A Baby for the Bachelor

by Victoria Pade

  Her words from the night before. It made her smile again.

  “I just wanted to punch that man!” Marti said, unwrapping a package of peanut butter cups and taking a bite.

  Noah grinned. “I can’t believe it—you’re really eating chocolate before dinner?”

  “Hey, you bought it. Besides, this one has peanut butter in it—that’s protein.”

  “I thought you were kidding about eating candy instead of pizza. I bought them as a joke.”

  “That’ll teach you.”

  “Give me the rest of that before you polish it all off,” he pretended to chastise, moving the remainder of the candy bars out of the way as she ate the second peanut butter cup. “You can’t feed my baby candy.”

  “I can. And I do. I can’t have wine, but I can have chocolate and it’s a good thing—wine I can go without, but never, ever, chocolate!”

  He tossed another bar on the table in front of her the way a zookeeper might throw a steak to a ferocious lion. “Do what you need to,” he said.

  Marti laughed and slid the candy bar back. “I’m okay for now,” she assured. “But I still can’t believe what that man said about my grandmother, and that he bought that barn out from under us. You weren’t lying when you said he was a horrible person.”

  “Through and through.”

  “How could Gram possibly have ever had a crush on him?”

  Noah shrugged. “Hector’s never had a shortage of female company, believe it or not. There was a long line of women that he cheated on his wife with. Apparently when it suits his purposes, he can show different colors.”

  “And getting Gram to sell him that land obviously suited his purposes,” Marti muttered. “But I wasn’t going to talk any more about that,” she added to remind herself.

  Aiding that cause, their pizza arrived. It was almost as big as the table itself and piled high with toppings. The waitress served them each a slice before leaving them to eat.

  “I feel the stress draining away already,” Marti joked after her first bite.

  “Good?” Noah asked.

  “Wonderful,” Marti answered honestly.

  “That’s a relief—after I ordered it I wondered if you had any weird pregnancy cravings or if there were things you couldn’t stand to eat or smell or something. I’ve heard that can happen.”

  “Eggs,” she said, almost gagging on the word.

  After another bite of his slice, Noah said, “So, dizzy spells and the unmentionable food—is pregnancy causing any other problems for you? Morning sickness or anything?”

  Marti smiled again. “I sleep a lot,” she said. “More than I ever have in my life. But I’m told that’s normal.”

  He shrugged one of those broad shoulders. “I couldn’t say one way or another. But you’ve seen a doctor, right? Everything seems okay?”

  “I’ve seen a doctor—twice already—and yes, everything so far is fine.”

  “And you’re…at peace with being pregnant, having a baby?”

  “At peace?” Marti asked, confused.

  “Do you have doubts or regrets? Do you hate that this has happened? Do you feel like you’ve completely accepted it…”

  It was a strange question and, like talking to him the night before, she had the sense that there was something behind it.

  “Are you worried about that?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said as if anyone would be.

  Maybe they would be, Marti thought, giving him the benefit of the doubt and deciding to simply answer his question.

  “I can’t say I don’t have any regrets—this isn’t a situation anyone wishes herself into. Or one I ever thought I’d be in. But yes, I’d say I’ve completely accepted it and no, I don’t have doubts about my decision to have the baby. It’s…well, it’s a step forward for me—that’s how I’m looking at it. An affirmation of life. When moving forward and having something life-affirming to make that happen was what I needed.”

  But getting any more deeply into that would mean getting into her own baggage and she wasn’t ready for that. So she turned the tables on him and said, “What about you? Doubts, regrets, hate that this has happened?”

  He didn’t seem to need to think about that—or maybe he already had—because he shook his head as he finished the bite of pizza he was working on and then said, “I’m with you—not an ideal situation. But the most important thing now is just to make the best of it. And I want you to know that I’m here for you—anything I can do, anything you need, all you have to do is say the word.”

  He’d made that apparent when an offhand remark had netted her a slew of candy bars.

  It was sweet of him, though. And nice to have someone offering what she would have expected of Jack had she and Jack gotten to this point.

  “So you’ll keep me in chocolate?” she teased.

  “A constant supply,” he promised.

  “That might require a second job.”

  “Maybe I can get one with Home-Max when it opens.”

  “If it opens now that we don’t have a site,” Marti said.

  “There are other empty buildings around here. I know someone who wants to sell a section of storefronts right on Main Street. He hates Hector so much he’d never sell to him. He’d probably be more inclined to sell to you just to spite Hector. You could look into knocking down walls to combine the space. And I’m great with knocking down walls, so that could be my chocolate job.”

  “Problems solved all the way around,” Marti joked again. “But seriously, will you put me in touch with the owner of the storefronts?”

  “Tomorrow.” Noah took his second slice of pizza and said, “Is that part of your job for Home-Max—procurer of property?”

  “That sounds bad—like I’m the property pimp,” she said with a laugh. “But no, not necessarily. Ry, Wyatt and I share all jobs pretty equally, including finding a site or land to build on when we decide to open a new store.”

  “Have you always been into hardware?”

  He’d clearly intended that one to have a double entendre and Marti laughed.

  “Always,” she said emphatically, playing along.

  “As a little girl you wanted hammers and pliers instead of dolls?”

  The innuendo was gone with that and Marti realized he was genuinely interested.

  She didn’t mind. “No, as a little girl I was all girl—I had dolls and an amazing playhouse and I tormented the dog by putting her in dresses.”

  “Even with two brothers, you weren’t a tomboy?”

  “I could hold my own with them, too. I went through bicycle tires faster than either Ry or Wyatt because I rode so hard. I could pitch a baseball better than either of them. And they learned early not to mess with me or they’d get back twice as much grief as they dished out.”

  Noah grinned at that notion. “I’ll bet you got away with more because you were the only girl, too—in my family our parents always thought my sisters were the innocent victims even when they weren’t, just because they were girls.”

  Marti smiled. “I admit I took some advantage of that. Once in particular, when my brothers dared me to put a lit cherry bomb in the refrigerator to see if it would go off in the cold. I blew up the whole inside—food and all—and ruined a nearly new fridge. Since they had the cherry bombs to start with, they got the blame and they still haven’t let me live that one down.”

  Again Noah grinned at her story. “Other than that, did you get along with your brothers when you were kids?”

  “Oh, yeah. Maybe it’s the triplet thing—you did know we’re triplets, didn’t you?”

  “I’d heard.”

  “Well, triplets or not, I don’t know any siblings who were closer than we were, and still are. We worked together in the family hardware stores when we were kids and hung out with each other. We work together now, live near each other in Missoula, we even take vacations together when we can. And we’re always there for each other—good times and bad.”

  �
��Have there been bad times?”

  He was definitely fishing, but she still wasn’t ready to let him get to know that much about her, so she said, “Gram’s mental health issues are bad. Wyatt’s wife and baby dying—that was bad. And I’ve had some bad of my own. But as I said, we get through everything together.”

  Noah nodded, seeming to concede that she wasn’t going to give him more than that yet. Then he said, “So how PO’d are your brothers going to be at me when they find out that I’m actually responsible for getting their unmarried sister pregnant?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said frankly. “Truthfully, even the artificial insemination idea didn’t go over all that well—you probably noticed that on Friday. Wyatt is trying to keep his feelings more under wraps than Ry—Ry has always been more outspoken. But when I told them that story they both sort of…recoiled. So neither of them is comfortable with it. I guess it’s possible they could be happy to find out I made that up. But the whole one-night stand with a stranger thing? That’s going to shock them. They know that just isn’t like me.”

  And she wasn’t looking forward to telling them. Especially not since they’d loved Jack almost as much as she had. She wasn’t eager to see how disappointed they were going to be to find out that she’d slept with someone else—someone she hadn’t even known—eight months after their best friend’s death…

  Noah must have sensed her dread of telling her brothers because he said, “Would it make it easier on you if we come up with a story? Like that we met a long time ago and have been secretly seeing each other?”

  “That would actually be worse and there’s no way they’d believe it,” she said without telling him why. “On the other hand, they might be understanding,” she allowed then, considering some of the unlike-himself behavior that had come out of Wyatt’s grief and the fact that Ry and Marti had both been through it with him and not held it against him. Maybe they wouldn’t hold this against her.

  “I guess it’s just hard to say how they’ll react,” she said, getting back to Noah’s original question. “Wyatt seems to like you, though—that doesn’t hurt anything.”

  “Do you have plans for when to tell them?”

  “Just when it seems opportune. And it’s probably better to tell them when they’re together.”

  Noah nodded again. “I’ll leave it up to you whether or not you want me to be with you when the time comes. I can take the heat if you do, so don’t let that be a factor.”

  “You think you can take on both of my brothers at once?” she teased him again.

  Noah didn’t take the bait, though. He just smiled, unperturbed by the possibility of her brothers’ anger but showing no bravado—two more things that appealed to her.

  But she reminded herself that they were there to get to know each other, not to find anything appealing or attractive, so she tried to curb it by taking her eyes off of him to push away her plate.

  “I think you overestimated how much pizza I can eat even under stress,” she said with a glance at what remained of the enormous pie.

  “It’s great left over. And cold. For breakfast.”

  Marti didn’t know why, but the pizza she’d enjoyed only moments before suddenly looked very unappetizing. All that sausage and pepperoni and salami and cheese and those shriveled vegetables and congealing grease…

  “Okay, maybe I’m having a problem with eggs and the idea of cold, leftover meat for breakfast,” she said, making a face to go with her queasy stomach. “You’d better take it.”

  “You could reheat it.”

  “That’s okay,” she assured him, trying to wash away the nausea with a drink of water, looking anywhere but at that pizza in front of her and trying not to breathe too deeply so she couldn’t smell it.

  “Not too okay,” Noah said then. “You’re looking a little green around the gills.”

  “I think I ate more than I should have,” she managed weakly and only after swallowing hard.

  “Maybe we should get you home.”

  “Maybe we should. Maybe I should wait outside,” she added, grabbing her purse and making a dash for the door and some fresh air.

  Through the windows at the front of the restaurant Marti saw Noah call their waitress over to box the remainder of the pizza. While the waitress was doing that he put the candy bars in the bag he must have gotten when he’d bought them. Then he paid the bill and came outside.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, sounding concerned.

  “Better,” she said because it was true—her stomach was beginning to settle. “But I don’t think I can be anywhere near that pizza.”

  “No problem,” he said, setting the box in the flatbed of his truck before opening the passenger door for her.

  “Sorry,” she apologized when he’d closed her door, rounded the truck’s front end and joined her to start the engine and pull away from the restaurant.

  As they drove down Main Street he pointed out the empty storefronts he thought she might be interested in for Home-Max, and that also helped to get her mind off her stomach. Before she knew it they were back at her grandmother’s house and she felt fine again.

  “Let me walk you all the way inside,” Noah offered as they neared the front door.

  “That’s okay. The wave has passed. I’m even considering another candy bar before bed,” she told him in a voice steady enough to be convincing.

  He handed her the bag and didn’t insist on going inside. But as they stood facing each other in the glow of the porch light he studied her as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her.

  “Really, I’m all right. It was just some pregnancy weirdness. No big deal,” she insisted.

  “I’ve never seen anybody look so sick so fast.”

  “Pregnancy weirdness,” she repeated. Then, to get him off the subject, she said, “Thanks again for taking me to meet Hector Tyson.”

  Noah smiled wryly. “You’re thanking me for taking you to meet someone who gave you a hard time and insulted your grandmother?”

  “I am. I needed to touch base with him, and now that I have I know what we’re dealing with. And it was good that you were there as backup when he attacked.”

  It occurred to her suddenly just how much she actually did appreciate that Noah had been there, especially when she realized how much worse the situation would likely have become without him.

  She looked deeper into his dark eyes and said, “I really did appreciate it.”

  His smile went slightly lopsided, as if she were embarrassing him, and he said, “I’m glad to help.”

  He reached out and took her by the arms then, a friendly, supportive gesture, as if to only let her know he genuinely was there for her. But the minute those strong, callused hands came into contact with her bare skin, that contact became something more significant.

  Marti felt it. She knew Noah did, too, because his grip tightened just enough to add a hint of intimacy and his thumbs began a little massaging motion.

  She also saw in his expression that gears had been switched.

  He was thinking about kissing her—she knew it as surely as she knew she was thinking about having him kiss her.

  But would he do it?

  She wanted him to. She didn’t understand it, and she again felt guilty and disloyal for it. But somewhere inside her head there was a voice saying: Kiss me…Kiss me…

  Then he did.

  But it was so not what she’d had in mind.

  He pulled her toward him and he pressed his warm, soft mouth to her forehead.

  Her forehead, not her lips!

  She swallowed hard but this time it wasn’t to keep her dinner down, it was to keep something else entirely at bay—the urge to tip her chin and kiss him for real as he lingered there, the scent of a clean, woodsy cologne just making her want him to kiss her all the more.

  But that wasn’t what was going on between them now, she reminded herself. This wasn’t Denver. They weren’t drunk. They couldn’t claim to be carrie
d away by the moment. This was the real world, they were in an awkward predicament working hard to just get acquainted.

  She swallowed again and drew back, though not enough to pull away, only enough to tilt her head and look up at him again, from a much closer vantage point.

  But still Noah didn’t take the hint. He drew back, too, let go of her arms and took a step away from her.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, as if even that kiss hadn’t happened. Or wasn’t important enough to comment on.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she parroted, fighting to keep her voice level and free of the disappointment that was running through her.

  Then Noah turned around and went back to his truck, and Marti went inside, closed the door and wilted against it.

  What was it about that man?

  He wasn’t Jack. He wasn’t anything like Jack. Noah was tall where Jack had barely been five-ten. Noah was laid-back where Jack had been like an energetic, overgrown kid. Noah was dark where Jack had been blond and blue-eyed. Noah worked quietly and methodically with his hands where Jack had been a fast-talking, hit-it-with-everything-he-had salesman. The two men were polar opposites.

  And yet that didn’t seem to matter because something about Noah just kept pulling her toward him in spite of herself and the feelings she still had for Jack. In spite of grief and good sense. In spite of the fact that she hardly knew Noah. And she didn’t know what to do about it.

  It seemed as if she should fight it.

  Shouldn’t she?

  Or should she just go with the flow since she was already carrying Noah’s baby?

  She honestly didn’t know. It was all just so confusing.

  And it didn’t help when one other thing occurred to her as she pushed away from the door and headed up the steps to her bedroom.

  She’d thought that alcohol had played the biggest role in that night in Denver. But here she was now, wishing that she was still out on the porch with Noah.

  That he was taking her into his arms, holding her close, kissing her until her lips were raw.

  And unless she was mistaken, she wanted it even more now than she had at any point that night in Denver.