The Army Ranger's Surprise

by Donna Michaels

  So when Tucker took one too many smoke breaks, Leo let him. He also got the kid to agree to sit in on this Friday’s group therapy session with him. It meant a late arrival at his gram’s, but she was already aware, and Kaydee told him not to worry about the seniors and bingo. She’d cover it.

  And then he’d cover her.

  At that delicious thought, his lips weren’t the only thing to twitch.

  “Damn, there’s Tuck,” Dirk grumbled at the sound of the bike pulling up outside. It meant he had to leave the last doughnut for the kid.

  One of the other crew members cupped the big guy’s shoulder. “Better luck next time.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Leo wished to God he’d had some of that luck when the countertop arrived. Blanche had wanted quartz.

  The shop delivered granite.

  What the hell?

  Leo dialed the distributor as he strode outside, explaining the mix-up with a calm he was far from feeling.

  “Hi, Mr. Reed,” the woman who identified herself as Heather said in pleasant voice. “I remember you. Let me call up the order…okay…you originally ordered quartz, but then you called later that day to change it to granite.”

  What?

  He stiffened and glanced around the front of Blanche’s yard as if it held the answers. “No. I came into your shop with my order,” he told her, gripping the phone as he worked to keep his irritation at bay.

  “Yes, I know. I remember you,” Heather said, her voice softening. “Then you called a few hours later and changed it to granite.”

  Like hell. Blanche wanted low maintenance. No sealing. Sanitary. No staining worries.

  Quartz.

  “I have it noted right here,” she said, as if he could see through the phone.

  He jumped in his truck and cranked the engine. “I’ll be right there.”

  Leo hung up without waiting for a reply. Dick move. He’d feel bad about it later. Right now, he needed answers. Doing his best to keep calm, he controlled his breathing and drove the twenty minutes to the manufacturer he’d visited ten days ago to place the damn quartz order.

  They’d screwed up. Not him. He didn’t call. Why the fuck would he?

  Christ. This was just great. Fucking great. Another screwup. How the hell was he going to explain this cost and delay to Stone?

  Maybe Blanche had changed the order…

  A long shot, but he needed to find out.

  Sucking it up, he called the woman and clenched his fist to keep his anger in check when she told him it wasn’t her. She wanted quartz. He promised her he’d fix it. Then hung up.

  He didn’t fucking need this.

  By the time he walked into the shop his gut was knotted tight, but he didn’t show his aggravation. He was good at masking emotions, thanks to years of training and practice.

  A half hour later, he left with the quartz countertop ordered, a new delivery date set for that Saturday, and a huge hit to his bank account to expedite things. No way would he allow Foxtrot to pay for his mistake.

  And it was his mistake, because even though he didn’t make that damn call and couldn’t prove someone at the distributer screwed up, he was responsible for material orders.

  On his way back to the jobsite, Leo stopped in at V-Spot to update Blanche. A stop he hadn’t wanted to make. A fucking stop he shouldn’t have had to make. As expected, though, she was nothing but nice, telling him it just meant she got out of cooking for a few more days.

  But it wasn’t right, and the more he thought about it, the more it aggravated him.

  Pulling in front of Blanche’s house, he slammed his truck in park as self-disgust mixed with stress to grip his shoulders and twist around his spine.

  Twice now, he nearly ruined Foxtrot’s name. Two screwups in only two jobs. Some goddamn supervisor he turned out to be. He was putting the company’s and his buddies’ reputations in jeopardy.

  Once he finished Blanche’s kitchen, Leo was going to think long and hard about telling Stone to find someone else to run the crew.

  He was bad luck.

  A burden.

  Perhaps he was better off as a crew member, instead of a leader in a position to hurt Foxtrot.

  Swallowing back a sour taste in his mouth, he forced himself to face a bitter truth. Maybe there were other things in his life he was fooling himself he could handle, too.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It still hadn’t sunk in.

  Two days ago, Kaydee watched Fiona sign papers to get the ball rolling on purchasing Yellow Rose from their boss. After talking with Rose and Earl last week, they all met again, but this time with business lawyers in attendance. Since the purchase price was well within Fi’s preapproval amount for a business loan, and Rose had all her papers in order, it’d only taken her friend’s lawyer a few days to go through everything and secure a good loan rate. So now Fi was just waiting on a call to let her know when she’d close.

  In the meantime, it was work as usual. They both had a half shift today. Kaydee yawned. Normally, she liked to work eight-hour days, but those had been rare lately. Thankfully, today wasn’t one of them. She only had an hour left. Which was good because…damn, she was still dog-tired from Sunday with Leo. Too much celebrating. She fought a grin. Nah, no such thing as too much Leo. He visited, but as usually happened when he stayed the night, there wasn’t much sleep involved.

  It was three days later, and she was still trying to play catch-up.

  Kaydee yawned again—something she’d been doing a lot lately. Leo’s fault. Her lips twitched, and warmth flooded her chest. Just thinking about him made her heart smile. And if that sentimental hoo-hah wasn’t true, she’d probably puke.

  But it was true. Every bit.

  “Your young man is putting that smile on your face,” Ida Nelson said as she sat waiting with her sister. The two women came in once a month to have their hair set and to gossip.

  Kaydee was waiting for Fiona to finish the appointment she was on before the two of them tackled the sisters. They liked to sit under the dryers together, so there was no sense starting one until they could both be done.

  “How do you know it’s a man?” Olivia elbowed her sister. “Maybe it’s a woman.”

  Kaydee’s smile increased. “It’s a guy.” Leo was definitely all man.

  “Ah, to be young and in love again,” Ida said, a dreamy look coming into her eyes.

  Or perhaps it was just cataracts.

  It didn’t matter. Kaydee’s mind caught the L-word and stuck.

  “Love?” Her heart dropped into her fluttering stomach.

  What did she know about love? Other than for family and friends.

  “Trust me, honey.” Olivia had risen to her feet and stood in front of the counter smiling at her. “Any man who brings a flush to your cheeks and a soft look in your eyes is definitely someone you’re in love with.”

  “In love?” With Leo. Kaydee blinked and sat back in her chair. Was she in love with him? She had no clue. She’d never been in love before. Never opened herself up for it.

  “Does he make your heart flutter?” Ida asked, standing next to her sister now.

  “Do you miss him when he’s not around?” Olivia asked.

  Ida leaned closer. “Do you count the hours until you see him?”

  All seemingly silly questions, but the thing was, Kaydee did do all three. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat, feeling a little foolish having this conversation in public.

  “Here’s the kicker,” Ida said, leaning closer still. “This one is the true test.”

  Olivia jerked her head toward her sister and snorted. “True test? What would you know of a true test? You haven’t been in love for decades.”

  Kaydee smiled, enjoying the exchange between the women. It wasn’t a far stretch to imagine her and Fiona carrying on like this when they were older. The fact that she’d have to stick around a long time to grow old with Fiona made her question why she even had the thought.

  Leo’s smil
ing face flashed through her mind. He was why she’d had a thought about the future here. His eyes held so much warmth her heart threatened to leave her chest.

  Yeah, her new outlook was definitely his fault. Ever since they started dating, the incredible man had tipped her world on its axis, and now her view had changed. It had altered.

  Like her.

  This wasn’t a bad thing, either. Just different. But still good. Great even.

  Ida lifted her chin. “Only need to be in it once to know. The best way to tell if you’re in love is this: If you close your eyes, can you picture your life without him?”

  It was crazy. She didn’t even need to close her eyes to answer that. It was as plain as the pain in her chest when she tried to breathe. “No,” she said. “My answer’s no. I don’t even want to try to picture my life without him.”

  Once again, for someone who didn’t do long term, this was certainly a new path. An altered one.

  Ida slapped the counter…pretty hard for a frail hand. “Then you’re in love with him.” The woman’s gaze grew misty, and she placed her hand over Kaydee’s. “Just don’t make the mistake I did. Don’t let him get away. Tell him how you feel. I should’ve told my Tommy, but I was young, and he was a white man. I listened to my parents when I should’ve listened to my heart.”

  By this time, Olivia had moved closer and put her arm around her sister. “I remember that. Is he the reason you never married?”

  “Yes.” Ida sighed. “He was my true love. And I let him slip through my fingers. No one could ever take his place.”

  Kaydee’s heart squeezed for the poor woman, and the conversation stayed with her long after the sisters’ hair had been set and they’d left. She didn’t want to let Leo slip through her fingers.

  God, no. She wanted to hold on to him with both hands. Tight. This new path she was on was just that…new. She had no idea how to keep Leo in her life. Did she just keep doing what she’d been doing? Letting happen what was going to happen seemed to be working out just fine. Perhaps that was all there was to it?

  She yawned again. Lordy, she hoped she didn’t fall asleep on the guy later. Tonight, when he visited, she was going to take a chance and bare her heart like never before. Like everything depended on it. In a sense it did. He was her everything.

  Instead of that sounding corny, it sounded right. Truthful.

  The phone rang. That sounded like work.

  She snorted at her poor joke, and because Fiona had a last-minute walk-in in her chair, Kaydee walked over to the desk and answered the phone. Someone called to schedule a cut and color for next week. She wrote it the book and frowned when she took note of the date.

  Alarm bells went off in her head.

  Trying not to panic, she walked as calmly as possible to the office to retrieve her pocket calendar from her purse. She was probably mistaken. Life was a bit crazy, what with all the showings, and working on the house, and here at the salon, and seeing Leo. All of which was great. She probably had the wrong date stuck in her head. The wrong week.

  Opening the bottom drawer in the desk, she bit her lower lip and reached past Fiona’s purse to yank hers out. Yeah. She was forever remembering the wrong week, hence the reason she always marked a big X on the day of her period.

  Instead of digging in her purse, Kaydee turned it upside down and dumped the contents on the desk. Her hand was shaking too much to bother with fishing for it. Inhaling slow and steady…twice, she reached for the small calendar, flipped to last month, and gasped.

  Of all times not to be wrong…

  Still staring at the calendar, she sank into the chair behind the desk and blinked. Maybe she had today’s date wrong. No. She recounted the weeks since X day.

  Shit.

  Has it been that long? She’d lost track. Hadn’t even realized she was late. She was never late. Ever.

  “Hey, Kaydee, last client left, so I locked the door. Are you…” Her friend’s voice trailed off. She must’ve seen the panic on Kaydee’s face, because she rushed close to peer at what she was clutching.

  The pocket calendar.

  Realization entered Fi’s eyes and lifted her brow. “Are you?” she asked in a hushed tone, despite the fact that she’d just stated the customers were gone.

  Remembering to breathe, she lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe? I-I’m a little late.”

  “How late?”

  “Four days. But I can’t be…you know.” She shot to her feet and began to pace, refusing to say the other P word. That might make it happen. She wasn’t taking any chances. “I mean, we never even had unprotected sex, Fi. So I can’t be. It’s probably just the stress or something.” Yeah, she stopped pacing. That had to be it. “I read somewhere that stress could affect a cycle.”

  Her friend put a hand on her shoulder, and her expression softened. “Kay, so could a defective condom. It’s as good as unprotected.”

  Shoot. Not what she wanted to hear.

  “But you’re right,” Fi said, squeezing her shoulder, the gleam in her eyes much more positive than before. “There are a lot of factors that could throw off your cycle.”

  Yeah. Like a baby.

  She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. The last thing Leo needed right now was a baby. Life was finally going good for the guy. He was taking chances—she was proof. So was their relationship. Yeah…she and Leo had a relationship, even though nothing was ever stated. And he was reaching for a goal now. Looking toward the future instead of living hour to hour. Day to day.

  Just last Sunday, he told her everything about his plans to invest in At-Ease Ranch, after he saved up a certain amount. Kaydee was so damn proud of him. Even told him, but he’d brushed it off, then brushed her mouth—with his; of course, that caused her mind to fog and need to take over.

  But before the mind-fogging incident, she’d been touched beyond anything that he’d confided his At-Ease plans to her. And not during sex, or even afterward, when their defenses were always down. No. It’d been while they were eating dinner. Dinner. That had made a much bigger impact on her.

  Still did.

  “Tell you what,” Fiona said, dipping down to catch her gaze. “Since we’re done with work, how about we stop by the store and grab a test?”

  A test. Yeah. She should probably do that. Drawing in a breath, she began to shove everything back into her purse. “Okay. No sense in worrying about anything until I know for sure.”

  But she knew. She’d never been late in her life.

  An hour later, she stood next to Fiona in her bathroom—the one she remodeled with Leo. The one they made beautiful. The one they probably made a baby in.

  At least, if the three sticks they stared at on the counter were correct. All three pregnancy tests sported double pink lines in their digital windows. A positive result.

  Kaydee was pregnant.

  Her heart rocked, and her queasy stomach felt…well, queasy.

  “No wonder I’ve been so tired this week,” she said, then promptly yawned.

  Fi tipped her head. “Are you going to keep it?”

  “Yes,” she said with a jerk of her head, while her hand automatically covered her belly. “I’d never give up my baby.”

  My baby…

  God, Kaydee really thought once she got confirmation that she’d freak out. Shed a few tears. Curl up in bed. Funny thing was, she suddenly felt grounded. It was weird. But in a good way. Like she had a purpose. Someone to love whom she wouldn’t have to leave, and who wouldn’t leave her…at least, not until college.

  She hoped.

  “Are you going to tell Leo?”

  Her euphoria evaporated. “Yes. Of course.” She’d never keep it from him.

  But how would he take it?

  He never made her any promises to stick around. Heck, they hadn’t even really labeled their relationship as a relationship, although she considered it one. A great one. Did he? And she had no idea how he felt about having children.

  She sig
hed, and it quickly turned into a yawn, right before her phone vibrated with a text in her pocket. Her heart skipped a beat, then raced when she saw it was Leo. Was he here already?

  Can’t stay tonight. Have to turn and burn after dinner with Gram. Sorry.

  Disappointment mixed with relief. Telling him about the baby was going to change things between them. Big-time. No matter his response. And she knew there was a huge chance it wouldn’t be a good one.

  She also knew something was off. Knew it in her gut. Maybe the baby was increasing her intuition. Maybe it was just because she was so in tune with Leo. Whatever the case, Kaydee was getting a weird vibe.

  Okay. Everything all right?

  She responded and hit send. Then she walked out of the bathroom and straight to the window in her front bedroom to glance across at Ava’s. Leo was just getting out of his truck. He glanced at her house, took a step, then stopped.

  Her heart squeezed. That wasn’t good. It was as if he was afraid to come over. But why?

  She glanced at her phone. No response yet. Careful to stay out of view, she stood there watching as indecision rooted him to his grandmother’s driveway. She thought briefly about texting him again, but what would she say? What could she say? It wasn’t like she was going to bring up the baby tonight. Hell no. Not if he was already wrestling with something.

  A second later, he straightened his shoulders and started to cross the street toward her house. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and rushed out into the hallway. “Fi, Leo’s on his way over. Could you do me a favor and stay up here? Something’s up, but I don’t know if I can get him to tell me. He isn’t staying long. He has to go back to Joyful.”

  “Okay,” Fi said. “No baby talk?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not tonight.” Then she turned and headed downstairs as the doorbell echoed through the house.

  That was going to be a tricky subject. One she wasn’t even ready to broach. Besides, all she’d done was pee on a stick. Three of them. Maybe it was better to see a doctor first and get professional confirmation before upsetting the apple cart.