“Because they know, as do we, that a child is a wonderful and precious gift.”
* * *
“UH-OH. You have that look on your face again,” Gretchen said as she entered her apartment a few minutes later.
“What look?”
“The look that says you have an opinion about something.”
He didn’t deny it. “Anything wrong with that?” he asked as he shut the door behind them.
“Plenty, when it doesn’t concur with mine.” Gretchen opened the drapes. The golden glow of the sun on a summer evening poured in the room.
“In this case, I’ve got a valid point,” he countered amiably.
“Which is...?”
Matt braced a hip against the back of the sofa and watched as she went through the mail that had accumulated the past two days. “I’m not sure you should renew your lease.”
Gretchen paused in the act of opening her electric bill. “Matt, I was on a waiting list for two years to get this apartment. It’s within easy walking distance of all my classes.”
His mouth curved briefly. “And you’re hardly ever here anymore.”
Gretchen looked around with a sigh, knowing he was right. She hadn’t been there much. The apartment was dusty, the air stale, the plants in need of watering. “Well, that was certainly true in May. I mean, I had a two-and-a-half-week break between spring and summer terms.”
“And since the first summer term started two weeks ago?” Matt prodded, a gleam in his eyes.
Gretchen shrugged, the electric-bill envelope still in her hands. “I lucked out. All my classes are back to back. I can come here, go to class and go home.”
“Exactly. Home isn’t here anymore, Gretchen. Home is with me, in Westlake Hills.”
Gretchen eyed Matt cautiously. “For now, yes...” she agreed reluctantly.
He levered himself away from the sofa and closed the distance between them lazily. “For as long as we both can see in the foreseeable future.”
As he neared her, Gretchen had to tilt her head back to see his face. “We agreed I’d stay with you until the baby was born,” she began in a low voice choked with emotion.
Matt flattened his hands on her shoulders, then swept them down her arms to her wrists. “No, we agreed we’d stay together as long as you and our baby needed me. That could be six weeks or six months or six years....”
Gretchen swallowed nervously. Matt was upsetting the delicate balance of their relationship again; she didn’t like it. “Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit here? Babies cry a lot. They’re up all night. They have smelly diapers and mysterious rashes and they teethe and do all sorts of things.”
“Exactly. And you’re going to need help seeing our little one through all those things. I want to be there for you, Gretchen. I want to be there for Zach Devin. Let me be there for both of you.”
“Oh, Matt...” Gretchen teared up as she let go of the half-opened envelope in her hand and watched it flutter to the small table-for-two next to her stove. She knew what her parents would think about this if they were here. They’d think I’d found a great man and could have all the happiness they’d ever wanted for me if only he’d fall in love with me. But that was a very big if only...
Matt hooked a foot beneath the rung of one chair and pulled it out. In one economical motion, he sank onto the chair, circled his arm about her waist and drew her down into his lap. “I know I’m pushing you and I said I wouldn’t do that.”
Gretchen laced one arm about his neck and flattened the other across his chest. Beneath the soft cotton of his shirt, his chest was warm and solid. She felt very safe in his arms, very much cared for and about. “Then why are you?” She fastened her eyes on his.
Matt contemplated her for a long moment. “I guess it has to do with the way I grew up, the way I know you grew up, in a warm, loving home with two parents who adored you and lots of laughter and familial support. I don’t want Zach Devin growing up without all that, do you?”
No, she didn’t. “This is because of your fight with Luke, isn’t it? Because you’re more or less on the outs with all your kids.”
His lips thinned. “I readily admit that I feel I failed them in some ways. I won’t fail Zach Devin if I can help it.”
Duty again. Gretchen worked to suppress a sigh of supreme disappointment as she launched herself off his lap and began to pace the room restlessly. “Aren’t you forgetting one little thing?” Gretchen asked, deliberately keeping her voice light, noncommittal. No use adding embarrassment to injury. It wasn’t as if they were actually in love with each other...was it? “Marriage isn’t ever easy, under even the best of circumstances. And to know that we only have to look back and remember,” she reminded him sadly. “We both went into out first marriages with all sorts of romantic expectations. We were both deeply in love with our mates, right?”
“Right.”
“And yet we still both had spouses who fell out of love with us in the course of the marriage.”
“You can’t compare our previous situations with our situation now,” Matt said slowly, beginning to feel very unhappy again.
Gretchen released a troubled sigh. “I don’t want to be hurt, Matt.” The hurt and humiliation she’d felt when her marriage to Robert ended had been staggering, and she hadn’t felt half as passionately about Robert then as she did about Matt now.
Matt began to relax. “You don’t have to worry about that, Gretchen.” He stood and replaced the chair.
Silence fell between them, more complicated and intense than before. Matt drew her gently into his arms. “I know this is a confusing situation.”
“And then some.”
Cupping a hand beneath her chin, he tilted her face up to his. “I also know there are no guarantees here. Only risks,” he soothed. “But I think they are risks worth taking. Not just for the baby, but for us. No one’s going to love Zach Devin the way we will, Gretchen, not from the very first, not the way we already do.”
He paused, then continued persuasively, “Don’t we owe it to ourselves to see if we can’t transfer some of that magic to our relationship? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to see if we can’t make this marriage work on an even higher level, even if we do so gradually?”
Still wrapped in the warmth of Matt’s embrace, Gretchen mulled over what he’d said. There was no doubt about it; the first five and a half months of her pregnancy had been rough on both of them, full of turmoil and change, but also full of wonder and love. Especially lately. “You mean let our love for the baby expand to include ourselves in a sort of familial way?” Gretchen asked.
Matt’s eyes were dark and fathomless, then ever so slowly they began to light. “That’s how families are made.” He traced the curve of her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Still studying her, he murmured thoughtfully, “It’s worth a shot, don’t you think?”
“If it provides a loving home for Zach Devin, yes. But if it doesn’t work out...”
Matt leaned forward to kiss her brow in a swift, reassuring manner, before he promised, “Then as I said before, we’ll look back and know we tried. And that things have enfolded the way they’re meant to be. But in the meantime, Zach Devin will have a great start with two parents who love him more than life.”
Gretchen had to admit the rent she was paying on the apartment was taking a great dent out of her savings. And these days she was hardly ever there. “I guess I could always get another apartment if and when the time comes,” she offered slowly, amazed as always at how easily Matt could talk her in or out of things.
Matt grinned. He hugged her close. “You won’t regret it,” he promised happily.
Gretchen hoped he was right about that, because she was now walking the high wire of an unexpected pregnancy and forced marriage, without a net.
* * *
GRETCHEN LEANED over Matt and shook her head. “Matt, I don’t think you should put that there,” she warned solemnly.
“Sweetheart,” Matt replied, not bothering
to hide his growing exasperation with her. “I’ve done this before—numerous times.”
“I know, but everything’s different these days,” Gretchen said anxiously, glancing over to study the paper-clipped pages of the instruction manual.
“Not that different,” Matt drawled with a sexy please-let’s-cooperate-here wink.
“Want to bet?” Gretchen quipped, as a film of perspiration broke out on first Matt’s forehead, then hers. She didn’t know how Matt felt, but this was so much harder than she had anticipated!
“Just...hold it in place,” Matt instructed firmly, albeit a little breathlessly. “Let me...yes...all right.” He slid around on his back, moving his upper torso slightly to the left of Gretchen. “That’s perfect.” He leaned back to view his handiwork.
Gretchen looked at the same thing and knew they still had much to test out. She thought of the homework she had left to do that evening and bit her lip uncertainly. Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted they get started on this right away, or that she and Matt do everything together from now on, including this. “How much longer do you think this is going to take?” she asked worriedly.
Matt shook his head, glancing back at the manual. “I’m not sure. A while.”
“Maybe we should’ve started with something easier,” she said. She didn’t want their first truly mutual, planned effort to be a disaster.
He put a reassuring hand on her arm. “Rome wasn’t built in an hour, Gretchen. And neither will this crib be....”
* * *
“OH, MATT, it’s gorgeous,” Gretchen breathed, two more weeks of part-time labor and endless planning later. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful nursery.”
Matt surveyed what had once been the guest room with a deeply felt satisfaction he knew Gretchen shared. “We did a great job, didn’t we?”
“We certainly did.” Gretchen tucked an arm around his waist.
Liking the easy way she touched him—she initiated physical contact as much as he did these days—Matt wrapped his arm around her shoulder as they surveyed the new kid-proof medium blue carpet, white waist-high wainscoting and lighter blue walls. The bleached-oak baby furniture they’d painstakingly assembled was arranged practically, the closet transformed with additional shelves for toys and baby linens and appropriately spaced hanging rods for baby-size clothing. An alphabet border and a Sesame Street mural on one wall further brightened up the nursery.
Beaming, Gretchen turned to face him. The softness of her breasts pressed against his chest.
“I worried that shade of blue we picked out for the new curtains was going to be too light, but you’re right,” she announced delightedly. “It’s perfect.”
Matt grinned as he surveyed the excited color in her cheeks. When she looked at him like that he wondered how he had ever gotten along without her. “I’ve got one more surprise for you,” he promised, kissing the top of her head. “Wait here.”
Short minutes later, he came back with a Bentwood rocker in the same bleached wood as the nursery furniture.
“Oh, Matt, a rocking chair.” Gretchen’s eyes shone with happiness.
Matt had no trouble picturing Gretchen in it, their baby in her arms. The vision brought a lump to his throat. “Every new mother needs one. Sit down and try it out.”
She launched herself into the chair and rocked back and forth gently, her eyes shutting briefly in silent accolade. “It’s wonderful. Thank you.” Her eyes misting, she braced a hand on the arm and gracefully levered herself to a standing position. Leaning forward, so her expanding tummy was between them, she stood on tiptoe, wreathed her arms about his neck and kissed him soundly on the mouth. “It’s like all my dreams are coming true,” she said softly.
Matt wrapped his arms around her. “Mine, too,” he admitted huskily. How could he ever have thought he didn’t want to do this all again? Gretchen...the baby...had brought new vivacity to his life. The thought of losing her brought an unexpected desperation to his life.
Gretchen hugged him harder. “Oh, Matt,” she murmured in a contented voice. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we? We’re building a family and a home and a marriage for our child, and we’re doing it against impossible odds.”
Matt knew in his case the odds weren’t that impossible. He wasn’t sure when it happened...if it had been the night he had pulled her out of the wrecked car, or the night he had first made love to her, or the night she had moved into his bedroom for the duration of her pregnancy, but somewhere along the way, he had fallen in love with her. Deeply, irrevocably in love with her. Somewhere along the way, he had stopped being able to imagine ever being happy without her.
The trick was going to be in finding a way to make her love him back, to make her want to share their life, not just for Zach Devin’s sake, but for their own. He had promised he wouldn’t pressure her. And he wouldn’t. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t work on it gradually. And the nursery was only part of his strategy to make Gretchen fall in love with him.
“Yes,” Matt said, folding Gretchen even closer. “We are.”
Chapter Eleven
June
“What do you think, Gretchen?”
Gretchen twirled in front of the full-length mirror in the master bedroom. She was six and a half months pregnant, she had gained almost fifteen pounds and she couldn’t believe how slim she looked in the silky navy blue maternity dress Angela had designed and sewn for her. “You’re a genius, Angela,” she said gratefully, unable to resist checking out the view from all sides once more. “The fabric, color and style are perfect for me.”
Angela grinned. “I’m glad you like it.”
Gretchen returned to Angela’s side so her stepdaughter could finish pinning the hem. “Your fashion design classes must really be helping you.”
Angela nodded. “I’m really enjoying them, especially the sewing part. But as good as my professors are, I don’t think they’re responsible for my flair for this.” She waved vaguely at Gretchen’s tea-length dress. “I get that from Dad’s mother. She’s the one who taught me how to sew. She was a seamstress, you know. Worked at the best department store in Lubbock, altering men’s suits, and sewing formals and wedding dresses for her private clientele.”
“Matt never mentioned that.”
Angela put in the last pin, then stepped back to admire her handiwork. “He doesn’t talk about sewing much,” she said distractedly. “It’s not his thing.”
“When are you going to tell him that you’re switching your major again, this time for good?”
Angela made a face as she began gathering up her things. “I think that news can wait.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Gretchen conceded, as Angela stuffed a pincushion and scissors in her sewing kit. “Although sooner or later he’s going to figure it out.”
“Normally, I’d agree with you there,” Angela murmured as she rerolled her measuring tape, “but lately he’s been so preoccupied with the coming baby that he hasn’t even asked me what classes I signed up to take this summer.”
Gretchen felt a flash of guilt. She knew she had taken up quite a bit of Matt’s time the past few months and added even more strain to what he promised was a temporarily difficult and complex period of time for his nearly grown children.
“Well, I know one thing. He’s been very impressed by the clothes you’ve sewn for me the past two months.” Angela had added three pairs of slacks, three pairs of shorts and four tailored menswear-style shirts to Gretchen’s wardrobe, all in mix-and-match colors that allowed her to make the most of what she had.
“I’m hoping that if he sees what I can do, this will soften him up, too.” Angela grimaced, feeling suddenly older than her twenty-four years. “So he doesn’t hit the roof again, when I do tell him, you know?”
Gretchen touched her stepdaughter’s arm gently. “He doesn’t mean to lose patience, Angela.”
“I know. On the other hand—” Angela blew out a weary breath “—he does have a right to be a l
ittle frustrated with me. I have been working toward an undergraduate degree for six years now.” She shook her head. “Most parents would’ve cut me off long ago. But not Dad. He just keeps hanging in there.”
Yes, Gretchen thought, Matt did. She slipped out of the dress and handed it to Angela. “Have you heard from Sassy lately?”
Angela reached for a hanger. “Yes. I talk to her about every week. You know this is the first summer she hasn’t come home to work in that law firm, don’t you?”
Gretchen nodded. As Angela hung up the dress, she slipped on her maternity jeans and an old white oxford-cloth dress shirt of Matt’s that he had lent her.
“Matt told me that she had elected to go to summer school at SMU, instead.” Gretchen paused as she buttoned the shirt, then admitted wistfully, “I wish she and Matt would patch things up.” It was obvious to Gretchen that the continuing cold war between them was bothering Matt a lot, even though he refused to talk about it in depth.
“Not much chance of that at the moment,” Angela declared as she perched, Indian-style, on the edge of the bed. “She’s pretty angry with Dad for not leveling with her about the baby and everything.”
Gretchen sat opposite Angela. “Do you think it would help if I talked to her?” Gretchen asked. “Told her how confused everything was for us at that point?”
“I don’t know, Gretchen. With Sassy, it could go either way. And if you made things worse... Let’s just say Dad would not be a happy camper.”
“True.”
“But back to my studies. Would you—Dad!” Angela broke off as Matt appeared in the doorway of the master bedroom. She turned slightly pink. “I didn’t know you were home.”
“Just got in.” He smiled at the sewing basket. “Sewing for Gretchen again?”
Angela nodded proudly. Bounding off the bed, she held up the navy blue maternity dress. “What do you think?”
“It’s very nice.” Matt sauntered farther into the room. He looked from one to the other with curiosity, then drawled casually, “So what were you two talking about just now?”
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