Rachel Gibson - Not Another Bad Date

“What?”

“No!”

“Yep. Twins, and Zach believes I got pregnant on purpose to trap him into marriage.”

“Jerk.”

“Ass.”

Clare reached for Adele’s hand. “You would never do that. If he thinks so, then he is unworthy of you.”

Adele smiled and squeezed Clare’s fingers. “Thank you.”

“What are your plans?” Lucy asked.

Adele shrugged and lifted her gaze to the dark windows above Lucy’s head. Outside, fat snowflakes floated toward the ground and blanketed the earth in virgin white. It was the first weekend in January. New Year. New snow. New life.

“You know we’ll help you in any way that we can.” Lucy spoke for all of them.

“I know.” She looked at her friends who were so important to her. The four of them were as close as family. They’d been through a lot together and shared their writing and heartache and joy. She loved them like they were her family, but a big chunk of her heart, her life, wasn’t here anymore. It was more than a thousand miles away. With Sheri and Kendra and Harris. And Zach. She wouldn’t raise two children so far away from their father. It wouldn’t be fair to them. Zach might be fine with having his children live several states from him. That’s how he’d raised Tiffany until three years ago, but it wasn’t okay with Adele. She hadn’t gotten pregnant by herself, and she wasn’t going to raise these babies by herself. Once the babies were born, she and Zach would have to work out custody. She couldn’t ask him to uproot and move from Texas. That wasn’t fair to Tiffany. Adele would have to move home, and the thought of leaving her friends added another heavy layer to her sadness.

“How do you feel?” Lucy asked. “You look tired.”

“I am tired. I sleep a lot, and I wake up tired. On the plane here, I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and I guess it’s normal.” She’d spent her time the past two days reading and staring at the ultrasound of the babies. “I have something to show y’all,” she said, and left the kitchen. She grabbed the photo from her dresser, then returned and set the picture on the table. Over the past few days, she’d started to feel a little motherly. The more she stared at the images, the more it felt real, and the more she started to feel protective. She hadn’t planned to have children this way, but it wasn’t their fault. An unexpected wave of warmth and love washed over her, and she lowered a hand to cover her stomach. It wasn’t their fault they looked like little shrimp.

“Well,” Clare said through a smile, “they’re just adorable.”

Lucy laughed. “They look just like you.”

Maddie leaned forward for a better look. “Does this one have a penis?”

“Don’t joke about that. I’m having girls.” The doorbell rang, and Adele left to answer it. Her friends’ laughter followed her as she moved through the living room and opened the door. Immediately she froze in a way that had nothing to do with the snow falling from the sky.

“Dwayne.”

“Hi, Adele.” Her old boyfriend stood on her porch wearing a shearling jean jacket. “You look good.”

Adele didn’t know whether to scream, call the police, or punch Dwayne in the head. For three years he’d left stuff on her porch like he was on some sort of insane reconnaissance mission.

“I’m returning this.” He held up a grocery sack. “It’s that nurse’s outfit we bought at The Pleasure Boutique.”

She took it from his hand and crossed her arms over her bulky sweater. “Why didn’t you just leave it on my porch and sneak off like you’ve been doing for the past three years?”

His cheeks turned a little more pink. “’Cause I wanted to tell you that I’m not going to do that anymore.” His breath hung in front of his face and he shrugged one shoulder. “I can’t explain why I was doing it at all. I just don’t know.”

She knew.

“I’d just get this wild hair and…”

“Act crazy?” It was the curse.

“Yeah, but I’m over it.” He flashed her a smile that used to make her heart melt. “You look good,” he repeated.

She wore a bulky sweater, jeans, and fuzzy slippers. Her hair was pulled back in a dreaded scrunchie, and she seriously doubted she looked anything other than complete crap.

“Maybe we can go out for a drink sometime.”

Even if she hadn’t been expecting another man’s babies, she wouldn’t have accepted his invitation. She opened her mouth to let him down gently, but a voice from behind Dwayne said, “She’s not going anywhere with you.”

Adele lifted her gaze from Dwayne’s startled face to Zach as he moved within the light of the porch. He wore his dark wool coat, and the porch light caught in the snow on his big shoulders and in his hair. Her stomach lifted and smashed into her heart.

“Who’s this?” Dwayne asked.

Dwayne was a big guy, but Zach was bigger. His brown eyes bored into Dwayne like he’d dared to intercept a perfect pass. “None of your damn business.” Zach stepped in front of Adele’s former boyfriend. “You’re out of my sight for two days, and some bozo is asking you out already? If you think I’m going to wait around to catch you between dates again you’re crazy.” He pointed behind him with his thumb. “Did you tell him you’re pregnant?”

“It didn’t come up.”

He looked hard into her eyes. “You are still pregnant, aren’t you?”

She frowned. “Of course. Why would you think I’m not?”

“Maybe because you left without talking to me.”

The thought of ending the pregnancy had entered her head and exited very quickly. Maybe if she hadn’t seen the ultrasound, she might have given that option more than a passing thought. But she had seen it, and the babies were real to her and becoming more so with each passing hour. “If I’d decided to end the pregnancy, I would have talked to you.”

“Ahh…” Dwayne said, and took a few steps back. “I guess I’ll see you around, Adele.”

“Okay.”

“No, you won’t.”

Adele looked into Zach’s eyes on the same level as hers. She couldn’t quite believe he was actually standing in front of her. “How did you get here?”

“The usual way. Took a plane. Rented a car with GPS. Here I am.”

“How did you know where I live?”

“Sherilyn.” A puff of warm breath hung between them. “I went to her house this morning, and she said you’d left. You took off without a word to me about where you were going and when you’d be back.”

“I don’t have to check in with you, Zach.”

He rocked back on his heels. “I’m not going to let you move across the country with two of my children.”

She’d planned on going back, but he didn’t need to know that. Not right now, when he was being so bossy. She poked a finger into his chest. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

He looked at her hand, then back up into her face. “It’s not just you anymore, Adele. You’re having my babies, and you can’t just pick up and run away when you feel like it.”

She dropped her hand. “I wasn’t running away.”

“Just like fourteen years ago.”

“I didn’t run away. I left.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“We can argue about this inside.”

She didn’t want to argue at all.

“Adele, I’m freezing my balls off out here.”

Even though she wasn’t sympathetic to his frozen balls, she took a step back, and Zach followed her inside.

“Hello, ladies,” he said, looking behind her.

With her nurse’s costume in one hand, Adele turned and shut the door. Her three friends stood in the middle of the living room, their arms folded beneath their breasts as they eyed Zach. Adele walked around him and set her bag on the chair. “Zach, these are my very good friends. This is Lucy Rothschild-McIntyre. She writes mystery novels.” Next she pointed to Clare. “This is Clare Vaughan. She writes historical romance novels, and this is Maddie Jones. She writes true crime.”