TWO BOYS TUMBLED into Laurel’s room with the enthusiasm only oversugared four-year-olds could bring.
They came at just the right time. Laurel had been practicing speeches on how to tell her family she was pregnant, each worse than the last. It didn’t help that she kept getting distracted by the image of Mitch making bacon.
“Aunt Laurel!” the boys cried. She’d earned the title of aunt even though they were technically second cousins.
Laurel sat up on her bed, heartened by their enthusiasm.
“We’re cannonballs.” Andrew crouched and rolled across the carpet toward her.
His identical brother—Alexander, the twin with the cowlick at his crown—rolled on the other side of the bed.
“Look what I brought you and Baby—fresh fruit!” Cousin Sophie, mother of the minion twins, held up a small bunch of bananas and a large yellow apple. “Mackenzie at the general store got a shipment yesterday before the pass closed. Wow, she’s a good salesperson. We barely got out of there without buying two more sleds. Did you call your parents? Or he who you refuse to name?”
That was Sophie, master of the conversational whip-around. The “he” in question was the father of Laurel’s baby, a man whose identity she was keeping secret as long as possible.
Secrets made her head ache. Laurel rubbed her temples, remembering the night they’d met...
“Ash...” Wyatt Halford had believed he was on a date with Laurel’s sister, Ashley. “I’m having a good time, but I have to admit. I’m surprised that you’re so...so...” Wyatt had struggled for words and it had been endearing. His gaze lingered on Laurel’s. His smile was completely natural. He hadn’t glanced around the restaurant to locate the nearest camera or cell phone aimed his way. He’d been unlike any actor Laurel had been sent on a date with posing as Ashley.
Having grown up as a Monroe, Laurel wasn’t impressed by beauty or wealth or celebrity. She didn’t need what they had. Her job on these first dates was to discourage a second one. But Wyatt Halford...
“You’re so...so down-to-earth,” Wyatt had said artlessly, flashing Laurel a smile that curled her toes. “Maybe it’s because I hadn’t realized you’d know the history of the action film genre.” His claim to fame. “Or because I’ve never heard you laugh wholeheartedly. Or simply because you’re wearing blue tonight.”
“Teal,” Laurel had whispered, won over. As kids, Mom had always put Ashley in pink and Laurel in a shade of blue or green.
On the night of her date with Wyatt, Laurel had argued with her mother about taking Ashley’s place. She’d wanted to stay home and work on the pink evening gown pinned to the dressmaker’s form in her bedroom. Eventually, Mom had won, as Laurel knew she would. In defiance, Laurel had worn a teal A-line dress, not black or Ashley’s signature pink. And this man—this handsome, charming actor beloved by millions—had looked at Laurel and seen something other than the bright, shiny penny that was Ashley Monroe.
A simple dinner date had turned into a not-so-simple morning after, something Laurel had carefully neglected to mention to Ashley and her mother. And now nothing was simple.
“Earth to Laurel.” Sophie snapped her fingers in front of Laurel’s face.
“I’m going to tell them,” Laurel reassured her cousin. It was a delicate matter. Wyatt still believed he’d slept with Ashley. How would he feel when he learned he hadn’t? What would he do?
Sophie slid her red glasses up her slim nose and gave Laurel a look of disapproval, one that worked equally well on four-year-old boys and twenty-seven-year-old pregnant women.
Laurel squirmed. “I’ll tell them after my doctor’s appointment.” Weather permitting. Her appointment was at least an hour’s drive away in Ketchum. “With a medical all clear, I can go home and tell everyone in person.” By then, she’d have her speech down.
Her head pounded. She wasn’t looking forward to that discussion. Her father—who’d fired and evicted her in favor of inheriting millions—would worry that a man wasn’t in the picture. Her mother—who considered Laurel her least successful child—would ask her why a man wasn’t in the picture. Her brother Jonah would offer to pound the man who’d once been in the picture. Ashley would do some calculations and ask if Wyatt Halford should be in the picture. And then...
Everyone would realize that Laurel—the family member most likely to show up for someone else’s crisis—was having a catastrophe of her own.
Her immediate family was in the entertainment industry. Dad ran Monroe Studios. Mom was a talent manager. Jonah, a script writer. Ashley, an actress. Laurel an on-set costume designer. Everything she did reflected back upon them. Impersonating a famous actress, sleeping with a famous actor and then having his baby was the kind of sensational news story Hollywood hungered for. It would overshadow every project, every business deal, every media interview her family was involved in from the moment the world found out about it. As for Laurel and her aspirations to be a red-carpet dress designer? Her revelation would bring rain on that parade.
“There’s no shame in putting yourself first for once.” Sophie was still riding the disapproval train, which was headed straight for Laurel. “Especially now.”
Laurel refrained from mentioning that putting herself first was how she’d gotten into this mess.
The twins crashed into log walls on either side of Laurel’s headboard and cried, “I beat you!” simultaneously. They flopped on Laurel’s bed and continued to shout, “I won!” and “No, I won!” at each other.
“It was a tie!” Laurel drew them into her arms and gave them each a kiss. “A race too close to call.”
“Behave, my adorable little heathens.” Sophie set the fruit on Laurel’s nightstand next to a large water bottle and an extralarge box of unsalted crackers. She pushed her glasses up her nose and gathered her brown hair from her shoulders as she peered at the stack of gossip magazines on the floor. “You need to get rid of these rags. That magazine article about Ashley making that pink dress.” Sophie picked up steam. “That’s just wrong. Don’t let Ashley take credit for your talent.”
“Let’s not blow this out of proportion.” Because the entire pink dress fiasco was Laurel’s fault. She was going to have to clean up the dress mess, but it took a backseat to her pregnancy.
“Please. Ashley owes you a public retraction. When I think of all the times you saved her butt...” Sophie tugged down a new red-and-blue Nordic sweater she’d ordered online. She’d embraced mountain fashion in a way Laurel never would. “Listen to me. You’ve saved my behind a time or two. And there’s a time or two more ahead, I’m sure. In fact, I’m waiting for you to get your sea legs back and help me explore the old buildings across the road before you leave.” Which were rumored to be stuffed with junk and “treasure.” Having been an art history major, Sophie considered herself qualified to differentiate between gems and junk. “And we’re going in just as soon as you get the all clear from the doctor.”
“I can’t wait.” Actually, Laurel could. She didn’t like the cold, cobwebs, bugs or varmits—as Roy over at the diner called the rats and raccoons he said inhabited the old trading post and mercantile. “You know, you won’t find a da Vinci in there.”
“A girl can dream.” Grinning, Sophie pulled her boys off the bed. “Like you used to dream about weddings, wedding dresses, flower girls and ring bearers.” She smoothed Alexander’s cowlick.
“Weddings?” Alexander ducked from Sophie’s touch. “Not that again.”
“We had to hold ring pillows for hours at Uncle Todd’s wedding.” Andrew referenced their paternal uncle.
A wedding?
The semi returned to park on Laurel’s chest, making her wheeze, making her head pound harder. Wyatt didn’t want to marry her. As far as she knew, he hadn’t even called Ashley or sent her flowers afterward.
Mitch would have sent flowers.
Laurel stifled a groan.
Mitch would have invited me to stay and then cooked me breakfast in the morning.
There was no stifling the groan this time.
“That’s our cue to leave, Aunt Laurel,” Sophie singsonged, herding the boys toward the door. “We’ll return this afternoon for a book or a movie if you feel better.”
Quiet descended. Laurel plucked at the seam of the handmade quilt beneath her, stared at the ceiling and contemplated her single status.
Not that I’m in love with Wyatt.
But no wedding bells meant single motherhood. Laurel sucked in a breath as she contemplated her future. Kids were a huge responsibility.
The semi took on additional cargo. It was increasingly difficult to breathe.
Women juggle careers and kids by themselves all the time.
That was what Sophie had done. She’d been the Monroe art collection curator until the reading of Grandpa Harlan’s will. Of course, Sophie’d had permanent fatigue lines on her face that her cute glasses couldn’t hide. And granted, she had twins, but that was little comfort. Twins and the Monroe family went together like mosquitos and still water.
Twins.
A second—heavier—semi parked on Laurel’s chest.
What if I’m having twins?
Before Laurel had time to hyperventilate, there was a timid knock on her door.
“Laurel?” It was Gabby. “Can we come in?”
We? Gabby and Mitch? What happened to not encouraging the Monroes?
Laurel smoothed her hair, imagined Mitch’s broad shoulders filling the doorway and invited them in.
Gabby entered first.
“Hope we’re not intruding.” An old woman appeared behind the preteen. She had a yellow knit cap on her short, coarse gray hair and wore three layers on top—a black turtleneck under a thin white sweater under a handmade, gray cable-knit cardigan that stretched to her knees. Her neon-red snow pants rustled with every step.
“Odette!” Laurel pushed herself up higher. She was surprised to see her, but unable to resist checking the empty hallway for one handsome, grumpy innkeeper.
“That’s me.” Odette blocked Laurel’s sight line. The old woman was an artisan with yarn and cloth. She knit with precision. She quilted with small, even stitches, and paired fabric of different colors and prints better than some fashion designers Laurel could name. Before Laurel had known she was pregnant, she’d asked—more like begged—Odette to teach her how to quilt.
It wasn’t that Laurel’s sewing skills needed improvement. She was a master with needle and thread. It was that every fashion designer had a passion that drove them, an imprint that made their work immediately recognizable and gave it that special something. Laurel had yet to find her signature.
Clothes she’d made before flitted through her mind...
The sleek black pantsuit Laurel had made for her sister to wear to a charity luncheon.
The gauzy pink-and-white sundress Ashley had worn to a friend’s beach wedding in the Bahamas.
A pink sheath. Rose-splattered pants. A brocade ball gown.
They’d all been nice. Well constructed. Well designed. But they lacked a je ne sais quoi—that special something that made one’s heart light up with joy.
But when Laurel looked at Odette’s quilts, she felt a stirring of something inside. A sense of excitement she hadn’t felt before.
Odette dropped a tan canvas bag brimming with pastel yarn on the bed. “I’ve come for your first lesson.”
“Can I stay and learn, too?” Gabby asked in a small voice she seldom used. Few people cowed the spunky preteen.
Odette eyed Gabby severely as if the young girl had sassed her. “I tried to teach you once before.” And by the tone of Odette’s voice, Gabby had failed.
“I was just a baby then,” Gabby said solemnly with that retainer lisp.
“That was last summer.”
“Exactly.” The girl nodded. “I was eleven.”
“All right,” Odette huffed, removing the knit cap from her coarse gray hair. It sprang free, revealing its true porcupine nature. “But this is your last chance.”
Gabby thanked the old woman profusely.
Odette unloaded yarn balls and wooden knitting needles from her bag, tossing them on the bed the way children toss tissue from a gift box as they search for the prize at the bottom.
“Are there quilt quarters in that bag?” Laurel asked, thrilled to be receiving a lesson but confused by all the yarn.
Odette’s shoulders stiffened. “You can’t master quilting until you develop patience and precision.”
Laurel had patience. For a week, she’d rested in her room all day waiting for her morning sickness to recede.
She opened her mouth to say something, but there was a warning in Gabby’s eyes and the yarn balls on the bed and Odette’s annoyance in the air, so Laurel swallowed back her curiosity and guessed, “You teach patience and precision through knitting?”
That earned her an approving nod. “Darn tootin’!” Odette finished unpacking the yarn and set her bag aside. Balls of bright purple, subtle teal, soft peach and oatmeal cream were scattered near Laurel’s stocking feet. “We’ll start with a scarf. Choose a color to begin.”
Gabby nudged the pink aside and snatched up the vibrant purple.
Laurel picked a ball of teal, reminded that her career was at a standstill, of Ashley and Wyatt, and of truths that needed to be told. She had no interest in knitting, but if this was a test to move to quilting instruction and a mental space where she might discover an expressive passion for fashion, Laurel was determined to pass.