child she carried.
It was not the first time she’d thought about that, but mostly she had skimmed over it. Now she faced it, and felt her knees weakening. It was real, all of it was real, and the cloak of numbness she’d been wearing much of the time since everything had blown up simply vanished.
No longer an intellectual exercise, no longer a problem of humiliation, no longer a situation to be solved. It was her and the child growing inside her and nobody else. The reality was stark, the road ahead invisible.
A mess? It was more than a mess. She’d exploded her entire life into little pieces.
Amber had headed to bed right after the cocoa. Wyatt had brought her suitcases in and showed her to the best guest room, then returned to his work before going to bed himself.
Last night had been uncomfortable, he thought as he made coffee in the morning and scrambled some eggs. They hadn’t talked at all, except superficially and briefly about her trip, about the room that was to be hers. Strangers. It felt like two strangers. He hadn’t really anticipated that. In his mind their friendship had remained as fresh as yesterday. Emails and other contacts didn’t quite bridge the years. Nor did it help his sense of awkwardness to discover that he still found her every bit as attractive as he ever had.
But he was worried about her, too. The stress of the past weeks had clearly worked on her. He’d expected her to look a bit older than she had when he’d run into her at that conference four years ago, but not this pinched and drained. Worn. Her situation was awful, so maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised.
He paused, looking out the window over the sink, noting that the wind was still blowing and leaves were still flying. By now, he thought with mild amusement, all the leaves in town should have been gone. But as he watched some of them eddy between the houses, he guessed they would hang around to be raked.
He heard steps behind him and turned to greet Amber. She looked a bit better this morning and was already dressed as if she were going to work in a navy blue pantsuit and white blouse. A bit much for hanging around the house.
“Well, good morning,” he said with a smile.
She smiled back. “Sorry I was so dead last night.”
“Long trip,” he said. “Eggs? Toast? Coffee?”
“All of the above, please.” She settled onto a stool on the far side of the island. “You have to work today, of course.”
“I cleared most of my schedule for the week,” he answered, turning back to the counter and cracking two more eggs into a bowl to whisk. “A few hours each day, rather than all day. Some hearings I can’t avoid, and a trial that’ll probably be over in a couple of hours after we finish jury selection.”
“Can I come watch?”
“Of course.” If she were in the courtroom with him, at least he wouldn’t be wondering if she were sitting here feeling like hell and unable to do a damn thing about it.
He gave her a cup of coffee and the eggs he’d already cooked. “Dig in.”
He started making his own eggs and heard her say, “You didn’t have to clear your schedule for me.”
“No, but I did anyway. You could have gone anywhere if solitude and four walls were all you wanted.”
He was pleased to hear a quiet laugh from her. “Sadly true,” she answered.
A minute later he carried his own plate and mug to the island and stood on the far side from her. “It’s okay, Amber,” he said before he started eating. “You’re welcome here and we’ll get over the awkwardness soon.”
“I didn’t expect it,” she admitted. “In some ways I felt as if all these years hadn’t passed.”
“In some ways they haven’t.” He sipped his coffee. “But even back then we didn’t share quarters.”
That drew another laugh from her, a small one.
“Look, this place is practically a hotel. Just do whatever you need to in order to feel comfortable. Spend as much time or as little as you want with me. Make your own ground rules. I’m pretty adaptable.”
She raised her face to smile at him. “Generous, too. Most of the problem is me, Wyatt. Everything is all messed up. Blown up. I feel as if I’m in a million pieces right now.”
“Hardly surprising. You want to talk some more?”
“Maybe after court. You must need to go soon.”
He glanced at the clock. Seven thirty. “Fifteen minutes. Can you be ready?”
“I am ready. But don’t you need time to change?”
Wyatt looked down at his jeans and polo shirt. “No.”
“Wow,” Amber breathed. “I might like this place.”
“Well, I do wear a robe. Most of the time.”
The sound of the laughter that pealed out of her warmed his heart. If she could still laugh like that, then everything would be okay. For her.
Because suddenly, for him, he wasn’t so sure. An attractive damsel in distress. Always his weak point, and more so for Amber.
* * *
The day was chilly and the wind whipped with ferocity. Amber almost felt like ducking as they left the house and walked to his car in the driveway. “Is this wind usual?” she asked once they were in the car.
“No. Usually we have a breeze, nothing bad, although it can get to be pretty constant if you get out onto the prairie. But here...” He shook his head as he turned over the ignition. “Some kind of front must be in the area, but I haven’t looked at the weather.”
“I was getting used to the wind in Chicago. I don’t think it ever stops. But this is pretty with the leaves tossing in the wind.”
“Until it comes time to rake,” he answered.
“Will there be anything left?” she wondered as he wove their way down the street toward where she presumed they’d find the courthouse.
It was only a few blocks away, and she was instantly charmed. She’d half expected some functional building that had been erected recently, but instead saw a gorgeous older redbrick building with impressive columns sitting in a square filled with concrete benches and tables and the remains of summer flowers. And the statue of a soldier, watching over it all.
“Did they transplant this from New England?” she asked, amazed.
“The folks who built it wanted something to remind them of home, I guess. We have a church that looks like it was snatched out of the jaws of Vermont, too.”
Amber was charmed. It might not be a large town, but what she had seen of it so far was gracious and inviting. Wyatt pulled around to the back of the courthouse and into a parking space labeled with his name: Hon. Wyatt Carter. Some of the other spaces had filled up, but they were all reserved—county attorney, court reporter and others.
“We finally emerged into the new century,” he remarked after they climbed out and headed for the back door.
“Meaning?”
“We had to build a new jail outside town. It wasn’t so long ago prisoners were kept in cells over the sheriff’s office, but six cells is just about enough to dry out the drunks overnight. So...big jail. And I do a lot of my hearings over closed-circuit TV. No big deal to you, I’m sure, but it was a very big deal when we transitioned here.”
She could almost imagine it. In a very short space of time he’d given her the feeling that this was an old Western town stepping very slowly into the modern era. She looked around just before he opened the door for her