by Lisa Plumley
It was time to settle her future, once and for all.
Or at least part of it.
The same left-hand turn that brought Nick onto Main Street brought him his first view of the crowd. From the looks of it, a third of the town had turned out. Men, women and children clumped around the town plaza’s courtyard in bunches, talking, pointing, and peering into the windows of Saguaro Vista Cattleman’s Bank. Police cars blocked the street, lights flashing. The town’s sole newspaper photographer ducked behind one, aiming for a Territorial-worthy shot of the fracas.
It’s Chloe, his sister Naomi had told him on the phone. Chloe needs you at the bank. That’s all he’d heard before dropping the phone and sprinting to his motorcycle. Now, steering between a woman wearing pink sponge curlers and a sheriff’s deputy directing traffic, Nick wished he’d waited to hear more. Was Chloe being arrested? Had she finally had a hormonal breakdown, snapped, and assaulted Effram Griggs?
The town’s fire engine careened around the corner, and suited-up fire fighters piled out. Nick’s heart slammed harder. He wrenched his bike to a stop at the curb and ran through the crowd. They surged along with him all the way to the bank’s doorway, where the first-comers spilled through the opened saloon-style doors. He elbowed his way inside.
Nick spotted Chloe’s blonde head first. She was near the wagon-wheel table in the middle of the bank, the same one used to hold deposit slips and pens on chains and—he looked closer—today, one very pregnant woman wearing wild hot pink clothes and an expression he’d never seen before. While he edged closer, Effram Griggs came into view, flapping a sheaf of paper toward Chloe like a human ceiling fan. She bent forward in the breeze and her head disappeared from view.
Dear God, Nick thought, realizing what all the paramedic-packed fuss was about. Chloe was in labor.
Right on top of the glossy home-banking brochures.
She’d probably come to the bank to confront Griggs about her loan—minus Nick, because he’d been too busy working on the growth accelerator to help her, dammit—and his latest refusal had sent her over the edge. Those lunatic hormones of hers could probably cause just about anything to happen.
“Chloe!” he yelled.
“Nick?”
He reached her and held her face in his hands, keeping her still so he could make sure she was all right. She felt all right, silky and warm beneath his palms. She looked okay, sort of pink and glowing … but, then again, that could’ve been the reflected glare from her clothes. Her hot pink linen mini-dress looked vivid enough to peel paint.
“Hiya, brainiac,” Chloe said. “What are you doing here?”
“Naomi called me. Danny’s bus driver was late because she had to detour around the bank. The street’s completely blocked outside. You’re the talk of the town, Chloe.”
She sat up straighter, looking pleased. “The street’s blocked?”
“The Territorial’s outside, too. You’ll probably make the evening edition.”
She beamed. “That’s great!”
It was worse than he’d thought. She’d gone temporarily crazy. Who knew pregnancy could do this to a person?
Nick rubbed his thumbs gently over her cheeks. This didn’t look like the writhing, screaming childbirth they showed on TV—or the grueling forty-eight hour laborathons his mother and sisters had moaned about—but he couldn’t be sure. Chloe’s method of having babies was bound to be a hundred and eighty degrees different than anyone else’s.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Is the pain bad? Is the baby—”
“The baby’s fine.” She smiled against his hands, making him realize how much he’d missed the feel of her. Then she slipped her fingers around his wrists and tugged downward. “And so am I. You’re acting like I’m going to pop the kid out right here, or something.”
If she was, she was being pretty blasé about it. Nick frowned, casting his arm toward the noisy crowd. “You’re not? But there are paramedics outside, police and fire fighters and—”
Something else occurred to him, and he gave her a stern look. “Are you still mad about our argument, Chloe? Because if you’re just saying this to make me go away, I—”
“No, I’m not. Not mad, not in labor, and not fibbing. The crowd’s here because of the sit-down strike, the police are probably here for crowd control, and the fire fighters are probably here in case Griggs locks me in the bank vault after all.”
She stopped and peered closely at him. “You’re looking a little woozy, Nick. You want to sit down?”
Scooting over the table’s thick wagon-wheel rungs, Chloe flashed her knee-high boots and made some room for him. “Come on. And maybe some water, too. Griggs?”
She put her hand on Nick’s shoulder and peered through the murmuring crowd like a queen calling her court jester. “Oh, Griggs!”
She had snapped. “Another sit-down strike? Chloe, come down from there. I’ll take you home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I—oh, there you are.”
Effram Griggs appeared beside Nick, looking as though he’d just emerged from a sauna. His forehead looked shiny with sweat, and his western shirt had twin wet spots under the arms. Clearly, having Chloe hold court in the middle of his bank wasn’t his usual Monday afternoon routine.
She inclined her head regally toward him. “Would you bring Mr. Steadman a glass of iced water, please? I think the crowd’s too much for him.”
“Right away. Have you finished the, ahh—”
“When you bring the check,” Chloe interrupted, tucking a pen into the top of one boot. The motion called attention to the rolled-up sheaf of papers stuck partway beneath her thigh. They looked like the ones Griggs had been waving around earlier. “And the water.”
“I don’t want any water,” Nick put in.
Too late. Griggs had already left.
He swiveled toward Chloe, who, having dispensed with both her pen and the pesky Mr. Griggs, was cheerfully tapping the papers against her boot.
“The check?” Nick asked. “A payoff for not causing a bigger riot?”
“For my loan.” She rubbed her other hand over her round, round belly and smiled at him. “My loan for my pet shop.”
“You got it?”
“Yes!” She patted the table. “Come on up. Celebrate my victory, Nick.”
“I can’t believe you got it.”
Griggs returned, hands overhead to pass through the crowd, holding a dripping glass of water in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. Solicitously, Chloe set the water on the table within Nick’s reach and then snatched the paper.
“The check!” she cried, holding it up for the crowd to see.
Bedlam erupted. Shouts of “Hurray!” mixed with clapping and whistling, then mellowed into a chant. It sounded like…
“No more Neanderthals?” Nick asked.
She laughed and flipped over a homemade poster from the table beside her. It showed a club-toting caveman’s body encircled by an ‘O’ with a diagonal slash through it. Effram Griggs’ head, sour-faced in an old newspaper photo, was pasted onto the caveman above the words: No More Neanderthals. Say Yes to Loans for Ladies.
“Turns out,” Chloe said, shoving the poster through the wagon-wheel slats, “that Griggs has a policy of refusing loans to women. He’s turned down half the ladies in my childbirth class—most of whom were forced to get loans in their husbands’ names.”
She frowned at the injustice of it all. Nick tried not to wonder if she’d have married him for her loan’s sake, if he’d asked.
“So,” she went on, reaching behind her for the fuzzy white jacket she’d left there and smoothing it over her lap, “I came in and told him I wasn’t leaving until he changed his stupid throwback policy. I can’t believe the old protest ploy worked! I didn’t exactly have a good track record with that one, you know.”
“The only thing you’re missing is that Brownie uniform of yours,” Nick said, reaching up to put his arms around her waist. “Now there’s somethin
g I’d like to see.”
“Actually, hot pink is more attention-getting.”
“I’ll say,” he said, waggling his eyebrows as he looked her over.
“But it was probably the baby. An extra sympathy measure I didn’t have when I was seven.”
“Maybe.” Or maybe Mrs. Griggs had been pregnant once, too, and her husband had learned his lesson. It was better to roll with the lunacy than try to fight it.
Or maybe that just described life with women in hot pink and triumphant grins. Nick smiled back amidst the chants and stomping feet and draped her puffy jacket over her shoulders, then tugged Chloe into his arms. The crowd cheered.
“Let’s go home and celebrate.” God, she felt good against him. “I know just the kind of party you need.”
She hugged him closer and raised on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “A party of two?”
“Something like that.”
The crowd bumped and jostled them, milling toward the exit now that the excitement was over with. Effram Griggs, muttering and wringing the loan papers he’d taken from Chloe in exchange for the check, passed by on his way to the vault—probably going to lock himself in until his personal nightmare had passed. Police officers loomed closer, probably wanting to make sure the poor pregnant women in Nick’s arms was all right.
Or not. A sound at the back of Nick’s head, where Chloe had her arms wrapped around his neck, killed his poor pregnant woman theory in a hurry. Nothing else sounded quite like the metallic snick of handcuffs closing.
“Chloe Carmichal?” one of the officers asked.
“Hey!” she answered, snaring Nick as she tried to tug her bound wrists over his head. “Hey! I’m—I’m—”
Stuck. Gently, Nick lifted her forearms past his nose and then hugged her against his side, turning them both to face a pair of Saguaro Vista’s finest.
The men in blue smirked. “You’re in trouble, is what you are,” said one. “Disturbing the peace, harassment, destruction of property—”
“Unlawful assembly, fire code violation,” continued the other, going on with a description of her rights.
“But—but—” Chloe protested. “But I’m—”
“Under arrest,” they finished in unison.
“I still can’t believe you staged a sit-down strike to make Griggs give you your loan,” Nick said, squinting into the sun as it set over downtown plaza.
“You can’t argue with success.” Smiling, Chloe slipped the loan check the police had returned to her into her white pillbox handbag and struggled to fasten the vintage latch. The stubborn old thing never had operated properly—just like Effram Griggs. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“To the tune of five hundred dollars in fines and bail. It would’ve been cheaper to marry for the money, like your friends in Baby Birthing 101 did.”
“They didn’t! They just couldn’t get credit in their own names, that’s all, and—and you’re teasing me, aren’t you?”
His sparkling eyes told her he was. The rat.
“I would’ve helped you, you know,” Nick went on. “Red and Jerry would have, too. You only had to ask.”
“I know,” Chloe mumbled, snuggling deeper into her fuzzy jacket. “I just … thought I had time. I thought my way would work, if I only stuck with it long enough.”
Their footsteps rang over the courtyard’s weathered saltillo tile as she and Nick headed for the curb where his motorcycle was parked. She took his arm as they passed the courtyard fountain. Its wintery spray misted them both, making Chloe shiver—but not with cold. Losing her pet store dream had come too close, and all because she’d refused to try getting her loan another way.
If I only stuck with it long enough.
Maybe sometimes it was smarter to recognize what wasn’t working. Maybe dogged dedication to a plan wasn’t always a sure-fire tactic.
And maybe not telling Nick the truth was exactly the same problem in different clothes, Chloe decided later as they zipped into Nick’s driveway and his motorcycle’s engine roared into silence. Maybe her Bruno alibi had outlived its usefulness. Maybe Nick could handle the truth. He’d been interested enough to critique her father and Tabitha’s choice of baby gifts, interested enough to set up the nursery and pack her refrigerator with milk for a crowd, interested enough to hound her about Twinkies and volunteer for hospital duty on junior’s birthday.
She eased off the motorcycle—no easy task, now that she couldn’t see her toes anymore—and handed her purple helmet to Nick, still thinking. What if she’d been wrong about him, all along? The evidence, when viewed in a certain light, pointed to a different Nick than the no-kids, none-of-the-time, marriage-as-obligation type she’d pegged him as.
He blinked at her and straightened his glasses. “What’s the matter? All protested out? You look like I do when I’ve been working on an invention all day and it won’t quite come together. Like that damned growth accelerator …”
Or maybe that yes-kids thing was only wishful thinking. Nick went on talking, telling her something about his invention and the meeting he’d set up for Wednesday with an interested investor in California, but Chloe could only listen with half an ear. His inventions will always come first, she thought. She watched his eyes light up as he described the prototype he’d come up with for the licensing meeting with the investor’s board of directors, and her heart sank. Always.
“Come in and check it out,” Nick was saying. His fingers touched hers, warm in the twilight. Smiling that devastating, you’ll-like-it smile of his, he tugged her gently up the walk to his front porch.
Her feet hit the porch floorboards at the same time her conscience made up its mind once and for all. “Nick, wait!” Chloe blurted out.
He stopped and squeezed her hand. “For what? If you’re worried about Larry, Moe and Curly—”
“It’s not that.”
“—and Shep, I’m sure they’re okay.”
“I, I, ummm …” Oh, God. When had telling the truth become so difficult?
When you started lying for a living, Carmichal.
Chloe twisted her handbag’s short straps and stared up at him, trying to dredge up some courage. Surely she had some, even beneath the layers of well-meant lies she’d told. She was the same woman who’d just staged a showdown at the bank, wasn’t she?
Except looking at Nick’s tender expression and lopsided, familiar grin made everything twice as hard. Biting her lip, Chloe pulled her gaze from his face and looked at the soft-lit windows behind him instead. Just say it! She told herself. Nick, this is your baby. Sorry I’ve lied to you about it for the past nine months. Ha, ha!
Right. That would go over like Curly’s exercise ball sinking into the fish tank.
“Chloe?”
She tried again. “Re-remember how you said you’d go to the hospital when the baby’s born, if I needed you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Something in the way he said it drew her gaze back to him. He’d put on that analytical scientist’s expression of his, the one she’d dreaded all these months. Was she giving off lie-detector signals, or what?
“I meant it, and I will,” Nick went on. He bent to speak to her navel. “Wouldn’t miss your debut for anything, big guy.”
Tenderness washed over her. He loved the baby already, and he didn’t even know the truth.
The truth. Get back on track, she ordered herself.
“What if it’s a girl?” she asked instead. Where had that come from?
“A girl?”
“You said, ‘big guy.’ What if it’s a girl?”
He straightened and gave her a quizzical look. “Then I’ll teach her to play football anyway.”
Behind him, something bumped inside his house. Chloe thought she glimpsed something dart past his half-opened blinds.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” He took her hand again. “Look, let’s talk about this inside.”
“No. I’ve got to tell you this now.” Sheesh, s
he sounded like a spoiled brat. Next she’d be stomping her foot. “It’s
…” Her breath caught in her throat, making her gulp for air. “… about Bruno.”
Another noise inside made her jerk. And breathe harder. Suddenly, Chloe couldn’t get enough air. Beside her, Nick’s image wavered like the Day-Glo castle inside her aquarium.
His voice yanked her back into the land of the listening, but that didn’t help her breathing any. Probably a panic attack, she figured, brought on by the stress of actually telling Nick the truth.
And risking the loss of the man she loved. Forever. Dear God, he’d never forgive her for this.
“Huh, huh,” she gasped, grabbing his arm for support. Help. I’ve become physically incapable of honesty.
He mistook her grappling for something else. Insistence that he listen to another Bruno story, probably.
“We can’t do this now,” Nick said abruptly—and hauled her inside his front door.
“Wait, I’m—I’m—”
Lights burst on in a blinding flash. No wait, those were flashbulbs popping all around her. Noisemakers screamed, and what looked like a hundred people surged up from their hiding places in the tropical rainforest that Nick’s living room had become. “Surprise!” they yelled.
“… hyperventilating,” Chloe finished weakly.
And then the world turned black.
Chapter Eleven
Surprise parties were underrated, Chloe decided once she’d come to and been ensconced in the chair of honor—in this case, Nick’s weathered leather BarcoLounger, specially decorated with pink and blue balloons and pastel stick-on bows. Because this party, this surprise, had saved her from making a potentially disastrous mistake.
Telling Nick the truth.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to, some cowardly part of her thought. To look at him now, surrounded by all their friends and most of his family, it was easy to believe they could go on the way they had been … partners in parenthood, just like they’d been partners in pregnancy. Even without the white picket fence and the ring and the happily-ever-after. Any guy who’d stage a surprise baby shower couldn’t be all work and no baby, could he?