Cart Before The Horse (11 page)

She put a hand to her chest and let out a sob. “I can’t believe you did this.
You gave her the ring.” She shook her head as though her husband and Holly had personally assaulted her. “You didn’t tell me you did that.”

Ed sat down and placed his napkin on his lap.
“I took it to Gabe the other day to give to her. Now pipe down.”

Holly pulled back her hand and set it in her lap.
She should have known her mother would react like that. But Gabe was always on top of things. “It was a very special moment. Her eyes were wide.” He turned and gazed at her. “She recognized it the moment she saw it.”

Holly held in the sigh.
Would he always make things better? She let herself relax. Yes, he would always be there. He’d said he would and she believed that whatever Gabe Maguire said he would do.

Trudy drank down the rest of her wine, let out a little huff, and plastered a smile on her face that Holly was much too familiar with. “Well, Holly, we should discuss a date for the
wedding.”

Holly wanted to reach for the glass of wine and drink it down, but she knew better.
And to replace the moment with her water goblet would have her mother asking questions. But she had to remember no matter what she told them right now she was going to have to live by. That was the deal. She’d promised Gabe.

When she looked at him, he raised his eyebrows.
He was going to hold her to her word.

“
Mom, I don’t want anything big or fancy.”

“Fine.
We could go to the country club. Or we—”

“
Mom, I just want something very small. Maybe over Thanksgiving when Gabe’s family is here.”

He patted her knee and she looked at him.
He was
smiling grandly.

Dear God, she was getting married.

“Mrs. Jacobs, I would love to have the wedding at the restaurant if you’d agree. Certainly we could also get married in a church if that’s important to you.”

Holly watched her mother’s anger begin to defuse.
“Oh, well, the restaurant would be fine. I’m sure we can arrange something very nice.”

“Perhaps you and Holly could work on the cake.
I’ll have the staff prepare the dinner.”

“I think that sounds lovely.”
Trudy filled her glass with more wine and resumed drinking.

Holly couldn’t decide if her life had just started or ended.
There went that control again. And she could feel the need for it to return to her. She couldn’t believe she was about to blurt it out, but she knew it was coming. And it wasn’t because she had to. It was because her mother was making her crazy with her giggling and her softness toward Gabe.

It began to boil inside of her until it burst to the surface.

“
Mom.” She grabbed hold of Gabe’s hand under the table as she waited for her mother to lift her eyes to hers. “I think you should know. Gabe and I are expecting a baby.”

She gave his hand a squeeze, trying to believe she was ready for this.
They were in it as deep as they could get. He’d hold her to her words, and there was no turning back. She was about to become Mrs. Gabriel Maguire and mother to his child. And there was nothing Trudy Jacobs could do or say about it now.

Chapter Seven

I
t was wrong to feel so good, she knew. Everything she’d dreaded had happened. Her mother had gotten angry over her ring. She’d wanted to plan the whole wedding—but Gabe had skillfully squashed her desires with the slight mention of having the wedding in the restaurant. And when Holly announced the baby, her mother had nearly lost her mind.

But Holly was back in charge.

Oh, her mother would get over it. She was sure she was already online ordering things from the Pottery Barn kids’ section. However, for the moment, Holly had made her an old woman, and Trudy Jacobs made it known she wasn’t ready
for that.

Holly sat back in her seat, as Gabe drove back to the resta
urant, and she rubbed her stomach.

Gabe turned his head and watched her. “You’re smiling.” He interrupted her moment.

“I am? That wouldn’t be very nice of me to smile when my mother was crying when I left.”

He shook his head and turned it back to watch the road. “I didn’t think you were the heartless kind.” His voice was sharp.

“I didn’t either.” She sighed. She should feel bad about hurting her mother’s feelings. “But now that I’m a rebel that messed up someone’s house, I feel liberated.”

“I’m beginning to regret taking you out last night.”

“Don’t. I can’t remember the last time I felt so good. Did you see the look on her face? I mean, I totally took away her power.”

“Holly, she was crushed.”

“She was crushed?
You’re worried about her?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “My whole life has been about her. What I did tonight was accept that things are out of order. Yes, damn it, I put the cart first.”

He glanced her way.
“I didn’t think you’d ever
accept that.”

“I have no choice.”

“You did have a choice, Holly.”

And now she felt small.
“You’re right. I was mad and upset when I found out I was pregnant. And my first reactions were all about how this was going to ruin my life. But I never thought about getting rid of the baby.”

“I’m very happy to hear that.”
He reached for her hand. “You said your mom was married before. What’s the story?”

Holly shook her head and dropped her shoulders.
“There isn’t much to tell. She married him when she was fifteen. It got her away from home.”

“Did you ever meet the man?”

“No. I don’t even know his name.”

“But you don’t like him.” His eyebrow rose above his su
nglasses, and she knew he was judging her by the way she spoke about a man she’d never met.

“What kind of man marries a fifteen-year-old girl just so she can run away?”

His forehead wrinkled and he glanced at her. “And that’s the real reason she married him? At fifteen don’t you just have to live with life the way it is?”

“They were very poor.
I’m talking the kind of poor where you can’t shower because you have no water.” Holly shifted her eyes out the window and shook her head. The rest of the story made her uncomfortable. “My mother got pregnant, on purpose, so he would marry her and take her away.”

Never in her life had she said that aloud, and she didn’t like the way reflected on her family. Great. Now she sounded like

her mother.

She wasn’t even sure her mother knew she knew about the baby. It wasn’t one of those topics that ever came up during a mother-daughter talk.

Gabe blew out a breath.
“No wonder you didn’t want to tell her. She’d feel like this was the end of your life the way you know it.”

“Exactly.”
Holly turned toward him. “I remember when I first started to date a boy in high school. You have to realize he was seventeen and I was just fourteen. But she was on my case all the time about what could happen with a boy. I was grounded for everything, and mind you, I never did anything that would warrant grounding. But she wanted to keep me away from him.”

“Because she knew what would happen.”

“And now look at me. It did happen.”

“And you’re thirty.”

“I know.” That’s exactly what her dad had said. If it seemed so socially acceptable at her age, why was she so worried about it—and why had her mother’s reaction been as negative as she’d assumed it would be?

Gabe drove past the front of the restaurant and then turned down the alley in back.
He pulled the car into the space and put it in park. He unbuckled his seat belt and looked at her. “I thought you were an only child. Ed is your dad, right?”

She nodded. “He is. She lost the baby in the sixth month.”

He reached for her hand. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Holly shrugged.
“I think she was okay with it. By then she was married and out of her parents’ home. She had a job and earned a diploma. Her husband left her a few years later, and a few more after that, she met my dad. They’re very happy, but he knows how she is. My mother doesn’t want to be poor or

looked down on anymore.
And even after thirty years she still is scared by it.”

Holly thought about it for a moment.
Her entire life, people

looked at her differently. She was the small kid in class with people years older. Was her mother looked at differently because she had only one dress and a piece of bread in her lunchbox? Holly knew how it felt when her coworkers had finally become people her own age. No one saw her as some freak. She was just the amazing designer and they liked working with her. It couldn’t have been much different for her mother. Finally to have people see her as someone acceptable to society must have been marvelous. She had a good husband, a nice home, and a smart daughter. Others struggled to keep their kids off drugs and their daughters from becoming teen mothers. Trudy Jacobs could smile and know she’d never have those kinds of problems with Holly.

Gabe and her father had made it clear.
She was thirty. It was the twenty-first century. There was nothing shameful about her pregnancy. She was going to be a mother and had something new to focus on and learn.

“I don’t think of your mother as anything but a classy wo
man,” Gabe said. “She’s very smart, and I know what happens to very smart women when they become grandmothers.”

“What?”

“They become mush.” He smiled and reached his hand to her cheek. “She’ll be fine and so will you. We have four weeks until the wedding you promised me. I want you to work with her on it and include her. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Everything is going to be perfect, Holly. I promise
you that.”

She’d do it for him, because family was so important to him. But she didn’t like promises.
Promises were like glass. They easily broke.

It was Sunday afternoon and it had been a long week. Holly didn’t want to move from bed or get out of her pajamas, but she finally opted for a shower.

She’d no sooner put on a clean pair of pajamas than there was a knock at the door. It was already four o’clock, so she assumed Gabe would be busy with the start of the dinner rush. She was pleasantly surprised when she opened the door and there stood Tracy with an enormous basket in her arms.

“Aunt Tracy is here, and we are going to have a wonderful night in.”
She walked by her and sat the basket on the table.

Holly closed the door and looked at her in her bright flo
wing colors. She felt a little like a wren in the company of a bird of paradise. “What are you doing?”

“Come here.” Tracy pulled out one of the chairs from around the table and motioned for her to sit.
“I went shopping and you have to open all your gifts.”

“Tracy, I don’t need anything.”

Tracy lifted her hands into the air, and her bracelets clanked together. “In two weeks you have gone from being my best designer to an expectant mother and now a fiancée. In the next month you’ll be married, and by spring you’ll have a baby. Trust me. You need things.”

“Who told you about the wedding?”
Holly crossed her arms over her chest.

She waved her hands, her bracelets chiming again. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. Only three people know about that, and one of them told you.”

Tracy placed her hands on Holly’s shoulders.
“That man who loves you told me.”

Holly shook her head.
“He doesn’t love me. This is
all just…”

“Wonderful.”
Tracy lifted her finger as Holly took a breath to speak. “Give it up, Holly. This isn’t the worst thing to happen to you. Embrace it. Let it flow. Fall in love.” She

kissed her on each cheek.
“Now go through the basket. I’m going to make some tea.”

By the time Tracy came back out of the kitchen with a cup

of tea, Holly was sitting on the floor surrounded by little gifts and crying.

Tracy stood above her, her mouth puckered. “Tell me this is all hormonal. I’ve never seen you cry as much as I have this week.”

“Some.”
Holly lifted a small footed pajama out of the pile. The design was familiar to her. It had been one of the first designs she’d ever created for a baby line. But she’d never seen it on the actual garment. “This is precious.”

“I figured it would work for either a boy or a girl.”
Tracy pulled a chair back from the table and sat down.

Holly picked up a jar and looked at it. “And what is this cream?”

“Oh, it’s for stretch marks. All organic. Start rubbing it on now and you won’t get the marks.”

“Really?”

“That’s what the woman said.”

Holly smiled and opened the jar.
She rubbed a little on her hand and then put it in the growing pile of gifts.

She opened more creams, bottles, diapers, outfits, and toys.
Then she opened boxes of maternity outfits, which she thought looked like the clothes Tracy wore every day, but she was sure she’d be grateful for them soon. In the last box was a white lacy piece of lingerie.

“And what is this for?”
She held up the skimpy fabric and looked at Tracy through it.

“For your wedding night.”

“I don’t think so.” She folded it back up and put it in the box.

“What are you talking about?
Give the man something to look forward to.”

Holly stood up and began to reorganize the gifts into neat piles on the table.
“The wedding is just a formality. It will make my mother happy. It will give the baby a name. Gabe would like to be married, and…”

“And Holly won’t have done it backward.”

“Now you sound like him.”

“I think he’s a very smart man.” Tracy bent down and picked up the wad of tissue paper on the floor. She balled it up and threw it at Holly.

Holly gasped and stood with her mouth open.

Tracy shook her head. “Snap out of it. Don’t be such a prude. Enjoy your life, your fiancé, your baby, and get over this high-and-mighty attitude of yours. Wear the damn outfit. Have sex with the man. ”

Holly stood and stared at her.
She could feel the tears creeping up again. She’d thought the nausea was the worst part, but now that Tracy pointed it out, she was always crying.

She batted away the tears.
“I’m sorry I’ve been a pain.”

“I’ve known you a long time.
You’ve always been a pain. Now you’re more human.” She stood and pulled Holly into her arms, and the strong scent of patchouli washed over her. “Honey, I wouldn’t have let you go home with the man that night if I’d thought anything bad was going to happen. As it turns out, I think he’s quite the catch.”

She was right.
He was a good catch. Perhaps she’d try a little harder at not being so uptight.

Gabe called to check on her.
Hearing his voice comforted the nausea she’d been feeling, and an unfamiliar happiness fluttered inside of her. “We’re watching Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movies,” she told him.

“I think I’m glad I didn’t invite myself over.”

“Probably.”

“I’m glad she came over to spend time with you.
You
sound happy.”

Holly looked at her friend seated on her couch and the pile of thoughtful gifts on the table.
“Yes. I’m very happy.”

“Will I see you for dinner tomorrow?”

“I’ll be there. Would you like me to cook something
 

for you?”

“No.
Chef has a new recipe he wants us to try. We’ll let him cook. But can I take you to lunch?”