by Cindy Kirk
“Well...” Mitzi twirled a piece of her hair around her fingers, a thoughtful look on her face. “I suppose I could throw one for her. Kate would help me.”
“Good.”
“Kate likes Poppy,” Mitzi added. “For that matter, I do, too. You know she’s a much better match for you than I ever was.”
“I agree.”
“Just like that?” she teased. “No denials?”
He laughed. “No reason to deny. Poppy and I are good together.”
“You’re in love with her.”
He froze.
Mitzi’s vivid blue eyes turned sharp and assessing. Her lips lifted in a catlike smile.
“I see it in your stunned expression,” she pressed, as if delighted to catch him off balance. “You’re crazy, stupid in love with her.”
Crazy, stupid.
Ben straightened, his shoulders suddenly stiff. “I’ll never be crazy, stupid in love with anyone.”
Not again, he thought. Never again.
“Yeah, right.” Mitzi’s eyes danced. “Tell that to someone who’ll believe it.”
* * *
“Thanks, Winn.” Poppy took a sip of the iced tea he’d brought her.
If she were on her own, she’d be mingling, talking with fellow book club members. She’d be doing something besides waiting for Ben to quit laughing and talking with Mitzi. But Winn showed no inclination to move on and she couldn’t really walk away. Not with his “date” currently preoccupied with her “date.”
Just when Poppy decided she and Winn had exhausted the small talk, Ben and Mitzi sauntered over. Mitzi seemed in high spirits and her blue eyes gleamed. After greeting Poppy, she tucked her arm through Winn’s and they headed for the bar.
Ben’s eyes now held shadows. Poppy was curious what he and Mitzi had discussed. She wondered if he’d tell her.
“I was surprised to see Mitzi here with Winn,” she said, offering him an opening. “He told me Kelvin was out of town.”
“Kelvin is just another momentary distraction for her.” Ben smiled, suddenly all solicitous. “Are you hungry? Would you like a burger?”
Quit worrying, Poppy told herself. Be fearless. Be spontaneous. “I’d like a bratwurst.”
The look in his eyes turned teasing. “The lady has decided to live dangerously.”
Poppy started to smile, and abruptly straightened. Her hand moved to her belly. “Oh.”
Concern blanketed Ben’s face. “What is it?”
“The baby moved.” She gazed at him, her eyes filled with awe. “It does feel like butterfly wings.”
Seeing the look of wonder on her face, unable to stop the warm tide of emotion welling up inside him, Ben admitted Mitzi had been right. He was in love with Poppy.
He wasn’t crazy, stupid in love, he told himself quite firmly. But definitely in love.
With a feeling of rightness, he placed his palm protectively on her belly...and felt a kick.
Chapter Nineteen
By the time they returned to Ben’s home that evening, Poppy was ready to relax. Groucho greeted them at the door with short staccato barks.
“Hey, boy.” Poppy scrubbed the top of his soft furry head. “Miss us?”
Ben liked the sound of the “us” even though Mitzi’s words kept echoing in his head. He wasn’t crazy, stupid in love with Poppy, he told himself again. He loved her. But he wasn’t stupid about it.
He pointed in the direction of the sofa. “Take a seat in the living room.”
“Ooh, so masterful.” A tiny smile hovered on the corners of her lips. “What do you have planned?”
“Trust me.”
Poppy did as he asked, glancing over her shoulder as she strolled down the hall.
Once in the kitchen Ben pulled out two wineglasses and filled them with sparkling grape juice. He told himself to not make such a big deal out of something that happened to millions of women every day.
But not to his woman.
And that was the crux of the matter. Poppy was his woman. This was his baby.
He carried the glasses into the living room where she sat on the sofa, petting Groucho. The dog leaped to the floor as if shot from a cannon.
“I’m sorry,” Poppy began. “I keep forgetting you don’t like him on the—”
She stopped speaking and her mouth formed a perfect O.
He handed her a glass, then took a seat beside her. “Feeling our baby move for the first time is a momentous occasion. It deserves a toast.”
Pleasure filled Poppy’s eyes and he knew he’d made the right decision in bringing out the sparkling juice. She glanced down at the glass.
“Sparkling grape juice, now.” He clinked his glass against hers. “Champagne, after the baby is born.”
She took a sip then placed her glass on the coffee table. With one fluid movement, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you so much for this. It’s so sweet.”
She buried her face against his neck and he inhaled the clean fresh scent of her.
He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
She lifted her gaze. “Me, too.”
“I love you, Poppy,” he said, the words coming more easily than he’d imagined.
She slid her fingers into his hair. “I love you, too.”
Once again his lips found hers and she forgot how to think, how to breathe. Her shirt had already found its way to the floor and his fingers were on her bra clasp when her phone began a tinny rendition of “New York, New York.”
“Ignore it.”
“That song plays for any 212 area code.” She leaned over and picked up the phone. “My great-aunt Katherine lives in the city. She hasn’t been well.”
He dropped his hands while Poppy pressed the phone against her ear. “Hello.”
Ben sat back and sipped the grape juice. His eyes narrowed as her expression changed. At first he’d thought something bad had indeed happened to her aunt. Then he heard her say a name. Bill.
“I can’t believe you lied to me about that.” Poppy paused, took a breath. “Scratch that. I can believe it. But I never thought you’d have stooped that low.”
Her face was now set in hard planes, her wide and generous mouth, a thin line. Her ex must have had a lot to say because for a long while it seemed all she did was listen.
“Well, I’m happy for you. Who knew telling me all this would make you feel better.” The sarcasm in Poppy’s voice came through loud and clear. She listened for a few more minutes, made a few noises of acknowledgment then hung up.
“Dirty rotten liar.” She rose to her feet and began to pace. “I can’t believe he expected me to just forgive him. Yeah, right. It’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens.”
Groucho sat on the floor, his head turning from side to side as she continued to pace.
“Come and sit with me,” Ben said in a soothing tone. “Tell me what he said. Then I’ll go to Manhattan and beat him up.”
As he hoped, that brought a smile to her lips. “Would you really do that?”
“Sweetheart, I’d do just about anything for you.”
Poppy returned to the sofa. “I suppose I should be grateful to him for solving yet another mystery.”
Though Ben wasn’t thirsty, he downed the rest of the grape juice and waited. She’d tell him what had gotten her so riled up when she was ready.
“Bill is doing a twelve-step program for sex addiction.”
He lifted a brow.
“Apparently he’s at the stage where you’re supposed to contact all the people you’ve wronged and ask for forgiveness.”
When she didn’t continue, Ben took her hand, found it ice cold. “Did he ask you to forgive him for cheating on you?�
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“Ohmigod, he never mentioned the cheating.” She gave a helpless sounding laugh, and pulled her hand from his. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? His list of transgressions probably runs into the thousands. It’s probably hard for him to keep them all straight.”
“Why did he call?” Ben asked, now perplexed.
“To tell me he was sorry for not letting me know that he was sterile and that’s why I couldn’t get pregnant.”
“I thought he’d fathered a couple of kids,” Ben said, trying to remember exactly what Poppy had told him.
“He did. Shortly after the second was born, he apparently had a vasectomy. A fact he failed to mention before we married or when I was undergoing all those procedures to find out what was wrong with me.” Poppy’s hands clenched and unclenched in her lap. “I should have been suspicious when the urologist dictated a letter instead of sending the semen analysis. But the doctor was a friend of his and I thought it was nice he went to the extra effort.”
She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I was so gullible, so foolish.”
“I don’t like it that he hurt you.”
She searched his gaze and what she found there must have reassured her of his sincerity, because she rested her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for that.”
After a moment, he brushed a kiss across her lips and stood, holding out a hand to her. “Come with me. I know something that will make you feel better.”
She let him pull her to standing and cocked her head.
“A massage. Guaranteed to obliterate any tension or your money back.”
Her eyes gleamed with suspicion. “I read somewhere that ninety-six percent of back rubs not done in hospitals or medical clinics lead to sex.”
“Really?” Ben wiggled his eyebrows. “Now those are the kind of odds I like.”
* * *
Sunday dinner at the Campbell ranch was always a relaxing affair. The more Poppy got to know Ben’s mother and dad, the more she liked them. They could laugh and talk about practically any topic.
But when Ben’s mother asked her what they’d done the previous evening, Poppy found herself blushing. Thankfully, Ben saved her when he mentioned the movie they’d watched.
Of course he didn’t mention that had been after the back rub, after they’d made love for hours. By the time she was back on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn in her lap, another glass of sparkling grape juice in her hand and Ben on one side of her and Groucho on the other, she’d been totally relaxed and her conversation with Bill had seemed like a bad dream.
“Why don’t we retire to the living room for coffee and dessert?” Dori said.
Poppy pushed back from her chair. “I’ll help clear the table.”
“No, dear.” Taking her arm, Dori propelled her into the living room. “I have a surprise for you.”
Ben cast a suspicious glance at the stacks of albums positioned on a low table. “What are those?”
His father lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I had nothing to do with any of this.”
Ben shot his mother a questioning glance.
“Pictures. I thought Poppy might enjoy looking at ones of you growing up.” Dori took a seat on the sofa and patted a spot next to her. “Poppy, you sit here.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring out the videos,” Ben muttered.
“Don’t tempt her,” John warned.
“I’m saving those for another visit,” Dori said cheerily, pulling a giant album onto her lap and flipping it open.
The key-lime cheesecake had been polished off by the time they reached Ben’s college years. He’d tried to put a stop to the viewing several times, insisting it was getting late. But Poppy demurred. Apparently she enjoyed seeing him with missing teeth and haircuts that had once been stylish but now looked ridiculous.
“This is Ben and Kristin.” Dori pointed to a picture of her son with one arm looped over the shoulders of a tall blonde with a friendly smile. What looked to be a university building loomed large behind them. “They were together during his medical school years but went their separate ways shortly before graduation. I never did understand what happened there.”
Dori turned to her son.
Poppy expected him to make some lighthearted joke like he’d done about the other girls in previous pictures, but when he hesitated, she realized this one had been different. She’d mattered.
“Kris found someone else,” Ben said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I believe she’s practicing in San Antonio. Or maybe it’s Austin.”
They continued through the rest the album then called it a night. Poppy waited until they were home before she brought up Kris. “You were in love with her. The girl in the picture.”
He gave a casual shrug. “That was a long time ago.”
“You were in love with her,” Poppy repeated.
He took her jacket and hung it up. Then he paused, as if he had to think about the answer. “Yes.”
Poppy forced a casual tone. “What happened?”
“After medical school, we went our separate ways.”
And that, Poppy thought, told her absolutely nothing.
“But if you loved her and she loved you—” Poppy paused, then recognized the look in his eyes. “She didn’t love you.”
“I thought she did, but she didn’t.” He wandered into the kitchen, added water to Groucho’s bowl.
She stood in the doorway, an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. “What happened?”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure he would tell her. But after giving Groucho a doggie treat, he rested his back against the counter and met her gaze. “During our last year in med school, she dumped me for someone else. I found out later she’d been seeing him behind my back.”
His lips lifted in a humorless smile.
Poppy thought of Bill. She remembered how she’d felt when a “friend” had finally told her the truth. “That had to have been devastating.”
“We weren’t married, Poppy,” he said as if that made a difference.
“What does that matter? You loved her. Trusted her. And she betrayed you.”
“Yes, she did.” His jaw set in a hard angle. “But I was foolish. I gave her my heart, my whole heart.”
For someone who had been doing a good job tracking the conversation, Poppy felt as if she’d suddenly taken a wrong turn. “Why was that foolish?”
“Because when you love someone that deeply, it gives them power over you,” he said. “I should have kept a part of myself back. I won’t make that mistake again.”
* * *
The next day, instead of concentrating on her work, Poppy found herself pondering Ben’s words. When she’d married Bill, she’d given him her whole heart. He’d deliberately held part of himself back from her.
Though she knew Ben hadn’t done that with her, his attitude troubled her. Because she loved him.
He said he loved her.
But how much?
She shoved the thought aside. Grabbing another cup of coffee, she returned to her desk and refocused on the computer screen.
It was another paperwork day and she was determined to get caught up. She’d always prided herself on staying on top of the reports that the courts demanded, but lately an overabundance of fieldwork had left little time for documentation.
Her stomach had just begun to growl when there was a rap at the office door. “Come in.”
She looked up. Her heart gave a little leap when she saw Ben.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Not quite the greeting I expected,” he said with an easy smile. “Perhaps this will change it.”
She surveyed the brown paper bag dangling from his fingers. “What’s in it?”
“Only a ch
icken salad sandwich with cranberries and walnuts on wheatberry bread. With an apple. And a fruitbar.” He smiled. “From the Green Gateau.”
Her favorite sandwich from her favorite restaurant.
She reached for the sack but he moved it back at the last second.
He moved to sit casually on the corner of her desk, the bag swinging from his fingers. “There’s a catch.”
Poppy heaved an exaggerated sigh, but couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. “Of course, there is.”
“The park. Lunch. With me.”
Poppy glanced at the clock. “I can take my lunch now. But do you have time?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “My first surgery got cancelled. Patient came down with a gastrointestinal bug during the night.”
Poppy pushed back her chair, rose to her feet and, quick as a cobra, snatched the sack from his hands. “You’ve got a deal.”
With one hand she kept the sack close, with the other, she smoothed down the bright blue top she wore over her growing baby bump.
Ben was seized suddenly with the urge to pull her close, to wrap his arms around her and never let her go. His surprise at the sheer force of such an emotion, made his tone a bit brusque. “We’d best get going.”
“There’s one thing I need to do first.” Poppy set the sack aside, wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close for a deep lingering kiss.
“Wow,” he said as she stepped back, picked up the sack and shot him a saucy smile. “That was quite an appetizer.”
“Unfortunately this—” Poppy tapped a finger against the sack “—will have to be the main course. Now this evening—”
Ben thought about the meeting he’d set with Mitzi. “I’m going to be a little late getting home tonight.”
She lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. “Your loss.”
“Not that late.” He took her arm as they strolled out into the bright sunshine. “Just don’t wait on me for dinner.”
“What’s going on?”
“Meeting,” he said and changed the subject.
“You know,” he said later as they sat on the park bench and watched several preschool-age children play on the equipment, “in several years it’ll be our kid standing on the top of the slide about to fall.”