Romantic Acquisition Page 0,64

test. That was the only way to be sure, she told herself. Before she started to panic and make rash decisions, she needed to have proof of a pregnancy. It could just be that she had come down with some sort of bug or her body was starting to get an allergy to something, she told herself.

Kate managed to pull on a simple black dress with a pair of boots. She wasn’t up to coordinating her outfit today. She just pulled her long hair back into a pony tail with a white bow, not caring how it looked.

At the drug store, she purchased a pregnancy test along with a whole bunch of makeup in an effort to hide the test in some way. She was sure the cashier would be wondering why a woman without a wedding ring was purchasing a pregnancy test.

Fortunately, the teenage cashier didn’t even hesitate or blink as she rang up the pregnancy test among all the makeup. She simply put the test into the bag, rang up Kate’s credit card and smiled to the next customer.

Kate brought the test home and immediately took it into her bathroom, not caring that she was going to be late for work again today. Ten minutes later, she was still sitting on the edge of her bed staring at the line on the end of the stick. It was blue. She went from staring at the stick, to reading the directions again. If there was a line, it was positive. No line, negative. Pretty simple.

Kate’s hand shook as she lifted the stick again. Sure enough, the blue line didn’t disappear.

“What have I done?” she asked out loud, the tears streaming down her face.

She’d gotten pregnant and didn’t have a husband. How could history repeat itself so harshly like this? Couldn’t this have happened to someone else? Someone who didn’t know the pain she would be inflicting on an innocent child? Carlo would probably be furious, just like her father had been and just like her old boyfriend had been. Why was she destined to fall into the same miserable trap her mother had endured? Why had she been so stupid as to put another child what she went through?

Kate sat up and dried her tears. She wouldn’t let that happen. She would love this child so much he or she wouldn’t know that there was a missing parent.

She could do it. She was intelligent, she had the financial resources and the health insurance. That was a whole lot more than what a lot of other women started off with. And they’d all done well, raising wonderful, caring children into society. If they could do it, so could she!

Within a half hour, she was still feeling awful physically, but excited emotionally despite her previous despair over her situation. She was going to have a baby! Carlo’s baby! If she didn’t feel so awful, she’d jump around her house in joy.

She remembered Carlo’s ominous statement about talking to her about something when he came back. He was probably going to break up with her anyway, she thought sadly, so this would be her one remembrance of him. She could keep a small part of him with her always.

The thought of never seeing Carlo again broke her heart but she knew she could endure that. Kate knew that she’d have to endure a lot now. She’d have to be strong. She was going to have a baby. Her hand instinctively covered her stomach where she thought the baby was resting. This child was going to have everything it could possibly want to make up for the fact that his or her mother had fallen in love with a man who didn’t want children.

By the afternoon, she was at work and the worry took over. She wasn’t going to worry about Carlo. She was going to see him one last time, tell him she understood his need to break things off between the two of them. He needed to know he’d have a child in the world, but she’d assure him that she could handle the responsibility on her own.

Kate vacillated between euphoria and depression. She was too excited about the idea of having a baby. But then she’d realize that Carlo wouldn’t be with her to share her joy and she’d plummet into a depression.

Her co-workers probably thought she was losing her mind, she thought as she walked back from the bathroom late in the afternoon. She would be smiling one minute,