The Wedding Plan

by Melissa Shirley

  Nat backed away. She didn’t need to hear anymore. Jacob met her in the hall. “Hey I was looking for you.”

  “I-um, I needed to walk for a minute.”

  “Legs bothering you again?” He ran a hand from her shoulder to her waist.

  “Yeah.” She could lie with the best of them. She wondered if the background check had that box checked. Unable to look at him, she stared at a spot over his shoulder. “I’m tired now. I think I want to go to bed. Will you say my goodbyes for me?” Instead of waiting for an answer or the kiss on her cheek he leaned in to give her, she walked into the first floor guest room where she and Jacob had been sleeping since she came home.

  Big as a whale had hurt—the steroids they had given her to help the baby develop added pounds to Nat’s frame it would take years to work off—but piece of trailer trash, background check, gold-digger, those had torn something in Nat, and she barely made it to the bed before the tears came. Not that she could deny any of it. Whatever Jacob’s mother’s investigator had found was all likely true, but she’d changed. Being with Jacob had changed her. Of course, no one would see it. All they saw was some girl from the trailer park trapping a rich doctor into staying with her. That was all they would ever see.

  God, she wanted to run away, hide her head under a pillow and forget this contract ever happened, but she’d need the money she would get once this deal was done to make sure she could provide a life for her baby. Yes, hers. She wouldn’t saddle Jacob with a kid his mother would never accept. As soon as this thing was over, she would take the baby and leave. That was that.

  When Jacob came to bed, she turned to face him. “I’m really uncomfortable tonight. Would you mind sleeping in the other room?” Too late to miss the question in his eyes, she shifted towards the wall once again.

  She couldn’t let him hold her, break her resolve with his arms and those eyes and all that feigned—she had to think of it that way—affection. This was what was best for all of them.

  * * *

  JACOB: I didn’t know. Oh, God. How did I not know, right? But I would never have guessed my mother—who walked out on me when I was ten—would have such an impact on my relationship with Nat. I never cared where Nat came from. If it wasn’t for Lucia’s money, I would have been one of those kids whisked off into the system. I would have had nothing growing up. I don’t love Nat for where she came from. I love her for who she is.

  Something had changed. Nat wouldn’t look at him, moved away when he reached for her. And she wouldn’t sleep with him. He’d checked with Ryhan and Lanie. She hadn’t said anything to either of them, hadn’t mentioned a problem or a change in her feelings. Maybe it was the drugs? Steroids had well-documented side effects. Maybe falling out of love was one of them.

  He sat at his desk, hands braced against his skull. God, it had been so hard these last few days. She barely talked to him, barely looked at him even. After she’d found him sleeping in the chair beside her bed, she’d started locking the door to the guestroom. What if she needed him during the night? He’d have to break the door down. Not that he minded. He didn’t care about the door. He cared that Nat was shutting him out—literally.

  And he felt selfish for thinking it, but almost losing their baby affected both of them. Yeah. He knew what a bastard it made him to resent how she’d started treating him. But he was scared, too. That was his baby as much as hers. Maybe he needed some reassurance every once in a while.

  And maybe she needed a man who would suck it up and be the strong one. He never should have cried with her at the hospital, never should have made her console him. How could he blame her for seeing him that way? For not believing he would take care of her and their son.

  When his cell rang, he looked down at the screen. Lucia. “What’s up, Grandma?”

  “Jacob, she’s gone.”

  “Gone?” What? She was hardly allowed to walk. Driving had been struck completely off the list.

  “Her car…she’s not here.” He’d never heard such panic in his grandmother’s voice. “I ran to the store. She wanted some ice cream and you didn’t have any. I only left her for a few minutes. I would have been back sooner, but Mitzy had to stop and tell me how her son was moving to town and then Jane Carlin wanted to show me pictures of her begonias. But I was only gone an hour, Jacob. I promise.”

  Jacob’s heart broke. “She’s allergic to ice cream, Grandma. That’s why we don’t have any.” She’d left him.

  Okay. He had to think. Where would she go? He knew she was just as worried about the baby as he was, so she wouldn’t get far from the hospital. She wouldn’t take a chance like that. His grandmother was still in his ear. “I’ll organize a search.”

  But why? If she didn’t want to be with him, didn’t want to share her life with him, what was the point? Still, he couldn’t do nothing. This was his wife. His Nat. “Okay. I’ll meet you at home as soon as I can.”

  He flung his office door open and stepped into the waiting room where Nat sat in the only occupied chair. The camera guy stood at the door, his eye pressed against the lens finder.

  Nat didn’t stand and Jacob didn’t move. “Lucia’s freaking out.”

  “I’ll call her and apologize.”

  He wanted to go to her, but he couldn’t. Not yet. “What are you doing, Nat?”

  “I was going to leave. Let you out of this mess, but I got on the road, and somehow, I ended up here.”

  He swallowed hard, gulped in as much air as he could to soften the answer to his next question. “Why’d you want to leave?”

  She shrugged. “Jacob…” She sighed. “This is so hard.”

  “It wasn’t so hard for you to lie to Lucia or walk out of the house and get in the car.” His tone came from the place where he hurt the worst, where the anger and pain built inside him.

  She didn’t react with more than a nod, and he could have kicked his own ass. “I don’t want you to be stuck with me just because of this baby.”

  “Have I acted that way? What did I do to make you feel like I think I’m stuck with you? Do I not love you enough? Do I get mad at you for…I don’t know…being you? What makes you think you need to decide for me what I want or how I feel?” She’d tried to leave him already, and no matter how much he wanted to do it, he couldn’t find it in himself to soften his voice.

  “People think I did this on purpose, that I trapped you to get my claws into your money.” Her voice broke, and a tear slipped down her cheek.

  “Who? Who thinks that? If you want to leave Nat, you don’t have to make excuses. You don’t have to invent reasons.” Why couldn’t he settle down? Accept her apology? Because as soon as he did, he knew she’d be out the door and out of his life. “I know everyone in this town and no one, not a single person has said a word about you or us or this.”

  She lifted her chin. “Not your mother?”

  “What does my mo-…” The dinner party for Lucia. Oh, God. He’d told Nat inviting her would ruin everything. Of course, at the time he’d only meant dinner, not his life. “What did she do? What did she say to you?” If his mother cost him the best thing that ever happened to him…short of killing the heartless old bag, there wasn’t much he could do. But if he lost Nat, all bets were off.

  “She didn’t say anything to me. I overheard her talking on the phone.” Nat shook her head. “I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but she’s right. You are trapped. I didn’t mean to, but I trapped you.” Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes pooled with tears. “I know you’d never say it. I know that you’re the kind of guy who will stick around no matter how bad it hurts you because you think you’re obligated to me and this baby, but I can’t do that to you. I can’t…”

  Anybody who thought this show was scripted was wrong. Jacob wished it was. He needed someone to give him the words to make her stay, to make her want to keep their family together. He pulled the chair beside her out in front, sat in it and leaned forward, taking her hand in his. “Nat, I don’t know what el
se to do to prove to you that I love you, that I want you, that I want this family.” She turned her chin down, and he guided it back until she had to look at him. “Tell me, Nat. Tell me what it’s gonna take. I’ll do it, but I don’t what’s left to try.”

  “Jacob, it’s not you I want to leave. It’s our situation.”

  “Please don’t do this, Nat. Please.” He would beg if that’s what it took.

  “You’ll find someone else. And you can see the baby…I would never…but I can’t hang onto you. We don’t fit. My world isn’t linen napkins and tiny teacups and honest to God Picassos. It’s barbecues with paper towels and wine from a box.”

  Jacob sat back. He’d thought they dispensed with all this nonsense. He could do barbecues and wine from a box. “Goddammit. I’ve never asked you to be different than who you are. I’ve never…”

  “No.” He smile was soft and she curled her finger into a fist as if she was trying not to touch him. God, he wanted her to touch him, to feel how his heart was beating for her. “But I’ll always know. I’ll always feel a little left of the outside.” She closed her eyes. “And I can’t help it.”

  “You could.”

  “I could what? Change? That’s what you mean right?”

  No. God no. He didn’t want to change one thing about her, well, except the whole wanting to leave part. This wasn’t working. “Nat, if you want to leave so bad, why aren’t you already gone? Why’d you come here?”

  “I wanted to see you. To tell you in person.”

  “No.” He shook his head, took her hands and brought her knuckles to his lips. “If you wanted to go, you would be on the road already. You don’t want to leave me. You love me, and you’re scared.” Maybe he was onto something. She hadn’t pulled away. “I’m scared, too. Putting it all out there like this…giving someone else so much control over my feelings. Yeah. I’m so scared sometimes it’s hard to breathe. What if lose you, you know? That’s what scares me most. But then I wake up with you next to me, and I’m so excited to share my life with you. Every day. I wake up every morning dying to see what lies ahead in our future.”

  “What if we don’t have one?”

  “Oh, we do. I know we do…because when I think about tomorrow, when I think about next week or next month or fifty years from now, I see you in all of it. I see us together.” This had to work. His life depended on it. “Close your eyes, Nat.”

  “Jacob—”

  “Please?” He waited for her sigh, for her to lick her lips, for her eyelids to flutter closed, but he needed her to really hear him. And for that, he would wait as long as she could stall. “I love you. For better or worse. In sickness and health. Until death…I love you, Nat.” He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers when all he really wanted to do was crush them with his own. “Don’t give up on me or on us. Come home with me.”

  “What about your mom? She sounded pretty determined.”

  “More than me?” When she didn’t return his smile, he continued, holding nothing back. “This is the woman who left me to fend for myself when I was ten years old. I don’t put a lot of stock in what she says.”

  Nat nodded and pursed her lips. “She did a background check.”

  “So?”

  Nat closed her eyes. “I wasn’t an angel.”

  “So you tell me.” He smiled. “I guarantee it won’t matter.”

  She wrinkled her brow and sat back out his reach unless he leaned forward. “Tell you the worst things about myself? Pass.”

  “You don’t have to, but if you want to, when you trust me enough, I’ll listen. And I’ll still love you when you’re done.”

  “You can’t promise that.”

  But he could. Nothing would change his mind about Natasha. Of that much, he was sure.

  NAT: It wasn’t about what he said. I mean, I liked it, but staying was about how he is. How he looked at me and made me believe we could overcome what I did in my past. That’s why I stayed. Mothers are hard. And we both came from broken places. I didn’t want—I don’t want to do that to our baby.

  16

  Jacob stared down into his coffee cup and wished he had something stronger. She’d been ready to tell him she was leaving. He knew it, spent the last few minutes trying to reason it away. What if she left?

  Jesse poured his own cup of coffee and leaned a hip against the table. “You look wrecked.”

  “Thanks. It’s a look I’m hoping catches on.” Jacob would have smiled, let his friend know he was okay, but he wasn’t.

  “I didn’t really remember your mom from when we were kids.”

  Jacob nodded. “Me either, coincidentally.”

  “I don’t want to get into your business.”

  In Jacob’s experience, a conversation that started with that sentence usually meant the one speaking it was going to get into his business. “You should get that painted on a sign and stick it at the edge of town.”

  Jesse chuckled. “I’ll put it on the agenda for the next town meeting.” Jacob’s stomach clenched. He wasn’t up for a pep talk, even a well-intentioned one, but he nodded anyway. “As I was saying, I don’t want to get into your business, but have you just told her how you feel?”

  Jacob blew out a breath. “I tell her every day. Over coffee. At lunch, at dinner, while we watch TV, at bedtime. I probably hold the world record for the number of times in a day I can say I love you. And still, she’s got one foot out the door already.”

  “The way I see it, you have two choices. You can let the girl of your dreams walk away from you, take everything that’s important and leave, or you can get your head out of your ass and fight for what you want.” Jesse shook his head as if this was the no-brainer to beat all other no-brainers, but he hadn’t gone through everything with Nat that Jacob had.

  “She’s knows what these people are going to see and hear from her own mouth. The big money scene is coming and she knows it. She knows what’s about to happen and she’s scared.”

  “So little faith you two have in this town.”

  “It’s not about faith, Jesse. It’s about the worst thing she’s ever done becoming gossip and she won’t—we won’t survive that.”

  Jesse gripped Jacob’s shoulder. “Does it matter to you?” Jacob shook his head. “Then make it not matter to her.” Jesse sighed. “And, I think you both might be surprised by how these people, who already know her secret, react. I think you’re also missing the big picture.” He pointed to Nat, still sitting in her chair, staring at the blank screen in front of her. “You love her. And she obviously loves you. Even if they hold a town meeting and stick all her secrets up on a big billboard, will it change how you feel?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what she needs to know.” The lights dimmed again, and Jesse handed Jacob a bag of popcorn. “You better soak up some of that coffee or you might never sleep again.”

  * * *

  Constance Graeme: I wanted to save my son from making a mistake he could never undo. No one was doing anything to save him from himself and what he thinks he feels for that girl. I had to step in and if he hates me for it, then I’ll deal with that.

  130 Days Earlier

  * * *

  God, he was exhausted. He’d spent the entire day with patients, never got to eat lunch, and all he wanted to do was get home to Nat, hold her for a few hours while they napped together—more specifically, while he napped. But he had one more patient. A new one. God only knew what that would bring. In a day filled with warts, little Tommy Riddle’s projectile vomit, four cases of the flu, and a few assorted non-illnesses that were more fact-finding mission of the local gossips, a new patient could mean anything.

  He walked down the small hallway that connected all his exam rooms. He didn’t bother to open the chart. He’d read it after he talked to… Connie Graeme. He knocked once and entered. “Good evening, Mrs. Graeme.”

  “Hello, honey.”

  Oh God. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t deal with her today. His eyes
flipped up to the woman’s face. Oh God, again. His mother. “What are you doing here?” After whatever she’d said about Nat, he could have lived the entire rest of his life without sharing one bit of oxygen with her. He tossed the folder onto the desk and crossed his arms. Defensive posture always worked best with Constance Albright-Williams-Henry-Chancellor-Windham-Pelling-Parks-apparently-Graeme.

  “Can a mother not just drop by and visit her only son?”

  “Not if you’re the mother.” He turned. No way was he wasting a minute on his mother that he could be spending with Nat.

  “Wait, Jacob, please.” He dropped his hand from the knob and turned. Rolled his eyes at his own weakness, at the little boy inside of him still dying for her affection. “I need to talk to you.” She slid off her chair. “I know you don’t want to hear this, especially from me, but there are things you need to know.” She produced an envelope—a generic looking brown envelope stuffed thick.

  “What’s that?” Only a fool wouldn’t have been able to guess what it was. And Jacob was no fool, especially when it came to his mother. He wanted to be a bigger person than to take the envelope, curled his fingers against his thighs to stop himself from reaching for it, but Nat still hadn’t talked to him about her past. Over and over, when she’d been almost ready to tell him, he’d assured her it wouldn’t matter, but she’d stopped talking, started pretending the conversation hadn’t happened. And he’d been happy to let her, happy to pretend right along with her, but now, all he had to do was open the flap. If for nothing else than to prepare himself, school his reactions.