Not Another Bad Date (22 page)

Adele returned her attention to her clipboard, and her heart pinched. She looked at Zach out of the corners of her eyes. She would never have that. No loving touch or comforting whisper. No strong shoulder on which to lay her head. He lifted his gaze from his magazine. His eyes were void of any emotion.

After about half an hour, a nurse came and got Adele. When she stood, Zach rose also. She turned to him, and whispered, “Stay out here.”

He shook his head. “Not a chance.”

The thought of her feet in the stirrups in front of Zach heated her cheeks. “Things get a little personal in there.”

He lowered his face and said next to her ear, “I’ve had my face in your crotch. It doesn’t get any more personal than that.”

Her heated cheeks caught fire. “Fine, but if I am pregnant, you better not swear and start saying I tricked you again.”

He sat next to her right shoulder as Dr. Helen Rodriguez examined her. He didn’t say anything when the doctor confirmed the pregnancy, and Adele was reluctant to look at his face to see his reaction.

When it was over, the paper drape around Adele’s hip crinkled as she sat up. “Where did the IUD go? My doctor said it was there at my last exam back in June.”

Dr. Rodriguez stood and pulled off her latex gloves. “My guess is that it’s in your uterus, but I can’t be sure without an ultrasound.” She tossed the gloves in the garbage and picked up Adele’s chart. “Get dressed, and a nurse will take you down the hall, and we’ll look for it with the ultrasound.”

So many thoughts raced through Adele’s head, and none of them stuck. She was pregnant. It was real. She was going to have a baby. It wasn’t until the door closed behind the doctor that she thought to ask questions. Like, what did it mean if the IUD
was
in her uterus?

“You’re pregnant.” Zach frowned and handed over her panties and jeans.

She hopped down and reached for the table for support as she stepped into her panties. Zach wrapped a hand around her arm, and she wished things were different.

“Contrary to what you think, I’m not happy about this.” She felt sick to her stomach and sick at heart. She was scared, and she just wanted someone to tell her it was all going to be okay. “I’m not any happier about it than you are.”

“I doubt that.” He dropped his hand from her. “You’re the woman whose biological clock is tapping her on the shoulder.”

She looked up at him as she stepped into her jeans and buttoned them over her flat abdomen. “Don’t turn my words around on me. Wanting a family someday and an unplanned pregnancy are two different things.”

The arch of his brow spoke volumes. He was never going to believe that it was unplanned.

She and Zach followed the nurse to a second room, and fifteen minutes later, she lay on a table with clear goop on her stomach while the doctor ran the probe across her skin. “I don’t see the IUD anywhere,” she said. “If it was there, I’d see the copper.”

Adele glanced up at the doctor, then returned her gaze to the monitor screen. “It’s just disappeared?”

“It’s not anywhere in your pelvis.”

“That’s good. Right?” she asked.

“Very good. An IUD pregnancy is very high-risk. If it was there, we’d either have to dilate your cervix and chance a spontaneous miscarriage. Or leave it in, and at seven weeks gestation, there’s a 25 percent chance of a spontaneous miscarriage. The rate goes up to 50 percent by midterm.”

“How does an IUD just disappear?” Zach asked.

The doctor looked at him. “About 7 percent of IUDs are expelled by a woman’s body. Usually within the first year of insertion.” She returned her gaze to Adele. “Which makes this case unusual because you’ve had yours in for three years.” She pointed at the monitor and moved the probe. “Here’s a heartbeat.”

Adele squinted at the monitor, and Zach scooted forward in his chair for a better look. “That little white thing surrounded by black?” he asked.

“Yep. That’s a baby.”

It looked like a shrimp to Adele.

The doctor slid the probe a few inches. “And here’s the second.”

Adele scrunched up her eyes. The screen looked kind of like a television between channels except for two black circles with white images in the middles. “The heartbeat shows up in a second place?”

The doctor laughed. “Two babies.”

“What?”

“Shit.” Zach sat back in his chair.

“Two?” Adele heard a buzzing in her ears.

“Yes. You’re having twins,” the doctor assured her.

She closed her eyes. “Shit.”

A half hour later, Zach helped her on with her coat. Armed with prenatal vitamins, a card with her return visit on it, and a printout of the twins, Adele walked from the doctor’s office. She was numb from shock as she made her way to Zach’s Escalade. Her vision blurred, and she looked down at the picture. “These fuzzy white spots don’t look like babies to me.” Her voice sounded like it was coming from a distance. “I don’t want to have twins,” she said, and held up the photo. “
You
did this to me, Zach.”

“Yeah, me and my turbo swimmers.”

“That isn’t funny. What am I going to do with…” she held up two fingers, “two?”

He opened the passenger door of the Cadillac. “Twins. Jesus, are you on fertility drugs?”

She hit him on the shoulder through his coat. “You get me pregnant with twins, then act like you’re the wounded party.” She thought of how big Sherilyn had gotten with Harris, then doubled it in her head. “I’m going to be as big as a whale,” she wailed. “My hands and feet are going to swell up, and it’s all your fault!” Hot tears splashed down her cheeks as she climbed in the car. Zach closed the door, and she wiped her face with her hands.
Twins!
She hadn’t known what she was going to do with one baby, let alone two. How was she going to take care of twins? One baby would be hard enough, but two? She stared out the side window as Zach got into the vehicle. He started the engine and sat for several long moments, the sound of the heater filling the silence between them.

“Just once,” he finally spoke, “I’d like to attend my own wedding where the bride isn’t knocked up.”

Adele turned and looked at him across the SUV. “What? I’m not marrying you.”

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “You’re pregnant,” he said through a sigh. “With twins. You can’t take care of two babies by yourself.”

She’d been thinking the same thing but wasn’t about to admit it to him. “Which is no reason to get married.” She shook her head. “You don’t want to marry me any more than I want to marry you.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He put the Escalade into gear, and they rolled out of the parking lot. “Pick a date, and we’ll go to the courthouse and do it,” he said without the slightest hint of emotion.

“I’m pregnant, not stupid. I’m not going to make two mistakes.” It was all so horribly unromantic, so loveless, that it might have been funny if it weren’t so sad. “You don’t love me, and I don’t want a bad marriage on top of everything else. Admit it, you don’t want to marry me any more than you wanted to marry Devon.”

He glanced over at her, and he lifted his gaze to her hair. “It probably wouldn’t be that bad.”

She hadn’t realized until he’d spoken that she’d been holding her breath, waiting from him to tell her he wanted to marry her because he loved her. She’d fallen in love for the second time with the same man who didn’t love her. Only this time it was worse. Two times worse.

“You’re not Devon.” He looked into her eyes.

She laughed through the little sob that broke her throat. What irony. She and Devon had always loathed each other and yet they’d ended up impregnated by the same man, and he didn’t love either one of them. The only difference was that Adele hadn’t done it on purpose. And of course, Adele would demand a lot more from the man she married than money and social position. “You’re right. I’d expect more from you than Devon. Money is easy. I’d expect something that I don’t think you can give.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d expect you to be faithful.”

“And you don’t think I can?”

She shook her head. “A man has to have a reason to be faithful.”

“Yeah?” he said through a scoff. “What’s that?”

“He has to love his wife.”

She nodded but didn’t look up.

“I have to talk to you about something important.”

“Is it about Adele?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

Hell, Zach didn’t really want to talk about her either. Not with Tiffany. Not until he had it all sorted out in his own head, but he figured he better before she heard the news from Kendra. “She’s going to have a baby.”

The fork stopped and Tiffany finally looked up.

“Two babies, actually.”

“Your babies?”

“Yes.”

Her big green eyes rounded. “You had…” she paused and spelled out the word, “…s. e. x.?”

“That’s generally how babies are made.”

She sat back in her chair and looked at him as if he’d suddenly turned into some kind of pervert. “Yuck! That’s so…yucky.” She gasped and her mouth fell open. “And you’re not even married.”

Lord he felt like a sinner. A perverted sinner.

“How could you do…that?”

He stood and reached for the plates. “I’m an adult, and sometimes adults do ‘that.’ You’ll understand someday.”

“You’re gross!”

On top of everything else, he thought as he moved from the dining room, his daughter thought he was gross. He set the plates on the counter and planted his hands on the cold granite. How had his life gotten this fucked up? Just when it had been better than it had been in a long time, the bottom falls out. God, he’d give anything to go back to his life a few weeks ago, when everything had been good. When he’d won the state championship and he could relax. When he looked forward to seeing Adele every morning, making love, and sharing a waffle afterward.

How had this happened to him again? He’d learned his lesson the first time. He’d been careful with Adele. Even after she’d told him she had an IUD, he’d always worn a condom.

He thought of her face as the doctor examined her. She’d looked so pale and tired. When she’d slid off the table and stepped into her pink panties, he thought she might pass out, and he’d grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. He’d fought the urge to pull her against his chest and tell her everything would be okay, but he hadn’t. It wasn’t going to be okay.

Twins.
He couldn’t wrap his brain around one baby, let alone two. He didn’t want any more children. Hell, he didn’t know what he was doing half the time with the child he already had. He didn’t want a wife either. He hadn’t meant to mention marriage as an option, but as she’d sat in the Escalade crying about getting as big as a whale, he’d felt responsible. She’d accused him of getting her pregnant, then acting like the wounded party, which was partly true, and for a few unguarded seconds, he’d felt like he had fourteen years ago when Devon had told him she was pregnant. Like before, he’d proposed marriage, but unlike Devon, Adele had turned him down flat. He should be congratulating himself.

I’m pregnant, not stupid. I’m not going to make two mistakes,
she’d said.
You don’t love me, and I don’t want a bad marriage on top of everything else.
He should be doing a victory dance in the end zone, but he didn’t feel like celebrating.
Admit it, you don’t want to marry me any more than you wanted to marry Devon.
He hadn’t given marrying
any
woman a lot of thought. Knocked up with his twins or not. He remembered how he’d felt when he’d married Devon. Responsible. Resigned. Trapped. Like fourteen years ago, he was responsible for creating new life, two new lives, and he felt like someone had kicked him in the chest and knocked the wind out of him, but he didn’t feel trapped. Adele hadn’t tried to trap him, or she clearly wouldn’t be so upset about it herself. He should probably clear that up with her. Maybe even apologize for thinking she’d lied about the IUD. Yeah, maybe he’d do that when she wasn’t so emotional.

“Daddy?”

Zach turned his head and looked at Tiffany. “Yeah?”

“Are you going to marry Adele?”

“I asked.” He pushed away from the counter. “She said no.”

“She doesn’t like you?” Tiffany asked, as if the mere thought was impossible.

Adele refused to marry him and didn’t think he was capable of being faithful. “No, I don’t think she likes me right now.”

“Do you like her?”

“Yeah.” He liked her. He liked the way her hair wrapped around his fingers and the way her cheeks got real red when she jogged. He liked that she’d moved to Texas to help out her sister. He liked a whole lot of things about her that he wasn’t even going to think about with his daughter around. Mostly, though, he liked the way she made him feel when he was with her. Alive for the first time in a very long time.

Tiffany moved toward him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry I said you were gross. You’re the best ever.”

At the moment he didn’t feel like “the best ever.” His life was suddenly a damn mess. He’d been knocked flat. Now he needed to pick himself up and figure out the game plan.

One thing was for certain though, having Zach’s twins certainly settled the question of Adele leaving town.