An Amish Proposal. Jo Brown Ann

when she turned down the proposal he’d made out of obligation?

      She was surprised that Micah’s actions bothered her more than Austin’s. It had to be a sign she was too distraught to think clearly.

      Katie Kay breathed a sigh of relief when the women turned to the refreshments and conversation. She had the excuse to bring coffee and tea to serve to Gemma’s guests. They thanked her and tried to make her feel welcome, but she sensed the questions they didn’t utter. She kept up an easy patter to defuse their curiosity.

      When everyone was served, she took her chair again and selected a chocolate chip cookie from the plate on the coffee table. Suddenly she was starving. A gut sign because her hunger should mean the day’s nausea was over.

      Gemma’s youngest, Jayden, toddled to his mamm and climbed onto her lap. Gemma continued her story without a pause but drew the little boy close to her. When he seemed to reshape himself so he could lean against her distended stomach, Katie Kay was startled by her surprising sense of longing.

      Would the boppli inside her ever reach out to her with such innocent love as Jayden did?

      “Mommy gots baby.” Jayden patted her stomach and grinned while everyone chuckled.

      Sliding off her lap, he went to the brunette whom Katie Kay thought was named Roberta. He tapped her belly as he had Gemma’s.

      “Gots baby?” he asked.

      That brought more laughter, because Roberta looked ready to go into labor at any second.

      He started to move to the next woman, who held her hands in the air and laughed, “No, Jayden. I don’t ‘gots baby.’ Not yet anyhow.”

      “No baby?” His pudgy face dropped as he turned to Katie Kay.

      As she tensed, Gemma scooped him up and cradled him as if he were a boppli. “That’s enough, young man.”

      Katie Kay hoped nobody heard her soft sigh of relief that Gemma had halted him before he asked if she had a baby. Too many people already knew. She trusted the Donnellys and Micah to keep her secret, but the more people who discovered she was pregnant, the greater the likelihood that they’d slip and word of her condition would reach her family.

      They couldn’t know until she told them.

      Whenever that might be.