“One hundred percent.”
Just this morning he had thought Emily Finnegan was the kind of woman he could possibly, someday, maybe fall in love with. Now she was having a baby. His baby. He was going to be a father. And then his mother’s unwelcome voice penetrated his thoughts. A father who isn’t married to the baby’s mother. What do you think people are going to say about that?
“We’ll get married,” he blurted. “Right away, as soon as you want.” The declaration caught him completely off guard.
Emily gaped at him. “Married? Are you out of your mind?”
“What did you expect me to say?”
Emily sprang to her feet. “I don’t know. ‘How did this happen?’ ‘What are you going to do about it?’”
He couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “I know how it happened. I was there, remember?” Then he sobered. Why would she think he would ask what she was going to do about it? Unless...no. He moved toward her, but she ducked out of reach.
Okay, not exactly the response he would have liked.
“Are you planning to do something about it?” he asked.
She nodded. “Have it, raise it.”
Her declaration was meant to be defiant, but it had him breathing a little better. She might not make this easy, but he had to do the right thing.
“Okay, then. We’ll raise it together.”
“Right.” Emily rolled her beautiful brown eyes. “That’ll be easy for two parents who live three hundred miles apart. Easy, until the next big case comes along, and you forget all about us for months on end. Yeah, that’s going to work.”
“Come on, Emily. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I know you think I’m a thoughtless jerk, but I’m not. Give me a chance to prove it.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
He couldn’t believe he was about to say what he was about to say. “We’ll get married. You can move to Chicago. I’ll take care of you and the baby and...”
Horrified didn’t come close to describing her expression.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, gee. Let me see. There is no way I’m moving to Chicago, and we hardly know one another, so I am not going to marry you.”
“Emily, we’ve known each other for years.”
“We’ve been acquainted for years. Big difference.”
“They’re basically the same things.”
“All right, then,” she said, offering up a challenge. “What’s my favorite color?”
He looked her up and down, as though her wardrobe might offer up a clue. “Yellow?”
“Wrong.”
“What’s my middle name?”
Hmm. Should he know this? Had it been mentioned during her nephew’s baptism, when the two of them had become godparents? Emily...? Emily...? He had no idea.
“When’s my birthday?” she asked, relentlessly hammering her point home.
Again, no idea. None whatsoever.
“See? You don’t know anything about me, but you think getting married is a good idea. You think I should walk away from my family and my job and everything I’ve ever known, follow you to Chicago and sit around in an apartment...or a house or wherever you live...waiting for you to get unbusy enough to be a husband and a father?”
“I don’t know, Emily. We’re about two minutes into a conversation I never expected to be having. We’re going to be parents, and I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“A marriage between two people who don’t know one another is not the right thing, so it can’t possibly be the best thing for the baby.”
Was she serious? “What do you suggest?” he prompted. “I ask you out on a date, so we can ‘get to know’ each other?”
“That would be a start.”
She was serious. “You want me to take you out to dinner and a movie? Drive you home? Leave you at the front door with a good-night kiss?”
She sucker-punched him with her smile. “That’s as good a place to start as any.”
Oh, man. She was dead serious. Women. Heaven help him. He would never understand them.
“Fine. We’ll do this your way. I’ll pick you up at six o’clock.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
“Oh, okay.”
“It’s a date.” Lamest idea ever, but if this was how she wanted to play it, then this was how they would play it, because in spite of her objections, he was going to convince her to let him do the right thing. Case closed.
* * *
EMILY PACED BACK and forth across her apartment’s tiny, cluttered living room. In Riverton’s early days, these second-floor spaces above the storefronts on Main Street had mostly been used as offices. This one, above what had long been home to the Riverton Gazette, had at various times been the office of a barrister, a land surveyor and an accountant. About twenty-five years ago, it had been converted into an apartment by removing most of the partitions to create an L-shaped living/dining/office area, separated from the single bedroom by a minuscule galley kitchen and an even smaller bathroom.
Emily had fallen in love with the place the instant she saw it. She was close enough to her family that she was never, ever homesick, and far enough away to feel like the independent career woman she had imagined being.
“What were you thinking?” she asked, her cell phone pressed to her ear. “You should not have texted me to come to the shop without telling me he was there.”
“I’m thinking you should be grateful,” Fred said.
Grateful?
She stopped in front of the hamster cage that sat on a low bookcase next to her desk, and tossed in a peanut. Tadpole pounced on it, grasped it with tiny paws, her black, beady eyes bright with anticipation, and attacked the outer shell with her incisors.
“Why should I be grateful, Fred? I wasn’t expecting to see him, and I sure wasn’t prepared to tell him about the baby.”
“And you were going to be prepared...when exactly?”
He had a point.
“Still, you could have given me a heads-up.”
“Right. And given you a chance to cook up an excuse to avoid seeing him.”
Fred knew her too well.
“So? How’d he take it?”
“Better than I expected.” Jack had been kind of amazing, actually, but he might not be so accepting once the shock wore off and he had time to think things through. “He even said...” No. She wasn’t ready to say that out loud, either.
“He said...?”
Emily watched Tadpole break through one end of the peanut shell and stuff the first nut into her cheek pouch. Life for a hamster was so easy. Eat. Run on your wheel. Sleep. Get up and do it all over again. Boring, but easy.
“Come on, Em. You’re killing me here.”
She sighed, knowing Fred wouldn’t let this go. “He said we should get married right away.”
A moment of stunned silence was followed by stammering. “He... Seriously?”
“Hey! Why so surprised? I’m a