Shaking her head impatiently at both of them, Olivia explained, “I’m not talking about a seminar, I’m talking about Senõr Fred’s-tonight.” She wiggled her brows. “Spiciest salsa in town and dollar margaritas.”

“Oh, I’m so in,” Tess said without hesitation, standing up and heading out of the office. “Let me get my coat, finish up some paperwork and I’ll meet you at reception in fifteen minutes.”

“What about you, Mary?” Olivia asked. “I mean, can anyone really turn down a margarita?”

At that question, Mary wanted to laugh, but she didn’t feel merry enough to make it happen. She could turn down a margarita, and pretty much anything alcoholic for the next nine months. She was back to where she’d started, with a pregnancy test hidden behind the rolls of toilet paper under the sink. And this time, she’d actually missed her period.

She scrubbed a hand over her face. How was she going to tell Ethan, or not tell him?

“I’d love to come,” Mary said finally, feeling slightly sick to her stomach at the thought of salsa and chips and happy hour chaos. “But I think I’ll stick to soda.”

Olivia smiled and shrugged. “Okay.”

“But if you two end up completely hammered,” Mary said, gathering up her notes and grinning. “Consider me your designated driver.”

Dr. Eleanor Wisel was a kind, grandmother type of Ob/Gyn with cool hands and warm instruments and a penchant for delivering news with her eyes closed. Dramatic effect? Who knew, but it was exactly how she’d told Mary that yes, she was indeed pregnant.

With a prescription for prenatal vitamins stuffed in her purse and a small plastic bag of coupons, information and dates for future appointments hanging from her wrist, Mary walked out of the office building and across the parking lot toward her car. Her insides had stopped shaking long enough for her brain to start processing what all this could mean. She didn’t have to worry about money or a future for this child-she had her business and the trust. She didn’t have to worry about loving this baby, she already felt totally in love with him or her. But what she did have to worry about was the father. She had to tell him, of course, but things were so crazy right now, would it be better if she waited?

She opened her car door and was about to climb in when she heard her name being called across the parking lot. Her skin prickled and her heart raced, and she quickly tossed her free bag of goodies into her car and slammed the door. When she looked up again, he was there, looking incredibly handsome in jeans, a white button-down shirt and a gray brushed-wool blazer. She found herself fascinated with his features, wondering would her baby have his eyes or hers? His hair color or hers? His roguish smile or her quirky one?

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a tone he usually reserved for employees.

“Seeing a doctor.”

Concern etched his features and he took a step closer to her. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Why did he have to smell so good? All she wanted to do was fall forward, rest her forehead on his chest, tell him how much she missed him and that everything that happened the day of her grandfather’s funeral was a stupid misunderstanding. “I’m perfectly healthy.”

He looked relieved.

“And what are you doing here?” she asked, suddenly aware of the pregnancy packet laying on the back seat in full view.

“I had a meeting in the building next door, and I saw your car.”

“Right,” she said, patting the Mustang she’d have to get rid of now in favor of an SUV or something more child friendly.

“Well, it’s been interesting.” He looked ready to take off, but Mary was not about to let him leave without at least starting the groundwork for a decent future relationship.

“Ethan, I want to apologize for what happened at the funeral-”

He put up a hand to stop her. “No need.”

“No, there is a need. What happened was a misunderstanding.”

Beside them, a woman was getting into her car, tossing her purse and effects into the back of the car, just as Mary had done a few minutes earlier. But she was not just any woman, Mary realized, her stomach roiling sickly as she turned her head and tried to go unnoticed by the woman she had chatted with in the waiting room of Dr. Wisel’s office.

“Oh, hey, there.”

Too late.

Mary gave the woman a quick wave and a very tightlipped smile as she silently begged her not to say anything more.

The woman waved, utter glee in her eyes at having heard good news today, as well. “See you later, and good luck with your baby.”

Her heart in her shoes, Mary nodded as they woman got into her car and shut the door. “You, too.”

She didn’t want to look at him, afraid of what she’d see in his dark-blue gaze: horror, disgust, disappointment. It would be something she’d always remember, but she wasn’t a coward, and she faced her child’s father with a proud lift of her chin.

“Baby?” he repeated, his face registering utter shock.

“It looks that way. It’s very early.”

“But…how is that possible? I wore a-”

“I know.”

“And the first time we had nothing at all and…well, nothing happened.”

“I know.”

He looked away, scrubbed a hand over his chin. “God, a baby. Your baby.”

“Our baby,” Mary couldn’t stop herself from saying. She wasn’t about to beg, but she loved the guy and she wanted him to want this child and her, too.

“Oh, Mary,” he said with a softness she’d only heard when she was in his arms, when he kissed her. “Were you going to tell me?”

“Of course I was going to tell you,” she assured him. “But you weren’t taking my calls-”

“I would’ve taken this one.”

“I had some things to think about first, some decisions to make-”

He went white as paper. “You’re going to…to have it, right?”

Her heart leaped into her throat. How could he even think…“Yes.”

He released a heavy sigh. “But you were going to wait to tell me?”

Around them people slammed doors and cars pulled in and out of their spaces. “Ethan, again, we haven’t spoken in two weeks. I didn’t know if we’d ever speak again the way you were ignoring my phone calls.”

“I was pissed.”

“I know.”

“I had every right to be.”

He did. “Okay.”

“But that doesn’t mean my feelings for you changed.”

Mary felt her breath catch in her throat. What did that mean? What feelings? Besides attraction and a strange friendship?

He continued, “That doesn’t mean I didn’t think about you every damn minute and want to be with you, around you, inside you.”

“Ethan,” she uttered, shaking her head.

“I have to know something, Mary.”

“Okay.”

“Are you ashamed of me, too?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What you did at the funeral-or what you didn’t do. Your grandmother treated me like dirt and you stood there.”

“You’re right. I was an idiot. At first. But after you left, I told her off.”

He didn’t look as though he wanted that answer, he was still so angry-at her, and maybe at his life and past. “You couldn’t get rid of me fast enough around Olivia and Tess.”

Sighing, she leaned against the car. “That had nothing to do with shame, Ethan.”

“What was it then?”

“I didn’t want my partners to know about you.”

He looked triumphant. “Exactly.”

“No, not exactly. I didn’t want them to know that I had allowed myself to be blackmailed by you, that I went to work for you afterward and then that I-” she swallowed “-fell in love with you in Michigan. If I’m ashamed of anyone, it’s myself.”

“For loving me?” he asked.

She studied him hard. “I’m coming clean here, Ethan. I’m admitting my failings, how I’ve screwed up. I should have found a different way to help my father, or allowed him to find a way out himself. I know that all I’ve ever done is try to keep the peace, take care of everyone else but myself. Then I used it as an excuse to stay away from relationships with people.” She looked heavenward. “But no more. I’m done with that. I have a child on the way, and I’m going to teach her by example to run headfirst into life and embrace it, and that the world’s problems are not hers to solve.” She looked at Ethan. “What are you going to teach her?”

Mary had hoped that her words, her own admission of past failures would jar him, make him see what a fool he’d been and how releasing the past was his only way to have a real future. But he wasn’t ready for that, and she had to accept the fact that maybe he never would be.

“I have plenty to teach,” he said proudly.

“The art of the deal?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being ruthless in business matters-”

“Business matters?” She shook her head, disappointed. “You still don’t understand what happened with us-or take any responsibility for it, do you?”

“If we’re talking about the bargain-”

“Of course we are.”

His chin set, his eyes blazing blue fire, he said, “I did what I had to do.”

Mary laughed bitterly as she opened her car door and climbed in. “You know, with how brilliant you are, I’d have thought that by now you’d have come up with a far more creative answer. That one’s getting a little tired, and frankly so am I,” she said before closing the door in his face.

Ethan Curtis wasn’t a big drinker, never packed up his troubles and headed to the nearest bar. Instead he preferred to solve his problems in a clear and rational way. Even in personal matters, this method worked well for him. Today, however, clear and rational just didn’t exist.

He drove through the stone gates of the Days of Grace Trailer Park and past the office to the mobile home he couldn’t seem to stay away from. The one-bedroom home seemed to stare back at him, wondering why he kept returning to a place that held such bad memories.