Something Unexpected

by Wendy Warren

  Quickly, Rosemary entered the store, which was larger than she’d expected, with an old-fashioned soda fountain to her left and gift shop up front. A cash register was located at the entrance, but also, she saw as she made her way back, in the rear of the store by the pharmacy.

  Locating the aisle with the EPTs, Rosemary grabbed two boxes to be on the safe side then gathered a few additional items before she approached the cash register near the pharmacy.

  The cashier had teased, bright red hair and pince-nez glasses perched low on the end of her nose. Her forehead creased deeply as she perused an issue of OK! Magazine. Rosemary never forgot a face and took a relieved breath when she realized the woman was a stranger to her.

  Unloading her items onto the counter, she slid a large box of candy ahead of the EPT. In addition she’d selected a white teddy bear holding a sign that read Friends Forever, and a greeting card, reasoning that if she did see someone she knew, she could say she was on her way to give moral support to a friend whose husband was overseas, and who thought she might be pregnant and didn’t want to be alone when she found out.

  Hopefully, it would sound better coming out of her mouth than it did in her head.

  A forced smile strained her lips as she mumbled her “Hello.”

  The cashier greeted her without fanfare and efficiently rang up the purchase. “Thirty-two ninety-five.”

  She hadn’t reacted in the slightest to the EPTs. Rosemary relaxed, realizing she’d been paranoid. This was a pharmacy, after all. They probably sold EPTs all the time.

  “Thirty-two ninety-five,” she repeated with more spring in her voice, opening her purse.

  “I don’t think I have a bag large enough for the candy box,” the older woman muttered, peering beneath the counter. “Do we have any of those gift bags left from Valentine’s Day?” she called out.

  Opening her deep handbag, Rosemary fished for her wallet.

  From the pharmacy behind the cash register, someone responded, “Why don’t you head on up to the front now, Millie. I’ll look for the bags.”

  As Rosemary registered the warm male voice, the strangest feeling she had ever experienced overcame her. Fire ignited in her belly and rushed through her veins so quickly that for a moment she felt as if she might pass out.

  No. Please, no.

  Impulse almost compelled her to look up, but she resisted, keeping her head as low as possible.

  “I don’t need the bag,” she protested to the cashier even as the woman walked around the counter. “I’ll just pay, and—”

  “Dean will take care of you, honey.”

  Dean.

  Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.

  As the older woman walked away, Rosemary’s gaze zeroed in on the EPT, which seemed to be glowing like a flare. She couldn’t breathe.

  Frantic, she looked around for a way to hide the evidence. Eye-level to her right were rolls of vitamin C and throat lozenges. Too small. Below them hung bags of cough drops.

  Diving, she seized several bags, dumping them on the counter. By the time a white lab coat appeared in her field of vision, there was barely an inch of counter surface visible. Tugging her hat as low as it would go, Rosemary dug through her purse. Where was her damned wallet?

  “All right, how large a gift bag do we need?” Dean inquired pleasantly as he halted in front of her. With only the counter to separate them, Rosemary felt her entire body tense. Her engaged lover was the friendly neighborhood pharmacist.

  Surveying her goods, he whistled. “Looks as if you’re medicating quite a cough.” He picked up one of the packages. “These are fine for a cough related to the common cold, but if you’re treating the bug that’s going around, you’ll need something stronger. May I recommend a couple of products I think will be more effective for you?”

  Oozing compassion and care, his voice could make a woman believe she was safe in his hands. An excellent trait in a pharmacist; a treacherous quality in a lover.

  “No need,” Rosemary croaked, morphing her normal tones into something that resembled a bullfrog on Marlboros. “I’m stocking up.”

  What were the chances she could pay her bill, collect her items and leave without having to look up?

  “Rosie?”

  Her trembling fingers closed around the wallet, and she felt a mustard seed’s worth of relief. Pulling out several bills, she tossed them onto the counter, opened her wide-mouthed purse and began sweeping her purchases inside. She had no hope that everything would fit, but prayed she could get the EPT in there without Dean noticing.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “Where have you been all these months?”

  Her hand froze. “You’ve been looking for me for months?”

  “Since December.”

  Anger raced through her, and she stared at him, hard. As always, Dean’s face was incredibly handsome, but this time the attractiveness was blunted by the fact that he was a low-down, lying boy-slut.

  All through her divorce, Rosemary had preferred to skirt issues rather than to confront them, afraid her feelings would overpower her. Now she experienced no such compunction.

  “I wonder how you had the time to look for me?” she said. “Didn’t your fiancée have plenty for you do?”

  She gave him points—but only a couple—for not trying to deny the existence of a fiancée. Neil had lied even after she’d caught him red-handed.

  He frowned. “I want to explain—”

  “Good,” she interrupted. “You can start by explaining me to her.” She reached again for the items on the counter, righteous indignation—no, rage—trumping all other emotion. Cheating didn’t ruin only the immediate relationship: it robbed the cheated-on person of her dreams. If you’d loved and been lied to once, it was damned difficult to trust in love a second time. Rosemary actually felt a kinship with Good English Cheddar.

  “Hey, stop.” Dean reached for her forearm. “Don’t run away again. Talk to me.”

  She sent him a withering glance. “You have got to be kidding. Let go of my arm.”

  “Rosemary, is that you?”

  Oh, good lord.

  Dean let her go, and Rosemary unclenched her gritted teeth to smile limply at the new arrival. Irene Gould, a regular participant at the library’s book club approached the pharmacy counter. “Hello, Irene.”

  “Darling girl! The book club has been so worried about you. We heard you have that awful flu that’s going around. Are you better?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Rosemary lied. “Doing fine.”

  “Oh, good. Listen, darling, I won’t be at the library this Thursday. I’m going on a seniors’ bus trip to Portland. We’re touring the Chinese Garden and eating dim sum in China Town.”

  Rosemary nodded politely, acutely aware that Dean was listening to every word. To him, Irene said, “You make sure she goes home with vitamin C and zinc. We want our librarian back.”

  “I’ll make sure,” Dean murmured pleasantly enough.

  The moment Irene left, Rosemary reached again for the items on the counter. This time Dean grabbed her wrist and held on tight.

  “You work at the library? That’s where you’ve been all this time?”

  “Let go of my wrist,” Rosemary ordered, looking up, but if Dean heard her, he gave no indication. His attention lowered, riveted now on the goods rather than on her. With his free hand, he extracted from the pile of cough drops and candies one of the two EPT test boxes.

  Panic turned Rosemary’s body cold. Thoughts ran through her mind so quickly, she couldn’t pin one down.

  “It’s for a friend,” she blurted. “A friend who thinks she might be pregnant and doesn’t want to be alone when she finds out.” The fib she’d prepped in case she ran into anyone she knew rolled off her tongue before she could think twice. “Her husband’s out of the country, so I said I’d bring along a pregnancy test….”

  “And cough drops?”

  “Those are mine. I’ve been sick.”

  “Maybe you s
hould see a doctor.” He studied her. “But make it an ob-gyn.” His expression was somber. “Your nose turns red when you’re lying.”

  Chapter Three

  Her ears turned red, too.

  A blush infused her cheeks, and her eyes began to glisten.

  Dean sensed her genuine panic and confusion; he’d have liked to comfort her, but he had his own teeming emotions to deal with. How many weeks ago had they met? Ten. Anything could have happened since that night. Anything could have happened before. He knew so damn little about Rosie or her lifestyle, yet when he looked from the EPT box to her eyes, he was certain she was purchasing the test because of their night together.

  Frustration tightened his gut. For weeks he had tried to find her, never realizing she worked less than a mile from the building on Main where he worked and lived.

  She’d run out on him after a night filled with passion, had bolted as soon as she’d recognized him in the market and obviously wanted nothing to do with him now. And still when he looked at her he felt something he almost never felt: need. An interest and desire and hope that weren’t matched anywhere else in his life.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  “Back to my real life.”

  When he’d woken to find her side of the bed empty, he’d considered a number of possible scenarios: she was married; she had an appointment she couldn’t break; he had been a disappointing lover. Remembering her reactions to him, he felt safe discarding the latter scenario, but if it was true, he wanted another chance.

  Frustration made his chest muscles ache when he realized how eager she was to escape the pharmacy. Red splotched her cheeks under her crazy pink hat, and her eyes—which still reminded him of candy—refused to meet his.

  Talk to me. I’ve been looking for you for weeks.

  Letting her go, he yanked a bag from beneath the counter and packed most of Rosie’s items inside. He slid the EPT into his pocket.

  He needed to tell her about Amanda, but they had other business to attend to first.

  “Come on.”

  “What?” She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Polly!” he called to a young woman stocking a shelf nearby. The girl, a teenager who’d worked for him the past two summers, loped over. “Ask Millie to come back and man the pharmacy for a while while you stay up front. I’m taking a break.”

  “Sure thing.” Polly smiled at him then looked at Rosie. “Oh, hi, Ms. Jeffers! I didn’t recognize you in that hat. It’s awesome.”

  Rosie nodded, obviously dismayed at being seen by yet another person. Dean used her discomfort to his advantage.

  “Ms. Jeffers and I have some business to take care of. We’ll be upstairs if anyone needs us.” He stared at her. “Right?” he demanded softly.

  Rosie’s jaw clenched, but she accurately read his expression: he wasn’t going to let this go. If she left, he’d follow, sooner or later. Probably sooner.

  “Right.” The word barely emerged through her gritted teeth.

  Good enough.

  “If you’ll follow me, Ms. Jeffers.” Dean walked around the counter and toward the stairwell leading to his apartment above the pharmacy. At least now he knew her last name and place of employment. And strangely, although he was about to take a pregnancy test with a woman he barely knew, he suddenly felt more optimistic than he had in weeks.

  As he walked away, Rosemary sweltered beneath her winter clothing and an even more cumbersome layer of embarrassment. She felt hot, apprehensive and foolish.

  “I’m bringing my friend an EPT…and some cough drops…” What a dork! She was an awful liar, which was why she hadn’t fibbed since she’d failed to complete a book report in fourth grade and told her teacher it got ruined when her mother washed her backpack.

  Dean appeared about as convinced as Mrs. Karp had been. Seeing him again while she was trying to ascertain whether she was pregnant with his child had quite simply sent her into a flight-or-fight panic.

  Hesitating before she followed him, Rosemary dug all the cough-drop bags from her purse and returned each one to its peg. The cashier had not rung them up, and while Rosemary might be a woman of questionable judgment, she was no shop-lifter. She had allowed her ex-husband’s treachery to turn her into someone she was not: a woman who spent the night with a total stranger. Whatever happened now—whatever the pregnancy test revealed—she was going to reclaim her former integrity.

  Dean reappeared at her side. “What are you doing?”

  “Returning these things. The cashier didn’t ring them up, and I don’t need them.”

  “Okay.” He watched her a moment then said, “I’ll be right back.” When Rosemary was placing the last bag of cough drops on its hook, Dean returned, holding a small rectangular box. Another EPT test, but a different brand. “This one is more accurate,” he informed her stoically. “So I’m told.”

  Rosemary eyed the box. “You have experience with this,” she concluded darkly.

  “Not personally, no. I’m a pharmacist. My customers talk to me.”

  Rosemary knew she had no right to judge. She was as responsible as he for the fact that she was about to pee on a stick. But at least she wouldn’t be engaged to somebody else when she got the results.

  “I don’t have any experience with this, either,” she blurted. “This isn’t something I’ve done before.”

  Dean’s brows rose. “No kidding?” He tilted his head toward the cough drops she’d hastily replaced. “You were so smooth purchasing the EPT I never would have guessed.”

  Rosemary flushed. “I mean, I don’t have experience with needing to buy one. I don’t do…what we did. I don’t go to bars, and I don’t go home with men. Just for the record.”

  “I see.” His blue eyes, as placid as a summer sky, glowed with gentle humor. “Well, just for the record, I didn’t think you did, Rosie.”

  The night they’d met she had told him to call her Rosie, though no one who knew her well used that nickname. For that single evening, she had wanted to be someone different, someone more frivolous, someone who didn’t weigh out each decision as if it would have an effect on national security.

  His lips edged into a smile that reminded her of his kisses, which had felt like conversation, as if he’d been speaking to her with each press of lips.

  He had held her in the dark of early morning, and after his breath had steadied in her ear, she’d lain awake, bewildered by the fact that the most passion she’d ever experienced had happened in the arms of a stranger.

  Frightened by the burgeoning desire to turn their single night into something more meaningful, she’d eased out from beneath his heavy arm and the leg he’d slid over hers. Then she’d gotten dressed and left, attempting to put the evening in perspective: she’d made a mistake. She had slept with a man she did not know, who had picked her up in a bar. Better to chalk it up to experience than to turn it into something it wasn’t. So, she had decided to go home, shower and take a vow of chastity.

  And that was before she’d seen him with another woman.

  Remembering that she was a train wreck when it came to judging a man’s character, Rosemary nodded to the EPT in Dean’s hand and said, “If you’ll give me that, I’ll let you know what happens.”

  “You can take the test here.”

  Incredulous, she shook her head. “In a public restroom?” Her gaze darting furtively, she lowered her voice. “Are you nuts? I would think that you, even more than I, would want to be as discreet as possible. You’re a pharmacist. People have to trust your judgment.”

  Tall, square-shouldered in his white lab coat and looking impossibly composed under the circumstances, Dean raised a brow. “That’s never been a problem. And, no, not in a public restroom. There’s a private bathroom upstairs.”

  “I have a private bathroom at home. I’ll call you.”

  The friendly humor in Dean’s eyes dimmed. “We took the risk together—we can find out the result together.”
<
br />   Before she could protest again, he added, “Humor me. If the result is negative, we never have to see each other again. Unless you need a prescription filled.”

  And if the result is positive?

  What was he going to say and how was he going to react if the thin pink line appeared? Rosemary, if she’d had the option, would have preferred to find out over the phone. Or by email.

  “It might help to have time to process the information on our own.”

  He shoved a hand through his hair, ruffling the brown waves. “Look, I’m as out of my element here as you are. Let’s get this part done right now. We’ll have the rest of the day to ‘process.’”

  The bells at the front of the store jingled again and happy voices filled the pharmacy. Rosemary didn’t want to discover whether they were going to be heading in her and Dean’s direction. “All right, all right. Let’s go.”

  She was rewarded with one of the calming smiles that doubtless made every spoonful of medicine he parceled out to his customers go down more easily.

  “This way,” he said and headed to a staircase that led to the building’s second story.

  Trepidation made Rosemary’s legs feel like lead weights. Her anxiety mounting with each step she took, she followed Dean to a single door at the top of the stairs and stood beside him on the landing as he unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  “What is this?” she asked as the open door revealed an attractive living room. “My apartment.”

  “You live here?” Being in the pharmacy with him was bad enough. She did not want to be alone with Dean in his home.

  Pocketing the keys again, he winked at her. “I can walk to work. Plus, it’s only me, Buff and Calamity up here, and we don’t take up a lot of space.”

  “Buff and Calamity. Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane?”

  Stepping back so she could enter, he smiled more broadly. “Exactly. My fish. I don’t have enough space for a dog, and I kill plants, but the fish and I have been together so long they’re almost fossils.”