Teresa Southwick - Wedding Rings and Baby Things

“You’re sweet to worry about me.”

He turned back to her. “I’ll tell you what’s sweet. Remember that move Jim and I taught you before your very first date?”

She grinned. “Remember it? I got to use it that night. Do you remember who fixed me up with that octopus?”

“Everyone’s entitled to a minor error in judgment.”

“Minor?”

“He was here for the weekend. He was lonely. It was supposed to be dinner and a movie. How did I know he was going to come on to you?” He looked at her. “Just promise me one thing…”

“What?”

“Before the jerk gets here, practice that move.”

“I will,” she said, laughing.

The sound surrounded him and he grinned, surprised at how contagious her laughter was. As ticked off as he’d been a minute before, he was sure no one but Kelly could have made him smile.

When Kelly had first found out about the baby, she’d misplaced her smile for a while. Recently she’d found it, and if Hammond did anything, to make her lose it again, Mike would hunt him down and take his pound of flesh. The man would never hurt Kelly again.

Kelly tensed when she heard the car pull up in front of her house. She knew the sound. It brought back painful memories of all the nights she’d expected to hear it, then waited in vain for Doug to show up. She remembered the flimsy excuses she’d believed because she’d desperately wanted to. She would never forget the disillusionment of learning about his lies, his other women, after she found out she was going to have a baby.

There was nothing he could tell her now that she wanted to hear. She had nothing to say to him. Period. This should be a very short meeting. But she would feel a lot more confident if she could stop the butterflies in her stomach or the trembling in her hands.

She opened the door as he strode up the walkway. He smiled at her. “Hello, Kelly.”

“Doug.” She motioned him inside.

He had the lanky good looks of a male model in a pin-striped suit. The red tie he wore was perfectly knotted at the collar of his crisp white shirt. His sandy hair was slightly mussed, and his hazel eyes held an expression that said he was glad to see her. She didn’t believe it

She frowned at him. “What do you want?”

“That’s pretty cold,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“The last time we spoke, you made it clear that you wanted nothing to do with the baby or me. I have no reason to think that the situation’s changed. So I’d like to know what you want.”

Doug looked sheepish. “I’m sorry about that, Kel—”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.

“All right. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry about the things I said. The situation caught me off guard and I—I suppose I sort of panicked.”

“You?” Kelly shook her head at his smoothness. He was as cool as they came. She had found out the hard way how he could lie without batting an eye. “Panicked?”

“Believe it or not,” he said in that affable, self-effacing way that had charmed her once. “You don’t know what it’s like to hear that you’re going to be a father.”

“That’s typical, Doug. It’s always about you. Did you stop to think how I felt finding out I was going to be a mother?”

“That’s why I’m here now.”

Her eyes widened and she wanted to laugh in his face, or slap it. “I’m six months pregnant. Took you long enough.” Her chest tightened with anger. “During all that time did you think about what would happen to me? Whether or not this would affect my life, my job?”

“Has it?”

“You bet it has, buster. I don’t have a job as of June.”

His eyebrows pulled together and, if she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was genuinely sorry.

“Then it’s fortunate I’m here.”

“Why?”

“Kelly, I want you to marry me. I want to be a father to our child.”

Kelly’s jaw dropped. She didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t this.

Her reaction was knee-jerk, and she should have put it exactly where Mike and her brother had taught her. Instead, she clasped her shaking hands together and tried to control her astonishment, then the surge of anger that followed.

“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.”

There was no reaction on his face, no indication whether her words had hurt him or not. “Think about this carefully. You just said you’ll be out of a job come June. How are you going to support yourself, let alone a kid?”

A kid? The baby was just an impersonal, nuisance kid as far as he was concerned. She didn’t want him anywhere near her child, not to mention raising him. “I’ll work it out. Alone,” she added firmly.

“If you marry me, I can take care of you both. I’m up for a partnership in the law firm—”

“I smell a rat,” she said, her eyes narrowing. With time and distance, she had realized Doug never did anything for anyone else unless there was something in it for him. Besides, he’d never said a word about loving her. If she hadn’t been so upset, it would have been funny. Two proposals in two days. Must be some kind of record for a pregnant lady. She’d been tempted to take Mike up on his offer, but Doug’s left her cold.

He looked down for a moment, then met her suspicious gaze. “You know the firm is very conservative and traditional. I don’t want to say that I’m not concerned about my success. But that’s not the reason I asked you—”

“Stuff a sock in it, Doug. Of course that’s the reason.” She took a deep breath. “Now I want you to listen, because I’m only going to say this once. I should have known that a lawyer who would sleep with his client couldn’t be trusted. You’re a liar and I’d be a fool to ever trust you again. There’s nothing you could say that would persuade me to marry you.”

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