by A. C. Arthur
Morgan had never had an affair before and while this one had been fun while it lasted, she was positive that she never wanted to experience another one.
“Really?” he asked as he sat back in the chair, letting one arm rest on the table. “Why don’t you tell me what those facts are.”
This entire conversation was pointless. They’d slept together a handful of times, had dinner at the diner and played in the snow. Her kids adored him, but they were young and would soon find something else to fall in love with. He’d been gone for ten days with no communication whatsoever and now he was back looking as handsome as ever, but still not as if he belonged here. There was no changing any of that.
“Temptation is a small town, Gray. There are no high-rise buildings, no nightclubs or fancy garages to park your equally fancy car. We’re simple people here, living a simple life. I’ve never seen as many numbers on a bank statement as I did on that one that belonged to your father. And I do just fine buying my children’s Christmas presents, but this living room has never been so full of gifts that I had to make a path to walk around them.”
He nodded.
“And what exactly does all of that mean?”
He was eerily calm as he continued to study her. Morgan figured that may have been the way he studied a new car or a new pair of shoes before he purchased them, but no, his eyes were much too intense for that.
She sighed heavily. “It means that we were a mixed match from the beginning. I’m a widowed teacher with two children. You’re an internationally known businessman with your own life and goals that I could never begin to compete with.” She shrugged. “We were doomed from the start.”
Gray rubbed a hand over his chin as he continued to look at her. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a red pouch. He set it on the table and they both stared at it for a few moments. He finally pulled the drawstrings and opened the pouch, pulling out a ring and sitting it on top of velour fabric. Morgan resisted the urge to gasp, but couldn’t stop staring down at the huge sapphire ring with a circle of diamonds surrounding it. This looked just like the sapphire necklace he’d given her for Christmas, the one that she still had in a box in her underwear drawer.
“Along with the account my father had in each of his children’s names, there was a safe-deposit box. This was in mine,” Gray told her. “He was going to give this to my mother for her birthday. It was three months after their wedding anniversary when he planned to give her the necklace. Those dates were nine months from the day he walked out on his family.”
Gray took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. He looked over to Morgan, his gaze softer now. “He never stopped loving her or us. I figured that out once I went through everything that was in his house, the pictures he kept, all the gifts my mother had ever given him, our first toys. None of that stuff was dusty or uncared for because he kept them out, he took care of them. Just as he always planned to take care of us. I have to believe that there was another reason for them breaking up, a reason that neither of them ever spoke of. If it was just an affair, why keep all those memories of the past?”
With his fingers, Gray brushed down his goatee, closing his eyes for a few moments before opening them again. “In the last weeks I’ve learned that life is not always what it seems, Morgan, and that sometimes people aren’t, either. I thought I knew what I wanted and where I wanted to be, but I was wrong. The moment I left Temptation for the second time I realized that I wanted to be here with you and the children. But we’re apparently too mixed matched for that.”
She should have felt like a jerk for the things she’d said to him, but Morgan could feel only sorrow.
“Neither of us knew the things we know now when we first met,” she said instead. “I’ve heard everything you’ve said about your parents and I’m so happy that you’re finding out things that you didn’t know before. But Gray, that doesn’t change the differences between us.”
“The social differences that don’t mean a damned thing. Is that what you’re referring to?” he asked.
Morgan clasped her hands together. “After you left, all people in town could talk about was how shocked they were that Harry had gotten involved in this situation. They couldn’t figure out why he would do such a thing when before you came to town Harry had seemed so happy. It was easy enough to accept Kym’s involvement because they didn’t know her and didn’t care to. But then that left me. I became the connection between Harry and you, to the fire and to the Reeds’ utter embarrassment that their son was going to jail. All of that rested on my shoulders.”
“It shouldn’t have and you know that.”
She nodded. “I do. But if I’d never gone to visit that house with you, if I had just stayed in my lane and let you go about your business, then maybe Harry’s life wouldn’t be ruined and the Reeds’ reputation wouldn’t be in shambles. Maybe a woman who only did her job and fell in love with a handsome man wouldn’t have found herself in what she thought was dire circumstances and wouldn’t be facing prison time. We can’t undo the past,” she told him. “But it’s probably smart if we start to think about other people besides ourselves when we start working toward the future.”
Again, Gray was silent. He looked at her and then down at the ring. After a few moments he put the ring back into the pouch and stuffed it into the pocket of his suit jacket once more.
“You seem to know how you feel on this subject,” he said as he stood up and grabbed his coat. “I’ll leave you alone with that decision.”
And that was that, Morgan thought, as she got up from her seat and walked Gray to the door. Not nearly as hard as she’d thought it would be and certainly not as exhausting as the scene with Harry. Except, she spoke too soon.
When Morgan opened the door to let Gray out the twins came rushing inside.
“Mr. Gray! Mr. Gray!” they yelled in unison, both of them wrapping their arms around each of Gray’s legs to hug him.
Morgan felt like a weight had been dropped on her chest as she watched Gray go to his knees to hug them both.
“You went away and we missed you!” Lily told him as she kissed his cheek.
“Yeah. I didn’t have anybody to play with my train with me. Mom and Lily are girls and they don’t understand,” Jack complained when he kept an arm around Gray’s neck and leaned in to him.
“I’ll have to come around and play with you some other time,” Gray told him. “Right now, I’ve got to go.”
“No,” Lily pleaded, her little face crumbling instantly. “Don’t go away again, Mr. Gray. Please don’t.”
“We want you to stay here with us,” Jack said. “We even wished on the mistletoe like Mama does.”
“Right,” Lily continued. “We wished for you to be our new daddy since our other one died.”
Morgan swallowed and tried desperately to keep her composure. In the days that Gray had been gone the children had asked about him every day and Morgan had given them a very generic he-had-to-go-back-to-his-home reply. She’d hoped that in time the questions would stop, but apparently her children were missing him much more than she initially thought. Her stomach churned and she thought she might actually cry or faint, one or the other, or possibly both.
“There’s magic in those wishes,” Granny said.
Morgan hadn’t even noticed her grandmother come into her house and take off her coat, but Granny was now standing right beside her.
“I’ll be back,” Gray told them. “I promise I’ll come back and play with you sometime. And Lily, we can have another tea party.”
Lily’s bottom lip quivered, while Jack’s remained poked out as Gray stood. He looked at Granny. “Nice seeing you again, Ms. Ida Mae.”
“Good to have you back, Grayson,” Granny replied.
Gray nodded and then looked at Morgan. He didn’t say anything but turned to walk out of the ho
use.
The moment the door was closed Morgan held up a hand to stop whatever words were about to come out of the mouths of her grandmother and her children. “Not right now,” she told them. “Just, not right now.”
She ran from the room at that moment, emotions swirling quickly and potently throughout her body, causing her to be sick.
* * *
Three days later Morgan lay facedown on her bed when Wendy came into the bedroom.
“Well, you missed a very lively MLK Day parade. Millie tried to ride one of the Coolridge horses instead of getting in the car with Mayor Pullum. You know she hates that woman with a passion.”
Wendy talked as she moved around the room, pushed open the curtains, and then plopped down on the bed as she took off her boots and dropped them to the floor.
“Then Fred ran over to try and help her up, but the horse bucked and when it came down it was in a puddle of muddy water that splattered all over Millie’s snow-white suit and Fred’s suede jacket. And that’s not all,” Wendy continued. “Jerline Bertrum ate three huge bags of Mr. Edison’s rainbow sherbet cotton candy and when it came time for her solo she barfed over the microphone and a good portion of the flower-lined float she was riding on. The kids all tried to laugh at first, but then there was a gust of wind and the smell hit everyone. There was barfing and crying and screaming. Girl, it was a mess.”
Morgan groaned.
“You been laying here the entire time?” Wendy asked.
Morgan opened one eye to see her sister looking down at her. “Uh-huh,” she murmured.
“Why? Are you sick?” Wendy flattened her palm on Morgan’s forehead. “You’re clammy but not feverish. You think it’s the flu?”
“No,” Morgan said quietly.
“Maybe it’s that stomach virus that’s been going around. Have you been vomiting or having diarrhea?”
Morgan did not want to think about either, but she was pretty sure she didn’t have a stomach virus.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, maybe even more quietly than she had the previous answer.
Wendy waited a beat and then said, “Excuse me?”
With a heavy sigh Morgan turned over onto her back, tossing the white stick she’d been holding in her hand for the last hour at her sister.
“What? Oh. My. Oh. My,” Wendy said over and over again. “You’re pregnant!”
“Give that girl a prize,” Morgan sighed.
“It’s Gray’s baby. You’re pregnant by Grayson Taylor,” Wendy said as she bounced up and down as if it was the happiest day in her life. “Oh, just wait until Granny hears this. She’s been talking about you and Gray for days now, saying how that mistletoe wish was bound to come true for the twins, no matter how you tried to stop it.”
Morgan dropped an arm over her face and groaned. “I didn’t try to stop it. I wanted to protect me and my kids.”
“Whatever,” Wendy said, thankfully getting up off the bed.
Morgan’s stomach was not on solid ground, hadn’t been for days now.
“There’s no protecting people from falling in love. I don’t know why anyone ever tries that stunt in the first place. And those children, they’re too young to know about games and hiding from their feelings. They knew what they wanted all along,” Wendy said.
“But he wasn’t theirs to want,” Morgan argued. “He wasn’t mine. He didn’t even want to be here.”
“Well, he’s certainly here now,” Wendy told her.
Morgan sat up on the bed to see her sister with her cell phone in hand. “What do you mean he’s here now? And who are you texting?”
“I’m telling Granny. You know she doesn’t carry that phone around that we got her so I’m guessing it’ll take her about an hour before she sees it. That gives you more than enough time to shower and pretty yourself up so you can go and tell Gray about the baby.”
Morgan narrowed her eyes at her sister. “What? Wait. I don’t know if we should be telling Granny yet. And it’s my news so I should really be the one to tell her. And how am I going to go and tell Gray anything? He’s back in Miami.”
Wendy shook her head. “Nope. He never left Temptation. He’s been staying at his parents’ house. The one where construction trucks have been parked out front since yesterday. He’s got work going on at the community center, the hospital and the Taylor house. So you can just go on over there and tell that man you’re having his baby.”
“I can’t,” Morgan said as she remembered all the things she’d said to him just days ago. All the things that she’d thought at the time were the right thing to say.
“You can and you will,” Wendy said, now finished with her text message. She came over and grabbed Morgan by the hand.
“Stop thinking of reasons not to do it and just go. You can’t keep his baby from him and you’re certainly not the type to even consider any other option,” Wendy continued.
“He probably thinks I’m some idiotic fluff head,” Morgan complained as she entered the bathroom.
“Well, you’ve certainly been acting like one. But we can easily blame that on the pregnancy. Now, here, I’ll run your water and when you get out I want you to put on the clothes I pick out for you. No fussing. Just get dressed and go,” her sister ordered her.
“Wendy,” Morgan said when she was standing near the shower stall, the water that her sister had turned on already sprinkling her arm. “What if he tells me to go away?”
Wendy shook her head as she smiled at her sister. “If he wanted you to go away, Morgan, he would have never come back to Temptation.”
Chapter 17
The red doors were gone.
That was the first thing Morgan noticed when she stepped out of her car and walked across the street toward the Taylor house on Peach Tree Lane. As Wendy had already told her there was a large dump truck and a smaller white pickup parked on the front lawn. The dilapidated white picket fence that surrounded the entire corner property was gone and there were workmen moving in and out of the house.
“Is Mr. Taylor here?” Morgan asked one of the men as she stepped gingerly onto the front porch.
“Straight back, in the kitchen with the site manager,” he said, barely looking at her while ripping another long slab of wood from the railing.
She walked into the house, seeing even more activity. There were holes in some of the walls, electrical wiring pulled out, several men standing around it talking about what they saw, she guessed. All the drapes had been removed from the windows and rugs had been taken up from the scuffed wood floors. Dust tickled her nose as she continued toward the back of the house. Nobody even asked why she was there—they all simply continued to work as if they didn’t see her in the midst of their workday.
She stepped into the kitchen to see even more people, including Gray. He was standing in a corner, a bank of huge windows that went from one side of the wall to halfway around the other. The view of the backyard was stunning, but it was the tiny peak of the mountaintop that had Morgan moving closer without speaking a word. This was a gorgeous view and as she stared out to the cloudy January day, she had a quick flash of children playing in this yard. First, it was of multiple children, six to be exact, three boys and three girls, running and laughing, tossing a bright red ball between them. In an instant the scene remained the same, but the children were different—there were two of them, a boy and a girl. The red ball still rolled around the yard, with laughter and cheering loud in the air. On the porch, just a short distance away, was a cradle with a baby wrapped tightly in a blanket inside.
“Good afternoon,” he said from directly behind her, his voice deep and warm.
Morgan spun around quickly, her back hitting against the windows as she faced Gray. He looked even better than he had a few days ago, she thought as she swallowed, trying to calm her jittering s
tomach. This wasn’t morning sickness, although Morgan had been having her time with that. Hence the reason she’d finally purchased the pregnancy test.
“Hi,” she said, her hands behind her, clasping the windowsill.
They were silent the next few minutes, both of them looking at each other as if searching for the right words to say. He wore a long-sleeved shirt today that melded against every muscle of his upper body. His jeans were dark denim, his boots black. If she didn’t know better Morgan might have mistaken him for one of the crew. But she did know better. She knew that there was a three-inch scar under his right knee where he’d fallen off his bike and into a ditch when he was thirteen. She also knew that his favorite ice cream was chocolate and that he’d never been to Walt Disney World. Another thing she knew, without a doubt, in that instant that she saw him standing in this old kitchen where his family once lived was that she loved this man.
“I thought you were leaving,” she said.
“I left your house because you told me to go,” he replied, stuffing his hands into his front pockets.
Morgan nodded. “I know.”
She’d told him that because she was afraid of hearing him say he didn’t want to stay. It had all boiled down to that. Well, whether or not Gray stayed in Temptation he deserved to know that she was carrying his child. Regardless of how she felt about him—even though she’d been too silly and too cowardly to just tell him that she loved him—he was free to go wherever he pleased. She wasn’t going to try and guilt him into staying with her. She was already a single mother, there was no reason why she couldn’t continue on that way. After all, thousands of women did every day.
Morgan took a deep breath and decided it was simply best to say it and get it over with.
“I’m pregnant.”
The words fell into the room that was bustling with activity around them. Still, they had the impact of a gigantic pink elephant stepping immediately between them.
