The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

“I’m pregnant, Blake. The test was positive.”

He was going to be a daddy.

It was Blake’s turn to have eyes filled with tears.

“WE HAVE TO DISCUSS logistics,” Annie said just before eleven that night. She’d changed, since she’d found out he hadn’t known about the baby. Grown more distant.

And less vulnerable.Suspecting her show of strength was mostly an act to convince herself, Blake nonetheless let it stand at face value.

He’d been thinking a lot about the practical reality of sharing a child with his ex-wife. And had, several times, come to the same conclusion. He knew it was the right decision. Now to convince Annie of that.

“I need to know what you expect in terms of shared parenting,” she said. “We really should have ironed all of this out before we ever…”

He wondered what thought she hadn’t completed. Before they had sex? Or before they made love.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he told her, wondering how best to approach her with his plan. How to present it without giving her the wrong idea. “Did you mean it when you said you never intend to marry again?”

“Completely. I’ve had the love of my life, and I’ve had security, and neither worked. I can’t take the chance on having my heart broken a third time. I can’t trust that a marriage would ever work.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“As sure as I am that I want this baby.”

In the end, he probably didn’t do the plan justice.

“Then I think we should get married.”

Annie’s silence wasn’t what he’d wanted. She’d been sitting on a pillow beside him, leaning against the wall a couple of inches away. Feet out in front of her, she seemed inordinately interested in her toes.

“Not to live together,” he quickly assured her. “We both know that wouldn’t work. And frankly, for reasons you now understand, I can’t risk it. But you have to admit, there are a lot of practical advantages to the legal aspects of the arrangement.”

As far as proposals went, this had to be the all-time worst. But then, he wasn’t proposing a romantic union.

“Such as?”

At least she hadn’t immediately said no. Hadn’t jumped up and kicked him out on his butt. Could it be that she was actually considering his idea?

Blake hardly dared hope. Gathering his thoughts, he set out to present the most important business proposition of his life.

“Insurance, for one thing,” he said. “I don’t know what your benefits at the paper are, but considering its small size, I’m guessing if you have full coverage, it’s expensive.”

“It is.”

“I have an interest in more than one insurance company, which nets me the best health-care coverage available at a nominal rate. The rate extends to my immediate family.”

In today’s world of rising health-care costs and disbanding insurance companies, this was probably his strongest selling point.

“Second, if something were to happen to me, you and the baby would be taken care of for the rest of your lives. Everything I have would automatically be yours. And if something happened to you, the baby would still be mine. We wouldn’t have to worry about court intervention.

“Marriage between us would also make things such as school enrollment and even doctor visits that much easier. We’d both have the right to represent the child.

“We would all have the same last name, too, which would make things less confusing.” He was scraping the bottom of the barrel now, but she still wasn’t talking. Wasn’t giving him any indication at all what she was thinking.

“There’d be no sex?”

He’d do his best on that one. But…“If that’s the way you want it.” He’d never take Annie against her will.

He just wasn’t so sure that was how it would work out. Their record for keeping their hands off each other wasn’t exactly stellar.