“I’d like to kiss the bride.”

She recovered from her surprise quickly. “I expect it to be part of the ceremony.”

“I mean, let’s do it now.”

“What?”

“Molly,” Adam said, urgency rising from his core. “I don’t want our first kiss to be in front of an audience. Even a small select audience. It wouldn’t—it won’t be right. Besides, it will take the pressure off the actual moment, right?”

Molly stilled. “Well—all right.”

Adam stepped over to his best friend—his bride-to-be. He lifted his hands and brushed her hair off her shoulders.

He’d dated a lot of women, kissed the majority of them, at the very least. But he hadn’t had any idea that he compared any of them to Molly until this moment, when she stood before him. And that’s when he knew—he was in big, big trouble.

Dear Reader,

In writing A Little Change Of Plans, I had to throw the hero and the heroine for a big loop. They thought they had their futures figured out long ago.

Uh-huh. Well, life may be about a lot of things, but I don’t think it’s ever about certainty.

As soon as I met Molly and Adam, I decided they would each have to let go of their illusion of what they thought they always wanted if they were to find real and lasting love and happiness. (And because I’m their author, what I say goes!)

I really hope these characters inspire you the way they inspired me, to live with an open heart and embrace all the surprising possibilities that inevitably appear.

All the best,

Jen Safrey

A Little Change of Plans
Jen Safrey

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JEN SAFREY

is a back-to-back recipient of the 2004 and 2005 Golden Leaf Awards for Long Contemporary Romance. She’s steadily moving up the belt ranks in tae kwon do, although her back kicks still need some work. She’s also learning to cook (finally), so feel free to e-mail her your recipes—easy ones—through her Web site at www.jensafreybooks.com.

Motherhood is a path I chose not to travel,

so this book is dedicated to the brave women

in my life who did, and shared their adventures with

me—particularly my sister, Elizabeth Markman,

and, of course, my own terrific mom.

Contents

Prologue

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

Prologue

June 1992

“Molly, you have been an asset to Saint Cecilia’s Girls’ Academy. I guess this is the last time I’ll meet with you as your guidance counselor.”

Molly crossed her legs at the ankle and straightened her spine. Ms. Glass regarded her, and Molly basked in the pride reflected through the woman’s thick glasses.

“Now,” the administrator continued, “I know I don’t have to ask you if you’ve given serious thought to what you want to study next year. I have a little feeling you’ve been mulling it over since you were in pigtails.”

“I’m going to earn a bachelor’s degree, then an MBA, and then start my own business,” Molly said with a smile.

The smile was returned by the older woman, but in it Molly detected a jaded tinge.

Molly didn’t take it personally. She imagined plenty of Saint Cecilia’s alumni returned every year with careers and lives miles and miles off the fast track, so far from what they’d once envisioned for themselves at this elite private school.

She, Molly Jackson, would not be among them. When she returned—if, of course, she had time to make the trip back to California from New York between power lunches and business-class trips to Europe—she would be feted as a success, maybe even with a scholarship founded in her name….

“Remember your first day as a freshman, Molly?” Ms. Glass asked, interrupting her reverie. “When I first met you? You walked into this office wearing a lovely, smart pink blazer. The rest of the girls were in jeans.”

Molly nodded, not really recalling her wardrobe that particular day and now wondering what the point of this discussion was going to be.

“You marched in here, sat down in that same chair there, and said, ‘I’m going to earn my bachelor’s, then an MBA, then start my own business.’”

Molly waited. She probably did say that.

“You were so sure of yourself then,” Ms. Glass continued, “and even more sure of yourself now.”

“Excuse me,” Molly said, frowning, “but it sounds like you think that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s a wonderful thing,” Ms. Glass said. “I have no doubt you’ll go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do. But I give every student of mine a piece of advice to take into the real world, and here’s yours: Let life just happen to you once in a while, Molly.”

Molly pulled her chin in, taken aback.

“Things are different after high school,” Ms. Glass went on. “Life may not turn out the way you expect, and you need to be able to adjust, relax, go with the flow.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. “This sounds like the opposite of normal guidance counselor advice.”

“Normal guidance counselor advice has never been something you really needed, Molly. I’m giving you woman-to-woman advice. Be spontaneous at least once in a while. Maybe once a year? Have fun. Meet boys.”

Molly had given boys some thought over the last few years, and she didn’t want to tell Ms. Glass that it happened to be another area in which she was quite sure of herself and of what would happen.

Out there was a boy just like herself.

A boy who worked hard, who put achieving first. A boy whose parents taught him how to strive to be the best. A boy who participated in student government, band, mathletes and excelled in a varsity sport. Maybe track and field.

Molly was going to find that boy, the one who was destined to be the man for her. A driven, ambitious man, exactly like the woman she was about to be.

She’d find him, and he wouldn’t be hard to find. They’d be drawn to one another without effort, ready and able to support one another, work side by side forever in perfect synchronized partnership.

College started in three months. He could be anywhere.

Molly stood, smoothed out the wrinkles in her black pants the way she knew her mother did and put out her hand. “Thank you for everything, Ms. Glass. I’m proud to have attended this school, and I promise, I won’t let Saint Cecilia’s down.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Ms. Glass said, clasping Molly’s hand and looking deep into her eyes. “Just think about yourself. And be happy.”

June 1992

“Well, Adam, it’s that time for you. This will be our last meeting.”

“Yup.”

“So, I beg you, please tell me you’ve decided what you plan to study next year.”

Adam leaned back and eyed Mr. Fisher. His guidance counselor stared back at him with a stern expression that Adam was certain had to have been a course requirement for the man to earn his education degree. The thought of a roomful of men and women staring each other down, practicing and perfecting their faces for the final exam, made Adam grin.

“I’m glad you’re so unconcerned and amused,” Mr. Fisher said, sitting back in his chair and lacing his fingers together on the blotter in front of him. “I wouldn’t want you to be losing sleep over your unclear future.”

“I’m not, Mr. F.,” Adam said, pretending he didn’t understand the sarcasm so as not to prolong the argument.

Adam didn’t take it personally. It was Mr. Fisher’s job to make sure his students didn’t return to Grover Cleveland High School year after year and tell him about their miserable rat-race lives of drudgery and nine-to-five-plus-overtime.

He, Adam Shibbs, would not be among them. When he returned—if he had time between checking out jazz clubs, discovering Middle Eastern restaurants and getting the local guys together to shoot hoops—he would have an easy smile on his face, a man happy with life and free to sample all the world had to offer.

“I know you’ve had a very difficult year,” Mr. Fisher said after a pause. His voice and face softened. “Losing a parent is a terrible experience.”

Adam, his levity fading away, looked down at the dusty floor, and wondered what the point of this discussion would be.

“But I don’t want to see you permanently stunt your growth as a person, Adam,” Mr. Fisher said. “Your grades are pretty good for an average student, but for a boy as bright as you, they’re a definite underachievement. Still, they were enough to get you into a good college, and my advice to you is to consider buckling down for a few years. Get motivated. See what your brain can do.”

“I use my brain,” Adam said. “I just don’t use it in the way you think I should. I don’t use it thinking of ways to get ahead and be great at everything, and earn a million dollars a year and make mergers and whatever else. I use it to try to learn about things that amaze me or make me laugh, so I can have a good time.” He paused. “You only live once.”

“I agree,” his guidance counselor said. “And sometimes, as I know you learned the hard way, your one life can throw you a lot of curveballs. You’ve got to know how to hit them, even if you don’t want or expect them to come at you. You coped this time around by easing up and relaxing, and that was fine, but maybe now it’s time to work hard for a while. Find your potential. Prepare yourself to face anything in the real world, and to meet anyone.”

Adam didn’t want to admit it, but he had been giving the part about meeting people a lot of thought.

Out there were many women just like himself—fun, carefree, exciting, adventurous. He planned to meet as many women as was possible and enjoy the wide, beautiful variety the world had to offer. And if he ever got to the point where it was time to settle down—although he couldn’t imagine that, really—he’d be acquainted with many to choose from. Women who didn’t work themselves to death, so that he wouldn’t have to love and lose someone again.

Women exactly like him. It was a huge planet. They wouldn’t be hard to find.

College started in three months. They could be everywhere.

Adam bent to retie the tattered lace on his sneaker, then stood and put out his hand. “Thanks for everything, Mr. Fisher. I did have fun most of the time here at G.C. High. I promise I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t promise me anything,” Mr. Fisher said, clasping his hand. “You’re the one with the promise. Just don’t ignore it.”

Chapter One

Molly Jackson’s pros/cons for keeping her birthday to herself—

Pros:

1. Don’t have to laugh weakly at lame jokes that go, “Let me guess. twenty-nine again, right?” Thirty-two is not only chronologically correct but absolutely acceptable.

2. Don’t have to worry about getting dragged out to a bar or restaurant by well-meaning Danbury Way women only to quietly obsess for three hours that I could be at home preparing that report for my newest client and worry that I’m wasting valuable time.

3. Don’t have to deflect curious, endless questions about my getting-bigger stomach. Don’t have to smile distantly and nod vaguely when the words “sperm bank” inevitably come up. Don’t have to feel guilty, and then extra guilty that I feel guilty.

4. Staying indoors all day means my hair won’t frizz up in the rain.

Cons:

1. Have to make my own cake.

The rain splattered down harder, startling Molly from her thoughts for a moment, but as she watched water stream down the windowpane, she was pulled back into the haven of her organized mind.

Molly was never off task for long, whatever the task happened to be.

Ten minutes later, she was con-less and convinced she’d made the right gut decision about her birthday. Plus, she was itching to get in to her office to start plowing through her in-box. She glanced up at the kitchen clock, which she could see from where she sprawled in the center of her soft, bouncy sofa—8:00 a.m. on the dot. She rose—or tried to rise. Her new weight unbalanced her and she fell back down, her behind sinking into the crevice between the sofa cushions. She was surprised it fit in there, because lately, she’d noticed her back end widening inch by inch, minute by minute. At this rate, by next week she’d be turning sideways to go through doorways. Someone would have to slap a Wide Load sign on the butt of her heather-gray sweatpants, the only item of clothing in her closet that she could still breathe in.

In what was becoming a common occurrence, her noncuddly, nonmaternal thoughts dissolved into guilt. “Sorry, baby,” she said, patting her stomach gently. “I’m just not used to you being so—so there.” She sighed. “Every day, you take me as much by surprise as the day I found out about you.”

Thinking about that, and thinking about how every day for the rest of her life would contain a persistent element of unexpectedness, Molly felt love. And hiding just underneath that thick cozy cover of love, a thinner, shakier stranger of a feeling that could possibly be—

No. Not fear. Molly refused fear. Never let it in.

She planted both palms on the couch and hurled herself up so efficiently she almost flew across the room into the wall. She walked to the staircase and ascended it, each deliberate step taking her away from the moment where she might have given in to her feelings, admitted what the fear did to her, welcomed this emotion she so rarely experienced.

And she refused to experience it, to surrender to it now. She was a single, pregnant career woman, and she couldn’t afford to give in to—that emotion.

She pushed through the door to her office and sat down. She glanced around at the clutterless desk, the efficient file cabinet, the dust-free computer monitor. This was control. She was in control. She could do anything she put her determined mind to.

The phone rang, and she donned her headset. She switched her computer on with one hand as she clicked onto the phone line with her other hand. “M.J. Consulting,” she said, her tone crisp.

She smiled, the same way she did after answering every first phone call of the day. She so loved the name of her own one-woman company. She particularly loved the name of her own company spoken by her in her own office, in her very own still-felt-like-new home.

“Yes, Mr. Trent, how are you?” she asked, leaving the smile on her face so it would come through the receiver on her client’s end. She reached for a pen out of her pencil cup and her hand came up a half-inch short.

Listening intently, Molly leaned forward. She tried not to groan into her headset as her stomach pressed against the desk, holding her back, keeping her capable fingertips just out of reach.

Busy, busy, busy all day long and that was just fine with Molly. By a quarter to four, she was famished, even after having eaten a massive roast-beef sandwich just a few hours ago. She stretched her arms over her head and contracted her tight lower back. Through the narrow break between the filmy lilac-colored curtains, she spied Sylvia Fulton walking back from her mailbox with a pile of magazines and catalogs, a filmy pink scarf tied over her gray hair. Molly waved one of her hands over her head and, squinting, Sylvia waved back, even though she probably couldn’t see Molly, just the shadowy motion of her greeting.

Molly got up and rubbed her lower back. Getting the mail was a good excuse to get blood circulating in her legs again.

She went downstairs and grabbed her umbrella from the pail beside the front door. It was only about twelve paces to the mailbox, but she might as well try to minimize the inevitable hair frizz.

The wind sent a spray of rain into her face, so she tilted her umbrella in front of her—which was why she didn’t see Irene Dare and Rhonda Johnson loitering in front of her house until it was too late to ignore them.

“Hi,” Molly said neutrally, sliding her unimportant-after-all mail from her box and turning to go.

“Molly!” Irene said. “You look just wonderful.”

“Wonderful,” Rhonda echoed.

Molly laid a hand on her stomach and silently apologized to her baby for exposing it to the nasty elements so early in its development. And she wasn’t thinking about the weather.

Rhonda smiled at Molly from under a bright blue umbrella, Irene from a light pink one. Despite the miniature terriers each woman carried like infants, their two smiles reminded Molly of the sly Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp.

“I was just saying to Irene as we passed your house, ‘I wonder how Molly’s doing,’” Rhonda purred—er, said. “And I said, ‘She’s so brave.’”

“Not that brave,” Molly said. “It’s probably safe to assume that women have been having babies since the dawn of humanity.”

“I mean, brave for doing it without a man around to help you.”

“Oh, I don’t think a man will be able to push better than I can when the big day comes.”

Undaunted, Irene chimed in, “You know, there are some people who say that going to a sperm bank is, well, desperate. But I don’t agree with that at all.”

“No?” Molly asked, echoing the sarcasm.

“No, of course not,” Irene went on. “In fact, if I were in your shoes— What I mean is, just getting to the age where it was time to finally give up on finding a man and have a baby on my own—it might be nice to be able to pick and choose what sperm I wanted. Custom-built baby.” She grinned.

“Irene? A baby?” Molly heard someone say, and all three women turned to find Rebecca Peters had walked two doors down from her place. “First of all, one can only assume you’re speaking theoretically.”

Irene, who Molly knew full well was obsessive about preserving her gym-toned looks, sputtered at the not-so-subtle insult.

“Besides,” Rebecca went on smoothly, “would you really be able to handle one more big mouth to feed?”

The grin flew off Rhonda’s face and landed on Molly’s. She covered it discreetly with her hand.

“Rebecca, how lovely to see you,” Rhonda said. “Too bad we were just leaving.” They turned their backs, but before they walked away, Rhonda said over her shoulder, “Molly, you should run inside now if you want to save your hair. Although it looks like it might be too late.”

Rebecca put two fingers in her mouth and made a vomiting sound. “Those two rats. And I’m not even talking about their scrawny little dogs.” She laid a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “I saw them waylay you from my window, so I figured I’d come to your rescue before your hormones made you do something you’d regret.”

Molly reached up and squeezed Rebecca’s long, graceful fingers. “Thank you. Although I’m not sure I would have ever regretted it.”

“Good point.” Rebecca’s sharp blue eyes flashed with leftover rebellion. “I seriously can’t believe their nerve. You know, people insist the city is cold and rude. But let me tell you, I never had to deal with anyone like that before I moved to quiet little Danbury Way.”

“Please don’t let them spoil Rosewood for you,” Molly said. “No one else is like them, you know that.”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“Besides, they live around the corner on Maplewood. They’re not Danbury Way-ers.”

The two women surveyed the wet street companionably from their dead end of the cul-de-sac. Now that Irene and Rhonda had slunk off, they were the only ones out in the dismal weather. After a few moments, Rebecca turned around. “It’s hysterical how from this spot, our places look like little out-houses for Carly’s mega-mansion.”

Molly giggled. As much as she loved her home, and as nice as the house was that Rebecca was renting, they unfortunately flanked the ostentatious brick edifice.

“Good thing I adore Carly so much,” Rebecca said, “or I might be jealous.”

“No, I think if I was going to bother being jealous, it would be of that new man of hers.”

Rebecca grinned. “Yeah, Bo’s something else. I’m happy for them. Listen, you’d better get back inside. You don’t want to catch a cold.”

“I’m fine. But it’s my hair, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re gorgeous and you know it.”

“And for that, you’re invited for lunch tomorrow.”

“Cool. I’ll come by around noon.” She turned to go.

“Rebecca.”

She swiveled back around. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Her friend waved it off. “Please. Don’t you know we city girls are always looking for a fight?” She put up her fists and gave a one-two punch to the air in front of her.

Molly laughed. Rebecca waggled her fingers on both hands, then jogged by Carly’s massive lawn and disappeared around the back of the house.

Molly’s smile lingered even on her getting-harder-every-time climb up the stairs back to her office. She was glad to be getting closer to Rebecca, who worked for a fashion magazine and had a lot of Molly’s own ambition and drive. She wondered what Rebecca would say if she knew the truth about the baby’s father. She had a strong feeling that she could trust Rebecca to keep it to herself, and that she wouldn’t judge Molly, but even still, Molly was too ashamed to say it out loud to anyone, to hear herself admit the facts.

Even her own parents back in California assumed she went to a sperm bank. It didn’t surprise them in the least. They were used to their daughter doing things the unconventional way—buying her own house, starting her own business. They were also used to their daughter’s success—being as they had such an influence on instilling it in the first place—so they had no doubts about Molly’s decisions. They stood behind her, but at a distance. Just like they always did.

The person who’d stood closest to her for so long was Adam, her unlikely best friend. He didn’t know anything about the baby, either. She hadn’t seen him since the reunion, where, preoccupied, she’d inadvertently left without saying goodbye. They’d only exchanged a few innocuous “hi, how are you? I’m still alive” e-mails since then. Molly didn’t question Adam’s lying low because she was too busy doing it herself. She’d tell him she was pregnant the next time they really talked, but she didn’t imagine she could bring herself to tell even him the truth.

Molly’s stomach growled, and when she scowled down at it, she saw the baby move. It was bad enough she ate more in a day than she did in a week pre-pregnancy, without her own body and the extra person occupying it rebelling against her.

She contemplated what was left in her kitchen, and after a minute or so, the phone rang again.

“I’ll make this quick, baby,” Molly said to her middle. “Then I’ll feed us.”

It was Friday afternoon, and she was anticipating a weekend of planning her eventual spring garden. Today she’d lined all her business ducks up in a harmoniously quacking row for next week. Whatever this was, it couldn’t set her too far back.

“M.J. Consulting,” she said, smiling again.

Less than two minutes later, her smile was gone.

Chapter Two

Adam propped his feet up on his second-floor balcony railing, and watched the rain drip onto his bare toes. He’d been planning since yesterday to pick up pad thai on the way home from work today and eat dinner al fresco. September 1 meant summer was on its way out, and he wanted to breathe in the warm air as long as it still surrounded him. Winter in upstate New York had its different snow-covered enjoyments, but it wasn’t time for that just yet.

So with these ambitious plans—and with Adam, this was as ambitious as it got—a day-long deluge wouldn’t change anything. The overhang from his upstairs neighbor’s balcony kept his head and his dinner dry. A few raindrops on his ankles were no hardship.

A tiny black furry flash tore out of the half-open sliding glass door and slid with a soft thud into the wall under Adam’s feet. Just barely righting himself, the Labrador puppy then collided into Adam’s chair leg, and jumped once to try to see what was in his owner’s dish. Then he bumped himself into the wall again, and ran back to Adam again, panting with the excitement of trying to figure out where the most fun was at that moment.

“Elmer,” Adam said. Elmer quivered, looking at Adam’s face, his hands, his dish, his feet. Adam chuckled. Elmer didn’t know his own name, but his exuberance at just hearing Adam’s voice was gratifying.

Adam hoped someone else would be just as happy to hear his voice, as soon as he got around to calling her to wish her a happy birthday. He wasn’t putting it off or anything. It wasn’t even dark yet. Technically, Molly’s birthday didn’t end until midnight.

Waiting until the absolute last minute would be kind of cheesy.

Well, they hadn’t talked to each other at all for approximately six months. She could certainly wait fifteen more minutes while he finished his pad thai. He put a forkful into his mouth. Elmer miniyelped and wagged his tail, watching Adam chew.

Besides, if Molly was so distressed at the six-month hiatus from his voice, she could just as well have picked up the phone and called him.

He shook his head at himself and took a long swallow of ginger ale. The truth was, a six-month hiatus wasn’t exactly unusual in their friendship. Even in college, living in the same dorm, they both knew—verbal acknowledgment unnecessary—that they couldn’t spend many consecutive hours in each other’s presence. Adam’s laid-back attitude got on Molly’s impatient nerves, and Molly’s constant running around gave Adam a serious case of motion sickness. Still, despite their obvious limitations, they each bestowed upon the other the title of best friend. For Adam—and he guessed for Molly, too—no one else had ever seemed to qualify for the position, and at some point soon after they met, the job was filled and no other applicants were considered.

After college, they’d gone their own separate ways, and drifted in and out of each other’s everyday lives. Some weeks, they chatted on the phone nightly. And sometimes months went by without an exchanged word or e-mail. The thing was, Adam always knew she was there, and that was enough. More than that was neediness, which sounded like a relationship, which was synonymous with trouble, as far as he was concerned.

The past six months were different, though, in that Adam had deliberately stayed away. The last time he’d seen her, she was leaving their ten-year college reunion with her long-unrequited crush, Zach Jones. Not just leaving with him, but leaving with his arm possessively around her waist, laughing up at him, her head thrown back so far her dark curls brushed the alluring curve of her behind.

Adam could have called her anytime after that. He could have said, “So. Zach Jones. You finally bagged that creep.” And she could have said, “Why do you care?” And maybe that’s why he’d never called—because he didn’t have an answer to that particular question for her. Or for himself.

She also could have said, “He turned out to be a jerk, just like you always thought.” And maybe that was one more reason he’d never called—because he didn’t want to give her the opportunity to not say that.

Whatever. Molly had a right to leave a party with anyone she wanted, even a schmuck like Zach Jones. And Adam had a right not to talk to her about it. So he’d limited his contact to a few random, somewhat impersonal e-mails—and her responses weren’t more than acknowledgments. Maybe she was avoiding him, too?

He shoveled in another mouthful of pad thai, slightly colder than the last bite. Elmer turned his puppy face up to the dark clouds in the distance and a stray raindrop blew into his eye. He blinked and shook and yelped again, wagging his happy tail.

The thing was, Molly had no idea Adam’s silence was anything but golden. She had no idea how inexplicably annoyed he was with her, with her uncharacteristically poor judgment. But if he failed to call her on her birthday, that was an egregious error. One that she would remember and hold over his head. That part, he could handle. But she’d be hurt, too, and that part he couldn’t handle. Hurting a woman like Molly Jackson by not calling her on her birthday would make him the schmuck.

Another bite of dinner was the deciding factor. “I think this is destined for the microwave, buddy,” he said, standing. Elmer leaped as high as he could, barely scraping Adam’s kneecap.

“Down, boy. I meant for tomorrow,” Adam said. “For lunch.” He stepped into his living room and Elmer trotted in behind him. Adam slid the door shut. “I have to make a call,” he continued, heading into the kitchen and reaching under the sink for the aluminum foil. “I have to wish Molly a happy birthday. I don’t know what else we’re going to talk about, but I know one thing is for sure.” He tore off a piece of foil, fitted it over the dinner plate and slid it into the refrigerator. “It’ll probably be a more interesting and complex conversation than these deep ones I have with you. No offense.”

Elmer wagged his tail, eyeballing the bottom shelf of the open refrigerator. Adam closed the door.

“You and I have fun, though, huh?” He rubbed his dog’s head. “Molly. Now that’s a girl who’s not about fun. She’s about work. Maybe she thinks work is fun.”

Elmer groaned and lay down on the linoleum.

“I agree. She’s nuts. People like that—” An image of his father floated to the front of his memory. Dad, who always did everything one-handed because the other hand was always clutching either a phone or a legal pad or his briefcase. “People like that—they die way too early,” Adam finished weakly. “They’re not for us.”

Elmer stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Molly is—well, Molly just needs to get out more,” Adam said.

Remembering that the last time he saw Molly she was going out and then he held it against her, he felt bad enough to finally grab the phone off the charger and dial her number. Before he got to the last digit, he hung up and tried to decide how he was going to musically deliver the happy birthday message. Traditional version? Beatles version? Finally deciding on the smelling-like-a-monkey version—even though he suspected he might have done that one last year—he redialed Molly’s number.

“Hello?”

Something was wrong. Molly’s voice was muffled, like she was speaking into the wrong end of a megaphone, or she was underwater, or she was…crying?

Molly? Crying?

“Molly?”

He was answered with a big, wet sniffle.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the birthday blues,” he ventured.

No answer yet, but was that a sob? Sounded like a strangled something in the back of her throat.

Worried, Adam tried again with humor. “Come on, Moll, maybe you’re over the hill but you’re not totally decrepit yet. You looked pretty good the last time I saw you.” In that short black dress and illegally high heels, she’d looked better than pretty good, in fact. And he hadn’t been the only one who’d thought so.

“Thirty-two is not over the hill, Shibbs,” she finally said, petulance obvious even under the sniffling.

“Sure it is. It’s all downhill from here.”

“I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.”

That wasn’t what worried Adam, because Molly wasn’t exactly someone aligned to Adam’s constant levity. It was the tears that were concerning. “Come on. Didn’t your birthday wishes come true?”

“Actually, let me think,” she said, sniffling so hard she coughed twice. “You know, I guess they did come true after all. This morning I woke up and thought, ‘Oh, it’s my birthday. I think the best gift anyone can give me today is a nice big stack of walking papers!’ And I had to wait the whole day, but just as I was finishing up work, at the very last second, I got my wish!”

Adam’s mouth hung open, and he thought it was very possible he was just as surprised as Molly must have been. “You got fired?”

“Only by my biggest client. No big deal.” She sighed, and a little sob came out with it.

“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

“I never got fired before.”

Neither had Adam, but he considered it best to keep that to himself. Molly was well aware of his relaxed work style, and it wasn’t going to make her feel any better that she’d now been canned one more time than he had.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. It wasn’t me. It was budget cuts. They had to let a lot of people go. An outside consultant wasn’t someone they were willing to save at the expense of one of their full-timers.”

“Of course not.”

“I begged them to keep me. I told them I’d revise our plans, make it more affordable, anything. It was humiliating, the way I acted. It was even worse than the firing part.”

“Then why did you?”

“I’m losing a big chunk of income.”

“Listen, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Well, I can’t exactly write ‘Not my fault’ on my mortgage check.”

“No, but your business has been going well enough to land you that gig in the first place. M.J. Consulting has a great rep. You’ll get another job soon enough. And you’ve got other clients. So you’ll eat mac-and-cheese and Ramen noodles for a couple of weeks, and by then you’ll have recovered. Tighten your belt a little.”

“Trust me, that’s not even physically possible.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed again, and this time it wasn’t accompanied by sobs and sniffles. Just noisy mouth breathing, caused by her now certainly stuffed nose.

“You know, I’ve been asking you for years to breathe heavy for me on the phone, babe, but you refused,” he joked.

“We can’t eat Ramen for weeks,” Molly said flatly.

“Sure you can. I can teach you 750 ways to cook that stuff—” Wait a minute. We? “We?” he asked. Was Zach Jones—there? Sitting next to her while she had this conversation? And if he was, why wasn’t he the one reassuring her, comforting her, trying to make her smile?

“Yeah. We. There’s two of us now, Adam. I haven’t— I suppose we haven’t talked in a while.”

“Well, I guess I should have known when you left with Jones at the reunion.”

She sputtered. “What? What do you take me for?”

“Just a woman who’s in love with a jerk.” Adam cringed. That just slipped out. He couldn’t help it. “Just tell him if he loves you, mac-and-cheese shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Oh, my God, Adam,” Molly said slowly. “If I didn’t know for a fact you’re smart, I’d call you an idiot. Zach’s not here. He dumped me when that weekend was barely over.”

“Molly, I’m—”

“Adam, I’m pregnant. It’s Zach’s.”

Adam opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and found he couldn’t stop doing it.

“I can’t believe I told you that. Actually, I’m glad I did,” Molly amended. “I’m sick of keeping it to myself. No one knows.”

“About the baby?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to hide a baby when you’re six months pregnant. No one knows about where the baby came from. Everyone around here, all my neighbors and friends, sort of quietly assumed I went to a sperm bank.”

“And you sort of quietly didn’t correct them.”

“What’s your point?”

“No point. Getting it all straight.” So Molly, my-life-is-a-well-oiled-machine Molly, was single, pregnant and financially shaky. That would be all of it straight.

“So you were right,” Molly said. “Zach is a jerk.”

For some reason, Adam was missing the deep satisfaction he’d expected to have upon hopefully hearing those words.

“So,” Adam said, “what’s your plan for this? Molly Jackson has an answer to everything.”

A long pause. “I know. But my best answer is far from a sure thing.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Well, there’s this Dutch chemical company called ALCOP that’s ready to open up a big plant here in Rosewood in a couple of weeks. They’re looking for a consultant to implement their human resources needs.”

“That’s right up your alley.”

“I’ve got great experience, sterling references—including the firm who just fired me, by the way, because they actually did like me—and I know I’d be the best local person this chem company can find. And it will be about six times the size of any other firm I’ve done work for. It’s a yearlong commitment, so I can count on the money being good for at least that long.”

“What’s not the sure thing?”

“Well, see, I heard about ALCOP not too long ago, and I decided then not to go for it. I had that other big client and besides, I’ve heard that the company president, Pieter Tilberg, is notorious for not hiring women for key positions.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Illegal or not, the glass ceiling hangs in too many places to count. That’s the way it is. That’s part of the reason why I struck out on my own in the first place.”

“You are woman. I hear you roaring.”

“Funny, Shibbs. So I figured, I’m doing fine, I don’t have the time, and besides, if this ALCOP guy’s got an issue with women, I can only imagine the issues he’d have with a single, pregnant one. But now—”

“Now you’ve got to take that chance?”

“I got fired at four o’clock. And I’ve now spent about five hours putting together a proposal,” she said. “And you know what? It’s flawless. Anyone would hire me. Even I would hire me. But when I walk in there, Tilberg won’t see my brain. He’ll see my big belly. And he won’t want to see it again. I’ll lose this chance, not because of my résumé but because of my private life.”

She broke down again, sobbing hard. “I’ve hardly even had a private life,” she managed to add.

Adam’s mind raced to take Molly-like control. “All right. You have to calm down. Freaking out is not useful. It’s not on the to-do list.”

Molly, a historical fan of lists, ceased her sobs a bit. When he could count to at least five between them, Adam said, “Did you get yourself an interview?”

“At the very last second,” Molly said shakily. “By the time I pulled myself together and made my decision, it was nearly six o’clock. I think I caught the HR director as she was leaving for the day. I hope I didn’t sound too desperate.”

“You’re not desperate.”

“The hell I’m not.”

“You’re not. Desperate people are people without resources. You have plenty of those. You have your brains, your résumé, your references…and me.”

“Oh, you, huh? You work for Gibraltar Foods, which has nothing to do with what I do. And besides, you don’t even care about work. You’re not much help to me right now. No offense.”

“Listen,” he said, “you’re a woman, and although in this day and age you could certainly change that, you don’t want to. And you’re pregnant, and that’s not changing, either. But one element of your situation is changeable, flexible. Masqueradeable.”

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about your being single. Why does anyone have to know that? Just during your big meeting, casually mention your devoted husband, Adam Shibbs.”

“What?” She pitched the word so high, she sounded like one of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

“Just tell the chem company honcho that you happen to be married. I’ll give you a ride from the interview and you can say your husband’s picking you up.”

“Adam, that’s not going to work. I appreciate the innovation behind the idea, but this place will undoubtedly do a background check. Then not only will I be exposed as single, but a big old liar on top of that.”

Adam blew a breath out from his bottom lip, and he felt the air on the tip of his nose. “So get married.”

Molly laughed an unamused, sharp laugh. “Oh, sure, no problem. Let me just run out right now and grab a man off the street.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Adam said, his heart beginning to pound a little faster even as his own words were falling out of his mouth. “I told you, you have resources, and I’m one of them.”

His heart was shocked at the decision his brain had made so hastily. Or, maybe his heart had made the decision without any brain input. Either way, Adam was not all together. He couldn’t be, or his ears wouldn’t have just heard his mouth say what it said.

There was an extended silence. Before Adam could use the empty time to question his own wisdom, before he could remind himself that Molly was precisely the kind of woman he could never make this sort of monumental decision with, he said, “I do believe this is literally a pregnant pause.”

“I’m just trying to take the time I need to make sure I did not misunderstand you,” Molly answered slowly.

“I apologize for not being totally clear,” Adam said. “What I meant to say was, let’s get married.”

He thought at first that the thud in his ear was his conscience trying to beat some sense into his skull.

A half moment later, he realized it was the loud echo of Molly’s abrupt disconnection.

Molly stared wide-eyed at the phone lying on the ground next to the wall, where she’d flung it as if it had spontaneously combusted next to her ear.

A second later, she scrambled over to snatch it off the floor and dialed Adam’s number. “Oops,” she said when he answered on the first half ring. “I, uh, I dropped the phone.” She shrugged one shoulder as if he could see it in his apartment twenty miles away.

“Of course.”

“So I missed the rest of your joke.”

“What joke?”

“You—you said, ‘Let’s get marr-marr—’” Molly cleared her throat. “You said—”

“Let’s get married.”

Hearing those words in Adam’s voice, did things as weird and foreign to her insides as the baby did. “Right, and then I hung up on the punch line.”

“There was no punch line.”

“Adam, can you cease and desist with the games right now? I had a hell of a day, and—”

“No games. I’m dead serious. We always said we’d marry each other anyway if we didn’t have better offers.”

Molly didn’t remind him that that agreement was supposed to go into effect when they turned thirty, and then in a semidrunken panic at his surprise party, they had mutually declared that pact null and void, at least until they hit forty.

What did it say about her that it was the closest she’d ever gotten to a marriage proposal? Well, until two minutes ago.

“Just for one year,” Adam went on. “The term of your job. What’s the big deal? Unless you have a boyfriend these days that I also have no idea about.”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t have a girlfriend at present. So I repeat, what’s the big deal? We’ll go to a justice of the peace, get married, you’ll get your great job, everyone’s happy.”

“What’ll you get out of it?”

He paused. “Helping you. We’re best friends. That’s my job.”

“This would have to be a serious secret,” Molly warned. “I mean, serious. I wouldn’t even tell my friends and neighbors the truth. I’m a terrible liar. If I tell one story to everyone, it’ll be easier.”

“Agreed.”

“Marry Adam Shibbs?” Molly mumbled. “Oh, that was meant to be internal dialogue,” she said, louder. “Sorry.”

“Hey,” he said, wounded. “I happen to know dozens of women who would love to marry me.”

“I’m sorry.” She paused. “I mean, we’d have to live together to keep this up. You’d have to live here.”

“You can come here, if you prefer.”

“No, there’s more room here and this is my—well, this is my house. I don’t want to be somewhere else. Especially while I’m pregnant.”

“Understood.”

“You’d be moving into my house,” she reiterated, and then she sank to the floor. She leaned her back against the wall and stretched her legs out in front of her. “We’re overlooking the small fact that we annoy the crap out of each other.”

“True. But I think this is important enough for us to compromise.”

“We can’t compromise our personalities, can we? For a whole year? We’re so different.” Which is why we’ve never even attempted to date, she added silently. Which is why we’re best friends.

Adam didn’t answer, and Molly realized he wouldn’t. He knew she could argue him into the ground on any point. So he’d rested his case, and it was now up to her.

Marry Adam?

It would be in name only. She knew he’d stick to the rules they set. But wasn’t marriage supposed to be something more, something about love?

She did love Adam. But not in the to-have-and-to-hold way. More like in the to-have-fun-and-to-hold-good-parties-with way. Right. She put a hand over her chest, felt the pounding of her heart. And that, that was merely because she was surprised.

It didn’t seem right to compromise on marriage. If she was ever going to bother taking this kind of step, it should be for the right, idealistic reasons.

“I can’t,” she finally said. “Adam, I can’t. Because you’re my friend, my real friend. Which you’re proving by offering to make this kind of sacrifice. And I will be grateful to you forever, but I just can’t.”

Adam still didn’t respond, and Molly thought for an impossible moment that she might have really hurt him, that he felt rejected. A little pain stabbed at her heart. Then he said, “All right. I thought it was a good idea, but it’s just as well. I’ve heard that you snore.”

It was a typical Adam comment, but the last word fell a tiny bit flat. “I’d better go,” Molly said. “I’m hungry again, which is not to be believed. And, Adam…thank you.”

“Don’t say thank you. Saying no to a marriage proposal is one thing. Saying ‘no, thanks’ to a marriage proposal is another.”

Molly said a hasty goodbye and hung up. She put her head in her hands, and didn’t realize she was crying again until she felt the tears leak out from between her fingers and drip down her wrist. Stupid hormones. If it hadn’t been for all her uncharacteristic boo-hooing, Adam wouldn’t have lost his mind and proposed, she wouldn’t have said no, and things wouldn’t be all strange between them now.

But she couldn’t do what he was suggesting. Even if it wasn’t really real. Adam was not the man she was supposed to marry. She was supposed to marry a man just like her—ambitious and career-oriented, someone who understood her goals not because she had to explain them, but because he had similar ones. That’s what her parents had in each other. That’s why Molly had been one of the only children in her small, elite private grade school with still-married parents. She’d emulated them in so many ways, so why not this important one?

“It’s worth waiting for,” she whispered to her baby, but why did it feel as if she were trying to convince herself? Her eyes overflowed again.

Plunk.

It was the sound of a large drop hitting the floor. A drop too heavy to be a tear.

Plunk.

This time, Molly was looking straight ahead and caught sight of the drop hitting her hardwood floor about six inches in front of her. She got onto her hands and knees, crawled to the spot, looked at the little puddle and sat back on her heels and tilted her head up to peer at the ceiling.

Plunk.

This drop didn’t hit the floor. It hit Molly’s large stomach. She stared at the spot on her sweater.

The ceiling was leaking. Leaking.

She jumped up awkwardly, scrambled into her office and turned over her wastebasket. Crumpled sticky notes and receipts skittered across the floor as she carried the bucket to the hallway, positioning it under the leak, which had quickened into a more regular plunk-plunk-plunk.

A freaking ceiling leak. This was going to cost—well, she couldn’t even guess. All she knew was, roof leaks were not cheap. She was really going to call that inspector she’d used and give him a piece of her mind.

She glanced down again at the wet spot on her shirt, and rubbed it with her hand. Her eyes welled up again.

No. This was going to be under control. She could do this. She was going to be an excellent mother. She was going to be as good at it as she was at everything else. And she was not going to let it rain on her little baby’s head.

She would do whatever it took to keep her future, and the future of her child, secure. And dry.

She snatched the phone off the floor where she’d left it, and hit redial. When Adam answered, she said, “Here’s the thing. If you think you’re going to be entitled to any special, ah, privileges of marriage, you will be mistaken.”

A beat. “Too bad,” he said. “I was kind of looking forward to complaining about my mother-in-law.”

“That’s not the privilege I’m referring to and you damn well know it.”

“Didn’t this conversation end already with you saying no?”

“I take it back.”

“Pardon?”

Molly took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and told her best friend, “It’s a deal. For one year, you’ve got yourself a wife.”

Chapter Three

Most Saturday mornings, Adam woke up with ideas in his head about how he was going to spend a fun weekend. Basketball with the guys, a romp in the park with Elmer, trying out a new restaurant, taking in an action flick, watching a ball game on TV with a large sausage pizza. Some weekends, he could cram all those things in, if he wanted to. Or he could spend two days sitting in an armchair reading books about topics he’d discovered he found interesting so that by Monday morning, he was a pseudo-expert.

This was definitely the first Saturday morning when he awoke, blinked at the sunlight streaming in on either side of the window shade, and thought, I need to pack a suitcase so I can go get married.

He squinted at the glowing red numbers on his clock. After ten already. Well, he’d been up kind of late. He’d figured he should remain near the phone in case Molly called him back and changed her mind again.

She hadn’t. And he’d stayed on his sofa through two and a half lame infomercials just to be sure.

He rolled out of bed and onto his knees on the floor. He stretched his hands over his head and let out a loud groan, then reached under his bed and slid out his suitcase. He blew a dust bunny off the top of it and Elmer, who’d been quietly sitting in the corner, chased it back under the bed.

Adam heaved the bag onto the still-warm sheets and opened it. He really didn’t know how much to pack. A little piece of him was feeling as if this were a dream. It was a pretty big suitcase, though. He decided to pack it until it was full.

He emptied two large dresser drawers next to the bag, then picked a pair of jeans out of the pile and slid them on his body, leaving the top button open. Then he began to fold without giving much thought to each garment. His brain was filled with Molly, and what she was thinking this morning, but in all the time he’d known that woman, he could never guess what she was thinking.

He wondered if husbands were supposed to know what their wives were thinking. Probably not, but their guesses were likely to be at least in the ballpark.

Right now, he felt like the starting pitcher in a game he wasn’t even originally supposed to play.

He rolled up several T-shirts and tossed them in the bag, picking up his pace, trying to keep his mind busy so it wouldn’t amuse itself with any more bad baseball analogies.

Should he pack towels? Molly would have lots of towels, but could he presume he’d be using them? Would marriage entitle him to towel usage? What about sheets?

Where was he going to sleep, anyway? And why didn’t he think about all this before he proposed?

“This is too much,” Adam muttered in Elmer’s direction. Elmer responded by pricking up his ears, then bounding out of the room.

Adam was shaking out his brown corduroy pants and hoping for a supernatural sign that he was doing the right thing when he heard his name ring out.

“Adam! Where are you?”

For a moment, he allowed himself the luxury of thinking that the divine was summoning him for a heart-to-heart. But unless the divine was taking the form of his mother’s voice, that wasn’t to be.

“Uncle Adam!” The voices of Trevor and Billy, his nephews, echoed through the small apartment, followed by his sister’s bellowing. “Where the heck are you? Still sleeping?”

Last night’s monumental events had completely erased his memory of his family’s scheduled visit this morning. He couldn’t let them see he was packing. He wasn’t in the mood for questions right now, and he couldn’t logically sort things out for them before he sorted them out for himself.

He rushed out of his bedroom and slammed the door hard behind him, colliding head-on with Janine.

“Watch it, buddy,” his sister said. “You forgot we were coming, didn’t you?”

“Heck, no. You wound me.”

“Then you were so excited to see us, you forgot to put on a shirt?”

“That’s right.”

She hugged him and patted his bare shoulders. “Nice to see you.”

“You, too.” His sister’s brown hair was smushed into a girly ponytail thing, which looked cute but was not the kind of thing she would have done with her hair before having kids. He remembered her hours with the hair dryer and curling iron, leaving Adam to hop up and down outside the bathroom, waiting. His sister was still pretty, but in a softer, less deliberate way.

Trevor and Billy flew into Adam, their collisions purposeful. “Oof.”

“Uncle Adam,” Trevor said with all the urgency of an eight-year-old. “I got a goal in soccer. It went right over the goalie’s head.”

Not to be outdone, ten-year-old Billy cut in. “I got first seat trumpet in band this year. I beat all the sixth-graders. I can’t wait for school to start.”

“That’s a new one,” Janine mumbled, rumpling both her sons’ hair.

“You guys rock,” Adam said. “I have the coolest nephews ever.”

They both grinned, and although blond Trevor and dark-haired Billy didn’t look much alike at first glance, their smiles were nearly identical.

“I love it when all my kids are in one place,” he heard, and the kids stepped aside to let Adam’s mother hug him. “How are you?”

“Same, no change,” Adam said, inhaling his mother’s classic French perfume, the kind he got her for Mother’s Day every year, as she rested her head of brunette curls on his chest. He glanced guiltily at the closed bedroom door. “Let’s go see what I have to eat.”

“Probably nothing, as usual,” Pam said. “So we brought plenty.” She headed to the kitchen, two hungry kids scampering behind. Adam went to follow them, but turned to check the door one last time.

It was open, and Janine was stepping out into the hall.

“What are you doing?” Adam asked.

“Tossing my sweater on your bed, where I always put it.”

“Why are you wearing a sweater? It’s like eighty-five degrees outside.”

“Why are you packing? Are you going somewhere?”

Adam pushed his sister back into his room and kicked the door shut.

“Oh,” Janine squealed, balling her fists in excitement. “It’s a secret. What is it?”

“None of your business,” Adam said, pulling on a black T-shirt and trying to sound fierce enough for his sister to back off. He should have known it would only intrigue her further.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she insisted, her threatening tone matching his. She was only a year older than him, but somehow she always managed to make it seem as if it were much more.

“Or what?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Or I’m telling Mom.”

“What are you, five? Besides, you don’t even know what you’re telling her,” Adam countered, getting a bit nervous.

“I don’t have to. I’ll just tell her something’s up and she’ll drag it out of you.”

Adam knew she was right. “Janine, I’m serious.”

“So am I. You can’t just be taking off somewhere, all cloak-and-dagger, with like a month’s worth of clothes, and leave us here to worry about you.”

“I’m not going far.”

“Where’s not far?”

The two siblings glared at each other in a silent standoff, until Janine broke it by throwing open the door and yelling, “Mom!”

“You’re not even my real sister,” Adam said in juvenile desperation. “Mom and Dad just felt sorry for you when your spaceship left without you, and they took you in.”

Janine put her hands on her hips. “For your information, I didn’t even believe that when I was a kid.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said, “because I happen to know for a fact that a pack of mangy wolves left you on our doorstep when you were a baby.”

“Really?” asked Trevor, who had come into the room without the adults noticing. “You’re a wolf, Uncle Adam?”

“I’m not just any wolf,” Adam told his towheaded nephew. “I’m the Big Bad Wolf.” He howled menacingly and lunged, causing Trevor to shriek. Elmer bounded in and added his puppy howls to the fray. Laughing, Janine joined in. Billy ran in to see what the racket was about and began howling too without knowing why.

An earsplitting whistle pierced the air, and the noise abruptly ceased.

“It’s clear I raised a bunch of wild animals,” Pam said to the silence. A few giggles came from the two boys.

“Billy and Trevor,” Pam said, “go to the living room and take Elmer with you.” She turned to the two adults, and Adam detected a twinkle in her eye. “Watch TV for a few minutes. I need to talk to my children.”

The boys, snickering the way kids did when they saw their elders being treated like fellow kids, edged out of the room, Billy gently tugging a still-scrabbling Elmer by the collar.

Adam marveled, and certainly not for the first time, at how his mother, the epitome of homespun living, could put an effective smackdown on a roomful of misbehavior.

“Mom,” Janine said. “Adam has something to tell you.”

“Space-alien girl,” Adam muttered.

“What is it?” Pam demanded of her son. When he didn’t answer, she scanned the room for a hint, and saw the open suitcase, half filled with T-shirts and boxer shorts. She addressed her daughter. “What is going on?”

Janine shrugged, eyeballing her brother.

Adam threw up his hands in defeat, and walked over to the suitcase. He had plenty to do, and he really couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

“I’m moving out for a little while,” he said. “And I fully intended to tell you. Janine, I was going to ask you if you want to stay here with the boys and keep an eye on the place. For free. I’ll keep up the rent.”

Janine appeared suddenly ecstatic. Adam knew she’d hated to impose on their mother by having to stay with her since her recent divorce. Although Adam suspected Pam didn’t mind in the least.

“For how long?” Janine asked.

“Oh,” Adam said, trying to sound nonchalant, “about a year.”

“A year?” Janine yelled.

“Did you get some kind of transfer?” his mother asked, and Adam noticed she was trying to stay calm. He hastened his explanation.

“No, I’m going to stay with Molly for a while.”

Both women stared at him. “Is Molly okay?” Pam asked. “She’s not sick, is she?”

“No, not exactly. She’s kind of—well, pregnant.”

Silence.

Adam began folding clothes faster. “So I’m going to marry her for a little while. It’s not a big deal.”

The silence continued, and when he ventured a glance up, both women had their mouths wide open.

“She’s pregnant?” Janine finally asked. “She—you and she—”

“No,” Adam interrupted. “Not me. I’m not the father.”

“But you’re marrying her?” Pam asked. “So you’re in love with her?”

“No,” Adam said quickly. “Absolutely not in love. Just helping out. Best-friend duty.”

“Why?” Janine asked. “Molly seems too sensible for weirdness like this. And you, Mr. Serial Dater, making any commitment for longer than twelve hours stuns me.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Look,” Adam said, raking his hands through his hair and looking at his family, “I can’t tell you any more than that. I promised her. She’s in a situation, she needs help, and no one is supposed to know this marriage isn’t a real one.”

“But it will be a real one,” Pam pointed out.

“I mean, a marriage based on—on…”

“On love?” Janine asked.

Adam said nothing.

“Because,” his sister went on, “after all, you are not in love with her.”

“I’m not in love with her,” Adam repeated through gritted teeth. “How many times will I have to say that?”

“Probably about once a day,” Pam said, “if you’re going to be married and living under the same roof.”

Adam wished his mother weren’t so smart, because then he could just ignore her, instead of experiencing an uneasy internal foreshadowing.

“So, when can we move in here?” Janine asked.

“I’m going over to Molly’s tonight. But I’ll have to keep coming back for my stuff every now and then.”

“Sure.”

“When are you and Molly actually getting married?” Pam inquired, sitting on the edge of the bed and picking up a pair of already folded khakis. She unfolded them, shook them out and folded them in a much neater, expert way.

“I’m not absolutely sure. Some time next week?”

“Well, as long as the mother of the groom gets a little advance notice.”

“Mom,” he said. “This isn’t that kind of wedding.”

“Every wedding is that kind of wedding,” Pam informed her son. “I intend to be there.”

“Me, too,” Janine said. “Did you get rings?”

“I haven’t even gotten breakfast,” Adam said. “This was all decided less than fifteen hours ago.”

“You need rings,” Janine said.

“And flowers,” Pam said.

“Molly’s going to kill me that you guys even know about this,” Adam said.

His mother looked surprised. “Surely Molly didn’t think you weren’t going to tell your family you got married?”

“Well, she didn’t want anyone to know it’s not really for real.”

“But you haven’t told us practically anything,” Janine said reasonably. “Besides, we won’t breathe a word. Because what if you guys actually do fall in love?”

Adam dropped his travel alarm clock on the floor and it buzzed shrilly. He picked it up and fumbled with it. “We won’t,” he said over the din. How did something this small make so much noise? Where was the damn button? He found it and the clock quieted in his hands. He almost said, We won’t, because not only did I decide long ago, when Dad died, that I wouldn’t live like him, but I also decided I wouldn’t love anyone who lived like him. And Molly is so, so like him. Instead, he just cut the reply down to, “We won’t.”

His mother and his sister met each other’s eyes.

“Do not do that,” he said.

“Do what?” they both asked him.

“Give each other that female look. You know what I’m talking about.”

“How is Molly feeling?” Pam asked, deftly taking control of the conversation. “How far along is she?”

“I guess fine. Six months.”

Pam looked taken aback. “Six months already? And you didn’t know about this at all?”

“I haven’t talked to her in about that long.”

“Well, if she needs a hand with anything at all, tell her she can always call your sister or me for professional mother advice.”

“She won’t have to. She’s Molly. She’s got everything under control.”

Pam’s eyebrows disappeared underneath her wispy bangs. “You think a woman going through her first pregnancy, and perhaps an unexpected one at that, a woman who also runs her own business and not too long ago bought her own home, has got everything ‘under control’?”

Adam paused midfold and ruminated a moment. Molly popped into his head—pinstriped, efficiently quick-moving Molly, holding a stack of folders in one hand and a phone in the other. “Sure.”

Then his mental picture suddenly warped and changed. Molly’s midsection expanded, popping two blazer buttons. Overwhelming tears rolled down her cheeks, the shocking tears he’d heard on the phone. The tears that drove him to propose marriage to a woman who was his polar opposite in every imaginable way.

“Sure,” he repeated, but this time the word sounded a little bit false.

This plan had made a whole lot more sense before his family started asking questions.

Hadn’t it?

He bent and dragged a pair of sneakers off his closet floor, and emerged just in time to see Janine and Pam exchange another one of those looks, but this time Adam deliberately ignored it. Just because they had a history of always being right, didn’t mean they would be right when it came to Molly. Or him.

Adam parked in front of Molly’s house, but Molly, absorbed in the garden patch underneath a front window with her back to him, didn’t appear to hear his car. He sat and watched her.

The muscles in her back worked underneath her thin white T-shirt as she bent over doing who knew what in the dirt. Every few seconds, she flipped her dark masses of curls over her shoulder, only to have them slip down her front again. And every few minutes, she toppled over.

She was sitting on a little stool low to the ground, and she seemed to be having a difficult time keeping her balance. She kept catching herself before actually hitting the grass, but he could interpret the mounting frustration in her body, just a little bit more with each time she righted herself. He didn’t have to see the expression of grim determination on her face to know it was there. It was her most popular look.

When he saw her pick up a little shovel and fling it with annoyance to the ground, sending bits of soil flying, he decided it was time to save her from herself.

He got out of his car and slammed the door. Her head snapped around. Now, that look, Adam thought, was not a familiar one on Molly. Nervous, unsure, lacking confidence and maybe even a little…scared.

He raised his hand in greeting and she got to her feet, kicking the stool away from her. She turned, and—

Whoa.

She approached him, and a wry smile curved up one corner of her top lip. She tugged down the hem of her shirt as she walked. “Notice anything different about me?” she asked when she stopped in front of him.

“Just the most obvious thing,” Adam answered. “Nice rack.”

Molly’s eyes widened, but then she crossed her arms over her breasts and, Adam noticed, tried and failed to not look pleased. She’d complained as long as he’d known her about what she called her hereditary flat chest, and although he’d never found her physically lacking in any way whatsoever, he had a feeling that she’d consider pregnancy breasts a bonus.

The truth was, there was quite a lot different about Molly today, and it wasn’t just her breasts or the swell of her midsection. Her hair seemed thicker somehow, curls a man could lose his hands in if he ventured to touch them. And her skin, always smooth and clear, seemed somehow purified, bright, like a light had been switched on inside her and was radiating out from every pore on her face, her neck, her arms. A trickle of perspiration ran down between her collarbone and disappeared into the new crevice between her suddenly lush breasts, and Adam felt his own upper lip grow damp in response.

He blinked.

For years, he’d had physical reactions to Molly. A man would have to be blind and deaf and one hundred percent oblivious not to be affected by her in any way. But the reaction was different now, stronger, needier, now that he was faced with the softer, more feminine, more vulnerable Molly. The woman that he was about to marry and live with for a year.

He swallowed and waited for her to speak, but she didn’t appear to know what to say next, either, so they stood regarding each other in silence.

He saw her eyes travel down to his shoulders, down his torso, all the way down to his beat-up sneakers and back up again. Her neutral expression didn’t change, and Adam supposed that was a plus. She could have curled her lip in disgust, thinking, This lazy, unmotivated guy who makes me mental is going to save my career?

It’s you who doesn’t understand me, Adam thought back at her. You don’t know why I am the way I am because I never told you. I never told you everything about my father because I don’t talk about that, ever, with anyone.

But, he continued in his mind, I will rescue you. I will be the hero because I have a feeling this is the only time in your life that you ever needed one.

“Want to see the house?” Molly asked, and Adam was startled at the subject change before he realized it wasn’t one, that they hadn’t been really communicating and that his assurances to her were still only in his head.

“Sure,” he said, and allowed her to lead him inside. “What were you planting?”

“Mums.”

“That’s appropriate. Mums for a new mum. If, you know, you were British.”

Molly chuckled at the weak joke and ushered him through her front door.

The last time he’d been to Molly’s Danbury Way home, she’d just moved in and there were neatly taped, unpacked boxes stacked in almost every corner. Now the boxes were gone and every room was vibrant with color and style—ruby and saffron pillows piled on the sofa, tiny bud vases on end tables sprouting pussy willows, shaggy, ropey throw rugs on the shining wood floors. A stranger would instantly know that Molly paid obsessive attention to the smallest details, and that this house was a manifestation of a longtime dream of how a home should be. Molly’s sweeping hand gesture as they entered the warm living room, the sunny kitchen and the flowery bathroom, conveyed her pride in her hard work.

In all the rooms—except one.

At the top of the stairs, next to her bedroom, one door remained shut.

“What’s in here?” Adam inquired, opening the door.

“Oh,” Molly said, “that’s the nursery.”

Not that you could tell. The walls were a flawless white, the window covered only with open blinds. Early-evening light angled in between the slats, illuminating the bereft emptiness of the rest of the room.

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