The Pregnancy Plan (16 page)

And that was why he went to his father’s workshop Saturday morning.

Rob Turcotte was a finish carpenter by trade and by choice, and he’d taught his son that a job didn’t feel like work if you loved the career you chose. It was a philosophy that was reflected in everything he did.

Cam mentally tried to assemble the various pieces of wood scattered on the table into some recognizable shape, then finally gave up and asked, “What are you making?”

“A cradle.”

For half a second, Cam wondered if his father already knew what he’d come to talk to him about. Then he remembered his sister was expecting her first child—an exciting announcement but one that had been relegated to the back of his mind because he had more pressing concerns.

“For Sherry’s baby?”

His father nodded. “Just like I made one for Maddie.”

“She uses it for her dolls,” Cam said, then wondered if he should have admitted that he let his daughter play with such a painstakingly crafted heirloom.

But his father, ever practical, said, “No reason to tuck it away in an attic to gather dust.”

Cam watched him work for several minutes, checking edges, sanding rough spots. “It seems like a lot of work for a piece of furniture that’s used for such a short time.”

“It’s a labor of love. And who knows? Maybe you’ll have use for Maddie’s cradle again someday.”

“Maybe sooner than you think,” Cam told him. “Ashley’s pregnant.”

Rob carefully set a delicate spindle down on the workbench before he met his son’s gaze. “Is this what you wanted?”

Cam sighed. “It’s what we both wanted. But now we can’t seem to agree on where to go from here.”

His father picked up a small sanding block and carefully began smoothing the rough edge of the wood.

“I want to marry her,” Cam told him.

Rob nodded. “Seems reasonable.”

“Ashley doesn’t think so,” he grumbled.

“She doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable woman.”

“About this, she’s being completely unreasonable.”

He paced the workshop while his dad sanded, and told him everything about their agreement.

“So you agreed, from the beginning, that you would make no claims with respect to the baby?” Rob asked.

Cam frowned. “I had to. It was the only way Ashley would include me in her plans.”

“And now you want to change those plans?”

“She’s carrying my child.”

“I got that,” his dad said. “But the fact remains that you set the terms and now you’re pushing her to change them.”

“Because I love her!”

His father lifted his brows. “Have you said those words to Ashley? And hopefully not shouted them at her.”

Cam dropped his head into his hands. “I’ve really messed this up, haven’t I?”

“It certainly seems that way.”

“You know, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I came in here for some fatherly advice.”

His dad’s only response was to ask, “When did you realize you were in love with Ashley?”

“When I saw her at the reunion,” Cam admitted, though it had taken a long time after before he’d admitted as much to himself.

“So when you found out that Ashley wanted to have a baby, why didn’t you just say, hey, that’s convenient, because I’m in love with you anyway so we should get married and have a family together?”

“Because she would have thought I was a lunatic.”

“Because she wasn’t ready to accept your feelings?”

He nodded.

“And you knew that if you pushed her for too much too soon….” his dad prompted.

“I would push her away.” Cam sighed as the point his father was trying to make finally became clear. “And that’s what I’m doing now.”

“Figured a man who graduated summa cum laude from medical school had to have at least half a brain,” his father said.

“So what am I supposed to do—just back off and let her have this baby on her own?”

“That is what you said you’d do,” his father reminded him.

“But—” Cam snapped his jaw shut as part of a long-ago conversation with Ashley played back inside his head.

“Trevor didn’t break my heart. He broke my trust.”

“And that takes longer to heal.”

Cam had broken both her heart
and
her trust. Maybe Ashley did love him, but she was hurt and angry and scared, and if they were ever going to have a future together, he would have to earn her forgiveness.

And he knew that wasn’t going to be easy.

When Greg Stafford showed up at her door the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, Ashley wasn’t just surprised, she was wary. She would say that she and the school principal had a friendly relationship, but she wouldn’t say that they were friends.

Her trepidation increased when he said, “I apologize for bothering you at home, but I wanted to keep this conversation unofficial.”

“Of course,” she agreed, opening the door to invite him in.

She offered him coffee, which he declined, obviously not wanting to prolong his visit—the reason for which was still a mystery to her.

“I don’t know how to delicately broach the subject,” Greg
finally admitted, “so I’m just going to ask you point-blank. Is Cameron Turcotte the father of your baby?”

Ashley really wished he’d accepted her offer of coffee, because then she would be busy doing something and not just staring at him with a guilty flush staining her cheeks. “Where did you hear that?”

“It doesn’t matter where I heard it,” her principal said. “I’m asking you if it’s true.”

She’d told her principal about her pregnancy so that he would understand why she was taking a leave of absence at the end of the current school year, but she hadn’t given him any details. And she swallowed nervously before answering his question now. “Yes.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

She opened her mouth and, as if he knew that she was going to respond in the negative, Greg narrowed his gaze on her. “You might want to give that question some thought before you answer.”

“We talked about the fact that I wanted to have a baby,” she reminded him. “And you didn’t express any concern about the fact that I wasn’t married.”

“Because you led me to believe that you were going to pursue alternate methods of conception.”

“Why does it matter how I got pregnant?”

“It only matters if you’re having an affair with the father of one of your students, which you just admitted that you are.”

“Not having, had,” she amended, though she suspected that the relationship being in the past wouldn’t make a difference to her boss. “And we were both single, consenting adults.”

Greg’s sigh confirmed the fact. “Your personal life is just that,” he told her. “Until someone brings it to the attention of the school board or the trustees. If that happens, it might be difficult for me to justify your position at the Parkdale.”

She swallowed. “Are you threatening to fire me?”

“No.” He sounded as shocked as she felt. “You have to know how much I enjoy having you on my staff, and how much the kids love you. But if the details of your relationship with Dr. Turcotte were revealed, the matter could be taken out of my hands.”

“How did you find out?” she asked him.

“I got an anonymous phone call from someone. A woman. I don’t believe your personal life is any of my business,” he assured her. “But I couldn’t ignore what she told me.”

As soon as Greg said he’d spoken to a woman, Ashley instinctively knew it was Danica who had called. What she couldn’t guess was why. What did the other woman hope to gain by exposing Ashley’s relationship with Cameron? Or was it simply a power play—another chance to show Ashley that she still knew how to exert control over her ex-husband’s life?

Ashley had the opportunity to answer at least some of her questions when she went to Walton’s to pick up a couple of pints of ice cream the next day. It was her pitiful contribution to Thanksgiving dinner at Megan and Gage’s house—a gathering that would include, in addition to the hosts, Ashley, Paige, Gage’s parents, his brother and sister-in-law and their four kids, and Ashley and Megan’s mother and her new husband.

When Ashley had commented on the size of the guest list, her sister had assured her that there was room for Cameron and Maddie, too. But Ashley knew that wasn’t an option—not right now. She was still furious with Cam, still reeling from the fact that she’d barely had a chance to process the news of her pregnancy and he was threatening to sue for custody of a child who wasn’t even close to being born.

Yes, she’d been furious and hurt, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Because, as her sister had so astutely pointed
out, a man as devoted to one child as Cam was to Maddie would never turn his back on another. Maybe he’d misled her, but she was guilty of seeing what she wanted to see—or maybe not seeing anything beyond her own desires—and her reaction to his threat had been purely emotional and completely unreasonable.

Over the past couple of weeks, she’d finally accepted that she and Cam would need to find a way to work together for the sake of their child. And maybe they would find a way back to one another in the process. But first she had to get through the holiday.

While she was at Walton’s, she ran into Danica, who was also picking up ice cream to go. It was ironic that, only a couple of months earlier, Ashley had suggested to Cam that Maddie should see more of her mother. Now Ashley was wishing Cam’s ex-wife would just go back to England and stay there forever.

But she put a smile on her face and asked, “Are you in town to spend the holiday with Maddie?”

Danica nodded. “Just until Friday, then I’m back to Chicago, working on a corporate merger.”

“I would have thought something like that would keep you so busy you wouldn’t have time to stir up trouble for others.”

The other woman shrugged, not even bothering to deny the accusation. “It seemed obvious to me that something had to be done to propel you and Cam forward.”

“How does jeopardizing my job help either of us?”

Danica waved a hand dismissively. “They can’t actually fire you.”

“They could transfer me to another school.”

“If you married Cameron, they’d have no reason to transfer you.”

Ashley was as stunned by the suggestion as she was
annoyed by the other woman’s machinations, and more than a little wary. The last time she’d been in town, Danica had focused her efforts on interfering in her ex-husband’s new relationship. Was it really possible that she was now trying to push Ashley and Cam back together? And if so, why?

“You’re assuming he’s asked.”

The other woman laughed. “I was married to the man once, remember?”

As if that was something Ashley was likely to forget.

“I know only too well how honorable and how committed to family he is,” Danica reminded her. “And if I had to guess, I would say that ‘marry me’ were the first words out of his mouth when he learned you were pregnant. What I can’t fathom is why you turned him down.”

Ashley still wasn’t sure that she should trust Cam’s ex-wife, but the other woman’s questions made her think, and made her wonder if she’d been too hasty in closing the door on a future with Cam. And though she’d had no intention of sharing her fears and concerns, she heard herself ask, “Would you want to marry a man who only proposed because you were pregnant?”

“I lied about being pregnant to get Cam to marry me,” his ex-wife informed her.

Her shock must have been evident, because one corner of Danica’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “He didn’t tell you that, did he?”

Ashley shook her head.

“I was in love with him. Foolishly, perhaps, because it’s obvious now that we were totally ill-suited for one another. But at the time, totally and completely. And when he started talking about coming back here and doing his internship in Pinehurst, I panicked. It was as if I knew, even without ever hearing him speak your name, that if he came home, I would lose him.”

“So you told him you were pregnant?” Ashley was stunned by the audacity, then realized her own actions of late were hardly above reproach.

“And he, predictably, stepped right up to the plate,” Danica told her.

She didn’t know how to respond to this revelation; she didn’t dare let herself think about how differently her life and Cameron’s might both have turned out if Danica had never uttered those words. “What happened when he found out the truth?”

“He didn’t—not for a long time. I told him I’d miscarried—” she looked away, and Ashley knew that Danica wasn’t as blasé about her own behavior as she wanted to appear “—and he accepted that explanation.”

“And then you did get pregnant.”

Danica nodded. “And totally freaked. But he probably didn’t tell you that, either.”

She shook her head. “He said that the pregnancy was…unexpected.”

“Unexpected,” she agreed. “And unwelcome. I didn’t want a baby. Not at that point in my life or our marriage, not ever.”

“Why?”

“Long, boring story.” Danica waved a hand dismissively. “My mother was unreasonable, demanding and abusive. My grandmother was the same, but also a drunk.”

Ashley didn’t have any trouble reading between the lines, and she felt an instinctive surge of sympathy for the other woman. “You were afraid you would continue the cycle.”

“It just seemed smarter not to take any chances. And when Cam and I finally split, I knew the best thing I could ever do for Madeline was give custody to her father.”

“You let him think you didn’t want her.”

“I didn’t want her,” Danica insisted.

But Ashley saw the pain in her eyes and she knew what it had cost Maddie’s mother to give her up. She hadn’t left her child because she didn’t love her, but because she loved her too much to risk perpetuating the same kind of abuse she’d suffered. While the revelation didn’t make Ashley like Danica any better, it did help her to understand the other woman. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’ve finally realized that it’s too late to undo the damage that I did to both Cam and Maddie, and I can see that you’ve helped both of them start healing.”

Ashley wasn’t entirely convinced of that, but Danica’s words gave her hope that maybe she and Cam and Maddie could all do some healing together.