The Second Time Around

by Marie Ferrarella

  Laurel banked down her disappointment. She’d been hungry all afternoon, but now her appetite seemed to have deserted her even though she was eating one of her favorite meals. Being pregnant was for the birds, she thought moodily.

  “There’s a scary image,” she said as she picked at her meal.

  Lynda had been through all this by proxy three other times. It made her an expert of sorts. “It’ll level off, it always does,” she reminded her confidently. “At least you’ll have something to show for it at the end of your crying jags.” She sighed. “All I ever have is a stuffed-up nose.” Because the waiter had also brought their fortune cookies at the same time he’d brought their dinner, Lynda selected one and cracked it opened. “How original,” she murmured, crumpling the tiny paper.

  “What does it say?” Laurel wanted to know.

  “You will meet a tall, dark stranger who will sweep you off your feet. Right.” Her voice vibrated with cynicism.

  Well, this was as good a lead-in as any she could have hoped for, Laurel thought. It was now or never.

  “Speaking of which…”

  Lynda held her hand up, indicating a time-out until she swallowed what was in her mouth. “Come again?”

  “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Lynda rolled her eyes. “Oh God, Laurie, please tell me it’s not a blind date.”

  “No, he’s got twenty-twenty vision.” Her sister gave her a reproving look for the archaic joke. “And practically perfect everything else,” she added with conviction.

  She could see that, despite trying not to be, her sister was interested. “So what’s he doing on the market?” Lynda asked. “Is he some kind of a closet serial killer?”

  Why did everyone always assume that if a person wasn’t taken by the ripe old age of twenty-five, there had to be something wrong with them, some glaring flaw? Sometimes it was just a matter of the right person not being in the immediate vicinity.

  “There’s nothing in his closet except clothes and hangers…and shoes,” Laurel added with feeling.

  “You seem to know a lot about his closet.”

  “I sold him the house.” She knew she’d mentioned it to Lynda because the sale had been such a big deal. But in typical Lynda fashion, her sister hadn’t really heard her. There were times what she thought Lynda had to be an honorary male. “And Jared’s been retained to fix it up. He and Morgan are almost finished with it.”

  Putting down her fork, Lynda wiped her mouth. A skeptical look came into her eyes. She was not impressed. “You sold him a fixer-upper?”

  Laurel knew what her sister was thinking. That the man couldn’t afford the prices of the newer homes and had gotten one that was priced to sell quickly because the owner wanted to unload the property. “I sold him the castle.”

  “The castle?” Lynda echoed. “He bought the castle?” She took a sip of the by-now-cool tea. “He’s the one? What is he, some deluded prince?”

  Picking up the teapot, Laurel refreshed Lynda’s cup and then her own. She felt herself getting defensive for Robert. That would probably tickle him, she couldn’t help thinking. After all this time, she was still defending him. Against her sister this time instead of a bloody nose, but the end result was the same.

  “He liked the stonework on it. Listen, the castle’s unique and so is he.” She looked down at her full teacup and decided to pass, even though she’d just poured it. They had a long drive ahead of them before they reached Bedford and she was at that point where for every drop of tea she consumed, three more seemed to materialize within her bladder. She didn’t want to be forced to get off the freeway in search of a bathroom halfway through their trip back.

  Lynda, meanwhile, seemed to be mulling over a word she’d used. “How unique?” she finally asked.

  Ha, gotcha! Laurel could feel herself reeling her sister in. “Well, for starters, he transformed himself from a geek everyone picked on to a man whose name has appeared on the pages of Fortune 500.” She knew that for a fact because she’d checked.

  But Lynda had gotten hung up on an earlier word. “Geek, huh?”

  “He doesn’t look like what you would expect a geek to look like,” Laurel told her firmly. “As a matter of fact, Jeannie refers to him as Mr. Hunk.”

  Lynda snorted, popping a piece of the fortune cookie into her mouth. “Jeannie has Jonas as her frame of reference.”

  The fact that the woman was married to someone who reminded most people of a life-size toad didn’t alter the fact that Jeannie had an active fantasy life. Most likely it had even contributed to it.

  “Trust me, she’s called it this time.” Laurel paused a beat, wondering if volunteering this would help or hinder things, then decided that if Lynda did go out with Robert, she was going to find out anyway. “I went to school with him.”

  Fresh interest crossed Lynda’s fair-complected face. “Oh?”

  “He’s a nice guy,” she told Lynda. “His wife died a few years ago and I think he’s lonely. But selective,” she added for her sister’s benefit, “which is why he’s still single.”

  “Well, there go my chances.”

  Laurel sighed and shook her head. She opened the vast cavern that was her purse and took out a small mirror. Holding it up before her sister, she said, “Take a look at yourself, Lynda.” When Lynda averted her eyes, she repeated sharply, “Look at yourself.” It was now a command, not a suggestion. “You’re a beautiful woman.”

  Lynda pushed the mirror down. “If I’m so beautiful, why did Dean leave?”

  Laurel returned the mirror to her purse. “Ever think that might be Dean’s problem, not yours? That he doesn’t know what he wants and is just one of these people who goes through life, constantly dissatisfied, constantly looking for ‘something better’ to come up over the hill even when he has something that’s out of this world right there in his lap?”

  “You’re a lot nicer now than you were when we were growing up.” Her sister laughed softly, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “That’s because you were a pain then,” Laurel quipped.

  Finished with the scraps from her cookie and her meal, Lynda sat back in her chair, her eyes level with Laurel’s. “Okay, I’m game. When do I meet Mr. Terrific?”

  Yes!

  Laurel did her best to keep a poker face. “How about coming to dinner next Friday? I’m having him over for a home-cooked meal, something he said he prefers to restaurant food.” She crossed her fingers that Robert would accept the invitation when she actually had a chance to extend it to him.

  “Friday,” Lynda repeated slowly, thinking. Her work as a corporate attorney for a leading manufacturing company kept her fairly busy. “I’m not sure…”

  “Lynda,” she began warningly.

  Lynda held up her hands. “Okay, okay, barring a major problem at work, I’ll be there.”

  She wasn’t accepting any excuses. If she could get Robert to come, she was going to personally hog-tie Lynda and drag her to the house if her sister gave her any trouble. “Any problem at work on a Friday can wait until the following Monday.”

  “You know, maybe you haven’t changed that much since we were kids,” Lynda decided, a half smile playing on her lips. “You were always bossy.”

  “It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.”

  Lynda raised her hand, signaling the waiter for their check. “Ready to go home?” she asked Laurel.

  Laurel was more than ready, but there was still something she needed to do. “I’d better make a pit stop first.” She struggled out of the booth. Baby weight was making a slide out challenging.

  It’s only going to get worse.

  “This baby has made himself at home on top of my bladder and refuses to move.”

  “Himself,” Lynda echoed. “Then you know it’s a he?”

  “Not yet,” she admitted, but then the look of certainty entered her eyes. “But it’s a boy, like his brothers. I’d bet on it.”

  CHAPTER 20

&n
bsp; Finished with his breakfast, Jason rose from the table and took his plate and cup to the sink. Since Laurel’s unexpected condition had taken them by storm, he found himself doing things around the house just to try to make her life a little easier. It wasn’t something he’d done before, but this time around, it seemed like the way to go.

  Depositing the dishes, he paused to look at her. She was standing next to the sink, distracted. She seemed uneasy and oblivious to what was going on around her. He knew why. She was due for an amniocentesis this afternoon.

  “Want me to be there with you?” he asked.

  She turned to him, confused, and he nodded toward the calendar where she’d marked the appointment. That he even took notice of what was written there surprised her. She’d mentioned it to him in passing, but that was when she’d first made the appointment. She hadn’t expected him to retain anything about the conversation. Jason wasn’t into remembering things like that. Especially when it came to the baby. Most of the time, he avoided talking about their being new parents again. It was as if she was just gaining weight arbitrarily instead of being pregnant.

  “Can you?”

  Jason shrugged into his jacket, straightening his tie. As hard as it was for him to make peace with this turn of events, he knew how much it meant to Laurel to have him there. “It’ll take some shifting around, but I can make it.”

  She wanted to tell him that it was all right. That she was a big girl—bigger at this point than she was happy about—and that she could do this on her own. But he’d shown such little support that she jumped at the chance to have him with her. To again be that team they’d always been before. Besides, she did feel a little uneasy about this afternoon.

  All right, scared—she felt scared. The idea having to face a nurse equipped with a needle that doubled as a javelin, of playing Moby Dick to the woman’s Ahab, made her hands and feet turn icy cold and her stomach queasy.

  So she gave up the brave facade she always liked to keep up and nodded. “Yes, I’d like that.” Laurel took a deep breath, and then let it out, trying to steady her suddenly erratic pulse. “You know, I don’t really have to do this,” she told him. “There’s nothing in the rules that says I have to have this test done.”

  “Don’t you want to be sure that everything’s okay with the baby?”

  Guilt popped up. When he put it that way, it sounded so selfish on her part.

  Because it was.

  With a sigh, she nodded. She’d researched the procedure online to see if anything had changed since she’d had it done twenty-one years ago. There was a short video she could have done without. Now she couldn’t get the image of the oversize needle out of her head.

  “Yes, of course I do. I just don’t relish the idea of being harpooned.”

  Jason picked up his briefcase from the floor as he chuckled. “You’re not that big yet.”

  “‘Yet.’ You used the word yet,” she pointed out dejectedly. God, she’d forgotten how much she hated the outer trappings of this eventual miracle of birth. “It means I’m getting there.”

  “Of course you’re getting there. Laurel, you’re just four months pregnant, but you are going to get bigger.”

  It sounded like some kind of curse being heaped on her head. Laurel closed her eyes.

  “Hopefully not in the next two weeks.” When she opened her eyes again, she saw Jason watching her quizzically. “The wedding, remember? I have a mother-of-the-groom dress to fit into.”

  It was obvious that he didn’t take this nearly as seriously as she did. “Worse comes to worst, I have a pup tent I can throw over you.”

  She shook her head in wonder as she straightened his collar. “And to think, I fell in love with you for your sense of humor.”

  The grin he gave her was positively wicked. “As I recall, that wasn’t all you loved.”

  Laurel sniffed, pretending to ignore the comment. To ignore the memories of the passionate love they used to make before there were rings on their fingers and vows binding their souls. “I was as pure as the driven snow when I married you.”

  Instead of taking his leave, Jason paused for a minute. He cupped her cheek gently with his hand. The love he felt stirring within surprised him. He’d loved his wife for a very long time, but these rushes of emotion, the same dizzying feelings he’d experienced when he’d first fallen in love with Laurel, were unexpected and surprising. He found himself enjoying them.

  “As I recall, the snow was a little slushy as it was being driven.” He brushed his lips against hers. “You were a wildcat, Laurie.”

  “Were?” she echoed, raising an eyebrow.

  “My apologies. Still are,” he amended. And then he surprised them both as he took her into his arms and kissed her again, this time with more feeling. “My little wildcat.”

  The smile he received in response was bright enough to melt the aforementioned snow. “Thanks for the ‘little.’”

  He released her, laughing as he picked up his briefcase again. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Jason?” she called after him as he led the way to the front door. Morgan had left several minutes before for the construction site, so it was just the two of them in the house.

  Something in her voice had him turning around. “Yes?”

  She joined him at the door, but neither one of them opened it. “Are you having an affair?”

  His mouth dropped open. “What?”

  Laurel shrugged. “You’re different lately.” At first distant, then close for a while, then distant again. And now he was offering to come with her for the test, something she hadn’t even asked him to do because she didn’t want to feel any more abandoned than she already did. What was going on? “You weren’t like that during any of my other pregnancies,” she pointed out.

  He supposed he had been giving off mixed signals, but that was because he’d been feeling them himself. This was change he hadn’t bargained for and it had knocked the foundations out from beneath his carefully orchestrated world. “Maybe because, during all the other pregnancies, I was too rushed to appreciate what was happening.” He knew it was vague, but it was the best he could do. He didn’t want to admit to her that he was anything but confident about what lay ahead. She had enough to deal with. “Too busy to drink in the experience.”

  She nodded, as if considering his explanation. “So you’re not having an affair?”

  He searched her face, her eyes, trying to get at the truth. At times he could intuit what she was thinking. At other times, such as now, he hadn’t a clue. “Are you serious?”

  “Maybe,” she allowed, then raised her thumb and forefinger, holding them half an inch apart. “Just a little.” She dropped her hand to her side and told him the real reason for her bouts of insecurities. “I feel dumpy.”

  Instead of answering her, Jason turned her around so that she faced the mirror hanging adjacent to the front door. It allowed a view that went beyond her waist. Standing behind her, he kept his hands on her shoulders forcing her to look at her image.

  “If you think that’s dumpy,” he told her, “then maybe after you have the amniocentesis done, we should take you to Dr. Mayweather,” he mentioned the ophthalmologist they’d been seeing annually for several years now, “to have your eyes checked again.”

  Still looking into the mirror, he watched the smile blossom on his wife’s lips. Laurel turned around to face him. The smile had entered her eyes.

  “I love you,” she told him.

  Husbands, one, he thought, pleased and relieved. “Good to know. Now I’ve got to get out of here.” He had his hand on the doorknob. “Two o’clock, right?”

  “Two o’clock,” Laurel confirmed. “Oh, and by the way.” Her words stopped what was about to be a clean getaway. Jason glanced at her over his shoulder, waiting. “I’m having Lynda and Robert to dinner this Friday.”

  “Robert?” Jason repeated the name. For a moment, it meant nothing to him, brought no images of anyone to mind. And then he remembered.
“That’s the guy you sold that white elephant to, isn’t it?” He opened the door and walked out.

  Laurel followed, then locked the door in her wake. “The castle,” she corrected, “not ‘white elephant.’ But yes, that’s the guy. Robert Manning. He’s the guy whose property your brother and Morgan are working on,” she threw in.

  Jason had his own theory about this little turn of events. “Feeling guilty?”

  She drew herself up to her full height, which mercifully was still more than her width. “No, I don’t feel guilty.”

  “Then you’re matchmaking.”

  She bristled at the old-fashioned word. “I’m merely bringing together two people who might not have the opportunity to meet otherwise.”

  Jason scrutinized her face. “And this would be a good thing because…?”

  Despite the fact that she could almost literally feel Lynda’s pain at being alone at this stage of her life, she wasn’t undertaking the matchup lightly. “Because I think they’re right for each other.”

  “Then you are matchmaking,” he said with finality.

  She began to protest, but knew that there was no winning with him when Jason took that tone. Besides, arguing would only succeed in making them both late.

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  As he went to the driveway, he felt oddly tolerant, given his general feelings about things like this. They were damn uncomfortable to say the least.

  “What I want to call it is meddling, but you’d probably hit me if I did.”

  Laurel beamed. “You know me so well.”

  He paused to look at her for a long moment over the hood of his car. She couldn’t read his expression. “Only sometimes, Laurie, only sometimes.”

  She wanted to ask him what he meant by that but decided to let it go for the time being. He was coming to the amniocentesis and he’d agreed to having Robert and Lynda over for dinner on Friday. That was enough for now.

  CHAPTER 21