggie clicked off and ran down the hall.