CHAPTER TWELVE

Six Months Later

You sure you’re okay, honey?” Kitty asked as she rushed around the house, fixing her makeup last minute and then scrutinizing her beaded handbag. She was dressed for a cocktail party despite the fact that it was seven in the morning, because she had a walk-on role and needed to head to the set. “You don’t need another pillow?”

“I’m good,” Annie told her. She had a pillow behind her lower back and one next to her, just in case. “Go enjoy yourself. Maybe they’ll give you a few more lines.”

“They have to be good ones, you know,” Kitty told her, putting in a hoop earring. “Viv said that she spoke on her last movie and the director made them reshoot it so he wouldn’t have to pay her scale. Cheapasses.”

“Super cheap,” Annie agreed.

“You want me to bring you home anything? In-N-Out maybe?”

Annie patted her enormous stomach. “No. I think I’m going to skip the milkshakes and burgers today.”

“It’s probably a good thing,” Kitty said, looking over at her daughter with a faintly puzzled expression. “I don’t recall porking up like you have when I had you, but then again, I do try to watch my figure. I can give you a good laxative—”

“Bye Mom,” Annie said pointedly. “Have fun.”

“All right, honey. I’m leaving!” She hesitated, grabbed her beaded purse and put her wallet into the discarded purse, instead, then rushed out the door. “Call if you need anything!”

“I won’t,” she called back. She waited until the door shut and then breathed a sigh of relief. Annie loved her mother. She really did. But Kitty was difficult to live with at times, and they got along best when they weren’t in each other’s hair constantly. Given that Annie had lived at home for seven months straight with no breaks for a movie—something that hadn’t happened in years—they were getting sick of each other. She was going to need to find an apartment when the baby came, she knew. Her mother’s house was a good size for Hollywood—twelve hundred square feet—but it felt tinier every day.

Of course, Annie needed steady work before she could get an apartment. Her savings were dwindling and apartments in Los Angeles were an arm and a leg. With a sigh, she picked up her laptop and gave the dog’s head a pat before resting the computer on her belly. Tucked against her other side, Spidey gnawed on one of his chew toys, happiest when he was next to her. She’d kept the dog.

And she’d kept the baby.

Her mother hadn’t understood either choice. It wasn’t her choice to make, though. Annie loved Spidey, and after she’d had a few weeks to weep through her feelings, she loved the baby, too. It didn’t matter that Dustin was a jerk or that he’d used her. They’d made a life together and she wasn’t going to get rid of it because it was inconvenient. Hadn’t Kitty raised Annie all on her own? She’d never known her father—her mother just said that he was a guy she’d met on set and that was the end of that. Two generations of Grissom women were going to be single moms, then. It happened. She’d make the best of it. And her mother had loved her and raised her well, so she was going to do the same for her baby girl.

Or baby boy. Whichever. It didn’t matter—she’d love the little one just the same.

She reached down and stroked Spidey’s ear as the dog happily snorted, licking peanut butter out of his Kong chew. Maybe she’d see if there was another dog movie that needed a Boston. Sometimes that happened—they didn’t care what breed the dog was as long as he was trained and listened to commands. But it hadn’t happened lately, and Annie’s agent hadn’t been able to line anything up for her at all.

She knew some of it was that she’d bickered so much with Sloane on the last movie, and because the industry was small, word got out. A few jobs had popped up, but a lot of them had involved traveling to other countries and with Annie’s heavy belly, that was out of the question. When she had a baby, those jobs would be impossible unless she schlepped her kid off to someone else for months on end, and she refused to do that. She sure couldn’t leave the kid with Kitty. Her poor baby would end up on every casting call for infants known to mankind, and she didn’t want to do that to him or her.

Maybe it was time to get out of the movie business entirely, she realized. Start something new. She could contact a few local pet places, see if they had openings for dog trainers. Heck, she’d run a cash register at a pet store if it’d give her some cash coming in and steady work. If she could rebuild her savings, she could think about the next step—like running her own dog training business.

Until the baby came, though, it was best to think in small steps.

With a sigh, she shifted on the couch, ignoring the twinges in her lower back. Balancing the laptop, she checked her email. Sandwiched in the usual junk emails was a notice from her agent.

She opened it . . . and her heart sank.

The Goodest Boy was going into reshoots. Annie needed to be in Wyoming in three days.

Reshoots were a fact of life in filmmaking. It was when the director decided that he needed more footage or needed a scene redone, and so everyone had to go back out on location. Reshoots were expensive and usually you weren’t paid for the extra time, but they were in the contract you signed, so it was expected.

Annie had forgotten all about reshoots for The Goodest Boy.

That meant going back to Painted Barrel.

That meant she might see Dustin Worthington.

And his girlfriend. Or wife. She didn’t know which one it was, just that Annie was the “other woman.”

Well . . . shit.

She rubbed her pregnant belly, thinking. She couldn’t exactly bail out of reshoots, given that Spidey was one of the stars. She had to go. Getting there wasn’t a problem, really. She’d rent a car, squeeze her big belly behind the steering wheel, and drive up there again.

But her stomach churned with dread at the thought of seeing Dustin—or his blonde girlfriend—again. She didn’t know what to do.

She had three days to figure something out.

Annie went to the laundromat to wash her clothes, because she would need them for Wyoming. She went to the dry cleaner and picked up her mother’s clothing just because she was out, and then went to the pet supply store and bought an obscene quantity of training treats so she could brush Spidey up on some of his tricks. Hopefully the reshoots wouldn’t be too painful. She kept the day busy with errands so she wouldn’t have to think too hard about Dustin.

She did anyhow, of course.

She wondered how he’d react to the thought that she was pregnant. Not just slightly pregnant, but starting-to-waddle, really-big-in-the-waist pregnant. Even her lips had puffed up, as if in solidarity with her ankles, which were permanently swollen at this point. Being pregnant was probably sexy for some people, but she mostly just felt ungainly and awkward.

Not that she wanted to be sexy around Dustin. Still, if she did run into him, it would be nice for him to be bowled over at how beautiful she was, how he’d messed things up between them. She entertained ideas of him groveling, begging for forgiveness only for her to turn her nose up at him and declare that he’d destroyed everything they might have ever had.

In reality . . . she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him she was pregnant.

She could hide it, mostly. Sure, she was poking out in the midsection, but a big bulky sweatshirt or an oversized wraparound sweater would probably hide the worst of it. She could avoid going out into Painted Barrel and stick to her hotel room. They were only going to be doing reshoots for a few days, after all. She might not see him. She might not need to tell him that he was going to be a father.

But that struck her as . . . kind of wrong.

Shouldn’t he know? No matter how bad of a person he was, or how big of a user, didn’t Dustin deserve to know he had a child coming into this world? Didn’t her baby deserve to have a father or to at least know of him? Child support aside, she’d often wondered about her own father growing up. As an adult, she didn’t care as much anymore, but with a baby on the way, she was remembering all of the times that other children’d had father figures and she’d only had her movie-obsessed mother.

Well, and her mother’s equally obsessed friends. And their plastic surgeons, who sent holiday cards to their favorite repeat clients.

Annie’s childhood hadn’t been all that normal, and the closer she got to her due date, the more she wanted her baby to have everything.

Everything.

So . . . it was a dilemma. Did she tell the rotten cowboy he was going to have a wonderful, magical child that she was growing in her belly and that he couldn’t be in the baby’s life unless the baby wanted it? Or did she let it slide and pretend there was no baby until she was safely back home again?

Annie pondered it late into the day, even as she packed her clothing and dug out every oversize tunic and sweatshirt she possibly could and stuffed them into her bags. Her mother eventually returned home, slightly frazzled and smelling like booze, but beaming. “I had four lines today, Annie! They let me flirt with the bartender in the scene, and the director even said it might stay in the final cut!”

“That’s great, Kitty.” Annie folded a cream-colored dog sweater and stuffed it into the bag. It was sticky with unseasonably warm weather here, but the mountains would be colder. Spidey would need to make sure he had warm clothing.

“You’re packing?” Kitty flopped into Annie’s bedroom and sat at the foot of the bed. “What’s going on?”

“Reshoots for The Goodest Boy. I have to be in Wyoming in three days.”

Kitty groaned. “Reshoots. As if they think everyone’s made of money and can just drop everything. They don’t even pay for reshoots!”

“It’s in the contract.” Annie shrugged. “I’ll do it. I have to. I’m just not looking forward to going back to Wyoming.”

Kitty made a sound of agreement, pushing her bleached hair back off her face. “I imagine it’s hell on your complexion.”

Annie frowned at her mother. “I don’t care about my complexion—”

“Well obviously, darling. You should have had those freckles lasered off years ago like I did.”

“I’m talking about the cowboy, mother. You know, the father of my child?” She patted her stomach, and as if responding, the baby shifted and kicked. She smiled to herself, rubbing. “This little guy is coming in ten weeks and I’m trying to figure out if I should tell the father he exists.”

“Ugh, why?”

“Because he’s going to be a parent?”

“Not if you refuse to put his name on the birth certificate.”

“Mother.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine then. Kitty.”

Kitty shrugged. “You got on just fine without a father.”

“I know. But I want to make sure it’s the right choice.” Annie stroked her rounded belly absently. She was constantly touching it now that she’d started to show, as if caressing her own stomach would somehow tell the baby inside how excited she was for him—or her—to arrive. “You never told my father about me, did you?”

“Oh, I did,” Kitty said breezily.

“You did?” Annie stared, shocked.

“Yes. I believe he told me that I was a whore and he gave me two hundred dollars to fix my problem.”

“Wow. What a winner.”

Kitty shrugged. “We Grissom women can pick them, it seems.”

Boy, she was not wrong. The thought was depressing. “But you did tell him.”

Her mother nodded. “At the time, I thought he should know. Be a father and all that. But I was much younger then, and stupider. Men don’t want to be a father unless it’s their idea.”

Annie’s stomach hurt, acid burning in her throat. Heartburn, she told herself, though it was most likely nerves. Her mother’s words had brought up a memory of her time with Dustin. Of him talking about his father, and how he’d had to marry Dustin’s mother after he got her pregnant and stayed home, running the family business. How Dustin had never wanted that.

Wasn’t this the same scenario? Wouldn’t she be forcing this onto him? Ugh. Annie swallowed hard.

But no, this would be different. She’d be letting him know about the baby . . . and that was it. She didn’t want child support. She didn’t want him to have any claim on her baby. Just because she was going to do the right thing didn’t mean that he had to.

She realized that her mind was made up. For her baby’s sake, she’d tell Dustin about the child. What Dustin chose to do with that information was up to him. She didn’t need—or want—him in her life. He could tell his blonde girlfriend . . . or not. It didn’t matter if the baby caused problems between the two of them.

Dustin should have thought of that before he’d slept with Annie, after all.

And really, Annie did best without secrets. She was an honest person and couldn’t live a lie, even if Dustin was okay with it. That wasn’t who she was . . . and she wasn’t going to change for him.

---

•   •   •

Dustin’s address was easy enough to find. She found his profile on Facebook (and okay, she might have hate-stalked it a little, but just a little) and then looked up the Price Ranch. It was apparently a big cattle ranch tucked into the mountains near Painted Barrel. While the website was outdated, she recognized the ranch’s “brand”—the symbol she’d seen on Dustin’s belt. That had to be it.

Once she’d rented a car, kissed her mom goodbye, and loaded up with snacks for both herself and Spidey, Annie headed off to Wyoming.

Driving across several states was a different experience when you were seven months pregnant. For one, she had to stop constantly to pee. Since she was by herself, every time she got gas or a snack, people gave her pitying looks, as if it were abnormal for a pregnant woman to be by herself. It irritated her—but then again, it could have been hormones causing that, too. Either way, she was in a rather pissy mood by the time she got to Wyoming, and when she found the turnoff for the Price Ranch, she was ready to get out of the car and confront someone.

The ranch itself looked rather idyllic. It was tucked deep into a valley in the twisting mountains, and the pass she had to take to get up to it was a little dangerous-looking, but it seemed safe enough. There was a light snow on the ground but the road itself was clear enough. She hoped the snow wasn’t going to be a big problem for the reshoots. Stupid if it was going to snow the entire time, but then again, she wasn’t the director. No one asked her opinion. There was a big gate with a grate of some kind across the front to keep the cattle from leaving, and when she turned down the road, she saw an enormous house that looked like a log cabin in the middle of the wilderness. There was a big barn off in the distance, rail fences as far as the eye could see, and cattle speckled over the rolling hills. It looked very pastoral.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it, Spidey?”

The dog ignored her, gazing at his now-empty Kong, hoping for a peanut butter refill.

“You can have that later,” she promised him. She drove up to the house itself, wondering if there was an appropriate place to park, and then laughed at herself. What was the appropriate sort of parking etiquette for showing up on someone’s doorstep pregnant with their baby? Parallel? Crossways? Cut off any exits just in case of a runner? Chuckling to herself at the joke, Annie got out of the car and wrapped her sweater tightly around her bulky midriff, then moved around to the back to get Spidey out of his seatbelt harness and into a leash harness. Once that was on, she put on his little winter coat and booties, because it was rather cold outside, the wind tearing through her clothing. Definitely colder than California, that was for sure. Shivering, she let Spidey climb down out of the car—she wasn’t really able to carry him at this point—and then they waddled up to the door together.

The house had a covered front porch, with a couple of wooden rocking chairs. Off in the distance, she could hear the sound of chickens, and she thought she saw a horse on the horizon. Was Dustin here? Goose bumps covered her arms and she felt a prickle of dread.

She’d never done this before—confronting an ex-boyfriend. She had a feeling it was going to go badly. Really badly. For a moment, she wanted to turn around and get back into the car. Hesitant, Annie put a hand on her stomach. “Give me a sign if you want this, baby. If not, I’ll turn around and leave and no one needs to know.”

The baby kicked, just under her hand.

Drat.

With a sigh, she headed for the house, Spidey at her heels.

Annie headed up the steps, glancing at the trucks nearby. There were several under a carport off behind the house, and she caught sight of Dustin’s familiar red monster of a truck. Yeah, this was where he lived. She didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse. It didn’t matter. It was something she had to do. Steeling herself, Annie took a deep breath and then tapped the doorbell.

“Coming,” a female voice called out. Annie waited on the porch, trying not to fidget. It seemed to take the woman a long time to get to the door, and she started to wonder if there was a problem. Finally, the door opened and the woman gave her a confused look. “Hello? Can I help you?”

If possible, the woman in front of her was even more pregnant than Annie was. She had dark, curly hair that she wore in a tail over one shoulder and had on a man’s plaid shirt over a long skirt, her belly straining the buttons. At her side, a big white dog wagged its tail happily.

“Hi, um, does Dustin Worthington live here?” Annie touched her belly.

The woman’s eyes went wide. “Oh. Oh, you’re Annie. Oh my goodness.” She sagged, and Annie immediately moved forward to try and help her.

“Wait!” Annie cried out, trying to hold her up. She was in danger of falling over herself. “I don’t think I can carry you!”

“No, I’m fine,” the woman panted, and they somehow managed to wobble over to the nearby couch together before both of them collapsed.

Wheezing, Annie rolled onto her back, her hands supporting her stomach. The other woman did the same. “That . . . was a close one,” Annie told her. “If you’d gone to the floor, I don’t think I could have helped you up.”

“Like a turtle on its back,” the woman said, still panting.

“Or two beached whales,” Annie agreed, picturing it. A horrified giggle burst in her throat.

The other woman looked over at her. Giggle-snorted.

And then they were both laughing. It was just too funny and horrific, two helpless pregnant women depending on each other for support and hoping the other had the strength. Once she started laughing, Annie couldn’t stop, either. She just kept picturing it and how funny they must have looked.

“Stop, stop,” the dark-haired woman howled. “I’m peeing my pants. My . . . bladder . . . baby’s right on it . . .”

Annie wiped tears from her eyes. “Mine too,” she giggled. “So awful.”

“The worst. Pregnancy sucks. They all lied to me,” the brunette managed, and then burst into a fresh round of laughter.

“I don’t know why I keep laughing,” Annie said, unable to stop. She just kept giggling, as if it was the funniest thing on earth.

“Hormones,” the other woman agreed between chuckles. “It’s either that or weeping.”

Oh gosh, and Annie really wanted to weep, too. Suddenly the laughter turned to tears and she started to cry.

“S’okay,” the other woman managed, staggering to her feet. “If you wet your pants, I have some extras.”

“This is a nightmare,” Annie said. She pressed her hands to her face. “All of this.”

“Oh, honey.” A moment later, a tissue was pressed into her hand and the other woman gave her shoulder a squeeze. “If you want to leave, I won’t tell Dustin you were here. It’ll be a secret between us beached whales.”

A hysterical laugh bubbled inside her again. “How did you know I’m Annie?”

“The red hair and freckles.” The woman patted her stomach and then eased herself onto the couch next to Annie again. “Though I admit the baby bump is a bit of a surprise.”

“More like a baby mountain,” Annie admitted. “We’re practically the same size and I’m only at thirty weeks.”

“Thirty-seven here,” the other woman said, her hand going to the small of her back. “Ready for this to be over. I’m Cass, by the way. Eli’s my husband.”

Annie swiped at her face. “I remember Dustin mentioning you. Hi. Annie.”

“Movie girl. Dog girl. I know.” She leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. “That was enough cardio for me today. If you don’t mind, I’m going to sit here for a moment longer so my stomach settles.”

“Is there anything I can get you?”

Cass waved a hand in the air. “I’m all right. I just get winded easily. Huge baby crushing my lungs and all.”

Gosh, Annie understood how that felt. She waited a few moments and then said, “Thank you.”

“For?”

“For offering to not tell Dustin I was here. I wasn’t sure if I should come.”

“I get that, considering you broke his heart and all.”

Annie frowned, toying with her tissue. At a slight jingle, she looked over and Spidey was politely sniffing the room, exploring an enormous dog bed that was near the fireplace. Right. They had a lot of dogs here. The white fluff monster that was Cass’s dog was busy sniffing Spidey’s hindquarters, but her dog was ignoring him, used to strange animals. She should call off the other dog so Spidey didn’t get nervous, but then she realized what the other woman said. “I’m sorry, did you say that I broke Dustin’s heart?”

“Well, yeah. Told us all about you for a week and then said nothing at all for the next six months. Eli and I connected the dots. It’s not like Dustin to be silent, you know. We figured you hurt him pretty bad.”

Something didn’t make sense. She tore at the tissue, anxious. “You mean he hurt me,” Annie gently corrected. “By not telling me that he had a girlfriend.”

Cass opened her eyes and squinted at Annie. “What girlfriend?”

“I know he has a girlfriend.” Her stomach was starting to hurt, and the baby did a somersault inside her, adding to the dizzy, spinning sensation.

“Dustin? Dustin Worthington? Mister Flirt And That’s It?” Cass shook her head, her curls sticking to her sweaty brow. “Dustin never sees a girl more than once. That’s why we all knew your name. He wouldn’t shut up about you. Well. At first.” Cass gave a little grimace.

Annie was pretty sure she was going to be sick. “The woman in town told me she was his girlfriend.”

“What? Who?”

“The blonde in the pharmacy. Red lips. Really pretty. Big hair. I forget her name—”

“Theresa?” When Annie nodded, Cass rolled her eyes. “She’s a one-woman crazy train. Also known as ‘stalker.’ He dated her once, I think, but she decided she deserved more. Dustin didn’t agree. She makes herself a pain in the ass every now and then and reminds him that she’s alive, but he’s not interested. Never really has been.”

“Oh no,” Annie moaned. Now she was the one that needed to lie down on the couch. She leaned back and pressed a hand to her forehead, feeling faint. “This is even worse than I thought.” No girlfriend? No wife? Just a crazy ex-lover? Or shoot, if they’d only gone out once, that didn’t even mean they were lovers. Not really. A vivid memory flashed through Annie’s mind—of Dustin checking the expiration date on the condoms. You never know, he’d said.

Because he’d had them for so long?

That meant . . . there was no other woman. He’d really wanted to be with Annie.

And she’d ghosted him. Acted like a jerk for seven months, convinced she’d been wronged.

Now she was the bad guy.

“I’m going to throw up,” Annie whispered.

“Please don’t puke or I will, too.”

She wanted to say it was too late, but she couldn’t, because lunch was coming up and she barely had time to lean over the couch and lose the contents of her stomach. A moment later, Cass heaved, and then both women were sick.

It would have been funny if it wasn’t happening to her.

Instead, she just started to cry again.

Stupid hormones.