And if there were always three of them in the relationship—Marti, her late fiancé and him—what would that be like? Could he handle it?
But when Noah thought about it like that, he knew that when he and Marti were together he didn’t have the feeling that there was a ghost lurking between them. Sure, when Marti talked about Jack, Noah knew he was in her head, in her heart. But when she wasn’t talking about him, it felt like her focus was solely on whatever they were talking about or doing. On him.
And in bed?
Noah had had some experience with a woman distracted by things other than him and that was definitely not Marti. It hadn’t been true in Denver six weeks ago and it sure as hell hadn’t been true last night.
Marti might not see him as her soul mate—the way she’d seen Jack—but there was something strong enough between them to make Noah believe that he had a place in her life, too.
And, hopefully, in her heart.
As he sat there watching her sleep, knowing he should leave, he hoped it was more than possible. That he might even have already begun to take the lead over the other guy.
Because the more he thought about it, the more he wanted her, the more he wanted them to have this baby together, raise it together. The more he wanted them to have a life—a whole, full life—to have other kids and a house and a dog and holidays and birthdays and vacations together. To reach milestones, to weather storms, to ride out every high and low, to be together for the rest of their lives no matter what those lives brought.
But what if…
What if he told Marti what he wanted and she balked?
She was still rough around the edges, he knew that. And that made her more unpredictable. And that unpredictability increased the risk if he pushed. Especially since this had all happened so fast—one night in Denver, only a week in Northbridge.
He didn’t think she would change her mind about having the baby, but if trying for so much more now turned her off, she could make it tougher for him to have a part in the baby’s life. He could be left in the court battle he’d been trying to avoid just to be granted any rights at all. Or he could lose the court battle, lose both Marti and the baby and end up with nothing.
Just the way he’d lost out twice before.
And as bad as that had been both of the other times, the thought of it happening now, with Marti, with this baby, was even worse.
So maybe he should just keep his mouth shut, he told himself. Maybe he should let things stay the way they were and hope for the best.
But what was the best he could hope for if he didn’t push for more?
That he’d see Marti when she came into town periodically? That he’d see her now and then if he could swing the time for a few days in Missoula? That he’d only see his son or daughter then and that way, too?
And what if Marti met someone else along the way—because there was that possibility, too. It wasn’t as if he’d be occupying her every minute and what if some other guy she met in Missoula caught her interest? Someone who would have more chance than he did to be with her. Someone who would have more chance than he did to be with his kid.
I’d be so far in the outfield I wouldn’t even be in the game…
He couldn’t stand that thought.
Dealing with the ghost of Marti’s late soul mate was one thing—it might not be easy, but it was a hell of a lot easier than trying to scrape together a few crumbs with her and with his son or daughter if they ended up becoming a family with someone else.
He just couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t.
But he could wait a little, he told himself. He could wait and hope that whatever it was that had been between them in Denver and then reignited here in Northbridge would flourish, would lead them where he wanted them to end up.
He could have patience, he told himself. And practicing patience was probably a wiser idea.
But it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.
Because as he sat there, staring down at Marti, wanting her so much it made him ache, he knew patience was beyond his grasp. Especially now that the image of someone else ending up with her was in his head.
Noah was already waiting for her when Marti pulled up in front of Hector Tyson’s house Sunday afternoon. He’d called around noon to tell her he wanted to see her today and she’d suggested they waste no time confronting Tyson about Theresa’s accusations.
Noah had said he would rather talk to her first but still he’d conceded to arrange the meeting.
“And maybe afterward we can talk,” he’d said.
He stood watching Marti as she brought her brother’s SUV to a stop right behind him. His long legs were stretched out in front of him as if he’d been there for a while, his hands were in his jean pockets. He was wearing a plain beige sport shirt with the sleeves rolled to mid-forearm. His hair glistened with a freshly washed sheen in the May sunshine and his angular face was clean-shaven. And when Marti turned off her engine and got out to walk over to him, she had to fight the urge to fling herself into his arms and pick up where they’d left off the night before.
But she managed to contain herself, merely smiled and said a simple, “Hi.”
He smiled back as if he were glad to see her, but there was something else around the edges of his smile that she couldn’t figure out. Something that looked as if he were holding back, too, but maybe not in the same way or for the same reason she was.
“Have you been waiting long?” Marti asked him after he returned her greeting.
“Nah, only a few minutes. Hector isn’t home yet, though. We’re catching him after his Sunday brunch and he’ll keep us waiting—he was none too happy to see you again but I told him he didn’t have a choice.”
“Are you sure he’ll show at all?”
“He has to come home sometime,” Noah reasoned.
Marti had joined him at his truck, wishing mightily that he would take his hands out of his pockets and reach for her, pull her to him and kiss her—even if they were out in the open.
But he didn’t and instead she was left merely standing in the vicinity of his knees, drinking in the sight of him and remembering vividly every minute of their night together.
“I’m sorry you had to slink out so early this morning,” she said then, wondering if she’d been able to sleep in his arms the way she’d wanted to, to wake up in them, to linger in bed with him this morning, if it would have helped the cravings she was feeling now.
“It’s okay. I would have rather stayed, but…Well, it opened my eyes to something.”
For some reason Marti couldn’t pinpoint, that didn’t sound altogether good.
“Did it even open your eyes to how much nicer it is to have your own place and not have to worry that someone’s grandmother is going to catch you?” she joked.
He chuckled. “That, too,” he agreed, but even though he’d accepted her bit of levity he still went on looking at her with a penetrating, searching gaze. “Can I ask you something while we wait here?”
“Sure.”
“Why me?”
“Why you what?” she asked in return, confused.
“You said that until me you’d never even kissed anyone besides Jack. So why me? And why not only kissing but everything else we did that night in Denver?”
“This is about Denver?” Marti said.
Noah shrugged. “I’m just wondering.”
“I was comfortable with you,” she said, trying to sort through it. “You were easy to talk to and funny.” And hard to take her eyes off of, but she didn’t say that.
What she did say was, “I liked you and being with you was…I don’t know—I’d gone to the Expo because my whole world had become about losing Jack, about grief, and I needed to break out of that. And there you were. You didn’t know any of it and you didn’t treat me with kid gloves and that was nice. You were nice and being with you…” Marti shrugged. “Being with you made me feel better than I had in a long time. It made me feel alive again, I gue
ss. And normal. And as if there was more to me than just Jack and what we’d had together and what we never would have together now, and that was kind of freeing. Is that bad?”
Noah shook his head. “I think that’s all good. Doesn’t it seem good to you—that being with me can bring you out of a tough time? That it can make you feel better and have fun again and go on with your own life and be normal?”
“Yes?” she agreed tentatively because she had the feeling she was being set up.
“So even though we don’t have a history the way you did with Jack, wouldn’t you say that there’s something here? Between us?”
“Something,” she allowed, again not committing to too much because she didn’t know where this was going.
“Something besides the baby, more than the baby?”
She wasn’t sure of that but when she hesitated to answer, Noah added, “Something we could build on?”
“Is this what you wanted to talk about?” she asked rather than answer him.
“Yeah.”
“Just because you had to leave this morning?”
“I didn’t want to go. But not just this morning. I didn’t want to have to go at all. Ever.”
That was heartening to hear, but it also made her uneasy because she thought she was beginning to see where he was headed with this.
Marti didn’t say anything to that and Noah went on anyway. “You know, sometimes people who are going to have a baby get married.”
“Sometimes,” she allowed, but that was what she’d been afraid this could be leading to. That everything he’d just said had only been laying the groundwork. That this—the baby—was really what he was thinking about.
“When I was a teenager in this position,” he went on, “I thought that that’s what should be done—that Sandy and I should get married.”
“I know, you told me. But you were a teenager who didn’t recognize the reality of marriage.”
“Now I’m older and I’m wondering if it would be such a bad idea for you and me.”
He was tiptoeing around this and Marti didn’t know if it was because marriage was something he thought he should offer even though he wasn’t sold on it himself, or because he was worried about her reaction.
“I think marriage should never be a have-to,” she said.
“I’m not saying have-to.”
“Getting married because there’s a baby on the way is a have-to,” she persisted.
“What about getting married because we’re good together and there’s a baby on the way?” he said.
Then, before Marti could respond, he said, “I know there’s no competing with a childhood sweetheart who was also a soul mate, somebody who was the only person you ever pictured yourself with. But there is a baby and I just got to thinking that maybe because there is, you could…readjust your vision of things.”
He said that conversationally, as if he was just throwing a hypothetical idea out onto the table for her to consider. And Marti wasn’t sure if there was more to it than that or not.
“Readjust my vision of things to include us getting married?” she reiterated.
“Sure. Why not? No, I’m not Jack, but I think we have something, Marti. Something out of the ordinary already.” He splayed his fingers to his chest for emphasis. “I feel it. Don’t you? Didn’t you last night?”
“I felt a lot of things last night, but—”
“But what?” he said, seizing that word as if she’d cracked a door open and he was pushing through it. “We’re good together—in bed and out of it—that’s more than a lot of people can say. I’m who you picked—the one person—to help put a stop to your grieving, to get back into life with. To be able to get back into life with. I’m who you picked to move on with, so let’s keep it moving. You’re having my baby. I want us to raise it together and I think we should get married to do it.”
By the end of that Noah was too impassioned for Marti to think he was merely suggesting marriage as a fleeting thought or even because he felt obligated to.
But it also left her seeing what she thought was the real reason behind his less-than-traditional proposal—he was afraid of losing this baby the way he’d lost the other children he’d wanted so badly.
And while she saw his point of view, all she could do was shake her head in denial.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “We don’t have to be married for you to have as big a part as you want in the baby’s life. You won’t lose this one—”
“That’s not true,” he said, the emotion still in his voice. “You’ll be in Missoula, so that’s where he or she will be while I’m here—I won’t have any part as long as we’re on separate sides of the state. And if you hook up with somebody else on top of it—”
“So this is a preventative proposal?”
“No,” he said. He shook his head and stared down at the ground as if he were regrouping. “Maybe I’m not handling this well,” he added more to himself than to her.
Then he looked at her again, his dark eyes penetrating and troubled, and when he spoke once more the emotions were better under control. “Yes, I’m afraid of losing the baby. But I’m just as afraid of losing you. It’s you I’m proposing to, not the baby, not even the mother of my child. Just you.”
“But if there wasn’t a baby we wouldn’t be here,” she felt compelled to remind him, to refute that.
“I think we might be. We still would have had the night in Denver—that’s where this started, don’t forget. You still would have come to Northbridge for your grandmother. We still would have met up again. And believe me, I still hadn’t stopped thinking about you even though Denver was weeks behind me, so the minute I set eyes on you when you showed up here, I would have been doing my damnedest to spend time with you, to get to know you. We could easily have still ended up—”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Why? Why couldn’t that have been our story? Just because we didn’t grow up together, just because I didn’t give you your first kiss and you didn’t give me mine?”
“Just because it isn’t likely,” she said.
“It happens all the time—people know instantly that they’re right for each other,” he said, his tone intense again.
“You’re telling me that if I wasn’t pregnant we’d be having this same conversation about getting married when we barely know each other?”
He seemed to think about that and to Marti that meant no.
“It’s the baby you really want,” she said softly, sadly, surprised by just how sad it made her.
“That’s absolutely not true—”
“You don’t want the baby?”
“It’s absolutely not true that the baby is the only thing I want or that if there was no baby, I wouldn’t feel about this—about you—the way I do.” He took a breath, slowing himself down before he went on. “I know that your relationship with Jack was the stuff fantasies are made of. I know this has all happened quick and backwards and probably isn’t anybody’s dream come true. But I do have feelings for you, Marti. And I think we have something here that’s special all on its own. I think we can have something great together along with having a baby together, and I’m asking you to marry me, Marti. If, for you, it has to be because of the baby, then that’s okay. Just marry me so we can make a life and a future together, so we can make the best of this.”
He’d said that before, the night they were having pizza after seeing Hector that first time—they were talking about having doubts or regrets that there was a baby. Noah had said that the most important thing was for them to make the best of the situation.
And suddenly Marti couldn’t help thinking that was part of what this was, too. And that Noah was saying whatever he thought he should say to convince her and bring it about.
And it just felt bad.
Jack had been devoted to her and her alone. Jack had adored her in a way that had left her never questioning it. Jack had told her—and everyone else—that he wanted mo
re than anything to spend the rest of his life with her. Jack had proposed on one knee amid rose petals and candlelight and beautiful words about how much he loved her.
And now here she was, with Noah, who she thought was just putting a good face on things. Yes, he might have some feelings for her but she still thought this was more about the baby than about her. About him not losing another child.
And while she understood that, she didn’t know why it was so hard to think that she wasn’t the main attraction for him.
“No,” she said. “I won’t marry you.”
His face fell. “Because I’m not that other guy,” he said flatly. “But no one ever will be, Marti, and there are good things here with you and me.”
“A marriage of convenience is not a good thing.”
“It wouldn’t be a marriage of convenience! Not for me!” he said, raising his voice slightly in what sounded like frustration.
But Marti just shook her head because no matter what he said, she still thought that was what he was proposing, a marriage he had to bring about so his rights to the baby were protected. And that wasn’t a marriage she would agree to.
“Like I said, you can be as much a part of the baby’s life as you want to—I won’t deny you that. But I also won’t marry you.”
Noah closed his eyes and shook his head. “I should have kept my mouth shut,” he muttered.
Then he opened his eyes and said, “Please just think about it.”
But Marti didn’t need to think about it. The difference between what she’d had with Jack, between what had led up to almost marrying Jack, and this was so glaring to her she couldn’t overlook it.
She swallowed the lump that had come into her throat—the lump she had no explanation for because she told herself that she shouldn’t be so let down, so disappointed, so hurt…
“It’ll be okay,” she reassured Noah. “We don’t have to be married for you to be this baby’s dad. You are this baby’s dad and nothing will ever change that. I give you my word.”
“It isn’t your word I want. It’s you,” Noah said fiercely.
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