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As he docked at a small port, he glanced at the beautiful bay view, and wished that Laura was here with him to see this. It was ironic. The farther he sailed away from her, the more he thought about her. He couldn’t shake her, no matter how hard he tried. He’d called, yes, but found he didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t leave a message and sometimes just called to hear her voice on the recorded message.
He was a mess. He’d thought getting away from everyone and being alone on the sea would help him clear his mind, but instead, all he did was think about Laura—about her bright green eyes, her deep laugh, the way she wrinkled her nose when she concentrated. He missed her gentle touch; he missed the way she rocked her head back and closed her eyes when she came. He missed…everything about her.
He should’ve thought about her less, but each day, he thought about her more. It had become almost more than he could bear, and yet he was thousands of miles away from San Francisco, moving farther away every day. So much for out of sight, out of mind, he thought.
The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t figure out why she’d left so abruptly, why she’d given up. The only answer he could think of was that she’d never loved him in the same way he’d loved her. That was the only explanation.
Mark pulled into a visitor’s slot so he could go seek arrangements for renting a slip to keep his boat harbored here.
He grabbed his boat’s paperwork and headed to the marina office, where he ran smack-dab into Edward, talking to the clerk.
“What are you doing here?” Mark asked, surprised.
“Looking for you,” Edward said. “I took the red-eye flight out, counting on you being here for the race.”
“But what about Elle? The baby?”
Edward shook his head. “If you turned on your phone once in a while or answered your radio, I wouldn’t have had to leave them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. Let’s get a drink. What I need to tell you needs to be told over tequila or, at minimum, beer.”
Mark sat across from his brother in the small sailor’s bar, waiting expectantly for the big news. Would his brother be telling him that he was leaving Elle for Laura? He surely didn’t need to sail halfway around the world to deliver that horrible news. Mark was just fine never knowing that.
“Okay, Laura swore me to secrecy, and I let her have that secrecy for a while, because…well, it’s her news to tell.”
Mark felt a prickling in his stomach. Nerves? What was he going to say? Please don’t say Laura has cancer.
“Is Laura okay?”
“She’s fine. She’s healthy. Laura’s pregnant. With your baby.”
Suddenly, the rest of the bar and the entire world disappeared. The edges of his vision grew fuzzy. Laura was pregnant? “That can’t be.”
“It can be, and it is.” Edward took a swig of beer.
“But she left me…she said…” Mark’s brain felt like mush. It just wasn’t working.
“She left you because you were being a tool and told her that there’s no way you ever wanted to be a father because it would trash your memories of Timothy,” Edward said. “That day at the hospital when you got all bent out of shape, we were talking about her pregnancy. I guessed she was pregnant. She showed all the signs.”
Mark felt a punch to the gut. It was true. The nausea. Fainting. Why hadn’t he seen it before?
He was going to be a father? The thought wasn’t as scary as he’d assumed. He’d always thought he only had room in his heart for Timothy, but maybe he was wrong about that.
Edward was still talking. “And then when you ran off on your boat, she thought you weren’t in this thing and that you didn’t love her.”
“She told me she was done with me.”
“And you didn’t bother to fight that? Tell her she was wrong? You know women test you. They do it all the time.”
Mark never did understand women. Then he remembered the first time Laura was pregnant, the pregnancy had nearly killed her.
“But how is she? Her health—”
“She’s on bed rest. It’s not going to be an easy pregnancy, and it will definitely not be an easy delivery.”
Mark did some quick math. “She’s going to be due soon.”
“Which is why I had to fly all the way out here after your ungrateful ass,” he said, shaking his head and taking a swig. “And believe me, Elle is not happy about me leaving her with that baby all alone. But I couldn’t very well let you go on thinking what you were thinking about Laura. Besides, given what she’s told me about the pregnancy, she’s going to need you there for the delivery.”
