Cal’s feelings soared as the impact of what Ashley had just told him sunk in. He wrapped her in a hug, then drew back to look into her face. Tears of happiness glittered in her eyes and fell down her face. But beneath the joy was something else…something uncertain…and full of conflict. Not sure where that emotion was coming from, Cal stepped back slightly to better survey her upturned face. Suddenly, his heart was beating as hard and erratically as hers. “You’re sure?”
Ashley swallowed hard and forced another smile. “I’ve had blood tests, the complete obstetrics work-up.”
Cal ran a hand down her arm. No doubt about it—she was trembling. And not in a good way. He tried to reassure her with a steadying touch. “And everything’s okay?”
Ashley nodded. “Absolutely.”
Then what was behind her sudden shift in mood, from all-out happiness to edgy apprehension? Cal wondered. Was there some medical reason for her uneasiness that she had yet to disclose? And was she trying, even as they stood there, to work up the courage to do so?
“Everything is on track for an August delivery by the stork,” Ashley joked.
Cal struggled to search out the possible cause for her anxiety. “August,” he repeated, focusing on the facts she had told him thus far. He stopped as her words sank in. “That means you’re—?”
“At the very beginning of my second trimester, yes,” she confirmed, abruptly looking as if she were hiding something from him again, and worse, feared his reaction to it.
Silence fell between them. The air was thick with tension. Ashley gulped and went back to the table. She lifted a glass of ice water and took a sip. Cal noticed there was a bead of perspiration just above her brow. She really was nervous about this. And not, he thought, because she had feared he wouldn’t be happy about the news. No, she had to know that as much as he loved her, he would be over the moon…
He swallowed around the tightness in his throat and stepped nearer. “How long have you known?”
Ashley pulled out a chair at the table, sat down. Looking as if she wanted nothing more than to retreat at that point, she avoided his probing gaze. Probably, Cal thought, because she didn’t want him to see the guilt simmering there.
“About three weeks,” she said in a low, deferential tone.
Cal shoved a hand through his hair. “And you didn’t tell me?”
Ashley blinked rapidly and recovered her composure. In a voice thick with emotion, she revealed, “I wanted to make sure everything was okay. And, well,” she lifted her hand helplessly and drew in another unsteady breath, “things were pretty rocky between us back then. I didn’t want us staying together only because of the baby.”
Did she really think that little of him? Of them? “You should have told me, Ashley.” Cal was angry and hurt at having been left out like that. Worse, he felt like a fool. Now, he knew why she hadn’t wanted him to see her naked. Why she had resisted buying more than just a few items of new clothing that fit her better. Why she resisted the heavy-duty exercising that would have helped her get her figure back under normal conditions—because it would have endangered the life of their fetus. And most of all, he knew why she had been so upset when she had briefly lost control of the Mustang he had given her, why she hadn’t wanted to drive it again in the ice and snow and why she had agreed to something with every safety option possible….
Abruptly, Ashley looked as unsettled as he felt at the news of her pregnancy and the fact she had chosen not to tell him till now. “I’ll never keep anything like that from you again,” Ashley promised him sincerely. She looked at him, love—and hope—shining in her eyes.
Cal had a choice. Stay angry and force them both to deal with his feelings, here and now, and ruin what should be one of the happiest nights of his life—or dig deep and find that compassion inside himself his mother had once found severely lacking, and accept Ashley’s mistake for what it was and let it go. Although it went against his gut impulse to have this out, here and now—no matter how unpleasant the confrontation—he decided to let it go.
He took Ashley in his arms and kissed her again, pouring all his love for her, all the hopes and dreams he had for her and the baby into the emotion-filled embrace. She was trembling when he lifted his head. They both were.
“So you’re happy about this baby?” Ashley whispered, looking more vulnerable and more in love with him than he had ever seen her.
Cal had wanted a family with her forever. And now she was here with him again, and it was really happening. He wasn’t going to spoil that. “Happier than I’ve ever been in my life,” he said huskily, curving his hand around her belly and the baby growing inside. And he meant that with all his heart and soul.
ASHLEY AND CAL stayed up late, celebrating, intending to sleep late the next morning since neither of them were on emergency call that weekend. It wasn’t to be. At eight-thirty, they heard the doorbell ringing. And ringing. And ringing. Cal groaned and lifted his head from the pillow. His wife was cuddled up beside him, in all her naked pregnant glory. “Are you expecting anyone?” He sure hoped not. He wanted nothing more than to be able to spend the morning noting all the miraculous changes going on in her body right now, and making love to her again and again. But as the doorbell rang yet again, he realized that wouldn’t happen until he got rid of whoever was intruding on their Saturday morning.
“I don’t know who it could be,” Ashley murmured. “Although I can tell you one thing, they’re at the top of my persona non grata list right now.”
Cal agreed. Who came over this time on a Saturday morning without calling first?
“I’ll see who it is.” Cal tugged on his slacks, grabbed his shirt, and headed downstairs. “And get rid of them. Pronto.”
Ashley lay back down. She thought about the night before, and how nervous she had been delivering the news to Cal. With good reason, as it turned out. He had been hurt at first to realize she had kept her pregnancy from him for even a few weeks. She couldn’t imagine how he would have reacted if he had known she’d not told him about the earlier pregnancy or subsequent miscarriage in the two-and-a-half years since.
He would have really been furious.
So she had chickened out again.
And though she knew she still had to find a way to tell him—some way, some time—in the near future, it wasn’t going to be today. Or tomorrow, which was Valentine’s Day and their third wedding anniversary. She wanted to know their marriage was on very solid ground before she risked seeing that disappointment in his eyes.
Downstairs, the front door opened, then closed. Ashley heard Cal welcoming their guests, then more voices. She sat up with a start, jumped out of bed, dressed and joined Cal as quickly as she could. And not a moment too soon, she noted, seeing the uncomfortable look on his face as he puttered about their kitchen, pouring juice, and taking a coffeecake from the freezer and putting it into the oven to warm.
Ashley stood in the portal wishing she’d had time to do more than put on her black slacks and a red sweater and brush her hair. “Mom. Dad.”
Both Harold and Margaret stood and gave her cursory hugs. “We’re sorry about the early hour, but this was the only time we could get our schedules together to visit with you,” Margaret said.
As usual, both dressed in business attire. Not that either were the type to ever putter around in jeans or sweats….
“We were just telling Cal that we can’t stay and have dinner with you this evening.” Harold’s words seemed rife with hidden meaning as he glanced at Cal.
“That’s okay.” Ashley smothered a yawn with the back of her hand. “We’ve got a Hart family thing over at the Wedding Inn to go to this evening anyway. But it’s good you’re here.” Ashley moved to her husband’s side. Needing his steadying presence more than ever, she wrapped her arm about his waist and leaned into him affectionately. “Cal and I have some news. We’re expecting a baby. Come August, you will be grandparents.”
For a second, neither Harold nor Margaret could speak. Then, as Ashley had hoped, her parents both offered her their congratulations and engulfed her and Cal in awkward hugs.
“Well, that’s wonderful news, and all the more reason for you to get your career situation straightened out,” Margaret said as the four of them sat down together in the family room.
His expression neutral, Cal walked over to start a pot of decaf in the adjacent kitchen. Ashley knew he was giving her room to deal with her parents as she saw fit, without inserting himself into the situation. “I told you—I’m going to be working part-time for the next few years,” Ashley explained patiently.
Margaret and Harold exchanged concerned looks. “Ashley, we know you want to be a good mother and you will be, but you can’t shortchange the rest of your life,” Margaret said.
“You’ll never be happy just working part-time,” Harold predicted.
Margaret leaned forward urgently. “Furthermore, they haven’t filled the position at Yale—”
“No,” Ashley said. “I’m not applying and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
Margaret frowned. “But—”
Cal walked back in, ready to help her out, if need be.
Ashley held up a hand, letting Cal know with a glance she could handle this. “You have to stop pushing me,” she told both her parents.
“But we want you to be happy!” Margaret insisted.
Ashley nodded, affirming she wanted the same thing. “And I will be. But only,” she stipulated bluntly, “if I am living my life my way.”
Harold regarded Ashley sternly. “We’re trying to help you, Ashley.”
Ashley knew that, just as she knew her parents loved her, in their own way. Even if they didn’t quite know what to do with her. “If you really want to help me,” she told them gently, “then let me be me.”
“ARE YOU OKAY?” Cal asked, after Margaret and Harold had left. She certainly looked as if she were doing fine, Cal noted. Although maybe that wasn’t a surprise, given the fact that for the first time Ashley had really stood up to Margaret and Harold. She had taken charge of her own life, worried less about what others wanted from her than what she wanted for herself and the two—no make that three now—of them.
Ashley nodded, relief flowing from her in waves. She wrapped her arms around Cal’s waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “Promise me that we will never do that to our children,” she said quietly.
Cal hugged her close and kissed the top of her head. “I promise.”
A contented silence fell between them. Cal stroked his hands through her hair. “They love you.”
“That’s the sad part.” Ashley drew back to look into his face. She splayed her hands across his chest. “I know that. Just as I know I will never live up to this perfect image they have of me. But it’s not my problem. It’s theirs.”
Cal regarded her with a mixture of respect and relief. “So you can deal?”
“With you by my side? I can tackle everything.” Ashley smiled.
“NERVOUS?” Cal asked Ashley as he parked in front of the Wedding Inn, and the two of them got out of their new station wagon.
“Not at all.” Ashley tucked her hand in Cal’s as they ascended the steps of the palatial, three-story white-brick Wedding Inn. In fact, she was looking forward to this evening with the Harts. Cal wanted to announce the impending birth of their baby to everyone in his family at once. They had decided the Valentine’s dinner Helen was giving for the family that evening was the perfect opportunity. “I know your family is going to be happy for us,” Ashley continued.
“I think so, too,” Cal murmured. Looking every bit as contented and optimistic about their future as she felt, he drew Ashley toward him for a steamy kiss beneath the pillared portico.
No sooner had their lips touched than twelve-year-old Christopher came barreling out the grand entrance, and nearly knocked them down. “Hey! You’re not supposed to be kissing yet!” he scolded them cheerfully, then stuck his head back in the front door. “Gramma—they’re out here! Kissing!”
“Already?” Janey teased as Cal and Ashley came into the grand hall. Cal’s sister looked as though she knew something Ashley didn’t. As did Christopher and Helen….
Ashley turned to Cal. “What are they talking about?” she asked.
Cal merely grinned in masculine satisfaction and gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s get everybody together and tell them our news first,” Cal said.
“I’ll get ’em all down here in no time flat!” Christopher raced through the hall.
Five minutes later all of Cal’s family were gathered around him and Ashley. Whatever the secret was, Ashley noted, they all appeared to be in on it, too.
“You wanted to talk to us?” Fletcher drawled.
“Ashley and I have an announcement to make,” Cal said in a voice husky with emotion. He brought Ashley in close to his side and held her there tenderly. “We’re expanding our family. Ashley is pregnant. The baby should be here in early August.”
That quickly, every woman in the family gasped in surprise and teared up. The men, looking no less moved, offered hearty handshakes and congratulations. Christopher turned to his mother, perplexed. “Is this why—?”
Janey clamped a hand over Christopher’s mouth before he could finish his sentence. “Not yet,” Janey warned.
“Someone care to fill me in?” Ashley prompted dryly. It seemed she was the only one in the room who didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Cal turned to Ashley. “You remember when I said I was going to have to get you another present for Valentine’s Day?”
Ashley nodded, recalling very well the evening he had gifted her with the Mustang convertible. That evening—and the romantic intention behind it—had marked a turning point in their relationship. “But we already got a station wagon,” she protested.
“This is a lot better than a station wagon,” a starry-eyed Lily declared.
Again, everyone nodded.
“We’re saying our wedding vows again tonight,” Cal told her in a voice filled with love. “In honor of our third wedding anniversary.”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE you all did all this,” Ashley said in stunned amazement as the women accompanied her up the sweeping staircase to the bridal dressing suite on the second floor.
Cal and his brothers were headed toward the groom’s suite on the other side of the inn.
“Cal’s had us busy for weeks!” Janey said, chuckling. “Why do you think I came over asking you to taste cake?”
“And I had you trying on wedding gowns?” Helen added.
“And I had you looking at flower arrangements,” Lily said.
Emma nodded. “We thought—correctly, it turned out—your tastes might have changed in the three years since your last wedding, or you just might be in the mood for something different.” She took the off-the-shoulder white silk gown with the fitted bodice, basque waist and full gathered skirt off the padded hanger. “We even had this altered for you.”
Oh, no… Ashley thought. But unwilling to state they shouldn’t have done that when everyone had clearly been trying so hard to please her, she simply smiled. “When is this all supposed to take place?”
“Half an hour. So we have plenty of time to get you ready. Don’t worry.”
Ashley delayed getting into her dress as long as she could, letting the stylist Emma had hired fuss with her hair and touch up her makeup, but finally, there was no getting around it; she had to get into the gown.
As she feared, the gown was a lot tighter than it had been when she had tried it on a week before, particularly in the area of her rib cage and breasts. She had to suck her midriff in mightily so it would zip. But as long as she stayed that way—barely breathing—it was a perfect fit.
“You look gorgeous,” Emma said.
Janey nodded. “Now for the veil.”
More fussing, and flowers were brought in. Then Mateo and Carlotta and a few other close friends of her and Cal arrived.
Before long, the harpist was starting. The women were ducking out, to join the others in the upstairs reception hall that had been readied for the ceremony itself.
“You okay?” Lily asked, as she knelt and arranged the chapel train on Ashley’s dress.
Except I can’t breathe. Ashley nodded, too embarrassed to tell anyone she really shouldn’t be wearing that dress…
Lily dashed on ahead, slipping into the room where the ceremony was to be held.
Ashley followed, alone, her bouquet clasped in front of her, for her grand entrance. The pressure on her waist and rib cage and the light-headed feeling got more intense with every step she took.
Don’t be silly. You can do this. It’s only a few more minutes…and then the ceremony will be done…
Determined not to do anything so foolish as pass out halfway to Cal, Ashley drew a deep, quelling breath, and commanded her knees to stop shaking so. Unfortunately, as her lungs filled, Ashley felt her dress begin to rip along her left side seam. Horrified she was about to put on a show for the entire Hart family, the likes of which they had never seen, Ashley gasped at the soft sound of rending fabric and bent over from the waist, both her hands going to her waist.
Once again, it was the exact wrong thing to do.
The additional pressure of binding fabric against her breasts and ribs pushed the air she had just gulped in right back out again. Ashley heard voices coming at her, as if from a great distance away. A rising murmur of familial concern. The next thing Ashley knew, the whole room was swimming, her limbs went limp, and her nose was buried in her bouquet.
FOR CAL, it was like watching an accident in slow motion.
He’d known something was wrong the moment Ashley stepped into the room. Her cheeks were too pink at first, then too pale, her steps uncertain, wavering. The way she was swaying back and forth, like a sailor on a pitching deck, he would’ve thought she’d been drinking. Except he knew she hadn’t. And wouldn’t so long as she was carrying their baby.
But it wasn’t until she moaned and bent over from the waist suddenly, clutching her left side, and Mac muttered beside him, “Oh my God! Not again!” that Cal lurched into action.
He dashed down the aisle, toward Ashley, catching her in his arms just as she dropped into a dead faint. Wondering all the while what the hell his brother had meant when he’d said, “Not again!”
Carlotta pushed her way through the family gathered around as Cal gently laid Ashley down on the satin runner in the center of the room. Shades of Polly Pruett’s untimely birth flashed through Cal’s mind. Except it was way too early for their baby to be born…
“Everyone clear the room,” Carlotta ordered, taking charge as Ashley’s Ob/Gyn.
Mac was already herding them out, shutting the door.
Ashley moaned and her eyes fluttered open.
“Ashley,” Carlotta demanded. “Are you in pain?”
“What?” Ashley struggled to come to all the way. “In pain? Oh God,” she prayed out loud. “Not again!”
What did she mean? Cal wondered. Not again!
What the hell did Mac know that he didn’t?
“Are you hurting anywhere?” Carlotta persisted, as she looked into Ashley’s eyes and checked her pulse.
“No,” Ashley shook her head, clearly sure about that much anyway. Ashley blinked again. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Cal told his wife gently.
Ashley put a trembling hand to her temple as she struggled to recall the moment immediately before her collapse. “I don’t know. I felt dizzy and then everything sort of went black.”
Carlotta palpated Ashley’s middle, checking to make sure there was no tenderness. When she found none, Carlotta looked over at Cal. “I think she just fainted,” Carlotta told Cal.
Helen knocked and popped her head in. “Cal? I’ve got some smelling salts if you need them.”
Cal went over to get them.
“Is she going to be okay?” Helen asked.
Cal nodded.
Their marriage was another matter.
CAL LEFT ASHLEY with Carlotta and went to find Mac. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?”
They stepped into the groom’s dressing room and shut the door behind them. “What did you mean when you said, ‘Not again’?” Cal demanded. “Have you seen Ashley faint before?”
For once in his life, Mac was at a complete loss for words.
“She’s okay, isn’t she?” Mac asked eventually.
“What would make you think she wouldn’t be?” Cal retorted. And why was his law-and-order older brother looking so guilty? “There’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”
Mac’s jaw tightened. He looked away. Didn’t answer. “You should probably talk to Ashley about this,” Mac advised.
Cal intended to do just that. He strode back down the hall to the suite where he and Ashley were to renew their vows. He knocked and walked in. Ashley was sitting in one of the chairs, Carlotta next to her, and sipping orange juice. They were talking in low, subdued tones. Tellingly, their conversation stopped abruptly when Cal walked in. They smiled—maybe too brightly and officiously. Both looked as if they were hiding something, just as Mac had. So now there were three people who knew what he didn’t. His temper rising, Cal looked at Carlotta. “If you don’t mind, I’d like a word alone with my wife,” he said mildly.
Carlotta patted Ashley’s hand—as if in silent support—and stood.
“The ceremony is going to have to be delayed. I’ve got a problem with the dress.” Flushing, Ashley held the glass of juice away from her and showed Cal the left side seam. It was shredded from her breast to waist.
“It’s probably best we wait, anyway.” Cal looked at Carlotta. “Would you please tell everyone and also make sure that we’re not disturbed?”
“No problem.” With another telling look at Ashley, Carlotta breezed out.
“Do you still feel light-headed?” Cal pulled up the chair beside her and turned it so they could sit, knee to knee, facing each other.
“No. The smelling salts took care of that.” She studied him as closely as he was regarding her.
Cal looked at her mouth—it was damp and soft. He wanted to drag her into his arms and kiss her again, reason be damned. He wanted to take her home and make wild passionate love to her again, and then, when they’d exhausted themselves and run the gamut of their feelings for each other, deal with this mess.
He also knew that it was that same head-in-the-sand, hear-no-evil, see-no-evil reaction that had gotten them to this point.
They had been running from certain truths for years.
They could not continue to do so.
Like it or not they had to deal with each other and these secrets, whatever they might be.
“You look upset,” Ashley said.
The understatement of the century if there ever was one. “Shouldn’t I be?” Cal replied cordially.
Looking as if she wanted to retreat, she took another long drink and turned her glance to the flower arbor where Cal and the minister had both been standing a few short minutes ago. Ashley swallowed hard. “Because I fainted?”
Cal regarded her warily, his heart working like a trip hammer in his chest. “Because Mac and Carlotta both know something that I don’t.” He paused, fury rising, as he waited for her to return her glance to his. “Were you ever going to tell me about what happened before?”
Abruptly, she looked exhausted and close to tears. “You know about the miscarriage,” she guessed sadly.
Which meant, Cal thought, there had been another baby. One he knew nothing about—until this evening, anyway. His muscles were tight with suppressed anger and resentment. Hurt colored his low tone as he replied, even more softly, “I do now.”
Ashley drained her glass, put it aside. Cal noted her hand was shaking.
“Then—?”
Briefly he explained what Mac had said and when. And how he’d refused to answer Cal’s questions about his comment.
Ashley released a frustrated breath. The color in her cheeks turned from a pale pink to a dusky rose as she declared miserably, “I never should have put him in that position.”
His mood grim, Cal stared at the woman he had been married to for three years. “No argument there,” he said sarcastically.
Ashley’s lower lip thrust toward him contentiously.
Giving her no chance to defend herself, he stood and moved a slight distance away from her. “And how is it that my brother knows you had a miscarriage and I don’t?” he demanded, bracing his legs a little further apart and folding his arms across his chest.
Ashley stood and gripped the back of the chair tightly with one hand. “Because Mac was with me when it happened.”
Jealousy ripped through his gut. “Which was?” Cal commanded.
Ashley drew in a quavering breath. “The summer I left for Hawaii. I had planned to tell you I was pregnant when you finished taking your board exams that July, but I miscarried before that.”
Pain glimmered in her eyes. She gulped and drew in a second, steadying breath. She was holding on to the chair so tightly her knuckles were white, but to her credit, she did not lower her gaze. “Mac and I were having lunch that day and after we left the restaurant, I got hit with what felt like the worst menstrual cramps I could ever imagine. I doubled over and nearly passed out.”
Just as she had a short while before, Cal thought, as she’d come down the aisle toward him.
Which explained his brother’s reaction.
“Mac took me to the emergency room. I made him promise not to tell anyone. I said I would tell you.”
“Except,” Cal pointed out bitterly, aware he had never been as angry with her as he was at that second, “you never did.”
“Because,” Ashley explained, her voice rising emotionally, “the time was never right.”
“Oh, I think you could have found the time, if you had wanted to.”
She grimaced; she’d deserved that. “You’re probably right.”
“So why didn’t you?” Cal’s exasperation mounted until he felt as if he were going to explode.
Ashley threw up her hands and began to pace, ripped gown and all. “Because I didn’t want you to hurt the way I was hurting, Cal.”
Except he had hurt, Cal recalled miserably. More than he ever would have had she only possessed the courage to tell him what he’d had every right to know. Then and now. He studied her silently, then summed it all up in a low, disparaging voice meant to inflict as much hurt in her as she already had in him. “So, instead you just let me think your unhappiness that summer was about losing your fellowship and deciding to take on a less prestigious residency, and about my desire to use your unexpected sabbatical to have a baby, when you—all of a sudden—weren’t quite ready?” What a mess. He scoffed at her in contempt as he concluded his recitation of the chain of events that had nearly destroyed their marriage. “And then, just to make sure we were both as absolutely miserable as we could be, you decided to pursue a fellowship after all and headed for Hawaii?”
Now, she was angry. “You told me to go!” she reminded him.
Cal couldn’t believe she was defending her actions. He glared at her, not sure if he wanted to kiss her or shake some sense into her. “I was trying to be supportive!” He had wanted her to be happy. And he’d thought—falsely, he now realized—that her being in the fellowship program had been key.
“And I was trying to spare you!”
“All right,” Cal said with as much indifference as he could feign. He hated the mixture of self-doubt and regret her actions had engendered in him. “Let’s say I buy all that.” But he wasn’t sure he did. To him, it sounded like feeble excuses. “Why haven’t you told me about the baby you lost during all this time?”
“Because things were already strained enough between us without adding that to the list,” she whispered softly.
“So in other words, you were never going to tell me,” Cal concluded roughly.
Ashley shook her head disparagingly. “I guess I sort of thought that ship had passed. That if I did tell you, and you found out how long I had kept it from you, you wouldn’t be able to forgive me.”
Cal couldn’t deny he was really angry and hurt, anymore than he could deny they still had a wedding to go through this evening, and a whole family still on the other side of the closed double doors, waiting. He turned away from her wearily, “I’ll go get the women and see what can be done about your dress.”
“Wait a minute.” Ashley rushed after him and grabbed his arm. “You’re not really planning to continue with the ceremony this evening…are you?”
Cal turned and regarded Ashley stoically, his sense of duty kicking in. “My family is all here,” he reminded her with a weariness that came from his soul. “The room is ready. The dinner, the cake…”
She cut him off with an arch look, stomping closer. “And you and I are in the middle of the biggest fight we’ve ever had in our life!”
“What does that have to do with renewing our wedding vows?” Cal asked.
What did it have to do with their wedding vows? Ashley wondered silently, upset. Just damn near everything!
She looked at her husband, the sadness welling up inside her almost more than she could bear.
She had never wanted either of them to feel the way they did right now. She had never wanted to be in a position where she had to worry constantly she would make a misstep or not live up to his considerable expectations, and feel his crushing disappointment in her. She wanted to be free to be who she was, to know she could make mistakes and still be wanted and loved. She wanted to know that forgiveness was always an option, that their love and their marriage and damn it—the family they were now creating—were strong enough to weather any difficulty thrown their way.
But Cal obviously didn’t feel the same way. “Look,” he said, coming toward her, the aggravation he felt still plain on his face. “You know I’m disappointed in you. And—for the record, Ashley,” he continued sternly, “I have every right to be. But that doesn’t change what has to be done.”
Ashley stiffened. She held her head high as she forced herself to admit, “You’re correct about that, all right.”
“Where are you going?” When she didn’t answer and just kept walking, he moved to block her way. “You can’t run out on us again.”
He was talking as if she had a choice. Tears gathered in her eyes. “I can’t stay and spend the rest of my life having you look at me like that, either,” Ashley told him sorrowfully. Her voice caught; it took everything she had to force herself to go on. “I’m not going to be the thing you most regret, Cal.” She paused, shook her head. “I spent my entire life never living up to the expectations of my parents and feeling bad about myself. I can’t be with someone who can’t accept anything less than perfection! Because I have news for you, Cal,” she whispered softly, looking deep into his eyes. “I am not perfect and never will be—and neither will our child!”
“Ashley,” Cal warned, looking all the more betrayed, “if you walk out on me again, it’s over.”
“Don’t you get it, Cal?” Ashley said evenly. She swallowed hard around the gathering knot of emotion in her throat. “It’s already over. It has been for years.”