The Second Time Around

by Marie Ferrarella

  No, nothing was wrong. Everything was perfect. Absolutely perfect, she thought. But she couldn’t help asking, “Isn’t this what got us in trouble in the first place?”

  “So?” He tucked her body beneath his and the familiar fit hardened him even more. Making him want her with a fierceness that never ceased to amaze him. “What’s going to happen? You’re going to become more pregnant?”

  She pretended to consider his question seriously. “I remember once reading about a woman who was pregnant with twins, but when they were born, the doctor discovered that they were each conceived at different times. One baby was actually chronologically two months younger than his brother.”

  He gave her a look that said he didn’t know whether or not to believe her. He shrugged his shoulders and they moved against her. “I’ll chance it.”

  “Sure,” she laughed. “It’s not your body you’re playing Russian roulette with.”

  “Nope.” His arms beneath her, Jason gathered her even closer. “It’s your body I’m interested in playing with.”

  She melted against him. Melted into him. All these years later and it was almost like the first time.

  Damn lucky, she thought again.

  “Talk is cheap,” she told him. “Show me.”

  The smile that unfurled along his lips was positively wicked. She could feel her pulse racing. “Your wish is my command.”

  Her breath was already growing short. Laurel’s eyes fluttered shut a moment before she let herself sink into the kiss that was very much, as the old Doors song went, lighting her fire.

  “Pregnancy agrees with you,” Jeannie decided the following morning after watching her walk in.

  Laurel could feel a spring in her step and a glow from last night that had yet to be extinguished. With any luck, she could bask in the feeling for the remainder of the day.

  Jeannie was eyeing her as she sat down, eager for details. “I take it everything went all right last night?”

  Laurel’s eyes widened. “Last night?” she echoed, surprised. “How did you—” And then she realized what Jeannie was referring to. “Oh, you mean with my telling the rest of my family about the baby.”

  “Yes,” Jeannie replied, “but whatever you were thinking looks a lot more interesting.” She propped her head on her upturned hand, looking as if she was settling in for the duration. “Want to talk about it?”

  Laurel allowed a mysterious smile to play on her lips. “A lady never tells.”

  Jeannie pushed her chair away from her own desk with her foot, propelling herself toward Laurel’s in one smooth motion. “No, but a best friend does.” She gave Laurel her best pleading look. “Throw me a bone, Laurel.”

  The woman made it sound as if she lived a cloistered existence. “You’re married, Jeannie.”

  Her words were met with a huge sigh. “That’s exactly why I need a bone. Because I’m married.”

  Maybe their signals had gotten crossed, Laurel thought. Her friend looked too eager for someone asking details about an encounter between a husband and wife. “This is about Jason.”

  Jeannie’s face fell. “Not Mr. Hunk?”

  “No, not Mr. Hunk.” Laurel did her best not to laugh.

  “Always said you had more than your share of luck, Laurel.” And then she smiled wistfully. “Lord knows I wouldn’t kick Jason out of bed, either.”

  “Well, you’d better if he’s in yours.”

  Jeannie raised her hands in surrender. “Sorry, no infringement intended.” She ducked her head in closer, even though it was still only the two of them in the office. “So, your husband is responsible for that rosy glow on your face.” That established, she returned to her original question. “Everyone okay with this new addition, or did you chicken out at the last minute and tell them you were thinking of putting a ‘new addition’ on the house instead?”

  “No chickening out,” Laurel informed her. “And the family is fine with it.”

  As fine as could be expected, she added silently. And Jason would come around, she promised herself. It was simply going to take more time than she’d anticipated.

  But Jeannie was no longer listening. Her attention had zeroed in on the front door. The bell above it had just gone off.

  “Oh-oh, heads up. Mr. Hunk is back. Whatever perfume you’re using, lady, I want some. Make it a bathtub full,” she amended.

  Laurel barely heard her. Her eyes were on the front of the office. Robert Manning had entered and was heading straight for her.

  CHAPTER 12

  Reaching her desk, Robert smiled warmly at her. He wore a navy-blue suit with a pearl blue shirt that once again brought out his eyes. It occurred to Laurel that someone had to have taught him how to dress.

  She wondered if that same advisor was available for Jason, who wore suits only because he had to. At home, he was the last word in comfort, with jeans that had been pressed into service years ago and shirts that only disappeared from regular use if she kidnapped them and sent them away to Goodwill.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Robert told her, “and decided to stop by to see if you have any more listings to show me.”

  “Is that anything like etchings?” she heard Jeannie ask under her breath, her words addressed to no one in particular.

  Rising from her desk, Laurel waved a hand at Jeannie behind her back so that Robert couldn’t see, hoping to silence her friend before she said anything audibly enough to embarrass her. She remained on her feet because, for some reason, standing made her feel as if she had more control over the situation.

  “As a matter of fact, a few more went on the market as of this morning.” Something, maybe intuition, had made her check the Web site on her laptop before she’d driven in this morning. “I think you might be interested in seeing a couple of them.”

  Seeming pleased, Robert spread out his arms. “I’m all yours.”

  Behind her, she heard Jeannie make a little noise and sigh. By the expression on his face, so did Robert. Smiling, he moved around her and put out his hand to Jeannie.

  “Robert Manning,” he introduced himself.

  Like someone in a trance, Jeannie slipped her hand into his. Her eyes never left his face. “Jean Wallace. Jeannie to my friends,” she added quickly.

  “Jeannie,” Robert repeated with a nod of his head, as if to approve of the name. “I hope you’ll allow me to call you that.”

  Allow? Laurel thought. Jeannie was practically begging him to use her nickname.

  “Absolutely,” Jeannie breathed.

  Amused, Laurel watched her best friend, a woman who was known for her sharp wit and equally sharp tongue, dissolve to the consistency of tapioca pudding left out on the counter overnight during a record heat wave.

  Robert smoothly turned back toward her. “So, shall we go?” he asked, then looked over at her desk. “Or are you busy?”

  On her desk she had a stack of folders, all neatly arranged and in alphabetical order. But that didn’t make the work within them any less pressing. Still, the paperwork she’d intended catching up on this morning was going to have to wait. Although she was a tad skeptical about the validity of his search for a new house, she had to treat Robert as if he were actually planning to buy property.

  “I’m here to sell houses,” she replied.

  Picking up the purse, she began to lead the way out the front door. They passed Ed Callaghan on his way in. The office manager looked pleased to see one of his agents going out on a showing this early in the day.

  “My car’s right out front,” she told Robert as they went through the front door.

  He closed the door behind them. “Why don’t we take mine this time?”

  There was no outright company policy as to whose vehicle would be used when viewing a property. Some of the time, a prospective buyer and agent would meet at the site in question. However, most of the time, when leaving from the agency, it was customary to use the agent’s car since the latter was strictly for business usage.


  Using the buyer’s car, at least this time, made the whole venture seem too personal somehow.

  A little too much like a date, she couldn’t help thinking.

  Especially when she saw what kind of a car Robert Manning had chosen to drive. It was parked several spaces over from the front door. Red and shiny, it was low to the ground and sporty beyond belief. She wasn’t much on cars. To her, they were just a way to get her to and from places, a great deal more convenient than having to take the bus. But this one was in a class all its own and it took her breath away.

  “A Ferrari?” She ogled the vehicle, then glanced over at Robert.

  He ran his hand fondly over the roof, obviously not so obsessed with his possession that he worried about leaving fingerprints. She liked that.

  “Yes, I always wanted one, ever since I was a kid.” Robert opened the passenger side door for her. “Do you like it?”

  She had no idea why, but she felt her heart rate speed up a shade.

  Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Laurel couldn’t shake the feeling that the words seemed very appropriate in this situation.

  You’re letting your imagination run away with you, she upbraided herself.

  It was her hormones acting up again, nothing more. All this was perfectly innocent and she was reading too much into it. Somehow, knowing the cause of her disquiet still didn’t change anything. For reasons she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—quite put into words, Laurel felt as if she was poised on the very point of a pin, ready to fall either forward or backward, but either way, destined to fall.

  “What’s not to like?” she responded. “It’s beautiful.”

  Taking her elbow, Robert helped her ease into the low-slung seat. She caught him watching her legs as she swung them inside the vehicle. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves as he rounded the hood and got in on the other side of the transmission shift.

  He shook his head as he buckled up. “‘Things’ aren’t beautiful,” he told her, putting the key into the ignition. “Now you—” he spared her a look “—you’re beautiful.”

  Oh no, she wasn’t going to fall into that trap. Was not about to deny his statement and find herself getting sucked into a discussion that revolved around her looks or anything remotely about her. That was definitely much too personal.

  So instead, she shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen some sunsets that were positively breathtaking.”

  She half expected him to disagree and she was ready for that. He surprised her by seeming to change the subject.

  “You were captain of the debating team.” It wasn’t a haphazard guess on his part. He said it as if he remembered.

  Captain of the debating team. The position had been something she’d been proud of. Something, she recalled, that had left Jason pretty much unimpressed when she’d told him about the string of successes she’d amassed during her term in her senior year at Bedford High. It was also a fact that she didn’t expect anyone to remember.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  She gave him the address, still staring at him. “You remember that?” she asked. “That I was captain of the debating team?”

  The smile was gentle, reminiscent, as if the past was never very far away for him. “I remember a great deal about high school,” Robert told her, then glanced at her as he pulled out of the parking lot. “A great deal.”

  She studied his profile for a moment when he looked back at the road. He had a very determined chin. Still waters did run deep, at least in his case.

  “And you used it, didn’t you?”

  Robert eased his foot onto the brake as the light turned yellow. He was too far from the intersection to risk getting across before the light turned red. “Excuse me?”

  She thought again that high school had had to be hell for him. In his place, she wasn’t sure how she would have fared. “All those negative experiences, those horrible people who got their kicks by picking on you—you used all that to spur you on,” she told him. “To make you the man you are now.”

  Rather than seem annoyed at the reference to his past, Robert allowed a hint of a smile to slip across his lips. The light turned green and he shifted from the brake to the gas.

  “Go on.”

  It was a philosophy she espoused. “Well, kids who have to put up with cruel teasing either go on to become huge successes—or serial killers. I’m guessing it’s safe to say that you’re not a serial killer.”

  He laughed at her comment. “Not that I didn’t think about it for a while,” he admitted, then elaborated. “Getting the likes of Will Turner and Jack Sullivan in some dark, dead-end alley and running them over with my car sounded pretty good at the time. But then I decided that becoming successful and well-off was the best way to go. What’s that old saying?”

  “Living well is the best revenge?” she offered.

  He nodded, a pleased grin on his lips. “That’s the one. Funny thing, though. Along the way to my ultimate success, people like Will Turner and Jack Sullivan stopped mattering.”

  “Well, that’s a healthy sign,” she commented.

  “But other people,” he went on, turning to look at her meaningfully, “never stopped mattering.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “Do you know that I used to dream about sweeping you off your feet?”

  Robert’s tone was so offhand that it took her a moment to get the full import of what he was saying. He’d had a crush on her. And she had been so wrapped up in her own world, in her activities, in being the best at everything that she had hardly noticed him. Certainly not that way.

  Laurel felt guilty at the oversight—and a little worried to boot. Was this a ruse? Was he just pretending to want to buy a house in order to—what? Grab a little alone time in the car with her? That seemed more than far-fetched. This was real life, not some grade B horror movie about obsession.

  Laurel turned toward him as they came to a stop at a major intersection. “Robert—Bobby,” she corrected, reverting back for a moment to a past they only remotely shared, “I’m married.”

  Traffic was moving again. He shifted from the brake to the accelerator. “Yes, so you mentioned yesterday.” But then he asked, “Happily?”

  “Very.” And even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t admit it to him. There was no way she would give him any false hope. Yes, he was gorgeous and his attention was flattering, but her heart belonged to Jason. It always had. She was not in the market for a fling, casual or otherwise. It wasn’t her style. “And, I’m expecting a baby.”

  That seemed to catch him off guard. The way it had everyone, she thought. He probably thought she was either putting him on—or out of her mind. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Really.”

  “On purpose?”

  Laurel saw him sneaking a look at her stomach. It didn’t bear out her words and she was rather happy about that. She didn’t mind being pregnant. What she minded was looking pregnant. She supposed that made her vain.

  “Well, I am now.” She lifted her shoulders in a half shrug. “I can’t say it was something that either one of us exactly planned.” A smile played on her lips. “But I’m getting used to the idea.”

  “What about your husband?” He searched for a name. “Joshua? Is he getting used to it?”

  “Jason,” she corrected. And no, she thought, Jason wasn’t getting used to it. But he would, in time. He had to. They were a team and she needed him now more than ever. She couldn’t stand the idea of going through all this isolated from him.

  She tried not to dwell on that. “He’s worried that something might happen to me. He thinks I’m too old to have a baby.”

  Robert slanted a look at her, amusement in his eyes. “Did you hit him?”

  She laughed. “I was tempted.” Jason kept insisting on making them old before their time, like their grandparents had been. She always maintained that a young frame of mind was what kept you going and helped you beat old age. “But Jason tends to be a worrier, so
I just let it ride.”

  “If you were my wife, I’d be worried, too,” Robert told her, then quickly glossed over his statement by adding, “But in this day and age, there’s a lot doctors can do in case there’s some kind of a medical emergency.” The four-way stop sign gave him the opportunity to look at Laurel again. “And you look like you’ve been taking good care of yourself.”

  “I exercise,” she volunteered. Then, because her schedule was so overwhelming, she added, “About twenty minutes every week and a half. Not much more time for anything else.” Laurel sighed, suddenly feeling drained and grateful that Robert was doing the driving. During her last three pregnancies, exhaustion would periodically hit her, coming out of the blue and striking without any rhyme or reason. Looked like this time around would be no different. “Things were supposed to get less hectic as time moved on, not more.”

  He glanced at her. “Do I take a right here?” She nodded in response. He turned the wheel. “Kids keep you young.”

  She laughed, thinking of what her mother said. “Or age you rapidly, depending on your point of view. Do you have any kids?”

  Robert shook his head. He had the window cracked open. The breeze that squeezed in ruffled his hair a little. “My wife and I tried, but we were never lucky enough to have any.” And then his eyes crinkled a little. “Why, are you giving this one away?”

  “Not a chance.” She smiled at his gentle sense of humor. Leaning forward, she indicated the second house on the right. “Right there, that’s the house. Just pull up in the driveway.” He did as she instructed. She saw him looking around, probably for a car. “The owners had to move,” she explained. “The house is empty,” she went on, “so it’s going to require exercising some imagination on your part.”

  “Not a problem,” Robert assured her. “I started out designing software for a living. My imagination is alive and well.”

  “Okay, then let’s put it to good use.” Laurel opened the door and was about to get out. Robert rounded the hood and presented himself on her side. He cupped her elbow with his hand, helping her from the vehicle. “Someone obviously taught you some excellent manners.”