The Pregnant Bride. Crystal Green

about to step up for Meggie when the driver whirled on her friends.

      “Pipe down, you harpies.” She looked at Nick, then at Meggie, who wasn’t even facing the car. “You okay, Meg?”

      Nick was close enough to see Meggie’s jaw clench. After a moment she said, “I’m fine.”

      “Go!” screamed one of the harpies. The driver looked at Meggie once more, at Nick, then let out a deafening yell of joy before laying pedal to the metal and taking off in a spray of dirt. The car roared down the road, past the spindly black-iron angels of the cemetery gates, past rickety horse-pasture fences. Voices faded into the chilly, autumn-swept air, tree leaves rustling in the aftermath.

      Meggie watched them leave. “You wanted Chad Spencer? Well, that’s the closest you’re going to get.”

      “What do you mean?”

      Meggie’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “The driver was Ashlyn, Chad’s sister.”

      Nick clenched his hands into fists, trying hard to ignore the fire in his heart. “What’re they doing tearing up the roads like that?”

      Meggie looked past him, toward the graveyard’s angel gate. Nick thought about Aunt Valentine, and where she might be buried.

      “That was Ashlyn’s plan for a friend’s bachelorette party. Raising Cain around town, flying a few bras on flag poles, posting a few anti-Spencer posters in windows. Anything to salute her brother’s superiority. She does her best to embarrass the family.” Meggie turned to Nick, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

      A breeze whistled past them, humming a low, mournful tune in his ear. He had to hold himself back from smoothing a strand of bobbing hair from the corner of her soft, red mouth. So vulnerable. He wanted to protect her from all the hurt in the world.

      She half laughed. “I think she despises Chad as much as you do. She’s had to live up to his perfection all these years. I almost like her.”

      How could she feel that way about anything Spencer? He couldn’t understand. “A bachelorette party?” he asked, wanting to steer the subject away from Ashlyn’s brother.

      “I baked the bride-to-be an angel food cake my own supernatural self. I should know.”

      He laughed, actually laughed, at that. She did, too. He was glad they could agree on something, even if it did border on the obscene. This time he didn’t stop himself from touching her, sketching a thumb down her cheek. Soft, so soft. “I’ll walk you to your door.”

      She’d frozen under his touch. As she looked into his eyes, he saw fear, trepidation. Maybe some memories she’d rather forget. “I’ll manage.”

      With that Meggie pulled away from him and climbed the steps up the hill to the massive black door of her home. Dark spiderwebby decorations surrounded the door frame like sentinels. He watched until she disappeared.

      She held the rest of their lives in her hands. He hoped she’d make the right decision.

      Three days later Meg still hadn’t come to a definite decision.

      “Now, don’t do anything hasty, Meg,” said Rachel Shane as she drove both of them to the Edgewater Motel. Her rattrap of a car bounced over the county roads, causing Rachel to slow down and Meg to cradle her belly.

      Meg shot her best friend a have-faith-in-me glance. “Am I the flighty type? I’ve thought long and hard about this.”

      “A stranger. The guy could be from Mars for all you know.”

      “I’m pretty secure in the belief that he’s earthbound, Rachel.” She understood her friend’s concerns. Not only did they echo her own, but Rachel had her own issues that shed a wary light on Meg’s situation.

      At the beginning of the year Rachel’s husband had disappeared, leaving his wife and five-year-old daughter behind on their bluegrass-rich horse farm. Rachel wasn’t a Kane’s Crossing native, so she’d been experiencing much the same troubles from the town as Meg. They were united in their loneliness, outsiders who’d allowed skeletons to creep out of their closets.

      Rachel’s gray-green eyes searched Meg’s. “I think you’re not telling me everything.”

      What? That Nick Cassidy had held her in thrall since she’d seen him standing in her bakery like a lone cowboy waiting for a gunfight? That he made her think thoughts best left sleeping? Not even Rachel would understand Meg’s attraction to this man. She was still railing against men in general—Chad, and her husband, Matthew, in particular.

      Rachel continued. “Your dignity was thoroughly trounced by Chad five short months ago, so I don’t understand why you’re so hot to marry anyone. Besides, you should listen to a girl with experience, one who knows about men who leave home to never return. I hope you’re thinking twice—no, three, four times—about this marriage proposal. It’s nuts.”

      Pride had almost convinced Meg to turn down Nick’s suggestion right on the spot, but then Ashlyn Spencer and her party had driven by, reminding Meg of how much she didn’t really belong in Kane’s Crossing. The insults would never stop. Neither would the moral censure for having a baby out of wedlock.

      She’d thought a little harder about Nick’s proposal. She knew it wasn’t a love match and, even so, the thought of the security he offered her and her unborn child was tempting. That’s why she needed to talk with him again, just to decide once and for all how she was going to handle a child on a single gal’s budget.

      They drove past the autumn-laced trees that lurked over the highway, slowing once they saw the rickety, neon-buzzed sign perpetually proclaiming Edgewater Motel—Vacancy. A one-story building squatted on the roadside, lined by a droopy porch complete with slouching chairs. Pink doors dotted the white-boarded walls. Meg guessed Nick was staying in room six because it was the only one with a vehicle in front of it. A lone-wolf-looking pickup truck.

      Once again, she wondered how Nick had gotten rich enough to flip her a three-hundred-dollar coffee tip.

      “This is it,” she said, gathering her purse.

      Rachel laid a hand on Meg’s arm. “I’ll go in with you.”

      Meg surveyed her friend’s hospital scrubs. “The emergency room is expecting you. I can handle this. Really.”

      “You thought you had this Chad thing handled, too.”

      Meg tried to still her anxiety. “Rachel, thank you for the concern and the help. And thank you for knowing when to stop nagging me.”

      Most of all, she added silently, thank you for keeping my secret.

      Rachel—and now Nick—had been the only two people she’d trusted. Was she about to make a mistake by putting her faith in Nick?

      Rachel smiled at her, a comforting balm to Meg’s nerves.

      “Call if you need anything. You have my beeper number.”

      Meg got out of the car. “You bet. And, Rachel?”

      Her friend waited expectantly, a worried frown on her face.

      “I hope you hear something about Matthew. Good luck.”

      Rachel’s eyes held a painful collage colored in grays. “Well, I’m not paying that detective to sit around. I’d better hear something about my vaporous husband soon.” She waved. “I’ll watch you for a minute.”

      Meg shut the car door. Through the open window, she said, “Why does everyone worry about us pregnant gals? I’m not going to explode within the next minute.”

      Rachel cocked an eyebrow, tapping her nails on the steering wheel.

      Meg took a deep breath, then marched up the stairs to number six. She lifted her chin and knocked, resisting the temptation to peek at Rachel.

      The door opened to showcase Nick, ruggedly handsome in a T-shirt