Baby Makes Three

Baby Makes 3 Part 3

Cecily pulled the car up to the house, stared at the peeling paint, the dangling shutter and the leaning porch then closed her eyes and rested her head against the steering wheel until the baby kicked. "Okay, kid. I get your point." She risked another quick glance. If she narrowed her eyes, didn't concentrate so hard, the house didn't look so bad. A few new boards, a lawnmower, and twenty or so gallons of Sherwin Williams and this place could be home. She had enough space on her credit card to fix it up and still survive until the baby came. Then she'd find a job and get back on her feet.

Okay. She had a plan.

Oh God. Who was she kidding? She didn't know the business end of a hammer from a butter knife. She couldn't do this. The house needed torn down, rebuilt into something that didn't have a hole in its roof or broken windows or a porch she didn't dare step onto for fear of falling straight through. She couldn't bring a baby here—not to the Night of the Living Dead house.

The impossibility of her only other choice—running home to Mommy and begging for not only her job but her childhood room—demanded she get out of the car and at least give the house a chance.

With a deep breath, she opened the car door and side-stepped a weed she imagined wrapping around her legs and pulling her underground. Okay. No more Netflix scary movies.

When a rabbit—please, God, let it be a rabbit—scurried under the porch, Cecily swallowed back a scream.

Okay. She'd bought the house on a whim. In her defense, she'd done it with the idea of pitching a new show to her mother rather than that stupid wedded bliss one she'd been sent to scout locations for.

Damn it. She should have done her job, kept her checkbook in her purse, and gotten the hell out of Dodge before she did something stupid like buy a house and bed a cowboy. Of course, then she wouldn't have had all those memories of Chase. And those memories had seen her through some long, lonely nights in the last six months.

He'd not only loved her to within an inch of her sanity, he'd talked to her and listened when she spoke. The first night, they'd spent getting to know each other's bodies, but that second night...it had been so much more. They'd learned each other's minds and hearts.

That was why she'd run and not looked back. Why it had taken six months to talk herself into finding him. Their connection, as immediate as it came, scared the bejesus out of her. Of course, it was also part of the reason she'd come back to Rangers End, to prove the connection she'd only now admitted to, existed only in her imagination. If she let herself believe otherwise, she'd never move on.

Nor would she repeat that mistake. Even if the driver of the big, black pick-up speeding down the lane belonged to the man she thought it must—the guy who'd looked like she'd shot his puppy when he figured out she'd been dumb enough to get pregnant. Not that he didn't share blame, but the responsibility for her body belonged to her. She should have been the careful one. That was her mother's view point, anyway. Damn it.

Swallowing hard against her apprehension, she sat on the porch step and waited for him. If he'd come to deliver the final kiss-off, she'd take the kiss then absolve him of any responsibility to her or the baby. If he'd come for any other reason, she'd still set him free. She didn't want anyone out of some sense of chivalrous obligation. No. She'd make it on her own. One way or the other.

And the little tingle on her skin when he paused to check his hair in the rearview mirror before he climbed out of the truck meant nothing. Probably, he was just vain, wanted to look good when he declined fatherhood.

But, oh my, that man had a walk that made her mouth water.

He stopped in front of her, the sun behind him keeping his face in shadow. "Hey."