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“Why Matt?”
It was the last thing she’d expected him to ask.
“Well,” she faltered, “he’s a friend. And smart. He’s nice. Healthy. His grandmother lived into her nineties.”
“What does Sheila feel about this, Laurel?”
“She agreed…”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Her breath caught; she had to face him. His eyes were steady. A couple of creases between his brows had deepened.
“I don’t really know,” she admitted. “She seemed okay…” She couldn’t finish the lie. Sheila had agreed, but she hadn’t seemed comfortable with the idea. She’d said yes with reluctance, Laurel guessed, perhaps in part out of pity.
Laurel hated knowing that.
Her cheeks heated and she looked away from Caleb, not wanting to see pity in his eyes, too.
There was a long silence. Neither of them moved. The water boiled beside her, and she stood there with the knife in her hand.
“Did you consider asking other friends?” Caleb’s voice was deep, quiet.
“I had a list…”
“Was I on it?”
The air had been sucked from the room. She couldn’t answer.
“Did you consider asking me, Laurel?” he persisted.
From somewhere, she found the courage to whisper, “What would you have said if I had asked?”
“I would have said yes.” He paused. “I’d like to have a baby with you, Laurel.”
CHAPTER TWO
“DO YOU MEAN THAT?” Laurel’s question came out, a mere thread of sound.
“I mean it.” He nodded at the glass. “Have a drink of wine.”
She gulped, grateful for the warmth that flowed to her stomach. Her emotions were in such turmoil she had no idea how she felt about his offer.
Caleb wasn’t on her list. The only guy she’d put on it who wasn’t married was George, who was gay and therefore safe.
Caleb wasn’t safe. She knew that much, from the panic and exhilaration and excitement ricocheting through her.
“Hey,” he said, voice gentle. “We’d better finish dinner.”
“Dinner?” She turned her head and stared blankly at the water boiling over on the stove and sizzling on the burner. “Oh. Yeah.” But she didn’t move.
“Broccoli,” he suggested, and squeezed by her in the narrow galley kitchen to take the lid off the noodles and turn the burner off. “Colander?”
“Um…bottom cupboard.” She pointed.
He drained while she hurriedly chopped and put the broccoli on to cook.
Caleb got plates out and said, “We don’t have to be fancy. Let’s just dish up here. We can come back for the broccoli.”
“Oh. Okay.”
She got out silverware while he dished up, and then followed him to the table.
There she studied him as if for the first time, seeing again the changes maturity had brought to his face. He’d become the man he had hoped to be, something not many people could say. His eyes were more serious, sometimes wary; his smiles still lit up a room, but came more rarely. He thought about what he did and said now, and what had once been idealism had now become acknowledgment of the responsibility he had taken on for so many other people. Once, when she’d looked at him like this, Laurel would have been able to read everything he felt on his face. Sometime in the past ten years, he had learned to shield his emotions. She hadn’t noticed that until now.
He watched her, his expression merely rueful.
“I wasn’t on your list, was I? You wouldn’t be so stunned if you’d ever thought about asking me.”
She struggled to pull herself together. “I didn’t consider asking any single guys. I thought…” Laurel managed a laugh. “Well, that it would send you running in terror.”
“I’m not running.” Why not?
“No. I see.”
“But you’re not saying what you think.”
She let out a shaky breath. “That’s because I have no idea what I do think! I figured you’d try to talk me out of the whole idea. I haven’t even told Dad or Megan. I was sure they’d both say, ‘You’re only twenty-eight, Laurel. Give yourself time. You want a family, not the responsibility of raising a child alone.’”
His mouth quirked. “Been airing all the con arguments to yourself, have you?”
“I’ve been around and around, but I really want to do this.” She raised her chin, letting him see that he couldn’t sway her.
He shrugged. “This is a normal age to start a family. I’ve been wondering about myself, too. What’s stopping me? Is it the travel? I’ve been thinking I’d like kids. You’re my best friend, Laurel. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have them with.”
Them. Not just one. What kind of future was he imagining? With them as a family?
Laurel felt a funny cramp start low in her belly. And even though her emotions were still pinging off each other, she knew: this was right.
A little girl or boy with Caleb’s bright blue eyes instead of her hazel ones, his dark curly hair, his height and athleticism instead of her klutziness. A child who would dream, who’d become passionate about something like Egyptian mummies or dinosaurs by the time he or she was four years old, who would dazzle and annoy teachers all at the same time, who would make Laurel laugh.
Until now, she’d wanted a baby, but that baby had been an abstract concept. Suddenly, the child she would carry would be Caleb’s. Caleb’s and hers.
Goose bumps walked over her skin, and she shivered.
“But…you’re bound to get married.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m twenty-nine. Hasn’t happened yet. The more business expands, the more time I spend on airplanes. Who am I going to marry? A flight attendant? I’m gone too much, Laurel. But I wouldn’t mind having a picture of my own kid to carry in my wallet. Having someone to spend time with when I’m in town.” He frowned. “Or am I making a big assumption here? Maybe you didn’t have any contact with the father in mind.”
“If that’s what I wanted, I would have gone with a sperm bank. I actually was hoping that Matt—that the father,” she corrected herself, “would at least be a friendly figure in my child’s life.”
“You know, our food is getting cold.”
Trust a man to be thinking about eating. But she shot to her feet. “The broccoli.”
SHE PICKED at her dinner.
In contrast, Caleb ate with a good appetite. “I think they gave me some peanuts somewhere about lunchtime. Breakfast was…I don’t even remember when. A long time ago.”
He’d flown from Santo Domingo, Laurel remembered, via Miami. He probably was starving. She decided to forgive him.
Neither talked much as they ate. She mentioned hearing that a mutual acquaintance from college had decided to go back to graduate school. “Oh, and I got an e-mail from Nadia. I haven’t heard from her in ages.”
“Your choice, as I recall.”
It had been. At first Laurel had turned to her best friends, but finally one day she’d looked at herself in the mirror and saw what they did: a woman who bore no resemblance to the Laurel they’d known in college. There was a Before, and an After, and the After was a painful contrast. It was easier, somehow, to be with people who hadn’t known the Before version. Who didn’t ask difficult questions, didn’t look puzzled at her new timidity, didn’t keep expecting her to become herself again. Old friends had refused to understand that this was who she was now, that the old Laurel had died that night in the parking garage. So she made new friends, like Matt Baker. They knew she had been raped and that she hadn’t gone back to law school, but didn’t see the painful contrast. She could feel comfortable with them in a way she would never be able to again with people like Nadia and even Caleb.
“It was still nice to hear from her,” she said, quietly.
His gaze rested on her face, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “What did she have to say?”
“It’s funny, but she just got pregnant. She said they weren’t planning to start a family yet, but it happened and now they’re excited.”
“Does she still live on Bainbridge?”
Laurel nodded. “I was thinking of giving her a call.”
“You were good friends.”
They’d been more than that. Paired by the college as roommates their freshman year, the two, at first sight ill-matched, had continued to room together the entire four years. Nadia’s parents were Russian immigrants, and she’d grown up deferring to men in a way that infuriated Laurel, who had been a militant feminist. But they both liked the window open at night, they laughed at the same things and they committed to listening to each other. By graduation, Nadia had been more willing to stand up for herself, and Laurel had begun to see shades of gray instead of stark black and white.
Laurel realized suddenly how much she missed Nadia. Who else could she call and say, I’m pregnant, and guess who the dad is?
Caleb pushed his plate away and said, “So.”
She gave up moving her food around and set down her fork. “So.”
“Have I been persuasive? Or are you going to stick with Matt?”
She shook her head. “No. Unless you want to think about it for a few days?”
“No thinking.” He held out his hand, laying it on the table, palm up. “I’m ready when you’re ready.”
Her chest felt as if it might have a helium balloon in it. She reached out her left hand and laid it on his, then almost jumped at how sensitive she was to such simple, everyday contact. The pads of his fingers tickled her skin, and when he wrapped his hand around her much smaller one, the scrape of his calluses might as well have been fingernails slowly, sensuously, drawn down her spine.
Something flared in his eyes, too, perhaps only awareness of how startled she was. But his voice, if anything, was pitched to soothe her.
“We’ve been good friends for a long time, Laurel. We’ll make this work.”
She gave a jerky nod. “I think we can.”
“So when? How?”
The procedure sounded even more appallingly clinical, even degrading, when she described it to Caleb.
“Does your insurance cover this? Or will it cost you?” he asked.
“It costs, but it’s not that much.” She hoped he wasn’t planning to offer money.
“Because I’m thinking, why can’t we do it ourselves?”
Her chair lurched as she jerked back, pulling her hand free. That quickly, her breath came fast, shuddery, and she stared at him in shock.
“Laurel.” He started to stand, but when she shrank further into herself he stopped, then sat again. “I didn’t mean that way. God! Do you really think I’m that big a jackass?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Then why are you cringing?”
“You know I can’t…”
A muscle spasmed in his cheek, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “I know. I do know. That’s not what I was suggesting. Only that we go the do-it-yourself route. Save bucks. I give you the sperm, you, uh, use a—I don’t know what—a turkey baster or something and squirt it in.” He winced at the imagery. “I’m just saying, it can’t be that hard to do.”
As rattled as she’d been a second ago, Laurel started to think. He was right; it couldn’t be hard. Women got pregnant even when their boyfriends had used condoms. It might be…nicer, yes, nicer to get pregnant at home. They could laugh at the awkwardness and their own embarrassment, instead of him having to get aroused in some examining room at the clinic, and her having to lie on her back with her feet in the stirrups with the doctor and nurses snapping on latex gloves and speculating about why she’d chosen this route to motherhood.
It wasn’t as if she was afraid of sperm. Only of men’s bodies, of being overpowered, of…
No. Don’t think about it. Don’t remember. Not now.
“Crap,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? The last thing you want is me handing you…I don’t know what. A baggie of… Jeez. Forget I suggested it.”
“No, I kind of like the idea. If you won’t be embarrassed. We could try, and then if I don’t get pregnant we could go to the clinic the next month.”
“You’re sure? Wow.” A grin broke out. “Hey! We’re going to be a mom and dad.”
“Together, to see our kid graduate from high school and college.”
They were smiling at each other, foolishly.
“An adventure,” Caleb said.
Finally, one she could take with him.
“An adventure,” Laurel agreed.
THAT EVENING, AFTER HE LEFT, she called Matt.
“Hey,” she said. “Listen, I hope this won’t break your heart, but Caleb and I talked, and… Well, he volunteered to father my baby.”
