Thanks for the reviews. Just a warning while I remember: the next few weeks are going to be very hectic for me (I'm moving house, entertaining relatives, going overseas etc) so updates may be erratic until mid August. I will try to get new chapters of Destiny and Brother's Keeper up when I can, but if you don't hear from me in a while, that's why. ;)
Chapter 8.
"Careful," Jack said, holding onto Kate's arm to steady her. "Watch your step." He nudged her heel with the toe of his boot to show her where to set her foot down.
"Where're we going?" she asked, turning her face towards the sound of his voice as she fumbled for the rail with her free hand.
He'd been acting mysterious ever since he came to collect her from the office; she could hear his smile as he answered, "You'll see."
She did her best to follow his instructions while he guided her through the rest of the climb, relieved when she felt the ground level out beneath them and he pulled her to a stop.
"Okay." He removed his fingers from her eyes. "You can open them."
They were standing on a white wooden porch, identical to the one they'd just left; if she didn't know any better, she might have believed that they'd been walking in circles and were now right back where they started. "It's a house," she said, confused as to what it was that she was supposed to be looking at.
She could see that it wasn't the reaction he was hoping for. "Not just any house…" he told her. He produced a set of keys from the pocket of his jumpsuit, dangling them in front of her until realisation dawned on her.
"You mean this is ours?" she checked, her words coming out in an awed whisper. The thought of having a place of their own where they could just be together was almost too good to be true.
He nodded. "No more sneaking around," he agreed. "From now on we're just like Horace and Amy and Sawyer and Juliet…"
She didn't know what to say so she decided to start with the obvious. "How did you…?" She trailed off, eyeing the little house again in amazement. "I thought we'd have to wait until someone moved out."
"I just talked to Horace and he made the arrangements," he explained. He flashed her an inviting grin as he fit a key into the lock and turned, allowing the door to swing inwards. "Would you like me to give you the tour?"
"Do you even have to ask?" she agreed, but he caught her wrist when she moved to go inside.
"Wait. We have to do this right," he insisted, bending to slide his hand under her knees. Before she could argue with him, he had scooped her up bridal style against his chest. "Jesus, Kate," he teased her with a theatrical groan when she shifted until she found a more comfortable position, letting her head fall on his shoulder and securing her own arms around his neck. "Are we sure it's not twins?"
"Just so we're clear, are you calling me 'fat'?" she retorted, narrowing her eyes at him as he manoeuvred them over the threshold.
"Never," he assured her, the corners of his lips twitching with amusement as he placed a conciliatory kiss on hers.
The interior was furnished with a teak dining room set, a thick-armed sofa and two armchairs the colour of oatmeal.
"Wow. This place is like a museum," Kate remarked, wrinkling her nose in disdain as she picked up one of the orange, brown and white throw pillows. She wondered if whoever made them knew how ugly they were. "What were these people thinking?" Everywhere she turned her eyes were assaulted by the same autumn colour scheme, with only the occasional splash of green to break it up.
"You're right. We should definitely fire our decorator," Jack teased her, coming up behind her. He pressed his lips against the skin exposed by the open collar of her shirt. "Come on. It gets better."
She followed him into the hall that led through to the rest of the house. "Bathroom," he announced, opening the door closest to the kitchen.
The second door revealed a double bed covered by a plain white comforter. On either side was a set of matching teak dressers and the most hideous lamps that she'd ever seen. "Our room," he told her with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.
"Our room," she echoed.
His brow furrowed into a serious frown. "You're not having second thoughts, are you?" he checked. "I know it was sudden—"
She shook her head. "No. Nothing like that," she assured him. "It's just that even when we were living together, it was always 'my place' or 'your place'." She smiled, swallowing against the hard lump forming in her throat. "We never really had an 'our place' before."
"Well, we were never married before," he agreed, his own expression softening into a grin as he stooped to kiss her.
"You haven't seen the best part," he told her, breaking it after a moment. He picked up her hand, pulling her across the hall to the last door.
At first glance it appeared to be an oversized closet, until she noticed the alphabet border that circled the top of the pale yellow walls. Beside each letter was a baby animal: ducklings and bunnies and sheep…
"Eventually this is gonna be Pamela's room – or maybe Donald's, if it's a boy," Jack explained, his tone changing to one of innocence when she turned back to him with a sharp look. "What? I'm just putting them out there."
"You're kidding, right?" she insisted, incredulous at the thought that he would even consider the latter… or the former, for that matter. "Please tell me you don't really want to name our son 'Donald'?" Donald Shephard. Donnie Shephard. She shuddered. It might be all right for 1977…
He pursed his lips into a thin line, feigning disappointment. At least she hoped, for his sake, that he was faking it. "You don't like it?"
"It's not that," she told him, trying to be diplomatic as she eased herself into the rocking chair beneath the window. She pushed off with her heels, testing it out, smiling at the image of herself feeding their baby there. "I just figured we'd go with something a little more… timeless… you know? Something that wouldn't be out of place in 2007."
"Are you sure?" he teased her, "I hear Donald is very popular at the moment…" and she couldn't help but laugh.
"Where did you hear that?" She folded her hands over her small bump, settling back in the chair as it swung back and forth.
"Ladies' Home Journal. They had a bunch of them in the waiting room at the clinic," he explained. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Apparently Twiggy just got married too."
"Twiggy?" she repeated, suppressing a giggle, but he just shrugged.
"I was two and a half when the sixties ended – it was before my time as well."
She went back to inspecting the nursery: aside from the chair that she now occupied, there was a small dresser and changing table, but no other furniture. "There's no crib," she observed. She hadn't noticed one in the bedroom either. Surely he hadn't forgotten such an important detail?
"The Lewises offered to give us theirs, but I had a better idea," he told her, pausing for emphasis before he announced, "I'm gonna build one." He opened the top drawer of the little wooden dresser and took out a folded sheet. "Here, I'll show you the plans."
As she took it from him, studying the maze of black lines, she wondered if he even knew how to read them. He was a doctor, not a builder; she'd never seen him assemble anything that hadn't come straight out of a box.
"We have all the tools in the shed," he continued, his face flushed with excitement. "Horace said I can borrow whatever I need."
"That's sweet, but do you know how quickly she's gonna outgrow it?" she protested. Between sleeping in a bassinette in their room and moving into a toddler bed they'd be lucky if they got more than a year's use out of it. "We should just take the Lewises'. She's a baby – it's not like she'll even know the difference."
But she could see that his mind was made up. "I only work half the day, Kate – what else am I gonna do with my time?"
He took the plans back from her and deposited them on the dresser so that he could be sure he had her full attention. "You and this baby are the most important thing in the world to me now," he told her and she realised that it wasn't about the crib at all: it was about him and his relentless need to prove to himself that he could be a better husband and father than his own father. "My first marriage fell apart because I was never home, and when I was, I was always tired and stressed. I wasn't there for her, so she turned to someone who was. I'm not gonna make that mistake again with you."
He let out a soft laugh, the corners of his mouth forming a lopsided grin. "I'm gonna be around so much both of you will be sick of me," he promised.
"Jack…" she began, not sure how to convince him that he was already a better man than his father for kicking his addictions and devoting himself to her and their child.
He removed a yellow envelope from the back pocket of his jumpsuit. "I almost forgot." He smoothed it out and peeled back the flap, shaking two thin gold bands into his palm. "This is yours," he told her, kneeling in front of her so that he could slide it onto her finger. "I'm sorry it's a little late."
"Thank you," she whispered, fighting back tears as she lifted her hand to admire it. Maybe it was all the pregnancy hormones coursing through her blood, or maybe it was just that for the first time in her life, everything was perfect. It was almost a week since she'd thought about Aaron, but now that she did, it was with a distant ache that she knew she could live with, not the searing pain that she'd felt when she closed the door to that motel room.
She took the other ring from Jack and put it on his hand. "I love you," she told him without letting go, and his face split into a grin as he wrapped her up in a tight hug.
"I love you too," he murmured into her hair.
Next chapter: Dinner with Suliet... ;)