My Babies and Me
He waited so long to answer her stomach tensed.
“I was content, sure.”
Content. Not happy. Why wasn’t she surprised?
As she toasted bagels and Michael mixed up some orange juice, Susan wondered if he’d ever been happy. If he even knew what the word meant. If, maybe, the problem wasn’t about goals and dreams and being who you were, but about never reaching quite far enough: Never asking for it all. And never relaxing enough to even know if he had it.
NEEDING TO PUT some distance between her and Michael, Susan went shopping right after breakfast. Baby clothes and toys, bottles and diapers were all happy things. And she got really, really happy. So happy that there was barely room for her in the Infiniti when she finally called it quits midafternoon. She had enough stuff for three baby showers. And she even had mints and chips and probably some peanuts to go with the loot. She’d have herself a party.
Another strange, and very old, car was blocking her drive when she arrived home. Heart plunging, she groaned. “Ah, Seth.” If he was blasted this early in the day, she was taking him straight to detox.
“Close your ears, little ones,” she instructed firmly as she headed empty-handed up the walk. The baby shower was going to have to wait.
On the alert, she let herself in, listening carefully to gauge how bad things were.
Shock held her immobile two steps inside the door. That wasn’t Seth’s voice.
“You’re such a nice man.” The voice was definitely feminine. And the woman just a tad too fond of Michael, in Susan’s opinion.
And since the house was Susan’s, hers was the opinion that counted. Set on charging the living room like a pit bull, she stopped suddenly, struck by a thought that left her weak and shaking.
Michael mattered that much to her. The idea of him with another woman was enough to make her insane.
She was acting as if he still belonged to her. As if he were her husband—and the father of her children. She could no longer hide from the truth. She was not only hopelessly, illogically, passionately in love with him, she truly didn’t think she could live without him. For real. Until that moment, she’d never actually faced the fact that she might have to try.
Which meant she had tried to trap him.
As her thoughts fell over themselves, they became increasingly dangerous. If she felt these things, wasn’t it possible, probable even, that Michael felt them, too? From her? That all the while her mouth had been telling him he was free to go, her eyes and heart were telling him something completely different?
Oh, God. Her fingers to her lips, she searched for a way to escape.
“Susan? Is that you?” Michael was calling her.
She made a dash for the hall, but ran into Michael as he came out of the living room. “There’s someone here to see you,” he said. With one glance at her face he stopped.
>
“You okay?”
Nodding her head jerkily, Susan tried to think, to behave normally. “Just have to go to the bathroom.” She blurted the only thing that came to mind. “You know how it is with pregnant women.”
Babbling like an idiot, she made a dash for their bedroom, ran into the adjoining bath and locked the door.
For want of something better to do, she splashed water on her face—and then repaired her makeup.
“I can think about this later,” she told her children who were protesting the butterflies that were sharing their space. “I’ll get rid of whoever’s come to see me, if she really did come to see me, and then claim I need a nap.”
With a plan, she felt a little better, but stopped again, just as she was about to open the bathroom door.
“I really do need a nap,” she said to her stomach. “I wouldn’t lie to Michael, not ever.”
Except she had. She’d been lying all along.
MICHAEL WATCHED Susan closely as she joined them in the living room. Relieved to see that her color was back, he smiled at her. She’d been sickly white when she’d first come in from shopping.
Their guest jumped up from the couch as Susan approached. “Hi,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Laura Sinclair.”
Michael almost felt sorry for the woman, standing up to Susan’s intimidating once-over—followed by her clear lack of recognition.