“This is a good surprise.”

“Famous last words.”

Twenty-One

I had no practice at setting up a romantic dinner.

And a romantic dinner with a big news chaser, since Gage had said he had something important to share?

Yeah, I definitely had no idea there.

You’d figure after a couple of weeks of dating and basically living together—talk about putting the cart after the pregnant horse, but Gage and I were trying to make up for lost time—that I’d feel better about making a meal he might enjoy. But nope, I still felt as if I was mostly flying blind.

At least I wasn’t entirely clueless. Most men tended to enjoy manly meats as a rule. Kel had said when she wanted to celebrate something with Dare or lure him into sex, she made him pot roast and green beans with mashed potatoes. I wasn’t sure how that was a sex-conducive supper—I thought oysters were aphrodisiacs, not potatoes—but my sister had bagged herself the first Kramer man. She had to be wiser about such things than I was.

I flapped the plastic tablecloth I’d picked up at the thrift store over my small circular kitchen table and coughed at the dust. Homemaker of the year, I was not. I was going for quaint dinner atmosphere, not high society.

Good thing too, since my budget didn’t extend to such extravagances. The secondhand store served my shopping needs just fine right now. They even had baby stuff. I’d started buying a few things here and then and tucking them away in the hall closet. A package of unused blankets. A package of brand new sippy cups. And on the last trip, a bright pink elephant with a plaid trunk.

Not that I was hoping for a girl or anything.

So, yes, I totally was.

I still felt strange shopping for baby things, and not just because I’d only made it through the first few chapters of my new pregnancy book. I just couldn’t believe it was all really happening. Even after confirmation from the doctor that sperm indeed had met egg and all systems were go, I couldn’t help doubting that it could be true. I hadn’t had many physical changes yet. Those unfortunate fainting episodes, my jeans getting shoved to the back of the closet, some definite exhaustion, and that bout of throwing up that day with Gage all counted in the symptoms column. Still, nothing that screamed knocked up.

Well, other than how hard I was hitting the peanut butter. But I did that sometimes during PMS.

So much for neon signs. This preggo deal was stealthy sometimes.

Or maybe I still kept figuring someone would take away this little slice of happiness I’d stolen for myself.

I brought over the fat candlestick I’d also gotten secondhand and plopped it in the center of my table. Around it I placed a twisted sprig of flowers I’d, ahem, borrowed from one of Macy’s countertop displays. She’d had plenty.

The timer dinged and I hurried to take out my roast. I pulled it out of the oven and wrinkled my nose as I looked it over. Seemed a little overdone. Dry? I’d just call it charbroiled.

Macy had already taught me that in retail, how you presented things and the language you used made a difference. I’d picked up some of that stuff from my various jobs over the years, but Macy was running through the basics with me. As if we might just be partners someday.

Another thing I was afraid to hope for.

The carrots along the sides of my roast seemed pretty good though. I popped one in my mouth to test it and let out a little moan at the burst of honey sweetness from the glaze I’d used.

Cooking was never going to be a huge skill of mine, but maybe I could keep me and the kid alive while Gage was on the road without resorting to microwave everything.

Just microwave most things. And she’d be on pureed bananas most of the time for a while anyway.

There, see, I could think of Gage being gone as if it was any old thing. Just normal life.

Because I was certain that was his big news tonight. He’d given me a heads up with that email he’d received. He couldn’t pass up an offer to join a huge team. Why should he? Just to play house with the chick he’d accidentally impregnated?

Okay, so I was beginning to believe we were far more than that. Deep down, I was having feelings for him that weren’t the friends with benefits kind.

Ah, hell, who was I kidding? I was more than halfway gone for the guy.

That little quarter of an inch left around my heart was purely self-protective barbed wire. If I went all in, let’s just say I wouldn’t be able to blithely make him going away charbroiled pot roast dinners.

As it was, I might’ve been sniffling a bit that didn’t have a thing to do with the puff of smoke that came out of my roast when I carved it open.

Betty Crocker I was not.

Tags: Taryn Quinn Crescent Cove Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net