The Pregnancy Plan (15 page)

She paused outside of Hush, Little Baby, her attention caught by the gorgeous cherrywood crib and dressing table on display. A recent visit to Dr. Alex had confirmed that the baby she’d wanted for so long would be a reality by the end
of next summer, and though she knew it was too early in her pregnancy to think about making any major purchases, she couldn’t resist browsing. Pushing open the door, she stepped inside and found that the store was a lot bigger than it appeared from the front and that the enormous space was divided into several distinctly themed rooms.

She walked past a hugely pregnant woman and her obviously adoring husband discussing infant car seats with one of the salesladies and tried not to think about the fact that, when it came time for her to pick out a car seat, she would be making the decision on her own. She would be making all of the decisions; she would bear all of the responsibilities. And that was okay, because it was her choice. But she knew that her child would miss out on so much if Cam wasn’t part of his or her life.

Pushing the thought aside, she moved into the first room. This one had a sports focus, with dark furniture, bold plaid fabrics and an assortment of books and outfits for sale that continued the theme. She picked up a miniature baseball uniform displayed beside a board book version of “Casey at the Bat.”

Beyond the sports room was a prehistoric setting, with everything and anything dinosaur. Then a vibrant circus-themed room, which she chose to bypass. Although she was sure the bright, primary colors would appeal to a child, there was something about perpetually grinning clown faces that had always creeped her out.

And then she discovered the fairy tale room, where everything was frilly and feminine—a little girl’s dream. Neatly tucked inside the open drawer of a glossy white wardrobe was a frilly little tutu and a pair of tiny pink ballet slippers. She picked up the shoes, marveling at the detail and delicacy, and found herself thinking about Maddie, who loved to twirl and pirouette in her sock feet on the kitchen floor. And Ashley
wondered if maybe her daughter would display the same enthusiasm some day, inspired by a tiny pair of ballet slippers just like the ones she was holding.

But it was too early in her pregnancy to begin speculating about whether the baby she was carrying was a boy or a girl, so it was more than a little premature to be thinking about Little League and dreaming of ballet recitals. With a soft, regretful sigh, she put the shoes down and, turning, nearly collided with Cam’s mother.

“This is my favorite room in the whole store,” Gayle told her, her voice low as if she was confessing something she shouldn’t.

“It’s my first time in here,” Ashley admitted. “But I’m amazed.”

“Then I know you’ll be back,” Gayle said. “Because every time there’s something new and different but always wonderful.”

“I’ll definitely be back,” Ashley said, then felt her cheeks color, a reaction that was more telling than her words. But she recovered quickly with the explantion, “Because my sister’s pregnant.”

“Ashley!” Maddie’s voice rang out from across the room, and the little girl skipped over, carrying a floppy-eared bunny that had obviously caught her eye.

Ashley turned, grateful for the interruption that allowed her to pull her foot out of her mouth.

“We’re shopping for baby stuff,” Maddie told her. “’Cause my aunt Sherry’s going to get a baby.”

“Well, that’s exciting news,” Ashley said.

“Are you going to get a baby, too?”

Ashley sucked in a breath, caught off guard by the child’s innocent question. And she knew that’s all it was—the simple curiosity of a six-year-old. “Oh. Someday, I hope.” She forced a smile. “But before I have a baby, I’m going to have a niece or a nephew.”

“I’m getting a cousin,” Maddie said proudly.

“A cousin who will be living in Florida,” Gayle noted with obvious disappointment. “I don’t know why it is that my kids had to go so far away to have their kids. I hate being a long-distance grandparent.”

“Well, at least Cam and Maddie are home now,” Ashley said, as the child wandered off again.

Gayle smiled as she kept a watchful eye on her granddaughter. “And I’m so grateful for that.”

“Look at these, Grandma.” Maddie was back again, this time with the little ballet slippers Ashley had recently admired. “Can we get these so the baby can be a dancer like me?”

Gayle looked at the price tag, winced. “Honey, she won’t even be walking, never mind dancing when she’s wearing shoes that size.”

“But they’re so pretty.” Maddie stroked a finger over the satiny toe.

“And I am such a sucker,” her grandmother laughed as she put the shoes into the basket she carried over one arm. “I can’t tell you how much time—and money—I spent in here when Maddie was a baby. I don’t think a week went by that I wasn’t sending a sleeper or a dress or something out to her. Of course, Cam now blames me for his daughter being a clothes horse, but I figure it’s a grandma’s job to spoil the little ones.”

“I take it Sherry’s expecting a girl?” Ashley prompted.

“Oh, yes. She told me last night. I’d have started shopping as soon as I got the news, except that the store was already closed for the day,” Gayle admitted.

“I’m glad it’s a girl. Girls are better than boys,” Maddie declared. “I think a sister would be better than a cousin, but I have to settle for a cousin because daddies can’t have babies and my mommy isn’t really the nurchring type.”

“Maddie,” her grandmother admonished gently.

“That’s what you told Grandpa.”

“I’m sure I did,” Gayle admitted in an undertone to Ashley. “But I wouldn’t have said it if I’d known she was within hearing distance.”

Ashley smiled. “I teach first grade,” she reminded the older woman. “Believe me, I understand only too well how they can forget direct instruction but recite verbatim something they should never have overheard.”

“What’s nurchring?” Maddie asked Ashley.

“I think you mean
nurturing,
” she said, scrambling to come up with a definition that wouldn’t paint the little girl’s mother in a completely negative light. “And it means to, uh, help grow or develop.”

“Daddy says I grow like a weed, so maybe I don’t need any more nurchring,” Maddie decided. “Babies need help because they start out small, but I bet I could help.”

“I’m sure you’d be a very big help,” Ashley said, somehow forcing the words out through the tightness in her throat. And because she knew she would have a complete meltdown if she didn’t get out of the store in the next thirty seconds, she said, “I have to run. I’m meeting Megan and Paige for lunch.”

Then she fled, leaving Cam’s daughter staring after her, and holding a huge piece of her heart.

Cam frowned at the stack of folders on his desk. It was almost seven o’clock, the last patient had walked out the door more than an hour earlier and he still had another hour or more of paperwork to finish. Thankfully his mother had agreed to take Maddie to ballet class so that he could stay late and try to catch up, but he refused to stay past eight o’clock—his daughter’s bedtime.

He had been a part of her bedtime routine from the day she was born. Of course, the routine then had been much simpler:
a bottle and a cuddle—no snacks, drinks, checks for under-the-bed-monsters or stories required. But no matter how much the routine had changed and expanded over the years, Cam continued to cherish those quiet moments with his daughter.

On a few occasions, when Ashley had been over as Maddie was getting ready for bed, his daughter had asked her teacher to do story time instead. Cam wasn’t really offended by her claims that Ashley told “the best stories” because he’d only had to listen to her once to know it was true.

He missed those story times. Or maybe he just missed Ashley.

Okay, no maybe about it—he
did
miss Ashley. And he was thinking, hoping, that if he gave her some time, she would soon realize that she missed him, too.

He opened the next folder on top of the pile, determined to push all thoughts of Ashley out of his mind and focus on his work so that he could be home for Maddie’s bedtime.

Andy Robichaud was the name on the file. The elderly gentleman had come in a few weeks earlier, complaining of frequent and painful urination. Cam knew the cause could be something as simple as a urinary tract infection or as complicated as prostate cancer, so he’d ordered a series of tests to correctly identify the root of the problem.

The report from PDA Labs was on the top. He picked it up and skimmed the codes, the numbers, and struggled to make sense of the results. Because according to the paper, Mr. Robichaud was pregnant.

The report he was reading obviously belonged in someone else’s file, not in that of a seventy-nine-year-old man—unless his patient was truly a medical miracle.

He was smiling at that impossibility when his gaze automatically shifted to the patient ID box at the top of the page. His smile slipped.

The test results were Ashley’s.

W
hen Ashley got home from her book club meeting Friday night, Cam was sitting in the dark on her front porch. If she’d been able to see him, she might have wondered why he was there. But she’d forgotten to leave the exterior lights on again and it was only when she stepped onto the path leading to the door that the sensor lights revealed his presence.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

Her heart had jolted at the sight of him and now pounded crazily inside of her chest. It wasn’t simply because she hadn’t seem him in a while, but that she’d never seen him like this—his eyes hard, his jaw set, anger practically radiating off of him in waves.

And she immediately knew, without having to ask, what he was referring to. She swallowed. “How did you find out?”

“I hardly think that’s the issue here.”

Though her hands were shaking, she managed to slide her
key into the lock. “I assume you want to come in and talk about this.”

“I’d say that a conversation is long overdue.”

She dropped her coat and her purse inside the door, conscious of Cam following close on her heels as she made her way into the living room, turning on lights as she went and desperately trying to find the words to explain her deception.

“Did Eli tell you?” she finally asked.

“You know he would never breach doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Then how—”

“Your test results were misfiled. I might not have realized the error except that I’ve never known a seventy-nine-year-old man’s blood work to reveal HCG.”

“Oh.”

“Now tell me why you didn’t tell me,” he challenged.

“I was going to,” she hedged.

“When?”

“Even before I knew for certain that I was pregnant, I was so excited about the possibility that I wanted to share it with you.”

“When was that?” he demanded to know.

She swallowed. “The day that I first met your ex-wife.”

“That was almost three weeks ago.”

“I know. But the longer she stayed, the more time she spent with you and Maddie, the more I started to doubt our relationship. Which I know doesn’t make any sense,” she admitted, “because I’m the one who said I didn’t want a relationship and that Maddie should spend more time with her mother. But just when I started thinking that maybe we could be a family—you and Maddie and me and the baby—Danica showed up and reminded me that you already had a family.”

“My marriage was never a secret,” he pointed out.

“I know, but it was in the past and your ex-wife was on another continent. And then suddenly she was here and I decided I would rather raise my baby alone than let him know that he was your second choice.”

“Why would you ever think something like that?” he demanded.

“Because I know what it feels like to be the runner-up. The bridesmaid instead of the bride.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I fell in love with you when I was fifteen,” she reminded him. “And during the two years that we were together, you told me you loved me, too. But when you graduated, you claimed that you weren’t ready for a serious relationship, that you needed to concentrate on your studies. So I waited. You went away to college, then to med school, and I waited. Because I loved you. Then I found out that while I was waiting, you had married someone else.”

“Because I was young and stupid and I foolishly thought that marrying someone else—someone who was completely unlike you—would finally help me forget about you.

“But it didn’t work. I never forgot about you, Ashley. And I never stopped loving you. And when I agreed to go along with your plan to have a baby, it was only because I hoped that, by the time you got pregnant, you’d realize we should be together.

“Except that isn’t quite how it happened, is it? As soon as you realized you were pregnant, you cut me out of your life. You never wanted me, you just wanted a baby.”

His tone was so cold, so icily unforgiving, that she shivered. And because she knew that she was solely responsible for his anger, she didn’t dispute his accusation. She didn’t tell him that the truth was, she’d wanted everything.

Even if she hadn’t realized it at the time, she’d wanted him and Maddie and their baby. But to admit that now would give
him the power to destroy her pride along with her heart. And her pride was all she had left now.

“Because you were never going to let me be part of your family,” she shot back.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Every time I tried to include Maddie in our plans, you made other arrangements for her. Apparently I’m good enough to sleep with you, but you don’t want me getting too close to your daughter.”

“Maybe I just needed to know that you wanted to be with me for me, and not because of Maddie.”

“You know me better than that.”

“Apparently I don’t, because I would never have expected you to keep the news of your pregnancy from me.”

“Okay, I should have told you,” she admitted. “Is that what you wanted me to say? Is that why you’re here?”

“It’s a start,” he agreed.

“So where do we go from here? What are we going to do now?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Now we’re going to get married.”

She stared at him, stunned. “You want to get married?”

“Under the circumstances, it seems like a reasonable solution.”

“Under the circumstances, it’s completely ridiculous.”

His jaw set. “Courts have pretty clear views on parental rights,” he warned. “And I’m not going to let you cut me out of my child’s life.”

She managed to hold back the tears but couldn’t hold back the words that were filled with anguish and torn from her heart. “You already took away my hopes and my dreams once, I’m not going to let you take
my
baby.”

“
Our
baby,” he said, but there was no warmth in his tone, only accusation.

She swiped a tear from her cheek. “Why are you doing this?”

“You can ask me that when you were the one who tried to trick me into getting you pregnant?” he asked scornfully.

She swallowed, but the guilt and the regrets stuck in her throat, practically choking her. “But I couldn’t follow through with it.”

“Except that you
are
pregnant,” he pointed out.

“And I got that way with your consent and cooperation,” she reminded him.

“Then you lied to me, telling me you weren’t pregnant when you were.”

“I didn’t know for sure that I was!”

She was yelling at him. She’d never screamed at anyone before, and she was appalled by her behavior, ashamed of the out-of-control emotions that were churning inside of her.

“Look at us, Cam.” She spoke softly, carefully, now. “We can’t even have a rational conversation about this and you think we should get married?”

He took a step closer and cupped her face in his palms, his thumbs brushing away the tears she didn’t even realize had spilled onto her cheeks. And then his mouth was on hers, and he was kissing her softly, slowly, deeply.

Her eyes drifted shut, her lips parted, her body yielded.

This was crazy. Complete insanity. She knew that, and yet, she couldn’t seem to stop kissing him back.

She’d felt his absence from her life keenly in the past few weeks. And it wasn’t just the physical aspect of their relationship that she missed, although there was no doubt she missed that as her pregnancy hormones seemed to have kicked into high gear, making her ache for him. But she’d missed so much more than that, too. The brief conversations they used to share when he picked Maddie up from school; their late night phone calls. Walks at Eagle Point Park; lazy Saturday
mornings; Sunday afternoon matinees. In just a few short months, he’d become an integral part of her life again, and letting him go—even if it had been her decision—had ripped a hole in her heart.

But now he was here, holding on to her as if he never meant to let her go. And she was holding on to him, too.

When he finally eased his lips away from hers, he said, “Yes, I think we should get married.”

“Wow. This is even better than last week’s
Desperate Housewives.
”

Ashley and Cam both turned to find Paige leaning against the doorjamb.

“I let myself in,” she explained, “because it was apparent that nobody was going to respond to the bell.”

Ashley didn’t know if she was embarrassed to have been part of the scene her cousin walked in on or simply grateful that Paige had walked in. Because without the interruption, Ashley couldn’t be certain she wouldn’t have ended up back in bed with Cam—which is what had started this whole mess in the first place.

“I didn’t think you were coming this weekend,” she said.

“Change of plans.”

“Well, your timing sucks,” Cam told her.

She lifted a brow. “I really didn’t mean to interrupt, but I thought you should know I was here before things moved beyond a PG-13 rating.”

“Always happy to entertain you,” Ashley said dryly.

Her cousin smiled, but Ashley noted the genuine concern and silent questions in her eyes.

“I should go,” Cam said to Ashley, the focused intensity of his gaze warning that they still had a lot of unfinished business. “My mom’s watching Maddie and I’m already later getting home than I told her I would be.”

She nodded and followed him to the door, but it was only after she’d locked up behind him that she realized how much her knees were shaking.

“What was
that
all about?” Paige asked when she returned to the living room.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Ashley admitted.

“Okay, let’s start with Cam wanting to marry you.”

She sighed. “Only because I’m pregnant.”

Though Paige raised her eyebrows at that revelation, all she said was, “Knowing how much you’ve always wanted a baby, and how much you’ve always loved Cam, I’m not seeing a downside here.”

“All I wanted was a baby. I didn’t factor a husband anywhere into the equation, and Cam led me to believe that it would be up to me to decide what role—if any—he would play in our baby’s life. And now that I am pregnant, he’s changed his tune. Now it’s all about his rights as the father. I didn’t want a father—I wanted a sperm donor.”

Paige didn’t say anything.

Ashley swiped at more tears that had spilled onto her cheeks. “I can’t believe I’ve made such a mess of everything.”

“You only think it’s a mess because it’s not playing out the way you expected, because you didn’t see that your plan was inherently flawed from the beginning.”

Paige went to the freezer and pulled out a pint of Walton’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. She got two spoons out of the drawer, then put one back when she peeled off the lid and realized there wasn’t very much ice cream left.

Ashley frowned; Paige shrugged.

“I know pregnant women crave ice cream,” she explained. “But sexually deprived women need chocolate. The fact that you are pregnant proves that you are not sexually deprived, ergo the pitiful amount of ice cream left in this container is mine.”

“You can have the ice cream,” Ashley said. “So long as you explain why you didn’t warn me that this could happen.”

Her cousin dipped her spoon into the ice cream. “Because you would have used it as an excuse to end your relationship before it had even begun, before you accepted that you never stopped loving Cam.”

“Right now, I
hate
Cam.”

“Love—hate.” She licked the spoon. “Fine line.”

Ashley shook her head. “I really hate him.”

“You should have seen things from where I was standing. One minute you’re spitting mad at each other, the next you’re locked together in a steamy embrace.” She fanned her face with her hand. “It was like watching a
really
hot movie.”

“You’re warped.”

Her cousin grinned. “Seriously, Ash, that kind of passion is…inspiring. And all too rare.”

“I don’t want that kind of passion,” Ashley lied. “And I sure as heck don’t want Cam Turcotte barging into my life and telling me what to do.”

“I could put up with some barging if it came with that kind of kissing.”

“Then why don’t
you
marry Cam?”

“He didn’t ask me.”

“And he only asked me because I’m going to have his baby.”

“Congratulations, by the way.”

Ashley allowed herself a smile. “Thanks.”

“So when is due-day?”

“July twenty-ninth.”

“Your mother will be happy.”

“Why?” Ashley asked cautiously.

“Because she’ll have a lot more time to plan your wedding than she had for Megan’s.”

“There’s not going to be a wedding.”

“That’s not the impression I got from Cam.”

“Well, Cam’s already had one wedding, so that should be enough for him.”

“Is that what this is really about? Are you still determined to punish him for finding someone else?”

“Do you really think I’m that petty?”

“I don’t think you’re petty at all,” her cousin assured her. “But I also don’t think you’ve ever been able to think clearly where Cam Turcotte is concerned.”

“Well, forgive me for wanting to get married for reasons other than the fact that I’m pregnant.”

“How about the fact that you love him?”

“I loved him once before, too,” she admitted. “And he broke my heart when he left me.”

And what she’d felt for Cam then was barely a shadow of what she felt now. Getting to know the man he’d become had forced her to let go of her infatuation with the boy he’d been and, in the process, her feelings had begun to change. The attraction was sharper, the chemistry stronger, the affection deeper.

And it worried her, that if she could love him so much more, he would have the power to hurt her even more. So she refused to give him that power.

Because Cam had moved away from home when he was nineteen, he’d learned at an early age to make his own choices and to live with the consequences—both good and bad—of those choices. Since coming home, he’d begun to appreciate the wisdom and experience his parents had to offer, and he’d found himself turning to them when he had questions or concerns about parenting or sometimes just to get a second opinion about something.