Becca's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  It was just the way Becca had always heard. When a door closes, a window is opened. Maybe this was Martha’s window.

  And maybe she’d have a window, too, if her door closed.

  She just hoped she’d be able to fit through the framework when it did.

  GRADUATION CAME. The population of Shelter Valley swelled, as it always did this time of year, with parents, friends and relatives of the graduates. For these last few weeks of the school year, there was at least an hour’s wait at the diner, whatever the time of day, and the two local hotels, both by the highway, were full.

  Becca, the perfect president’s wife, was as much a credit to Will as ever as they made appearances at parties, dinners, alumni fund-raisers. Other than those appearances, doctor’s appointments and in bed at night, Will rarely saw her those next few weeks. Getting her Save the Youth program up and running was taking the majority of Becca’s time.

  Phyllis Langford, it turned out, was interested in the psychology professorship. She called, sent her materials and, at the request of the Psychology Department, flew out the last week of May for an intensive set of interviews. She received a unanimous vote and was offered the position before she left town.

  During his interview with her, Will found her to be not only a well-educated applicant worthy of hire, but a sensitive listener, as well. She seemed to hear things that weren’t actually expressed. Things people felt but didn’t say. He was sure she’d be a real asset to the university.

  Without his even asking, she’d reassured him that Christine was fine—and greatly looking forward to living in Arizona.

  She also explained her own reasons for wanting to make such a drastic move. Not only was it a step up for her professionally, as Todd’s position was more senior than the job Phyllis currently held, but she knew it was time to make a break from Boston—and the ex-husband she found difficult to let go of completely. She was looking to Shelter Valley for a fresh start. A new life.

  Will figured she was looking in the right place.

  The first Saturday in June, with the university between sessions, he and Becca went into Phoenix to pick out nursery furniture. The job was surprisingly easy as Becca knew exactly what she wanted and they both liked the same things. Even down to the rocker she chose for the nursery.

  “We should have one for the family room, too,” Will said, testing the chair for himself. His feet on the footstool, his body cushioned by the soft leather, he could fall asleep in it—perfect, he decided, for when he was taking his middle-of-the-night sleepless-baby turns.

  Becca gave him an odd look when he said something of the sort to her, and he realized that his thoughts had carried him someplace he hadn’t yet decided to be. Into the future. Still living with Becca.

  Her eyes filling with tentative hope, she silently asked him if he’d made a decision, if he’d figured out whether he was in love with her, or if their life together was really just a sham.

  He couldn’t give her an answer. An answer he needed just as badly as she did.

  And still, in that silent communication they’d been sharing since they were banned from passing notes in junior high, she let him know that his time was running out. He’d better come up with something, or she was going to take his choices away from him.

  It was the first time he realized that he wasn’t the only one who could end their marriage.

  BECCA LAY uncharacteristically awake that night. She didn’t feel sick. Didn’t have any physical aches, no sharp pains—no numbness, either. Her stomach just felt odd. Like she had little champagne bubbles trapped there.

  She’d been having this strange indigestion, or whatever it was, for most of the week.

  Will, sleeping restlessly beside her, turned his head. She closed her eyes, hoping that if he awoke, he’d think she was asleep. She couldn’t face any intimate conversation just then—and intimate was all it could be, with the two of them lying side by side in the bed they’d shared for almost twenty years.

  They hadn’t both been awake in that bed at the same time in months. Every night Will waited until she was asleep before climbing in beside her, and whoever woke first in the morning didn’t linger long enough for the other to wake up.

  Hearing his deep, regular breathing, Becca relaxed, her eyes popping open again. Will was facing her, his strong features softened with sleep. She took advantage of the rare opportunity to study him, to look her fill, to stare avidly at the man she’d been in love with forever.

  Will mumbled in his sleep. And moved. A leg. An arm. Once, just his hand along the mattress. But with every restless move, her body felt another jolt of heat. She wanted him so desperately. Needed to feel those hands on her body, wanting her.

  Becca turned over, pulling the covers carefully over her shoulders, staving off the shivers that were coursing through her body. She wished she was wearing more than the thin silk sleeveless gown she’d pulled on in deference to the one-hundred-degree weather they’d been having.

  And remembered how he used to tell her that no matter how many times he touched her breasts, their softness still amazed him.

  Becca started to cry, slow tears that trailed quietly down her cheeks.

  Back in those early days, in spite of their harried schedules, they’d had sex twice a day. So how was Will managing with nothing for more than four months? An image of Todd crept into her mind. He hadn’t needed his wife to find sexual satisfaction.

  Becca was scared to death that Will might have found someone else, too. Especially after her talk with Martha, who’d had no idea that Todd had been fooling around.

  Could Will be fooling around on her? Was that the real reason they hadn’t made love for so long?

  Will moved again, resettled himself, and desire for her husband consumed Becca, in spite of her fears.

  A sob escaped before she even knew it was coming. Throwing back the covers, she started to sit up, to escape the bed that was far too crowded.

  “Becca?” Will’s hand shot out, grabbing her arm.

  “You okay?” he asked sleepily. He might be only half-conscious, but his grip was strong.

  “Fine,” she said quite normally, considering, and then ruined the effect with a big sniffle.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up and switching on the bedside lamp in one movement. He turned her to face him. “Are you ill?”

  Becca shook her head. She couldn’t look at him. This was so humiliating. Here she was, in bed with her husband, wanting him. And there he was, in the same bed, not wanting her.

  “You had a bad dream?” he asked.

  She shook her head again. She felt so helpless, so hopeless, as though nothing mattered. And yet everything did.

  Pulling her up against his body, clothed only in a pair of cotton boxers, Will spoke to her softly, offering one meaningless reassurance after another. He shifted, bringing his lower body into contact with her—and Becca began to cry again.

  “It’s about this afternoon, isn’t it,” he said.

  She knew immediately what he meant. That mostly wordless conversation over the rocking chair. His confusion over who they were, who they were going to be. The day had been ruined after that. Luckily all they’d had left to do was pay the bill and make arrangements for everything to be delivered the following week.

  “I’m not going to desert you, Bec. You know that, don’t you?” he asked.

  She shrugged, her shoulders moving against his bare chest. His arms were around her, his hands clasped across her stomach. His chin rested on the top of her head.

  “It’s not really even about you, not completely,” he said. “It’s about me—about being blind and shallow. It’s like I went to sleep at twenty and woke up and I was forty-two.”

  So who was the man she’d shared those twenty years with, if not him? Becca wouldn’t ask him, wasn’t sure it even mattered.

  “Talk to me, Bec,” he pleaded.

  And because she didn’t know what else to do, because he’d always b
een the one she went to when the world rocked too far on its axis, she did.

  “Will, if I ask you something, do you promise to answer honestly, no matter how painful that answer might be?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Have you ever slept with anyone else?”

  “No.” He waited a moment, while the silence in the room filled with tension. “Have you?”

  “Of course not.” Becca licked her lips, tasting the salt of her tears. “Do you want to?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure about that?” He’d never lied to her before.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever had fantasies of being with someone else?”

  “Of course,” he answered, still holding her.

  “Every man does. I kind of figured every woman does, too.” His voice was calm, comforting. But she was beyond comfort. “Don’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” Becca said. She couldn’t think about that now. “Probably.”

  He grew still. “Do you want to sleep with someone else, Bec?”

  The tears started again, welling silently. “No.”

  She could feel the sudden tension drain out of him. And hated his being so sure of her when she was sure of nothing at all.

  The room was so quiet she could hear Will’s breathing. And her own. Until she thought she was going to scream. Or lose her mind. She’d never known anything could hurt this much.

  She had to ask. “Do you?”

  “No.” He didn’t even hesitate and Becca started to relax a little.

  “How can you be certain?” She didn’t know why she had to push him, other than that she couldn’t get Martha’s pain-filled eyes out of her mind.

  “Because if I was ever going to want another woman, it would’ve been the new English professor I hired, and I’m not the least bit tempted.”

  Becca’s world crumbled.

  “You’re interested in one of your teachers?” She couldn’t imagine a worse nightmare.

  “No!” he said, chuckling. “Didn’t I just say I’m not?”

  “But you like her.”

  He turned Becca then, tenderly, until he was looking into her eyes, his face mere inches away.

  “Only because she reminds me so much of you.”

  She couldn’t trust him anymore. Couldn’t believe what he was telling her. “You want her.”

  Her fear, her overflowing, hormonally unbalanced emotions, bubbled up from inside.

  “I do not want her, Rebecca,” he said, never more convincing in his life. His eyes were steady, full of frustration, but steady. Unwavering.

  However, according to Will, Todd had been perfectly steady, too, when he’d come begging, requesting money for Stacy. Apparently if the girl was young enough, beautiful enough, a man would do anything for her.

  “She wears her hair the way you used to when we were in college, held back in those barrette things and long, almost to her hips.”

  “I thought you liked my hair shorter.”

  “I do!” Will sighed, his brows furrowed as his frustration built. “She just reminds me of a simpler time. A time when no answers were necessary because I didn’t know there were any questions.”

  “What else about her reminds you of me?”

  “Her intelligence. You’ve always been my equal or more in any debate.”

  And they’d had some good ones.

  Becca leaned back against him, tired, wishing for oblivion to take her away from her whole confusing life. At least until she had enough strength to make sense of it.

  “But mostly,” Will continued when she just wanted the whole conversation to be over, “it’s her eyes.”

  He’d been close enough to notice her eyes?

  “They’re blue like yours,” he said, hurting her even more, “but what really reminded me of you—of the way you are now, not twenty years ago—was the shadows in them. I wish I could take the shadows out of your eyes, Bec.”

  There was no mistaking the sincere, intense note of caring in his voice. No doubting which woman he was with at that moment. And really no doubting his fidelity. Whether she believed him about the occupants of his dreams or not, she knew that Will had never been unfaithful to her.

  At least not yet.

  “Please make love to me,” she whispered.

  His hands splayed possessively across her belly. “I’m still not sure….”

  “I know we have problems, Will,” she said in a rush. “I’m not dumb enough to think that sex will wipe them away. But it might help.”

  “I want you, Becca, so badly I ache with it most nights, but—”

  “I won’t hold you to anything,” she promised him.

  “I just want to feel your body naked against mine again. To know that I’m the woman you want in your arms when you cry out in satisfaction.”

  “You’ve always been the woman I want in my arms.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WILL’S STRUGGLE was unlike any he’d known before. His body was on fire for the woman in his arms. After months of sleeping beside her, of denying himself what had always been his for the taking, he was ready to explode with need.

  And yet…

  “Our lovemaking has always meant more than just sex.” He attempted to explain himself to her. “From the very first, it was a commitment—a promise for tomorrow.”

  Becca didn’t say anything. Just nodded, her hair tickling his chest.

  “I’m not going to make promises I might not be able to keep. Especially not to you.”

  “I appreciate that, Will. But don’t you see, if we both agree that there are no promises attached—”

  “What was that?” Will interrupted her to stare down at his hand, where it lay across her belly.

  “Shh,” Becca said.

  It came again, very faintly. A light tap against her abdomen. From inside her abdomen.

  “It’s him!” Will said, his voice filled with wonder, with awe.

  Becca giggled. “Or her.”

  He continued to look at her belly, though there was no way he was removing his hand.

  “Can you feel it?” he whispered. Could the child really hear him, like some of the books said?

  “Of course I can feel it,” she whispered back. He could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No, but I gather it might later on.” She stopped as one more little nudge bumped against his hand.

  “Right now it just kind of tickles.”

  They waited silently for another five minutes, but their baby had apparently decided he was finished entertaining his parents. Will still couldn’t bring himself to break his contact with Becca. With the moment.

  Softly, slowly, he ran his hand over her belly—up to her rib cage, down to her hips.

  Driven by the need to get closer to her, to the miracle they’d created together, he drew up her gown, lifting it until he had access to her bare belly. He caressed it again, side to side, top to bottom, her soft skin igniting the fires he was trying so hard to quench.

  All he was going to do was touch her. It had been so damn long since he’d touched her. Just her belly. His baby. No more.

  Just her belly. His palm trailed over it again, feeling the goose bumps as she responded to him. Becca lay perfectly still against him, almost as though she was holding her breath.

  Continuing its caressing motion, his palm slid up to her ribs again.

  Looking down, he caught a glimpse of the silky white triangle of her panties. He knew what velvety treasure lay beneath them. Knew exactly where to touch her, how to touch her, to have her squirming beneath him, crying out his name as though he were king of her universe.

  His palm slipped. Up. Encountering the underside of her breast. It was heavy against the side of his finger. And soft. So soft.

  Will, groaning, slid his hand over that breast, cupping it. Just her breast. He’d only touch her breast. It had been so long.

  Breasts. Not just one,
but two. His hand slid over to cup her other breast, squeezing softly, possessing. And before he knew what was happening, his other hand had followed the first, until both her breasts were captive to him.

  Becca’s nipples hardened in his palms, tight buds poking at him. She liked him to run his fingers lightly over the center of that hardness.

  So he did. Just briefly. For a moment. No more.

  Teasing the tips of her breasts made her writhe.

  That silky white triangle was like a flag, blazoning, capturing his attention, bringing his gaze back to it over and over again.

  But he wasn’t going to do any more than look at it. No matter how badly he wanted to rip those panties off his wife’s body, no matter how eagerly she invited him, how badly she wanted him, he wasn’t going to do it.

  He just wasn’t.

  But he could play with her breasts. He was already there, anyway. She felt so good, so right, naked beneath his palms. Kind of like coming home. And she, pushing her nipples more firmly into his palms, was enjoying herself, too.

  They always talked while they were making love. From that very first night, when she’d been nervous and he, so awkwardly rushed and needy, had been trying to take his time with her, they’d made love verbally, as well as physically.

  But tonight, neither one of them said a word. They weren’t making love.

  As Becca started to quiet in his arms, her lower body not quieting at all as it issued the familiar invitation, Will teased her nipples again. She wanted him to. She was telling him she wanted him to.

  So he did.

  He was in actual pain, strained to the point of near agony, but he wasn’t going to give in to it. He lay back, propped against the pillows, taking Becca with him. And was very careful not to move his lower body—or to let hers touch it, either.

  A man could only stand so much.

  Tilting her head, Becca gazed up at him, her blue eyes languorous with a passion he’d missed more than he’d realized. She licked her open lips, and he lowered his mouth to cover them. They’d looked so incomplete, so needy.