He chuckled. “I guess there must have been a whole group of you in a luxury suite?”
“Just seven,” she said. “Me, Marcus, his son MJ, two business associates and their spouses.”
“Marcus’s wife wasn’t there?”
She shook her head. “They’re divorced.”
“So...it was a date?”
“No,” she said, sounding amused. “It was a baseball game.”
“I bet he thought it was a date,” Caleb grumbled. And though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, he heard himself ask, “Did he make a move?”
She tapped a finger against her chin as if trying to remember. “Well, he did pass me the mustard for my hot dog.”
“Was it a Nathan’s?”
“As a matter of fact, it was,” she confirmed. “But he never made a move—I promise. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I have occasionally gone out with other guys over the years.”
“I didn’t expect that you stayed home every night pining for the husband you left behind in Nevada,” he said.
“By the time I was ready to start dating again, I assumed you were my ex-husband,” she reminded him.
“Any serious relationships?”
She shook her head. “How about you?”
“No.”
An awkward moment passed before she asked, “Does it seem strange to be talking about other people we’ve dated while waiting to find out if we’re going to have a baby together?”
“A little,” he admitted.
“We probably should have had this conversation before we fell into bed together. Or maybe we shouldn’t have fallen into bed together.”
“Whatever the test says, I don’t regret that night for a second,” he told her.
Before she could respond, her phone chimed to indicate that the three minutes were up.
She drew a deep breath, no doubt bracing herself for the results. His own heart was beating so hard and fast, he wondered if she could hear it.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He touched his lips to her—a tender and hopefully reassuring kiss. “I’m ready.”
Her hand trembled as she reached for the box and withdrew the stick.
He shifted closer, so that he could see the result at the same time she did. Of course, he hadn’t read the instructions, so he wasn’t sure what the two lines in the little window meant. So he looked at Brie, trying to decipher the result from her expression.
She exhaled an unsteady breath. “It’s positive.”
Positive.
He wanted to whoop for joy, but he wasn’t sure that she was as thrilled with the result as he was. Instead, he attempted to ease the tension by asking, “Do the two lines mean you’re pregnant with twins?”
“Ohgod—no,” she responded immediately. Vehemently.
“I just wondered, because I’ve heard that twins run in families.”
“Regan’s the first in our family to have a multiple birth,” she told him. “And it’s only fraternal twins that are linked to a genetic predisposition, anyway. Identical twins are a completely random occurrence, which, now that I’m saying it out loud, is not reassuring.”
But he didn’t think that was why she was still clutching the stick in a white-knuckled grip. “So...are you happy? Sad?”
“Happy,” she said.
And then she started to cry.
He immediately slid an arm across her shoulders and hugged her to his side. “I’m getting some mixed signals here.”
Brie managed a watery laugh. “These are happy tears. Mostly.”
“I’m happy, too,” he said. Of course, mixed in with the happy was more than a little bit of “what the hell do we do now?” but he decided to focus on the happy.
So he continued to hold her, trying to be strong and reassuring, until her tears subsided.
“It’s going to be okay.” He murmured the words soothingly as he gently brushed the lingering traces of moisture from her cheeks. “No, it’s going to be amazing. We’re going to have a baby, Brie.”
“A baby,” she echoed softly, reverently, her hand automatically moving to cover her still flat belly. “When I think about it, it just seems so unlikely... I mean, what are the odds that we would both have been in Las Vegas on the same weekend, staying in the same hotel, then ending up in bed together? And now we’re going to have a baby.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a string of coincidences,” he suggested. “Maybe it was destiny.”
“I think destiny is an excuse used by people who want to abdicate responsibility for their choices.”
“And I think living in New York has made you cynical,” he chided.
“I guess, if we’re going to have a baby together, we should postpone the divorce,” she ventured, looking at him to gauge his reaction to her words.
“Postpone?” he echoed.
“I know I asked you to sign the papers, but under the circumstances, it might make sense to wait until after the baby’s born.”
“I tore up the papers, Brie.”
“What? When?”
“When I booked my flight to New York.”
Her brows drew together as she tried to make sense of what he was telling her. “What if the test had been negative?”
“I didn’t tear them up because I believed you were pregnant—although I did consider the possibility,” he confided. “I tore them up because I want to make our marriage work and this trip was about convincing you to give us another chance, regardless of the test results.”
“A bold move, cowboy.”
He grinned. “I thought you liked that about me.”
“There were a lot of things I liked about you,” she said. “But I don’t know you anymore. And you don’t know me.”
“So we’ll take some time to get to know one another again,” he suggested reasonably.
“That’s a good idea,” she agreed. “Maybe we could plan regular Saturday night dates—oh wait, that won’t work, because I live in New York and you live in Nevada.”
“Regular Saturday night dates could prove a challenge,” he acknowledged. “But I’m here now.”
* * *
So they took the subway into Manhattan again, this time exiting at the Museum of Natural History, then cutting through Central Park to Fifth Avenue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Oh, you said The Met,” he said, as they climbed the wide stone steps to the entrance.
“What did you think I said?”
“The Mets.”
A smile tugged at her lips as she shook her head. “You did not. You know I’d only ever go see the Mets lose against the Yankees.”
He chuckled at that as they entered the building. “Where do we begin?” he asked, looking around The Great Hall.
“That depends on what you want to see,” she told him. “It’s easy to lose a whole day in here.”
“We can spend as much time as you want,” he promised. “I don’t have to be anywhere until the airport tomorrow.”
“A tempting offer, but it’s too nice a day to spend all of it indoors,” she said. “And what I really want to see is the Art of Native America before it’s gone.”
So she led him to The American Wing, and after they’d finished perusing the temporary exhibit, they went back to the park. The half-mile wide by two-and-a-half-mile long green space in the middle of the city was pretty impressive—even to a man accustomed to the wide-open spaces of northern Nevada.
“This is one of my favorite places in the city, whatever the season,” she confided, nibbling on a soft-serve ice-cream cone as they made their way along the paved path flanked by huge elm trees and dotted with statues of famous literary figures.
“It’s beautiful,” he told her.
“And not a cow in sight,” she teased.
The awkward segue made her smile. “That was always your plan—to have your own place on your family’s ranch.”
“Our plan,” he reminded her.
She nodded.
“Anyway, I just thought I’d mention that there’s a bedroom adjacent to the master suite that would make a terrific nursery.”
“You’re jumping the gun a little bit,” she told him, both tempted and terrified by his suggestion.
She knew that moving back to Haven, to live with her husband and raise their child together, was the obvious answer. The easy answer. But that didn’t mean it was the right one for her. And she had no intention of making any relocation decisions mere hours after taking a pregnancy test.
“I’m trying to make plans,” he said, as he drew her toward one of the benches under the shade of the trees.
He’d always sensed when she needed to talk, and he’d always been a good listener. Maybe that was why, like so many times in the past, she found herself opening up to him. “I’ve wanted to be a mom for so long,” she confided. “But now that it could finally happen, I’m afraid to think too far ahead.”
The first time they’d been in this situation, she’d been overwhelmed by the implications of having a baby so young and the course it would set for her life. She wouldn’t have gone to college then. Maybe she could have taken some courses online and eventually earned enough credits for a degree, but she might have lost the opportunity to pursue a teaching career.
Having grown up with two career-driven parents, she’d promised herself that when she had kids, she’d never let them feel as if they were in the way. Their questions wouldn’t be interruptions; their activities wouldn’t be distractions. They would know, every minute of every single day, that they were the most precious gifts she’d ever been given.
But at eighteen, an unplanned pregnancy hadn’t seemed like a gift. Certainly not one that she’d wanted.
“When we were pregnant before, when we lost our baby...”
Caleb nodded, silently encouraging her to continue.
“I felt as if it was my fault,” she confessed to him now.
“Why would you ever think that?” he asked.
“Because my first thought, when I saw the plus sign, was that maybe it was wrong. I hoped it was wrong. I actually prayed not to be pregnant—” her tears spilled over “—and then, only a few weeks later, I wasn’t.”
“Then it was my fault, too. Because I had the same thoughts,” he admitted. “But it wasn’t because we didn’t love our baby. We were just young and scared and overwhelmed.”
She wanted to believe it was true. But she still felt guilty—and worried. “What if—”
He must have known what she was going to say, because he cut her off before she could finish her thought. “Let’s not go there,” he urged. “No one ever wins the ‘what if’ game.”
She nodded. “You’re right.”
“Let’s just focus on doing all of the right things to take care of you and our baby,” he suggested.
“Such as eating healthy?” she asked, popping the last bite of cone into her mouth.
“Calcium is necessary for strong bones,” he said.
She smiled then, grateful for his willingness to support her ice cream addiction.
Of course, she’d always been able to count on Caleb to stand by her side...until she walked away.
* * *
The house was dark and quiet when Caleb slipped out early Sunday morning after a restless and sleepless night. By the time he returned, it was neither. He followed the sound of voices to the kitchen, where Grace and Lily were seated at the little table.
“I thought I’d be back before you made your coffee,” he noted, setting the carryout tray on the table.
“We’re always grateful for more,” Grace said. “And is that a bag of Bergen Bagels?”
He nodded. “Brie mentioned that they were a favorite.”
“And now you are, too,” Lily said.
“When you weren’t on the sofa this morning, we thought maybe you’d gone back to Nevada,” Grace told him.
“I was awake early and didn’t want to disturb anyone else, so I went for a walk then stopped at that little café down the street on the way back.”
“That was thoughtful,” Lily said, as he handed out the paper cups.
“I didn’t know how you liked it, so they’re all black, but creamers and sugars are in the bag.”
“Black works for me,” Grace said, prying the lid off her cup. “Thanks.”
“I’m light and sweet,” Lily said, tearing open three packages of sugar and dumping them into her cup.
“And that’s how she takes her coffee, too,” Grace remarked.
Caleb smiled as he lifted his own cup to his lips.
Lily emptied the same number of creamers into her cup, stirred.
“So...are you going to be a daddy?” Grace asked.
The unexpected question made him gulp, and he winced as the hot coffee burned his throat.
“You couldn’t let me finish my coffee before the interrogation?” he grumbled.
“We just want to know what’s going on,” Lily told him.
“Isn’t that for me and Brie to figure out?”
“We want her to be happy,” Grace said.
“And you don’t think I can make her happy?” he guessed.
“She didn’t move to New York because she was happy in Nevada,” Lily pointed out.
“She moved to New York to go to Columbia,” he reminded them.
“There are some pretty good schools a lot closer to Nevada,” Grace noted.
“You’re right,” he acknowledged. Because it was the same thing he’d said, when he confronted Brie about her decision. “But everything is different now.”
“Then she is pregnant,” Grace concluded.
“She wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“You didn’t reveal any big secrets,” Lily assured him. “We’d pretty much figured it out.”
“So what happens now?” Grace asked. “Do you expect her to move back to Haven?”
“I’d like her to come home,” he said. “Every day of these past seven years, it’s felt as if the biggest part of my heart was missing.”
“And yet, this is the first trip you’ve ever made to New York to see her,” Lily noted.
“I wanted her to come back because it was what she wanted, not because I begged. But now I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to be with her.”
“Including beg?” Grace challenged.
“If that’s what it takes to convince her to give our marriage a second chance—and to give our baby a real family.”
The two women exchanged a glance.
“It has to be her decision,” Lily said.
“But we won’t stand in your way,” Grace promised.
“Thank you,” Caleb said sincerely. “I’m glad to know that Brie has such good friends here.”
“And because we’re such good friends, we feel compelled to warn you that if you break her heart again, you’ll answer to us,” Grace said.
He nodded. “Duly noted.”
* * *
“Hey, sleepyhead.”
Brie pushed herself up into a sitting position in bed. “What’s that?” she asked, eyeing the tray Caleb carried.
“Breakfast.”
“You made me breakfast?”
“Sadly, I can only take credit for the delivery,” he said. “Grace was in charge of the stove.”
She surveyed the contents of the tray he set across her lap. “Is she upset about something?”
“Why would you think that?” he asked cautiously.
“Because she doesn’t cook very often,” Brie explained. “And w
hen she breaks eggs, it’s usually a form of therapy.”
“She did more than break eggs. She chopped onions and peppers, fried ham and grated cheese.”
“This is a really nice treat,” she said. “But I thought we were going to the Milk + Honey Cafe for brunch today.”
“That was the plan,” he confirmed. “But when you slept through your alarm, we decided you probably needed sleep more than you needed crème brûlée French toast.”
“You decided?” She frowned, her fork in the eggs. “You, Grace and Lily are making decisions for me now?”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “We only decided to let you sleep.”
“You woke me up now,” she pointed out.
“Because it’s almost noon, and I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
“What?” She twisted her head to look at the clock beside the bed. “Ohmygod, it’s almost noon.”
“That’s what I said,” he agreed, his tone tinged with amusement.
She chewed on a bite of omelet, swallowed. “What time’s your flight?”
“Four.”
“As soon as I finish eating, I’ll hit the shower so I can go with you to the airport,” she said.
“You don’t have to do that,” he protested.
“I want to be sure you make it to JFK in time.”
“That eager to get rid of me?”
“I only meant that you seem to have a little bit of trouble with our public transportation system.”
“That’s why I was thinking about calling an Uber,” he admitted.
“Or you could save fifty bucks and have the pleasure of my company a little longer.”
“In that case, eat up and get moving.”
* * *
They didn’t talk much on the way to the airport, but they sat close together on the train—their hips and shoulders touching, their hands joined.
Though she’d lived without him for seven years, Brie knew she was going to miss Caleb when he was gone. Because he was no longer just the boy she’d loved and impulsively married—he was the father of the child they were going to have together. And this time, despite the circumstances of conception, she had no doubts about her readiness to be a mother, and she already loved their baby more than she could have imagined.
One Night with the Cowboy Page 11
