“Mmm-hmm. Even the sex,” Marissa said, smiling, moving her pointer lower still. “It’s a—”
“Boy,” Matt and Gretchen said in unison.
“Oh, my gosh, Matt, we have a son.” Tears sparkled in her eyes as she turned to look up at him.
“Incredible,” Matt murmured in a choked voice, looking down at Gretchen. Again he squeezed her hand. Gretchen knew she had never seen him happier than he appeared at that moment. She knew exactly how he felt. This had to be one of the very best moments of her life, too.
“You all decided on any names?” Marissa asked as the nurse stepped forward to help take some measurements of the image on the screen.
“No, not really,” Matt said as Marissa took a picture of the screen and the nurse handed them the developing Polaroid.
“Now that we know, though, I guess we could go ahead and decide,” Gretchen said as she admired the black-and-white photograph of the baby in utero.
Matt grinned. “I guess we could at that.”
“Well, you’ll both be glad to hear everything is okay. Your son is progressing right on schedule, and it appears the due date is what we initially thought, around the twenty-third of September, give or take a few days either way.”
“Yeah, well...” Matt began, grinning.
“We never had any doubt about that,” Gretchen finished.
* * *
“SO WHAT do you think—about names, I mean?” Gretchen asked Matt as he drove them home in his Jeep. Tearing her eyes from the beautiful Texas wildflowers growing on either side of the highway, she turned to face him. “Do you want to get a baby book and figure out one from that or go the more sentimental route?”
Matt decided he might as well be honest. “I wanted to name the baby after our parents.”
Gretchen smiled at him radiantly. She was wearing that tan-and-white striped maternity outfit. Her mahogany hair curled softly around her shoulders and gleamed in the sunshine. Excited color filled her cheeks. She had never looked prettier or more content, Matt thought. He felt good knowing he’d had a hand in giving her the child she had always wanted.
“I want that, too,” she admitted softly.
“My dad’s name was Zach,” Matt said, as they passed numerous families photographing their children—and occasionally even their pets—in the thick fields of Texas bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush that bordered the hillsides in and around Austin.
“My dad’s name was Devin.”
“Devin Zach?” Matt suggested, as he passed yet another mom and dad snapping photos of their toddler romping in the wildflowers.
“Actually, I like Zach Devin a lot better,” Gretchen said.
Matt contemplated the sound of that a moment, even as he wondered if he and Gretchen would one day be taking their son to the wildflowers for photos jointly, or if they would do those activities solo, as most parents without partners did. He admitted he was hoping for the former. He slanted Gretchen a smile. “Zach Devin is good. Zach Devin Hale is very good,” he said.
“Gosh, that was easy,” Gretchen said with relief, as Matt turned in the driveway and parked his Jeep.
Matt cut the engine and unclasped his seat belt. “I know. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? How well we get along sometimes?” he said lightly as he bent toward her impulsively. He took her in his arms and was about to kiss her, when the sound of a car motor interrupted. They turned in the direction of the sound and saw Luke park behind them.
Matt felt a rush of ambivalent feelings. He had missed his son, but he was also highly irritated with him. Semester exams had been over for nearly a week. Yet Luke hadn’t even bothered to call to let Matt know of his plans for the break. In fact, it had been almost two months since the two had even talked. “I was wondering if he was going to come home,” Matt murmured.
Gretchen withdrew from his arms, her expression stern and maternal. “Now, Matt. He’s got to be here because he wants to make peace,” she chided.
“Let’s hope that’s the case,” Matt said dryly. Inwardly, he wasn’t counting on it.
They assembled in the driveway. To Matt’s relief, his son was cordial as the three of them greeted one another and entered the house. As always, upon arrival, Matt and Luke gravitated toward the living room.
This time Gretchen did not follow. “You know, I think I’ll go in the kitchen and start dinner,” she said.
“You don’t have to do that, Gretchen,” Luke interjected, his manner both adult and direct. “You’re Dad’s wife. You can hear what I have to say to him.”
Gretchen looked to Matt.
“Stay,” Matt urged. He didn’t know what Luke had on his mind. He did know he wanted Gretchen by his side, just as she had wanted him to be with her during the ultrasound she’d had earlier.
As uncertain about what was going to happen next as Matt, Gretchen sat down on the sofa. Matt sat next to her, with Luke in a wing chair opposite them.
Luke leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands between his knees. “About this summer...” he began earnestly. “I’ve decided to stay with my original decision and not go to summer school at A & M.”
Matt nodded his approval, his mind already racing ahead. “I can use you right now, either out in Lubbock on one of the drilling sites or here in town at the office and warehouse.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think you should count on that.”
Matt looked at Luke, sure he hadn’t heard right.
“I’ve accepted another job this summer, Dad,” Luke continued bluntly. “I’m going to be working for a private investigation agency here in town, instead.”
This, Matt thought, was not good news. Gretchen felt the same, if the new tenseness in her demeanor was any indication.
“And if you give me any grief about it,” Luke went on defiantly, “I may not go back to school next fall.”
Matt did not abide being threatened. But he saw no reason to lose his temper, either. “Don’t you think you’re acting a little hastily?” he asked Luke calmly.
“No, I think I’m taking charge of my life and doing what I want to be doing, just like you are, Dad,” Luke shot back.
Matt saw no reason to hide his feelings. “You know I totally disapprove of this?” he asked his son grimly.
“You know I have to follow my heart,” Luke countered, just as grimly.
At the thought of a whole summer wasted, when it could easily be put to better use, Matt felt his patience waning. “Are you moving back in?” he asked curtly.
“No,” Luke snapped back. “Angela said I could stay in her apartment, so that’s what I’m going to do.” He paused to look over at Gretchen. “You two being newlyweds and all, I figured you could use the privacy.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Gretchen interjected, raising both hands in silent entreaty. “This is your home, too, Luke,” she added softly, as her compassionate glance lasered in on his willful one. “I don’t want to be responsible for pushing you out.”
“You’re not,” Luke said frankly. He pushed to his feet and began to move about the living room restlessly, his attention still focused on Gretchen. “Dad is. If I were here all summer, he’d be haranguing me constantly to go to work for him. Frankly, I don’t want to listen to it.”
“That’s because you know I’m right,” Matt retorted hotly.
Luke blew out a weary breath and ran both hands through his tousled, unshorn hair. “Look, Dad, I love you, and I admire what you’ve built for yourself, but for the last time, your business does not interest me. Not in the least. P.I. work does.”
Matt had known Luke long enough to realize this was just a whim. “You’ve never given the family business a chance,” Matt countered equably.
“You’re right. I haven’t.” Luke shoved both hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “And that should tell you something, too.”
Matt frowned.
“I’m taking this job this summer. So like it or not, you’re going to have to live with it,” Luke de
creed.
“Fine,” Matt said. It’d be one less problem for him to deal with.
“Fine,” Luke snapped back. “I’ve got to go.” Without another word, he walked hurriedly toward the door. Seconds later, the front door slammed behind him.
Matt looked at Gretchen in frustration. Half an hour earlier, she had been radiant and happy. Now she was pale and upset. Worse, Matt thought, he should have seen this coming and handled it better, somehow spared Gretchen the stress of sitting in on his quarrel with his son. But he hadn’t, and now he would just have to find a way to lessen the tension between them. “So much for my superior parenting ability,” he said drolly.
Struggling to understand the inherent difficulties in parenting an almost grown but not quite yet independent offspring, Gretchen stood. “What does it matter what kind of summer job Luke gets as long as he’s working?”
Matt did not want to argue the subject with Gretchen, too. Working to contain his aggravation, he stifled a sigh and explained, “Because I want him to learn the family business from the ground up. This is the perfect time for him to be out on the drilling sites.”
“Hasn’t he already done that, other summers?” Gretchen persisted as she headed toward the back of the house.
Matt nodded tersely, as she glanced over her shoulder, and followed her into the laundry room.
“Then this’ll give him something to compare that with. Maybe when he spends the whole summer hunting people down and staking people out, he won’t think it is so glamorous,” Gretchen suggested, as she bent to take laundry out of the clothes dryer.
“I don’t know about that.” Matt watched as she spread the clean clothes out on the folding table. “Luke is and always has been awfully nosy.”
“Well, then, maybe he is suited for—”
“Don’t say it,” Matt interrupted with a warning glance. “Don’t even think it.” He stepped forward to lend a hand with the towels.
Gretchen spun toward him. They were so close they were standing toe to toe. “What is this? So now I’m admonished to be silent, too?” Gretchen demanded.
Looking into her upturned face, Matt frowned. “It’s not that,” he said.
“Then what?” Gretchen cried, her eyes brimming with exasperation.
“I don’t know what it is about this past year or so but none of them listens to me. I’m beginning to think I have no influence over any of my children,” he lamented as he speedily folded first one towel, then another and another.
Determined not to relent, Gretchen pitched in with the sorting and folding. “Listen to me, Matt. Your kids are finding their way in the world. It’s not an easy process, no matter how old or young you are.”
Matt tackled the washcloths, while she mated the socks. “I know you mean well, but there is nothing you can say about this that is going to make me feel any better.”
Gretchen’s chin lifted. For a moment she looked as defiant and argumentative as Luke had.
“Right, and I suppose you were the perfect son when you were your kids’ age?” she demanded, planting her hands on her hips.
Matt grabbed a laundry basket. “Damn straight I was.”
“And you never did the slightest thing to annoy your folks?”
Matt paused as he layered stacks of clothes, to take upstairs for distribution. “That was different,” he allowed reluctantly.
She tilted her head to the side, surveyed his scowl and grinned. “Hmm.”
Matt waited for the teasing sure to come. He wasn’t disappointed. “I’m beginning to see a whole new side of you, Matt Hale,” she declared, as he picked up the basket of folded laundry and carted it up the stairs. She followed him to the linen closet in the master bathroom and perched on the marble countertop. Her hands braced on either side of her, she swung her legs back and forth. “So,” she began still regarding him with a sparkling look, “what did you do to irritate your parents?”
Matt stacked the towels and washcloths on the shelf. “Nothing major.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Matt turned around to face her. “Okay, so I broke curfew a few times,” he admitted reluctantly, “and left the house without telling them where I was going or when I was going to be back.”
“Bet that went over well,” Gretchen drawled.
Chagrined, Matt rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, there were a few times when my mother would’ve liked to wring my damn fool neck.” Looking back, he was surprised his folks hadn’t lost their temper with him more than they had.
“And were there other instances where you disappointed them—perhaps in a more serious way?” she asked gently.
He nodded. Sobering, he took her hand in his and intertwined their fingers. “I didn’t finish college.” She waited, listening, really wanting to know what had happened and why. Succumbing to the compassion in her eyes, he found himself continuing intimately, “I didn’t return my senior year when I was offered a cut of the profits to stay on and bring a well in. It was a gusher and I used the proceeds to start my own company. My mom and dad were disappointed.” Matt shook his head unhappily. “They’d never had the opportunity to go to college at all. To see me throw it all away when they’d scraped and saved to send me to Texas A & M...well, I think it really hurt.”
Gretchen took his other hand in hers. “But they must’ve been proud of your success in starting your own company.”
His eyes on the way their fingers were entwined, Matt acknowledged that with a nod. “They were, although my company wasn’t as hugely successful when they passed away as it is now. But yeah.” He smiled, the satisfaction he felt for what he had built welling in him. “I think they felt I had made something of myself in the end.”
Gretchen lifted his left hand to her lips and kissed the back of it gently. “Maybe Luke will do the same thing.”
Even as shivers of desire went through him, Matt couldn’t help but worry. “The PI business is a tough one.”
“So is wildcatting,” Gretchen said, moving to the edge of the countertop and all the way into his arms, “but he’s got your genes, and your love.” She smiled up at him. “I’m betting on him.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a born peacemaker?”
“Yep.” She splayed her hands lovingly across his chest, in much the same way she did when they made love. “But I don’t mind hearing it again and again and again.” She lifted her lips to his. He kissed her lingeringly. “So what are your plans for today?” he asked. He knew what he wanted to do—take her to bed and spend the rest of the day and all night making mad, passionate love to her.
But as he had half suspected, Gretchen had other plans.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’ve got to go over to my apartment building and talk to the manager about signing a new lease.”
Matt frowned. “I didn’t know your current lease was up.”
“At the end of June,” she confided matter-of-factly.
Matt tried not to think about why she wanted to re-sign a lease on a place she was no longer using. His manner casual, he asked, “Mind if I go with you?”
“Actually—” Gretchen smiled “—I’d be glad for the company.”
* * *
“SO BACK TO OUR earlier conversation about what I did in my adolescence to consciously or unconsciously irk my folks,” Matt said as he drove to the university. He slanted Gretchen a teasing glance. “You never got around to discussing what you did on that score.”
Gretchen groaned. Matt persisted. Finally, he got her to fess up, her hands pressed against her very pink cheeks.
“Okay, okay, I confess. I refused to make my bed—and, when forced, did a very sloppy job of it.”
Matt quirked a brow. The image of a much younger Gretchen, in the midst of a teenage rebellion was a compelling one. “But you make your bed these days,” he said.
Embarrassed, Gretchen rolled her eyes. “That,” she remarked sagely, “is because I’ve grown up and discovered the pleasure of climbing into a neat a
nd tidy bed every night.”
Thinking how seldom their sheets stayed neat and tidy once the two of them were between them, Matt grinned. No one, he had decided, could tangle a set of sheets and use an entire king-size bed the way they did. But back to her true confessions... “Okay. That’s on the small score,” he said, as they stopped at a street sign. Because there was no traffic coming in any direction, he paused to look at her. “What about on the larger score?”
“I married Robert, which, as we all know now, was a big mistake. And I mean a big mistake.”
Wishing he could hold her in his arms, but knowing they’d be at her apartment in another minute and she might talk more if not distracted, Matt drove on.
“My dad told me I was too young, of course,” Gretchen continued with a heartfelt sigh. She turned her gaze to the narrow tree-lined street. “He suspected that Robert was rushing me into marriage for his own convenience and needs—that he was more eager for a paid way through med school and a wife to take care of him during the long, arduous process—and not because of any real desire to be with me.”
Listening to her talk, Matt hoped he never ran into “Robert,” ‘cause if he did he would be seriously tempted to punch the guy’s lights out for hurting Gretchen the way he had.
Oblivious to his thoughts, she shook her head in regret. “I should have listened to my dad, but I didn’t because I was just too young and stubborn.”
Matt parked his Jeep in a shady space in front of her apartment building. He turned to her, not sure why this was important, only knowing that it was. “What would your parents think about us if they were here?”
“They’d be happy for me,” Gretchen said softly, self-assuredly, as she absently brushed a speck of lint from the knee of his jeans. “They’d be happy for us.”
“Even with the circumstances of our marriage being what they are?” Matt asked gently, wondering if the sheer unexpectedness of her pregnancy was still driving a wedge between them.
“Yes.”
Gretchen leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, the way Matt imagined that she might kiss an old and dear friend. Her blue eyes shining, she looked up at him.
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