Helen R. - The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child

She was silent for a minute, and when she finally spoke, it was only to say, “I believe that Maddie’s class will be finishing soon, and I need to get home.”

Cam pushed back his chair to walk her out.

“Thanks—for the update.”

She just nodded.

He watched her go, wondering why she’d refused to answer his question.

Because she didn’t believe in second chances?

Or because she did?

The Fall Festival was an old but ever-evolving Pinehurst tradition. What had started as a single-day celebration of the harvest back in 1859, when most of the town’s residents were farmers, had become a four-day mid-October event.

For Ashley and Paige, it was an annual ritual that brought back mostly fond memories of their teenage years. Because she’d been a bookworm rather than a social butterfly, Megan’s memories weren’t quite so fond, but they usually dragged her along to the fair with them anyway. And while Megan had critically assessed the engineering of the midway rides, Ashley and Paige were never deterred by her negative attitude.

They would save up their allowance for weeks in advance of the fair, happily giving up their hard-earned cash for a bird’s-eye view of the grounds from the top of the Ferris wheel, the thrill of a spin around the Zipper or the heart-pounding fear of the haunted house.

Of course, the fair was more than just the rides and caramel apples and cotton candy. It included a livestock exhibition and agricultural displays with the fattest pig, prettiest flowers and biggest pumpkins proudly displayed with their award-winning ribbons. There were also cooking contests, with local chefs putting their pies and cookies and breads to the test of the judges, and offering samples and selling their wares to the public.

As Ashley walked along the well-trodden dirt path munching on a bag of fresh kettle corn, she had to admit that, at almost thirty years of age, she enjoyed the annual festival probably even more now than she had as a teen. She no longer stood in line for the Zipper, but she’d learned to appreciate the arts and crafts displays more, and she always bought a couple of jars of Mrs. Kurchik’s homemade peach jam, winner of the blue ribbon every year for as far back as she could remember.

“You’ve got to see the baby pigs,” Ashley told Paige, steering her cousin toward the barn. Having brought her class on a field trip the previous day, she’d scoped out most of the grounds already.

“It stinks in the barn,” Paige protested.

“It smells like animals,” Ashley allowed, breathing in the scent of damp earth and fresh straw with just an underlying hint of manure.

Paige wrinkled her nose but gamely followed her through the wide doors. “It smells exactly as it did fifteen years ago.”

“Really?” Ashley was surprised by the comment. “We hardly ever came to see the animals when were in high school.”

“I wasn’t in here to see the animals.”

Ashley glanced over her shoulder, saw her cousin smiling.

“Do you remember Marvin Tedeschi?” Paige asked.

She scrambled through her memories to put a face to the name. “Mr. Archer’s history class?”

Paige smiled and nodded. “He got to second base with me, right here in this barn during the Fall Festival when we were in tenth grade.”

“You went to second base with Marvin Tedeschi?” Ashley stared at her. “The quiet kid with shaggy blond hair?”

“That quiet kid had the lips of a poet and the hands of an artist.”

“How did I not know this?”

“You were too busy lusting after Cam Turcotte to notice what was going on with anyone else,” Paige said.

Ashley couldn’t deny that was probably true, so she only asked, “And what happened after second base?”

Her cousin sighed. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, he got to second base a couple more times after that, but we never took it any further.” Her lips curved, her eyes glinted. “At least, not until I saw him at the reunion in the spring.”

“You hooked up with him that night?”

“I was feeling a little … nostalgic.”

“And he was feeling a little … Wilder?” Ashley teased.

Paige grinned. “I’d say he was feeling a lot Wilder. And left me feeling very grateful.”

“So that was it? You had great sex, then just went your separate ways?”

“Neither of us wanted anything more than that.”

“I don’t know that I could ever be so casual about intimacy,” Ashley admitted.

“Because you don’t think about sex for the purpose of physical release but as an assessment tool in your search for a potential husband,” her cousin pointed out.

“That’s not true.”

“It wasn’t a criticism,” Paige assured her.

Ashley frowned. “It’s still not true.”

“Have you ever had sex with a guy just because you thought it would be fun?”

Because she hadn’t, she only said, “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves that you’re looking for a mate for life,” Paige insisted. “And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I’m not looking for a mate at all, not anymore,” Ashley reminded her.

“Then you should try sex just for fun,” her cousin advised.

She shook her head. “I think I’ll keep my expectations low, at least that way I won’t be disappointed.”

Paige stopped in mid-stride and turned to face her. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“CBB wasn’t even good in bed.”

Ashley felt her cheeks flame as she reached out to rub the cow’s head. The big, dark eyes closed and the animal seemed to sigh with pleasure. “Sex was … fine.”

Paige lifted her brows. “Fine?”

“Look, if it’s okay with you, I’d really rather not discuss this now.” There wasn’t anything she couldn’t talk to her cousin about, but if they were going to perform a postmortem on her sex life, she wanted it to be in the privacy of her own home with a glass of wine in her hand, not in a public venue where anyone could overhear their conversation. Not that there were many other people in the barn, but still.

Unfortunately, Paige wouldn’t be deterred. “I need to understand this.”

“What’s to understand?”

“You were going to marry him.”

“And?” she prompted.

“And I can’t fathom why you would want to marry a guy who didn’t rock your world,” her cousin told her.

“Maybe my world isn’t capable of being rocked,” Ashley said, aware that she sounded more than a little defensive.

“Are you saying … never?”

She looked away. “Never with Trevor.”

“Sounds like a really bad slogan,” Paige said. “Maybe you should suggest he put it on his business cards, as a warning to other unsuspecting women.”

Ashley felt her lips curve, grateful that her cousin could make her see the light side of such a humiliating admission. “I’m happy just to move on,” she said, doing so towards the pigpen.

“But—oh.” Whatever else Paige was about to say was forgotten when she caught sight of the seven piglets, their round pink butts wiggling as they scrambled for position while nursing at their mother’s belly. “Oh, they are so cute.”

“My kids went crazy, oohing and aahing when they saw them yesterday,” Ashley told her.

“Kind of like I just did?”

“Just like that,” she agreed.

“Seven babies,” Paige mused. “Can you imagine?”

Ashley would happily settle for one baby of her own. At least one at a time. But she pushed the pang of longing aside, as she’d been doing for months now, since the end of her engagement to Trevor and the realization that her dreams of motherhood were slipping further and further away from her.