Not Another Bad Date

Chapter 18

“You’re what?” Lucy Rothschild-McIntyre sat up straight in her chair, a piece of chocolate torte suspended on the fork tines in front of her face.

Clare Vaughan stared across the kitchen table at Adele, her eyes wide as Maddie Jones set down her glass of wine and lifted a brow. “Are you shitting me?” Maddie asked.

Adele shook her head. Her three closest friends sat at her kitchen table in her home in Boise, feasting on Lucy’s torte. She’d been home a day and a half, and her friends had come over to cook dinner together and catch up. Adele had waited until dessert to drop her bombshell.

“Nope,” Adele answered, and took a bite of cake. “Not shitting you. I’m pregnant.”

“And you waited until now to tell us.”

Adele shrugged. “I knew that’s all we’d talk about, and I wanted to know what y’all have been up to first.”

One corner of Maddie’s lips rose. “Y’all?”

“How far along are you?” Clare asked.

“Eight weeks now.” Two months. The nausea hadn’t let up, and her breasts were sore. She could practically feel them getting bigger, pushing against the restraint of her C cups.

The three friends all glanced at each other, and Maddie asked, “Who’s the daddy?”

“His name is Zach Zemaitis.” The sound of his name on her lips brought back memories of him and made her heart stutter. Distance had not put a dent in healing her heart.

A frown wrinkled Lucy’s brow. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“He used to play professional football.” She remembered the day in his office when she’d read about his skilled hands. She took another bite and said around a mouthful of torte, “He played for Denver.”

The wrinkle in Lucy’s brow smoothed. “That Zach Zemaitis?”

“The quarterback?” Maddie once again reached for her wine. “He’s huge.”

“Yep.” Lord, cake hadn’t tasted so good since she’d dated stoner Doug back in college, and she tried to concentrate on that rather than Zach and how much she missed him. Just like the first time she’d been with Zach, their time together had been hot and intense and brief, and he’d left her shattered.

“I don’t watch football.” Clare shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t know who he is. How did you meet him?”

“I met him years ago at UT,” she answered, then filled them in on the past. She told them that Zach was the first guy she’d had sex with and she told them about Devon. “Now he lives in Cedar Creek with his daughter,” she finished. She took a drink of her decaf coffee and wondered what he was doing. If he even knew that she’d left two days ago. She’d left without telling him. Not out of hurt or spite, but because he’d want to know when she’d be back, and she didn’t know the answer to that herself. Or maybe he wouldn’t want to know. Maybe he didn’t even care. He hadn’t called, so her guess would be that he didn’t care. He was probably out celebrating her refusal to marry him.

“I guess it’s too late for my safe-sex lecture,” Maddie said.

“We used two forms of birth control.” Or at least she’d thought she had birth control.

“What’s he do now?” Clare wanted to know.

“He coaches high-school football,” she said, and recalled the way he pushed and pulled at his hat as he stood on the sidelines. Her chest ached, but she wouldn’t cry. Not now. Her friends were here. She didn’t want the sadness to swamp her like an incoming tide. Not yet.

“What does he think about the baby?”

Adele held up two fingers. “I’m having twins.”

“What?”

“No!”

“Yep. Twins, and Zach believes I got pregnant on purpose to trap him into marriage.”

“Jerk.”

“Ass.”

Clare reached for Adele’s hand. “You would never do that. If he thinks so, then he is unworthy of you.”

Adele smiled and squeezed Clare’s fingers. “Thank you.”

“What are your plans?” Lucy asked.

Adele shrugged and lifted her gaze to the dark windows above Lucy’s head. Outside, fat snowflakes floated toward the ground and blanketed the earth in virgin white. It was the first weekend in January. New Year. New snow. New life.

“You know we’ll help you in any way that we can.” Lucy spoke for all of them.

“I know.” She looked at her friends who were so important to her. The four of them were as close as family. They’d been through a lot together and shared their writing and heartache and joy. She loved them like they were her family, but a big chunk of her heart, her life, wasn’t here anymore. It was more than a thousand miles away. With Sheri and Kendra and Harris. And Zach. She wouldn’t raise two children so far away from their father. It wouldn’t be fair to them. Zach might be fine with having his children live several states from him. That’s how he’d raised Tiffany until three years ago, but it wasn’t okay with Adele. She hadn’t gotten pregnant by herself, and she wasn’t going to raise these babies by herself. Once the babies were born, she and Zach would have to work out custody. She couldn’t ask him to uproot and move from Texas. That wasn’t fair to Tiffany. Adele would have to move home, and the thought of leaving her friends added another heavy layer to her sadness.

“How do you feel?” Lucy asked. “You look tired.”

“I am tired. I sleep a lot, and I wake up tired. On the plane here, I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and I guess it’s normal.” She’d spent her time the past two days reading and staring at the ultrasound of the babies. “I have something to show y’all,” she said, and left the kitchen. She grabbed the photo from her dresser, then returned and set the picture on the table. Over the past few days, she’d started to feel a little motherly. The more she stared at the images, the more it felt real, and the more she started to feel protective. She hadn’t planned to have children this way, but it wasn’t their fault. An unexpected wave of warmth and love washed over her, and she lowered a hand to cover her stomach. It wasn’t their fault they looked like little shrimp.

“Well,” Clare said through a smile, “they’re just adorable.”

Lucy laughed. “They look just like you.”

Maddie leaned forward for a better look. “Does this one have a penis?”

“Don’t joke about that. I’m having girls.” The doorbell rang, and Adele left to answer it. Her friends’ laughter followed her as she moved through the living room and opened the door. Immediately she froze in a way that had nothing to do with the snow falling from the sky.

“Dwayne.”

“Hi, Adele.” Her old boyfriend stood on her porch wearing a shearling jean jacket. “You look good.”

Adele didn’t know whether to scream, call the police, or punch Dwayne in the head. For three years he’d left stuff on her porch like he was on some sort of insane reconnaissance mission.

“I’m returning this.” He held up a grocery sack. “It’s that nurse’s outfit we bought at The Pleasure Boutique.”

She took it from his hand and crossed her arms over her bulky sweater. “Why didn’t you just leave it on my porch and sneak off like you’ve been doing for the past three years?”

His cheeks turned a little more pink. “’Cause I wanted to tell you that I’m not going to do that anymore.” His breath hung in front of his face and he shrugged one shoulder. “I can’t explain why I was doing it at all. I just don’t know.”

She knew.

“I’d just get this wild hair and…”

“Act crazy?” It was the curse.

“Yeah, but I’m over it.” He flashed her a smile that used to make her heart melt. “You look good,” he repeated.

She wore a bulky sweater, jeans, and fuzzy slippers. Her hair was pulled back in a dreaded scrunchie, and she seriously doubted she looked anything other than complete crap.

“Maybe we can go out for a drink sometime.”

Even if she hadn’t been expecting another man’s babies, she wouldn’t have accepted his invitation. She opened her mouth to let him down gently, but a voice from behind Dwayne said, “She’s not going anywhere with you.”

Adele lifted her gaze from Dwayne’s startled face to Zach as he moved within the light of the porch. He wore his dark wool coat, and the porch light caught in the snow on his big shoulders and in his hair. Her stomach lifted and smashed into her heart.

“Who’s this?” Dwayne asked.

Dwayne was a big guy, but Zach was bigger. His brown eyes bored into Dwayne like he’d dared to intercept a perfect pass. “None of your damn business.” Zach stepped in front of Adele’s former boyfriend. “You’re out of my sight for two days, and some bozo is asking you out already? If you think I’m going to wait around to catch you between dates again you’re crazy.” He pointed behind him with his thumb. “Did you tell him you’re pregnant?”

“It didn’t come up.”

He looked hard into her eyes. “You are still pregnant, aren’t you?”

She frowned. “Of course. Why would you think I’m not?”

“Maybe because you left without talking to me.”

The thought of ending the pregnancy had entered her head and exited very quickly. Maybe if she hadn’t seen the ultrasound, she might have given that option more than a passing thought. But she had seen it, and the babies were real to her and becoming more so with each passing hour. “If I’d decided to end the pregnancy, I would have talked to you.”

“Ahh…” Dwayne said, and took a few steps back. “I guess I’ll see you around, Adele.”

“Okay.”

“No, you won’t.”

Adele looked into Zach’s eyes on the same level as hers. She couldn’t quite believe he was actually standing in front of her. “How did you get here?”

“The usual way. Took a plane. Rented a car with GPS. Here I am.”

“How did you know where I live?”

“Sherilyn.” A puff of warm breath hung between them. “I went to her house this morning, and she said you’d left. You took off without a word to me about where you were going and when you’d be back.”

“I don’t have to check in with you, Zach.”

He rocked back on his heels. “I’m not going to let you move across the country with two of my children.”

She’d planned on going back, but he didn’t need to know that. Not right now, when he was being so bossy. She poked a finger into his chest. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

He looked at her hand, then back up into her face. “It’s not just you anymore, Adele. You’re having my babies, and you can’t just pick up and run away when you feel like it.”

She dropped her hand. “I wasn’t running away.”

“Just like fourteen years ago.”

“I didn’t run away. I left.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“We can argue about this inside.”

She didn’t want to argue at all.

“Adele, I’m freezing my balls off out here.”

Even though she wasn’t sympathetic to his frozen balls, she took a step back, and Zach followed her inside.

“Hello, ladies,” he said, looking behind her.

With her nurse’s costume in one hand, Adele turned and shut the door. Her three friends stood in the middle of the living room, their arms folded beneath their breasts as they eyed Zach. Adele walked around him and set her bag on the chair. “Zach, these are my very good friends. This is Lucy Rothschild-McIntyre. She writes mystery novels.” Next she pointed to Clare. “This is Clare Vaughan. She writes historical romance novels, and this is Maddie Jones. She writes true crime.”

“Adele’s told me about you ladies, and it’s my pleasure to meet you in person.” He unbuttoned his coat and shrugged out of it as if he intended to stay for a while. Beneath the coat he wore a white-and-blue-striped dress shirt tucked into a pair of Levi’s. “Cold enough for y’all?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not bad.”

Maddie tilted her head to one side and looked at him. “It’s been colder.”

“I haven’t been in a good snowstorm since I lived in Denver. Never thought I’d miss it, but I do.” He smiled and the sudden infusion of testosterone in the room messed with her friends’ usually level heads. The tension eased, and they smiled back at Zach. As Adele hung his coat in the closet, they asked about his trip and about flying in through the snow.

Then Maddie got down to business. “Adele’s pregnant. What are your plans?” she asked as if she was Adele’s father.

Zach smiled. “That’s between me and Adele.”

Maddie nodded and gathered her things to go. On her way out she put one hand on Adele’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Do you have the stun pen I gave you?”

Adele frowned. “Somewhere.”

“Get it and the Mace.” She looked at Zach. “If he gets out of line, zap him.”

Adele knew that Maddie was kidding—mostly.

Lucy filed out next. “If you need anything, call.”

“I will.”

Then it was Clare’s turn. “I love you.”

“I know.” She hugged her good-bye. “I love you, too.” She waved one last time to her friends, then shut the door behind them and moved back into the living room. Zach stood by the fireplace looking at the photos on the mantel.

“I wasn’t running away, Zach. I always planned on going back to Cedar Creek.”

“When?” He set down a picture frame and looked at her.

“I don’t know for sure.”

“You don’t think you should have talked to me before you left? You don’t think you should have mentioned your plans?”

“Maybe.” She scrubbed her face with her hands. “But I just wanted to get away and think. I’m confused and scared, and I don’t know what to do or what I’m doing. I’m thirty-five, and this has never happened to me.” She swallowed back tears when all she really wanted to do was lay her head on Zach’s chest and cry. Of course that was impossible. “I feel so stupid, but I did everything short of abstinence not to get pregnant. I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t know how this happened.”

He looked at her across the room, and said, “I believe you.”

Finally. But it wasn’t much comfort.

“I should have known better. I did know better, but I was too wrapped up in being an ass. I’m sorry.”

The apology shocked her, and her poor deluded heart read too much meaning in it. “Well,” she said and crossed her arms over her heart. “You should be.”

“And believe it or not, I didn’t come here to fight.”

She frowned. Could have fooled her. “You came here to see if I ended the pregnancy.”

“While that did enter my head, that’s not the reason I’m here either.”

“Then why are you here?” She dropped her hands to her sides. “And couldn’t you have used the phone?”

“Yeah, I could have, but there is something I need to tell you, and you should hear it in person and not over the phone.” He moved across the room toward her. “You said that in order for a man to be faithful, he has to love his wife. I’ve been thinking about that, and you’re right. Devon didn’t care who I was with, and I didn’t love her.” He paused and looked into her eyes. He took a deep breath and said, “It’s different with you. I love you, Adele. That’s what I’ve come all this way to tell you. I love you.”

She looked up into his face, and her heart squeezed like a sponge.

“When you told me you were pregnant, I thought the bottom dropped out of my life, but I was wrong. When I went to your sister’s to see you yesterday and you weren’t there, that’s when the bottom really fell out of my life.” He placed his warm hands on her cheeks. “I can’t imagine you not in my life.” He lowered his face to hers and spoke against her mouth. “I don’t want to imagine you not in my life.”

“I love you, Zach,” she whispered, just before he kissed her, tender and sweet and filled with blistering heat. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, deeper, hotter until he lifted his head. His breath rushed fast and hot, and he pulled her against his chest.

“Come home. Live with me,” he said next to her ear. “Marry me, Adele, and not because you’re pregnant. Not because I feel responsible or because you’re scared. Marry me because I love you and you love me and we should be together.”

She pulled back and looked up at him. Into his hooded brown eyes. A tear spilled from her lashes and she swallowed past the ache in her chest. “Yes,” she said. “And not because I’m scared and pregnant, but because I love you.”

He brushed her tear away with his thumb. “When you first came back to town, I thought that maybe you’d come back for a reason.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I admit, I thought the reason was purely sexual.”

“I came back to help my sister.”

“You came back to help me.” He gave her a soft kiss that calmed her worries and soothed her heart.

He had helped her, too. He’d helped break the curse, but she figured it was best not to mention it. “You helped me, and you helped Sherilyn. You put Harris’s furniture together.”

“The furniture was an excuse to be with you.”

She wrapped her arms around his chest and pressed herself against his big warm body. “I started to fall in love with you the day you gave me the tool belt.”

“Ah, you were dazzled by the shiny tools.”

She nodded. “You have dazzling tools.”

He laughed. “I remember the day I saw you standing under my portico. You looked like you’d seen a ghost, but you were beautiful.”

“Ah, you were dazzled by my lack of sleep and crazy hair.”

“I’ve always been dazzled by your crazy hair.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back and somehow got her sweater over her head. “Before that day, you were just a memory. A memory of a beautiful girl I knew in college who picked me to make love to her for her first time.” He looked into her face and tossed her sweater on the floor. “I thank God you walked out of my memory and into my life.”

She reached for the button on his shirt. “What about Tiffany?”

“She’ll be fine. I think she’s looking forward to having a couple of brothers.”

Adele’s fingers stilled on the last button and she glanced up. “Brothers!”

He pulled his shirt out of his jeans and looked down at her bare abdomen. “How are the boys?”

“Girls. The girls are making me nauseous in the morning.”

“Sorry about that.” He shucked the shirt from his arms and pulled her bare belly against his hot skin. He smiled, then lowered his brows. “Your breasts are bigger.”

“They hurt.”

“Sorry about that.” But he didn’t look all that sorry.

She shook her head. “Twins. You not only get me pregnant, but you get me pregnant with twins.”

“Yeah,” he said through a smile, but this time he didn’t bother saying he was sorry about that.

She ran her hands up his sides and over the hard planes of his chest. Who would have thought that she’d find love in the last place she expected? With the man who’d once broken her heart to pieces. Who would have thought Zach Zemaitis would be the man to break the curse she’d been living under?

Not Adele. He’d given her his heart and saved her from a lifetime of bad dates. He’d given her two babies growing beneath her own heart, and she would never be at all sorry about that.