A Child Under His Tree. Allison Leigh

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СКАЧАТЬ trash can that had been in Kelly’s room since she’d been ten. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

      She wished she’d waited until Monday, that’s what she had to say.

      She wisely kept the sarcastic thought to herself. Kelly was twenty-three. Old enough to deal with the consequences of her actions, but not old enough to deal with her mother’s reaction.

      Evidently unsatisfied with Kelly’s silence, her mom grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her slightly. “Well? At the very least, tell me it’s the Buchanan boy’s baby.”

      Kelly looked away from her mother’s face. “Why? Caleb and I broke up two years ago.” She was only buying time, though. Because she knew why.

      Her mother made a disgusted sound and let her go. “Because you’ll be set for life, obviously!” She propped her hands on her skinny hips. “He’ll marry you. Even when it doesn’t work out, you’ll be taken care of. Those people take care of their own. Always have. Always will.”

      Those people.

      Kelly felt nauseated. More from her mother’s words than from the baby inside her that hadn’t even existed five weeks ago. By those people, her mother meant anyone connected to the wealthy Clay family. The family who possessed everything that Georgette and Kelly Rasmussen did not.

      Money. Plentiful land. Education. Class.

      Georgette envied everything they possessed, even as she seemed to hate them for it.

      “I don’t want to marry Caleb.”

      Her mother made another disgusted sound. “Since when?”

      Since he dumped me more than two years ago? Again, Kelly kept that answer to herself. She was over Caleb Buchanan. Had been for a long while now. Sleeping with him thirty-four days ago had been her way of proving it. Convoluted thinking, perhaps, but it was true, nevertheless. Which only seemed to confirm that the Rasmussen nut didn’t fall far from the tree.

      “You’ll marry that boy,” her mother said into the silence. She pointed her finger at Kelly’s face. “You’re not going to get stuck raising a baby on your own the way I was. You’ll marry him. He’ll provide for you both.” Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled tightly. “They’ll provide for all of us.”

      “You hated when I was dating him when we were teenagers! Now you’re all for me marrying him?” Kelly wanted to throw herself on the twin bed that also hadn’t changed since she was ten and pull the pillows over her head.

      “I knew you’d mess it up. Same as I did when I was that age.” Again the disgusted sound from her mother, accompanied by a hand swiping dismissively through the air. “And you did. He went off and found someone else.”

      Someone better. That’s what her mom had said at the time.

      Kelly pushed away the hurtful memory and put the width of the twin bed between them. “Exactly.” She didn’t throw herself on the bed. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was an adult. With a baby inside her. “He found someone else. A brilliant premed student just like him.” She left out the part that Caleb had also broken up with that woman. “Why on earth would you think this baby is his, anyway?”

      “He was home here in Weaver for Christmas. If not his, then whose? God knows you’re not much of a catch. Only boy who ever came sniffing around for you was that Buchanan kid.”

      “Ever think that’s because I didn’t want boys coming around here to meet you?” She couldn’t believe the words came out, even if they were true.

      “All right, then,” Georgette challenged. “Whose baby is it?”

      Kelly’s eyes stung. She wasn’t a liar by nature.

      But she lied. She lied because she wasn’t going to get foisted on Caleb Buchanan just because he and his people took care of their own. She wasn’t going to end up a wife out of his sense of responsibility. Not when she’d been raised by a mother who’d only acted out of responsibility instead of love.

      Caleb might have wanted her once, but he’d cast her aside.

      Until one night thirty-four days ago when he’d wanted her enough to get naked in the front seat of her pickup truck, just like they’d done back when they were in high school. Back before he’d left her and gone off to college. Back before he’d chosen another woman.

      “It was just a guy, Mama. Nobody you know at all.”

      The determined brightness in her mother’s eyes dimmed, and she got the same disappointed, dissatisfied, discontented look she’d had all of Kelly’s life. She sank down on the foot of the twin bed as if she couldn’t stand the weight of her own body. “The only chance you had of making something of yourself—snagging a fancy, educated surgeon like that Buchanan—and you take up with some guy just passing through town?”

      Her mother was editorializing. Adding details that Kelly had not. Embellishing the story with her own experiences. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. “Caleb has years to go before he’ll be a surgeon! And I don’t need to make someone like him marry me in order to make something of myself, Mama. I’ve got a good job working with Doc Cobb!”

      “Sure, answering his phones and putting out the trash. You think that old coot is gonna want his receptionist parading around with a pregnant belly and no ring on her finger? Times may have changed since you were born, but people in this town still expect mamas to be with the daddies. All you’re gonna earn is a lot of gossip and speculation. You ought to have been smarter than to ruin your life the same way I did!”

      Kelly stared at her mother and vowed right then and there that she’d make sure her child never heard such hateful words. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

      Georgette just snorted, not seeming to notice Kelly pulling out her ancient suitcase from the closet until it lay open on the bed. “What fool thing are you doing now?”

      “Packing.” Kelly kept moving, pulling open her top drawer and dumping the contents into the suitcase, quickly followed by the second drawer, and the third and last. She had to push down hard on the suitcase when she closed it to get the lock latched, but she managed.

      Georgette was watching her with an annoyed look. “Gonna go chase after the guy, I suppose. Fat lot of good that’ll do.”

      Kelly didn’t have a second suitcase. But she had an oversize beach bag that managed to hold several pairs of shoes and her favorite pair of boots. “Why? Is that what you did?” She propped the bulging canvas bag against the faded pink suitcase and went back to the closet again. “Fruitlessly chase after my father?” She snatched two handfuls of hanging clothes from the single wooden bar in her closet. “Is that why you’ve always hated me?”

      Her mother answered with a huff. “I’ve always said you had a crazy imagination.”

      “Yes.” Kelly draped the clothes over her arm. She was leaving behind stuff, but she was beyond caring. “It’s my imagination that I can count on one hand the times you’ve ever shown a lick of caring for me.”

      Georgette’s frown deepened. She’d never welcomed other people’s opinions, and Kelly’s was no different. “Kept a roof over your ungrateful head, didn’t I?”

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