Best of Three (Counting on Love) (32 page)

He could only imagine what he looked like. He could feel that his eyes were a little wild. He was definitely breathing fast. His heart was racing. He was very possibly having a panic attack.

A panic attack. Yes. That was exactly what this was. Panic was the perfect word.

“You
will
move in with me,” he said firmly. “Your lifestyle and habits are unbecoming for a pregnant woman.
Any
woman but especially one pregnant with my child.”

“Unbecoming? Could you sound more pompous?” she asked. “I’m going to go. Before you say something
really
stupid.”

“But…” He struggled to find the right words to convince her that this was the right thing to do. He wanted this baby and he wanted
her
. He wouldn’t lose them to her stupid pride. Her best friend had raised a daughter all on her own and he respected how difficult that must have been. But Emma didn’t have to do it the hard way. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, hoping it sounded as reasonable out loud as it did in his head. “I’ll help with everything. I’ll
pay
for everything.”

Emma’s jaw clenched. Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing fast. Her eyes sparkled. She looked ready for battle.

But when she spoke, it was calm and even. “We’re going to need to come up with a sign that I can give you when you need to chill the hell out. We’ll call it the Asshole Alert, okay?” She turned and yanked the door open. “I will talk to you
later
.”

Obviously it hadn’t sounded as reasonable out loud. She was halfway down the hall when Nate finally snapped out of his I’m-totally-fucking-this-up daze. He stalked into the hallway. “Keep your phone on!” he called after her.

She held up one hand, with her middle finger extended. “Asshole alert!” she called back without turning.

Emma managed to get to the parking garage before she started crying. And then she was pissed. She hadn’t cried over a guy since Luke Carlson dumped her for Abi Potter in tenth grade. And Luke Carlson wasn’t a jerk. He was a sweet guy who had taken her to see the second Harry Potter movie. She’d loved him for that alone.

Nate Sullivan, on the other hand, was a Grade-A jerk. And he had never taken her on a date.

He wanted to raise the baby with her because he didn’t think she could
afford it
? Not because he wanted to be there, not because he had feelings for Emma, but because she didn’t know what she was doing and didn’t have as much money as he did.

He was so not worth crying over.

She turned the car for home, but had no intention of staying there long. She’d dressed down, way down, for the appointment with Nate. She’d wanted him to see that she was taking this seriously. But she was headed for home now—and her closet and her sexiest dress. She wasn’t going to be serious about anything more tonight and, hell, she wasn’t going to be able to wear the thing much longer. Better enjoy it while she could.

An hour later she was in a booth at Trudy’s with her sisters, nursing a ginger ale.

Isabelle kept casting her worried looks. She didn’t know how things had gone with Nate but Emma assumed it was easy to tell it had been a disaster. Olivia and Amanda were oblivious to anything being wrong. Amanda had been dancing with her fiancé, Ryan, and Olivia had been shooting pool with her buddy Cody and some of the other firemen she worked with every day.

Emma hadn’t told them about the baby yet and she wasn’t in the mood now.

She frowned at Isabelle and shook her head. Isabelle looked from Amanda to Olivia, then back to Emma. Emma frowned harder and shook her head again. Isabelle lifted an eyebrow and nodded. Emma slapped her hand down on the table. “Not now.”

Amanda jumped in her seat and looked at Emma. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Isabelle said at the same time.

“You’re not okay?” Amanda asked Isabelle.

“I’m fine.” Isabelle pinned Emma with a look. “How about you, Em?”

Emma shot back her drink. Ginger ale went down smoother than tequila. Which wasn’t a point in its favor at the moment. “I’m going to dance.”

She was not going to tell her sisters yet. She wasn’t ready. She was still trying to process it all herself. She was
pregnant
. Something like that took some getting used to. Especially considering Amanda and Olivia didn’t even know everything that had been going on with her and Nate.

She thought she should actually talk to Dena about it. Dena knew the panic, the disbelief and the pain that went along with being unexpectedly pregnant and the father being a dick.

But really, she just wanted to forget about it for a few minutes. Maybe an hour.

Her whole life was about to change. She got that on a cerebral level. It was taking time to sink in further than that.

She slid out of the booth and made a bee-line for the bunch of guys at the bar. They were doing shots and laughing and giving each other a hard time. Emma knew every single one of them. Had danced with nine out of ten of them. Had gone on an outside-of-Trudy’s date with six of the ten. Had slept with two of the ten.

Fuck. Okay, the ways her life was going to change were starting to hit her.

She changed directions and headed instead for the only one of her brother’s close friends who wasn’t spoken for by one of her sisters.

Cody Madsen was a nice guy. A genuine, couldn’t-be-a-dick if he tried, nice guy. He was not only her brother’s best friend since college, he acted like an older brother to Olivia. He was also her boss. Emma knew Conner loved having Cody around to keep an eye on Olivia nearly twenty-four-seven and she had to admit that Cody treated Olivia very well.

She could use being treated well by a nice guy for an hour or so herself.

She walked up to the pool table where Ryan, Conner and Cody were playing.

Nate was noticeably absent.

She pushed that out of her mind. “Cody, dance with me.”

All the guys turned to face her at once.

“We’re in the middle of a game,” Conner pointed out from where he was posed for his next shot.

Emma really wanted to dance with Cody. She looked around and spotted Kevin Campbell, another of the seemingly endless supply of hot paramedics that worked for St. Anthony’s, sitting at a table nearby with Sam Bradford and Dooley Miller. She walked over to Kevin and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Kevin, would you take Cody’s place at the pool table? I need him for a minute.”

“Uh.” Kevin glanced at the pool game. “I guess?”

“Thanks.” She tugged him out of his seat—which was a feat considering the guy was an ex-NFL player. She pushed him toward the table and then took Cody’s hand. “There you go, big brother,” she said to Conner.

Cody didn’t say anything as they made their way to the dance floor. He simply turned and took her in his arms, swaying with the music.

They danced for an entire song without talking. Emma felt her body relax and she rested her cheek against Cody’s shoulder. He was like a big teddy bear. A good-looking, six-foot tall teddy bear with wide shoulders, a hard chest and a six-pack. Still, she felt content and comfortable and that was a huge thing at the moment. Content and comfortable were two things that seemed to be hard to find and she was afraid in the next several months—or eighteen years or so—they were going to be even more elusive. That much she did know about motherhood. And motherhood with Nate Sullivan in the picture? Comfortable wasn’t going to be very common.

She made herself stop thinking about Nate and concentrated instead on the act of dancing with a guy she didn’t want to sleep with. She didn’t have to flirt or tease or act sexy. She also didn’t have to worry about pulling back, looking into his eyes, and knowing that she was never going to get over him, no matter how much of ass he was.

Cody was safe.

The second song started and they kept swaying. Even though it was not a swaying-only song.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Cody’s deep voice rumbled against her ear and she sighed. Did she? Kind of. But not with a sibling that would have all kinds of their own emotions about it. And not with Dena and not with any of the other guys and definitely not with Nate.

Cody was safe. She trusted that he would keep her confidence, and not try to give her any advice, and the first thing out of his mouth wouldn’t be about Nate or Conner.

She looked up at him. “Something big has happened,” she said as introduction.

He smiled. “Something good big or something bad big?”

Now that was a hell of a question. Her first instinct was to say “bad big” but she hesitated. Because it wasn’t bad. It was complicated and inconvenient and confusing. But it wasn’t bad. She felt her first real smile since seeing that initial pink line curl her lips. “Good big. Mostly. Maybe with a dash of this-is-going-to-get-messy.”

Cody looked intrigued but he simply said, “Are you happy about it?”

Another good one. And this time her first instinct was to say yes. Which shocked her. Was she happy about it? It was a baby. A
baby
. With Nate. Things between them were messy but Nate was a fantastic father who could give her child everything. He needed a smack upside the head from time to time, but if she could have written down every trait she wanted in the father of her child, the list would have pointed right at Nate Sullivan.

And she was going to be a mom.

For a second, Emma couldn’t take a deep breath. The idea of being someone’s mother was…humbling. And terrifying. And exciting.

“I am happy about it,” she finally said out loud. “I am.”

“Then I’m happy for you,” Cody said.

“Can I cut in?”

Emma turned to find Steve Jacobsen grinning at her. “Uh.” She glanced up at Cody. “Not right now, Steve, okay?”

Steve shrugged. “I’ll catch you later then.”

He sauntered off and Emma tried to resume her conversation with Cody. “If I tell you my news can you keep it under wraps for awhile?”

Cody nodded. “Of course.”

She needed to tell him about her and Nate spending time together first. Or maybe Olivia had mentioned that to him. “Did Olivia tell you that me and—”

“There you are!”

Emma looked at Mitch Bauman. “Hi, Mitch.”

“You haven’t been around lately. I’ve been waiting to tell you—I got tickets to see Maroon Five and I want to take you.”

Emma stared at him. Mitch was asking her out. While she was dancing with another man. And pregnant with
another
man’s baby. Of course, he didn’t know that, but the strangeness of the situation hit her hard.

This was her life. She dated a lot, she flirted
a lot
and the men who knew her knew that she didn’t get too serious and that she sometimes dated more than one guy at a time. If she was sleeping with someone, she was monogamous to that guy for the course of their relationship, however long or short it was, but if she was only dating someone, then she had no qualms about saying yes to more than one invitation at a time. That was more common than not. Her intimate relationships were not as extensive as everyone thought. There were a lot of assumptions out there and most of the guys she spent time with simply didn’t bother to correct those assumptions. But she’d always been comfortable with knowing the truth about her relationships and not caring what everyone else thought.

Suddenly she cared.

A lot.

And just as suddenly, her stomach started to hurt. The “morning sickness” was hitting now?

Awesome.

“No, Mitch,” she said, more forcefully than necessary. “I don’t want to go to the concert with you.”

Mitch looked surprised, then glanced at Cody.

She frowned. “And no I’m not dating Cody.”

“I thought we had a good time when we went out last month,” Mitch said.

That also hit her hard. They hadn’t slept together, but they’d made out heavily. And Mitch hadn’t asked her out again in a month. Sure, she hadn’t been around as much the past two or three weeks, but she had a phone.

“Last month,” she repeated. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have moved on since then? That things might have changed in that amount of time?”

Like everything. Everything had changed in the space of a few hours.

“I figured you were having fun,” Mitch said. “I didn’t realize there was a timeframe here.”

And now she was officially sick. Sick of one guy after another, sick of none of them being quite right but ignoring the fact because what good would it do, sick of no one having any expectations of her or wanting more from her. She was capable of more, she was able to
be
more.

“Emma.”

That deep firm voice made her suck in a quick breath as she pivoted.

Then there was this guy. The first one to have some expectations, to push her, to make her think, to make her work…the one who pissed her off the most.

“This is not a good time, Nate.”

Except that it was. She wanted to be in
his
arms. She wanted him to tell her this was okay. She wanted him to not be a jerk and to
make
it okay. It was a very good time. She’d decided that she didn’t want all these guys anymore, she didn’t want to party anymore, she didn’t want to be the last one anyone depended on. That was why she’d stayed friends with Dena. That was why she’d been there to watch Shannon grow up. Because they needed her.