Thirteen
“They’re okay.” Paula was peeking out of the kitchen window overlooking the deck.
“You mean Dad isn’t strangling Zach or freezing him out completely?”
“Nope.” Paula returned to the living room with two mugs of tea. “They’re measuring.”
“Measuring...do I want to ask what?”
“The deck, sweetheart.” Paula handed over a mug.
“Oh, that.”
Her mother sat on the dilapidated couch next to her, placing a comforting hand on Pen’s knee. “This seems very sudden.”
“Three months is one quarter of the year. It’s not that sudden.” Pen held her tea close to her lips. She hadn’t meant to sound so defensive.
“Three months is how long you’ve been pregnant. When did you meet him?”
“I told you. When I lived here. That’s been years ago.” Pen lifted her thumbnail and nibbled. Her mother’s serious expression remained. “Yes. Okay, it was sudden.”
“But you’re in love.”
Thank goodness her mother didn’t put a question mark at the end of that sentence. Pen didn’t like to lie. She smiled instead. No, she and Zach weren’t in love. What they had wasn’t ever supposed to be about love. She couldn’t deny she felt close to him—and that she liked him a whole lot.
When she thought of her baby, a worrisome thought niggled its way forward. Would her son or daughter grow up thinking love was a fairy tale?
No, she decided in an instant.
Pen would show her child love, and Zach would, too. Romantic love was avoidable. She thought back through her past boyfriends and wasn’t sure she’d ever been in love herself. There’d always been an obstacle, an excuse she’d found to keep from getting in too deep.
Maybe because she’d arranged many false marriages and engagements for publicity and had become the ultimate skeptic. Or maybe the idea of giving in and being someone’s all meant she’d be at risk to lose it all.
With a child on the way, she couldn’t afford to be selfish.
A pair of low male laughs carried on the Chicago wind and into the living room and Penelope and Paula exchanged glances.
“Are they...?” Pen started.
Paula blinked, then smiled. “I think they are.”
Zach and Pen’s baby would know love—so much of it, he or she would never want for more.
But as she made that empty assurance to herself Pen wondered if she could settle for the same.
* * *
Louis not only liked to talk about houses and building, he was also a Dallas Cowboys fan.
Go fucking figure.
Zach ended up at the picnic table drinking beers and yapping with Pen’s father until well after midnight.
“I should go up,” Louis said. He cast a glance at an upstairs window. “Paula waits for me.”
How...nice. Zach’s parents got along fine, but he didn’t remember his mother ever waiting on his dad, or his dad cutting anything short to go to her.
Louis stood and Zach stood with him. “Thanks for letting us stay.”