One Night With You (2 page)

Emotionally she felt stupid and foolish and incredibly naive. She simply had not considered this happening. Had not allowed herself to consider that it
could
happen. Pregnancy had seemed so far from that weekend. So removed from what was happening between them.

"Face it," she said to her reflection in the rearview mirror, "you were stupid. And now you're scared."

She surveyed herself in the narrow mirror. Yes, definitely scared. She could see her eyes reflected back at her. Wide and blue and uncharacteristically shadowed, with two creases furrowing the smooth surface between her brows. She wasn't prepared for this, she thought, a little wildly. She wasn't ready. It was too soon. She needed more time!

But there wasn't more time and, ready or not, it was most definitely happening.

She looked down at her hands, clenched tightly around the steering wheel, and slowly released her grip.
Coffee
, she thought.
I need a cup of coffee before I drive back
.

And maybe something to eat, she decided, thinking that lunch seemed as if it had been days ago instead of merely a few hours. She had been ravenously hungry lately and now she knew why.

She drove carefully, as if her belly were already protruding enough to hinder her movements, and parked in front of one of her favorite seafood restaurants on the Santa Cruz wharf. It was nearly empty and she chose a booth next to the plate-glass window, where she had an unimpeded view of the fishing boats tied up to the wharf.

She had always loved to watch the gulls and the pelicans swooping low over the water, bickering over the scraps of fish tossed to them as the fishermen cleaned their catch. Her father used to bring her there to lunch when she was a child. Grown-up lunches, just him and her. It had always made her feel important and special.

"I'll have coffee," she said when the waitress came to take her order. "No, make that tea," she amended. Pregnant women probably shouldn't drink coffee. "Hot tea and a bowl of clam chowder with extra butter for the sourdough, please," she added, thinking vaguely that dairy products were supposed to be good for you.

She sipped absently at the chowder when it came and drank the strong hot tea gratefully, feeling its warmth spread slowly through her body. As she sat there, pretending to eat, she tried to analyze exactly what it was that she was scared of. Exactly. No vague fears permitted.

Well, number one, she enumerated silently, what did she know about bringing up a child? Did she know how? No, that was too vague. Besides, everyone who has ever been pregnant has worried about that. Losing her job? No, the movie crowd she worked with would barely bat an eye, although a few eyebrows might be raised at her decision to go through with it. Terminating the pregnancy would seem the more logical choice to most of them.

Well, she asked herself, wasn't it the most logical choice for a woman in her situation? It was still early enough, she was single and there was no one else—no man—involved. Not now, anyway, she thought wryly. So why not?

She tried to look at it logically and without emotion and failed. No, it just wasn't something she could do. And that left raising the child herself, because having a baby and then giving it up was also something she could never bring herself to do. No matter how logical or sensible it might seem.

But why change tactics now, she asked herself, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, when nothing about this whole affair, from beginning to end, had any foundation in logic. Even being here, now, was not logical. Logic would have been seeing a doctor in San Francisco, where she lived. But she had been honestly worried, having fooled herself into thinking that there was something seriously amiss with her female plumbing—as her mother referred to it—and she had instinctively wanted the reassurance of the familiar and the trusted.

That meant, to Desi, Dr. Craig, who had tended to her medical needs all her life. So she had hopped into her Spitfire and driven the eighty miles south to her hometown of Santa Cruz.

And that was not only illogical, she thought, it was dangerous. Santa Cruz was a sleepy seaside town, at least in the wintertime when all of the tourists and summer residents had gone home. If anyone happened to see her who knew her mother—well, enough said. And almost everyone in Santa Cruz knew her mother, who was active in all the local women's clubs, or her father, who was a local attorney, or the youngest of her three brothers, Court, the only one of the four Weston children still living at home.

Almost anyone she might run into in town would know at least one of her family and would naturally mention that they had seen her. And then her mother would call, wanting to know why she had driven all the way down from San Francisco and not stopped by to see her family. And if not to visit her family, then why make the drive? All asked in the nicest way possible, of course, between bits of gossip and family news and with loving concern.

And Desi would have to lie. She wasn't a very good liar, but over the phone, away from her mother's eagle eye, she could do a convincing job of it. But it would be only a delaying tactic at best because, sooner or later, they would have to know.

How she hated the thought of telling them. Not that there would be a scene, no screaming or tears or "how could you do this to me's." Her mother would be all loving concern and her brothers, being of her own generation, would accept it as a part of today's morals, but she could already see the disappointment in her father's face.

She, as the only daughter among three sons, was the apple of her father's eye and, despite her twenty-four years, she knew he still thought of her as his little girl. It would be different if her pregnancy was the result of a long-term relationship and if she was planning to marry the father. It would certainly be easier to explain. Telling her father his first grandchild was the result of what amounted to a one-night stand would just about break his heart.

The waitress came by to offer more hot water for her tea and Desi, startled from her unhappy reverie, covered the cup with her hand, shaking her head. "Just the check, please," she said, digging into her satchel for her wallet.

Rising from the booth, she turned toward the exit and then paused as she caught sight of herself reflected faintly in the plate-glass window. A tall slim woman with flaming red hair caught up in a fashionably untidy knot on top of her head stared back at her. She didn't look any different, she thought, than she had when she left home earlier. Dressed in well-worn straight leg jeans, high-heeled ankle boots, and a sleek navy cashmere sweater with a bulky knit scarf looped around her neck, she looked like the same woman who had stood in front of the bedroom mirror at eleven this morning telling herself everything was going to be just fine. Dr. Craig wasn't going to find anything wrong with her. Instinctively she turned sideways, looking for changes in her figure but there wasn't even a hint of a baby bump—although, maybe, her breasts were a bit fuller?

With a sigh she turned away from her reflection in the window and headed out of the restaurant to her car, suddenly wanting very much to be home in her own cozy little apartment on California Street, where she could burrow down under the covers of her big brass bed and indulge in a good cry.

She only got as far as Scott's Valley before she turned the Spitfire around and retraced the thirty miles back to Santa Cruz—and her parents' house. They'd be at dinner about now, her parents and her youngest brother, Court. Just as badly as she had wanted to be at her apartment, she now wanted to see all of them. To tell them about her pregnancy now, before her courage failed her or before someone else could tell them first. She wanted to share her fears and uncertainties with someone, yes. But even more, she realized, she wanted a chance to share and explore those faint stirrings of wonder and joy she had felt in those first few moments after Dr. Craig had confirmed her pregnancy. Those were the important feelings, the most real. Her first instinctive reaction to the news had been happiness.

A baby—
his
baby—the tangible result of those two heavenly days.

"Hold that thought," she said to herself as she parked the Spitfire in front of her parents' house, a Victorian on West Cliff Drive with an unimpeded view of Monterey Bay.

She paused for a moment by the car to stare out over the cliffs at the sparkling blue sea. There were a few die-hard surfers sitting on their boards out past the breakers, talking and waiting for the perfect wave. Hardy souls, she thought with a smile, to be out there at all, even in their wet suits, because, despite the mild summerlike weather it was still only February and that water was
cold
. She knew because she had surfed off this point, too, in the days when she had been a young teenager determined to do everything her brothers did.

Lord, that suddenly seemed such a long, long time ago.

Sighing, she went through the front gate and walked around the house to the back door of her parents' home.

"Mom?" she called as she pushed open the screen leading into her mother's immaculate apple-green-and-white kitchen. "Dad? Anybody home?"

"In here," her mother replied. Desi heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back as her mother rose and hurried toward the sound of her daughter's voice. "We're just finishing dinner, dear. Have you eaten yet?"

"Mmm-hmm, I had some chowder at Stagnaro's about an hour or so ago."

"Well, I hardly call that dinner," Mrs. Weston said, linking her arm affectionately through Desi's. They were much the same height, with Desi being perhaps a half inch taller and several pounds lighter. They had the same coloring, too, except Mrs. Weston's hair was not so coppery a red as her daughter's, being liberally sprinkled with gray that she refused to color, and not nearly so wildly curly. The curls had come from Mr. Weston's side of the family.

"Come eat and tell us what we've done to deserve the unexpected honor of your company."

"Oh, mom," she said, smiling. "Really. You'd think I never come home anymore."

"Not since Christmas," said her father from his chair at the head of the table, and Desi went around to kiss his cheek.

"Hello, Daddy."

"Sit down, Desiree," said her mother, "Courtland will get you a plate. Courtland, stop stuffing your face for a minute and get your sister a plate and some silverware before she wastes away right in front of our eyes."

Court grimaced at the use of his full name, but got up obligingly to fetch the requested items. "Here ya are, Desiree," he said, a subtle teasing stress on her full name. He knew she wasn't particularly fond of it, any more than he was fond of his. Or, in point of fact, any more than any of the four younger Westons were of their given names.

Mrs. Weston had a romantic streak that was apparently intensified by pregnancy, and each of her children had what she considered romantic names. As a result they all used a shortened version and only their mother—as mothers will—used their full given names.

"Thanks, Courtland," Desi returned, smiling impishly. She wondered briefly if her mother's particular brand of romanticism was hereditary. Would her baby end up as, God forbid, a Rhett or a Scarlett? The thought made her giggle.

"Share the joke?" asked her father.

"It's nothing, dad. Just a passing thought," she said, but then went on, "no, that's not true. I was wondering if I'd be like mom and give my baby some impossible name."

"Impossible!" her mother said with mock indignation. "You all have perfectly lovely names."

"Yeah," put in Court, "perfectly lovely. Just what a guy needs."

"Now, Courtland," Mrs. Weston began, but her husband, sensing something more beneath Desi's light words, silenced his wife with a slight shake of his head.

"What put that thought into your head, Desi?" he asked gently.

Desi put down her fork, blue eyes glued to her plate. "I drove down to see Dr. Craig today," she said softly, her voice almost inaudible, so that they had to strain to hear her. "I thought I was having some sort of female troubles. Or something terrible. You know, like cancer."

"Desiree, darling." Her mother rose from her chair to lay a comforting arm around Desi's shoulders.

"But I'm not sick," she said, and her eyes sought her father's, pleading and defiance in their blue depths. "I'm pregnant."

There was a minute's stunned silence and then, "Holy shit," said Court.

"Language, Courtland," admonished Mrs. Weston automatically. "Desiree, are you sure? How long?" and then the inevitable question, "Do we know the father, darling?"

"When's the wedding?" asked Court.

"No wedding," said Desi firmly, her eyes still on her father's face.

"No wedding?" echoed her mother uncertainly. "But Desiree, a baby... Surely..." And then her face lit with compassionate understanding, and her arms around her daughter were fiercely protective. "Oh, darling, he doesn't want to get married, does he?"

Desi turned into her mother's embrace, returning the fierce hug. "Oh, mom," she said breathlessly, hovering someplace between laughter and tears. "You're priceless. It's not that he doesn't want to get married. I don't."

"You don't? But, Desiree—"

"Mom, he doesn't even know."

"You just found out yourself, of course. Yes, that explains it. When you tell him, then—"

"No, mom, listen to me for just a minute. I don't want to get married. He doesn't know and... and I'm not going to tell him."

"Not going to tell him!"

"Don't you think he has a right to know?" came her father's gentle voice, speaking for the first time.

"No, Daddy." She dropped her head, staring at her clenched hands. "He wouldn't want to know. He... we...." She struggled for the words, determined to be as truthful as possible now that she had started. "We don't have a relationship or... anything. It was something that just happened. But I'm not ashamed. I want you all to understand that. I wasn't coerced or drunk or anything like that. And I'm glad about the baby." Her long artistic fingers unclenched and spread tenderly, protectively over her abdomen. "I want this baby," she said. "Very much."