“We’re having a baby,” she whispered as if it were breaking news.
He laughed. “So I’ve heard.”
Noah leaned down and kissed her, lingering a little longer than was appropriate with the obstetrician sitting right there. Caitlyn allowed herself the luxury of savoring the kiss in a way that had been all too absent recently.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Noah asked eventually.
“Amazing? Listen to that heartbeat,” she said proudly. “It’s beyond incredible.”
“It’s strong and healthy,” Dr. Harris confirmed. He gave her a hard look. “And we’re going to keep it that way. No more cancellations, understood?”
Caitlyn nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I’ll see to it,” Noah chimed in.
For once she didn’t object to his take-charge attitude. She certainly hadn’t done anything to reassure him that she was taking good care of herself. Well, no more. It was time to grow up, accept where they were and move forward. She had a brand-new life depending on her. It might not be what she’d envisioned for the immediate future, but it was the reality.
Dr. Harris handed her a printout of the sonogram. “I’ll see you in a month. Call me anytime, day or night, if anything comes up before that.”
Cait nodded.
Beside her, Noah was studying her intently. “Are you okay?”
“A little shell-shocked,” she confessed. She patted her belly. “There really is a little person growing in there.” She regarded him with amazement. “I’ve read the textbooks. I’ve been around a lot of expectant moms, but until right this second I don’t think I ever understood what it would feel like to know that I’m going to be a mom.”
“If it’s anything like how I feel knowing that I’m going to be a dad, it’s pretty mind-blowing,” Noah said. “Why don’t we go celebrate? Are you ready to do that yet?”
She smiled at him. “I think I am. I think I’d even like a glass of champagne, the nonalcoholic kind, anyway.”
Noah looked relieved. “Done,” he said readily. “Pick the place and we’ll toast our baby.”
“It’s about time, isn’t it?” she said, regretting all the weeks she’d thought only of how this was going to disrupt her life, rather than thinking about the miracle they’d been given.
Eager now to embrace the excitement, she dressed quickly and met Noah in the reception area.
“I want to go to Brady’s,” she announced.
“You want to celebrate in Chesapeake Shores?” he said, clearly surprised by the choice.
“It’s where my family always goes for special occasions, at least the ones we don’t spend at Grandpa Mick’s. Do you mind making the drive?”
“Of course not, if it’s what you want.”
“If it gets late, we can spend the night with Mom and Trace and drive back in the morning.”
“Do you want anyone in the family to join us for this celebration dinner?” Noah asked.
Caitlyn shook her head. “No, this needs to be just the two of us. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Wedding plans, perhaps?” he asked.
She winced at the hopefulness in his expression. “Sorry. Not yet. I was thinking more along the lines of baby names. I understand that the process of elimination can take a very long time.”
Noah looked surprised. “You want to choose a name for the baby? That’s quite a leap from barely wanting to acknowledge that he or she is on the way.”
“I don’t want our child to arrive in the world and have to wait around for us to come up with a name,” she said simply. “It needs to know we gave the matter some thought. If we hit on the right choices, I’m expecting a couple of good solid kicks in my womb.”
Noah laughed. “I think we might be more at the flutter stage right now.”
She gave him a defiant look. “The point is that our baby is going to be brilliant and will react when we get it right.”
“Okay, then,” Noah said, clearly fighting a smile. “Do we need to buy a book of baby names on the way down there? Your aunt Shanna probably has one at her store.”
She shook her head at once. “We’ll look up popular baby names on our phones,” she said. “If we set foot in her bookstore, the whole family will find out we’re in town. If we’re careful, we might actually have an entire evening to ourselves with no one in the family the wiser unless we decide to stay over.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said readily. He started to the door, then paused and put his hands on her shoulders and gazed into her eyes, his expression softening. “I love seeing you like this, Cait. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to be as happy about the baby as I am.” He searched her face with a long look. “You really are happy, aren’t you?”
“I’m really happy,” she assured him, winding her arms around his neck for another of those slow, sensual kisses that reminded her of how good they were together.
Right this second, with her blood humming and her heart full of joy, she could almost believe that the future would sort itself out in a way that was best for all of them.
* * *
Brady’s really was the perfect spot for a quiet celebration, Noah concluded after they’d been seated at a table with a view of the bay. The attentive staff brought a bottle of chilled, nonalcoholic bubbly to the table at once, then discreetly left them to look over the menu.
“Nice place,” he said.
“Wait till you try the food,” Cait told him, her expression eager. “Nobody makes better crab cakes or any other crab dish, for that matter. And the rockfish is excellent, too. The desserts here can’t compare to those at Aunt Jess’s Inn at Eagle Point, but everything else is first-rate.”
“I heard that,” a man said, feigning a scowl as he looked down at Cait.
“Brady!” she said, jumping up to embrace him.
He wrapped her in a warm embrace, then held her away. “Look at you. I hear you’re about to be a doctor and a mother.”
Cait flushed. “Word does get around in this town, doesn’t it?”
“Especially if it involves an O’Brien,” he confirmed.
“This is Noah,” Cait told him.
“Ah, the new doc coming to town,” Brady said, reaching out to shake his hand. “Welcome to Chesapeake Shores.” He glanced toward the open bottle chilling in a bucket of ice. “You two celebrating?”
Cait nodded. “Please, please don’t spread the word about that. Noah and I were hoping for a quiet evening to ourselves.”
“Take back what you said about my desserts and I’ll keep my mouth shut,” he countered.
“Your desserts are sublime,” she said at once.
“Then my lips are sealed,” he promised. “Why don’t you let me put something special together for you?” He glanced at Noah. “Any seafood you hate or are allergic to?”
“Not a thing,” Noah said. “Surprise us. Is that okay with you, Cait?”
“Perfect,” she said at once.
Brady took another long look at her and shook his head. “I remember you in pigtails. How’d you get to be all grown-up when I haven’t aged a bit?”
“Chesapeake Shores magic,” she told him.
Brady left them to themselves. Within minutes, small appetizer-size plates started arriving with a half-dozen different seafood delicacies from little crab tarts to scallops wrapped in bacon. Each bite was more delicious than the one before.
“He knows what he’s doing in the kitchen, doesn’t he?” Noah said approvingly. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anything better in Baltimore.”
“Brady’s is a hidden treasure,” Cait confirmed. “He and Aunt Jess have done a great job of keeping their menus unique so that people will always have a reason to go to both places. That doesn’t mean they’re not competitive. A
unt Jess is an O’Brien, after all, and Brady was here first. The locals benefit from that rivalry.”
“How does Jess feel about the family celebrating special events here?”
Cait laughed. “Oh, she gets her share of things. Between weddings, receptions and baby showers, we keep her in business, too.”
“Interesting you should mention weddings,” Noah said.
She gave him a warning look. “You promised.”
He grinned at her. “It just seemed like a natural opening. What sort of wedding would you like, Cait? Big and fancy? Small and intimate?”
“There’s no such thing as small in my family,” she said. “There are a lot of us. But family only would work for me.”
He nodded. “Good to know.”
“When the time comes,” she added pointedly.
“You said when, not if. I’ll take that as a good sign.”
“And drop the subject?”
“Dropped,” he said at once. Victories might come in small increments, but they were coming. “How about baby names? You ready to talk about those?”
Her eyes lit with surprising eagerness and she took her phone from her purse. “Here we go,” she said eventually. “The most recent list of common baby names.”
She began to read them off, wrinkling her nose from time to time. Noah saw the precise instant when something appealed to her.
“What?” he asked.
“Megan,” she said softly. “After my grandmother. We have a Little Mick, but none of the girls have been named for her. I like Megan McIlroy. How about you?”
He nodded. “Put it at the top of the list for girls,” he agreed. “How about a boy’s name?”
“Noah’s a great name,” she said.
“I don’t think so. We’d only end up calling him Junior.”
“But it needs to capture your Scottish heritage,” she said. “Rory?”
“And throw my Scottish roots into the faces of your Irish family? Maybe we’d better avoid that.”
She grinned then. “How about Scott? That could be fun.”
“Do you really want to taunt them that way? Or make life miserable for our child?”
“Oh, come on. Scott is a great name for a boy. Kids won’t notice that we’re making a little joke between us.”
“Trust me, someone will figure it out and torment him,” Noah said. “Let’s just find something nice and traditional.”
“Robert’s a good solid name,” she suggested. “We could call him Robby or Bobby. We don’t have any of those in the family.”
“And it wouldn’t have anything to do with him being named for a famous Scottish poet,” Noah said wryly.
“Not every Robert in the world was named for Robert Burns,” she argued.
“But ours would be,” he taunted. “Admit it.”
“Okay, yes, it did cross my mind.”
Noah gestured toward her phone. “What else is on that list?”
She read off a few more names until Noah stopped her. “That’s it,” he said. “Jackson.”
He wasn’t surprised when her eyes lit up.
“From Grey’s Anatomy,” she said with a grin. “You know he’s my favorite. Those eyes of his...” She practically swooned as she said it.
“There are worse reasons to choose a name for a baby. We could call him Jack. That’s a good old-fashioned nickname.”
“I love it,” she said at once. She touched a hand to her stomach. “What about it, kiddo? Are you a Megan or a Jackson?”
Noah laughed at the suddenly startled expression on her face.
“The baby kicked,” she told him, eyes wide. “I swear it did. We have ourselves a Megan or a Jackson.”
“Well, I for one can’t wait to find out which it is. What about you?”
She looked hesitant. “I’d kind of like to be surprised.”
“You don’t have some compulsive need to decorate in either pink or blue?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “This baby has been a surprise from the get-go. I say we run with that all the way.”
Delighted with her suddenly light mood, Noah nodded. “Okay, then. We’ll be surprised.”
Thank goodness he’d let Connor and Mick talk him into that pale green nursery with its decor of bunnies and ducks. It seemed the safe choice was going to work out just fine.
11
Over the next couple of weeks as the end of Noah’s residency approached and he was more and more absorbed with making plans to open his practice in Chesapeake Shores, Caitlyn looked back on their celebration at Brady’s as a turning point. She’d slept better and felt more at ease with him from that moment on. Their easygoing rapport was what she’d missed during those first tense weeks after discovering she was pregnant. They might not have set a wedding date, but she felt as if their relationship was back on solid ground. She’d remembered all the reasons she’d fallen in love with him—his compassion, his strength, his generosity of spirit.
Whatever resentment she’d felt over the pregnancy had faded, too. She’d begun to embrace the blessing that had been given to them.
Oh, she still had her share of moments when she was angry about the choices she was faced with making, but in general she was too busy to spend much time dwelling on that. And, though she’d sworn to Noah that she’d never blamed him for any of this, she recognized that on some level she had. She’d let go of that anger, too, and accepted her own share of responsibility. She’d said that before, but it had been no more than giving lip service to it. Now the knowledge that she and Noah shared responsibility for this child had settled into her heart.
“What happened when you and Noah went to Chesapeake Shores?” Carrie asked over popcorn as they settled in on a Saturday night to watch an old movie musical marathon with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
“What makes you think anything happened?”
“You seem different. Happier and more at peace.” Carrie grinned. “And you’ve stopped looking at me as if I’ve stolen your favorite toy.”
Caitlyn frowned. “I never looked at you like that,” she protested.
“Oh, yes, you did. And I know the look, because I was always stealing your favorite toys when we were kids.”
Caitlyn thought back to what seemed like a million years ago when rivalries had sprung up over the most inconsequential things. “Come to think of it, you did, you little brat.”
Carrie laughed. “Now there’s the twin I know and love. Seriously, though, what happened with you and Noah that night at Brady’s?”
“We celebrated the baby. I told you that.”
“And I think that’s fantastic, but you didn’t set a wedding date. Why not? Why are you holding out?” She gave Caitlyn a questioning look. “I have to assume you’re the one who’s not ready. After all, Noah’s moving to Chesapeake Shores to be surrounded by O’Briens. That tells me he’s more than ready for marriage and a lifetime of meddling relatives.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “Brave man!”
“I know,” Caitlyn agreed, acknowledging her own sense of shock at his willingness to do that. “At first I thought he was nuts for even considering a move to the middle of the enemy camp, but then I realized that from his perspective all those people are allies. I’m the one they’re not so happy with at the moment.”
“You could change that with two words,” Carrie suggested. “Or even one.”
“Oh?”
“I do or even a simple yes would satisfy them. So, why aren’t you saying either one?”
Caitlyn had wondered about that herself. Why was she still holding out against what increasingly seemed to be her inevitable fate? “I don’t know,” she confessed softly. “I love Noah. And we’re having this baby. Getting married shouldn’t be this huge obstacle for me. It woul
d solve so much, not the least of which would be getting Grandpa Mick off my case.”
Carrie gave her a thoughtful look. “I do have one thought, if you’re ready for one more person to butt in.”
“Why not?” Caitlyn responded. She certainly wasn’t reaching any conclusions on her own. Pretty soon, she was going to have no choice but to accept her family’s opinion that she was just being stubborn because none of this had happened on her timetable.
“I think if you say yes, it will mean accepting that your goal is no longer an option, at least for now,” Carrie suggested. “I imagine that’s why you were so mad at me, too. I’m getting to do what you’d envisioned for yourself.”
“I’m definitely still in mourning for that dream,” Caitlyn agreed. “And yes, I envy you, no question about it. This is much bigger than stealing a toy, Carrie. Going to Africa will be some sort of lark for you. I was meant to help those villages. My whole identity, at least in my mind, was based on that. I made a commitment to those people to come back.”
“And we all admire you for that, me most of all,” Carrie told her. “But your dream doesn’t have to be dead. You need to stop looking at it that way.”
“How can I look at it any other way? Once I’m married and there’s a baby to consider, I’ll be trapped forever in Chesapeake Shores. It’s not what I bargained for.”
“Oh, stop whining,” Carrie said impatiently, shocking her. “You’re every bit the O’Brien that I am. We know we can make things turn out the way we want them to, even if it takes a little longer than we planned. If Noah truly loves you—and even I, after a few weeks, can see that he does—he’s going to do everything in his power to find a way for you to get whatever you need to be completely and totally fulfilled.”
“How? It’s not as if Africa is right around the corner. I can’t go off and leave my husband and a baby behind.”
“Are you still stuck on that?” Carrie asked even more impatiently. “Marriage and five kids didn’t stop Grandpa Mick from following his destiny.”
“And look how that turned out,” Caitlyn argued. “He and Grandma Megan were divorced for years. Nell raised Mom and her siblings. I don’t want to marry Noah and then wind up divorced because I was constantly running off to pursue this other passion of mine. Maybe I should just accept that the two things can’t be reconciled. That would save us all a lot of misery.”
The Christmas Bouquet Page 15