The Marriage Solution. Brenda Harlen

kept circling back to the same place. Maybe marriage and a baby weren’t a lifelong dream of his, but he owed it to Tess—and their baby—to do the right thing. And as much as he racked his brain for another solution, he’d started to believe that marriage was the best one.

      He wanted his baby to have a father and he wanted to help Tess, and marrying her would accomplish both of those objectives.

      Which is exactly what he told her when he stopped by her office Friday afternoon.

      “We should get married.”

      Tess turned around so quickly when he spoke that she knocked her coffee mug, spilling its contents all over the papers spread out on her desk. She swore under her breath as she moved her equipment out of the way of the spreading puddle.

      As Craig hurried to the small kitchen to find a roll of paper towels, he realized he probably shouldn’t have blurted it out the way he had.

      His mother often teased that he had a way with words and a natural charm that could persuade anyone to do what he wanted. He’d thought Tess would appreciate a straightforward approach. The silence that stretched between them as they worked to clean up her desk caused him to question that assumption.

      She didn’t say anything at all until her wastebasket was filled with wet towels and illegible pages and the remaining papers had been spread out to dry.

      “In the future, you might want to open a conversation with ‘hello’,” she suggested.

      “Sorry,” he said. Then he smiled. “Hello, Tess.”

      “Hello, Craig,” she responded politely.

      He dropped into the chair beside her desk. “Now that we’ve dealt with the social niceties, can we get to the reason I’m here?”

      “Please,” she agreed. “I’d like to know what’s behind the sudden change in your attitude about marriage.”

      “The baby,” he admitted. “Our baby needs a father.”

      She was quiet for a moment, considering his statement, then she nodded. “I don’t disagree,” she said. “But do you really want to be the baby’s father—or do you just want to do what you’ve convinced yourself is the right thing?”

      “I want to be a father.” Parenthood wasn’t something he’d ever looked forward to in the abstract sense, but now, knowing his best friend was pregnant with his child, he found it was true.

      “I’m a little surprised,” she admitted. “But I’m also relieved. I think our child will benefit from having both of his parents involved in his life.”

      “His?” he wondered aloud.

      She shrugged. “I don’t know yet, of course. But it doesn’t seem right to refer to the baby as ‘it’.”

      He could see her point and while he hadn’t given much thought to the gender of their child, he found he liked the idea of having a son. A little boy who might grow up to take his place in the business Craig’s grandfather had founded. Of course, a girl could do the same thing. And when he thought about it, he found himself intrigued by the idea of a daughter—a little angel who looked just like her mother.

      “Whether the baby’s a boy or a girl,” he said. “I don’t just want to be involved, I want to be there for him, or her, every day. I’ve been thinking about this since you took that test—I’ve hardly been able to think about anything else— and I really believe marriage is the perfect solution.”

      “I didn’t ask you for a solution,” she said.

      He took a deep breath, tried to figure out what he’d said or done to put her back up. Because it was obvious to him now that her back was up about something.

      “I’m only trying to help,” he said.

      “Just like you were helping when you took me home that night?”

      She winced, and he knew she regretted the words as soon as she’d spoken, but that couldn’t erase them. Nor could it alter the truth in them. She blamed him, as he blamed himself.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was out of line.”

      “No,” he denied. “You have every right to be mad at me. If I’d been thinking about what you needed instead of what I wanted, I would have just been your friend that night.”

      She managed a weak smile. “I think I was pretty clear on what I needed.”

      Yeah, she had been. But he should have looked beyond the invitation in her eyes, beyond the softness of her lips and the yield of her warm curves. Except that having Tess in his arms had been a dream come true and he hadn’t wanted to let her go.

      Her smile faded as she folded her hands on her desk and faced him solemnly. “I’m not angry with you,” she said. “But maybe you should be angry with me.”

      “Why?”

      “Because—” she hesitated, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip. “Because I’m not sure I didn’t get pregnant on purpose.”

      He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

      She looked down at the fingers laced together in front of her and took a deep breath. “You know how much I’ve always wanted a family of my own,” she began. “Especially since my mom died. When I broke off my engagement to Roger, that dream seemed to slip away from me and that hurt more than anything else.”

      She swallowed. “I didn’t set out to get pregnant. At least, I don’t think I did. But I wonder if, subconsciously—”

      “Tess,” he interrupted gently. “The condom broke. It had nothing to do with your conscious or subconscious desire for a family.”

      She dropped her gaze again. “The condom broke because it was more than a year past its expiration date.”

      He stared at her, stunned, as the events of that night replayed in his mind.

      He mentally fast-forwarded through all the hot, sweaty stuff to the relevant moment when he’d realized they were in the guest room and his condoms were across the hall in his bedroom. He’d intended to go to his room to get them, but Tess had surprised him by admitting there were some in her purse. Since her purse was on the dresser beside the bed—a helluva lot closer than the night table in his bedroom, which was at least thirty feet away—they’d used the ones in her purse.

      The out-of-date condoms.

      “I didn’t know it at the time,” she said quickly. “I didn’t know until I checked the box when I got home.”

      “Why didn’t you check the box before you bought them?”

      Her cheeks colored. “I did. But I bought them a couple of years ago—when Roger and I first started dating. But he always took care of protection and I never really thought about it afterward.”

      “You’ve been carrying those condoms in your purse for two years?” he asked incredulously.

      She shook her head. “I only opened the box a couple of months ago when I decided that I was going to prove to myself that I was over Roger. But I didn’t have any need for them…until that night.”

      “Not until that night, huh?” He couldn’t fight the smile that tugged at his lips.

      Tess eyed him warily. “You’re not mad?”

      Maybe he should be angry, at least annoyed. But he knew Tess, and he knew, despite her own concerns to the contrary, that she would never have gotten pregnant on purpose.

      “Do you believe in fate?” he asked.

      Her expression grew more wary. “I’m not sure.”

      “I’m not sure, either,” he admitted. “But I can’t help thinking that fate has been sticking her nose into things since you broke mine.”