The Baby Gamble

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Other than muttering hello, he didn’t talk at all. Finally, Annie pushed on the latch, catching her breath as she opened her home to the outside night air—and him.

  Blake at any time was hard to ignore. But in a suit he was breathtaking.

  And maybe a little intimidating, too. If she’d been susceptible to him emotionally, in any way. Now, however, she was only inclined to get rid of him.

  When he turned, waiting for her to lead the way, she headed toward the kitchen. It was the one place where she had more than a single seat to offer.

  He took the folding chair she pointed him to. “Your tastes have changed.” His voice was more teasing than judgmental—not that Blake had ever been one to point fingers at anyone.

  “I wanted the house more than I wanted the furniture,” she said, pouring him a glass of the merlot he used to like, and bringing it and her own glass to the table. She didn’t plan for them to be there long enough to finish their drinks, but the wine provided them with something socially acceptable to do while they decided not to have a baby together.

  It might take a moment or two for her to figure out how to handle Cole’s reaction in a way that would be gentle yet firm.

  “Roger wanted the furniture worse than he wanted the house,” she continued, handing Blake a napkin to put under his glass. “I got the dishes. He got the tools.”

  She sat.

  Blake’s gaze settled on her as if he could see inside her just as well as he used to. She wished he wouldn’t do that.

  “It sounds like it was an amicable parting,” he said.

  She nodded tentatively. On paper it had been. But privately, in those conversations when they acknowledged that they had to part, there’d been nothing but disappointment. And pain. And guilt. His pain and her guilt. And in the end, her pain, too.

  In marrying Roger, who’d been her friend for years, she’d hurt someone she loved. Horribly.

  “I heard he left town,” Blake said, and Annie stared at him. He was a little too close to her thoughts.

  “He has an uncle in Ohio with a farm equipment company. Roger’s running the place for him now.”

  “Does he like it there?”

  How would Annie know? She wasn’t in the habit of talking to her exes—as Blake was well aware.

  “According to his sister, when I ran into her at the post office about six months ago.”

  “She’s still in town?”

  “They moved to San Antonio this past summer. Her daughter needed a gifted program….”

  “What about his parents?”

  “His dad died several years ago, and afterward his mom remarried and moved to Dallas.”

  And that just about took care of Annie’s second marriage—and nearly four years of her life.

  “Do you have any regrets?”

  No one had asked her that before—not regarding her breakup with Roger. That was a question she’d heard many times, however, after Blake had returned and she’d chosen to honor her current marriage over her first. Most often she’d heard it from Roger.

  “He’s a good man who’d have given his life for me, and I hurt him,” she said simply. “Of course I have regrets.”

  “You stayed with him.”

  “I was committed, and I did love him. But he knew I wasn’t in love with him.”

  She didn’t realize exactly what she’d just revealed—and to whom—until Blake took a slow sip of his wine, peering at her over the top of the glass.

  “From the beginning?” His question, as usual, went straight to the point.

  “He knew from the beginning, yes.”

  Blake didn’t say any more, and in spite of all the things left unsaid between them, neither did she.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE WINE WAS GOOD, but Blake sipped slowly.

  It would be so easy to let the libation do his work for him. Too easy. And infinitely more difficult to regain his self-control.He’d been that route. And had managed to haul himself away from the detour before it destroyed him.

  But there were others.

  “I’ve given some thought to your request.” In fact, pretty much every nonwork thought he’d had in the past forty-eight hours had concerned Annie’s request.

  She looked about twenty as she sat there, silently awaiting his response. Instead of filling out with approaching middle age, she was thinner now, her belly flatter—and more tanned, he saw from the sliver of skin showing between the bottom of her shirt and the low-cut top of her jeans.

  His gaze settled there, finding momentary escape. But then that belly was a reminder of other things, too.

  “What happened?” His dry throat made speech difficult.

  Annie was frowning. “What do you mean? What happened when?”

  There was a time when she’d known what he was thinking, sometimes even before he did. Back then they’d talked in code, their own particular language of half-spoken thoughts understood only by the two of them.

  “With the baby.”

  He could feel her stiffen. Watched her wineglass tremble as she raised it to her lips.

  Our baby, he’d wanted to say.

  “The doctor just said it was one of those things.”

  “One of what things?”

  Annie ran her finger around the rim of her glass, not looking at him. “It happens that way sometimes. Could be the egg and sperm didn’t fully fertilize, or that the egg wasn’t properly embedded in the uterus. Maybe there was some genetic abnormality that would have produced catastrophic results. Miscarriages are common—nature’s way of ridding the body of something that wasn’t right.”

  He thought about that. Wondered what could possibly have not been right about a baby between him and Annie. A baby that they’d conceived together in love.

  “What are the chances of it happening again?”

  How could talking with Annie feel so awkward? And at the same time so natural? Right?

  “Slim. I’ve had all the tests, just for my own peace of mind, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me—no reason I shouldn’t carry a healthy baby full term.”

  Suddenly, he could feel the tremors starting—behind his knees was always the first place they hit. He had to get out of here. Or at the very least, out of a conversation that was triggering such painful memories.

  “Were they able to tell…if it was a boy or a girl?”

  Stop, man. Go home.

  The interior of his uncle’s old Lincoln was beige. With white stitching. After all these years, the smell of the leather still permeated the car. And if he concentrated hard enough he could smell it.

  If Blake stood up, he could be driving away in less than a minute.

  It took him several seconds to see that Annie was shaking her head, the curls around her temples brushing against her skin. “It was too soon,” she said, her voice hushed.

  She still hurt. The loss of their child tore at her, undiminished with time. He’d known that, of course, on some level. He just didn’t want to think about it.

  Not unless he couldn’t help it. Like all the other things locked away in that cave inside him, numbing him to much of what went on in the outside world. And in his own world, as well.

  “I was expecting to see a three-and-a-half-year-old girl when I got off that plane.”

  What in the hell was he doing? He didn’t relive this stuff. This wasn’t why he’d come here.

  He had a plan. Strict orders to himself.

  One of which was to be out of Annie’s house within ten minutes.

  He’d already disobeyed that order.

  Annie sat still, not looking at him.

  “She had blond hair, like my mother’s,” Blake continued. “And curls like yours.”

  He could feel the anticipation, the sweat down the middle of his back. Could hear the sound of the plane’s engines, the landing gear dropping down. And then metal clanking on metal—a cell door closing. Locking him in.

  “She took her first step on what I calculat
ed to be October 12.” He heard his voice, but wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t just in his head. “She said ‘Mama’ on Christmas Eve—the best Christmas present you could have received.”

  When he’d imagined all this the first time, he’d been lying naked on a dirty cement floor somewhere in Jordan, shivering with cold. The nudity had been his punishment for refusing to eat until he was granted some kind of contact with the American embassy. By then he’d been imprisoned for eighteen months. Had only known the exact date because one of his guards had taunted him about the Christian holiday.

  Blake had grown used to the mental and emotional torture by then. Or at least, he’d become as immune to it as a human being could be, living under such duress for an extended length of time.

  They hadn’t beaten him. He had no outward scars. And he was thankful for that.

  “I used to picture you breast-feeding her,” he continued. “I had set feeding times, and I’d sit and picture you, the creamy whiteness of your breasts. The softness in your eyes as you looked at our little girl. The gentle smile on your lips. I’d see her little hand, with her tiny fingernails, cupping you, opening and closing against you. I could hear her suckling. For months, I would wake up in the morning, eager to get to feeding time. And look forward to subsequent feedings throughout the day.”

  His voice trailed off, but the vision didn’t. He was there. Feeling the cold. The hardness. Seeing the rough gray rock of the makeshift cell that a group of extremist insurgents had held him in—U.S. collateral for whatever they might decide to bargain for, following the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.

  “She was almost three when she was finally potty trained. Though you gave it your best effort for six months prior to that, she refused to be interested before then. But then, almost overnight, she had it.”

  And shortly after that his captors had been identified by the Jordanian government. It had taken them another three months to find Blake and the other civilians the group had held hostage.

  Blake blinked, his eyes burning, as he relived the first experience of daylight he’d had in nearly four years. He had hardly been able to comprehend the blue skies and sunshine overhead, and the fresh air against his skin had been almost painful.

  And so beautiful he’d actually wept as he walked down the path to medical help and a series of debriefing meetings, counseling, hand-holding, more debriefing, exercising, recovering his strength.

  And finally, after one brief phone call announcing his arrival, home.

  Home.

  The hot air surrounding him suddenly cooled, chilling his wet skin. Blake blinked again. Less painfully this time. His eyes came back to his surroundings and focused on the friendly lighting in a kitchen in River Bluff, Texas.

  And he saw Annie sitting not two feet away from him, tears streaming down her face.

  “I…TELL ME ABOUT IT, Blake. About what happened to you.” Dry-eyed now, Annie tried to reconnect with the man she’d once loved with all her heart. He sipped his wine. Acted as if he hadn’t just given her more of himself in five minutes than he’d given her during their entire marriage.

  He shrugged. “There’s not much to tell that you don’t already know. I was among a small group of American and British civilians taken captive by a rogue band of bin Laden supporters who hoped to gain his approval by offering him human bargaining tools.”She, and a lot of other people, knew the political part. The official explanation for innocent people losing years of their lives to terrorist factions.

  “You were in captivity for four years, Blake. What was it like?”

  “Not as bad as it could have been,” he said at last. “We were never tortured.”

  The words hinted at something that remained unsaid, and Annie shivered.

  “Holding someone against their will is torture.” She dared to push him, which was something she wouldn’t have done six years before. She’d begged once. And that had netted her nothing but a husband who was presumed dead, and a miscarriage that had nearly cost her her sanity.

  Talk to me, Blake. Her pleas were silent now. For once in your life, give me even a small bit of all that you hold so deeply inside of you.

  He stood. “I’m sorry to have kept you so long,” he said, pushing the folding chair back up to the card table. He set down his glass. “I came to talk to you about this…thing you intend to do.”

  He’d come to tell her no, and she didn’t want to hear it—not right then. Not when her feelings were so raw, her heart still breaking at the thought of her proud, loyal, private-to-the-point-of-breaking-her-heart husband locked away all alone in some cell in the Middle East, imagining their nonexistent child at her breast.

  “It’s okay.”

  His brows raised, he glanced down at her. “You’ve changed your mind?”

  “No. I just…”

  “In that case, I agree.”

  AS SOON AS HE HEARD himself say the words, Blake turned around and walked out of Annie’s kitchen. Out of her house. And her life.

  He drove for an hour, but without leaving River Bluff. Past the Cross Fox Ranch, which was the home of the Carricks, a father-and-son duo who cared deeply for each other while struggling to see who each had become in the time Brady had been gone. Around town, and then out to see Luke Chisum, another of the gang of poker players who had taken him on as one of their own.Blake had only met Luke the month before. And he figured he’d probably never know the real man behind the happy-faced guy who sat at the table and joked with men he’d known his whole life. Luke hadn’t had an easy time of it. Still wasn’t, from what little Blake had gathered from things left unsaid at the table. Not only had Luke come home to help his mother care for his father, who’d had a stroke, but there were problems with an older brother, too.

  Blake could relate. His homecoming hadn’t been the best, either.

  The Lincoln found its way past the old bar outside of town where the Wild Bunch played their weekly poker games. It reminded Blake of his life—once filled with love and promise and friendship, and now run-down, a shambles.

  He went by Cole’s place, too. Sat at the end of the drive of the half-built dream house that his recently divorced friend and ex-brother-in-law was slowly finishing on his own. Blake thought about knocking on the door. Thought about it, but didn’t do it.

  Instead, with more doubt in his heart than anything else, he somehow found himself back outside the house Annie and her second husband had bought together. Lived in together.

  The home she’d gone back to the day she’d picked up Blake from the airport in San Antonio and driven him to the hotel where she’d booked him a room, leaving him with a bank account containing a quarter of a million dollars, keys to his deceased uncle’s car, and a hole where his heart had been.

  He climbed the steps more slowly this time around. Knocked. And knocked again.

  When she didn’t answer, he tried the door. It had been latched earlier, but hardly anyone in River Bluff locked their doors. Blake wasn’t surprised now when Annie’s door swung open.

  And he didn’t even think twice when he stepped inside, moving slowly through the rooms, listening for any sound that might tell him where he’d find her.

  The house gave away nothing. He took in the nearly empty living room and a bedroom-turned-office, with a desk that matched her kitchen table.

  Passed a bathroom and moved on down the hallway to another bedroom, not sure what to expect. And that’s where he found her. Sitting on the floor in the middle of the most exquisite room he’d ever seen.

  Annie might not have done a thing with the rest of her living space, but the room she’d created for the baby she hoped to have could easily have been featured in a magazine.

  She glanced up. Met his gaze. Didn’t seem all that surprised to see him there, again, uninvited.

  “We have to talk.” He’d never been much for pretty words, and this time was no different.

  Pulling her knees to her chest, Annie wrapped her ar
ms around them and nodded.

  He’d come back to tell her that he’d misspoken earlier. That he couldn’t father her child. For all the obvious reasons. And for one she would have no way of knowing.

  Contrary to what her brother, Cole, thought, Blake didn’t fit her criteria. First and foremost, Annie was looking for a man who was emotionally stable. Strong.

  And Blake Smith was no such thing.

  SHE TRIED TO LOOK AT HIM, to face life head-on. But instead she could only stare at the rainbow mural painted on the wall opposite the hand-carved wooden crib she’d found in a little shop outside of Waco.

  “We need to decide how we’re going to go about doing this.”Blake’s words were so matter-of-fact, so ludicrous, when she considered that they hadn’t seen each other in two years, and before that had been separated for four. And were now, with barely a hello, discussing sharing their sperm and eggs.

  She wasn’t going to sleep with him. She couldn’t.

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  His question made her think.

  “Because if you’ve decided you don’t want a baby after all, I’d be—”

  “No!” She’d not meant to speak so sharply. “I want the baby.”

  More than anything. She was completely sure of that.

  “You just don’t want me to be the father.” He’d always been a smart man.

  And had managed to miss such key things at the same time.

  “I didn’t expect you to say yes.” Which wasn’t quite the same thing. But close enough.

  “You have someone else in mind?”

  She wanted to lie. Wished she could truthfully say yes. “No.”

  “But you want to find someone else.”

  Chin high, she stared up at him. “Don’t you want that, too? In all honesty?”

  Blake’s hesitation made her heart miss a beat. He’d disappeared on her six years ago. And run out again an hour ago.

  “You could end up with a man who fit all the criteria and seemed nice, but was rough when it came right down to it….”