Nudging Travis so he’d let her out, she gave him a hug. “Be good,” she said and threw her twenty-dollar bill on the table.
BOOKER LOOKED UP THE moment Katie came through the door of his office. He’d been paying his vendors—a slow, laborious project because of his injured hand—but he was finished now. Returning the checkbook to his desk drawer, he said, “So how’d it go with Don and Tami?”
“Great.” She smiled, but Booker thought she looked a little pale. Her parents seemed to have that effect on her.
“They’re going to take Travis back?”
“As long as he lives by their rules.”
Booker considered her answer. “Fortunately he can’t get pregnant.”
She chuckled. “Actually they said I could move back, too.”
Sudden panic raised Booker’s pulse, but he told himself it had everything to do with losing the comfortable existence he’d come to know with Katie’s cooking and cleaning. Surely it had nothing to do with her on a personal level. Surely he wasn’t beginning to count on having her around. He’d known from the outset not to count on her for anything.
“Are you going home to your folks, then?” he asked, turning his attention back to the papers on his desk as though her answer didn’t matter.
“I will if you want me to.”
From the corner of his eye, he could see her toying with the strap of her purse. “It’s your decision.”
She didn’t answer for a while, and eventually he looked up at her.
“Do you want to know what I’d rather do?”
He nodded, but felt his stomach muscles tighten.
“I’d rather stay with you.”
Relief swept through him, but Booker wasn’t about to let Katie know that. “If you stay with me, you’re seeing the doctor this week,” he said.
“Booker, you know I have to find someone who’ll let me make payments—”
“We’re going to Rebecca’s doctor,” he said. “Delaney’s been to see him, too. They both recommend him. If he won’t let you make payments, I will.”
THREE DAYS LATER, on Wednesday, Katie visited the doctor. According to the nurse, her blood pressure was fine. Her weight gain was on target. There wasn’t any protein in her urine, and the baby seemed to be growing at a healthy rate. She felt she was in good hands and was glad Booker had brought her. Until just before she left. Then the doctor suggested she start childbirth classes right away and asked if she had a friend, parent or significant other who could be her coach.
Katie thought of Mona, Erma, Rebecca, Delaney and Ashleigh. She supposed she could ask one of them. She thought briefly of her mother, too. But no matter how many faces passed through her mind, she kept coming back to one—Booker’s.
Only she couldn’t imagine him in a childbirth class with her, let alone joining her for the actual delivery. And she had no idea how she’d even ask him.
“Is something wrong?” he asked as they drove home.
She hesitated. “No, why?”
“You haven’t said much about the doctor. Did you like him?”
“He was nice.” She kept her eyes on the road.
Booker opened the ashtray, and she knew he was getting one of the toothpicks she’d put in there after grocery-shopping yesterday. “What did they do?” he asked.
“They weighed me, measured the baby, that sort of stuff.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
After another few moments, she could feel his attention on her again and finally turned to face him. “What?”
He opened and closed his right hand, stretching his injured fingers, and she wondered how badly they still hurt. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“There’s nothing wrong,” she said. Except that she was terrified. Terrified of having a child she wasn’t prepared for. Terrified to experience so many “firsts” on her own. She had three months before the baby was due. Then she’d be facing the actual delivery, getting up at night to nurse, worrying about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and jaundice and all the other things that could go wrong with an infant. And she was living with her ex-boyfriend….
Suddenly her existence seemed very precarious indeed. She’d been so excited about learning how to build Web sites, so optimistic, that she’d grown complacent and hadn’t really considered what her life would be like in the very near future. How was she going to care for a newborn and launch a business?
She didn’t have a bassinet or a crib. She didn’t even have a diaper bag.
“Have you ever been around a new baby?” she asked.
He studied her, frowning, obviously trying to guess at her thoughts. “No.”
Just as she’d figured. What if he didn’t like all the fussing? What if he asked her and the baby to leave?
When I run out of beds, you’ll be the first to go….
She knew Booker hadn’t been completely serious when he made that statement, but there were no promises between them. He’d loosely given her six months, but he could ask her to leave at any point and probably would the moment he met a woman he wanted to date. Then where would she go? How would she take care of her baby?
For the first time since she’d gotten pregnant, Katie considered the unthinkable. Was she really the best person to raise this child?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BOOKER HAD SET UP KATIE’S computer system on Monday. She’d installed all the software then, too, but it had taken several more days to receive Internet service. Now, on Friday, she was finally up and running and wanted to build a sample Web site and experiment with her new tools. But she couldn’t seem to concentrate. Ever since her doctor’s appointment, she found herself staring off into space for long stretches of time, wondering what would be best for her child.
Certainly a complete family would provide a better foundation. She didn’t need a psychologist to tell her that. A married couple with a home, at least one job between them, and some savings. A couple just like Josh and Rebecca.
But Katie didn’t know how she could ever let her baby go. Even to Josh and Rebecca.
The telephone rang. She picked it up, knowing it was Booker. She’d called him earlier, just because she needed to hear his voice. But he’d been dealing with a customer and Delbert had taken a message.
“Hello?”
“You called?”
He sounded busy, which made her feel guilty for bothering him.