Love Potion #2. Margot Early

      “And how is Jane Eyre on the two thousandth reading?” he asked.

      Her eyes remained fixed on the page. “If you had a modicum of education, you would know that Jane Eyre is the story of a self-centered older man, who dislikes children, deceiving a vulnerable woman twenty years his junior. After she learns that he is actually married and keeps his first wife, whom he claims is insane, locked in an attic, he continues to attempt seducing her and she continues to love him, and after he is blind and crippled and his wife dead under mysterious circumstances, the female protagonist returns to him. It’s a creepy story, and one reading, in school, was enough for me.”

      Paul reached across the front seat, lifted the cover of her book slightly. A novel by someone named Emilie Loring. It was entitled My Dearest Love, and the woman on the front looked like Elizabeth Taylor. Familiar with Cameron’s reading material, he suspected it had been published sometime between 1920 and 1960.

      Cameron ignored him.

      He started the car, plugged his iPod into the dash, and put on some music. Cameron recognized the start of “So Alone,” by Rhesus. Paul had given her the English band’s CD Narcolepsy Baby two months earlier.

      She told Paul, “Those guys—and girl—were sweet. The band members. I think there’s another band with the same name.”

      Paul nodded absently. “I think there may be.”

      More than an hour later, when he reached her house, she thanked him, and just for a second she glanced at him, and Paul wondered if she wanted him to kiss her. He did want to but knew better. If he did, she would become his girlfriend, and that would herald a world of things he did not want.

      But then he thought he’d imagined the look. She got out, and he let her. Made himself let her go.

      Myrtle Hollow

      CLARE CUREUX woke with a start.

      The dream had been horrible. It was Flower Patten all over again, but this time, that case of true cephalopelvic disproportion, CPD, had been Cameron McAllister’s, and it was Cameron DOA at the hospital.

      What a nightmare. Clare closed her eyes again, then reopened them.

      Silly Cameron thought she was in love with Graham. Clare knew her dream had been no vision. She knew when something was an omen of the future, and this had been a nightmare, nothing more ominous.

      The question was, why had she dreamed about Cameron and dreamed that Cameron was pregnant?

      Thinking of Cameron made Clare think of Paul, and she frowned at the thought. Paul’s life was his own, but he certainly lived for himself to a greater degree than she’d have liked.

      Which had to be something she’d caused, that selfishness, that fierce…well…childishness.

      She breathed relief. Just a nightmare. Cameron was not pregnant.

      CHAPTER THREE

      FIVE DAYS LATER, Cameron, glancing in the mirror as she dressed for work, thought her nipples looked larger than usual. There could be no reason for this. Theoretically, it could occur because of pregnancy. But pregnancy didn’t show signs this early, and she wasn’t pregnant.

      Still, she decided to use the second pregnancy test.

      She knew it would say that she wasn’t pregnant, and then she could forget about the optical illusion she’d just had and also completely forget about making love with Paul, which she was having trouble forgetting.

      She wished Paul was the kind of man she could be in a relationship with.

      She thought of Mary Anne, in love now with Graham Corbett. Cameron knew Mary Anne was in love, and in their case the attraction had begun on Graham’s side. A fairy-tale romance. Why can’t it happen to me?

      Briefly, Cameron considered Sean Devlin. How bizarre that she felt so little attraction to him. And he was just what she should want. They had talked so easily at the Crawl gig. He’d been willing to tell her of his vulnerability following his divorce, even tendencies he might have picked up from the kind of childhood he’d had. But there seemed, to her, no spark between them—not on her side, anyway. Maybe she wasn’t ready to have a lasting relationship. Her job had made her appreciate the freedom of not having to adapt to another person’s wants, schedule, whims. But selfishness wasn’t the reason she felt no attraction to Sean. And they’d been great friends in college, too.

      Paul, however…

      Sometimes, sometimes when she saw Paul’s name and number come up on her cell phone, she felt an overwhelming comfort that she thought must be what people felt in good marriages. No—more than comfort. Different than comfort. Attraction. Attraction to Paul—that frightened her. Paul, like Rhett Butler, was “not a marrying man.”

      In the bathroom, she used the pregnancy kit and set it on the sink ledge, went into the kitchen and found a banana for breakfast and returned to the bathroom and the sight of two thin lines.

      She remembered, in panic, the mild disappointment she’d felt in the restroom at the Charleston Walmart. What had prompted such insanity?

      But despite her fears—of being pregnant, of losing the pregnancy because of an inability to carry a child, of loving the child and perhaps losing it—she couldn’t deny some private pleasure. She was, at this moment, a mother. She didn’t understand her own feelings but she well guessed the reason for them.

      It was because this child was also Paul Cureux’s.

      SEAN CALLED later that day and asked if she wanted to meet for coffee.

      Cameron was abruptly off coffee but promised to meet him at the coffeehouse anyhow. She would order herbal tea.

      When she entered the Chief Logan Coffeehouse and saw Sean stand up, she almost gasped at how absolutely handsome he was. Breathtaking. Truly one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen.

      Maybe she was attracted.

      He got their drinks—double cappuccino for himself, raspberry leaf tea for her—and joined her at a table by the window, out of hearing range of the other patrons.

      He was easy to talk to, told her about his marriage and the ex-wife who was a model. He’d brought her a chapbook of his poems, for which she thanked him.

      Watching her with great penetration, he said at last, “I think there’s something on your mind.”

      Cameron knew that he was someone who could keep a secret, knew because he had been that way in the past. So she said the requisite words. “I’ll tell you, but you can’t say anything to anyone.”

      “Of course.”

      And she told him. His mouth fell open slightly, and he gazed at her with an expression of wonder. His dark brown hair was going prematurely gray, but his eyebrows remained extremely dark and bushy. “When are you going to tell him?”

      Cameron shook her head. “Not yet.” She wouldn’t mention the possibility of miscarriage because she could no longer acknowledge that possibility, even to herself. It was unthinkable. And if she didn’t think of it, it could not happen.

      Sean gave her a very serious look. “You should tell him, Cam.”

      “I will. Just…not yet.”

      SEAN CALLED every day and became Cameron’s confidant. Cameron really wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t been put off by the reality of her carrying another man’s child. She’d seen men who were just terribly attracted to mothers, and maybe Sean was one of these. Some of these, Cameron felt, were looking for a second mother for themselves, but she couldn’t believe Sean fit into this category. In any case, Sean was not an object. Paul was the man who interested her—and she didn’t want him to interest her.

      Paul and she always talked daily, but now Cameron found herself avoiding him. Besides, whenever he brought up Sean—which he always did—they