The Baby Agenda

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “You didn’t have to displace her,” Will said mildly. He was close behind her, a big plastic tub in his arms. “I’d have been okay on the couch.”

  “You have all your stuff.” Which he’d refused to allow her to help carry. “It makes sense for you to go ahead and settle in now.”

  Her mother came out of the bathroom as they passed. “Oh, I thought I heard voices. Will, can I help?”

  “No, I can get it all.”

  Gee, of course he didn’t want a woman carrying anything when he—a man—was around to do it. Moira was beginning to wonder—oh, shoot, why kid herself? she’d wondered all along—what she’d gotten herself into. Will Becker, she suspected, was sexist and overbearing, even if he mostly disguised those tendencies behind a relentlessly pleasant manner.

  Mom laughed and said, “I can certainly pull a suitcase,” and went out to his truck.

  His eyebrows drew together as he watched her. After a minute, evidently resigned, he passed Moira and walked across the guest room to set the tub on top of the dresser.

  “The drawers are empty and the closet is mostly,” she told him hastily. “I have some extra bedding in there up on the shelf…”

  “I don’t need that much space.” He glanced around, his gaze finally settling on the open doorway beside her.

  “Is that your room across the hall?”

  “Yes. I have a second bathroom in there. You can put your stuff in the one out here.”

  His expression told her she sounded like a bellhop unnecessarily pointing out features of a hotel room. She couldn’t seem to help herself. This was so bizarre. A man she hardly knew was moving in with all his worldly possessions.

  She was wearing a wedding ring that he’d put on her finger.

  Ulp.

  “Uh…let me check that there are clean towels in the bathroom.”

  With a nod, he left. Moira still hadn’t moved when her mother pulled a giant suitcase in, said, “I’ll go back for another load,” and disappeared again. Moira hurried to the bathroom before Will could catch her still standing there like a dolt. She already knew there were clean towels in here because she’d hung them on the rack not ten minutes ago, but this was a good place to hide briefly. And heck, while she was here she had to pee anyway. That was pretty much a given these days. She was awfully glad the master bedroom had a separate bath, or else he’d hear her getting up all night long.

  She made a face. Not that he could live with her for long without noticing she needed the bathroom constantly. Gray hadn’t commented, but that was probably only because he was used to his pregnant wife doing the same.

  Thank heavens Mom was here tonight. Her presence made Will’s feel less strange. More as if Moira simply had houseguests, two of them instead of one. Of course, one of them was going to be staying a whole lot longer than the other.

  Marriage might have been an even bigger mistake than sleeping with him had been in the first place. Moira stared at herself in the mirror and saw how dilated her eyes were, how shell-shocked she looked. And how not married. The first thing she’d done when she got home was change out of her wedding dress into a denim jumper over a forest-green turtleneck. Nicer than she probably would have put on if she’d been by herself, but comfortable. And a contrast to Will in his well-cut dark suit.

  Seeing him today at the church, she’d wondered whether it was the same suit he had worn that night at the gala. When she’d approached him at the altar and he held out his hand to her, the moment had felt eerily familiar. As if the two scenes had layered one over the other, she’d seen him stepping into the hotel room, his eyes devouring her face. His expression had been similar—intense, maybe hungry, and yet also tender.

  It was the tenderness, she admitted to herself, that got to her.

  She slipped out of the bathroom after hearing his footsteps going down the hall. She lurked in the kitchen pretending to be thinking about what she’d make for dinner even though she already knew. What was she going to do all afternoon?

  Will appeared in the kitchen. “What are you up to?”

  “Um…making sure I took the chicken out of the freezer.”

  “You look tired.” His voice was gentle. “Why don’t you lie down for a bit?”

  The minute he suggested it, Moira wanted that nap with all the desperation of a chocoholic grubbing for a hidden stash of Hershey’s Kisses. She needed sleep. More, she needed oblivion. A chance to recharge.

  “You know, I think I will. If you don’t mind.”

  “No.” He smiled at her. “You’ll feel better.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “She’s as determined as her daughter. She’s out getting another load.”

  “Oh. Will you tell her…?”

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t touch her as she went by, but she felt his gaze following her all the way to her room.

  As overwhelmingly sleepy as she suddenly felt, Moira expected when she lay down to spend some time thinking about Will and the fact that they were married now and what that meant, but it didn’t work that way. She kicked off her shoes, slipped under the covers and conked out.

  THIS OUGHT TO FEEL SIMILAR to living at home, Will thought a week later. Somehow it didn’t, even though he was used to sharing his home with a woman.

  But Moira wasn’t Sophie. He didn’t feel about her the same way he did about his sister.

  The two women had things in common, though. Neither of them took direction well. They were both smart, too, and curious. And they both had smiles that warmed his heart.

  In some ways, of course, Moira was the more confident of the two. She was in her thirties, not twenty-one. She had a successful career. She’d won recognition as an architect, had homes and commercial buildings she’d designed featured in Sunday supplements of the Seattle Times and The Herald. She was more of an artist than most architects were, Will had seen; her sketches weren’t only clear, they had grace and deserved to hang framed on the wall.

  What he couldn’t figure out was why she also had a quality of vulnerability that Sophie, who’d lost her parents early, didn’t. Why that trace of sadness clung to Moira, why he’d been able to tell that she wasn’t surprised at all when Bruce Girard treated her the way he did. Moira maybe wasn’t beautiful by the standards set by fashion magazines, but Will was a hell of a lot more attracted to her generous curves than he would have been to any skeletal runway model. She was vibrant and sweet and yet had a quality of innocence that made him think of Botticelli’s Venus, or maybe a Renaissance Madonna. Pregnant, she embodied fertility, but he never saw even a hint that she was aware of herself as a sensual woman.

  He found he wanted to know badly whether she’d had her heart broken. Who had hurt her and why. Why she’d never married and had reached the point of being grateful to have become pregnant during a one-night stand.

  Since their wedding day, she’d been as skittish with him as the dainty impala he had startled once at the edge of a Zimbabwe woodland. A patient man, Will was smart enough to bide his time. It was easy to talk about work, about clients and friends, to draw her out. He waited several days even to ask how she and Gray had gotten to be so close.

  They were eating a dinner he’d cooked—grilled salmon and baby potatoes sautéed in butter and dill. Moira wrinkled her nose at the broccoli, but took a decent helping. He’d noticed that she wasn’t fond of most green veggies, but Will was trying to make sure she ate right.

  “How’d you and Gray get to be friends?” he asked, helping himself to another serving of potatoes, his tone deliberately casual.

  “Our freshman year we were in the same dorm, same hall.” Moira’s smile was soft as she remembered. “We flirted a little, went out a couple of times and had a really great time. He kept coming by my room to hang out. We talked and talked, and somehow never got around to seriously making out or anything like that. Even then, Gray was always totally upfront. One day he said, ‘You’re, like, the best friend I’ve made here, but I sort of ge
t the feeling neither of us has the hots for each other,’ and I realized he was right.”

  Had she really felt the same? Will couldn’t help wondering. Or had she fallen in love and, given her lack of experience, was waiting for Gray to make a move?

  Sounding breezy, she went on, “He told me about the girls he was seeing, I talked about guys. I ended up getting pretty serious about this one guy my junior year, and even so there’s stuff I’d have never in a million years have told him that I’d already told Gray. When we graduated, we promised each other that someday we’d open a firm together.”

  “Promises like that are easy to make,” he observed.

  “And unlikely to be kept? That’s what I thought. I went home to Missoula. I’d worked summers there for this firm and they offered me a job. Gray took one in Portland. I figured we’d drift apart.”

  “So what happened?” Will asked.

  “It was Gray more than me. More than anyone I’ve ever met, when he says something he means it. He had a goal, and he never let himself forget it. We talked often, emailed all the time and we both saved money. When we thought we had enough, Gray told me he’d found the perfect town. Aside from nixing a few places—with my skin, I don’t do well at all in hot climates—I didn’t care so much where we opened our firm. Gray, though, had this ideal town in mind, and as far as he was concerned West Fork was it. Small town, but close enough to Everett and even Seattle that we’re not dependent on a strictly local clientele. And he was right. It’s worked great.”

  “Was he already married when you moved here?”

  She shook her head. “No, Charlotte had grown up on a farm here, but she came back to town again only last year when her dad needed her. She got pregnant pretty soon after the wedding. I don’t think she and Gray planned it. Which I think is funny, because Gray plans everything.”

  Will nodded. There was no reason for him to be jealous of her relationship with Gray Van Dusen, but he felt a jab now and then anyway. There was a sense of intimacy between the two of them that made him wonder whether Moira would have liked her friend to feel more for her. Will knew she wouldn’t admit it even if he asked, though, so he didn’t.

  “What happened with the college boyfriend?”

  One shoulder lifted in a dismissive, who-knows shrug.

  “It wasn’t the romance of the century. He met someone the summer between our junior and senior years and I didn’t actually care.”

  Yet another guy who’d ditched her. Or was he reading entirely too much into normal stories of youthful romance? He’d had a girlfriend himself his freshman year, and he couldn’t remember her last name or quite picture her face.

  “Anybody serious since?”

  She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Not really.”

  He wasn’t buying that; she was thirty-five, not twenty-five. Most people their age had had a few near misses, at least.

  Suddenly stunned, he thought, good God, what if it was true? What if she hadn’t had the high of knowing a man she liked was falling for her? What if that college boyfriend had been the last? Was it possible?

  After a moment, she said, “You?”

  Surprised and pleased, since up to this point she’d avoided asking him anything very personal, Will said, “I’ve had a couple of relationships that lasted a year or more, but…” He frowned, mulling it over. “Truth is, I was pretty tied up, between the business and my sister >and brothers. I was doing well to sneak away for a date once a week.” His mouth tilted in a rueful smile. “Plus, I made a house rule that none of us could have overnight guests of the opposite sex. I was the one who suffered the most from it in the early years, but I didn’t want home to degenerate into a frat-house atmosphere. Especially with my sister being the youngest. The rule broke down eventually, when each of them had college friends stay, but the friend always had a bed made up in the family room. If anybody sneaked down the hall…” He laughed. “I pretended not to notice.”

  She was smiling, too. “Even when it was Sophie’s boyfriend doing the sneaking?”

  “I might have been a little stricter with her. I guess you’ve noticed that I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.”

  Quietly, Moira said, “We wouldn’t be married if you weren’t.”

  He couldn’t read much with her eyes downcast. “No,” he said after a moment. “I guess we wouldn’t be.”

  “Dinner was good.” She gave him a bright, artificial smile. “Thank you.”

  Right now, he was the original house-husband. What else did he have to do but grocery shop and cook on days when she didn’t need him? A week into it, he’d have thought he would be bored to death, but strangely he wasn’t yet. He’d been reading voraciously, a pleasure he hadn’t been able to make much time for even once Sophie was off to college. Will had found he enjoyed accompanying Moira to job sites, too, seeing her in her element demonstrating a quickness of mind and creativity he admired. The contractors, electricians and plumbers she dealt with were almost universally men, but aside from a certain nervousness when their gazes strayed to her protuberant belly, they treated her straightforwardly and with respect. Will knew some of them, and he’d been careful to deflect any attempt on their parts to include him in discussions.

  “This isn’t my job,” he’d say briefly. He wouldn’t blame Moira for getting her back up if anyone tried to defer to him instead of her. Will did stay close to her from the minute they got out of her car or his pickup. If she so much as stumbled, he’d grab her or wrap his arm around her waist.

  He thought she was starting to get used to having him touch her, progress of a kind. The first few times he’d laid a hand on her lower back as they walked, or reached for her to help her out of a vehicle, she’d been obviously startled. Today, she had walked in the front door looking exhausted, and when he pulled her to him she’d simply leaned, as if she had waited all day to do just that.

  “No,” he said now when she stood and started clearing plates. “I’ll clean the kitchen. You sit.”

  “If you cook, I should clean.”

  “You worked today. I didn’t.” He took the empty serving bowl and plate out of her hands. “Want me to put hot water on for tea?”

  She followed him to the kitchen but settled on a stool at the breakfast bar. At his question, she sighed. “No, it’ll only make me have to, um…”

  It amused him that she should be shy about something like that.

  “Get up at night?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “According to the book about pregnancy I’ve been reading, that’s pretty normal.”

  “You’ve been reading a book about pregnancy?” Moira looked aghast. “Why?”

  “I want to know what to expect,” he said simply.

  “Speaking of which…” Color tinted her cheeks. “I need to start a childbirth class. Actually, I should have started a couple of weeks ago. And, well, I need a labor coach.” She was talking faster and faster. “I wondered if you wanted to go with me. Except it would mean you being there. I mean, when I have the baby.”

  He’d opened the dishwasher, but now he straightened. What the hell? Had she been thinking of asking someone else? “I told you I intended to be there. Of course I want to be your labor coach.”

  “Oh. Well.” Moira rubbed her fingertips on the tile counter. “Okay. Then I’ll sign us up. It’s only once a week.”

  He nodded, willing himself not to get pissed off. He felt more married than she did, but he couldn’t blame her. He’d pushed her into this.

  He was getting damn tired of repeating that to himself, but he’d keep doing it as long as he had to.

  “We can practice the breathing at home,” he said.

  Moira nodded, then said a little tentatively, “I was thinking we might get a Christmas tree pretty soon. Unless you want to go to your brother’s, or…”

  “You mean, do we want to go to my brother’s?”

  He must have sounded ticked, because she looked wary.

  “I did assume you wouldn’t take off Chris
tmas Day and leave me behind. Although I spent last year with Charlotte and Gray and Faith and…oh, everyone. I’m sure we’d be welcome if we’d like to do that.”

  Damn it, this wasn’t a minefield. She shouldn’t have to watch her every word.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked. “Can your mother come for the holidays? Or would she rather wait until you have the baby?”

  “I think that’s what she has in mind.” She hesitated. “We should have Christmas with your family. Maybe have them here.”

  He reached across the counter and took her hand. “Yeah, I’d like to do that. Maybe just us Christmas Eve, unless you want to do something with Gray and Charlotte.”

  “They’re having a party the Saturday before.” Her smile was a little tremulous. “I’d like to get a tree. And maybe put up lights. If you don’t mind climbing the ladder.”

  “I’d rather you keep both feet on the ground.” He grinned at her. “I like Christmas. Bring it on.”

  Her smile brightened and he saw a glow of excitement in her eyes. “Have you shopped yet? I mean, for Sophie and everybody?”

  “For a change, yeah.” He laughed at her expression.

  “What did you think? I’m a guy. But in this case I brought presents from Africa.” For her, too, but he didn’t mention that. “I even have a few extra things. A basket your mom might like, for example.” He’d packed a whole suitcase full of things that had caught his eye.

  Moira gave a happy wriggle. “Let’s get a tree next weekend.”

  Will felt a glow of his own, centered right under his breastbone. “Works for me.”

  Their first Christmas.

  She might assume it would also be their last, but Will was finding that he liked being married to Moira. Failure wasn’t an option. Starting a few traditions together spiced by Christmas spirit might be just the thing to convince her that they could be happy together.

  “OH, MY,” THE CHILDBIRTH instructor said when she saw Moira. “When are you due, dear?”