The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child: The Pregnancy Plan / Hope's Child. Brenda Harlen

      Megan had been married for three months now, but Ashley still missed having her around. She certainly missed her more than she missed her former fiancé—she shook her head, pushing him firmly out of her mind. She wasn’t going to ruin a perfectly nice day thinking about Trevor and what he’d done.

      Instead, she carried her drink into the dining room, back to the mysterious paper-wrapped package. She couldn’t remember buying anything that needed to be delivered, but the neatly printed label had her name and address on it, so she turned the parcel over and lifted the tape.

      As she pulled back the paper, revealing a polished walnut frame and the edge of a cream-colored mat, she realized it was a picture. Tearing the paper further, she sucked in a breath at the image of herself wrapped in the arms of her supposedly devoted fiancé.

      The frame slipped from her fingers and crashed to the ground.

      The glass broke, a long jagged crack across the center, slicing neatly between the images of Ashley and Trevor.

      She’d canceled the wedding and everything related to it. She’d made the phone calls herself to the florist and the caterer; she’d notified the band and the pastry chef. She’d been too late to stop the order at the printer, but she’d been certain to shred each and every invitation and response card and personalized thank-you note when they were delivered. She knew there was no way she would have forgotten to contact the photographer.

      Then she spotted the piece of paper tucked into the bottom corner of the frame. She reached for it, frowning as she unfolded it. If it was an invoice—

      No, it was a note.

      From Trevor.

      Ashley,

      I just wanted you to know that I’ve been thinking about you and missing you. I haven’t given up hope that we can find a way to work things out. I’m sending this picture to remind you of the happy times we had together, and to let you know that I want us to be together again. I love you. T xo

      She tore the note into tiny pieces and let them fall from her hands like confetti. Of course, thinking of confetti made her think of weddings and that made her even angrier.

      She picked up the broken frame and carted it to the kitchen to dump it in the garbage where it belonged. She was over him. She really was. Wholly and completely. But apparently she wasn’t over being mad.

      She pulled the waste basket out of the cupboard and shoved the picture in it, determined to put Trevor out of her mind. As she pushed down on it, she felt a quick, slicing pain. She felt the blood, warm and wet, dripping down her hand, before she saw the streaks of red. And when she did, her stomach pitched.

      She’d never done well with the sight of blood. Although cuts and scrapes were common occurrences with first graders, those cuts and scrapes could usually be fixed with a Band-Aid or an ice pack. Ashley peeked at her hand again and didn’t think a Band-Aid was going to do the job. Not this time.

      She grabbed a clean dish towel from the drawer and wrapped it around her palm.

      A quick glance at the clock revealed that it was almost five, so she knew that the phones at her doctor’s office would already have been turned over to the answering service. But she’d been a patient of Uncle Eli’s since she was a child and the duration of their relationship, combined with the fact that he’d been a good friend of both of her parents, meant that she could show up at his office at this late hour and know that he would make time for her. Hopefully that would save her a trip to the emergency room.

      Fifteen minutes later, she was ushered into an exam room by the nurse.

      “The doctor will be in to see you shortly,” Irene told her.

      And Ashley, feeling a little queasy from the loss of blood, nodded gratefully, reassured that she’d made the right decision in coming here rather than the hospital.

      An opinion that changed as soon as the doctor walked into the room.

      Cam had been at the office since 8:00 a.m.

      He knew that the nature of a family practice required a certain degree of flexibility with respect to unexpected emergencies, but as the day wore on and he worked through lunch, he wished that Courtney—the receptionist and general office manager—would show some appreciation of the same fact and schedule appointments with more than ten minutes between them.

      By five o’clock, the number of patients in the waiting room had diminished sufficiently that there were enough chairs for those still waiting. By that same time, he’d managed to take half a dozen bites of the sandwich that Courtney had brought back for him when she returned from her lunch break. The thinning of the crowd combined with the silencing of his stomach gave him hope that he might actually get out of the office before he needed to return the following morning.

      He was reaching for the file in the slot outside of exam room number two when Irene—Dr. Alexander’s sister and longtime nurse—slipped out of room number four. The guilty flush in her cheeks warned him that she’d squeezed in yet another patient who didn’t have an appointment.

      He sighed. “I thought you wanted to go home as much as I do.”

      “You need a home in order to go to it,” she said.

      “I’ll have one soon enough,” he told her. “And you’re not going to distract me that easily.”

      “I’m not trying to distract you at all.” She took his arm and steered him towards the door she’d just exited.

      “I thought Mrs. Kirkland was next.”

      “Mrs. Kirkland is a hypochondriac, but this patient is really bleeding.”

      He sighed again and took the folder she thrust into his hands, not even having a moment to note the name on the tab before he walked in the room.

      And found himself face-to-face with Ashley Roarke.

      He faltered, at a sudden loss for words since “Hello, Ashley, I’m Dr. Turcotte”—the standard greeting he’d given to Dr. Alexander’s other patients—seemed a little ridiculous in light of their history.

      But it was long ago history and he’d seen her only once since he’d left town more than a dozen years earlier—just a few months before at their high school reunion. Ashley had made it clear to him then then that she didn’t forgive him for leaving her and that she had no interest in reminiscing with him.

      She’d also told him that she was getting married in a few months, he remembered now. But her purse was clutched in her left hand and the impressive diamond she’d worn at the reunion wasn’t on it.

      Her other hand was wrapped in a bloody towel, and it was the blood that jerked him out of the past and firmly back into doctor mode.

      He couldn’t think of her as the first woman he’d ever loved, the only woman he’d never forgotten. She was a patient, and it was his job to ascertain the nature of her injury and prescribe treatment.

      “I, uh, came to see Eli,” she told him, breaking the awkward silence.

      “He’s at the hospital.”

      “Oh. Well.” She cleared her throat. “Okay. I’ll go there then. To the hospital. To catch up with him there.”

      She was babbling, obviously not any more prepared for this unexpected meeting than he was. And though he was tempted to let her go, it was apparent that she hadn’t come to chat with Eli but for medical attention, and he wouldn’t shirk his duty.

      “You’re dripping blood,” he told her.

      She glanced down, and quickly averted her gaze again.

      “I think I should take a look at that before you go anywhere.” He reached into a box on the counter to pull out a pair of disposable gloves.

      “I’d rather have Eli look at it,” she said.

      “Stop being stubborn, Ash.”