“Okay.” She popped another pretzel stick in her mouth. “I’ve been thinking out some names…What do you think of Cecilia for a girl?”

“That’s pretty. Cecilia Hurst is a nice enough name.”

The pretzel felt inflated in her mouth. She hadn’t thought to give the baby Ben’s last name. “It’s a girl. The technician said she’s positive of it.”

“Oh, well, then. It would have been nice to have another son, but we can’t order these things, can we?” Ben gave a little laugh.

Ha ha. Mandy didn’t feel the least bit like laughing. Not when she was thinking Rebecca Sharpton would have had a father who wouldn’t have cared one whit that she was a girl instead of a boy.

But Cecilia Hurst was going to have a father like Mandy had. Distracted. Loving, but always distant, always disappointed.

It wasn’t what she wanted for her daughter, but then we can’t order these things, can we?

And she wasn’t sure she would change things if she could. If she hadn’t been pregnant with Ben’s child, she never would have met Damien at all. They never would have made love, and she never would have realized that she loved him. Truly, deeply, loved him.

But if fate had played things out the way they were supposed to be, and Beckwith Tripp’s prediction for a long, sweet, enriched life had been correct, she didn’t see where she was supposed to go from here.

Her bun was baking, but her bloody heart was breaking.

Mandy stuffed another pretzel in her mouth.

Damien shifted the box in his hands and pressed the doorbell. His palms were sweating, and his heart was pounding. He wasn’t sure he could do this.

Even though it was only ten in the morning, the sun was beating down on him, and he felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his T-shirt. He was giving it two more seconds; then he was getting the hell out of there.

The door swung open. Damn.

His father-in-law’s greeting died on his lips, and his jaw dropped. “Damien?” He called back over his shoulder. “Susan, you want to come on out here?”

“Hi, Fred. How are you?” The words stuck in his mouth, but Damien forced them out and willed himself not to shuffle on the sidewalk.

“Good, good.” Fred stared at him, then shook his head. “Jesus, come on in. Look at me just leaving you standing there. But you gave me a start, kid. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in three years.”