Expecting the Best (Harlequin Superromance)

by Lynnette Kent

At Shelley’s wince, Zach decided to stop asking questions. Each one only made the situation worse.

  Lunch was the usual madhouse, with kids and parents of all ages talking at the same time. Somehow Zach got placed toward the end of the long table, away from Shelley. In trying to keep track of what was going on with her, he wasn’t listening much to his twin nephews seated on either side of him.

  Grant stood up to give thanks. He said the usual rote prayer they’d all learned from church, and then added, “Thanks for the new additions to our family. Help us to love one another.” The gesture actually seemed to thaw Shelley out some. By the time everybody was served, she’d even smiled once or twice.

  Zach finally caught up with her as they cleared the table. “Are you surviving?”

  “I’m okay. Your mother’s very sweet.”

  “Unless you don’t clean your room.”

  “She’d have to be organized, with so many to take care of.”

  “I’ve stood in this line for many, many hours. I remember before we had a dishwasher. Then we did the washing by hand.”

  Shelley nodded. “My mom got a dishwasher the year I went into senior high. Of course, we didn’t dirty this many dishes in three days.” They reached the sink. “Let me do yours.”

  “Sorry. That’s against the rules. You insult my honor as a Harmon to even suggest such a travesty.”

  She looked up at him. “Is that why you got mad and slammed the door last night? Because I wouldn’t let you clean up the table?”

  He could lie. Or not. “Only partly.”

  “Ah.” She rinsed her dishes and stepped to the side to load them. “I didn’t think it would be that simple.”

  “Nothing about our relationship is simple, Shelley.” Zach moved so that when she straightened up, they were close together. “Doesn’t mean it can’t work.”

  “You’re blocking traffic,” Rachel called. “No loitering around the dishwasher.”

  Shelley blushed and went back into the dining room. Zach followed, but she managed to avoid him during the rest of the cleanup operation.

  The cold weather vetoed any kind of outdoor game, so the guys settled in to watch football. Rachel and Shelley joined them, while his mom and his sister, Marian, and Grant’s wife, Joya, talked in the kitchen. The kids flopped in front of the upstairs TV with a parent-approved video. Typical Sunday at the Harmons’. Zach finally started to relax.

  On his way back from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn, he caught the telltale squeak of a stair and looked up to see Carol halfway down. She tried to back up, to disappear.

  “Nope. Sorry. Can’t run away.” He came around to the foot of the steps. “We’re gonna have to talk sometime.”

  “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

  “You owe Shelley an apology.”

  She snorted.

  “You were rude, Carol. She’s my wife.”

  “Oh, yeah. How could I forget?” She snapped her fingers. “Maybe because I never got told about it in the first place?”

  “Okay, that was a mistake. I’m sorry. But Shelley and I have had some trouble working things out. I couldn’t say anything until the situation was settled.”

  “Maybe you should have settled things before you made a baby. Or is that only a ‘do as I say’ kind of standard?”

  “No, it’s not. Taking responsibility is part of being an adult.”

  “So how old will you be when you grow up?”

  “Get over it, Carol. You like Shelley and you know it. Let’s just move on from here.”

  “I liked her a lot better before I knew she was a slut.”

  The word took a second or two to register. With a curse of his own, Zach charged up four steps before the pain caught him. “You little—” He stumbled, but kept going.

  “Zach, stop!”

  He looked around to see Shelley at the bottom of the stairs. No need to ask if she’d heard—her face was as white as her sweater. “Give me a minute here, Shelley. We’ll be ready to go shortly.” Soon as I wash my sister’s mouth out with soap…

  “Come down, Zach.”

  “In a minute.” He leaned back against the wall. Funny, how much just breathing could hurt.

  “The obedient little husband, aren’t you?” Carol observed from the landing above. “She must be dynamite in bed, to have you so totally hooked.”

  “Enough, Carol.” Two words took a lot of energy.

  “I can see how it all works, though. She’s got you for a stud, and you get to spend her money. Good job, Zach. I never thought you had that much ambition.” She looked down at Shelley. “Considering how many times I heard my brother say he’d never get married, I guess getting pregnant was the only way to spring the trap.”

  His chest hurt, and his head had started pounding. But he straightened up, gathering the energy to protest.

  Shelley beat him to it. “I trapped him?” Folding her arms across her chest, she raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you really think I couldn’t live without another husband in my life? Someone who would complicate my decisions, mess up my schedule, tell me how to raise my child? If anyone is trapped…”

  She stopped on a deep, deep breath and, without another word, passed the stairs on her way down the hallway. Her heels tapped briskly on the wooden floor as she approached the kitchen. In the silence she left behind, Zach could hear his mother inviting her to stay for pot roast and Shelley’s polite refusal.

  Then she stalked back down the hall, stopped at the closet and picked out her coat. Before he could move, she was at the front door. “I assume somebody can give you a ride home, Zach. See you later.” And she shut the door firmly behind her.

  Zach sank down to sit on a step. Turning his head, he stared up at his sister. “Satisfied?” She was looking a little shell-shocked. “You single-handedly destroyed a relationship that took me eight months to build. I think it would have been less of a problem if you just cut my heart out with Mom’s butter knife.”

  He dropped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. After a few seconds, Carol’s bedroom door slammed shut. Zach sat there for the rest of the ball game, wondering which of his brothers would give him a ride home.

  Wondering if his wife would be there when they did.

  THE THIRD TIME she passed the same run-down strip mall, Shelley realized she’d better start paying attention to where she was going. She was lucky she hadn’t had an accident. Her mind certainly hadn’t been on driving a car. Her mind had been…

  Stunned. Vaporized. She hadn’t dealt with teenagers before. She hadn’t realized they could be so… so vicious. Would Allyson react like that one day?

  Or even next weekend, when she came to visit?

  The prospect hurt so much, Shelley pulled out of traffic into a parking lot. She could barely see to drive.

  She still couldn’t quite believe what had happened. Zach had said nothing. Nothing. No defense of himself, let alone her. Why would he let those accusations slide by?

  Maybe because he believed them. Did Zach use that ugly word himself, in his mind? Did he think she’d “trapped” him?

  A noise off to the left—a broken bottle and some shouts—dragged her out of her misery. A group of men or older boys, too far away in the dark to distinguish, walked her way. They were shoving each other, making gestures, drinking out of brown paper bags. Getting close.

  Her hands slipped on the plastic levers as she flipped off the interior light and pulled the car into Reverse. Backing up caught the group’s attention—she heard comments about the Mercedes as she wheeled around and catcalls as she checked for traffic. With a squeal of tires, she shot out of the parking lot, not before a couple of hands pounded on the rear hood. Breathing hard, she drove as fast as she could through the traffic, trying to get away.

  Finally, she saw a sign for an entrance onto I-70. The only option was the westbound lane, and the next exit was five miles farther. But at least she’d have a direction. A glance at the clock startled he
r—she’d left the Harmons’ almost two hours ago.

  Another forty minutes brought her to Zach’s house. The windows blazed with light. Shelley sat for a few minutes parked at the curb, just watching. Was he alone? Would she have to face more accusations? Or would his stony silence be the only sound?

  The car got colder as she hesitated, until finally her feet started hurting and her hands were almost numb. It wasn’t good for the baby for her to sit here much longer. She couldn’t afford to get sick this close to delivery.

  A dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood as she shut the car door. Holding her coat closed, she hurried up the driveway and across the walk. She’d just put a foot on the first step when the door surged open. A man stood silhouetted against the light inside.

  “Where have you been?” Zach asked. “I was about to call the cops.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SHELLEY STEPPED past him into the house. “You are the cops.” Her spine ached with weariness. Her head had started to pound.

  Zach shut the door behind her. “Having just left the hospital, even I would need help. It’s a big town.”

  Looking around the living room, she felt displaced. Was this home? “I know. I just…wasn’t paying attention.” She slipped out of her coat. Before she could turn, Zach took it out of her hands and went to the closet.

  “Are you okay?” He stood by the door, hands in his pockets, a frown still in his eyes.

  “Sure.” She brushed back her hair, wishing she didn’t have to lie. “Why not?”

  “Because—” He stared up at the ceiling, then lowered his gaze to hers. “Carol didn’t mean the things she said.”

  So much for her hopes of being defended. “Oh, I think she probably did.” Without glancing at him, Shelley walked through the dining room into the kitchen. “Have you had dinner?”

  He followed. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I’m not very hungry. I’ll heat you up a pizza, if that sounds okay.” She opened the freezer, but couldn’t seem to read the box labels.

  Zach gripped her shoulder and turned her around. “For God’s sake, Shelley, are you trying to drive me crazy?”

  He didn’t lift his hand, and the sweet pressure pushed her closer to tears. Finally, she looked at him. “No.”

  “Then talk to me about this.” His face was pale and drawn.

  “I don’t see much to talk about.” She managed a shrug. “We are married because I’m pregnant. We didn’t tell anybody in your family, and that hurt their feelings. We don’t know how things are going to work from here. End of discussion.”

  She tried to turn back to the open freezer, but he held her in place. “I did not marry you to spend your money.”

  “I know that.” The oven buzzer signaled the temperature she’d set. She looked up at Zach, unwilling to beg, desperate to be free. This time he let her go. In silence, she fumbled a pizza out of the box and into the oven.

  He waited to speak until she straightened up again. “But there’s no denying my income doesn’t come close to yours. Maybe we should work out a prenuptial agreement.”

  “Two years, maybe even a year ago, I would have agreed with that idea.” She took a deep breath, released it on a sigh. “Now I think it’s just an insult to both of us. Drop it, Zach.”

  She started to leave the kitchen. He stepped up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Shelley, we can do better than this.”

  “Not tonight we can’t.” His warmth behind her, the closeness of his body, threatened all her defenses. In another second, she would make a fool of herself. “I’m really tired. I need to lie down for a while.”

  At last, he loosened his grip. “Okay. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” Trying not to run away, Shelley walked carefully down the hallway toward her room. Once inside, she shut the door as quietly as possible, then lay down on the bed with her clothes on. Too tired to undress, too disappointed to think, too numb to cry, she escaped into sleep.

  ZACH GOT out of bed Monday morning to find Shelley dressed for work and on her way out the door. Tuesday and Wednesday were the same. She went to the office early, then brought paperwork home to deal with in the afternoon and evenings. Her concentration kept her quiet, almost unreachable. With two weeks of mandatory leave left and no idea how to break the silence, Zach did some reading—history and professional journals, plus a couple of childbirth books he’d bought before the shooting. Those got him thinking.

  When Shelley came home on Thursday, he had lunch ready—burritos and a salad. She sat down at the table with the same distant smile she’d used on him all week. “This is good.”

  “Thanks.” He drank some water to wet his dry throat. “Listen, I just realized—babies need cribs and stuff. Clothes.”

  She didn’t look up from her plate. “Yes.”

  “Do you already have those things?”

  “Not many.” She shook her head and speared some salad. “Dexter took the baby furniture.”

  “Well, we’d better get moving, then. There are only three weeks left, right?”

  His words seemed to reach her through a fog. She stared at him, looking puzzled. “I guess we should do that.”

  “How about this afternoon? We could go shopping, pick up some supplies.”

  “Are you well enough to go out?” She still cared about that, at least.

  “As long as I don’t have to chase down anything faster than a rock.”

  Her face warmed a little. “Okay.”

  Zach grinned for the first time since Sunday. “Okay.”

  An hour later, he stood in the center of a baby boutique called Tiny Town, overwhelmed. “I had no idea there was this much stuff.”

  “Babies are big business.”

  “Maybe I need to restructure my investments.”

  She smiled at that. “Could be. Where do you want to start?”

  “Um—cribs?”

  The salesman smelled money and gave them all of his attention. Zach tried to anticipate Shelley’s taste. “This one’s nice,” he said, gesturing toward a creation draped with a tent of white cloth.

  Her head cocked as she contemplated. “You like all those yards of eyelet and ruffles?”

  “Don’t you?”

  They gazed at each other, testing the waters. “It’s okay,” Shelley conceded. “But I don’t think it fits the house.”

  Zach sighed in relief. “What did you have in mind?”

  She led him to one of the first cribs they’d seen, simple and uncomplicated in a natural-finish wood. “This would work in that yellow room.”

  “Okay. You like the chest, too?”

  “And the changing table.”

  “How about a glider?” the salesman slipped in.

  “What’s a glider?” Zach followed him to a display of chairs. “You mean rocking chairs?”

  The salesman gestured widely. “No one rocks anymore. They glide.”

  Zach glanced at Shelley, saw her trying not to laugh. “Okay. Do we have to sit in all of them? Must be a thousand.”

  She surveyed the selection. “This one,” she said after a few minutes, and walked to a plainly styled chair in a wood that matched the crib. “This is good—not too high.” She looked up at Zach. “Want to try?”

  For the very first time, the image of him holding his own child came into his head. “Yeah, sure,” he said faintly. He sat down, but the chair could have been lined with tack points, for all he noticed. “Feels great.”

  “I’ll have that added to your order,” the salesman said. He stopped just short of rubbing his palms together in glee.

  The search for sheets and blankets and towels increased the salesman’s satisfaction. But Shelley didn’t like any of the curtains or crib skirts. “I can have those made. I was thinking old gold and purple stripes.”

  “If you say so.” Zach surveyed yards of pastel, bunny-flecked cotton. “Sounds okay to me.”

  Then there were the clothes.

 
“This small?” He held up a long-sleeved suit that might have fit a Chihuahua. “Really?”

  “Allyson was seven pounds, eight ounces, and nineteen inches long.”

  He estimated the length between his hands. “The size of my mom’s Christmas roast.”

  Shelley laughed. “Charming, Zach. Really charming.”

  Hearing her laugh felt like a victory. “I try. So what do kids in the diaper set wear these days?”

  A lot, it seemed, especially in winter in Denver. Hats. Socks. Sleepers, Shelley called them. Buntings.

  “Buntings?”

  “A little zip-up blanket jacket to keep them warm.”

  “Oh.” Another blinding thought occurred to him. “Do you know…” He swallowed. “Boy or girl?”

  “No clue. I don’t want to know.” She shook her head, but her eyes sparked with excitement. “They said that if they could tell, they’d keep it a secret.”

  “Oh.” A person took shape in his mind—Shelley’s blond hair on a blue-eyed little girl. “Should we get some clothes for both, just in case?”

  “What we’ve got will work for the first couple of months. Then we’ll know what to buy.” She had a mind like a steel trap when it came to shopping. “Now we need to get a car seat.”

  He felt more at home with the technical elements of car-seat safety and stroller design. Shelley, bless her, let him do most of the talking. Who knew shopping could be this much fun?

  They didn’t argue at all until they stood at the checkout counter. The cashier gave them a staggering total. He pulled out his credit card. Shelley pulled out hers.

  Zach shook his head. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Shelley looked up at him. “We spent a lot of money. Let me do it.”

  “Not a problem.” He put his hand forward, card extended.

  Her fingers closed around his wrist. “You weren’t expecting this kind of expense.” She kept her voice low, but the intensity came through.

  “Shelley.” Zach let some firmness into his voice. “Later, okay?”

  She moved back and he paid the bill, arranging to have everything delivered. As they crossed the parking lot, her quick footsteps tapped out her agitation.

  Once the car doors were closed, Zach sat quietly watching Shelley’s profile as she stared at her hands wrapped around the steering wheel.