Their gazes danced around each other for a second or two, then she took off for her car, leaving Cal so tangled up in his emotions, he had no idea which one prompted him to yell out, “We could get married.”
She spun around, her mouth open. Then she burst out laughing.
“It wasn’t that dumb a suggestion,” he muttered, closing the space between them.
She crossed her arms when he reached her, that pitying look in her eyes again. “Who’d you vote for in the last election?”
He told her, and she laughed again. The car door groaned when she opened it. “We’d never survive the next presidential campaign. Besides, even if I was sticking around, you know as well as I do shotgun marriages rarely work out.”
He couldn’t argue with her there. Of the three couples they’d gone to high school with who’d “had” to get married, only one was still together.
“Hold on.” He clamped hold of the top of the door. “What do you mean you’re not sticking around?”
Her brows shot up. “You honestly don’t expect me to move back here just because I’m pregnant?”
“I didn’t expect anything. But I sure as hell didn’t think you’d drop a bombshell like this and just take off again!”
“I’m not. I’ll be here until the end of the week.”
“Oh, well then. That’s different.”
“Dammit, Cal…” She smacked a loose hair out of her face.
“I know your life is here. But mine isn’t. And hasn’t been for a long time. I’ve invested far too much in my career, and Mama sacrificed too much to help me get there, to just drop it because I’m—we’re—going to have a baby.”
Her words only added to the debris-laden whirlwind swirling around inside his head. Yes, he’d always accepted, even if he hadn’t fully understood, that Haven could never provide Dawn with whatever it was that fed her soul, something he assumed she’d found in New York. And an hour ago he didn’t even know about this baby. Yet he already knew not being able to see this child grow up, day by day, minute by minute, would kill him.
“And if you think I’m gonna settle for being an e-mail daddy,” he said sharply, “you’re more off your nut than I thought. You can be a lawyer anywhere. Even here.”
“Right. As if there’s room for more than one attorney in a town with a population of nine hundred.”
“Hey, we’re up to nine hundred and nine now. At least three people had babies last year, nobody died and a new family with four kids bought Ned MacAllister’s property and are building on it. And besides, I hear Sherman Mosely’s thinking of retiring. That heart attack he had last year put the fear of God in him. So maybe there would be—”
“And what kind of work would I do here? Help people make out their wills? Write up contracts? My life isn’t something out of Ally McBeal. I don’t spend my days handling frivolous cases and my nights boogying in some bar.”
“I didn’t figure you did.”
“Then you should understand that I need to be someplace where I can make a real difference in people’s lives. Those kids I told you about? They need me, Cal. And if I make partner, I can help them even more.”
“In other words, Podunkville’s petty little problems don’t matter.”
“I didn’t say that! And I didn’t mean that. It’s just that…oh, hell—how can I possibly make you understand this without sounding like a snob? I’d feel stifled and useless here, can’t you understand that?”
Cal slammed his palm against the car’s roof. “And how the hell do you expect to raise a child together if we don’t live in the same place?”
“I don’t know! But I can’t just give up my life!”
“Your work comes before your child, in other words.”
“No!” Anguish swam in her eyes. “Oh, God, Cal—I may be totally clueless, and I’m still in shock, too, and I may not know what kind of mother I’ll make, but there’s a reason I never got beyond looking at the front door of that clinic! It takes my breath, how much I already love this kid. And I’m prepared to give it anything it needs. But is it so wrong to not want to lose myself in the process?”
He felt his eyes blaze into hers. “Is it so wrong for me to want to be a real part of my child’s life?”
“Of course not, but—”
“A kid shouldn’t have to grow up without its father, Dawn! And I’d think you’d be the last person to want to see that happen to your kid!”
Her face went rigid. Then she threw up her hands, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m too tired to talk about this anymore right now.” He didn’t hinder her when she climbed into the car. “Maybe tomorrow?”
His chest all knotted up, Cal propped his now-stinging hand on the roof. “You plannin’ on changing your mind overnight?”
After a moment, she shook her head again.
“Well, honey—” he let go and stood up straight “—neither am I. So I’d say we’re at an impasse, wouldn’t you?”
He watched her peel out of the drive, wondering if it would have made things better or worse to admit he was every bit as scared as she was.
If not more.
Chapter 2
After he’d put up the horses for the night and returned to the house, all he did was prowl from room to room. An activity which finally drove Ethel, who was crocheting something or other in the living room because the TV reception was better in here, she said, over the edge.
“For pity’s sake, boy! Either sit your backside down and talk to me or take it someplace else! And I already figured out she’s pregnant, so there’s one decision out of your hands.”
He stared at the top of her pin-curled head—she was already “in for the night,” as she put it. “How’d you know that?”
“Because it’s true what they say. About pregnant women glowing. Even if her particular glow looks more like it’s due to radioactive waste. Besides, why else would she be here?”
Cal sighed. Ethel clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her crochet hook a blur. Whatever it was she was making, it was frilly and the most godawful shade of pink Cal had ever seen. Suddenly she plopped the whatever-it-was in her lap and peered at him over her reading glasses, with as much concern in those button eyes of hers as if she’d been his real mother. Which, considering she’d pretty much filled that gap in his life from the time he was nine, wasn’t surprising. “Why don’t you go see your brother?”
“Which one?”
“Does it matter?”
He almost cracked a smile at that. “And what good would that do?”
“Other than getting you out of my hair? I have no idea.” She picked up her work again, weaving the hook in and out of all those little holes so fast it made him dizzy to watch. “But that’s what big brothers are for—to talk things over with. Now that the two of them’s finally figured out a thing or two about women, maybe they can share their wisdom. Besides, you’ll