Their Nine-Month Surprise

by Laurel Greer

  “He’s not going to—” Short, sun-streaked curls bobbed as Maggie shook her head and released Marisol’s arm. “Crumb cake. I shouldn’t get involved in this.”

  Without a parting greeting, she disappeared down the short hallway and behind a door, which promptly slammed.

  Marisol flinched, and the motion made the baby shift. She rubbed a hand over her stomach and sat behind the reception desk. “Shh, everything’s under control.”

  Or, rather, she thought it had been. Arrive in Montana safely—check. Move into apartment—check. Complete degree requirements—underway. Love baby with entire being—check, check, check.

  She loved a well-crafted list.

  But he’s wanted a family forever... If Maggie meant family in the sense of wife, kids and dogs, that wasn’t an item Marisol was prepared to even think about, let alone write down.

  * * *

  Lachlan Reid swung open the side door to his sister’s veterinary practice and the high-pitched bell tinkled, as per usual. The walls of the rear hallway were still hurting for a fresh coat of pale blue paint. His German Shorthaired Pointer, Fudge, ill-mannered as hell when not working as an avalanche dog, pushed past him and headed for her food dish as she always did.

  Nothing else was the same.

  The blueprint roll in his hand, the one he finally had the savings and financing to see come to fruition, canceled out everything familiar this morning, from the well-loved laminate on the floor to the faint barks signifying breakfast was being served in the kennels.

  He’d spent five months working his ass off teaching other SAR dog handlers abroad, which had provided extra seed money to make this blueprint come to life. That, plus the grant he was a shoo-in to receive, meant things were a go. Success didn’t smell sweet, it smelled like kibble and disinfectant and the dirt floor of the ancient barn out back that he’d finally renovate into a dog training facility.

  He wiped his sneakers on the mat and traded his hoodie for the lab coat hanging on a hook in the staff room. Grabbing a coffee from the gurgling machine, he headed down the short hall behind the front desk, toward the head of long, chestnut-brown waves tied in a no-nonsense ponyt—wait, what?

  He froze in his tracks. Coffee slopped on the floor.

  Their receptionist was a guy.

  Who did not have a ponytail. Especially not that ponytail.

  Lachlan knew that ponytail. Intimately. And it, and the woman it was attached to, was supposed to be in Vancouver, not Sutter Creek.

  Lach had spent a good deal of time under the mistletoe with his hands in Marisol Cardenas’s hair.

  On her shoulders, hips... Hell, all over her curvy body.

  His stomach heated and palms tingled at the possibility of getting to repeat the experience.

  The reception desk ran parallel to the hallway, forming a T. And why she was sitting behind it, well, he wasn’t ready for the answer. His feet refused to move forward.

  I’m seeing things. Got affected by the altitude on the glacier yesterday. But two long blinks affirmed he wasn’t suffering from delayed-onset hallucinations. Maybe his sister let Marisol in?

  Who cares? He could think of far worse ways to spend a Monday morning before the literal animal hordes arrived. Or rather, he would have back in December before Marisol had preemptively cut off any possibility of a relationship by asking, “this is just a fling, right?” He’d stammered out some sort of response, saving his pride by telling her he was too busy with work to get involved with anyone.

  And when he’d gotten a last-minute invitation to work out of the country after the original trainer had backed out, jumping on the offer had been about distracting himself from his memories of Marisol as much as the welcome financial opportunity.

  He’d only returned a week ago, and adjusting to no longer living in a hotel room was taking longer than he’d expected.

  The dog, finished with her meal, pranced past Lachlan to greet Marisol. Not with her usual wiggle-ass maneuvers, though. Fudge gave Marisol a few tentative sniffs, and let out a whine before sidling up and putting her brown-and-white head in Marisol’s lap.

  “Hey, baby,” Marisol crooned, scratching the dog behind her ears.

  Affection warmed his core, but he shut down the response. She’s talking to the dog, not you, idiot.

  “Hey, Lach.”

  Yep, no endearment for him. She didn’t even turn around, kept her focus solidly on whatever book she was holding.

  “Hey, baby,” he mimicked. Not to the dog, and by the way Marisol sat straighter, she knew it.

  He closed the distance and hitched a hip on the desk. “Mari—”

  Holy. Jesus.

  His lips went numb. He gripped the counter with both hands to stop himself from sliding to the floor.

  And she gripped her textbook to her abdomen. Her very round abdomen.

  Marisol’s golden-brown skin paled. Her throat bobbed once, twice. She muttered something in German that couldn’t be anything but profanity. “Lachlan...”

  A thousand responses bounced around his head, but all he managed to get out was one crude word.

  Burying his fingers in his hair, and unable to control his gaping mouth, he stared at her stomach. He was versed in domestic animal gestation, not human, but that bump had to be around the six-month mark. He didn’t need to count backward to know what that meant.

  Her lip started to wobble and indecision swam in her green eyes. “Say something.”

  Get it together. He coughed, then croaked, “Is it—I mean, did we—But we used—” He ended the nonsensical half sentences with a blitz of expletives.

  A nervous smile kissed the edge of her full lips. “Not quite sure if I caught what you meant, but I think it was along the lines of ‘yes, it’s yours.’ We made a baby. And we did use condoms. But that one time, we started without...”

  “Without,” he echoed, dropping his hands to his sides. “Weren’t you on the pill?”

  “Yep. And I’ll save you from asking—I used it correctly. The chances of pregnancy were miniscule. And yet...”

  He coughed again. The desk creaked as he let it take more of his weight. “And you didn’t say anything? It’s June, Marisol.”

  He dealt with distress all the time. Pet owners and ranchers, pale and shaking when their animals were in need of care. Idiot hikers, defensive and cranky when they had to admit they should have taken a compass instead of relying on their now-dead cell phone’s GPS. But nothing he’d run across in either job quite matched the mix of ire and dread flashing in Marisol’s green eyes.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Her clenched teeth muffled her words.

  “Am I kidding you? Try the other way around.”

  “I’m clearly not.” Mouth tight, she waved a hand at her stomach.

  Son of a... He’d run his hand over her abdomen dozens of times before. Back when it had been flat. And now it wasn’t. His baby was in there. “Last time I checked, ‘mind reader’ wasn’t anywhere on my résumé.”

  “So learn how to return a goddamn message!”

  His tongue lay useless, thick in his mouth.

  What was she talking about? None of this made sense. He massaged his still-numb lips with his fingers, stopping himself from reaching out and touching the bump, so damned foreign. Something niggled in his gut. The need to learn her new form until it was familiar again.

  And whatever she’d just shrieked at him, too, about returning his—

  Oh. Oh, Christ.

  “What message?” he asked quietly.

  Twisting her hands, she fidgeted with her clothes, straightening the summery blouse and skirt. “The ones I left you in January.”

  January, when he’d been in the mountains outside of Santiago. “I was having a hard time getting service, so there were a few times I went a few weeks without checking. They must
have gotten automatically deleted.”

  “Deleted.” She mouthed it more than spoke it.

  “Why didn’t you call back? Once I left Chile, reception was way better.”

  Thank God she was sitting down—she started shaking hard enough he’d have worried she’d lose her balance.

  Concern jolted through him. He could deal with being pissed off later. Right now, her rapid breathing ranked as way more important.

  He knelt on the floor in front of her and turned her chin to catch her gaze straight on, and pressed a fingertip to the notch in her wrist. Her pulse fluttered, way too fast.

  Then again, his was about the same.

  “Deep breaths,” he said.

  “Chile... As in the Andes?” she murmured. The regret braided into her dawning understanding sucker punched him. “And Australia? And Korea?”

  “And New Zealand,” he said. “But if you knew...”

  “I didn’t. I thought he was lying.”

  “Zach?” Who else but Marisol’s brother would have told her where Lachlan had been?

  “No, whoever answers the phone here.”

  Evan. Evan, who had no qualms about enforcing a “no personal calls on my phone line” policy, and did so with his patented level of sarcasm.

  He reached out to pull her into him, one hand on the base of her skull, the other at the small of her back.

  Holding her again was a goddamn gift. Holding her while she was pregnant with their child... Indescribable.

  The child she didn’t manage to tell you about for half a year. His brief haze of amazement evaporated.

  “What about online?” The question came out a snap.

  She startled and stepped away, falling back into the desk chair before he could get a hand out to steady her. “What about it?”

  “I’m on Facebook. And checked my email regularly.”

  “Facebook? I’m supposed to send you a message about this on social media?” she said, pointing to her belly. “No way. You were avoiding my voicemails, so what was the point? I figured I’d have to do it face-to-face the first chance I could get.”

  “I wasn’t avoiding you,” he emphasized.

  Though the set of her jaw suggested she was having a hard time adjusting to the knowledge. “I thought you had instructed your receptionist to lie to me. I wasn’t up for being ignored electronically, too. I was puking my...”

  She slammed her lips shut.

  The dog plastered herself to Marisol’s side. She flattened her liver-brown ears and glared at Lachlan. Fudge clearly didn’t need the adjustment time that Lachlan did. She seemed to have appointed herself Marisol’s protector.

  And Lachlan understood that. The need to ensure Marisol’s safety seeped into his bones, into every corner of his soul. It didn’t erase his questions, though. Even if he did extend her the benefit of the doubt, understanding why he was finding out she was pregnant when she was six months along was only a glimpse of the trail they were now going to have to hike together.

  “How long are you here for?” he asked.

  “Here...in the office?”

  “Uh, no, in town.”

  “Right. Baby brain,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

  “Do you expect to raise our child in Vancouver? Away from me?” he prodded. “I can’t just up and move my business before the shovels even break ground.”

  “Lachlan,” Marisol cut him off softly. ”I know we have lots to talk about—”

  “You think?”

  A warbly throat cleared from behind him, on the other side of the half wall that separated the reception desk from the waiting room. “Lachlan Reid, that boarding school your parents sent you to may have been lax on manners, but your grandmother did not allow you to speak to ladies like that.”

  Damn it. The last thing he wanted was for half the town to be up in their business before he’d had the chance to discover exactly what that business was. Lachlan cocked a brow and turned to regard Gertie Rafferty, the silver-headed dynamo who’d been keeping the Sutter Creek gossip chain going for most of her eighty-plus years. Mrs. Rafferty’s Russian blue peered up at Lachlan from her perch in the woman’s arms.

  He didn’t bother to remind Mrs. Rafferty that his workplace wasn’t the most appropriate of places for a dressing-down. He’d dated her granddaughter one teenage summer, and had stolen too many cookies off the trays in the back of the older woman’s bakery to ever be considered fully grown.

  “Boarding school was fifteen years ago, Mrs. Rafferty,” he said.

  “So you’ve had plenty of time living here to lose those entitled habits.” She turned her attention to Marisol. “Hello, dear. You look as pretty today as you did when you last visited. That baby’s all out front. Must be murder on your back. And thank goodness Lachlan is finally home so you can bring him to task.”

  Marisol blushed. “Oh, well, we’re not together...”

  He cringed. Was Marisol even going to want to publicly acknowledge him as the father? He sure as hell was going to insist on it, but until they’d had the conversation, it wasn’t any of Gertie’s business. “Mrs. Rafferty, it’s not what you think—”

  “A handsome devil like you, dear? It’s exactly what I think. I had four children. I know how reproduction works.”

  “You’re making assumptions—”

  She cut him off with a piercing look, punctuated with a mew from her cat. “And you’re making your grandmother roll over in her grave, letting your sweetheart walk around without a ring on her finger.”

  His brain scrambled to get caught up. Sweetheart? Ring? Both words he could get used to when Marisol was on the receiving end, but the flat look on her face indicated she did not agree.

  “We need a little time,” he said.

  “Doesn’t look like you have much left,” Gertie said with a pointed glance at Marisol’s belly.

  He coughed. “Well, we—”

  “He didn’t know about the baby,” Marisol said between gritted teeth. “He didn’t know I was coming.” She looked at Lach with all the honesty in the world in her eyes. “Talking to you was my number one priority, though.”

  “Instead, everyone’s been talking about her all morning,” Gertie added. Marisol groaned, and the older woman’s pale cheeks flushed. “Just curiosity, dear.” She eyed Marisol from behind thick-lensed glasses. “The buzz in the bakery is that you’ve signed the lease on Mackenzie Dawson’s old place. And Lachlan’s name has come up a few times, too, given how he was squiring you around before Christmas.”

  Marisol sighed and splayed her fingers on her stomach in what looked like an unconscious gesture. Her cheeks reddened. “We’ve had all of ten minutes. Surely Sutter Creek can extend us a few hours, days maybe, before people start calling caterers and booking churches? Because I don’t want to—”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, and she stopped talking. Good. Because for some reason, he didn’t want to hear that she didn’t want to marry him. Especially not with an audience. Not that he was going to suggest that. Marriage wasn’t something to jump into, even with a baby involved. But having her confirm she’d already written off the idea... It was as if a handful of the mealworms they kept in the supply room were inching up his spine.

  The room had filled up some during Mrs. Rafferty’s questioning. Two more people with their animals sat in the waiting area, and shoes squeaked on the floor down the hall. Maggie called Mrs. Rafferty into a treatment room, but the older woman’s pointed observation of him made it clear he should expect more of the same during Kittay’s appointment.

  Evan, their twentysomething receptionist, came behind the desk and shooed them out of his space with a flick of his wrist. “You’re a minute late already, Lach. You have a presurgical exam on Petunia in room three, and after Dr. Mags does her thing with Mrs. Rafferty’s cat, you’re up with her vaccinations.” />
  “Evan,” Lach said gruffly.

  The willowy man paused. “Yes?”

  “Marisol tried to call the clinic while I was away.”

  “Lots of women called, as per usual. I told them exactly where you—” Evan stopped talking as his gaze landed on Marisol’s stomach.

  Lachlan had seen Evan dangling by one hand from the underside of a cliff overhang. The guy was fearless.

  Except in the face of an irritated pregnant woman, apparently.

  His face turned whiter than his platinum blond hair, and he scrunched his nose apologetically. “Oh. Well. You should have told me why you were calling, honey.”

  “What, announce I’m knocked up to someone I don’t know?” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone before I told Lachlan.”

  The explanation stilled some of Lachlan’s shaky parts. He wanted to be mad. Wanted to wallow in having been kept in the dark. But the reasons for her silence made that hard.

  “Besides,” she continued, “you were cranky, sure, but you were being honest. I was the one who didn’t believe you, because Lachlan hadn’t...” She didn’t finish the thought. Nice of her to hold back from blaming him in front of an audience.

  Even if it was starting to look like he deserved some of it.

  But no—how would he have known?

  “There was no way for me to call back given I didn’t get the message,” he said testily. The last thing he wanted was for it to get around town that he’d actually sloughed off the mother of his child.

  “Right,” she mumbled.

  “Uh, truly sorry if I complicated things.” Evan petted Fudge, who was mooching for treats. “Try again, dog. The only being in these parts who’s allowed to have a round belly is Marisol. Or should I say, your mommy?”

  “I’m not Fudge’s mommy. Lachlan and I aren’t...” Marisol closed her eyes. Her previous blush was turning into a green tinge.

  Lachlan took her hand and pulled her down the hall. “I’ll correct everyone.”

  “I think the cat’s out of the bag. Or rather, the cat’s in the treatment room with a cell phone–wielding senior citizen.”