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I gripped the steering wheel, trying to minimize the movement of the car jostling my stomach. Gaze trained straight ahead, I took deep, even breaths. “Been there, done that. It’ll pass.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.” She sipped slowly as if expecting her stomach to revolt. “So, do you have the flu? You’ve been drinking these for a couple of weeks.”

Though Rachel didn’t often speak her mind, it was easy to forget she had keen powers of observation. “It hasn’t been weeks.”

“Yes, it has.”

“I didn’t realize.” But as I ticked back through the days and weeks, I noticed a collection of queasy moments that normally would have caught my attention.

Rachel paused, can halfway to her mouth, and looked at me. Her gaze narrowed and then widened. “Daisy.”

I tightened my hands on the wheel. “What?”

She cocked her head, and her gaze roamed over my body, resting on my stomach. “Daisy.”

Shit. “What?”

The light changed, and a car behind us beeped when I delayed. I shifted to first but wasn’t smooth with the clutch, so we rabbit hopped a few feet before the gears clicked.

She gripped her door. “You’re pregnant.”

“What?” The word had a high-pitched quality.

“Daisy.” Rachel, like our mom, had a way of saying my name with more underlying meaning than a five-page speech. Was this a talent reserved for mothers? Would the secret of injecting censure into a name be revealed to me when I became a mother?

Became. A. Mother. Damn.

A car beeped again, and I drove through the intersection. I pulled into a fast-food restaurant parking lot.

A lie would get me off the hook for a few days, but what was the point? The secret would come out sooner or later. The clinic doctor had talked about options, but this baby was going to be born.

“Don’t tell anyone yet,” I said. “I’ve a lot of thinking to do.”

She yanked off her sunglasses and studied me with bloodshot eyes. “You really are pregnant?”

“Yep.” Tension rippled through my muscles as I braced for her reaction. I wasn’t used to the idea of a baby.

Rachel pushed her sunglasses up on her head and grinned, and her wan face brightened as if she’d won a million dollars. She hugged me, and though I’m not a hugger by nature, I hugged back, suddenly very grateful to feel as if I wasn’t alone. Tears welled in my eyes, and one spilled free.

“I thought your breasts were getting bigger,” she said as she drew back. “I was a double D by the time the girls were born.”

I glanced at my slightly fuller breasts. “I can’t imagine these puppies making it past B. Boobs are definitely a McCrae trait.”

“They’re a pregnant woman’s trait. And you’ve always wished for boobs.”

“Yeah, well, Mom always said ‘Be careful what you wish for.’”

“Have you told Gordon?”

“I received the confirmation this morning.”

A brow arching, a conspirator’s smile curled the edges of her lips. “The early-morning appointment?”

“Yeah. I had a blood test yesterday, and the results came in this morning.”

“So, you’ll tell Gordon this afternoon when he gets back?”

“Yeah.”

The smile faded, and blue eyes darkened. “Where’s the enthusiasm? Gordon seems like a nice guy.”

“He is.” My voice cracked a little.

Her head cocked, and I could imagine her radar beeping. “He might be surprised, perhaps shocked, but he’ll adapt.”

“Maybe.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, maybe ?”

Why did life always have to be so complicated? I laid my head on the steering wheel, gripping it as if it were a life raft.

“What’s wrong?” Rachel rubbed her hand over shoulder muscles strung as tight as a bowstring. “Is the baby all right?”

“Yeah, sure. The baby seems fine.” I eased my grip on the wheel. “I’m four months pregnant, Rachel. The baby is not Gordon’s.”

Her finger gripped my shoulder in a firm, gentle hold. “Are you sure?”

“We haven’t done it since we got back together.”

“ It . By that, Miss McCrae who sounds like she’s in the seventh grade, do you mean sex?” Without Simon staring at her as if he were starving, she could be adult about sex.

“Correct. In the past, it complicated things between us and blurred our good judgment. This time we wanted to take it slow. Be friends first.”

“Okay.” She sat a little straighter as if readying for trouble. “Then who?”

“You’ve never met him. His name is Roger Traymore. He worked at my DC firm. My last night in my apartment I had a party. He showed up with everyone else but stayed a little longer.”

She raised a brow. “So have you told him?”

“He’s in China. He landed a teaching job with a university in Beijing, I think. He left the day after the party. And even if he lived next door, he’s not the daddy kind of guy.”

“Doesn’t matter what kind of guy he is, he’s going to be a father.” Resolve had pushed past the effects of her hangover. “Daisy, you need to tell him.”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe one day soon. One tsunami at a time. I’m still trying to wrap my own brain around this, and I do have to talk to Gordon today.”

She squeezed my shoulder a little tighter. “One way or another it’s going to be okay, Daisy.” Her grin wasn’t exactly happy but more the stiff-upper-lip kind. “You’re going to have a baby, and it’s really scary now, but it’s going to be a blessing.”

Unshed tears clogged my throat. Oddly, the lion’s share of my worries wasn’t for myself but for the kid. Was having me as a mom going to be good or bad? “Is it?”

“Of course it is! Once you cradle your child, all the worries will fade. This will work, and you’ll be a great mother.”

Dark fears clawed and howled like a caged animal. “It didn’t work out so well for my birth mother. She kept me for three years, and then she bailed on me. What if I can’t hack it as a mother?”

“You may look like Terry, but you’re not Terry. She was seventeen when you were born, and you’re thirty-four. You have a deep sense of responsibility, and though she may now, she didn’t when she was with you. You cannot make a comparison.”

I thought back to our awkward meeting at the Armistead the month before last. We’d both been nervous at our reunion, and neither of us knew how to negotiate the tempestuous waters.

“When we met, she gave me a picture taken of us when I was a few months old. She was smiling, and she looked tired but happy.” Later, I’d studied her face, searching for clues hinting of my eventual abandonment.

There’d been none. “Somewhere along the way it went wrong.”

“She was a single, isolated teenager. She didn’t have family. And she had a drug problem. The choices she made had no bearing on you. Don’t allow yourself to think like a lost child. You’re a strong woman.”

I raised my chin. “I’m not thinking like a lost child. I’m thinking like an expectant mother who fears she’s going to screw up her kid if she bolts.”

“You won’t bolt.” Steely certainty underscored the words.

A sick feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. “Terry did a number on me when she left. I know Mom and Dad are the best parents, but no amount of love will ever totally fix Terry’s damage. I don’t want to screw up the kid.”

Rachel shook her head. “You can be odd, demanding, and a little bitchy at times, but I never thought of you as damaged.”

I arched a brow. “Really? Remember all the meltdowns I had as a kid. Hide-and-go-seek? Fine when I was hiding but a mess when everyone hid from me. Or what about when we had to do the family tree in sixth grade? We had the same tree, but the teacher put an asterisk by my name and wrote adopted . I didn’t take the notation well. ”

Rachel scrunched up her nose. “That old biddy deserved it. And as I remember, Mom blew a fuse over that as well.”

“I don’t sweat my quirks and fears so much these days. Abandonment and rejection are kind of like my pals now. For the most part they don’t bother me. But I’d sure hate them to babysit the kid.”

“You won’t let them.”

“I’m not off to the best start, Rachel. I got knocked up during twenty minutes of goodbye-feeling-sorry-for-myself sex to a guy now living in China who’s not my boyfriend. How messed up is that?”

Rachel smiled. “I don’t care who the father is. All I care about is that you’re going to have a baby, and I think you’re going to be fine.”

Nodding, I swallowed. “Keep saying that. One day I might believe it.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I worried about screwing up my kids. Hell, I still worry about it.”

“You do a great job with Ellie and Anna.”

Genuine doubt radiated in her gaze. “I work crazy hours. I’m always tired, and now Mike’s gone and it’s just me. I really have the potential to mess up two people.”

“So, being a paranoid mess is normal?”

“Totally. If you weren’t worried, then you’d be in trouble.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A bit of the stress knotting my back eased. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

We sat silent for a minute, watching people stream in and out of the hamburger joint.

“Hang on to those single mother tips for me, because I’m going to need them.”

She offered a bright, if hungover, smile. “You don’t know how Gordon will react. He might be okay with this.”

“Would you have been cool if Mike announced he’d gotten another girl pregnant before he dated you?”

She frowned. “I might be okay with it. Nobody cheated on anybody.”

I shook my head. “I’ve been a lot of emotional work for Gordon. I hurt him when I left him last year. Asking him to raise or accept another man’s baby is asking too much.”

My phone buzzed, and Gordon’s name flashed on the display. He texted, I’m back. Can you come over?

Rachel nibbled her lip. “You better go.”

“I don’t want to do this.”

“Talk to him. It might not be so bad.”

Laughing as tears pooled in my eyes, I shook my head. “Right.”

“Hang tough.”

“Let’s get the paint and drop it off, and then I’ll head over to Gordon’s.”

“We can get the paint later.”

“No, now is best.”

“This is a delay tactic.”

“You’re very right.”