Cart Before The Horse by Bernadette Marie Read Free Book Online Page A

tray and set it in front of her. “What’s on your list so far?”
    “I’m going to have to find a new doctor. Decide on a hospital. Buy a crib. Things like that.”
    “Good idea.” He finished unloading the tray and noticed that she smiled at the slice of pie with two forks. “Nine months goes extremely fast.”
    Gabe pulled two spoons from a drawer and handed her one before sitting across from her. “Do you have brothers or
sisters?”
    “No.” She took the napkin he’d brought up and set it on her lap. “Only child.”
    “Do you have anyone close to you who’s had a baby recently and could give you some good referrals?”
    She shook her head. “Nope. Pretty sad, huh?”
    “No, I didn’t mean that.” He stirred his soup around. “I’ll call my sister Maggie tomorrow. She’s in New York, but she can give us some ideas on what we should look for. Her youngest is only six months old. She’ll have the most recent information.”
    “Your family really embraces anything you do?”
    “One hundred percent.” He looked up from his bowl. “Yours doesn’t?”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just my life has always been a little backward, and this is no different. My mother tends to
     
    cluck her tongue and shake her head at me when I tell her
new things.”
    He lifted a spoon full of soup to his lips and blew on it. “Why is that?”
    “Well, I was a bit of a prodigy.”
    He shifted his eyes to her as he bent over his bowl of soup. “A prodigy?”
    She nodded as she stirred her soup. “I was born two months early. I walked by nine months. I could read by three years old. I knew algebra at seven and graduated high school at fifteen.”
    Gabe lowered his spoon. Was this going to be a genetic thing she passed on to their baby? “Wow. I had no idea.”
    “I graduated top of my class in college when I was
nineteen.”
    “Associate’s degree?”
    “Double major in business and design.”
    “You double majored in college in…” He did the math in his head. “Three years?”
    “Yep. Not much of a social life when you’re three years younger than your peers.” She sipped her soup off the spoon. “This is really good.”
    “My mother’s recipe. My uncle made it a staple on the menu.” Seated across from a prodigy who’d complimented his soup, he was suddenly at a loss for better words. Was she going to expect him to know great art? A foreign language? What if she wanted to look at his bookwork and check his math? The thoughts of her smartness and his—well, he didn’t think he was stupid, but at the moment he wasn’t feeling very adequate—buzzed in his head, and he took a long drink of tea to wet his dry mouth. “So, what did you do after college?”
    “I went right into textile design with Tracy when she opened her company.”
    “So you’ve done everything years before anyone normally would have.”
     
    “Yep, I’ve put the cart before the horse my whole life. And now here I am pregnant and not married.”
    “It is a little backward, but backward seems to have worked for you.”
    She shrugged her shoulders. “I won’t deny it. I’m successful and have a lot to show for it, but I missed out on so
many things.”
    “Normality?” That sounded bad. He wanted to take it back, but she was laughing.
    “Exactly.” She took another bite of soup then leaned forward on her arms. “My best friend was my next-door neighbor. She was my age but never invited me to any slumber parties because I didn’t know any of the other girls our age, since I was grades ahead of them in school.”
    “That must have been hard.”
    “I didn’t know any different.” She picked up the glass of tea and took a sip. “I never went to prom or a frat party. I’ve never TP’d anyone’s house or snuck out in the middle
of the night.”
    He laughed, though he hadn’t meant to. “Sorry. I did all of those things and got busted each time.” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his