The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

“You really think people are going to buy apartments?” she asked him, thinking about the realestate column she wrote for the first Monday edition each month.

“These projects have seen overwhelming success in L.A. and Phoenix.”

“Mind if I pick your brain for a column in a couple of weeks?” Annie asked after he had given her more details.

“Of course not.” His reply was more than just welcoming. He sounded genuinely pleased to help her. Honored even.

And that was her clue.

“I called to tell you that…”

Did she really want to do this? Cut herself off from something that gave her more…everything…than anything she’d ever known?

Did she really want to spend the rest of her life crying herself to sleep alone in the bed her lover had just left?

“What is it, Annie?”

“I…missed you over the weekend.”

His silence unnerved her. Embarrassed her. She’d had expectations when there were to be none.

“And the fact that I did brought home to me quite clearly something I’d already determined.”

“And what is that?”

“I…Just in case you were thinking about comi

ng back…”

Another silence. He wasn’t helping her out at all. Except that maybe he was. Blake’s silences were a good part of the problem between them. He couldn’t end them. She couldn’t live with them.

“I can’t do it, Blake.” The words, when they came, did so in a rush. “I can’t make love with you again.”

“I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yes, Annie, I do.”

“And you’re not mad?”

“Not at all. How could I be?”

Because she owed him nothing, he meant? Or because he cared too much about her to be angry, when she had to make a hard decision in order to take care of herself?

“Okay, then, well, I’ll talk to you later…”

There was nothing more to do but hang up. Annie rode along, phone to her ear.

“Annie?”

“Yes?”

“You’ll give me a call? Next week when you do the test?”

The test. The baby they might have made. That he wanted to father.

“Yes. Of course.”