just wanted a few days without anyone tiptoeing around her or being overly solicitous of her. A few days of not needing to assure everyone she spoke to that she was okay. A few days to interact with people who didn’t know her or Jack or what had happened. People who were just going about their lives the way they always had.
Which was exactly what she’d found and for the whole three days of the Expo she’d felt as if at least half of the weight on her shoulders had been lifted. It had actually been easier to endure the bouts of grief without all the coddling and fussing.
Bouts of grief—she realized as she thought that that’s what the grieving was becoming. That it wasn’t the constant, ever-present entity that it had been at the beginning. That now she was doing what Wyatt had said she would—that the times when she felt better and more able to cope, more as if she really was going to get through it, were increasing. That the times when she was blinded by it were becoming fewer and further between.
And the Expo had helped that along.
And so had Noah Perry…
She’d encountered him on several occasions over those three days. Not that she’d known his name. Until the night in the coffee shop he was just another face among the gazillion faces that had passed through Home-Max’s displays or visited the hospitality suite.
And yet here she was, having his baby.
Overwhelmed by that all over again, she lay on her side on the bed with her feet still on the floor.
The image of Noah’s face had stuck with her at least, she thought in a feeble attempt to somehow make this seem less awful than it did. He was memorably handsome, though. Which was why she’d noticed him even among the crowd at the Expo and amid a sea of other faces in the suite when he’d passed through.
He had rugged good looks—a sharply defined bone structure that gave him a square brow, high cheekbones, a razor-sharp nose and a jawline that was strong and prominent.
But it was his hair and eyes that had really stuck with her. There was nothing common or ordinary about them.
He had great hair. Dark and thick and wavy. And although he wore it a little longer than she’d liked Jack to wear his, it suited this guy. Full and carelessly combed away from that chiseled face, it touched his collar in the back and gave him an untamed, bad-boy air.
And his eyes—they were the color of melted bittersweet chocolate, shining and penetrating and patient. Eyes that looked as if they had intelligence behind them. That seemed to see past the surface.
She’d already thought that if her baby was born with its father’s hair and eyes it would be beautiful…
But she hadn’t just taken one glance at the man and said, “take me, I’m yours,” because he looked good…well, better than good, great. Still, that hadn’t been enough for her to spend the night with him. No, that had come out of a combination of things, including a few cocktails too many and an apparent weakness for the cute guy she’d repeatedly seen around the trade show.
Would she have agreed to join him for a bite to eat if her inhibitions hadn’t already been compromised?
Probably. Because in a way, by then the man she’d been thinking of for three days as The Cute Guy had become a part of the reason she’d gone to the Expo in the first place. He’d treated her normally.
He’d joked with her. He’d been friendly. He’d been funny and charming and clever. And yes, he’d even flirted with her a little.
Not that she’d wanted someone to flirt with her, but when he had, it had felt good. It had also felt good to discover that she could even flirt back—something she hadn’t known she could do with anyone but Jack. So she’d opted to allow herself one last brush with that before returning to reality in Missoula and had had a sandwich with The Cute Guy.
And she’d enjoyed herself.
Yes, she’d felt guilty. A part of her had felt as if she were being unfaithful to Jack.
But like her brother Ry, Jack had always been about living life, about grabbing it and shaking every last drop out of it. He’d said again and again after Wyatt’s wife had died that the living had to go on living. He’d even said that if anything ever happened to him, he wanted Marti to jump right back on the bandwagon, that he didn’t want her wasting any time wallowing.
Easier said than done.
Maybe her less-than-sober state that night in the coffee shop had also been a factor, but when The Cute Guy had asked her to go to the bar for a nightcap and she’d debated whether or not she should, in her mind she’d heard Jack’s voice urging her to go ahead…
So she had.
She’d gone to the hotel bar for more drinking. Some dancing. For some fun.
And when it should have been over, she hadn’t wanted it to be…
That was the last clear thing she remembered. The rest was far, far more fuzzy. A complete blur, actually. The kissing. His room. His bed. Clothes coming off in the dark. Letting herself just go with feeling good, with what she wanted at that moment…
The next thing she’d known, morning sunshine was coming in through the windows, she wasn’t drunk anymore and she was appalled by what she’d done. So she’d dressed in a silent hurry and slinked out of his room.
She hadn’t told a soul about that night and the further she’d gotten away from it, the more she’d begun to see it merely as something that had helped her turn a corner in her grieving for Jack. And she’d viewed that as a good thing because it had made her realize that she was going to survive losing him, that she just might be able to go on without him after all.
And then she’d missed her period.
For a few days she’d told herself it was just late, that it would start any minute.
For a few days after that she’d told herself there could be any number of reasons to miss a period—stress had caused her to miss the first one after Jack’s death.
By the time she was two weeks late she’d bought a home pregnancy test. When it had come up positive, she’d rushed to her doctor, hoping it was a false positive.
It wasn’t.
Shock, horror, fear, panic—she’d gone through them all since then. But when she’d been able to calm down and think it through, she’d decided that maybe the pregnancy, and the baby, were signs that she really did have to push on. To go forward. To leave the past behind. And so she’d decided to do just that. By having the baby.
She’d considered how she might track down The Cute Guy whose name she thought was Norm. She didn’t know anything about him other than he was a contractor from somewhere in southeast Montana and what floor of the hotel his room had been on. Still, those were starting points and she’d thought she might be able to use them to persuade the hotel to give her his full name and address. But for what? she’d asked herself.
She didn’t need financial help. She had no idea who he really was or what his background might be, or if he might have a family. She had no idea what kind of damage could be done if she pursued him with this, or what sort of reaction or response she’d be met with. So it just seemed better to leave things the way they were. To consider the baby hers and hers alone, to have it and raise it on her own and to leave the-Cute-Guy-from-the-Expo none the wiser.
So she’d concocted the artificial insemination story.
And even if it wasn’t true, she still liked the message it gave—that she’d taken control of her life again and was moving forward, albeit unconventionally. Plus, since telling her brothers and a few friends the tale and presenting it as something she’d actively gone after and achieved, it almost felt as if that’s what she’d done.
Then she’d looked up into the face of The Cute Guy again that afternoon…
Since then, relief