Season for Love (16 page)

“Uh-huh.” As Joe twirled spaghetti around his fork, he tried to think of a way to broach the pregnancy subject. It was so unusual to feel hesitant to talk to her about anything. He loved how they talked about everything and usually held nothing back.
 

“Hey.” She nudged his leg with her foot. “Where’d you go?”

Joe looked up at her, surprised to realize he’d zoned out. “Nowhere. I’m here.”

She nodded to the spaghetti he’d twirled into a tight mass around his fork. “Are you going to play with that or eat it?”

He pushed his plate away, too nervous to eat anymore. “I’m done.”

“Do you mind if I finish it?”

“Go for it.” Her increased appetite was another in a growing list of puzzle pieces Joe never would’ve put together on his own without his mother’s insight. In addition to the sleepiness and appetite gain, her breasts were bigger and more sensitive, and she was often overly emotional, all of which, according to what he’d read, were indications of pregnancy.
 

“What’re you thinking about?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No, honey. Nothing’s wrong. Finish eating, and then we’ll talk.”

She put down her fork and pushed the plate aside. “I’m done.”

“Come here.” He held out his hand to her and guided her onto his lap.

“What’s going on, Joe? Are you mad about something? I know I’ve been a bit of a grouch during exams—”

He kissed the words right off her lips. “You haven’t been a grouch. You’ve been busy and really, really tired.”

“I know. It’s crazy. I don’t remember it being this bad last year.”

Joe took a deep breath. “Is it possible that this year might be different because you’re pregnant?” Because he was holding her so close, he felt her go rigid in his arms.

“I’m not pregnant. There’s no way I’m pregnant! We’ve been careful, and I’m on the pill.”

“And you’ve never forgotten to take it for a day or two because you were busy or preoccupied with school?”

He watched her closely as she thought back over the last few months.

Her mouth fell open and then snapped closed the instant before two big tears slid down her cheeks. “That’s all it takes?” she whispered.

“That and nonstop effort,” he said in a teasing tone.

“I can’t be pregnant, Joe. I
can’t be
. I have two and a half years of school left. How will I have a baby
and
manage school?”

Joe brushed away her tears and kissed her. “Easy—you’ll manage school, and I’ll manage the baby.”

“How do you already have this all figured out?”

“I’ve had a couple of days to process the possibility. I told my mom the other day that you’ve been really tired, and she suggested you might be pregnant.”

“How is it that she knew and I didn’t?” Janey asked, piqued by the thought.

Joe laughed at the face she made. How could he not? She was so damned cute.
 

She scowled at him. “Hell of a vet I’m going to be when I can’t even figure out that I’m pregnant without the help of my mother-in-law who lives a thousand miles from me.”

“You’re going to be the best vet ever, and I hate to tell you, we don’t know for sure that you’re pregnant.”

“We need to get a test.”

“I got three of them the other day. I was waiting for you to get through your exams before I mentioned it.”

“Thank you for waiting. This would’ve taken me right over the edge this week, which, of course, you knew.”

“So,” he asked, his heart pounding with anticipation and excitement and more love than he’d ever felt in his life, “do you want to take one of the tests?”

New tears flooded her eyes as she nodded. “Is this why I’ve been crying over everything lately?”

He took her by the hand and led her into the bathroom. Under the sink, he retrieved one of the tests he’d stashed there. “Maybe so.”

“I suppose it’s better to be pregnant than to be having a nervous breakdown over school.”

“Much better,” he said, laughing. He took the test out of the box and handed it to her. “Pee goes here.” When he started to leave the room to give her some privacy, she called him back.

“Stay. We did the rest of it together, why not this part, too?”

He smiled at her logic and leaned against the wall while she took care of business.
 

She placed the innocuous plastic stick on the sink, and they watched in stunned amazement as a blue plus sign appeared a few minutes later.

“Well,” she said, “your mother was right.” She turned to him, looked up and met his gaze. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more careful.”

“Please don’t say that. Everything happens for a reason, and when you think about it, this might be the perfect time for us to have a baby.”

She raised a brow in the skeptical expression that was so Janey. “How do you figure?”

“If we wait until you finish school, I’ll be almost forty. That’s getting sort of late if I want to have any energy left for Little League coaching and football playing and wrestling, not to mention tea parties and fashion shows and Girl Scouts.”

Janey laughed through her tears and hugged him.
 

“It’s all going to be fine,” he whispered into the silky softness of her blonde hair. “I promise. It might not be how we planned it, but life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

“Or when you’re busy making love like sex-starved lunatics.”

“That too,” he said with a laugh. He slid his hands down her back to cup her bottom, lifting her into his arms.

She curled her arms and legs around him as he carried her to their bedroom. The menagerie collected around their feet, and Joe nearly tripped over them.
 

“Goddamn it,” he said when he’d recovered his footing. “I’m carrying very precious cargo here, people.”

“Don’t swear in front of the baby.”

He was relieved she’d taken the news better than he’d expected and so excited to be a father, a thought that suddenly filled him with fear.

“What?” she asked. “Why did your brows go all furrowy?”

He deposited her on the bed and crawled in next to her.

She snuggled up to him as she did every night.

“I barely remember what it’s like to have a dad. What if I’m no good at it?”

“Oh, Joe! You’ll be a great dad! This baby will be so lucky to have you. You’re already thinking about tea parties and football practice.”

“You’re awfully sure I’ll be good at it.”

“I’m positive.” She kissed his neck and then his jaw before finding his lips in a kiss that quickly spiraled into passionate need. Her arms tightened around him as her tongue flirted with his, making him crazy with desire.
 

“Love me, Joe,” she whispered.

“I love you love you more than anything, Janey Cantrell.” Joe added the second “love you” as they always did and peppered her face with kisses before taking her mouth again. Without breaking the kiss, he tugged at their clothes until all the important parts were revealed. He entered her carefully, without the usual abandon that marked their lovemaking.

“
Joe
,” she moaned in protest. “Come
on
.”
 

“I don’t want to hurt you—or the baby.” Everything was different now that he knew their child lay between them, precious and fragile.

“You won’t.” She arched into his thrust and clutched his backside, keeping him buried deep inside her.
 

He drew her nipple into his mouth, sucking and tugging, sending her into a powerful orgasm that finished him off in record time. “Sorry,” he said, panting in the aftermath of the explosive climax.

Her hands were soothing on his back. “For what?”

“For not lasting longer.”

“You lasted just long enough. I can barely keep my eyes open, and what if I fell asleep in the middle of, you know…”

“You’d better not fall asleep in the middle of
that
.”

Janey chuckled and held him close enough that he could hear her heart beating fast beneath his ear.

After a long moment of contented silence, he said, “I promised my mother I’d tell her as soon as we knew for sure.”

“Can it be our little secret for tonight? We can tell her and my parents tomorrow.”

Joe closed his eyes against the rush of emotion. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been happier. “Sure, baby. Whatever you want.”

“I have everything I want.” She tightened her arms around him. “Everything I could ever want.”

And that, Joe decided as he followed her into sleep, was all that mattered to him.

Chapter 12

Grant spent two days hoping he would hear from Stephanie before his friend Dan Torrington clued him in.

“She’s not coming back,” Dan said.

“How do you know that?” Grant asked Dan, who was visiting for the weekend and thinking about spending the winter on the island to pen the book he’d been planning to write for years. He’d fallen in love with the island on an earlier visit.

“Grant, my friend, let me tell you something about women.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” Grant muttered.

“They are sensitive, delicate creatures.”

Grant didn’t want to be around when Stephanie heard herself described as a sensitive, delicate creature.
 

“They require tremendous amounts of attention.”

“I give her tremendous amounts of attention. Hell, she has practically
all
my attention.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. You’re spending too much time together.”

Grant, who used to go months between visits when he was dating Abby, now couldn’t imagine a day without Stephanie in it. He couldn’t picture his life without her front and center, irritating him and loving him. The pain he’d carried in his breastbone since she stormed out of their house two mornings ago had intensified when he began to fear that he might’ve lost her for good this time.

“You could be right,” Grant said.

“I usually am.”
 

Grant rolled his eyes at his friend’s arrogance.

Dan gestured for Chelsea, the bartender at the Beachcomber, to bring them two more beers.

The pretty young bartender set down the bottles with a friendly smile for Dan.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said.

“My pleasure. I have to ask you—are you related to the Baldwin brothers?”

“Nope,” Dan said. “I get that a lot, though. People think I look like Billy Baldwin.”

“You really do.” Based on the dreamy look on her face, Chelsea was quite fond of Billy Baldwin.

Dan flashed her the dimpled grin that had made him famous. “Thanks for the beers.”

“You’re going to get sued calling women ‘sweetheart,’” Grant said when Chelsea moved on to other customers.

Dan scoffed. “Puleeze. She loved it. You heard what she said. ‘My pleasure.’ Would she have said that if she were offended? Hell, she thought I was Billy Baldwin! Maybe he can play me in your movie.”

Grant rolled his eyes. “You’re more famous than he is, not that she knows that.”
 

Dan brushed off the reference to his fame, as he always did. He’d made a career out of freeing prisoners who’d been wrongly convicted. Stephanie’s stepfather was the latest in a long string of successes. “Take it from me. Chicks like to be
charmed
. They need to be
wooed
.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing with Steph, and look at where it’s gotten me.”

Dan had the audacity to laugh at that. “You haven’t been
wooing
her. You’ve been driving her crazy with your vision of her story. So take a step back from the screenplay for a while, work out the relationship issues and see where you are.”

“What do you know about relationship issues anyway? Your idea of a relationship is dinner and a hotel room.”

“And that’s bad how, exactly? You don’t see me mooning around for two days because my girlfriend told me to screw and moved out.”

“She hasn’t moved out. Yet.” The thought that maybe she had struck another note of fear in Grant’s chest. He wondered if he might be having a heart attack. “You’re not helping.”

“What happened anyway?”

“I have no idea. We were arguing about this one part of the screenplay we’ve gone over a hundred times and she got all pissed and left.”

“Grant.” Dan waited until Grant spared him a glance to continue. “She’s not coming back. If you want to fix this, you have to go to her.”

“I’m not the one who left. Why do I have to do the chasing?”

Dan shook his head with dismay. “I have so much to teach you, my friend.”

While Grant wanted to object to that statement, he couldn’t. Stephanie was his second serious girlfriend, and he’d screwed up the first one rather royally. As much as he’d cared for Abby, he truly
loved
Stephanie. If he had to beg and grovel, he would. After two days without her, he’d discovered he had no pride where she was concerned.