Not Another Bad Date

“I got that. Why?”

“’Cause she thinks they only act nice to her ’cause of her daddy. I guess after the party last night, some of the mothers hung around, and Tiffany said they were flirting and acting dumb.”

Adele pulled out of the gated community and imagined it was something Tiffany was going to have to get used to. Zach was very good-looking and rich and…well, he was Zach Zemaitis, and this was Texas. “She doesn’t like women flirting with her father?”

“Oh no.” Adele looked across at her niece who shook her head. “She doesn’t like women around her daddy. At all. She says they want to marry him, and she doesn’t want a stepmomma.”

Adele thought of Genevieve and didn’t think the woman’s interest was in marriage. “Not all women are interested in a husband. Some just like to go out and have fun. He’s single and…attractive.” Which was such a ridiculous understatement. Saying Zach was attractive was like saying a hurricane was a slight breeze.

“Yeah, Mr. Z’s cute. For an old guy.”

Adele chuckled. For an old guy. As she drove across town to the hospital, she thought about the brush of his mouth against hers and the seductive pull of his touch. Fourteen years ago, Zach had had moves well beyond his years. He’d known his way around a girl’s body, and she had a feeling he’d only gotten better.

When they walked into Sherilyn’s hospital room, she sat in a chair by the window waiting for them.

“The baby is really active today,” she said, a smile warming the tired lines at the corners of her eyes.

Kendra dropped her backpack on the bed and moved to her mother’s side. She placed her hands on Sherilyn’s belly and waited.

“Did you feel that?” Sherilyn asked.

Kendra nodded and her dark hair fell over one shoulder. “That was a good one.”

Sherilyn lifted a hand from her belly and motioned to Adele. “Come feel.”

“He always stops when I touch your stomach.” She moved to her sister’s other side and Sherilyn grasped her hand. She placed it on her belly and waited. Just as Adele was about to pull away, she felt movement beneath her palm. She paused and was rewarded with a strong kick.

“Oh my God!” She looked up into her sister’s face and grinned. “Was that him?”

Sherilyn nodded.

“What’s he doing? Tae kwon do?”

“Maybe he’s trying to kick his way out,” Kendra suggested as they all three stared at Sherilyn’s belly. Through the thin cotton of Sherilyn’s nightgown, her taut skin warmed Adele’s palm. A new life grew beneath her touch, and for the first time it seemed real to her. He seemed real to her. Sure she’d seen his sonogram images, but they’d looked more alien than human. She’d heard his heart beat dozens of times, but that sounded weird and squishy, not like the beating of a human heart.

“Have you decided on a name?” she asked. They’d talked about names, but now that he was suddenly real, it seemed right that he have a name.

“I think Harris. He’ll have his father’s last name, but I’d like him to have my maiden name.”

“Harris Morgan.” Adele’s smile grew. “I like it.”

Kendra shook her head. “I like Nick.”

“That’s because you like Nick Jonas,” Sherilyn said.

Adele hadn’t known that Kendra liked a boy. “Does he go to your new school?”

Kendra glanced across her mother’s stomach at Adele and rolled her eyes. “Nick is part of the Jonas Brothers. They sing ‘Hold On.’” She didn’t say duh, but she might as well have.

Beneath Adele’s hand, the baby kicked again, and it felt as if he’d kicked something loose that lodged in the middle of her chest. Something she hadn’t really given much thought to lately because there hadn’t been a man in her life for several years.

Yeah, Mr. Z’s cute. For an old guy. Zach was the same age as Adele. She dropped her hand and walked to the side of the bed. She watched Kendra and Sherilyn talk and laugh as they tried to get the baby to move.

“There it was again,” Kendra said through a great big smile.

Being here with Sherilyn, feeling the baby move and watching Kendra touch her mother’s stomach, it struck Adele that she was watching a family. Yeah, William was an AWOL a-hole, but that didn’t make Sherilyn, Kendra, and the baby any less a family.

Adele wanted that. She’d always wanted a family. When she’d had single girlfriends, she could tell herself that there was still time. But one by one her friends were all married or getting married and starting families of their own. Adele wanted her own family, too. A man to love her and her children. Children who would grow up and demand Eggos one day only to look at her like she was a moron the next and declare they hated Eggos.

“That was huge!” Sherilyn laughed.

It wasn’t as if Adele was standing there, watching her sister, and suddenly hearing the ticking of some biological clock. It was more like a glimpse into her future.

There’s always time, a little voice in her head reminded her. But was there? That’s what she liked to think, but she was thirty-five and hadn’t had a good date in three years. She was either cursed or crazy and what were the chances of finding a man who would marry a cursed or crazy woman?

Good. Crazy people have a way of finding each other. Look at Bonnie and Clyde. Ozzy and Sharon. Whitney and Bobby. Okay, so what were the chances of finding a nice normal man who would marry a cursed or crazy woman?

Not so good. And she didn’t want to purposely raise a child by herself. Some women did and were good at it. She just didn’t think it was for her. Maybe she’d change her mind in a few years, but for now, she wanted the whole package.

“This Thursday night there’s a rally at the high-school gym, and the Stallionettes are gonna dance,” Kendra announced, and pulled Adele’s thoughts from her troubles.

“Why is the junior high having a rally at the high school?” Adele wanted to know.

“It’s the high-school football rally.” Kendra looked across at Adele. “You’ll film it again, right?”

“Of course.”

Kendra removed her hands from her mother’s stomach and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet with excitement. “The high school’s dance team is out of town at a competition, so they asked us. How awesome is it that we get to perform at Cedar Creek the night before a playoff game?”

Watching Kendra dance again—very awesome. Seeing Zach again—not very awesome.

Inside the Cedar Creek gymnasium, gold and green streamers wafted from the rafters. Since the last time Adele had been in the gym, the packed bleachers had been painted green and gold. The wooden floor had a new snarling cougar logo that was very fierce, and a few new championships had been painted on one wall.

Adele stood just inside the door, Sherilyn’s Handycam in her shoulder bag. The Cedar Creek marching band stood in the center of the gym as cheerleaders jumped about to the blasting horns and thumping drumbeat of the school song. Adele didn’t consider herself a particularly sentimental person, but hearing the old familiar tune hit her with a touch of nostalgia, like thumbing through an old photo album and seeing a picture of her first dog, Hanna.

The band finished on a booming note, then filed out two opposite doors. With the floor cleared, Adele looked for Kendra and found her across the gym, sitting on a bottom row in front of the football team. She wore her black footless unitard, purple sparkly vest, and soft leather dance shoes. Her dark hair was pulled to the back of her neck, and she’d painted her lips a deep red.

Since Kendra had found out that her team would dance at the high school, she’d been extremely nervous. What if she didn’t get her sparkly vest in time? What if she did tour jete when she was supposed to do a stag leap? What