Page 45 of One More Baby for the Boss

Besides, she had told Jack that she would be here in these mountains. The thought of him looking in this direction and thinking about her, and meanwhile her being somewhere else, felt like a betrayal. Staying in the place she’d told him she would be was the least she could do. She owed him that much.

At least her shift was over for the day. She’d had enough of being yelled at by angry customers. Her feet were sore, and the smell of donuts was making her feel slightly nauseated. She had hoped she would get used to that smell, having spent three weeks here in Herald Springs. She should have begun to adjust to it by now. But it only seemed to be getting worse.

She grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from the cooler, rang it in at her register, and swiped her card to pay for it. At least that would help to settle her stomach.

And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have an appetite. She’d been eating ravenously lately — in fact, she had taken a hit on her grocery budget because she kept finishing everything she’d bought to stock her fridge before the week was out and having to order takeout. Tonight would be no different. She’d used up the last of her boxed pasta last night, and already thoughts of a frozen pizza were on her mind. She decided to stop at the drugstore on the way home and pick one up, and maybe a bag of chips to go along with it.

Inside the drugstore, she roamed the aisles, lamenting the loss of a personal chef to cook every meal for her. It was the most superficial reason to feel sad about leaving Jack and Elijah behind, but it was still part of what had remained on her mind. There were shallow reasons to regret what had happened, in addition to the deeper ones.

She picked up a pizza and was deciding on a bag of chocolates instead of chips when it happened. A woman walked by her with a box of tampons in her shopping basket. It caught Alex’s eye, and the first thought she had was,I should really stock up.

And then she paused.

She hadn’t had a period since she had come to Herald Springs.

Of course, that wasn’t all that odd. It had only been three weeks, after all. But now she was thinking back, trying to remember. When had her last one before that been? She couldn’t put a date on it, but she thought it had been very early in her time with Elijah and Jack.

Too long ago.

Suddenly, her brain was humming with nervous energy. It had been years since she’d had a pregnancy scare. She had sort of begun to believe those days were behind her, that this was something younger women dealt with. But now, she realized, she was going to have to take a test. She had to know for sure, one way or the other.

Her mind still wasn’t quite processing the implications as she walked over to the appropriate aisle and picked up the little blue box. She felt as if she was on autopilot. And the feeling remained as she went to the self-checkout to pay for her items, thankful that this was a store that offered a self-checkout so that at least she wouldn’t have to cope with the moment of handing a pregnancy test to a clerk and wondering what he was thinking as he rang her up.

She drove home in a stupor, feeling as if her mind was drifting somewhere outside her body, unable to bring herself back down to earth. This couldn’t be happening. She hadn’t wanted to relinquish her connection to Elijah — she’d been devastated by the fact that it had become necessary to let him go. But she had never intended to maintain their connection in this way. It was overwhelming.

What would she do if this test came up positive? Her lifestyle was so erratic. It was hard to imagine adding a baby to the equation. It would have no sense of stability. And there was Elijah to consider — would she tell him?

Don’t do this. Don’t borrow trouble. Maybe it’s nothing. Take the test.

When she got home, though, she couldn’t bring herself to do it at first. She put her pizza in the oven and sat down at the kitchen table, waiting, hoping that her head would clear. It didn’t, and after a few minutes she got to her feet, picked up the test, and went into the bathroom.

It was the longest three minutes of her life.

But when the time was up and she stood staring down at the test results, there was no mistaking the little plus sign in the window. Her suspicions were realized. She was pregnant.

She was going to have Elijah’s baby.

She drifted back into the kitchen and sat down heavily, wondering what she was going to do now. She couldn’t go back to Hope’s Creek. Even though she thought Elijah would want to know about this, telling him seemed like to big a risk. She couldn’t forget about the way he had treated her when she’d called him out for not attending family day at Jack’s school. How would it be if they shared a child? How could she hope to be the kind of parent she wanted to be if she wasn’t even able to speak to her child’s father about his well-being without fear of him exploding at her like that?

She couldn’t raise a child with Elijah. At the heart of it, that fact was the reason she’d left Hope’s Creek in the first place — it had been too hard to balance what was best for Jack with the way sheand Elijah always seemed to interact with each other. She wasn’t going to be able to navigate that with a new baby, either, so it was best to keep her distance.

She shivered.

She was alone in the world. She had no one. There was no place she called home, no one she could rely on for help. And she was going to have a baby.

If the last nine years had taught Alex anything, though, it was that she could rely on herself. She was strong and self-sufficient, and she knew she was equal to the challenges that lay ahead for her. She would manage this, one way or another. She would be the parent her baby needed, even if that meant making some compromises to her own life. She would find an apartment somewhere — not here, she couldn’t bring herself to stick with this donut job long-term, butsomewhere. She would find a support network of friendly neighbors. She would find childcare options and register her baby for school.

I can do these things. It’s going to be hard, but I know I can do it.

Alex took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing her body to relax. This was going to be all right. It was unexpected and terrifying, but it wasn’t beyond the scope of what she could handle. She could do this, and she knew it.

She got up and took her pizza out of the oven, reflecting on the insane fact that the entire world had shifted around her in the twenty minutes since she had put it in. Nothing was what it had been earlier this evening. She might as well have been a completely different person when she had woken up in the morning. She hardly knew herself anymore.

She found herself aching, suddenly and fiercely, for her family. They would have been so excited to know that she was going to be a mother. They would have rallied around her, supported her completely. If they had been alive, she would never have missed having a father for her baby, because her own family would have been enough for her.

But I’m going to have a family again,she realized.After all this time on my own, I won’t be alone in the world anymore. I’ll be able to say that I belong to someone.

She felt a thrill at that. She’d had a hint of that feeling during her time with Elijah and Jack. Being with them had reminded her of what it had been like to be part of a family, and it was something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. It was, she realized, part of what made her so sure that she wanted to go ahead with this pregnancy. That despite the unusual circumstances, she was ready to have this baby.

---