LOST AND FOUND HUSBAND by Sheri Whitefeather Read Free Book Online Page B

what she was facing. It was going to be far more traumatic for her. She was the one who had to carry the baby, to give birth, to be the primary caregiver.
    “I’m not kidding myself,” she said, as if she were thinking the same thing. “It’s not going to be easy trying to pull this off. But I figure it happened for a reason. Everything does, don’t you think?”
    No, he didn’t. Otherwise his wife would still be alive. “My daughter tends to think that way. Ever since she found her birth parents, she’s been hung up on fate.”
    “Do you think she’ll think our baby is fate?”
    Their baby. It almost made them sound like a couple. But they weren’t. He and Dana would be living separately with Dana raising a child they’d conceived on a first date. How could that be fate? “I have no idea how she’s going to react.” He only knew how uncomfortable he was going to be revealing what he’d done and who he’d done it with.
    “When are you going to tell her?”
    “I don’t know. This weekend, maybe. She’s supposed to be coming home to visit me. I was going to take her out to her favorite sushi bar.”
    “That’s nice. Can I see a picture of her?”
    “What? Why?”
    “Because she’s going to be the baby’s big sister.”
    He couldn’t argue with her reasoning. What she said was true. Dana and the tiny life in her womb were connected to his daughter. One night of passion and he and Dana had created a child. It boggled his brain. When he was young and eager to start a family, he would have been thrilled to have made a baby so quickly and easily, but he was older and of a different mindset now. None of it made sense, not for him or for Dana.
    He opened a file on his smartphone and showed her an image of Kaley.
    “She’s beautiful. She looks as if she could be your biological child.”
    “She’s part Native on her birth father’s side. That was instrumental in the adoption.”
    “I wonder what this baby is going to look like.”
    “Maybe it will favor you.” He watched her hair blow across her cheek, thinking how pretty she was. “Or maybe it will favor both of us.”
    Dana smiled a little. “They’re going to do an ultrasound at six weeks and give me a copy of the picture afterward.”
    “Are ultrasounds routine this early on?”
    “They are with my doctor. He likes to do one at the beginning, then another one later when the baby is more developed.”
    At this stage, Eric imagined that the fetus was going to look like a peapod or some other odd shaped little thing. “Is Candy going to the ultrasound appointment with you?”
    Dana nodded. “Candy was pregnant when she was married, but she lost the baby. She told me on the day we discovered that I was pregnant.”
    “I’m sorry for her loss.” Candy seemed like a good friend to Dana.
    “I’ll introduce you to her one of these times.”
    “I’m just glad she’s there for you.”
    “Me, too. It helps me not to feel so alone.”
    Struggling to give her comfort, he reached across the table for her hand. She curled her fingers into his, but the contact wasn’t as encompassing as it should have been. He wasn’t any good at this.
    “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” he asked.
    “I’m certainly going to try.”
    He didn’t know what he was going to do, other than combat the expectant-father panic. “I’m really sorry, Dana.”
    “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
    “I feel like I made a mess of things.”
    “That’s just because you’re nervous. So am I. We just need more time to let it sink in.”
    “Then if there’s nothing else left to discuss right now, I should head home.” He needed to sit quietly and breathe. His heart was punching the crap out of his chest.
    “Okay.” Her hand drifted from his. “I’ll be in touch.”
    “Let me know about the insurance quotes.”
    “I will.”
    She walked him to the gate in the corner of the yard. They didn’t hug goodbye. They didn’t do anything but