* * *

Grace had to call Ginger and ask her if she felt confident enough to manage the shop another day and, bless her, she was good with that. She then spent four hours with Ray Anne, first signing the contracts for the house and then heading to Bandon and North Bend to make decorating selections. She didn’t screw around pondering her choices, but Ray Anne enthusiastically endorsed every one.

About two hours into the project, Grace suddenly felt very faint and woozy with a touch of nausea. “Oh, damn, I forgot to eat,” she said to her Realtor.

“I have an energy drink in my purse,” Ray Anne offered.

“Oh, so that’s what keeps you going,” she joked, but a bit weakly. She used to live on those! But with a bun in the oven, she wasn’t sure what was safe. “Pull into the next grocery or deli. All I need is a half sandwich or something and I’ll be fine.” But it reminded her that she had other important business at hand.

She was just getting back to the flower shop a little after three when she finally texted Troy. Am I going to see you tonight?

He texted back that he was working at Cooper’s from four till whenever and if she wanted him to, he could stop by afterward.

If I want you to?

It was usually hard to keep him away.

Please, she responded. I really have to talk to you about a couple of things.

From that point until nine-thirty she wondered what she was going to say. How she was going to say it. When he finally arrived and used his own key to get in, she leaped to her feet and ran to him, throwing her arms around him. Even twenty-four hours away from him was too much.

But he didn’t embrace her as wildly. His hands rested on her hips. This was where Troy usually wondered how fast he could get into her. Counter, table, floor, wall? And yet there was a sudden distance she couldn’t understand.

“Why are you different?” she asked.

“Different how?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s something different. You’re not clutching me. You’re not trying to get under my clothes. It’s like you don’t want to be here!”

“No, no, I want to be here. Gracie, we should talk about a few things.”

“Yes,” she said, drawing him into her little space. “Yes, we have to talk. You first. What’s bothering you?”

They sat on the couch together. He held her hands. He gazed into her eyes—all the gestures of impending bad news. “Grace, I’m not proud of this, okay. I have to be honest with you. The money. Your money. It was ten times greater than I imagined. A hundred times greater. It kind of blew me away. Intimidated me. Filled me with doubts.”

“Doubts?”

“About us, Gracie. I don’t feel like we have as much in common as I thought we did. It worries me a little. I’m wondering...what do we do if we find out we don’t fit? If we’re just too different?”

She was stunned. “Are you breaking up with me?” she asked.

“No. No, of course not. I’m just a little...I’m worried about us. I need time to figure out how we go forward together. I don’t have anything, Grace. You’re as rich as the Gettys. I don’t want to live off you. You can’t live off me. We have to figure this out.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said. “Do I look like I’m rich?” she said, throwing an arm wide, indicating her little loft. “I have an idea—how about if I earn a living, you earn a living and neither of us lives off the other?”

“And that fortune you’re sitting on?”

“I’ll do exactly as I promised my mother—I’ll take care of it. Troy, I’m not going to live in a big cold stone manor house with a full-time staff. I do need more space than this someday, but...I bought my mother a house today. On the beach. One of Cooper’s new houses. Something that would be perfect for her—the warm sun on the deck, the sound of the ocean. I think it could be comforting for her, much more so than the big house in the city. And I—”

“See? See? That was just so easy. You just went out and bought a house that must have cost, I don’t know, a million dollars or—”

“One-point-two,” she said, lifting her chin a notch.

“Holy Jesus...” He leaned an elbow on his knee and put his head in his hand.

“Close to my shop, close to the doctor, close to the sound of kids having fun, dogs barking as they play fetch or chase birds along the beach, nice neighbors...”

“Do you have any idea how weird that is? That you can just plunk down over a million dollars and—”

“So much for You don’t have to be afraid to tell me anything, Grace, and You don’t have to worry about how I’ll react, Grace. It’s who I am!” she shouted. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be broke and up to my eyeballs in student loans for you, but this is who I am and I’m not a bad person!”

“I never meant to suggest you were—”

“And I’m pregnant!”

All sound and motion stopped. She could tell that Troy didn’t breathe. He just held his breath and looked at her. Finally he said, “Whoa.” And that was all. After actual minutes had passed, he asked, “How pregnant?”

“I don’t know. Not very.”

“I thought you were going to see Peyton. I thought you were going to—”

“Take care of it?” she asked tartly. “I went to Peyton. She said I had a few days to see if my period would just come on its own so I could start on the pill. I was supposed to follow up with her.”

“And you didn’t?”

“A few things happened! I got that note, I tried to electrocute my boyfriend, your friends came for the weekend, my mother showed up with ALS...I forgot. It just slipped my mind. When I realized my period was really late, I used a test and peed on the stick. I wanted to tell you that second, but we were literally on our way to the airport and things were complicated enough. This is the first chance we’ve had to talk.”

“Oh, God,” he said.

“You didn’t remember, either! You never asked!”

“Grace, I take responsibility and you’re right, I didn’t follow up, either. But let’s not panic. It’s early. We don’t have to make any decisions tonight. We can process this.”

“I don’t have any decisions to make, Troy. I have a baby in me. It’s just a little seed, but it’s there and I’m not making it go away just because it’s inconvenient.”

“Okay, fine, right. But we don’t have to make any irrevocable decisions tonight. There’s time to think this through.”

“All right. You go think this through. When you know what you want, you know where to find me.”

“You want me to leave?”

“Yes,” she said. “You have a lot of issues. Whether we’re right for each other, whether we have enough in common, whether the fact that I come from a family with money is going to be a problem for you, what you want to do about a baby. I have no issues. I have nothing I have to process.”

“Okay, now you’re getting mad,” he said. “Be fair, Grace—what can I ever give you if you have everything? If all you have to do is point and it’s yours?”