The Pregnancy Plan (14 page)

She could hardly blame him for that, especially not after she’d encouraged him to facilitate more contact between mother and child.

“And then I showed up,” she said, trying to look at the situa
tion from his perspective. “How awkward was it for you to explain why Maddie’s teacher was knocking at your door at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning?”

“Danica and I have been divorced for almost five years. She knows I’ve dated other women, just as I know she’s dated other men. I don’t have to explain anything to her.”

Even so, Ashley knew the other woman had been curious about her visit. But she accepted his explanation for what it was, and tried to tamp down her own curiosity.

“Why did you come by this morning?” he asked her.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him the real reason. Not now. Not while Danica was in town and before anything had been confirmed.

“I was just thinking about you and Maddie,” she said, because that was at least partially true.

He set aside one untangled and now neatly coiled string of lights. “And missing me?”

“No.”

“I miss you,” he said softly. “Whenever I wake up in the morning without you. Whenever I go to sleep at night without you. Whenever I think about you and you’re not there, which happens about a hundred times a day, I miss you.”

They were just words, but something about those words—or maybe it was the sincerity of his tone and the warmth in his eyes—made her heart soften, yearn. But all she said was, “Oh.”

He smiled. “That surprises you, doesn’t it?”

“A little.”

“And scares you?” he guessed.

“More than a little,” she admitted, but she knew that his feelings didn’t scare her half as much as her own.

“Well, I just thought you should know,” he told her.

She took the second string of lights from him. “It scares me,” she said, “because I miss you, too. Sometimes.”

Despite the obvious reluctance of her admission, he smiled, clearly pleased by her response. “That’s a start.” He touched his hand to her cheek, his palm warm against her skin. His smile faded. “You’re freezing.”

She shrugged. “I guess I’ve been out here for a while.”

“Why don’t we go in and put on a pot of coffee?”

She closed the garage door and followed him into the house.

Though she thought they’d cleared the air about his ex-wife’s visit, mostly, there was still one specific concern gnawing at the back of her mind. She turned on the faucet and filled the pot with water and wondered if she dared ask Cam about it.

Paige had once told her that in relationships, as in a cross-examination at trial, you never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. Of equal importance was to never ask a question if the answer could hurt you. But she had to know.

When the coffee finished brewing, she poured two cups and slid one over the table to Cam before taking the seat across from him.

“Have you ever thought about getting back together with her?” she asked him.

“Danica?”

She nodded.

“No,” he said.

The immediate and definitive response should have reassured her, but she wasn’t able to relinquish her concerns so easily. “But she’s Maddie’s mother.”

“Yes, she is,” he agreed.

“And if she wanted to reconcile, wouldn’t you want that for your daughter?”

“No,” he said again.

“Why not?”

“Because we were never happy together, and that’s not the kind of relationship example I want to set for my child.”

She wanted to be satisfied by his explanation. It was logical and it answered her question, but for some reason she couldn’t let it go. “You were in love with her once.”

Cam set his cup down and met her gaze across the table.

She could tell he wasn’t any happier than she was about the direction of their conversation, but like a train veering dangerously off-track, she couldn’t seem to stop it.

“I wouldn’t have married her if I wasn’t,” he admitted. “But, as it turned out, I didn’t really know her and she didn’t really know me, and when we finally got around to sharing all the intimate details that you should know about the person you marry, it was too late.”

But whether he knew her or not, he’d fallen in love with her, and Danica was beautiful, sophisticated, ambitious—everything Ashley wasn’t. “She obviously still cares about you.”

“We have a child together,” he reminded her. “That creates a bond that can’t ever be broken.”

Which was almost the same thing that Megan had said to her, but which took on a whole new meaning when applied to Cam and his ex-wife. And it made Ashley wonder if it might not be a mistake to tie herself to a man who was already tied to someone else.

Cam didn’t know what else he could say to Ashley to alleviate the doubts he could see swirling in the depths of her violet eyes, and he mentally cursed his ex-wife again, adding bad timing to his usual complaints of selfishness and lack of consideration. Because just when he and Ashley had finally started to make progress in their relationship, Danica’s unexpected appearance had put a damper on everything.

“But Maddie is the only reason we’re still in contact,” he continued his explanation. “There’s nothing else between us anymore.”

“I’m sorry if it seems like I was interrogating you,” she said. “I was just caught off guard when Maddie opened the door and she was there.”

“Does it bother you that she’s staying at my house?”

“No,” she said.

But he knew it was a lie. Because he knew that if Ashley’s ex had suddenly taken up residence in her house, however temporarily, it sure as hell would bother him.

“It’s only for a few days,” he told her. “But I can check her into a hotel—”

“No,” she said again. “If this is your usual arrangement, if it gives Maddie more time with her mother, then there’s no reason to change it. But I have to admit, it bothers me that she’d rather be sleeping in your bed than down the hall.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” he asked cautiously.

“Are you going to deny that it’s true?”

He wished he could. But he wouldn’t lie to her and he wouldn’t tiptoe around the truth. “She did imply that she didn’t want to sleep in the spare room,” he admitted. “But I clarified the situation for her.”

“And why did it need clarification?”

He didn’t know how to answer that question without landing himself in hotter water, so he said nothing.

“Because she’s used to dropping in to your life when it’s convenient for her—and back into your bed because that’s convenient, too.”

“It hasn’t exactly been a pattern,” he denied.

“But it’s happened.”

“I don’t expect you to understand—”

“I do understand,” she interrupted. “My friend Marilyn frequently has sex with her ex-husband because, to use her words, the itch needs to be scratched and it’s safer to use a stick that’s familiar for the task.”

He winced at the harshness of the analogy, though he couldn’t deny there was some truth in it.

“I haven’t had sex with Danica in more than two years,” he told her. “In fact, I haven’t been with anyone at all in that time, until you. Do you want to know why?”

She shrugged.

“Because I got tired of sex that didn’t mean anything. Because I wanted something more for myself.” He slipped his arms around her waist, drew her closer. “Because I wanted to be with someone I care about.”

“You’re making this into something more complicated than it was supposed to be.”

“So sue me.”

“Paige is a lawyer,” she reminded him. “Don’t tempt me.”

“Okay, I’ll let you tempt me instead.”

She tipped her head back so that her lips were only a whisper away from his. “Do you think I could?”

“You already have,” he said, and carried her up to the bedroom.

C
am had told Ashley that Danica would only be in town for a few days, but at the end of the week, she was still there, still in Cam’s house—sleeping down the hall from her ex-husband. And then one week turned into two, because—as she explained to Ashley when she came to school to pick up Maddie—she’d managed to settle a big case before trial, allowing her to extend her leave and spend more time with her family.

She hadn’t said her
daughter,
but her
family.

And the longer Danica stayed, the more Ashley worried that Cam might change his mind about wanting to reconcile with his ex-wife.

She knew she was being irrational, but from her perspective, Cam had chosen the other woman over her once already—when he’d left Ashley in Pinehurst and fallen in love with Danica.

Still, she had to give him an A for effort, because he continued to call her every night and to stop by whenever he had a chance. Of course, Danica kept him busy so that those chances were infrequent, but she didn’t blame Cam for that. She knew he was only trying to facilitate the relationship between his daughter and her mother, but she couldn’t deny that she missed spending time with him, and she missed making love with him.

She could call it having sex, but her conversation with her sister only a couple of weeks earlier had forced her to acknowledge the truth of her feelings for Cam. She was in love with him—and she was very much afraid that, for the second time in her life, she was going to lose him.

A fear that grew stronger every day through the week, until Friday night, when he showed up at her door.

“I thought Victoria was spending the night at your house with Maddie,” Ashley said.

“She is,” Cam agreed. “But it occurred to me that Danica should be able to handle two six-year-old girls for a few hours.”

“Should?”

He shrugged. “They’ve got popcorn and movies—everything is good.”

“So what are we going to do for a few hours?”

“We could make popcorn and watch a movie,” he suggested.

Which wasn’t at all what she’d expected him to say. “Really?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I just figured you didn’t come over here to watch a movie.”

“I came over here to be with you, because I missed you.”

And he sounded so sincere that her heart gave a little fluttery sigh, warning that she was in big trouble.

“I love making love with you,” he told her, “but I love just being with you, too.”

He’d used the word
love
three times in one sentence, but he hadn’t actually said that he loved her. Of course, she hadn’t
said the words to him, either. Though she no longer had any doubts about the feelings in her heart, before she put it all on the line, she needed some more time to trust and believe that they could make their relationship work.

“In that case, I think I would enjoy watching a movie with you.” She smiled. “Later.”

When Cam sneaked out to see Ashley, he hadn’t done so with the intention of getting her naked, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to protest when things started moving in that direction. Even after several weeks, the attraction between them had not begun to wane and the intensity of their lovemaking had not diminished. And while he knew Ashley was hoping to get pregnant, he didn’t believe her desire for a baby was the sole driving force behind her passion. No, the chemistry had been there twelve years ago and it was still there, and more powerful than ever.

But just as they were about to fall back onto Ashley’s bed, his cell phone rang.

Cam swore under his breath as he released his hold on Ashley to reach into his pocket. CALL FROM HOME was on the display, and he glanced apologetically at her. “I’m sorry. I have to—”

“Don’t apologize,” she interrupted. “Of course you need to make sure everything’s okay with your daughter.”

He connected the call. “Maddie?”

“No, it’s me.”

Danica.

He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to let you know that we’re out of milk, so that you can pick some up on your way home.”

He was silent, trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind the seemingly innocuous words.

“Cam?” she prompted, when he failed to respond.

“Yeah, I’m here. I just can’t believe you called to ask me to pick up milk.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No,” he said, still not sure he wasn’t missing something. “I’m just not sure when I’m going to be back.”

“Oh.” There was a not-so-subtle note of disapproval in her voice. “Madeline and Victoria wanted to make chocolate chip cookies, and we don’t have any milk.”

“You’re baking cookies with the girls?”

“Is it so hard to believe?” she asked, the indignation in her tone confirming that he hadn’t managed to hide the disbelief in his own.

“Actually, yes,” he told her.

“Forget it, then,” she said, obviously annoyed by his uncensored response. “I’ll tell them that baking cookies will have to wait for another day.”

“Have you even looked at the recipe?” he challenged.

“Of course I have.”

“Because the recipe doesn’t call for milk.”

She didn’t respond immediately, proving that she hadn’t looked at the recipe, and that her request for milk wasn’t the real reason for her call.

“Well, we want to drink milk with the cookies,” she said.

“I’ll pick some up before I come home,” he told her. “But it won’t be until later.”

“Thank you,” she said, and disconnected.

When Cameron turned around, Ashley had rebuttoned her shirt and was tugging a brush through her hair.

Obviously her mood had changed and the moment had passed.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She just shook her head. “You don’t even see what she’s doing, do you?”

“Apparently not,” he admitted cautiously.

She turned to face him. “She’s playing the wife card.”

“She’s not my wife anymore,” he reminded her.

“She called and asked you to pick up milk,” Ashley said. “Which is the type of thing that a wife asks her husband to do.”

“Even when we were married, she never made those kinds of calls. In fact, she probably wouldn’t even have noticed if we were out of milk.”

“And yet she called you now, knowing you were here, to ask.”

“She doesn’t know I’m here.”

“You don’t think so?” she challenged.

He frowned at the certainty in her tone. “How could she?”

“Your car is still in your driveway, which means that you didn’t go too far, and, coincidentally, I live down the street.”

“Danica doesn’t play those kind of games,” he said, but in the back of his mind, he wondered if he could be wrong.

“Neither do I,” Ashley said.

It was the quiet resignation in her eyes that worried him more than the words or the tone.

“What are you saying?”

“I can’t do this anymore, Cam. I won’t be the other woman.”

He was stunned. “Are you seriously asking me to choose between you and my ex-wife? Because if that’s the case, let me remind you that she is my
ex-
wife.”

Ashley took a step back. “I’m not asking you to choose at all.
I’m
making the choice this time, based on what’s best for me, and that is to move on with my life without you in it.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said, needing it to be true. Because to lose her again would be unbearable.

“I do mean it,” she said softly. “Because you broke my heart once before, Cam, and I’m not going to give you a chance to do it again.”

“What about the baby we were going to have?”

So much for Ashley’s resolution not to let him break her heart again, because with only those words, it cracked wide open.

She looked away so he wouldn’t see the distress she knew would be reflected in her eyes. Because having a baby with Cam had been her dream for so long, it broke her heart to admit that it just wasn’t going to happen, that they were never going to be the family she wanted.

“Obviously it’s a good thing I figured this out before I got pregnant.”

“How do you know you’re not pregnant?” he demanded.

“I got my period last week.” She uttered the lie without compunction because she didn’t want to put him in the position of having to choose—or maybe she didn’t want to put herself in the position of being rejected again.

“Oh,” he said, and she thought he sounded genuinely disappointed.

“It’s for the best,” she said, though it was another lie. Because she knew that if Cam even suspected the truth, he would never walk out the door. And she needed him to go. She needed to cut him out of her life so that she could get on with hers.

His gaze narrowed. “You expect me to believe that you’ve changed your mind about wanting a baby?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. I’ve just decided to revert to my original plan.”

Because she’d jumped into this arrangement with Cam without thinking it through, without realizing that he already had responsibilities and obligations as a result of his first marriage. And she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in second place.

“You really want to have a baby fathered by a stranger?”

There was as much anger as disbelief in his tone, and it annoyed Ashley that he thought he had a right to be angry about anything. After all, she wasn’t the one playing house with an ex-spouse.

“I’m not exactly planning on picking up someone in a bar,” she reminded him.

“That would almost be preferable to having your baby’s conception instigated by a catheter,” he shot back.

“Then I’ll be sure to keep that as a backup plan,” she said coolly.

“Don’t do this, Ashley.” He sounded more worried than angry now, as if he’d finally realized that she meant what she’d said. “Don’t shut me out of your life.”

And she did mean what she’d said, even if the thought of watching him walk out on her once more made her heart break all over again. But she had to be strong—or at least make him believe that she was. It was the only way she would get through this.

“I was never looking for a relationship,” she reminded him. “You were the one who tried to turn this into something more.”

“Because I care about you.” He took her hands, as if the physical connection would help her to believe the words he spoke. “I’ve always cared about you.”

And she did believe that he cared about her. But she
loved
him, and she wouldn’t settle for any less than being loved in return. Not this time.

“If you really care about me, you’ll accept that this is my choice.”

Cam had no intention of accepting Ashley’s decision. At least not without doing everything he could to change her mind. But first he came to some conclusions of his own.

Before Danica left Pinehurst for Chicago, where she would be working on a corporate merger, he decided to set some guidelines and establish firm boundaries to govern future interactions with his ex-wife. For starters, he wanted Danica to commit to seeing Maddie at least four times a year on a
regular schedule. He assured her that he would never deny requests for additional visitation, but he’d come to realize that one of the reasons Maddie was so despondent whenever she had to say goodbye to her mother was that she never knew when she would see her again. He also informed Danica that she would have to arrange for her own accommodations for future visits, with Maddie staying overnight with her mother if that was what they both wanted.

To his surprise, Danica didn’t object to any of his terms. And when all was said and done, he felt good about the decisions they’d made. He only wished they’d made those same decisions six months earlier, or at least before Ashley had concluded that she didn’t want to be with a man who was still struggling to fix the mistakes of his past.

As he sat with Maddie in the rooftop parking lot of the airport to watch his ex-wife’s plane lift into the air, he was thinking of Ashley. Missing Ashley.

Apparently Maddie was, too, because he’d barely pulled out of the parking lot when she asked, “Can we go see Ashley now?”

“Oh, honey.” He glanced at the clock on the dash. “It’s too late to go visiting anyone tonight.”

“But you’re still friends with her, aren’t you? You still like her, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he said.

But the truth was, he had no idea if he and Ashley were still friends, and he wanted to be so much more. And although he did like her, that word didn’t begin to describe the depth of his feelings for her.

“Can we see her tomorrow?” Maddie pressed.

“You will see her tomorrow—at school,” he reminded her.

“I like when she comes to visit us at home because then I get to call her Ashley instead of Miss Ashley.”

The dropping of the title was something Ashley and
Maddie had decided, and though he worried that his daughter might slip up at school one day, so far she’d been careful. Probably because she was so thrilled to be on a first-name basis with her teacher outside of school that she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the privilege.

Of course, she didn’t know that her father had screwed everything up for her—and he was still hoping that he might find a way to fix it before she ever found out.

“But I am excited about going to school tomorrow,” Maddie continued, oblivious to his inner turmoil. “Because we’re going to make up our own fairy tales.”

“That sounds like an ambitious project.”

“Ashley—
Miss
Ashley—says the best stories are those that show imagination and heart. I thought she was talking about the pictures, and I asked her how to draw a picture of imagination, but she explained that imagination is making something up—telling about something that isn’t real but that you can see in your mind.

“Can you see things in your mind, Daddy?”

“I guess I can sometimes.”

“Then you know how to use your imagination,” she told him.

Cam only wished he could imagine the right scenario to get Ashley back in his life.

Instead of their usual brunch, Ashley was meeting her sister and her cousin for a late lunch because Paige was babysitting while a friend went to an appointment. Since she had some time before she was due to meet them, Ashley decided to wander through some of the shops on Rockton Street.