“There’s nothing I want more,” she said.
And then she was in his arms and neither of them needed words to communicate what they wanted. Their hearts were totally in sync.
Even though everything he’d ever imagined was within reach, Seth couldn’t help thinking of the obstacles.
“What if Blue Heron Cove doesn’t get approved?”
“Then I’ll come live in some dinky little apartment near campus and cook for you while you study,” she said without hesitation.
He smiled at the image. “You’d be satisfied with a dinky little apartment?”
She glanced around at the small house she’d turned into a home. “I might have to spruce it up a little,” she conceded. “But we’d have this to come home to.”
He searched her face. “So, this is it for you? Seaview Key is home? No reservations?”
“Not a one,” she told him. “As long as you’re here, I’m home. I never told you this but that contractor I wanted tried to convince me to work with him, rather than pursuing Blue Heron Cove. He thought we’d make a good team.”
Seth felt his heart stumble. “Why didn’t you say something? It sounds as if it would have been a great opportunity.”
“Because Seaview Key is what I want. You’re what I want. I don’t have a single doubt about either of those things.”
Relief flowed through him. “That’s good, then.”
She hesitated for a minute, worry etched on her brow. “Seth, we’re not entirely crazy for thinking we can make this work, are we?”
“I certainly don’t think we are. Did Luke suggest otherwise?”
“No, actually I think this was exactly what he was hoping for when he came over here. He seemed to think we’d gotten way off track by not admitting what we really wanted.”
Seth smiled. “I’ll have to thank him one of these days. Not right away, of course. He’s already entirely too smug about thinking he knows what’s best for me.”
“That’s what good friends do,” she reminded him.
“Then I’ll thank him sooner rather than later,” Seth said, pulling her into his arms. “But not just now. I have much better things in mind.”
And he set out to prove it.
* * *
There was one thing Abby wanted to do before she and Seth walked down the aisle. It was the one thing that might change their plans. She made an appointment with a fertility expert on the mainland, then made the trip over on the ferry on her own.
After the examination and several tests, she sat across from the doctor in her sunny office and waited for the verdict.
“I’m not seeing anything obvious to explain why you haven’t gotten pregnant in the past,” she told Abby. “We’ll have to wait for the test results to know definitively whether there’s a problem.”
“And if nothing turns up, it would be okay for me to try?” Abby asked, her heart in her throat. “It’s not too late?”
“A pregnancy at your age would be high risk,” she replied candidly, “but not out of the question. You seem to be in excellent health overall, so as long as you get good prenatal care, follow directions and are prepared for the possibility of bed rest at some point, I think it would be safe to try. You’d want to consider amniocentesis to be sure there are no abnormalities, but we can discuss that when the time comes. Let’s get the results of these tests first, then see where we are.”
Abby nodded, trying hard not to let her excitement get ahead of the results that would be the true test of what might be possible. “Thank you so much.”
“I’ll be in touch as soon as I know more,” the doctor promised. “May I ask, is there some reason this is so important to you? Your patient questionnaire indicates you’re divorced.”
Abby couldn’t stop the smile that broke across her face. “I’m engaged, actually. We both want children. I just don’t want to get his hopes up if it’s not likely we’ll have them.”
“Then we’ll both hope for the best,” the doctor told her.
When Abby got back to Seaview Key, she found herself stopping by Hannah’s. When her friend opened the door, she regarded Abby with concern.
“Is everything okay? You look a little shaken.”
“I saw a fertility expert today,” she admitted.
Hannah’s eyes widened. “Come on in. I’ll pour tea.”
They settled at the kitchen table with glasses of iced tea and a plate of homemade oatmeal raisin cookies.
Abby bit into a cookie, then grinned. “Jenny’s,” she guessed.
“Of course. Mine are more like hockey pucks.” She studied Abby closely. “Why the sudden decision to visit a doctor?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
Hannah chuckled. “How many of yours are still locked away in my head?”
“Okay, crazy question,” Abby conceded. “It’s just that Seth and I don’t want word to get out just yet. We’re engaged.”
Hannah’s eyes lit up. “Oh, sweetie, that’s fantastic. But why the secrecy?”
“We both want to savor it for a little bit,” Abby admitted, then shrugged. “And we don’t want Luke to get all smug and take credit for nudging us in the right direction.”
Hannah laughed. “Yeah, I can see why you’d want to avoid that. My husband does love being right. And here I told him not to meddle.”
“Well, he did meddle and it worked,” Abby said. “Anyway, after Seth and I decided to get married, I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t too late to try for a baby.”
“How does he feel about that, especially with this whole medical school thing I hear he’s considering?”
“That’s the thing, I didn’t want to say anything to him until I knew if a pregnancy was even possible.”
“But what if he sees it as a huge obstacle to his plans?” Hannah asked worriedly.
“There’s no reason it has to be,” Abby said defensively. “We’re not two young kids. We’ve both juggled a lot of balls in the air in our lives. And we have financial resources.”
“Yours,” Hannah reminded her. “We both know how he’d feel about relying on your money.”
“Well, it
