The Second Time Around Read online

  “The Aimes Baby account. It’s ours,” he declared, referring to the project for the agency he’d been working for these past fifteen years. Then he gleefully corrected, “Mine.” Jason let the words sink in before embellishing. “The baby food, the diapers, the toys, all mine.”

  “We’ll have to add on to the house,” Laurel quipped, trying very hard to focus on his joy and not her own dread.

  “Very funny. I’m talking about the account.” As if she didn’t know, he thought with affection. Laurel had always taken an active interest in his work. More than he did in hers, he was sorry to admit. But then, he was the one who needed bolstering at times. She had always been tireless, always confident. He didn’t know how she did it. “They loved my ad campaign,” he told her needlessly since he was the main one pitching to the company. His dark green eyes were shining as he went on. “This means a bonus, a raise and a lot of other perks. Jon Aimes approved the campaign personally. You know what this means, right?”

  Her brain felt like Swiss cheese. She didn’t even know her own middle name right now.

  “Tell me what it means,” she coaxed in a voice that wives had been using for centuries to humor husbands who were dying to disclose details.

  “It means that we have an in with his other companies, as well. I have an in with his other companies as well,” he emphasized. “This makes me a very important asset to Chandler, Wallace and Mitchell.” His grin was so wide now, it threatened to split his face. “Sky’s the limit, Laurie,” he declared.

  His enthusiasm about to overflow, Jason propped the bottle against his thigh and began working the cork loose. “I told them I needed some time off before I could throw myself headlong into the work. They were a little skeptical at first, but I convinced them. I told them I’d take a laptop with me and e-mail them anything I came up with.”

  “Laptop?” Laurel repeated. Every second, her brain was shrinking, reducing in size to whatever might reside in a single-cell amoeba.

  “Yeah. I figured we’d take it on our road trip. You didn’t think I’d forget about the road trip, did you? I know it’s not going to be for as long as we anticipated, and I will have to do some work, but it’ll be great, I promise, honey.” He saw the look on her face and put his own interpretation to her expression. “I know, I know, I was going to taper off, working toward an early retirement, but this just fell into my lap.” He conveniently forgot about the long hours he’d put in to get this to fall into his lap. “This was just too good to pass up, you know? And we’ll take that longer road trip once all this is squared away. Scout’s honor.”

  The cork finally came loose and went shooting into the living room like a large, beige-colored bullet. Jason laughed as foam came pouring out.

  “Wow. I had no idea those things could go that far. C’mon, honey, follow me,” he urged, hurrying into the living room, a trail of foam marking his path.

  There were crystal glasses on the coffee table and he quickly filled first one, then the other. Once he put down the champagne bottle, he picked up both glasses and offered one to her.

  “Here.”

  But Laurel kept her hand at her sides and she shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

  Jason was nothing if not tolerant. “I know, I know, it’s not five o’clock yet, but this is a special occasion, honey. I promise I won’t tell the alcohol police. They won’t bust you.” Picking up her hand, he tried to press the glass into it.

  But she kept her hand clenched, refusing to take the glass even though there was nothing she would have rather done right now than down its contents—maybe even the whole bottle. But the reason she wanted the drink was the very reason she couldn’t have it.

  “No, Jason, really, I can’t. I can’t have a drink of champagne. Or anything alcoholic.”

  The perfectly shaped eyebrows she had always envied drew together in a concerned line as Jason looked at her. “Why? Aren’t you feeling well?”

  She felt inches away from recycling her lunch. “So-so.”

  And then he remembered. The excitement left his voice. “That’s right, you went to see Dr. Kilpatrick today. What did she say? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” he guessed, afraid to let his imagination go any further. “Can you take something for it? Can it be cured?”

  Terminated, maybe, but not cured. And she wasn’t about to consider the former. So she shook her head. “Not really.”

  Jason’s festive mood was gone. “Honey, is it something serious?”

  She pressed her lips together. The moment of truth was here. “That all depends. Do you think a baby is serious?”

  It was his turn to repeat words in confusion. “A baby?”

  Laurel nodded. It was time to drop the bomb. She couldn’t stall any longer. “Jason, I’m pregnant.”

  The glass he’d been holding slipped from his suddenly numbed fingers. Champagne pooled on the light gray carpet, then slowly sank in.

  Like a drowning man going down for the fourth time.

  CHAPTER 4

  Laurel swallowed the few choice words that sprang to her lips regarding the pool of champagne swiftly vanishing into her recently steam cleaned rug. Hurrying into the kitchen, she made a beeline for the sink and opened the cabinet doors beneath it. Housed there were all the cleaning products she needed for any emergency.

  She snatched up her ever-faithful can of extrastrength rug cleaner and a clean cloth. The red can and its brethren had served her in good stead, eradicating pizza, spilled cans of soda and beer and the very pungent evidence of not one but three very intense cases of stomach flu.

  Stunned and overwhelmed, Jason came to and followed her into the kitchen. He moved like a lost traveler in a foreign land.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Turning on her heel, Laurel narrowly avoided colliding with him as she went back into the living room. Time was of the essence when it came to fighting any and all stains. The carpet was no longer new and not nearly as resilient as it’d once been.

  Moving around Jason, she dropped to her knees by the coffee table and sprayed the stain. She knew he was waiting for an answer and wished she could give him the one he wanted. But that wasn’t possible.

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  Jason found himself addressing the top of her head. “You look frazzled,” he told her quite honestly. “But it’s not a look I haven’t seen before.”

  Dabbing at the stain, she glanced up at him. “I’m frazzled because I’m pregnant.”

  Jason seemed about to slip into shock. “Stop saying that.”

  She began to rise to her feet again. He took her elbow and helped her up.

  She didn’t feel pregnant, Jason thought, remembering how heavy Laurel had been during the last pregnancy. She’d gotten so large, he was afraid she’d never get her figure back. But she had. And he liked it. Liked having her as shapely as she’d been the day they got married. Ralph Peters, one of his associates, lamented that his wife looked twice as large as she had when they were first married. Ralph always spoke about Laurel wistfully, telling Jason what a lucky dog he was. He was lucky, no matter what her size.

  Laurel drew her elbow away from him. As she’d left the doctor’s office, she’d been ambivalent. More in shock than anything else. She certainly hadn’t wanted to get pregnant again. Didn’t want to be pregnant. But listening to Jason, she suddenly felt very protective of this tiny seed within her. Protective and defensive. And suddenly, despite her condition, very alone. She and Jason had always been on the same page no matter what the issue. Sometimes he was at the top and she at the bottom, or vice versa, but always the same page. The look in his eyes told her they were volumes apart.

  She didn’t like the feeling.

  “The baby’s not going away if I stop saying I’m pregnant, Jason.” She went back to the kitchen to return the can and the cloth to their rightful place. Housework could be handled better if it was divided into a thousand small components rather than tackled on a grand scale.


  “Pregnant,” Jason echoed again, shaking his head. “How could this have happened?”

  “The usual way, Jason.” Laurel shut the cabinet again and returned to face him. “There’s a mama bee and a papa bee and the papa bee pollinated the mama bee.”

  He still couldn’t believe it. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure you’re pregnant? There’s no mistake?”

  There was no mistaking the hopeful note in his voice. She closed her eyes, feeling increasingly alone by the second. Maybe she should have told her best friend or her sister first. Or her mother. But Jason had given her no choice. He’d been here when she hadn’t expected him to be.

  “The doctor’s sure.” She opened her eyes again. “The stick turned blue, the rabbit died, how many different ways do you want me to say it? I’m pregnant.”

  He stared at her, confused. “The rabbit died? They still use rabbits?”

  He would latch onto that, she thought. He did things like that when he didn’t like what he was hearing. Focus on a minute, extraneous tidbit and blow it out of proportion.

  “It’s just a figure of speech, Jason. But I am pregnant.” She took a breath to try to calm down. Her stomach remained queasy. “Now that I think of it, this is just the way I felt with Luke.”

  Jason tried to put the cork back into the bottle and failed. A perfect afternoon had suddenly fallen apart. He gave up with the cork, tossing it aside. “You had Luke over twenty-three years ago.”

  She waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she pressed, “Your point being?”

  Jason shrugged uncomfortably. He felt like a man walking through a minefield. But he had to make her understand. “My point is that women with twenty-three-year-old sons don’t get pregnant.”

  And what the hell was that supposed to mean? she thought, struggling to keep from losing her temper. She began to pace back and forth around the sofa. She’d been through this often enough to know that it was the hormones talking. They were playing Ping-Pong with her emotions. Having her husband say asinine things didn’t help, of course.

  “Is that some kind of a law?” she asked. “Because if it is, I was out of town the day Congress passed it.”

  “Laurel, stop pacing.” Then, when she didn’t, he caught hold of her shoulders and held her in place. Or tried to.

  She pushed away his hands. “Why? So you can get a clear shot at me?” Okay, that was over the top, she told herself. “Sorry, I can’t help it. I’m exhausted and yet, there’s all this pent-up energy inside of me. Just like with Luke,” she repeated, her tone daring him to deny her statement.

  “Pregnant,” he repeated again. The word kept attacking him from all angles, seeking entrance into his brain. He just couldn’t handle it and he sank onto the sofa.

  Because she had nowhere else to go, Laurel lowered herself down beside him. Deep within her soul, she wanted her husband, her partner, her best friend of so many years, to tell her everything was going to be all right. That he wasn’t upset or angry about this bizarre twist their lives had taken. And that he was going to stand by her, no matter what. Stand by her and rub cocoa butter onto her swiftly expanding abdomen to prevent stretch marks, the way he had all the other times.

  All the other times, she reminded herself silently, they had been much younger. Jason had been much younger.

  Oh God, this was going to be a nightmare. And when she woke up, she was going to be alone. In her mind’s eye, she could see Jason running for the hills. Who wants to be married to a forty-five-year-old pregnant woman?

  She blew out a breath. “So.”

  The word hung in the air between them, waiting for more. Begging for more.

  “So,” he finally echoed, then turned to look at her. As she watched, his expression changed from that of a man who had just dived into a foxhole, shell-shocked, to that of a man who had suddenly seen the course of action opening up before him. “You can’t have it,” he told her, his voice firm.

  She blinked, stunned.

  Jason was the type who refused to kill crickets in the house. He captured them and set them free on the patio. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying. “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t have it,” he repeated, his voice carrying just a shade less conviction than it had a moment ago.

  “What do you mean, I ‘can’t have it’?” she demanded. “This isn’t some rich piece of cake that’s going to send my diet into a tailspin—this is a baby. I already have it. I’m pregnant. With child,” she added, using the terminology Dr. Kilpatrick had used when breaking the news to her. She fought back the wave of horror that was mounting within her. “Jason, you’re talking about a human being here.”

  There were a score of theories as to when a fetus became a living being. He couldn’t summon one to back him up. “There’s a debate over that at this stage.”

  She stood up indignantly. “Not to me. You can’t just sweep it away like that.”

  Didn’t she understand what was at stake? He rose, trying to put his hands on her shoulders. Trying to form a unit. “Yes, I can.”

  There was anger in her eyes, anger mixed with disappointment and deep, deep hurt. “Look, I’m sorry this messes up the plans you’ve been dreaming about these last few years. They were my plans, too, but—”

  “Is that what you think? That I’m upset because we can’t take a—a stupid road trip?”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  “Hell, no.” And then because his denial wasn’t strictly true, Jason backtracked a little, correcting himself. “I’m disappointed, sure, but the whole road trip idea is becoming sort of an unattainable goal, like Shangri-la.”

  “Is it the summer home?” she asked. “Because we could still build one, just not as big and maybe not quite in the location you wanted—”

  He cut her short. “It’s not the summer home.”

  She’d run out of things to guess. “All right then, what are you upset about?”

  “You.”

  “Me?” He had completely lost her. “What about me?”

  His gift of gab, the very thing that helped him pitch the ads he so cleverly constructed, left him when it came to speaking from his heart. He wasn’t a man who bared his emotions. He turned away for a moment, shoving his hands deep into his pocket, searching for a way to anchor himself. Searching for words.

  When he spoke, he addressed the words to the wall. “Look, I don’t want to have to do without you.”

  Was that it? He was afraid of losing his maid? Over the years, she’d spoiled him and she knew it. She’d taken a relatively self-sufficient man and gotten him used to having everything done for him.

  Her own fault, she thought.

  “I’ll still do everything I’ve always done,” she assured him, trying hard not to let her annoyance show. “Your shirts will still be ironed, your meals will still be made, most likely on time, your—”

  “The hell with my shirts. The hell with the meals,” he retorted.

  For a second, because he had her really confused, Laurel stopped talking. Confusion had her resorting to quips.

  “Okay, you’ll be wrinkled and hungry. I wish you’d told me that years ago. You would have saved me so much time every week—”

  “I don’t want to have to do without you,” Jason repeated, saying the words with more feeling. And then, because his wife eyed him as if he had suddenly started speaking in several foreign languages, all at once, he was forced to elaborate. He hated being made to say every word. She was supposed to be able to read between the lines. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to go on.”

  For one of the very few times in her life, Laurel found herself truly speechless.

  CHAPTER 5

  The silence in the living room continued, stretching out like a long, silken thread until Jason couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Say something,” he urged.

  Laurel felt tears stinging her eyes, threatening to spill out. She knew they were there partiall
y because of the king-size hormonal blender into which her emotions had been tossed. But the tears had also sprung up because words of affection from Jason, any sort of affection, were as rare as a blizzard in July in Southern California. It had been years since he’d said anything romantic. He rarely expressed his feelings for her, he just expected her to know.

  The breath she let out was ragged. “I think that’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”

  Jason looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I’m talking about you dying.”

  “No,” she contradicted, “you’re talking about love.” She wasn’t going to let him bluster his way out of this. He’d said something nice and she was holding him to it. Laurel touched his face, every single available space within her welling up with affection. “I’m not going to die in childbirth, Jase.”

  He took her hand, but rather than pushing it aside, he pressed it to his cheek. Just for a moment. And then he moved it aside. “How do you know?”

  “All right.” She inclined her head as if to give him his due. “I can’t give you a written guarantee. But I also can’t give you one that says I won’t die in a traffic accident because I got hit by a car while driving down to Newport Beach. Or that I won’t die choking on your mother’s extra dry turkey next Thanksgiving. But,” she went on, a smile curving her mouth, “I’m reasonably sure I won’t die in childbirth. More sure of that than I am about not getting hit by a car or choking on your mother’s turkey,” she added for good measure.

  Jason sighed, taking her hands in his. He forced himself to look her straight in the eye as he tried to make her understand the full extent of his concern. “Laurel, don’t take this the wrong way.” She looked at him warily, waiting. “But you’re old.”

  She pulled her hands away and turned from him all in one motion. It turned out to be a little too fast, because the sudden movement made her feel dizzy. Shutting her eyes made it worse, and she swayed. The next thing she knew, Jason had his arms around her, holding her steady. Getting her bearing, she pushed him away from her.