Vegas Pregnancy Surprise (15 page)

“I was eighteen. Marcus was sixteen.” He heaved a sigh, and she could hear the weight of his grief in that sound. “The last thing my mother said to me was ‘Watch out for your brother. Take care of him for us.’ And that’s what I did. Marcus and I made a deal—I’d stay on top of him, his pills, his appointments, and he could pretend to live a normal life. He never even told his wife about his heart.” Linc let out a breath. “That, I didn’t know. But with Marcus, that makes sense. He just wanted to be…normal. So I did enough worrying for both of us.”

It all began to make sense now, the picture coming into focus for Molly, like a television that had suddenly been fixed. “Linc, you can’t blame yourself for not being there when your brother died. Those things happen. They—”

He wheeled around. “I
can
damned well blame myself. Do you want to know where I was when my brother’s heart started giving out? I was at a bar, getting drunk. Thinking I was having a good time. Relaxing for the first time in a decade.”

“You were on vacation. You’re supposed to relax.”

“I was supposed to look out for my brother, Molly, not—”

He shook his head and turned back to the window. His shoulders hunched, and his back tensed.

“Not…what?”

“Not be sitting at that bar thinking it was about damned time my brother took care of me for once.”

The words had slipped out of him in a whisper, raw and painful. He seemed to crumple into himself, as if the last string holding him up had been snipped. Or maybe it was simply the weight of his guilt, crushing him until he couldn’t take the burden anymore.

“You can’t blame yourself for that, Linc. Everyone—”

“No, Molly, I can. And I do. What kind of brother does that?”

“One who wanted his own life and deserved to have one,” she said, wishing she could mend his broken heart with her own two hands. “Your parents wouldn’t have wanted you to give up your own happiness to take care of your brother, and I doubt he wanted it, either.”

“I should have been there. I should have…” His voice cracked, along with his composure.

Her arms went around him then, and she laid her head on his shoulder. “You did your best, Linc.”

He shook his head.

“A congenital problem can attack someone at any time. Whether you’re there or not.”

“He called me. And I didn’t answer.” He heaved a breath. “Because I didn’t want to work. Me, the one who always works. I wanted time off.”

“That’s not selfish, Linc.” She came around him, until she had his face in her hands, and locked her gaze on his blue eyes. “It’s human. And it’s okay. You’ve always been the responsible one, and it’s okay to not be that person once in a while. To live your own life.”

He started to shake his head, tears glimmering in his eyes, but she kept repeating the words, telling him over and over that what he did was okay, that it wasn’t a sin, forgiving him for the people who couldn’t.

Finally, Linc stopped, and she could see him trying to accept the fact that he had done nothing more than be a regular person. “If I’d just answered the phone, maybe I could have…”

“Maybe,” she said softly. “And maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. Either way, do you think your brother would want you to spend the rest of your life feeling guilty?”

He let out a long breath. “No.”

She could hear in his voice, though, that it didn’t matter. Linc still felt as if he had to pay a penance for a crime he hadn’t committed out of anything other than simple human nature. “You remember what you told me about why you liked those rock outcroppings so much at Lake Mead?” she said.

“The rocks? What do they have to do with anything?”

“Because they don’t change, you said. They stay the same, year after year. They don’t move, they don’t go anywhere, they don’t grow.” She dropped her hands from his face. “You’re like those rocks, Linc. You haven’t moved or grown or changed in all the years since your brother died. Except for that one night we had together. Then you were the man you could be, if only you’d stop standing still.”

“Molly, you don’t understand—”

A long, slow and sad smile slid across her face. “I do, Linc. All you have to do is decide that you’re tired of being a rock. And start being a person again. Allow yourself to live.” She reached up and cupped his jaw. “Stop paying for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“And what? Be a father? God, Molly, you have no idea how much I want to be. But what if…?” He glanced down at her belly, at the small swell beneath her pale pink tunic top. “What if I make the same mistakes? What if our baby is born with the same problems my brother had?”

“And what if the baby isn’t? There are no guarantees in parenthood, Linc. You just do the best you can.”

“Like you’re doing.”

She nodded, feeling the sting of tears when she thought of the long, lonely road ahead. Of raising their child without him. “I’m trying.”

“Then why did you leave?”

She let out a gust and turned away. “Why would I stay? To be another line in your schedule? To have the baby end up on your ‘To Do’ list? No, Linc. I want the whole thing. The family. The husband. All of us sitting around the Christmas tree opening presents and then debating whether we want roast beef or ham for dinner.”

“For someone who wants it all, you’ve done a good job of trying to avoid a commitment yourself.”

“What do you mean? I’ve done nothing but try to connect with you. I came all the way to Vegas—”

“Yet you didn’t tell me the truth until you had to.”

She wrapped her hands around the cold glass of iced tea. “Because that’s not the kind of thing you spring on someone. And you made it clear from the beginning that you were not the family man type.”

“You kept trying to get me to open up, but you wouldn’t do the same with me.”

“I did. I…” Her voice trailed off as she realized that she had kept much of herself back in those weeks she’d been in Vegas. Thinking she was being so smart, keeping her heart protected.

Had it been smart after all? Look where she’d ended up—alone again.

He shook his head. “We’re two of a kind, aren’t we, Molly? Both of us wanting so much to have it all, but being too afraid to really try?”

“That may be true, Linc, but for me, fear or not, I don’t have a choice.” She met his gaze, and her spine straightened as a strength she hadn’t realized she had infused her. “You can walk away and bury yourself in work again, if you want, but I’m going to stay right here. And have our baby.”

Linc sat in the back of the town car for a long time. Saul tried to engage him in conversation twice, but gave up when he only got one-word answers from his boss. Finally, Linc opened the back door himself and got out, waving Saul off. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

He wandered down the concrete ramp, then stopped just shy of where the cement ended and the sand began. He bent down, unlaced his thousand-dollar shoes, tucked them and his socks under his arm, then started forward. His bare feet sank into the sand of the beach, a softer, prettier and whiter sand than the one at Lake Mead, but to him it felt as if he was back at the Las Vegas lake with Molly.

He walked the San Diego beach for a good half hour, watching the surf, the kids darting in and out of the water, the gulls diving for crumbs and fish, then turned around and headed halfway back to where the car was parked. Long enough to clear his head, come to some decisions.

And find a good place to sit. A forgotten Adirondack chair with a built-in umbrella, one of those nice wooden ones hotels rented out to their customers, then tucked away at the end of the day.

Linc sat down, pulled out a pen—

And finally let go of the past.

“He’s right,” Molly said, thinking of what Linc had said to her before he’d left. “I hate that.”

Alex and Serena, their two faces pressed together so they could both be seen in Alex’s Web cam, laughed. “Then find him and tell him,” Alex said.

Molly sighed. “But what if it doesn’t work out? What if I make another mistake?”

“Falling in love is about taking a leap of faith, Molly. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t, but when it does…” A wide smile spread across Alex’s face, and once again a stab of envy ran through Molly. “It’s wonderful.”

She could have that, Molly realized. If only she’d let go and trust. Allow Linc into her heart.

“You deserve a happy ending,” Serena said. “A Prince Charming of your own.”

Molly smiled. “Thanks, guys. Every time I talk to you two or Jayne, I always feel better.”

Alex laughed. “That’s because we’re the voice of reason. Maybe not always for ourselves, but always for other people.”

Molly joined in their laughter. The three of them chatted a little while longer about their lives, then disconnected. She sat back in her desk chair for a long time after the Web cam turned off, thinking about what Alex had said.

Take a leap of faith with Linc. Trust in him—but most of all in herself—that the second time around she had made a better choice.

Could she do that?

Her doorbell rang. Rocky scrambled to his feet and began to bark, little non-ferocious yips that wouldn’t have scared off anyone, but he thought sounded like a guard dog. Molly gave him an appreciative pat on the head, then crossed to open the door.

Linc stood on her doorstep. Again.

“I thought you went back to Vegas.”

“I can’t.” He grinned.

“Why?”

“Everything I want is here. In San Diego.”

Her heart sang, but she tamped down the feeling. They’d been here before, just a couple hours ago. “Here?”

“I went down to the beach,” he said. “Walked for a long time. In fact, I think I still have sand in my shoes.”

She laughed. “You? Walked on the beach?”

He nodded. “I think someone I know called it playing hooky.”

“That I did.”

He reached up and caught a tendril of her hair, and she held her breath as he let it slip through his hand, slow, sensual, making her melt with desire. “You were right. I’ve let guilt run my life long enough.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” She wanted to back up, to escape his touch. He was here to say goodbye, she was sure of it. And she just couldn’t do that twice.

Linc released her, then bent down and retrieved something from the table on her porch. “While I was there, I finished this. For you. For the baby.”

He handed her the
Memories for Your Baby
journal. Molly took it, then opened the book, and found the pages inside filled with Linc’s neat script. Everything from his favorite color to his earliest childhood memory, written down, in detail.

“You…you did it.” Each page revealed something more about Linc, something she hadn’t known before. Another piece of his soul, his heart.

Linc’s entire self, written in the pages of their baby’s journal. She ran a palm over the fresh ink, feeling more connected to him at that moment than ever before.

“It needs something more, though.”

“What? I mean, it looks like you’ve filled in everything you could. I’m just amazed, Linc, I never thought—”

“It needs your stories, Molly. You never filled in your pages, either.”

She stopped and looked up at him. She hadn’t, had she? All this time she’d been concentrating on garnering information about Linc. She’d completely forgotten about the mom pages.

“When you do, I want to read them,” Linc said, taking a step closer to her, closing the gap until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began. “I want to know everything about you, Molly. What kind of eggs you like in the morning. If you sleep on the right side of the bed or the left. If you like romantic movies or thrillers.”

What was he saying? Had she heard him right? “You…but…why?”

A grin curved up his face. “Because if I’m going to move my business to San Diego, I want to be sure.”

Move his business to San Diego? The words swam in Molly’s head. Had she heard him right? “Be sure about what?”

He reached up and cupped her jaw, running his thumb over her bottom lip. “I want to be sure that I know everything I can about the woman I want to marry.”

She blinked. “Marry? Did you just say you want to marry me?”

“I love you, Molly. I’ve loved you since I met you that night in the bar. I love the way you take chances, the way you have this amazing mix of sweet and sassy, even the way you boss me around sometimes.” He chuckled.

“You…you do? But…” She couldn’t even form the words, just vague questions.

“The more I wrote in that journal, the more I realized I wanted to make new memories. With you. With our baby. I didn’t want to look back at my life in five years or ten or twenty and just see empty pages, ones that didn’t have you and our baby in them. Over the last week, I’ve spent a lot of time with my niece and nephew and it made me realize how much I want to spend time with my own child. How much I don’t want to miss out on those years.”

She stood there, dumbfounded.

“You were right,” he went on, “I was like those rocks at the lake. And if I kept on going the way I was, my life would be as cold and hard as them.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then another to her cheek. “You made this rock move and change. And, to be honest, it was about damned time. So marry me and let’s be a family.”

Joy took wing in her heart. He loved her? Wanted to marry her? “Linc, I…I don’t know what to say.”

“Then just say yes.” He kissed her other cheek, then her lips. “I’ve spent too many years using work to fill the hole in my heart when all I had to do was look—” at this his blue eyes connected with hers “—at you.”

Her heart melted, her arms stole around Linc, and she curved into him. “Oh, Linc, I love you, too. And, yes—yes, I’ll marry you.”

A smile broke across his face, bloomed in his blue eyes. His hand slipped between them, to rest on her abdomen. “Then I think we need to find a pen.”

“A pen? Why?”

“Because there’s a page in the baby book for ‘When Your Parents Fell in Love’.” He kissed Molly, long and sweet and sure, then pulled back. “And I think that moment is now.”

Molly smiled up at Linc—not Lincoln Curtis, but Linc, the man she had met, the man she had, indeed, fallen in love with—and smiled. “And what will we put? That we had a one-night stand, one crazy night in Vegas, and it turned into something more?”