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SUMMER BROUGHT WILLA’S HEYDAYS. VACATIONS staggered through the months of June, July, and August guaranteed her kennels never wanted for boarders. Gordy patrolled the grounds like a member of campus security, reporting back when his canine instincts found anything amiss.
This year, June’s heat seemed more oppressive than usual for a Texas Gulf Coast summer. Soaring temperatures sapped her strength and she was grateful for her border collie’s sharp eye. He pulled his weight beyond his role as companion and she rewarded him nicely.
She rewarded Joel, too, for he was an awesome help. He’d gone back to work at the end of April—three weeks to the day after they’d become lovers. He’d surprised her by waiting that long, by not cutting off the cast himself and forging his own release papers. He’d been that antsy and impatient
Once his cast had come off, he’d spent a lot of time in his home gym working to rebuild the muscle he’d lost. His weakness came as a surprise to the Wolf Man. It seemed he considered himself invincible. Being reminded of his human nature—that he could break as well as bend and that recovery came with time, not on command—made Joel a bit of a grump.
Now that he was mobile again, he had a month’s worth of strength training he needed to show off and put to good use. He didn’t hesitate to hop through the shrubbery separating their yards any time he saw her working.
He took upon himself a few of the more arduous tasks, ones Willa had never had trouble managing before. This year, though, scrubbing down the kennels between boarders and hauling the fifty-pound bags of kibble and chow to the storage shed when the delivery service dropped the load on her driveway was more than she wanted to handle.
He’d even gotten into the habit of leashing up one of the larger dogs to accompany him on his daily run. That was probably the biggest help of all because giving each of her boarders a daily dose of exercise was an amenity she prided herself on providing.
But in these long, hot and humid days of deep summer, exercise was the last thing on her mind. She got enough. Physical labor was built into her daily routine, and she certainly didn’t lack for after-hours exertion.
The decision to become Joel’s lover had been one of the best moves, the rightest moves, she’d made while navigating in the nebulous waters of male/female relationships. She’d never been more satisfied, more spoiled. More full and complete. She was also blessed with the certainty that Joel felt the same.
Physically, they were two halves of the same whole. And that cliché extended to their mental synchronicity as well.
They thought the same thoughts at the same time, finished sentences the other started. They often spoke to one another without words, saying all they needed to say with looks and gestures.
It was almost frightening how well they meshed on those two levels. Especially when the third, emotional level was giving her fits. It shouldn’t have, really.
She shouldn’t have been surprised to find herself loving the man with whom she shared the best and worst of her days, the blissfully erotic hours of the night.
It was Joel who first came to mind when she had good news—or bad news—to tell. It was Joel’s opinion she wanted when she considered raising her summer rates. It was Joel’s input she asked for after interviewing three contractors who bid on replacing her roof. It was Joel’s advice she sought when her minivan died and a vehicle purchase became priority number one.
Joel Wolfsley had become her best friend. Yet she couldn’t share with him the thing she most wanted, most needed to share. The one thing a best friend—and this best friend in particular— deserved to be the first to know.
When she’d overslept that morning in mid-May and, even at Gordy’s urgent bark, had had to force herself out of bed, she knew she was suffering from more than heat; knew she was ill-equipped to self-diagnose.
This lethargy wasn’t going away on its own. It wasn’t serious enough to be chronic fatigue, yet it was more than long hours working and too little sleep to recharge.
Her next thought had been of anemia. A very plausible possibility. Her diet wasn’t exactly iron rich, but she’d never suffered such weariness before. And her periods had never been overly heavy—
A jolt of panic had scorched a wild path from her heart to the pit of her stomach. It was hysteria that had driven her from bed to bathroom and the dated record hung inside the medicine chest.
She’d flipped back through the pages, knocked the calendar into the sink, fished it out and kept from shaking long enough to open the damp accounting of her cycle.
She’d marked her start date in April, but May... nothing. And now it was the first of June. Oh, God. It was the first of June.
Joel had been gone for a week of training in the middle of last month. He’d asked about her timing just once before he left. She’d been due to start then and had told him so. But she’d never started.
She’d never started.
Of course she wasn’t pregnant. One of her ovaries had been crushed in the accident. The Fallopian tube opposite had been cut. Cut, yes, but it hadn’t been banded. And it hadn’t been tied...
The doctors who’d treated her when she’d been a child weren’t specialists but emergency physicians. Her family doctor, however, had concurred with the opinion that such extensive damage would preclude a pregnancy.
The gynecologist she’d been seeing for the past ten years had seen her records, but had never ordered up tests or suggested taking a look with an arthroscope at what eighteen years of healing time had accomplished. And he’d really had no reason to, not with such a dire diagnosis printed in bold black and white and no partner waiting in the wings.
So, when his nurse had taken Willa’s blood that early June morning, and he’d come back with a wide smile and a big thumbs-up, Willa had fainted. It seemed so silly now, fainting. But then she’d been both anemic and dizzy, and her head had been swimming and the shockingly good news had unraveled her tenuous grip on consciousness.
After she’d come to, the miracle had coiled right back up into a tightly twined ball of nerves and trepidation. Joel was not going to be happy. He’d made his feelings on fatherhood clear. Neither was he open to the possibility of marriage.
Of course, trapping him into either had never been Willa’s intent. Nor was it her intent now. Still, over the next week she found herself avoiding Joel and keeping her distance, and though he never came out and asked for an explanation, she knew he noticed her withdrawal.
When they slept together, long into the nights after they’d made love, he held her desperately close. He touched her often during the wee hours as if seeking reassurance that she hadn’t walked away and, more than anything, that he wasn’t the cause of her withdrawal.
Even after he’d gone to sleep, she feared slipping from bed and waking him. And so she lay at his side and used her pillow to soak up silent tears.
She couldn’t make herself tell her best friend, her best friend whom she loved beyond words or measure, that she was pregnant with his child. For once she did, nothing would ever be the same. He would no longer be her best friend.
And even the joy that filled her soul failed to soothe that sadness.
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WILLA’S SADNESS DIDN’T keep her from rejoicing. How could it? She was going to have a baby!
She wondered if she was carrying a boy or a girl, and she picked out names for both. To be fair, she should have asked for Joel’s input, but she wasn’t feeling very magnanimous these days.
She was eight weeks’ pregnant. Her morning sickness was quickly quelled with a handful of crackers. She knew she was lucky in that her physical suffering was minimal.
But she was achy and bluesy and stupidly emotional and wanted to take it out on the man whose fault it was that she was swelling like a balloon—not a good idea since she still hadn’t mentioned that the seed he’d planted had taken root.
Good grief. She should’ve insisted on condoms, but they’d talked about past relationships and both had tests proving they were clean and she wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant.
She needed to tell him.
She’d kept the secret too long already. The added stress of such intentional dishonesty was straining the bonds of their relationship. She’d grown snappish and cross and grew more snappish and cross when Joel questioned her moods.
She had to tell him.
This baby was his, after all. He might not want to be a father, but nature and miracles had taken away his choice. Not long after the new year, a new baby Wolfsley would enter the world. They needed to decide how best to share the parenting.
She was going to tell him.
Then he could decide how much of a role he wished to play in his child’s life. His decision would ultimately affect Willa’s future, whether she stayed in the Houston area or left Texas to bring up her child alone.
Today. She would tell him. Today.
She whistled for Gordy. He loped across the yard. And not far behind loped Joel.
Not just today, Willa. Now. Tell him now. Easier said than done, she thought and sighed.
Why did he have to move across the lawn the way he moved in bed, with a purpose for every motion, a way of using his body that defined male beauty? Fluid movements emphasized the strength and symmetry of long arms and legs, the span of palm and breadth of shoulders, the pride in a head held high.
Why did her heart skip a clichéd beat when she looked up to see him? Why did her body tingle and heat? Why did she think of a hundred ways to greet him then trip over every word on her clumsy tongue?
Why did she have to love him? This man who would want no part of the gift he’d given her, who’d presented her with a legacy she’d never thought to claim. Why did it have to be the wolf she loved, the one determined to need no one, to walk through life alone?
Joel came to a stop, scrubbed a hand through Gordy’s ruff then glanced up at Willa. His smile faded. His stance stiffened. His chin came up a defensive notch even as his brow went down.
Hands on his hips, he asked, “What’s wrong.”
Common sense and decorum never had a chance.
“I’m pregnant.”