What a Girl Wants

by Jennifer Snow

  “What movie?”

  “Ethan!” Jim’s voice called from the fire hall below.

  “He’s not home,” Ethan called through the open front door, where a warm night breeze blew into the apartment.

  “Sorry to interrupt your evening,” he said, appearing in the doorway, “but I need you to sign off on the weekly inspection reports. They are due tomorrow morning.”

  Ethan groaned as he lifted Bailey’s legs from his lap and stood. “And this is why you shouldn’t live where you work,” he said. “Be right back.”

  “Sorry, Bailey,” Jim said.

  “It’s no problem. Maybe now I’ll actually get to watch some of this movie,” she teased.

  She hit the play button and settled back against the cushions on the sofa, pulling her long hair out from under her and letting it drape over the side. The apartment didn’t have air-conditioning and the heat they were creating inside the small space was intense.

  “I’m so sorry.” A familiar voice behind her made her jump.

  Bailey sprang to her feet. “Emily?” She blinked, refusing to believe the sight in front of her. What was Emily doing here?

  Emily’s expression of surprise turned to relief as she entered the apartment. “Oh, thank heavens, it’s just you. For a second, I thought Ethan was with someone.”

  He was with someone. Her. She hesitated, unsure of what to say, grateful for the appearance of Ethan in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here, Em?” he asked, his voice void of emotion.

  “Ethan, hi. I tried to call....” When he remained silent, Emily glanced fleetingly from one to the other.

  “I noticed. What are you doing here?” he repeated.

  “I needed to talk to you and you weren’t answering my calls, so—”

  “You flew here?” Bailey interjected. This couldn’t be happening. How was it even possible that one of the best moments in her life could be interrupted this way, right now?

  “It was important,” Emily said, moving into the room.

  Clearly. Bailey turned to face Ethan, who seemed frozen to the spot, staring blankly at his ex. His lack of expression made his feelings hard to read and her heart fell to the floor.

  “Can we talk?” Emily asked after an excruciatingly long silence that was actually just seconds.

  Ethan folded his arms across his chest and the color came back to his cheeks. “Go ahead.” Entering the apartment, he took the television remote and turned off the movie.

  Emily glanced at Bailey. “I was hoping you’d be alone.”

  Of course she was. No doubt she’d been hoping to find him alone, depressed and still in love with her. Well, he wasn’t alone or depressed...and dammit, she wished she could say he wasn’t still in love with Emily, but the tension filling the air between them was excruciatingly obvious.

  “I’ll go,” Bailey said. What choice did she have? She wanted to tell Emily to leave. That she was too late, but it wasn’t her place.

  “No, Bailey, you don’t have to.... Whatever Emily has to say, she can say in front of you.”

  Bailey cringed. While her mind was more at ease after Ethan’s insistence that she stay, she wasn’t sure she was ready to witness whatever was about to happen.

  “Ethan...” Emily crossed the room and reached toward him.

  Bailey looked away, but she heard the sound of the armchair slide against the wooden floor as Ethan backed into it and away from Emily. “You know what, Emily, whatever it is can wait. Please leave.”

  “Ethan, I’m pregnant.”

  * * *

  FROM THE CORNER of his eye, Ethan saw Bailey head toward the front door. Where was she going? And what exactly had Emily just said? He wanted to race after Bailey, tell her not to go, but his feet were frozen in place as he stared blankly at Emily. What was she saying?

  “Say something.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?” He glanced at her stomach. She’d definitely gained weight. Her abdomen stretched against the thin fabric of her lacy white tank top, making a tiny bulge above her loose-fitting jeans. But she couldn’t be that far along. He did the math back to the last time....

  “The baby is yours,” she said, a desperate look in her pale blue eyes.

  He blinked twice and a pool of sweat gathered on his back under his T-shirt. The baby was his? How could... How was that... He needed to sit. Slowly, he lowered himself into the chair behind him and rested his head in his hands.

  “Ethan...”

  “Shh... Please, just don’t talk.” He needed a minute to digest what she’d just said. Pregnant. His baby. Bailey gone.

  Emily moved closer and sat at his feet on the floor. She touched his knee and he flinched. Jumping up out of the chair, he paced the living room floor. “How far along are you?”

  “Six months,” she said, raising her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

  “You don’t even look pregnant.”

  “They say for a first baby, I probably won’t get very big until the last trimester.”

  “They?”

  “The doctors in Miami at the women’s prenatal ward.”

  “So you’ve been to a doctor....” He remembered his sister’s pregnancy with the boys. At six months, Melody had already heard the babies’ heartbeat. He stopped. “You’ve heard...its heartbeat?” Before she could answer, he swung around, searching the room. “Where’s Bailey?” His mind reeled and he couldn’t think straight.

  Emily struggled to push herself up off the floor and slowly approached him. “She left. And yes, I’ve heard the heartbeat.”

  “But I... How did this happen?”

  “Don’t you remember? A week before...”

  He put a hand up to stop her. Of course he remembered. It had been one of the memories he’d clung to in those first few months after she’d left. “But that was...”

  “Six months ago.”

  A realization struck him. “What about Greg Harrison?”

  Her gaze fell to the floor. “That ended a few months ago.”

  About the time she’d started placing calls to him, he suspected. “When he found out about the baby...and me?”

  Emily nodded.

  Ethan grew angry. His pacing resumed. The man was a piece of work. He came to town and made a play for Ethan’s girlfriend and then left her after she revealed she was pregnant. Of all the low, slimy moves.

  Emily stepped forward and placed a hand on his arm. “Please stop pacing. You’re making me dizzy.”

  He was making her dizzy? Did she hear herself? She’d come into his home and turned his entire world upside down in a matter of minutes and he was making her dizzy. When he turned to face her, he frowned. She did look pale and her hand was resting on her belly. His baby was inside there. The thought nearly set him on his behind.

  “Are you okay?”

  “This nausea is killing me.... Do you have any soda crackers?”

  “No, I don’t...”

  “Cheerios?”

  “Yes,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen. Taking a bowl from the cupboard, he opened the pantry and pulled out the cereal. His hand shook and the little round Os littered his counter as he filled the bowl. “Milk?” he called, still trying to grasp the reality of the situation. His ex-girlfriend was in his apartment pregnant with his baby and eating Cheerios. He opened the fridge. And he was out of milk.... Of all times...

  “No, just dry is fine,” she answered.

  Returning to the living room, he found her lying on the couch, her back resting against the pillow Bailey had just been leaning on. Bailey. He longed to go find her, but he had to deal with this first. He handed her the bowl. “Do you need anything else?”

&nb
sp; “No, thank you.” She ate several Cheerios slowly, then she sat up and patted the couch next to her. “Please, sit.”

  Ethan folded his arms across his chest. “I’m okay here,” he said, locked in place across the room from her. He didn’t want to get too close. He had no idea what to say or how to act. He wanted to be furious with her. Tell her to leave. That it was too late to just waltz back in and claim what she obviously thought was still hers. But one look at her tired, frightened expression and he softened. She was having a baby. His baby. And she was alone.

  “I’m sorry. I did try to tell you sooner.”

  He nodded. “So what happens now?” He hoped she had the answers, because he sure didn’t.

  “I was hoping you would consider giving us another chance,” she whispered.

  Another chance. The one thing he’d been longing for...craving for so long. And now here it was. Too late and too complicated. He nodded slowly. “And you’re moving back home?” It wasn’t really a question. Of course she would move back to Brookhollow....

  But she was shaking her head. “Um...no. I’m going back to Miami. I took a two-week leave to come back. It was the only way I could get you to talk to me.”

  “You’re leaving again? But I thought you just said you wanted to give us another chance.”

  “I do.”

  She did, but she expected him to move to Miami. “You want me to move?”

  “I have a great job in Miami, Ethan. They know about the baby and they are offering a paid three-month maternity leave. And my apartment is a two bedroom...with room for a nursery.” She paused and scanned his loft apartment. “We couldn’t have a baby here.”

  “There are other homes in Brookhollow, Emily.” He couldn’t believe this. She really wasn’t moving home. She’d made up her mind...and his apparently. “You have family here. Won’t your parents want to be near their grandchild?” He knew his would. His chest hurt and he struggled to fill his lungs with air. Was he really even having this conversation with her?

  “They will understand. We’ll visit. They can visit. My life is in Miami now.”

  Her life may be. But his life was here in Brookhollow. How many times had they had this conversation in the past? But now she had an edge. If he wanted to be part of his child’s life, it had to be in Miami.

  Setting the Cheerios aside, she stood and crossed the room toward him. Forcing his arms away from his chest, she wedged herself closer to him, then taking his hand, placed it on her stomach. “We can make this work,” she whispered.

  A lump formed in his throat as he thought about what she was asking. She expected him to give up his apartment, his job, his family, Bailey. Oh, God, Bailey. He couldn’t breathe as he thought about having to tell her. After so many years of being blind to the possibility of the two of them together, he’d finally discovered a real love...only to have it disappear in seconds.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FOUR SETS OF unblinking eyes stared at him in his grandmother’s ten-by-ten room in the senior’s complex. The members of his immediate family sat, openmouthed, expressions of disbelief plastered over their faces. Maybe telling them all together like this had been a mistake. The only one who wasn’t there was his sister. Melody had had to work, missing the big announcement he’d just laid on the rest of his family. It figured that the one person he knew he could count on to support his decision, despite her dislike of his ex, couldn’t be there. He cleared his throat, but waited, knowing his family was processing. In a few seconds, he’d be wishing for the silence.

  His mother, June, spoke first, but it wasn’t to him. “Are you okay, Willa?” she asked the older lady, who was perched on the edge of her rocking chair.

  Willa nodded, then surprised everyone by saying, “I think this may be my fault.”

  “Mom, that’s ridiculous. How on earth could you have had anything to do with this?” Ethan’s father turned from staring at Ethan to look at his mother.

  “I wanted a great-granddaughter.”

  “Grandma, that’s not why this happened,” Ethan reassured her. “Emily is already six months pregnant.”

  The woman nodded emphatically. “Yes, it was about six months ago when it happened.”

  “What happened?” Jim asked, finally joining the conversation.

  “Claudette Jansen and I saw a fortune teller in Somerville with her daughter Jude. I wished for this....” The older woman looked pale.

  Ethan moved forward and touched his grandmother’s shoulder. “Grams, that’s not why this happened, I can assure you.”

  “I feel dizzy,” Willa said, closing her eyes.

  Willa might be a hypochondriac, but even he could see this had shaken her. He’d hoped she’d be happy to hear the news. He hadn’t meant to unnerve her.

  “Boys, why don’t you go get your grandmother a drink from the nurse’s station down the hall?” June suggested, helping Willa out of her chair and into her bed.

  Jim and Ethan left the room, and the moment the door closed behind them, Jim punched his shoulder. Hard.

  “What was that for?” Ethan asked, rubbing the tender spot.

  “For upsetting Grams,” he said, then hit him again.

  “Ow, stop. What’s wrong with you?”

  “How could you have let this happen?”

  “It wasn’t exactly planned, Jim,” Ethan mumbled.

  “And you’re sure...”

  “Jim, don’t even go there.” His voice was hard when he turned to his brother. Of course the thought had crossed his mind ever so briefly the evening before, but he hadn’t asked. If Emily said he was the father, he believed her.

  “I don’t understand what took her so long to tell you,” he said as they made their way down the hall of the west wing of the building.

  “She tried.”

  “Not hard enough.”

  “Look, Jim, I know how you feel about her, but what I need from you right now is support.” He stopped and faced his brother. “Can you do that?”

  Jim hesitated. “I don’t know. I need more information first.”

  “That’s fair.” If the roles were reversed, Ethan would probably feel the same. He folded his arms across his chest and prepared to answer Jim’s questions the best he knew how.

  “You’re sure she won’t consider moving home?”

  “Her job in Miami is offering paid maternity and the company has its own day care center for employees. She says she’s not interested in being a stay-at-home mom. If I want to be involved, I have to move to Miami.” Ethan took a glass from the desk and filled it with water from the dispenser in the hallway.

  “What about your job at the fire hall?”

  “Adams is next in line for the promotion to captain. I guess that’s the way it would go.”

  “And you’re okay with that? Walking away from the job you love? The home you love... Your family.”

  “Jim, put yourself in my shoes. If the roles were reversed, what would you do?” He knew the answer and so did Jim.

  Jim sighed. “Fine. I guess you really don’t have many options this time.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay, but now for my toughest question—what about Bailey?”

  What about Bailey? What could he do about hurting the woman he was falling in love with? The choice he was being forced to make meant that someone was going to get hurt. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have an answer myself.”

  * * *

  LATER THAT EVENING, Ethan knocked on the front door of his sister’s bungalow-style home. Melody’s Chevrolet minivan sat in the driveway of the quiet cul-de-sac neighborhood and the sound of the boys playing in the living room came through the open windows. The television blared in the background and the telephone was ringing. He tried the door handle, but it was locked. Tha
t didn’t surprise him. As the only daughter of the town’s police chief, Melody knew to always keep her family safe. He waited, then knocked again.

  His sister answered a second later. She was wearing her Play Hard Sports smock from her day job, her cordless home phone resting between her shoulder and ear while she mixed what looked like mashed potatoes in a large salad bowl. She gave him a wary look, but nodded with her head, gesturing him inside. “What do you mean something came up? You’re thirteen.... A date?” She spoke into the phone, rolling her eyes at Ethan.

  He shut the front door behind him and removed his running shoes before entering the living room.

  “Uncle Ethan!” David rushed to him.

  Josh waved from the sofa where he was glued to a Nintendo video game. Controller in hand, he navigated a race car down a dirt track on the family’s television.

  “Hey, guys,” Ethan greeted.

  “What are you doing here?” David asked.

  “I was just in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by,” he said, ruffling David’s hair.

  “Fine, I’ll figure something out,” Melody said, as she set the phone back in the cradle in the hallway. She rubbed her forehead and stared at the ceiling for a long moment before turning to him. “You look about as worn out and exhausted as I feel. Coffee?”

  “Do you have anything a little stronger?”

  “No, but I have an emergency stash of rocky road ice cream...and while normally I wouldn’t share that with anyone, I’ll make an exception this time.”

  “Honestly, sis, it would just be wasted on me.” Not even an emergency stash of ice cream could make his most recent problems disappear. “Coffee’s good enough.”

  Melody turned to the boys. “Guys, why don’t you play in the yard until dinner’s ready, okay?”

  “But I’m almost finished this level....” Josh argued.

  Melody looked more than a little defeated.

  Ethan jumped in where he wouldn’t normally, but he needed to talk to his sister. “Hey, guys, why don’t you both go outside and practice for a bit, then I’ll come play for a while,” he suggested, picking up their soccer ball near the door and tossing it to David.