Ming wore the mulish expression he’d first encountered on the playground when one of his buddies had shoved her off the swings.
“This weekend was a mistake.” She slipped sideways into the bedroom and headed straight for her suitcase.
To Jason’s bafflement, she used it as a battering ram, clearing him from her path to the front door.
“You’re leaving?”
“You thought conceiving a baby should be memorable, but the only thing I’m going to remember about being here with you is this fight.”
“We’re not fighting.” She was making no sense, and Jason wasn’t sure how trying to provide her with a romantic setting for their first time together had sparked her wrath. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Back to San Francisco. There’s a midnight flight that will put me back in Houston by morning.”
How could she know that unless…? “You’d already decided you weren’t going to stay.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her voice rang with sincerity, but she was already out the door and her face was turned away from him. “I just happened to notice it when I was booking my flight.”
Ming was approaching the trunk of her rental car as Jason barreled through the front door and halted. His instincts told him to stop her. He was reasonably certain he could coax her mood back to romance with her favorite dessert and a stroll through the gardens, but her words had him wondering about his past choices when it came to relationships.
In the deepening twilight, a full harvest moon, robust and orange from the sunset, crested the trees. A lovers’ moon. Pity it would go to waste on them.
Jason dug his fingers into the door as Ming turned her car around. Was giving her time to think a good idea? He was gambling that eventually she’d remember that she needed him to get pregnant.
Five
Ming hadn’t been able to sleep on the red-eye from San Francisco to Houston. The minute her car had reached the Mendocino city limits, she’d begun to feel the full weight of her mistake. She had three choices: convince Jason to use a clinic for her conception, give up on him being her child’s father or stop behaving like a ninny and have sex with him. Because it was her nature to do so, she spent the flight home making pro and con lists for each choice. Then she weighted each item and analyzed her results.
Logic told her to head for the nearest sperm bank. Instead, as soon as the wheels of the plane hit the runway, she texted him an apology and asked him to call as soon as he was able.
The cab from the airport dropped her off at nine in the morning. She entered her house and felt buffeted by its emptiness. With Lily in Portland and Muffin spending the weekend with Ming’s parents, she had the place to herself. The prospect depressed her, but she was too exhausted to fetch the active Yorkshire terrier.
Closing the curtains in her room, she slid between the sheets but didn’t fall asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. She tortured herself with thoughts of making love with Jason. Imagined his strong body moving against her, igniting her passion. Her body pulsed with need. If she hadn’t panicked, she wouldn’t feel like a runaway freight train. She’d be sated and sleepy instead of wide awake and horny.
Ming buried her face in the pillow and screamed her frustration until her throat burned. That drained enough of her energy to allow her to sleep. She awakened some hours later, disoriented by the dark room, and checked the clock. It was almost five. She pushed to a sitting position and raked her long hair away from her face. Despite sleeping for six hours, she was far from rested. Turbulent dreams of Jason returned her to that unfulfilled state that had plagued her earlier.
If not for the evocative scents of cooking, she might have spent what remained of the day in bed, but her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t had anything to eat except the power bar she’d bought at the airport. She got dressed and went to the kitchen to investigate.
“Something smells great.” Ming stepped off the back stairs and into her kitchen, surprising her sister.
The oven door closed with a bang as she spun to face Ming. “You’re home.” Lily’s cheeks bore a rosy flush, probably put there by whatever simmered on the stove.
Even though both girls had learned to cook from their mother, only Lily had inherited their mother’s passion for food. Ming knew enough to keep from starving, but for her cooking was more of a necessity than an infatuation.
“You’re cooking.”
“I was craving lamb.”
“Craving it?” The dish was a signature item Lily prepared when she was trying to impress a guy. It had been over a year since she’d made it. “I thought you were going to be house hunting in Portland this weekend.”
“I changed my mind about spending the weekend.”
“Does this mean you’re changing your mind about moving?” Ming quizzed, unable to contain the hope in her voice.
“No.” Lily pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge and dug in a drawer for the corkscrew. “How come you’re home so early? I thought you were gone all weekend.”
Ming thought of the chardonnay she and Jason had shared. How he’d fed her grapes and how she’d enjoyed his hands on her skin. “I wasn’t having any fun so I thought I’d come home.” Not the whole truth, but far from a lie. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before you left town last week, but Terry wants to sell me his half of the practice. He’s retiring.”
“How are you going to manage a baby and the practice all by yourself?”
“I can handle it just fine.”
“I think you’re being selfish.” Lily’s words, muffled by the refrigerator door, drove a spear into Ming’s heart. She pulled a bowl of string beans out and plunked them on the counter. “How can you possibly have enough time for a child when you’re running the practice?”
“There are a lot of professional women who manage to do both.” Ming forced back the doubts creeping up on her, but on the heels of her failure with Jason this weekend, she couldn’t help but wonder if her subconscious agreed with Lily.
What if she couldn’t do both well? Was she risking complete failure? No. She could do this. Even without a partner in her life to help her when things went wrong, or to celebrate the triumphs?
She was going to be awfully lonely. Sure, her parents would help when they could, but Lily was moving and Jason had his racing and his career to occupy him. What was she thinking? She would have her child and the practice to occupy her full attention. What about love? Marriage?
She brushed aside the questions. What good did it do to focus on something she couldn’t control? Planning and organization led to success, and she was a master of both.
With her confidence renewed, she poured wine from the bottle Lily had opened. As it hit her taste buds, she made a face. She checked the label and frowned at her sister.
“Since when do you drink Riesling?”
“I’m trying new things.”
“This is Evan’s favorite wine.”
“He recommended it so I bought a bottle.”
“Recently?”
“No.” Her sister frowned. “A while ago. Geez, what’s with all the questions? I tried a type of wine your ex liked. Big deal.”
Lily’s sharpness rocked Ming. Was her sister so upset with her that it threatened to drive a wedge between them?
Ming set down her wineglass. “I’m going to run over to Mom and Dad’s and pick up Muffin. Is there anything you need me to get while I’m out?”
“How about a bottle of wine you prefer?”
Flinching at her sister’s unhappy tone, Ming grabbed her keys and headed for the door. “You know, I’m not exactly thrilled with your decision to move to Portland, but I know it’s something you feel you have to do, so I’m trying to put aside my selfish wish for you to stay and at least act like I’m supportive.”
Then, without waiting for her sister’s reply, Ming stepped into her garage and shut the door firmly behind her. With her hands shaking, she had a hard time getting the key into the ignition of the ’66 Shelby Cobra. She’d chosen to drive the convertible tonight, hoping the fresh air might clear away all the confusion in her mind.
The drive to her parents’ house was accomplished in record time thanks to the smoothly purring 425 V8 engine. She really should sell the car. It was an impractical vehicle for a mother-to-be, but she had such great memories of the summer she and Jason had spent fixing it up.
After her spat with Lily, she’d planned to join her parents for dinner, but they were meeting friends at the country club, so Ming collected her dog and retraced her path back to her house. A car sat in her driveway. In the fading daylight, it took her a second to recognize it as Evan’s.
Because she and Jason were best friends and she knew there’d be occasions when she’d hang out with his family, Ming had made a decision to keep her interactions with Evan amicable. In fact, it wasn’t that hard. Their relationship lacked the turbulent passion that would make her hate him for dumping her. But that didn’t mean she was okay about him showing up without warning.
Ming parked the convertible in the garage. Disappointment filled her as she tucked Muffin under her arm and exited the car. She’d been hoping Jason had stopped by. He hadn’t called her or responded to her text.