The Baby Promise. Carolyne Aarsen

a balance between her sorrow over Jim’s death and her relief.

      Jim’s parents didn’t need to see the relief.

      Though Beth lived only a few hundred feet away from her in-laws, she tried to maintain a boundary and often kept to herself.

      But today they’d insisted she come to see Nick’s friend. So she’d reluctantly accepted the invitation, then sat through dinner listening to Nick’s stories and keeping her feelings in check.

      She finished her pie, picked up her plate and stacked Bob’s plate on top.

      But Nick reached across the table and put his hand on hers.

      “I’ll help with the dishes.”

      She could feel calluses on his warm palm. The hands of a soldier.

      She jerked her hand back, the plates she held clattering onto the table.

      He frowned, obviously puzzled at her reaction. “I’m sorry. I hate to see a pregnant woman working.”

      “You don’t need to look,” she said with a touch of asperity she immediately regretted.

      She blamed her shortness on the headache she’d been fighting ever since she came back from Shellie’s craft store after her doctor’s appointment. She’d been working up enough courage all week to talk to her boss about carrying her handmade cards in the store, but when she got to work, Shellie had already left to go to a craft show. So she’d chatted with Isla, the other part-time employee, tidied up the paper racks, reorganized the stamps and set up a new display in the window.

      Then, when her few hours of work were over, she’d made the trip back to the ranch, her briefcase still brimming with homemade cards and her nervousness translating into a headache.

      “Now I’m sorry,” Beth replied, giving him a quick smile. “I’m just tired.”

      His crooked grin seemed at odds with his rough and rugged demeanor, but obviously she was forgiven. “I think you’re allowed to be,” he said with a touch of consideration.

      Beth held his gaze a moment, surprised at his tone. Not what she’d expect from a friend of Jim.

      “You both just sit down. We’ll do the dishes later,” Ellen said. “Beth, why don’t you tell us what the doctor told you this afternoon? We don’t get to see much of you, so it’s nice to catch up.”

      “Everything is progressing the way it should,” Beth reported, repressing another surge of guilt at her mother-in-law’s muted reprimand. “But he wants to see me in a couple of days again, though I don’t know why.”

      “I’m sure he just wants to keep his eye on you, given what you’ve had to deal with.” Ellen gave her a gentle smile.

      “But you’re feeling okay?” Bob asked, a touch of concern in his voice.

      “I saw your light on at twelve o’clock last night,” Ellen said. “Were you having a hard time sleeping, my dear?”

      “I usually do,” was all Beth said.

      They didn’t need to know she stayed up until two o’clock taking apart the cards she had already made, rethinking designs and colors all to impress an absent boss. Like Jim, Bob and Ellen didn’t understand how she could spend so much time on her “little hobby,” as Jim had called it, so she didn’t talk about it in front of them.

      Bob leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his worn plaid shirt. “So things are okay for you, Beth?”

      “Just fine.” An awkward silence followed her brief comment and Beth looked down at her clenched hands resting on her stomach. She felt Nick watching her and wished she could leave.

      During the entire meal he’d been giving her sympathetic smiles. Poor dead Jim’s pregnant widow.

      A surefire combination for pity. But she didn’t want his or anyone else’s pity. She just wanted to get on with her life. And having Jim’s friend around wasn’t helping. Especially a friend who constantly talked about Jim as if he was a devoted husband and excited father-to-be.

      Beth shot a nervous glance at the clock. Her brother had told her that she had to call him at seven-thirty on the dot if she wanted to connect with him. It was seven-fifteen. Time to go.

      She pushed her chair back and ponderously got to her feet. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me,” she said, shooting a quick glance around the table. “I have to make an important phone call.”

      Ellen frowned her curiosity, but Beth wasn’t about to tell her that her conversation with her brother was about her moving off the ranch and into his apartment in Vancouver.

      She knew the Carrutherses expected her to stay on the ranch indefinitely, but she couldn’t. Especially now that Jim was gone. She had to get on with her life and away from the memories.

      “I’ll walk you to the house,” Bob said, making a move to get up.

      “No. There’s no need.” Beth raised her hand to stop him. “You keep visiting with Nick. I’ll be fine.”

      “I’ll walk her to the house,” Nick said, standing up and pushing his chair under the table.

      She should have quit while she was ahead, Beth thought. She did not want to spend any more time with Nick than she had to. She was tired of smiling at his stories about Jim, tired of how impressed Nick was with Jim’s supposed devotion to her.

      “I’m okay. Really,” Beth protested again.

      “I’m sure you are, but it’s dark and slippery,” Nick said, coming around the table. “And I promised Jim I’d look out for you.”

      Beth stifled another protest. Going along with his chivalry was the best way to get through this. He would be gone tonight. Soon she’d be living in Vancouver and Nick and Jim and the Carruthers family would be part of her past.

      “Thanks so much for dinner,” she said to Ellen. “It was delicious.”

      “You can come anytime, you know,” Ellen said, a hopeful note in her voice.

      “I don’t want to impose.”

      And before they could tell her yet again that her presence would never be an imposition, she walked out of the kitchen. Waddled, more like.

      All the way to the entrance she was far too aware of Nick looming behind her. She quickened her pace, but in spite of his limp he moved surprisingly quick. He had moved past her, pulling her coat off the rack in the entryway. A protest sprang to her lips, but it was probably better, for now, to simply put up with all his hovering.

      As he lifted her coat up over her shoulders, his fingers brushed her neck. A tiny shiver danced down her spine and Beth jerked away.

      “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice gruff. “Just trying to help.”

      “It’s okay.” She murmured her automatic reply, wondering why she felt so jumpy around him. Probably because she fell short of his expectations of the grieving widow.

      Not much she could do about that. She had shed more tears before Jim died than after.

      A brisk wind howled around the yard as they stepped out from the shelter of the trees. Beth pulled her coat closer around her, shivering.

      “Are you warm enough?” Nick asked as he walked alongside her, his footsteps crunching on the dry snow.

      She wasn’t, because her coat was too small and could barely close around her stomach. She didn’t want to spend money on another one when she would be moving to a warmer city soon. So she just shivered through the cold.

      “I’m plenty warm enough.”

      They walked in silence toward her house. In the distance a coyote sent a howl up to the sliver of moon hanging just above the mountains. Stars were scattered bits of light in the inky-black sky above