Merry Christmas, Baby Maverick!. Brenda Harlen

sighed and joined the line for concessions. She couldn’t blame her friend for being interested, especially when she’d never told Natalie what had happened with Trey on the Fourth of July, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be around while the other woman made a play for him.

      When she entered the gymnasium with the drinks and popcorn, she found Natalie in conversation with Trey. Though her instinct was to turn in the opposite direction, she forced her feet to move toward them.

      Trey’s gaze shifted to her and his lips curved. “Hi, again.”

      “Hi,” she echoed his greeting, glancing around. “Are you here with someone?”

       Please, let him be here with someone.

      But the universe ignored her plea, and Trey shook his head.

      “Why don’t you join us?” Natalie invited, patting the empty chair on her left.

      “I think I will,” he said, just as an elderly couple moved toward the two vacant seats beside Natalie.

      Trey stepped back, relinquishing the spot she had offered to him. Kayla didn’t even have time to exhale a sigh of relief before he moved to the empty seat on the other side of her.

      She was secretly relieved that her friend’s obvious maneuverings had been thwarted, but she didn’t know how she would manage to focus on the screen and forget that he was sitting right beside her for the next ninety-four minutes.

      In fact, she didn’t even make it through four minutes, because she couldn’t take a breath without inhaling his clean, masculine scent. She couldn’t shift in her seat without brushing against him. And she couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that her naked body had been entwined with his.

      She forced her attention back to the screen, to the crowd gathered around the window of Higbee’s Department Store to marvel at the display of mechanized electronic joy and, of course, Ralphie, wide-eyed and slack-jawed as he fixated on “the holy grail of Christmas gifts—the Red Ryder two hundred shot range model air rifle.”

      “Are you going to share that popcorn?” Trey whispered close to her ear.

      “I am sharing it,” she said. “With Natalie.”

      But deeply ingrained good manners had her shifting the bag to offer it to him.

      “Thanks.” He dipped his hand inside.

      She tried to keep her attention on the movie, but it was no use. Even Ralphie’s entertaining antics weren’t capable of distracting her from Trey’s presence. It was as if every nerve ending in her body was attuned to his nearness.

      It probably didn’t help that they were in the high school—the setting of so many of her youthful fantasies. So many times she’d stood at her locker and watched him walk past with a group of friends, her heart racing as she waited for him to turn and look at her. So many times she’d witnessed him snuggled up to a cheerleader on the bleachers, and she’d imagined that she was that cheerleader.

      Back then, she would have given almost anything to be in the circle of his arms. She would have given almost anything to have him just smile at her. She’d been so seriously and pathetically infatuated that just an acknowledgment of her presence would have fueled her fantasies for days, weeks, months.

      When his family had moved away from Rust Creek Falls, she’d cried her heart out. But even then, she’d continued to daydream, imagining that he would come back one day, unable to live without her. She might have been shy and quiet, but deep inside, she was capable of all the usual teenage melodrama—and more.

      Sitting beside him now, in the darkened gym, was a schoolgirl fantasy come to life. But he wasn’t just sitting in the chair beside her, he was so close that his thigh was pressed against hers. And when he reached into the bag of popcorn she was holding, his fingertips trailed deliberately over the back of her hand.

      At least she assumed it was deliberate, because he didn’t pull his hand away, even when her breath made an audible catch in her throat.

      Natalie glanced at her questioningly.

      She cleared her throat, as if there was something stuck in it, and picked up her soda.

      She felt a flutter in her tummy that she dismissed as butterflies—a far too usual occurrence when she was around Trey. Then she realized it was their baby—the baby he didn’t know about—and her eyes inexplicably filled with tears.

      You have to tell him.

      The words echoed in the back of her mind, an unending reel of admonishment, the voice of her own conscience in tandem with her sister’s.

      He has a right to know.

      You-have-to-tell-him-he-has-a-right-to-know-you-have-to-tell-him-he-has-a-right-to-know-you-have-to—

      “Excuse me,” she whispered, thrusting the bag of popcorn at Trey and slipping out of her seat to escape from the gymnasium.

      The bright lights of the hallway blinded her for a moment, so that she didn’t know which way to turn. She’d spent four years in these halls, but suddenly she couldn’t remember the way to the girls’ bathroom.

      She leaned back against the wall for a minute to get her bearings, then made her way across the hall. Thankfully, the facility was empty, and she slipped into the nearest stall, locked the door, sat down on the closed toilet seat and let the tears fall.

      In recent weeks, her emotions had been out of control. She’d been tearing up over the silliest things—a quick glimpse of an elderly couple holding hands, the sight of a mother pushing her child in a stroller, even coffee commercials on TV could start the waterworks. Crying in public bathrooms hadn’t exactly become a habit, but this wasn’t the first time for her, either.

      No, the first time had been three months earlier. After purchasing a pregnancy test from an out-of-the-way pharmacy in Kalispell, she’d driven to the shopping center and taken her package into the bathroom. Because no way could she risk taking the test home, into her parents’ house, and then disposing of it—regardless of the result—with the rest of the family’s trash.

      She remembered every minute of that day clearly. The way her fingers had trembled as she tore open the box, how the words had blurred in front of her eyes as she read and re-read the instructions to make sure she did everything correctly.

      After she’d managed to perform the test as indicated, she’d put the stick aside—on the back of the toilet—and counted down the seconds on her watch. When the time was up, she picked up the stick again and looked in the little window, the tears no longer blurring her eyes but sliding freely down her cheeks.

      She hadn’t bothered to brush them away. She couldn’t have stopped them if she’d tried. Never, in all of her twenty-five years, had she imagined being in this situation. Pregnant. Unmarried.

      Alone.

      She was stunned and scared and completely overwhelmed.

      And she was angry. At both herself and Trey for being careless. She didn’t know what he’d been thinking, but she’d been so caught up in the moment that she’d forgotten all about protection until he was inside of her. Realization seemed to have dawned on him at the same time, because he’d immediately pulled out of her, apologizing to her, promising that he didn’t have unprotected sex—ever.

      Then he’d found a condom and covered himself with it before he joined their bodies together again. She didn’t know if it was that brief moment of unprotected penetration that had resulted in her pregnancy, or if it was just a statistical reality—if she was one of the two percent of women who was going to be a mommy because condoms were only ninety-eight percent effective in preventing pregnancy.

      Of course, the reason didn’t matter as much as the reality: she was pregnant. She didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how she felt about the situation—because it was easier to think about her pregnancy as a