“I’ve decided to have a baby.”

Caleb swore, and Laurel saw that he’d poured wine on the counter.

“You didn’t just tell me you’re pregnant.”

“No. I told you I’m going to get pregnant.”

His eyes narrowed. “That usually requires a woman and a man.”

“You know I can’t… I don’t want…”

What she thought was anger faded from his face. “I know. So you’re—what?—planning to find a donor?”

“I already have.” She busied herself dumping noodles into the now boiling water. “You know Matt Baker?”

Caleb’s tone was careful, controlled. “Why him?”

It was the last thing she’d expected him to ask. “He’s a friend. And smart. He’s nice. Healthy…”

“Did you consider asking me?”

From somewhere she found the courage to whisper, “What would you have said if I had asked?”

Dear Reader,

Let’s say your best friend is a guy. You want to have a baby. He’s smart, nice, has good genes. Why would asking him to father your baby change your relationship at all? I mean, hey—you’ve been friends forever.

Done laughing? After all, having a baby changed your relationship with your husband, right? But in my heroine’s defense, she turns to her best friend because of a whole lot of complicated fears and needs. He feels safe to her. Of course, he isn’t at all.

First Comes Baby drew together several themes that seem to preoccupy me as a writer: the aftereffects of traumatic life events, the powerful need to have a child and the emotional vulnerability pregnancy brings. Best of all, I finally had a chance to write about the transformation of friendship into passionate love, a process that proved easy— Caleb is one of my all-time-favorite heroes.

I hope you fall in love with him, too!

Best,

Janice

First Comes Baby
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janice Kay Johnson is the author of nearly sixty books for adults and children. She has been a finalist for the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award for four of her Harlequin Superromance novels. A former librarian, she lives north of Seattle, Washington, and is an active volunteer at and board member of Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter. When not fostering kittens or writing, she gardens, quilts, reads and e-mails her two daughters, who are both in Southern California.

Dedicated with love to Mom,

my best friend and constant support

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

LAUREL WOODALL had been sure that asking a man to father her baby—without any sexual privileges—had to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.

But no. That conversation paled in comparison to this one.

Asking said man’s wife whether it was okay with her was definitely worse.

The two sat across their dining room table from Laurel, their chairs placed so close together that their shoulders touched. After dinner, they’d sent the kids to do homework, take baths and get ready for bed. Sheila and Laurel had cleared the dirty dishes and loaded the dishwasher, chatting in the way of two people determined to pretend they didn’t feel at all uncomfortable with each other, even though that was a flat-out lie on both their parts. Then they’d poured coffee and returned to the table.

Laurel took a deep breath, clasped her hands in her lap and said, “Well, I assume Matt told you what I wanted to talk about.”

Sheila, a freckle-faced redhead, nodded.

“Um…how do you feel about it?”

It. Great word. It could sum up anything from a brightly wrapped package to a great big favor. Like the donation of sperm, the fathering of a baby. But it, little tiny word that it was, implied the request was nothing special.

Beside his wife, Matt all but quivered like a tuning fork. He must know what she thought, but not necessarily what she’d say.

“I have a few questions.”

“Of course.” Laurel smiled as if they were talking about vacation plans, not something so desperately vital to her.

“Would your child know Matt was his father?”

“That would be entirely up to you. I was hoping that he—or she—would.” Secretly, she wanted a girl. “That we could be pretty matter-of-fact. I could say, ‘I wasn’t married and I wanted a child, so I asked one of my best friends if he would be your daddy.’ There are plenty of other alternative families around.”

“That means our children would have to know, too.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But you could explain the circumstances to them the same way.”

“Are you expecting Matt to take any real role as father?”

“Again, that would be up to him, and to you, of course. If he was around, a friendly uncle kind of figure, that would be great. Am I expecting him to want joint custody or every other weekend? No.”

“Wow.” Sheila looked into her coffee cup as if for answers.

Wrong beverage. No tea leaves there.

Laurel leaned forward. “What if I were sitting here tonight telling you I’m pregnant? Wouldn’t you gather my baby into your family, the way you always have me? If I were asking you to be godparents…”

“I wouldn’t hesitate,” Sheila admitted. “But…this is different.”

“I asked Matt because I know him. I’m comfortable with him. And…well, honestly, because your kids are so fantastic.”

It was the right thing to say. Sheila’s face softened.

Matt puffed out his chest. “I’m a proven stud.”

His wife elbowed him. “They are fantastic, aren’t they? Although I’m inclined to think I’m more responsible than he is.”

They grinned at each other, as in love, Laurel suspected, as they’d been on their wedding day. That was another reason she’d asked them. Their marriage was solid, their relationship trusting. Sheila wouldn’t wonder even for a second if there was anything funny going on between her husband and Laurel.

She sighed then. “I’m sure most of my hesitation is based on some kind of atavistic response. You know. He’s my man, and I don’t want to share his genes. But another part of me knows that’s silly. He wants to do this for you, and it’s not as if I don’t love you, too, so… Sure. Okay.”

Breath catching, Laurel sat up straighter. “Really? You mean it?”

Sheila smiled. “I said yes, didn’t I?”

“Oh, bless you!” Laurel’s chair rocked as she jumped to her feet and raced around the table to hug first Sheila, then Matt. “This is so amazing! It’s really going to happen. Wow. I’m in shock.”

“You’re crying,” Matt said in alarm.

“What? Oh.” She swiped at tears. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this. Knowing that soon, she’d be a mother.

Eventually she stopped smiling and wiped away the tears enough so that she could tell them what she knew about the procedure.

“You could go in with Matt,” she said to Sheila. “Help him, um, you know.”

“Produce the little guys?” Sheila said just a little sardonically.

The big, brawny, bearded guy blushed, Laurel would have sworn he did.

“Yeah. That.” She didn’t actually want to think about that part of the “procedure.” It was too close to sex, something else she never, ever thought about. Not when she could help it. “If you were there, it would be as if…oh, as if his, uh, contribution came from both of you.”

“I don’t know. That seems weird. Well, all of it does. But I’ll think about it. Okay?”

Laurel nodded.

“Now, how about some dessert? I made a coffee cake today.”

Stomach knotted with the aftermath of nerves and maybe a new case of them—she was going to have a baby!—Laurel still smiled and said, “Sounds great.”

This had been the hardest part, she reminded herself—and kept reminding herself, even after she’d said goodbye to Sheila and Matt’s brood, hugged both of them again and gotten behind the wheel of the car.

She’d had alternatives in mind, but Matt had been first on her list. They’d been friends since she’d taken her first job after the rape in a legal aid office. He was great: smart, good-looking in a teddy-bearish way, gentle, kind and healthy. She knew his parents were still alive and going strong in their seventies—tonight Sheila had mentioned they were on a cruise in the Caribbean—and that his grandmother had lived into her nineties. She knew him. The essence of him.

Of course, she’d considered going the sperm bank route. Had even called a couple of places. She’d almost convinced herself that she balked because she could never know how much in each donor’s profile was true and how much false. Graduate student in astrophysics. Sure. But maybe he worked at the local Brown Bear car wash. I.Q. of 154. Uh-huh. And how did he measure it? An online pop quiz?

But that wasn’t really it. Some of those donors probably were graduate students who needed some bucks to supplement their fellowships. No, what mattered was that they were strangers.

Strange men.

However clinical the procedure—there was that word again—she would still be taking a part of him inside her. Her skin crawled at the idea.

But a friend… A friend for whom she had no sexual feelings. That was different. She could hug Matt, and his sperm she could accept.

And he’d said yes. They’d said yes. Tears burned behind her eyelids when she let herself into her small house in Lake City.

LAUREL DIDN’T TELL anyone what she planned. Not her father, not her younger sister. Once it was a done deal and she was pregnant would be soon enough. They couldn’t try to talk her out of it then.

And they would. Even Matt had, in his gentle way.

He’d cleared his throat apologetically. “I know you don’t see a sexual relationship in your near future. But you’re still young, Laurel. It’s not as if your childbearing years are passing. You’ve done a lot of healing. You’ll do more. Becoming a parent with someone you love…”

She’d shaken her head. “No. It’s not going to happen, Matt. And…I need someone to love. Someone I can love.”

She guessed the certainty in her voice had swayed him. Or the plea, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was, she didn’t want to argue with anyone else. Explain. Justify.

Nope, she would just announce, “I’m pregnant,” and have faith they’d be happy for her.

Caleb was different. She wouldn’t tell him when he called or she responded to his e-mails, but in person, it would be hard not to. Fortunately, he was out of the country, as he often was, so she hadn’t had to make an excuse to avoid seeing him.

She didn’t know what he’d say, whether he’d understand or would try to talk her out of a decision she’d already made. He was less predictable than her dad or her sister.

Part of her wanted to tell him. He’d been the most amazing friend she’d ever had, and had been since the second week of their freshman year of college.

Laurel still remembered the first time she’d seen him. Their dorm at Pacific Lutheran University had a rec room in the basement, complete with a Ping-Pong table and a dozen sagging sofas and chairs too grungy even for the local thrift store. She had wandered down, feeling shy but acting on faith that, since nobody here knew her, if she forced herself to pretend to be outgoing she might actually be popular. A bunch of kids were draped on the sofas, one reading and nodding in time to music that played through her headphones, some arguing about whether any curriculum should be required—how funny that she remembered that—and two boys played Ping-Pong.

One of those two was in her intro to psych class. They’d sat next to each other and exchanged a few words, so she felt comfortable pausing to watch the game. Until the second boy aced his serve and taunted the guy she knew, then grinned at her. She looked at him, he looked at her and… It wasn’t true love at first sight, even though the girlfriends she made in the weeks to come believed through all four years that she had a crush on Caleb Manes. What they’d done was fall into like. There was a connection. They were instant friends, this tall, lanky boy with curly dark hair and electric-blue eyes and former high school nerd Laurel Woodall, in those days carrying an extra twenty-five pounds.

She could talk to Caleb; he really listened. And he talked to her, telling her stuff no guy ever had before. They advised each other through girlfriends and boyfriends, first kisses and breakups. He’d slipped a note into her hand when all the seniors in their graduation robes milled like sheep impervious to attempts to herd them into order. She had waved and smiled at her dad, snapping pictures, then peeked at the note.

Friends forever, it said.

She’d felt a tiny glow of warmth and relief at his reassurance that somehow they would stay connected even though they were going in different directions. Caleb had signed up for the Peace Corps and was going to bum around Europe with a buddy until he had to report for training. She had a summer job lined up and was heading to law school at the University of Washington come fall.

But…friends forever. Of course they would be.

They almost hadn’t been. The irony was, she’d been the one who tried to shut him out, along with all her other friends. But Caleb hadn’t let her, a fact that to this day still filled her with misgiving and relief and probably a dozen other emotions mixed into a brew as murky as folk cures for hangovers: weird looking, vile tasting, not so easy on the stomach, but in the end, settling in there.

They’d never been quite as close as when they could drop by each other’s dorm rooms and later apartments at PLU. But that would have happened anyway. By the time he came back from Ecuador, she hadn’t seen him in two years. They were adults, embarked on careers, or at least—in her case—a job. He’d become engaged once, although the wedding had kept getting postponed and never did happen. Once his import business took off, Caleb had bought a house on Vashon Island, a twenty-minute ferry ride plus a half-hour drive from her north Seattle neighborhood. She saw him maybe once a month. Sometimes less.

They were casual friends, Laurel concluded, refusing to listen to any dissenting voices. She had no obligation to tell him anything.

It had taken her so long to work up the courage to ask Matt to donate sperm, her most fertile time of the month had come and gone. So now she had a month to second-guess herself, suffer daily panic attacks and pray that he and Sheila didn’t change their minds. Laurel didn’t think they would, but that fear had to be part of those panic attacks that hit her unpredictably.

She’d be sitting on the Metro bus she took every morning to work at the downtown law firm, hip to hip with some old lady gripping her purse and shooting glares at everyone who walked down the aisle, or some guy in cornrows blasting rap from headphones and bobbing in time. She’d be minding her own business, looking out the window and seeing the cross streets pass, wishing she’d had time for a second cup of coffee. She’d vowed to save her money and not stop every day at the Tully’s on the corner where she got off, but maybe today…

And it would hit her, a tsunami of doubt and fear, heralded by no warning. The cold constricted her breathing, raised goose bumps that traveled down her arms and then her legs. She would be paralyzed in place, gripped by the shock and the power of the current, aware of light above, but unable to swim to it.

Laurel knew panic, had once recognized the trigger. But she’d gotten better, so much better, until now. This time, she didn’t understand.

She wanted a baby. She wasn’t afraid of having one, of being able to cope as a single mother. She had complete faith she could do it.

Matt and Sheila might back out. But if they did, she still had her list. Or she would pick a donor from one of those trumped-up profiles and buy sperm. There were other ways.

Was Matt the wrong choice? At the question, her anxiety ratcheted up a notch, but she couldn’t think why. Like a mantra, she repeated to herself: he’s smart, good-looking, nice, healthy. Everything she wanted her child’s father to be.

Was she afraid of problems down the line? Her child being hurt because Matt wasn’t really interested in being a father? Or worse, Matt deciding to contest Laurel for custody? Claiming her to be unfit?

In her calmer moments, she knew he’d never do anything like that. He was a friend. That’s why she’d asked him. Anyway, Sheila wouldn’t want to raise his child with another woman as her own. She’d been worried already that Laurel would seek too much involvement from Matt in the baby’s life.

Was she scared about the procedure? Laurel did hate annual exams, but she liked the woman doctor she saw at the Women’s Health Clinic. She trusted her to be gentle and as unobtrusive as possible. While it was happening, veiled from the doctor by the white sheet, she would close her eyes and think, A baby. Soon, soon, I’ll feel movement inside, and my belly will swell and you’ll hear my voice. She wasn’t afraid.

But she was, of something. She just didn’t know what.

If she stayed very still, the wave would slowly ebb away, leaving her sitting on the bus, her stop still to come, her seatmate unaware of the terror that had swept over her. She would sag the slightest bit in relief, perhaps lean her head against the thick glass of the window, the cool smooth surface more comforting than a hug.

Soon, soon. Then I won’t be afraid.

She hated being afraid, feeling vulnerable, and refused to surrender to these panic attacks in any way.

Her period came on time, to the day when she’d expected it. Her last in a year or more, she hoped. She intended to breast-feed, and she knew that often delayed the resumption of menstruation, sometimes for six months or more after delivery.

Of course, she might not get pregnant the first month. There were no guarantees. She wouldn’t get discouraged. She could afford the additional procedures.

But she wasn’t sure she could bear the panic attacks, day after day, for another month. Or one after that.

They didn’t come when she was home alone, thank goodness. She didn’t like it when the wind scratched the branches of the maple against her bedroom window at night, or when the house settled and creaked. When she heard a cough outside, late, or the clatter of a garbage can as if someone had brushed it. She was a woman who lived alone in a city that was safer than many, but still a city, so of course she had those anxieties. The important part was, they no longer paralyzed her.

It was the idea of getting pregnant that did. Something about her plan wasn’t quite right. Maybe it was only the unconventional way, the impersonality. Not how a young woman dreamed of conceiving her first child.

Once it was done, Laurel was convinced, she’d be okay.

Just today, she’d talked to Matt. She hadn’t seen him or Sheila in the two weeks since she’d had dinner at their house and asked them for the ultimate favor. But she called legal aid, where Matt still worked and said, “Just wanted to say hi.”

“Hey.” He sounded distracted. “Got a doozy today. Landlord from hell. Mildewed, sagging ceiling collapsed and badly hurt a toddler. A few rats fell with the ceiling. Sounds Third World, doesn’t it?”

“At the very least. Will the child be okay?”

“Doctor thinks so. But I’m going to nail the landlord’s hide to the wall.”

“You go get ’em.” Laurel felt a momentary pang for the days when she’d imagined that someday she, too, would be a crusading attorney.

“We still on?”

There was something in his voice. Lack of enthusiasm? Hope that they weren’t still on? Or was her paranoia reading shades of gray into a casual question?

“Yep. Two more weeks.”

She heard a muffled voice.

“Listen. Got to go. We’ll talk again?”

“Next week,” Laurel promised.

Disquiet made her chest feel hollow. Had she ruined a friendship she valued by asking this of Matt? Or would everything be fine, once it was done?

She turned back to her computer and made herself concentrate on the will she was writing. She worked as a paralegal for a firm of attorneys, but most often with Malcolm Hern, whose scrawled notes about the clients’ wishes she peered at frequently.

Nonetheless, she was relieved when five o’clock came and she could shut down her computer, don her raincoat, grab her purse and join the other flunkies leaving. This was one of the few times a day she was glad not to have her law degree. If she was working here as an attorney, there’d be no five o’clock departures for her. Nope, she’d be putting in sixty- or seventy-hour workweeks. She couldn’t be a single parent.

The elevator moved slowly, even after it was full, stopping at nearly every floor between the thirty-fifth, where her firm was located, and the ground floor. She hated being pressed against strangers this way, and always chose a corner if she could get into one. Even so, the man behind her had nearly full-body contact with her and his breath stirred the hair at her nape. Her relief when the light flashed on L and the elevator dinged and the doors slid open was profound. Still, she had to wait for others to exit ahead of her, had to suffer more jostling.

Laurel joined the exodus into the marble lobby, heading for the rotating glass doors. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a man fell into step with her.

“Can I offer the lady a ride home?”

“Caleb!” she exclaimed in delight. “You’re back in town.”

He wrapped a long arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze even as they kept walking. “Yep. Good trip. How are you?”

Oh, planning to get myself impregnated two weeks from tomorrow. Having daily panic attacks.

“I’m good. Can I offer you dinner?”

“I was planning to take you out.”

“I have beef stroganoff simmering in my Crock-Pot as we speak.”

“Deal.”

His smile was as amazing as ever although the effect was somewhat different now that he was a man rather than a boy. Most of his travels took him to Central and South America, which meant he was perpetually tanned, paler laugh lines fanning out from his blue, blue eyes. But the dimple still deepened in one cheek whenever he offered his beguiling, lopsided grin.

Caleb wore his hair longer than did most of the attorneys and businessmen in the lobby, not ponytail length, just a little shaggy, the curls making it constantly disheveled. He’d filled out a little in the years since college, but was still lean, and at a couple of inches over six feet he towered over her five foot four or so. Laurel was always aware of women’s heads turning when she was with him, not just because he was handsome, although he was. He had that indefinable quality that in an actor or public speaker would be labeled charisma. He exuded some kind of life force, perhaps a belief in himself that drew the stares.

And she was in trouble, she realized suddenly. Was she going to try to get through the evening without telling him what she was up to?

If she kept silent, he’d be hurt later, and for good reason. They’d always told each other everything important.

Everything but what she’d thought and felt when she’d been brutally raped during her first and only year of law school. That single subject was taboo. Only in her rape support group could she talk about that day, because every woman there understood in a way no man ever would.

Okay, this she’d tell him. She didn’t like explaining herself, hated the idea of having to tell him to butt out, it was none of his business. But secrecy would bother him more, she knew it would.

Typical Caleb, he’d found a parking spot on the street not half a block from the Drohman Tower where she worked. Nobody found street parking at this time of day downtown.

Nobody but Caleb, charmed as always.

“How was your trip?” she asked, once he’d pulled out into traffic.

“Really good. Haiti is always depressing. The poverty.” He shook his head. “But I’m excited about the cooperative we’ve got going there. Not just drum art, although the artisans in the group are making some wall sculptures that are different from the more common ones. But we’ve added a guy who makes the most extraordinary stone sculptures. Wait’ll you see them.”

In college, Caleb had been determined to work for a humanitarian organization like Save the Children. But during his time in Ecuador with the Peace Corps, he’d had what he’d described as a revelation. Outside aid wasn’t the key, self-sufficiency was. Every country in Latin and South America had unique, beautiful crafts that would bring high prices from Americans if they were made accessible to them. Instead of just buying from artists, he helped organize cooperatives, often village- and even region-wide with profit sharing. Some were comprised only of women, many of whom had lost their husbands to war.

Caleb had started with a tiny store on University Avenue in Seattle, expanding it within a year and adding a second two years later in Portland. Now he had another in upscale Bellevue and a fourth in Tacoma, with a fifth planned for San Francisco. He also put out a catalog and sold through a Web site. He made a good living but passed on profits to the artisans in the cooperatives on a scale that stunned Haitians and Guatemalans who were accustomed to getting pennies for work that sold for a hundred dollars in the United States.

Caleb loved what he did and what he’d accomplished. Every time she saw him, Laurel felt an ache of regret and disappointment in herself. Her dreams had been as vivid as his, and now where was she? Working a nine-to-five job, getting through each day as well as she could.

Choosing to become a mother was the first decision she’d made in a long time that looked ahead, that said, I have hope. Maybe, just maybe, Caleb would be glad for her.

Traffic on I-5 was stop-and-go. Laurel could have gotten home nearly as fast on the bus that ambled down Eastlake and through the University District. But she didn’t care if the traffic ever opened up. It was wonderful just to be sitting next to Caleb, hearing him talk about the wretchedness he’d seen side by side with the need to create something beautiful. He spoke with admiration of the warmth of community he saw down there and felt Americans had lost, but he also told her about glorious Caribbean beaches littered with bits of Styrofoam and hypodermic needles, about the children and the politics and the disease. He was passionate, angry, awed—and still able to believe he could make a difference.

A few times she’d imagined traveling with him, seeing with her own eyes everything he described. Once he’d tentatively suggested she join him on a trip to Honduras and Guatemala. He’d talked about monkeys leaping through branches above crumbling Mayan ruins, patient women weaving all day long to provide for their families, sunshine and darting fish in coral reefs.

But by then, all Laurel had to buttress herself from the world was her routine. The safety of eating the same cereal every morning, sitting in the same chair at the table, catching the bus at the same time, knowing the faces of the other riders at her stop. She hadn’t been able to imagine herself catching a plane, going to a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, taking a boat upriver to places without cars or telephones, to a place where her own life didn’t make sense. So she’d made an excuse. He’d looked at her for a grave moment with eyes that saw more than she wanted them to and he hadn’t asked again.

Laurel lived in a neighborhood off Lake City Way in north Seattle that had been built in the thirties and forties. The houses were modest but charming, wood-framed, owned mainly by young families. Hers was the anomaly, a homely 1950s addition with a flat roof, a one-car garage made of cinder blocks and a chain-link fence. She’d been lucky to be able to afford it with her father’s help. So far, her budget hadn’t allowed anything that could be called remodeling, but the chain-link fence was disappearing beneath the honeysuckle and climbing roses and clematis she’d planted along it, and she’d painted the formerly street-sign-yellow garage a more unobtrusive coffee-brown. Trellises and more climbers were masking its ugly facade.

Inside, she’d torn up the shag carpets to expose oak floors that needed refinishing but were still beautiful; however, she was living with 1950s-era plywood and veneer kitchen and bathroom cabinets, aluminum-frame windows that dripped and a shower so tiny and dark it gave her claustrophobia.

Caleb parked on the street and commented on the shoots coming up in her garden.

“I planted a bunch of bulbs last fall. Mostly hyacinths and daffodils.”

“Did I tell you that you inspired me?” he said, as she unlocked the door. “I planted a couple hundred tulips in October. With my luck, the moles have eaten them, but I tried.”

She laughed, not showing her astonishment at his choice of words. She had inspired him?

Comfortable in her house, he found the corkscrew in a drawer and opened a bottle of wine while she changed into jeans, a sweater and slip-on shoes, then put on water to boil for noodles.

“So,” Caleb said, “enough about me. Tell me about your life.”

He always put it that way, as if she had a life.

Today, Laurel thought with a tinge of defiance, she’d prove that she did.

“I’ve decided to have a baby.”

He swore, and she saw that he’d poured wine on the counter. He grabbed the sponge, mopped up, then handed her a glass.

“You didn’t just tell me you’re pregnant.”

“No, I told you I’m going to get pregnant.”

His eyes narrowed. “Just like that.”

“It happens really quickly,” she assured him.

“And usually requires a woman and a man.”

“You know I can’t… I don’t want…”

What she could have sworn was anger faded from his face. “I know. So you’re—what?—planning to find a donor?”

“I already have.” She busied herself dumping noodles into the now-boiling water. “You know Matt Baker? My friend from legal aid?”

Caleb’s tone was careful, controlled. “Isn’t he married?”

“Yes, that’s the beauty of it. I already spend a lot of time at their house. They have great kids. I’m Madison’s godmother. So it’ll give my child a sort of extended family.” Beginning to cut up broccoli, she hurried on. “I thought of going the anonymous-donor route, but that made me nervous. It’s like, every guy who donates is a future Nobel Prize winner. Brilliant, of course, handsome, athletic, a Ph.D. candidate in something or other. I mean, what are the odds? Some of them have to be ordinary. Or worse than ordinary. Schmucks. I wanted my baby’s father to be somebody…” Somebody, in another life, I might have loved.

Standing there in the kitchen, the knife poised above a clump of broccoli, she thought, But Matt isn’t.

Well, she did love him, of course. But not…not that way. He wasn’t anybody who ever would have attracted her, not even before. Was that the problem?

Caleb muttered a word she couldn’t quite catch. “I didn’t know you were thinking about anything like this.”

“It’s been just the past few months.”

“Why Matt?”

It was the last thing she’d expected him to ask.

“Well,” she faltered, “he’s a friend. And smart. He’s nice. Healthy. His grandmother lived into her nineties.”

“What does Sheila feel about this, Laurel?”

“She agreed…”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Her breath caught; she had to face him. His eyes were steady. A couple of creases between his brows had deepened.

“I don’t really know,” she admitted. “She seemed okay…” She couldn’t finish the lie. Sheila had agreed, but she hadn’t seemed comfortable with the idea. She’d said yes with reluctance, Laurel guessed, perhaps in part out of pity.

Laurel hated knowing that.

Her cheeks heated and she looked away from Caleb, not wanting to see pity in his eyes, too.

There was a long silence. Neither of them moved. The water boiled beside her, and she stood there with the knife in her hand.

“Did you consider asking other friends?” Caleb’s voice was deep, quiet.

“I had a list…”

“Was I on it?”

The air had been sucked from the room. She couldn’t answer.

“Did you consider asking me, Laurel?” he persisted.

From somewhere, she found the courage to whisper, “What would you have said if I had asked?”

“I would have said yes.” He paused. “I’d like to have a baby with you, Laurel.”

CHAPTER TWO

“DO YOU MEAN THAT?” Laurel’s question came out, a mere thread of sound.

“I mean it.” He nodded at the glass. “Have a drink of wine.”

She gulped, grateful for the warmth that flowed to her stomach. Her emotions were in such turmoil she had no idea how she felt about his offer.

Caleb wasn’t on her list. The only guy she’d put on it who wasn’t married was George, who was gay and therefore safe.

Caleb wasn’t safe. She knew that much, from the panic and exhilaration and excitement ricocheting through her.

“Hey,” he said, voice gentle. “We’d better finish dinner.”

“Dinner?” She turned her head and stared blankly at the water boiling over on the stove and sizzling on the burner. “Oh. Yeah.” But she didn’t move.

“Broccoli,” he suggested, and squeezed by her in the narrow galley kitchen to take the lid off the noodles and turn the burner off. “Colander?”

“Um…bottom cupboard.” She pointed.

He drained while she hurriedly chopped and put the broccoli on to cook.

Caleb got plates out and said, “We don’t have to be fancy. Let’s just dish up here. We can come back for the broccoli.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She got out silverware while he dished up, and then followed him to the table.

There she studied him as if for the first time, seeing again the changes maturity had brought to his face. He’d become the man he had hoped to be, something not many people could say. His eyes were more serious, sometimes wary; his smiles still lit up a room, but came more rarely. He thought about what he did and said now, and what had once been idealism had now become acknowledgment of the responsibility he had taken on for so many other people. Once, when she’d looked at him like this, Laurel would have been able to read everything he felt on his face. Sometime in the past ten years, he had learned to shield his emotions. She hadn’t noticed that until now.

He watched her, his expression merely rueful.

“I wasn’t on your list, was I? You wouldn’t be so stunned if you’d ever thought about asking me.”

She struggled to pull herself together. “I didn’t consider asking any single guys. I thought…” Laurel managed a laugh. “Well, that it would send you running in terror.”

“I’m not running.” Why not?

“No. I see.”

“But you’re not saying what you think.”

She let out a shaky breath. “That’s because I have no idea what I do think! I figured you’d try to talk me out of the whole idea. I haven’t even told Dad or Megan. I was sure they’d both say, ‘You’re only twenty-eight, Laurel. Give yourself time. You want a family, not the responsibility of raising a child alone.’”

His mouth quirked. “Been airing all the con arguments to yourself, have you?”

“I’ve been around and around, but I really want to do this.” She raised her chin, letting him see that he couldn’t sway her.

He shrugged. “This is a normal age to start a family. I’ve been wondering about myself, too. What’s stopping me? Is it the travel? I’ve been thinking I’d like kids. You’re my best friend, Laurel. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have them with.”

Them. Not just one. What kind of future was he imagining? With them as a family?

Laurel felt a funny cramp start low in her belly. And even though her emotions were still pinging off each other, she knew: this was right.

A little girl or boy with Caleb’s bright blue eyes instead of her hazel ones, his dark curly hair, his height and athleticism instead of her klutziness. A child who would dream, who’d become passionate about something like Egyptian mummies or dinosaurs by the time he or she was four years old, who would dazzle and annoy teachers all at the same time, who would make Laurel laugh.

Until now, she’d wanted a baby, but that baby had been an abstract concept. Suddenly, the child she would carry would be Caleb’s. Caleb’s and hers.

Goose bumps walked over her skin, and she shivered.

“But…you’re bound to get married.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m twenty-nine. Hasn’t happened yet. The more business expands, the more time I spend on airplanes. Who am I going to marry? A flight attendant? I’m gone too much, Laurel. But I wouldn’t mind having a picture of my own kid to carry in my wallet. Having someone to spend time with when I’m in town.” He frowned. “Or am I making a big assumption here? Maybe you didn’t have any contact with the father in mind.”

“If that’s what I wanted, I would have gone with a sperm bank. I actually was hoping that Matt—that the father,” she corrected herself, “would at least be a friendly figure in my child’s life.”

“You know, our food is getting cold.”

Trust a man to be thinking about eating. But she shot to her feet. “The broccoli.”

SHE PICKED at her dinner.

In contrast, Caleb ate with a good appetite. “I think they gave me some peanuts somewhere about lunchtime. Breakfast was…I don’t even remember when. A long time ago.”

He’d flown from Santo Domingo, Laurel remembered, via Miami. He probably was starving. She decided to forgive him.

Neither talked much as they ate. She mentioned hearing that a mutual acquaintance from college had decided to go back to graduate school. “Oh, and I got an e-mail from Nadia. I haven’t heard from her in ages.”

“Your choice, as I recall.”

It had been. At first Laurel had turned to her best friends, but finally one day she’d looked at herself in the mirror and saw what they did: a woman who bore no resemblance to the Laurel they’d known in college. There was a Before, and an After, and the After was a painful contrast. It was easier, somehow, to be with people who hadn’t known the Before version. Who didn’t ask difficult questions, didn’t look puzzled at her new timidity, didn’t keep expecting her to become herself again. Old friends had refused to understand that this was who she was now, that the old Laurel had died that night in the parking garage. So she made new friends, like Matt Baker. They knew she had been raped and that she hadn’t gone back to law school, but didn’t see the painful contrast. She could feel comfortable with them in a way she would never be able to again with people like Nadia and even Caleb.

“It was still nice to hear from her,” she said, quietly.

His gaze rested on her face, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “What did she have to say?”

“It’s funny, but she just got pregnant. She said they weren’t planning to start a family yet, but it happened and now they’re excited.”

“Does she still live on Bainbridge?”

Laurel nodded. “I was thinking of giving her a call.”

“You were good friends.”

They’d been more than that. Paired by the college as roommates their freshman year, the two, at first sight ill-matched, had continued to room together the entire four years. Nadia’s parents were Russian immigrants, and she’d grown up deferring to men in a way that infuriated Laurel, who had been a militant feminist. But they both liked the window open at night, they laughed at the same things and they committed to listening to each other. By graduation, Nadia had been more willing to stand up for herself, and Laurel had begun to see shades of gray instead of stark black and white.

Laurel realized suddenly how much she missed Nadia. Who else could she call and say, I’m pregnant, and guess who the dad is?

Caleb pushed his plate away and said, “So.”

She gave up moving her food around and set down her fork. “So.”

“Have I been persuasive? Or are you going to stick with Matt?”

She shook her head. “No. Unless you want to think about it for a few days?”

“No thinking.” He held out his hand, laying it on the table, palm up. “I’m ready when you’re ready.”

Her chest felt as if it might have a helium balloon in it. She reached out her left hand and laid it on his, then almost jumped at how sensitive she was to such simple, everyday contact. The pads of his fingers tickled her skin, and when he wrapped his hand around her much smaller one, the scrape of his calluses might as well have been fingernails slowly, sensuously, drawn down her spine.

Something flared in his eyes, too, perhaps only awareness of how startled she was. But his voice, if anything, was pitched to soothe her.

“We’ve been good friends for a long time, Laurel. We’ll make this work.”

She gave a jerky nod. “I think we can.”

“So when? How?”

The procedure sounded even more appallingly clinical, even degrading, when she described it to Caleb.

“Does your insurance cover this? Or will it cost you?” he asked.

“It costs, but it’s not that much.” She hoped he wasn’t planning to offer money.

“Because I’m thinking, why can’t we do it ourselves?”

Her chair lurched as she jerked back, pulling her hand free. That quickly, her breath came fast, shuddery, and she stared at him in shock.

“Laurel.” He started to stand, but when she shrank further into herself he stopped, then sat again. “I didn’t mean that way. God! Do you really think I’m that big a jackass?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Then why are you cringing?”

“You know I can’t…”

A muscle spasmed in his cheek, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “I know. I do know. That’s not what I was suggesting. Only that we go the do-it-yourself route. Save bucks. I give you the sperm, you, uh, use a—I don’t know what—a turkey baster or something and squirt it in.” He winced at the imagery. “I’m just saying, it can’t be that hard to do.”

As rattled as she’d been a second ago, Laurel started to think. He was right; it couldn’t be hard. Women got pregnant even when their boyfriends had used condoms. It might be…nicer, yes, nicer to get pregnant at home. They could laugh at the awkwardness and their own embarrassment, instead of him having to get aroused in some examining room at the clinic, and her having to lie on her back with her feet in the stirrups with the doctor and nurses snapping on latex gloves and speculating about why she’d chosen this route to motherhood.

It wasn’t as if she was afraid of sperm. Only of men’s bodies, of being overpowered, of…

No. Don’t think about it. Don’t remember. Not now.

“Crap,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? The last thing you want is me handing you…I don’t know what. A baggie of… Jeez. Forget I suggested it.”

“No, I kind of like the idea. If you won’t be embarrassed. We could try, and then if I don’t get pregnant we could go to the clinic the next month.”

“You’re sure? Wow.” A grin broke out. “Hey! We’re going to be a mom and dad.”

“Together, to see our kid graduate from high school and college.”

They were smiling at each other, foolishly.

“An adventure,” Caleb said.

Finally, one she could take with him.

“An adventure,” Laurel agreed.

THAT EVENING, AFTER HE LEFT, she called Matt.

“Hey,” she said. “Listen, I hope this won’t break your heart, but Caleb and I talked, and… Well, he volunteered to father my baby.”

Long silence. Waiting in apprehension, she feared she was hurting his feelings. She’d asked, he’d accepted and now she was saying, By the way, I don’t need you after all.

“Got to tell you, that’s a little bit of a relief. Sheila wouldn’t have withdrawn her blessing, but she keeps suggesting other ideas for you. I don’t think she was happy.”

“No, I got that impression. Tell her… Well, I’ll tell her myself. The fact that both of you agreed was incredibly generous. You’re good friends.”

“But you found a better stud, huh?” He was grinning, she could tell.

“A single one. Probably better all around.”

“But you’re still going ahead with this?”

Her fingers tightened on the phone. “It wasn’t a whim, you know.”

He fumbled through an apology. She assured him she hadn’t taken offense. How could she? He was a good friend.

But…he wasn’t the right man to be the father of her baby.

NOT AT ALL TO CALEB’S SURPRISE, Laurel insisted on a parenting plan, with rights and responsibilities down on paper, signed and even witnessed by a next-door neighbor. The one part included at his insistence was the child support he intended to pay, although they finally compromised on an amount less than he liked. The plan was Laurel through and through. She liked everything hashed out thoroughly, no detail misplaced, everyone crystal clear on where they stood.

Caleb had known within the first week of meeting her that she would end up a lawyer.

It broke his heart that she hadn’t.

No, what really broke his heart was why she hadn’t.

A 4.0 student at PLU, she’d scored high on the LSATs and been promptly accepted at the University of Washington Law School, one of the top handful in the nation. She’d e-mailed him often that first semester and into the second one, excited and energized, thriving in the competitive, challenging environment.

Traveling weekly to Quito to check e-mail and respond to friends, he’d been first puzzled and then alarmed by her silence, which started in early April. Tough exams coming up? he’d e-mailed. No answer. Three weeks later, he’d heard from Nadia. Laurel had been attacked in the parking garage on the UW campus late at night, after she’d stayed studying at the law library. Brutally raped and beaten, she was left for dead. Not until morning had someone seen her feet sticking out from behind her car and called 9-1-1. She hadn’t come out of the coma for a week. Her face was damaged—cheekbone shattered, eyes swollen shut, three ribs broken, one penetrating a lung. She was expected to recover, Nadia had written, but…

Caleb had almost flown home. But when he’d called, her dad had said she didn’t want to see anybody. She was confused, struggling to remember what had happened. A few days later, in a second phone call, he’d told Caleb she didn’t want him to come.

“She’s proud of what you’re doing there,” he’d said. “She says she’s okay. She has Meggie and me, of course.” Laurel’s mom had died of cancer when Laurel was a girl. “Nadia has been at the hospital almost daily. There’s nothing you can do, Caleb. Not right now. She’ll need all her friends later.”

When she’d finally e-mailed, near the end of May, she’d told him that the police hadn’t arrested anybody, and she’d missed too many classes to go back to school. Maybe in the fall. Her message had concluded, Thanks for the flowers and your good wishes, Caleb. But…can we not talk about what happened?

Their e-mail conversations over the next year had been surreal. She wanted to hear every detail about his village, from the goat that chased toddlers and finally ended up in the dinner pot to his work organizing schools. She was evasive about her own life except for the most superficial details. He knew she’d given up her apartment and was living with her father in Shoreline, just north of Seattle. She had decided not to go back to school that fall.

I’m still feeling some physical effects, she’d written, in what he guessed was a masterly understatement. The dean says whenever I’m ready. Next fall looks better.

She talked about autumn leaves and lilacs coming into bloom, about windstorms and politics, but not herself. Mention of mutual friends became rare. In fact, he began to suspect she wasn’t seeing anyone but her father and sister.

She always responded to his e-mails, but started to take a couple of weeks to do so. When the time for his return to the States neared, she wrote, So, are you coming back to the Seattle area? If so, we’ll have to get together some time.

Some time? They were best friends. What did she mean, some time?

A couple of his buddies were at the airport along with his parents to greet him when he landed at Sea-Tac. Not Laurel. When he called and tried to set up a dinner, lunch or anything else, she had excuses. Caleb called Nadia and found out that she hadn’t seen Laurel in six months. She’d given up. Finally, he just went by her dad’s house.

Laurel was shocked to find him on her doorstep, but not as much as he was by the sight of her. It wasn’t so much the injuries—he’d expected those. A scar ran from the crest of her cheekbone into her hairline. Her face wasn’t as perfectly sculpted as it had been. But that didn’t matter.

What got him was the weight she’d lost, the paleness of her face, the dullness in her eyes. She was thin, washed out. Her arms were wrapped around her waist instead of outstretched to draw him into a big hug. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

He couldn’t say, What in hell happened to you? He already knew. He just hadn’t known how far the effects went beyond the physical.

He hugged her, pretending he didn’t notice the way she shrank away. He talked about his flight, about his culture shock, persuaded her to take a walk to a small park he’d noticed driving there.

The next time he called, she made excuses again. He dropped by again. And again.

She quit even talking about going back to law school, but she did heal to the point where she got a job at a downtown law firm and with her dad’s help bought the house and moved out on her own once again. By that time, few of her old friends came around anymore. Even Nadia, now married and working full-time as a marketing executive, had given up. Only Caleb stuck it out. Sometimes he wondered why he persisted. But…she was Laurel. He’d known from the first time he saw her that she was special. He’d said friends forever, and meant it.

He used to think they might get together sometime. As in, sleep together, or maybe even fall in love and go off into the sunset. At first it didn’t happen because their timing wasn’t right. He had a high school girlfriend when they first met; by the time he and Danica called it quits at October break, Laurel was dating some guy. It worked that way until their senior year, when they were both briefly single. He thought about making a move on her. He wanted to make a move on her. Damn, he’d wanted to. But then he looked at her and thought, Yeah, but she’s my best friend. It can’t work out long term. I’m leaving for two years. What if screwing her now ruins what we have?

In the end, it hadn’t seemed worth it. But he’d left for a summer in Europe believing that someday Laurel would be the girl for him. If he had a choice between time spent with Laurel and anyone else, Laurel always won. Once he got back, he thought, then he’d get bold.

That wasn’t how it happened, of course, or how it ever would happen. They’d stayed friends, since he wouldn’t let her quit on them. But romance was not a possibility anymore. She wouldn’t let it be.

Nonetheless, he’d been royally pissed when she told him she had chosen Matt Baker to father her baby. She’d decided to pick a friend, and she hadn’t picked him? He hadn’t even made her goddamn list? For a minute, he’d seen red. Or maybe green, because he was jealous as hell. If any man’s sperm was swimming inside Laurel Woodall, it was going to be his.

It would, that is, if he could get it up and manage to jack off in her bathroom, knowing she was sitting out in the living room pretending to watch TV. Him, he’d never felt less aroused in his life.

And this was the big day, outlined in red on his calendar. The day of the month she deemed her most fertile. Something he had never expected to know about her.

Of course, instead of being the big day, it was going to be a humiliating one for him if he couldn’t perform.

To start with, her bathroom wasn’t conducive to erotic activities, even self-managed ones. The damn room was tiny—as in, you could wash your hands while you were still sitting on the toilet. For that matter, you could stick your head in the shower and wash your hair without leaving the toilet, either. Good thing if he ever had to take a shower here, because his entire body sure wouldn’t fit in that stall.

His real problem, though, was that the bathroom felt virginal. White-painted cabinets, wallpaper—although there wasn’t much wall—that was also white strewn with violets. He used to think it was funny that tough, argumentative, take-no-prisoners Laurel had a secret girlie side. Right now, gaze on the tiny, green-glass bottle with tiny white bell-shaped flowers in it that sat next to the sink, Caleb wasn’t so amused. Trying to get worked up, he felt as if he was raping her in a figurative if not literal sense.

She wants your damn sperm.

No, she didn’t. She wanted an immaculate conception. But she couldn’t have one, so she was hoping for the next best thing. A tube of some unacknowledged substance that she could use like a douche. She didn’t want him, she wanted a baby.

Well, if that was all she’d take from him, that’s what he’d give her, Caleb thought grimly, and unzipped his jeans.

Think about that beauty who flirted with you in Santo Domingo.

The idea of sitting here in this girlie bathroom, Laurel a room away, getting aroused by imagining the exotic, coffee-skinned beauty who had tried to lure him into her rooms on a back street in the colonial Dominican Republic city struck him as dirty.

It had to be Laurel, Caleb realized, desperate. How could he give her a baby if it wasn’t even her he was thinking about? Whether she would like it or not, he was going to close his eyes and imagine making love with her. Maybe this wasn’t the normal way for a man and woman to conceive a child, but he figured it wasn’t as much the physical act as the emotions that were important. By God, he was going to feel as close to what he should be as he could manage.

But it was the old Laurel he pictured, the one who laughed at him and challenged him and, yes, flirted with him. He fantasized about the young woman he remembered from brief glimpses, in tiny panties and bra. By her senior year, her body was slim and pale but for nicely rounded hips she grumbled about, but looked more than fine to him, and generous breasts she tried to minimize with baggy shirts. It was the sexy Laurel he saw when he closed his eyes, not the traumatized one who shrank from all contact.

Thinking about her that way…well, it wasn’t as much of a reach as he’d thought it would be. And it worked.

No problem.

COULD HER CHEEKS get any hotter without sizzling like meat on a grill? Laurel didn’t want to know.

She accepted the big plastic syringe Caleb had gotten from a veterinarian friend, tried not to look at the milky liquid inside and said, all bright and chirpy, “Oh, good. I hope it wasn’t too…well, hard.”

Humiliation swept over her. Bad pun. Really, really bad.

Yes, her cheeks could get hotter. And did.

“Your turn.” Darned if his cheeks weren’t stained dark red, too. So, okay, this wasn’t an everyday happening for him, either. “You want me to stay?”

And hold her hand?

She shook her head quick. “No, I’ll be fine.”

Caleb was already backing up. “Then, uh, I’ll give you a call.”

“Okay. Sure.”

He had the front door open. “I’ll lock.”

“Good.”

But she was talking to herself. He was gone, duty performed. So much for them laughing together at the awkwardness.

She stared down at the object in her hand before remembering exactly what it was and averting her gaze.

Laurel lay on her bed to insert the syringe, then remembered that standing on your head was supposed to help speed the sperm on their way. She’d been able to stand on her head when she was a kid, but hadn’t in years. Could she still?

She finally slithered off the bed, using it to brace herself, and managed to keep her feet in the air for several minutes. That had to be long enough. Then she read in bed for a while, knowing full well that she wouldn’t remember a word later, and finally dozed off even though it was still early evening.

She woke up later, blinking fuzzily and trying to remember why she was in bed and whether the 8:13 on the clock was morning or evening.

Evening. Oh, God. She was pregnant. Maybe. She hoped. Or at least, in the process of getting pregnant.

She splayed her hands over her belly, a smile curving her mouth as she imagined life inside her, however tiny.

“Are you in there?” she whispered, as if the cells that held the possibility of life could hear. “If you are, welcome. I really want you. And…I think your daddy does, too.”

She had that helium-balloon sensation again, chest swelling with an emotion that felt perilously like happiness. When was the last time she’d been happy? Really, truly, happy? The After Laurel didn’t know. A long, long time. Realizing that she was happy actually scared her a little. Being careful, guarded, made her feel safe. Happiness made you careless.

But she had to open herself to it, if she was to be a mother. She could never let her child realize how vulnerable she felt. Knowing your mom was scared of the world was no way to grow up.

And maybe she could rediscover not just herself, but how it felt to let even something small, like watching a butterfly, make you happy. A child could do that for you, open your eyes to sensations and wonders you’d come to take for granted.

And she, who took so little for granted anymore, was more than ready to rediscover the wonders and not just the dangers of the world around her.

CHAPTER THREE

LAUREL KNEW SHE WAS pregnant within two weeks. She couldn’t verify it, and she didn’t call Caleb with the big news. Not when she’d have to say, It’s actually too early for a pregnancy test. I just have a feeling…

But her period came as reliably as Monday mornings. On Wednesday, when it should have started with a flood, it didn’t. Not Thursday, either, or Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

The following Wednesday, she was so queasy she couldn’t eat her morning oatmeal. A banana was the best she could do.

Caleb had had to fly to South America unexpectedly, promising he wouldn’t be gone for more than a couple of weeks, so telling him she thought she was pregnant wasn’t an option anyway. Not if she didn’t want to make the announcement via e-mail.

She hadn’t actually seen him since the evening he’d disappeared into her bathroom and emerged a half hour later, red-faced, with the syringe he all but flung at her before he fled. Or maybe, left quickly out of consideration for her feelings. Laurel wasn’t sure.

He’d called a couple of times, and they’d had stilted conversations. It was almost as bad as when he’d first come back from his stint in the Peace Corps and been so familiar she felt even more like a stranger to herself.

After a week of nausea, she did tell her rape support group that she thought she was pregnant. The group of nine other women gazed at her in surprise and speculation, waiting for the details.

She’d intended to keep it brief—I want to start a family, I had sperm donated—but once she’d started, Laurel had found herself spilling everything. Her choice of one friend to be donor, and then her decision to change to her oldest, dearest friend, despite the fact that he was single. The only thing she didn’t say was that there’d once been sexual chemistry between them. Because that didn’t matter anymore, did it?

They congratulated her, but they also asked questions, and some surprised her.

Marie, one of the women who was most reticent about the details of her own rape, asked, “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

“You mean, before I got pregnant?”

There were nods all around.

“Because…” She didn’t know why.

“You thought we’d try to talk you out of it,” Marie said.

“That’s why I didn’t tell my dad, but…” She looked around the circle. “Would you have tried?”

At least half the women nodded.

“But…why?” she asked.

Again, it was Marie who spoke. “You’re the only one of us who hasn’t had a relationship since her rape.” They’d been meeting for a long time now, with Cherie the most recent addition two and a half years ago.

“A lot of you are married,” Laurel argued. “That’s different.”

“I’m not married,” Jennifer said. She was a quiet blonde about Laurel’s age.

Three others reminded her they weren’t married, either.

“And I wasn’t married when I got raped,” Cherie said. “I met Greg later.”

Laurel lifted her chin. “What’s your point?”

Marie spoke for all of them. “That sex and relationships with men are harder for us than they used to be, but not impossible. Having a kid is great. Just…. don’t give up on men until you’ve given ’em a fair try. Okay?”

How was it that she hadn’t realized she was the only one in the group who had resolved to stay celibate?

She nodded, although she hadn’t changed her mind.

“When are you due?” someone asked then.

In chatter about bottle-feeding versus breast, offers of hand-me-down clothes, even a stroller and tales about their own children, Laurel almost forgot their reservations.

Almost.

DESPITE HER CERTAINTY, she was so nervous when she went into her doctor’s office to take the pregnancy test, she couldn’t just sit and wait for the results, pretending she cared what Good Housekeeping said about organizing closets. She went for a walk, just a couple of blocks, but it was easier to reason with herself when she was moving than sitting still in a waiting room full of other people.

You think you’re pregnant, her doubting inner self said, but so did Bloody Mary. Haven’t you ever heard of hysterical pregnancy?

She had, and she might be a good candidate, as desperate as she was to be pregnant.

“I’ll bet Queen Mary didn’t have morning sickness,” she argued with herself.

A couple of passing teenage boys in gigantic pants and black bandannas gave her a “yo, you’re crazy, lady” look.

Maybe she was. Her breath came short. Thank God she hadn’t told Caleb.

There was one way to settle this.

Laurel turned resolutely and went back to the clinic.

The receptionist didn’t even let her sit down. “Dr. Schapiro will see you now.”

She escorted Laurel to an office rather than an examining room.

The doctor was perhaps fifty, with a dark bob of hair, crinkles beside her eyes and a warmth that seemed genuine. She stood and shook hands with Laurel across the desk.

“I know this is good news for you. You’re pregnant.”

Laurel closed her eyes momentarily against a wave of joy and relief.

“It is good news?”

“Yes, I…yes.”

Her gaze was curious, but she didn’t ask why Laurel hadn’t been back to have the sperm implanted here. “We’ll get you scheduled for your first prenatal exam, and I’ve already written you a prescription for vitamins. How are you feeling?”

“Nauseated.” Laurel made a face. “Pretty much constantly. Or maybe I should say, unpredictably. I thought it was called morning sickness. Shouldn’t I feel great in the afternoon?”

Dr. Schapiro laughed. “Unfortunately, it’s called that only because nausea on first rising is common. There are women who tell me they feel dandy in the morning and then can’t eat dinner, and others who suffer from a certain level of nausea pretty much all day. I take it you’re one of those?”

Laurel nodded. “I’m trying to keep eating. I know it’s important. But it’s hard. Every so often I’m suddenly starved, but if I eat very much I throw it up an hour later.”

“The good news is, morning sickness usually only lasts through the first trimester. But it’s really important that you’re able to keep food down.” She talked for a few minutes about eating small amounts, what foods were least likely to cause nausea and which were most important for the fetus’s development.

Armed with a pile of handouts and an appointment a month later, Laurel walked out of the clinic in a daze. She was pregnant. First try. She’d known she was pregnant. So why the sense of unreality now?

Because she hadn’t gotten pregnant the usual way? Well, yeah. The big event had borne more resemblance to treating herself for a yeast infection. Except for the standing-on-her-head part.

A chilly trickle down her spine made her wonder whether she was really feeling fear. She’d taken a huge step, and now had to live with the consequences. And she had to tell everybody, starting with her dad and sister. She’d have to suffer the questions and curiosity of everybody at work. She wasn’t even sure how the women in her support group truly felt about her decision.

But it’s my decision, she reminded herself. Nobody but hers. Which, when she got right down to it, was what made it so scary.

Managing financially was a worry, of course. She made a decent living at Vallone, Penn and Cooper, the law firm, but she’d need to take maternity leave, and then find reliable day care. Caleb had insisted on paying child support at a very minimum. She knew he’d give her more if she’d take it, but the reality was, Caleb had fathered her baby out of kindness, no matter what he’d said to the contrary. What happened once he got married and had other children? What if his wife resented the existence of this child that wasn’t even the vestige of a former relationship? Laurel had to be self-supporting. She wanted to be able to put away a good deal of the money from Caleb in a college fund.

When she got home, Laurel called first her father and then her sister and invited them to dinner Saturday night.

“I have news,” she admitted to Megan. “No, not a word until Saturday.”

“You’re going back to law school!” her sister crowed.

The pain took her by surprise. She should have realized that’s what Meg would assume. Why did it hurt so much? Because her own sister didn’t know her well enough to understand why she couldn’t go back? Because a part of her hadn’t quite let go of the dream?

She managed to say, “No. It’s not that. Sorry.”

“Oh. Well,” Meg rallied, “don’t be sorry. I can’t wait to hear what the news is. Dad’s coming, you said?”

Friday afternoon, as she left work, Caleb fell in step with her in the lobby. “You going to let a guy take you out to dinner?”

Startled, she spun so quickly her ankle turned and she would have gone down but for his quick grip on her arm. “You always manage to sneak up on me!”

“What better place to lie in wait for you?”

“Did you just get in?”

“12:16 p.m. I went home, took a shower, changed clothes, then headed here.”

They emerged onto Fourth Street, where traffic was bumper to bumper and the sidewalks jammed. Caleb laid a hand on her back to steer her. “I’m a block down.”

“Of course you are.”

His grin flashed. As long as she’d known him, everyone had teased him about his luck.

In the crowd, talking wasn’t practical. Horns sounded, bus brakes squealed and the sound of a deep bass pounded from a car that was stuck in traffic. Neither Caleb nor Laurel said a word until Caleb unlocked his Prius and they both got in and the racket of the outside world was buffered. He put the key in the ignition, but didn’t turn it. Instead, he looked at her. “So?”

She knew what he was asking. “I’m pregnant.”

His smile was a glorious burst of delight. “Really? Now?”

“No, tomorrow.” She poked him. “Of course, now.”

“You’ve had a pregnancy test?”

“Yes, and I’m spending half my time hugging toilets.”

“Morning sickness?”

Laurel sighed. “In lieu of rejecting the fetus, my body is rejecting everything else I put in it.”

“My mom swears morning sickness is why she never had another kid. She actually ended up in the hospital when she got dehydrated.”

Great. She’d needed to hear this.

“Most women go through it and come out just fine on the other side.” She was counting on it. “Which is usually after three months.”

“And right now, you’re—” he frowned, calculating “—five weeks?”

“Six.”

“Have you told anyone?”

She took a deep breath. “Tomorrow is the big day. I’m having my dad and Meg over to dinner. I admitted to Meg that I had a big announcement.”

He must have heard something in her tone. “Did she guess?”

“She assumed I was going back to law school.”

“Ah.” Caleb studied her, but said nothing.

“What?”

His eyebrows rose. “I didn’t say anything.”

“But you were thinking it.” Laurel knew she sounded bellicose.

“I was thinking, My God, we’re having a baby.”

Tears abruptly filled her eyes, and she bit her lip. “We are, aren’t we?”

He reached out and took her hand. “Did you ever think, back in college, that we’d come to this?”

“Not that you’d donate sperm.” She had sometimes dreamed that one day they would look at each other and realize that the like they’d fallen into had become love. Maybe it had, on her side. Or at least, she’d become aware of the possibility. But that she’d cold-bloodedly choose him to father her baby because he was handsome, smart and healthy… No, never that.

“Yeah, that one would have taken me by surprise, too.” Still smiling, he started the engine. “Do you want me to be there tomorrow night?”

She turned her whole upper body. “Would you?” Hope trembled in her voice.

“I’d like to be.” He looked over his shoulder to merge into traffic. “I was afraid…”

“What?”

His shoulders moved, a small jerk. “That you wouldn’t want to be open about me being the father.”

Nonplussed, she realized she had never really thought it through. If Matt had fathered her baby, she’d intended to keep the knowledge among a chosen few. Probably her dad and sister. They’d met Matt a few times and knew he and Laurel were friends. But a more public announcement would have been awkward all around. Either she explained to everyone that it was just sperm, or people would think he and she had had a fling, which wasn’t kind to Sheila.

But with Caleb… It wouldn’t matter if most people assumed they’d had a brief relationship. At least, it wouldn’t to her.

She sneaked a glance at his profile.

He turned his head, his blue eyes meeting hers. “This taking deep thought?”

“No, I was just realizing that it didn’t. Unless you’d rather I kept it to myself, I don’t mind if everyone knows you’re the father.”

“Like I told you, I want to be a father. In every sense of the word.”

If he hadn’t signed a contract and parenting plan—well, okay, if he wasn’t Caleb—that might have scared her. If Matt had started talking like that, she would have freaked. She’d wanted the baby to be hers. Hers alone.

How funny that now she was okay with this baby being theirs.

Unaware of her reverie, Caleb muttered a profanity as a hulking SUV cut him off on the freeway.

“Have you told your parents?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I figured I’d wait until it happened.”

She couldn’t blame him, since she’d done the same. Almost at random, Laurel said, “I’m planning dinner for six tomorrow.”

“Cooking doesn’t nauseate you?”

“Yeah, but I’ll survive.”

“Why don’t I cook? You have to admit, my sweet-and-sour pork is to die for.”

“Why aren’t you married?”

“Huh?”

“Do you know how many women would kill for a man who’d make that kind of offer?”

This grin was faintly wicked. “Yeah, I’m one of a kind. Women do propose all the time. But I’m saving myself for…” He broke off.

“For?”

“God knows. An octogenarian wedding?”

“You and a little white-haired lady in a nursing home?”

“Maybe.” He growled something under his breath. “Does traffic get worse every day, or is it my imagination?”

Contemplating the giant parking lot I-5 had become, Laurel said, “It gets worse, I think. That’s why I ride the bus.”

His face settled into a frown. “I don’t like the idea of you having to take buses when you’re really pregnant.”

“As opposed to only a tiny bit pregnant?”

He ignored her flippancy. “What if you have a long wait? And the Metro buses have lousy shock absorbers.” He wasn’t done. “What if you have to stand? And you know how you get jostled getting on and off.”

She did know, and wasn’t looking forward to it. But the idea of squeezing herself behind the wheel of a car, only to inch along the freeway, was even less appealing.

“The bus is actually pretty relaxing. And people are nice. Somebody would give up their seat for me.”

“Hell, let’s get off here.” He took the Forty-fifth Street exit and got in the left lane to head west, toward the Sound. “What do you feel like eating?”

Her stomach quivered. “A piece of dry toast?”

“In other words, don’t bother taking you to Le Gourmand?”

She groped through her purse for the soda crackers she’d taken to carrying. “Really, really no.”

“Ah, well, let me get some takeout and we’ll go to your place.”

Even the smell of his Korean takeout upset her stomach. She had to crack her window, which would have helped more if the air outside hadn’t been diesel-laden. But she made it home and curled up on her couch a safe distance from Caleb while he ate. Her stomach had settled enough to accept a piece of toast, which he made for her, and some strawberries.

He didn’t stay long, promising to be back by four tomorrow with the groceries he needed to make dinner. “You don’t have to do a thing” were his last words.

The next afternoon, Caleb returned so vibrantly full of life and energy Laurel felt washed out in comparison. She’d been so tired all day that she’d already taken a nap. She only hoped today was an anomaly. How would she get through a day at work if all she wanted to do was crawl under her desk and snooze?

She left him to cook while she showered and then fortified herself with a couple of crackers. She wouldn’t even have to make an announcement if she had to dash off and puke the minute Dad and Meg walked through the door.

They arrived separately. Megan, four years younger than Laurel, was a hotshot software designer for a small firm that existed in Microsoft’s shadow in Redmond, just across Lake Washington from Seattle. She was currently working on a team designing some kind of management software that she claimed would be a big seller thanks to flexibility from a rules-based interface.

Whatever that was. Laurel was embarrassed to have so little grasp of what her sister actually did.

Both sisters had had dishwater-blond hair when they were toddlers—the kind that the sun bleached to silver-blond every summer. Laurel’s had stayed somewhere between blond and light brown, while Megan’s had darkened to a rich shade of mahogany. Megan was, in Laurel’s admittedly biased opinion, a beauty. She had inherited their mother’s slim build instead of Grandma Woodall’s buxom one, which Laurel considered something of a curse.

In low-cut jeans, heels, a cropped lime-green blazer and big gold-hoop earrings, Megan strolled in, dropped a huge purse and hugged first Caleb and then Laurel.

“You didn’t say Caleb would be here.”

“He invited himself yesterday. And then offered to cook.”

“What a man,” her sister said admiringly.

Laurel laughed. “That’s what I told him.”

“You know, if you don’t want him…” Megan gave him a saucy look.

He grinned at her. “One Woodall sister is enough for me, thanks.”

Laurel suspected that he saw Megan as a little sister, and for all her teasing, Meg had never given the slightest sign of a crush on Caleb. She was currently dating another computer geek, a guy who would have been handsome if he’d ever comb his hair or thought about what he was putting on in the morning. Apparently his virtuosity in HTML and a dozen other computer languages offset his stylistic lack for a girl who’d cared deeply what she put on in the morning from about her second birthday on.

Dad arrived grumbling about traffic. “I had to go in to work today. Somebody screwed up.”

He was an engineer at Boeing, working on a new fuel-efficient plane that was to be built in Everett. In his mid-fifties, he had to be the catch of the Boeing plant, single, nice looking if not exactly handsome and still possessing all his hair. It was the color of Megan’s, and turning silver dramatically at the temples. As far as Laurel could tell, he had never considered remarrying. She knew he dated, but not once since her mom had died when she was eleven had he introduced a woman to his daughters.

“Smells good,” he said, shaking Caleb’s hand. “Thank God you took over the kitchen.”

Laurel threw a magazine at him. He laughed when it fell short.

“So what’s the news?” he asked. “Meggie told me last night that you have an announcement.”

Caleb clanged a pan lid. “Why don’t we wait until we sit down?”

“So you can listen? Or has she already told you?” Megan asked.

He smiled at her. “Not saying.”

“Pooh.”

“Anybody want some wine?” Laurel stood. “Caleb, how far away from sitting down are we?”

“Five minutes. In fact, you can take the salad to the table.”

Laurel’s father opened the wine and poured, and a few minutes later they were seated. The food did smell good. So good, she was having one of her brief and usually foolish moments of genuine hunger.

Meg leveled a look at her. “Out with it. We’re ready to toast. Assuming it’s good news?”

“It’s good news.” Laurel met Caleb’s gaze and drew strength from the encouragement she saw in his eyes. Then she bit her lip, looked at her dad and said, “I’m pregnant.”

There was an awful moment of silence. He stared at her, as if uncomprehending. “Pregnant?”

“I should have told you I was going to try. But I was afraid you’d want to talk me out of it.”

“I didn’t know you were even dating…” His dazed stare swung to the fourth person at the table. “Caleb?”

Laurel decided to be blunt. “No, we aren’t sleeping together. Yes, Caleb’s the father. I asked him to donate sperm.”

“You mean?” Megan looked stunned.

“Yes. I chose to be a single mother. Instead of going to a donor bank, I decided to ask a friend. Caleb wants to be involved in my baby’s life.”

He spoke up then. “As I told Laurel, there’s no one I’d rather have a child with.”

Her father half rose. “You got my daughter pregnant?”

“Daddy!” She grabbed his arm. “He didn’t ‘get’ me pregnant. Not the way you mean. At my request, he donated sperm.”

Her father sagged back into his seat. “Good God, Laurel! You’re twenty-eight. Have you given up on life?”

That hurt. It would have hurt worse if Caleb hadn’t said quietly, “Seems to me she’s embracing it.”

“But you’re writing off any possibility of falling in love and getting married.”

She wanted to say no, but that would be a lie.

“You didn’t believe me when I told you before. I just…I can’t imagine it, Dad.” Her voice was small, shaky. She might have fallen apart if Caleb hadn’t been there offering steady support by his mere presence. “But I want children. I want a family. And I can have that without getting married. Is that so awful?”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “No. No, of course not. You’ll be a hell of a mother, Laurel.”

Tears in her eyes, Megan stood and hugged Laurel. “I should have said this first. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Her father lifted his wineglass. “To my first grandchild.”

They all drank, Laurel taking the tiniest of sips before setting her glass down again.

Caleb handed Megan the bowl of rice to begin dishing up, then the salad to George Woodall.

He took it, but seemed unaware it was in his hand. “I don’t like the idea of you managing on your own, Laurel. Being a parent…it’s hard work.”

“You managed on your own, after Mommy died.”

“You girls were eleven and seven. And don’t you remember how tough that first year was? Meggie had to drop out of soccer. I just couldn’t get her to practices. You two went off to school every day in mismatched outfits, your hair barely brushed.”

“But in the end, you were a great parent.”

“You weren’t babies. Laurel, no matter how beat you are, there’ll be no one besides you to get up in the middle of the night, no one to give a bottle, get to day care when you’re held up…” He shook his head. “You know I’ll do what I can, but I’m a long way from retirement age. And Meggie seems to work twelve-hour days.”

“It’s not that bad,” Laurel’s sister said. “Although… Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually held a baby. You know I never babysat.”

Megan hadn’t liked little kids. By the time she was ten or twelve, she’d curl her lip and say, “Ew, kids.” Laurel wasn’t expecting a whole lot in the babysitting department from her sister, at least until her child was of an age to start learning to navigate the Internet.

“I don’t expect a lot of help.” Laurel accepted the rice from her sister. “Daddy, dish up.”

He looked down uncomprehendingly at the bowl still in his hand, then transferred some salad to his plate and handed it to Caleb. Poor Caleb, who had slaved in the kitchen and was probably starving. He always was.

To reassure her father, Laurel talked about some of the research she’d done on maternity leave, neighborhood day-care centers and mothers’ groups.

“I do plan to be here,” Caleb interrupted, when she was waxing eloquent about her ability to handle her job and a baby with one hand tied behind her back.

His scowl was for her. He wasn’t jumping in to make her dad feel better, he was irked at her for leaving him out of her calculations.

As if the two of them were alone at the table, she said, “You travel so much.”

“I can curtail it when you need me. I have people working for me who’ll be glad to take over.”

“But…I didn’t ask you to change your life.”

His face darkened. “I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t going to be just a biological father. That if I signed on, it was going to be the real deal.”

“I didn’t expect you to change diapers, either.”

“Why not? Don’t fathers do that?” He shot a glance at George.

“I did,” her dad agreed.

“I’ll be here, Laurel,” Caleb repeated.

Absurdly, her eyes were filling with tears. Pressing her lips together, she nodded, then dabbed at her eyes with her napkin.

As touched as she was, Laurel was a bit annoyed when her father seemed to relax after this exchange, apparently reassured that Caleb intended to do his manly duty. Hadn’t he raised her and Megan to be strong, independent women who could cope with whatever life threw at them? Apparently, single parenting wasn’t one of those things.

She tried to excuse him. He was from another generation that still had faith in traditional two-parent homes. But the world had changed. Look how many gay and lesbian couples had children, how well open adoption was working, how single mothers banded together to share their loads.

But Laurel couldn’t shake the feeling that if Meg had made the same announcement, he wouldn’t have been so alarmed. Her father doubted her ability to handle the stress of single parenthood, not the ability of women in general or even of his daughters in particular. Despite his support, in the end he was just like everyone else. He didn’t understand why she couldn’t go back to being herself, the Laurel who hadn’t been taught how powerless she really was, who hadn’t faced death, who hadn’t spent weeks in the hospital recovering from broken bones and swelling that compressed her brain. And because she couldn’t, he assumed she was weak, that she would falter as a mom.

Knowing he thought like that stung.

But her father being her father, he disarmed her hurt and resentment before dinner was over. He set down his fork, looked at her and said, “Laurel, I want you to know that I didn’t mean to imply you can’t do this on your own.” His smile held regret and remembered grief. “I just wish you didn’t have to.”

“Oh, Daddy!” Blinking back more tears—damn, she wished she didn’t cry so easily these days—Laurel stood and hugged him. With her eyes closed, the familiar scent of him in her nostrils, and his strong arms closed around her, she felt so safe.

Straightening away from him was a wrench, just as moving out of his house the second time had been. She couldn’t be Daddy’s little girl forever, and she would forever know she wasn’t really safe.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and went back to her place at the table.

When he and Megan left an hour later, Caleb was at her side to wave goodbye.

“I really appreciate you coming,” she told him, assuming he was leaving, too.

“Hmm? Oh, no problem.”

“Are you taking off, too?”

“I thought I’d hang around for a while.”

“Okay,” she said, although he hadn’t asked for permission.

Inside, he asked, “How’s the stomach?”

She’d remembered what the doctor said and barely nibbled. “Actually, I feel fine,” she said with surprise.

“Good. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you some herbal tea?”

That sounded nice. Grateful everyone had helped clean up, Laurel headed toward the couch, ready to relax.

That is, until behind her Caleb continued, his tone flat. Maybe even hard. “And then, you and I need to have a talk.”

CHAPTER FOUR

LAUREL’S VOICE ROSE. “What do you mean, I’m trying to shut you out?”

“That seems clear enough to me.” Caleb paced her miniature living room, three steps one way, three the other. He considered himself an easygoing guy, but tonight she’d enraged him almost as much as she had when she asked another man to father her baby. “Didn’t you just spend the last two hours trying to convince your dad how competent you are to single-handedly raise our child?”

“I was trying to make him understand my decision!” She sat on the couch, glaring up at him, her head turning as he passed in front of her.

“I thought it had become our decision.”

“I made the decision to have a baby long before…”

“I butted into it?” he interrupted.

“I didn’t say that!”

“But you meant it!”

Her lower lip stuck out in a way that was familiar to him from the thousand maddening arguments during their PLU years. “Maybe I did.”

Ready to yank on his hair in frustration, Caleb was struck by a sudden thought: he hadn’t seen Laurel look so stubborn, even combative, so alive, since they’d hugged goodbye at Sea-Tac Airport the summer she saw him off to Ecuador.

His Laurel, who had felt powerless since even the choice of life and death had been taken out of her hands in that parking garage, was grabbing for control, because something mattered a whole hell of a lot to her.

Next to that, his hurt feelings didn’t count.

He stopped midroom and shook his head. “Listen to us. We haven’t squabbled like this in years.”

She sniffed. “We never squabbled. We debated. And I usually won.”

“Yet another subject open to argument.”

She bit her lip to hide her smile. Seeing it, he couldn’t help laughing.

“Okay, okay. This one you can win. I understand why you felt you had to convince your dad that you’re superhuman.”

She gave a queenly inclination of her head. “Thank you.”

Anger gone, Caleb dropped into her single easy chair and slid low, spine curved. “Just…don’t forget I’m here, Laurel. For you, any time. You know I mean that.”

Abruptly, tears sparkled in her eyes. She swiped at them impatiently. “Darn it, Caleb! I’m trying to be mad at you!”

“Yeah? You can quit any time.”

“I don’t want to quit! I am competent to raise this baby alone. I swear my father relaxed the minute you stepped in.” She lowered her voice to a gruff note that failed to echo her dad’s. “‘Ah, she has a man after all. I don’t need to worry.’”

She looked cute trying to scowl at him, her lashes still damp, her hair sagging sideways from the elegant topknot she’d earlier achieved.

Caleb found himself smiling. “You do have a man. You don’t have to worry.”

“Aargh!” Laurel jumped to her feet.

“Now, now,” he soothed. “Don’t upset the baby.”

She picked up a pile of magazines from the coffee table and flung them at him.

Caleb laughed as they rained down on him, slithering to the floor and to each side of him in the chair. “Temper, temper.”

She stamped her foot. “Nobody could ever make me as mad as you do!”

“Isn’t that what best friends are for?”

“No! They’re supposed to support each other!”

His amusement vanished, and he was dead serious when he said, “That’s what I’m trying to do. But I can’t support you if you won’t lean, just a bit.”

Her expression changed, and they stared at each other for a wondering moment. She moaned. “I knew I shouldn’t eat dinner,” she said, then dashed to the bathroom.

By the time Caleb got to his feet, she’d dropped to her knees in front of the toilet and was heaving up what she’d just eaten. Even as she puked, she was poking behind her with one foot trying to shut the bathroom door.

He didn’t let her. Because he couldn’t get into the bathroom, Caleb sank to his haunches behind her and laid a gentle hand on her back. He waited until she was done and her body sagged, then rubbed.

She groped with one hand until she found the lever and flushed the toilet. “I’m disgusting!”

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen you puke,” he reminded her.

Laurel never had handled booze well. They hadn’t been friends a month when she’d drunk too much beer at a kegger and hadn’t made it back to the dorm before she’d had to vomit. Caleb remembered the night, the day’s heat lingering, lights in dorm buildings around them, Laurel’s soft whimper as she sank to her knees beside a towering rhododendron. Him leading her home, taking her to the bathroom and helping her rinse her mouth before he tucked her into her bed and left her already falling asleep.

“Don’t remind me,” she mumbled now.

“Yeah, but just think.” He kneaded her shoulders as she slumped against the toilet. “That time you were sick because you’d done something stupid. This time, it’s because you did something smart.”

“You think?” she whispered.

“I think.”

After a moment, she said, “I liked what you said to Dad. About how I’m embracing life.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

Again, she was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I hope so.” Her shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh. “Thanks, Caleb.” She began to struggle to her feet. “I’ll feel better once I’ve brushed my teeth.”

He hated taking his hands from her, but rose, too, and let her shut the bathroom door this time.

Outside, in the tiny nook that passed for a hall in her house, Caleb realized he was going to be shut out often. He had to let her shut those doors, real and metaphorical, or she might believe that he didn’t have faith in her ability to cope.

On the other hand, he wasn’t going to be waiting for her to invite him in, either. Or she’d be raising his kid alone, and he’d be wondering how it happened. Because if there was one thing Laurel had become good at, it was shutting other people out.

Through the door, he asked, “You ever call Nadia?”

Silence. Water ran, then was turned off. Laurel finally came out of the bathroom. “No, but I will,” she said, gaze sliding from his. “Do you want another cup of coffee?”

“Doesn’t the smell make you sick?”

“No, now that my stomach is empty, I’m starved again. Coffee would smell good.”

He patted her on the back. “Six, seven more weeks. You’ll make it.”

On her way to the kitchen, Laurel cast him a look that verged on dislike. “Easy for you to say. You’ll be out of the country for most of it.”

“I don’t have to be,” he repeated. “I can delegate.”

Still prickly, she said, “I’m not very good company these days. You might as well travel now. If you plan to be around more after the baby is first born.”

If he planned to be around. Caleb counted silently to ten.

“I plan to be around. But I think I’ll skip the coffee tonight, head on home.”

“Oh?” She didn’t sound as if she cared. “I’ll walk you out.”

“No.” Once upon a time, he might have wrapped her in a hug or kissed her cheek. Now he only nodded toward the refrigerator. “Get yourself something to eat. But call me if you want me, Laurel. I mean it.”

Her voice softened, or at least he imagined it did. “I know you do, Caleb. Thank you for coming tonight.”

“Any time,” he told her, and let himself out.

Time to tell his own parents.

HIS FATHER SET DOWN his drink so hard, liquid splashed onto the table. “Are you crazy?”

Caleb had braced himself for their questions and concern, but he hadn’t anticipated the genuine shock on their faces when he told them right before dinner at their house.

“You know how long Laurel and I have been friends.”

“Friends don’t impregnate friends.”

“Clay.” His wife shook her head in warning.

“What?” he asked her. “I’m supposed to smile and say, Isn’t that nice? Do you think it’s nice that some woman who isn’t married to our son is going to be raising our grandchild?”

“Some woman?” Caleb’s temper sparked. “Laurel’s a hell of a lot more than that! You claimed to like her!”

“We do like her…” his mother began, but was interrupted by her husband.

“What does liking her have to do with anything? She’s not our daughter-in-law. Hell, she could decide we shouldn’t see the baby if she feels like it.”

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