Chances Are Read online

  Chances Are

  By

  Mysti Parker & MJ Post

  Kindle Edition

  *****

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Mysti Parker & MJ Post on Kindle Direct Publishing

  Chances Are

  Copyright © 2014 Mysti Parker & MJ Post

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  Thank you for purchasing this ebook. This title is the copyrighted property of the authors, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy at Amazon.com, where they can also discover other works by these authors. Thank you for your support.

  Chances Are

  Sometimes love’s not enough.

  Natalie and JD West had it all—a nice house, steady jobs, and a baby on the way.

  Until the unthinkable happened.

  On the brink of divorce, Natalie soothes her grief by playing matchmaker for her best friend. JD, a high school principal, focuses on helping a troubled student. With their separate missions, a seductive secretary, and a deadly situation threatening to tear them apart for good, chances are they’ll never make it. Can they bet on love to pull them back together?

  Dedications

  To all the moms and dads of sweet angel babies who are gone but not forgotten.

  To teachers, principals, and all the staff at our public schools—you are my heroes.

  As always, I thank God for the blessings, my family for their support and tolerance of dirty dishes, and my coauthor for being a pleasure to work with. ~Mysti

  Love is hard work, but it's essential work, and there's no work more important than the work of love. Thanks to the one who taught me that. ~MJ

  Chapter One

  Natalie held up the teddy bear lovey and read her son’s name embroidered in baby blue: John Allen West. Three-year-old Jeremy bounced up and down, his long-lashed eyes wide and anxious to see if she liked his gift.

  “I absolutely love it! I know the baby will too. Thank you sweetie. How about a hug?”

  He threw his arms around her neck with a great big squeeze and a growl. Jeremy’s monster hugs were the best, even if they were a little asphyxiating. Natalie looked up at his mom and grunted, “Thanks, Stacy.”

  “You’re so very welcome. Jeremy adores you and Vicki. He can’t wait to get out the door every morning. It’s a real blessing knowing he’s in good hands while I’m at work. You’ll post pictures on your Facebook page, right?”

  Jeremy released Natalie and took his mom’s hand.

  Rubbing the giant bulge under her maternity shirt, Natalie smiled. “Sure. Just don’t expect to see me in the pics. I’ll look terrible.”

  “No you won’t. Nothing’s as beautiful as a mother holding her newborn son for the first time. I bet JD’s excited?”

  Natalie nodded.

  “I guess we’ll see you in a few weeks. Take good care of yourself, OK?”

  “I will.”

  Vicki walked out of the storage room and joined Natalie at the door. They watched their last daycare kid leave for the day.

  “I bet JD really is excited, honey.” Vicki’s wise words and her molasses-smooth Alabaman accent never failed to comfort Natalie. “He’s one of those John Wayne types, you know? Doesn’t want to show his soft side.”

  “He missed our last ultrasound. I had to tell him we were having a boy over the phone. He’s always worked long hours. But, he’s been working nonstop ever since I got pregnant and he’s already stressing about how much work he’ll miss when John Allen’s born.”

  “Maybe he’s scared of being a dad. Afraid he’ll screw up somehow. Have you talked to him about it?”

  Natalie turned the lock on the door and drew the curtain. “Talk? JD’s idea of talking is sitting there in silence while I do all the talking. All I get is ‘OK.’, ‘Yeah.’, ‘It’ll be all right.’ Or my favorite—‘You’re overreacting.’ I don’t think he’ll hate the baby or anything like that, but I don’t want our son growing up without him. ”

  “Well, at least he hasn’t run off with some floozy like my two exes did. He doesn’t drink or smoke. And he doesn’t fly off the handle and yell about everything, right?”

  Natalie had to laugh a little at that. “No, he used to huff and puff and be a smart ass now and then, but now it’s just one huff and one puff, and then back to the old stone face.”

  “Like that statue of the old Colonel in the park? Yeah, I know that look.”

  Natalie changed the subject. “You sure you’ll be fine here for the next six weeks or so? It can’t be much longer now. We’re already a day past the due date. I haven’t even felt John Allen move for a while. He’s too crammed in there, I guess.”

  “He’ll be here before you know it, and then you’ll wish he was still in there when he wakes up every two hours to eat. You better hurry up—you’ll miss your appointment. Is JD meeting you there?”

  “No, he has a meeting at the District Headquarters tonight.” Natalie took her purse from the coat rack and slung it over her shoulder. The lovey blanket Jeremy gave her rattled as she tucked it carefully inside.

  “Well, just drive carefully, ok? They may want to induce you. My daughter had to be induced when Tyler was born. Ended up with a C-section and…” She used her hands as a ruler. “…a scar this long.”

  Vicki’s horror stories about birth and motherhood once bothered Natalie. Now she was so used to them, she felt prepared to handle any complication that should arise. Her own mother, wherever she was in France at the moment—Paris or Cannes or Toulouse—was never so forthcoming.

  “You have your phone?” Vicki flicked the light switch and followed Natalie out the back door.

  “Yes, don’t worry, mom. I’ll call you soon as the baby arrives.”

  “You better.” She wrapped Natalie in a warm hug that brought tears to both their eyes. “Love you, honey. Can’t wait to see your little boy.”

  ****

  At 4:45, Dr. Brennen’s office was winding down for the day. The only other patient was a very pregnant teenage girl with one too many piercings. She chomped her chewing gum with vengeance while tapping a cigarette pack on the armrest. Her…significant other?—Natalie saw no rings on either of them—wore a lopsided Louisville Cardinals cap, a stained white tank top and pants almost down to his knees. Had it not been for his smiley faced boxers, they would have been down to his ankles by now.

  Natalie texted JD: Still waiting. I wonder if the doc will want to induce me. She flipped through a worn copy of Woman’s Day. She had to squelch the urge to rip those cigarettes out of the teen mom’s hand and to yank up her Neanderthal boyfriend’s pants until they squeezed his junk and made him regret having done his part in their situation. Such careless parents already—that poor kid didn’t stand a chance. From the day that plus sign appeared on the test strip, Natalie had done everything a pregnant woman was supposed to. Daily prenatal vitamins, no alcohol, no caffeine and no late-nighters.

  The physician assistant’s voice startled her. “Natalie West?”

  “Yes,” Natalie answered. She tossed the magazine onto the table to join the other outdated ones.

  “Come on back.”

  Natalie checked her phone while negotiating her girth from the waiting room chair. JD still hadn’t answered her text. She sent one more: Going back now. We may get to see John Allen soon. I’m so ready to not be pregnant.

  The assistant, a skinny blonde named Jen, led Natalie to Exam Room #2. Natalie hoisted hersel
f onto the exam table, where Jen took her blood pressure and temperature. She scribbled the figures onto her chart.

  “Dr. Brennen will be right in,” Jen said and breezed out the door, closing it softly behind her.

  Natalie rolled her eyes. ‘Right in’ meant ‘he’ll acknowledge your existence eventually’. She rubbed her belly, anxious to know what Dr. Brennen would suggest. Induction? C-section? She’d even read about stripping the membranes as a means to get labor started without drugs. That sounded uncomfortable, but surely better than Pitocin or surgery.

  The door opened, and Dr. Brennen stepped through with his clipboard. He pushed up his glasses and grinned. “I bet you’re ready to have that baby.”

  “You have no idea,” she laughed. “I’d like to be able to sleep again and to stop peeing every ten minutes.”

  He laid the clipboard on the counter, washed his hands, and retrieved the fetal Doppler from where it hung on the wall. “Well, let’s see how you’re progressing. It might be time to start discussing induction unless you’re dilated enough. Go ahead and lie back.”

  She did as he asked, pulling her shirt up to expose her stretch-marked belly, and steeled herself for the familiar gel. It made a farting noise as Dr. Brennen squeezed it from the tube. Natalie sucked in air through her teeth from the sudden shock of cold.

  “I can’t remember, but have you picked out a name already?” he asked while turning the monitor on.

  “John Allen,” she answered.

  “Good name.” He placed the rounded probe to her belly and started moving it around. “Is your husband excited?”

  “Yes,” she lied, staring at the cross-section picture of a pregnant lady, complete with her open uterus and happy little upside down baby. “Well, he says so when he’s half-asleep or waiting for his dinner.”

  The doctor ignored her quip. He mumbled something under his breath.

  She looked at him again. “What?”

  He moved the probe from one spot to the next, brow wrinkling more with every centimeter. “When’s the last time you felt the baby, Nat?”

  “Um…this morning, I think, or maybe yesterday.” Her breath came faster. Why wouldn’t he look at her? “Why? What’s wrong? He’s OK, isn’t he?”

  He spent another tortuous minute searching her belly, roving the probe around like a space car going for a joyride on the moon. His lips drew in, almost disappearing under his gray mustache.

  “What’s wrong?! Is something wrong?” Natalie’s heart thudded against her chest. She heard her cell phone buzz from the confines of her purse. JD must have texted her back. Where was he? Was he on his way?

  Dr. Brennen quickly wiped the probe and slid it back into its holder on the Doppler. He stuck his head out the door and called for Jen. A few minutes later, they were looking at John Allen on a portable ultrasound machine. He was all curled up in there like she’d seen him before, but this time, there were no wiggly legs and no swish, swish, swish at a healthy 160 beats per minute. Dr. Brennen leaned close to her and took her hand in his two big, shaking ones. She didn’t like the look on his face, and she never in a million years expected what he had to say next:

  “Natalie, I’m sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”

  Chapter Two

  JD West needed a school secretary. He’d called the downtown office and asked them to send him someone. Since Mrs. Jessup had suddenly moved to Arkansas to take care of her daughter’s kids while the daughter tried to get a singing career going in Branson, the only help he had was an older semi-retired lady, Mrs. McCarthy, who didn’t know how to pronounce the name of the school. Elbridge Jones, not Eldridge Jonas, High School. It was hard to get help he could trust. More and more, he knew he had to see to everything there himself. With new changes in state policy, every student who failed the tests was counted against the school and against his personal record. He worked hard, and his staff worked hard, and they all deserved better. It was up to him. It was all on him to make Elbridge Jones high school a success, to make its kids active, excited learners, and to get them to pass the state tests. And to make sure the staff morale was good. And to make sure the hallways were clean. And to make sure there was no broken furniture. To make sure the gym had enough equipment.

  He was in the gym storage area himself, trying to decide if county regulations required him to do paperwork before discarding un-inflatable basketballs and cracked baseball bats.

  Coach Peterman had his team running around the court when JD stepped out. He looked at the kids. He knew all their names and histories. He spotted Marcus Laurents and gestured the coach over.

  "I thought Big M wasn't eligible after failing Algebra."

  Peterman raised an eyebrow. "I got him a tutor. We need him against Rockford Hill tomorrow."

  "Eligibility rules are for a reason, Dave. We want to be careful to send the kid the right message."

  The coach did a huff-huff laugh and slapped JD on the back like he was one of the good ol’ boys. "We also need a good enough record to recruit better kids from the middle schools. Money’s in sports, Mr. West, like it or not. Big M has good hustle on the court. One game’s not gonna hurt."

  JD hated the never-ending academics vs. sports battle and he wasn’t one of the good ol’ boys. Never had been, never would be. "We’ve been over this. Marcus has to sit out until he gets his grades up, and that’s-” His cell rang. The ringtone was the Eagles’ “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” something he desperately wanted and never got. It was the ring tone he had set for Natalie. She was supposed to go to Dr. Brennen and was probably calling to repeat back to him whatever bland reassurances the doctor had given her.

  John Allen would be fine without analyzing every word that came out of Dr. Brennen’s bored mouth. But JD loved Natalie and knew he had to listen. When he came to bed at night, usually at midnight because of updating paperwork in the county’s online system, he curled up next to her and felt her growing belly and listened to her soft breaths. She’d be a fine mother — she was a natural with the little ones. And somehow, he'd figure out how to make his kid a decent citizen with good values, unlike the troubled, pimply teens from broken homes who broiled past him in the hallway every day yelling the F word at each other and trying to light up undetected in the basement bathroom.

  He wished Natalie would have saved the talk for later, so he could get his work done. He couldn’t calm her fears or take care of her aches and pains when he had all this work bullshit on his mind.

  “JD!” The broken sound of sobs. Background noises, her voice garbled by tears. Another episode of weepiness? He had work to do. “Oh my God, you have to get to the hospital. John Allen — the baby — the baby has no heartbeat! They’re taking me in now.”

  His stomach turned over. She was fine, she’d been fine! How could she have news like that for him? “What? No, it has to be a mistake! The baby’s fine, he was fine, he was just…”

  He could hear in her voice that was struggling to control sobs. “They’re taking me in now. I have to get off the phone. Come to the hospital, JD! Please!”

  ****

  JD ran three red lights and two stop signs, not because he was racing, just because he didn’t even see them. His eyes were wet. They had put so much into this pregnancy. He had already planned their family trips and plotted the course of John Allen’s education. He pulled into the hospital’s emergency parking. He didn’t know whether he was allowed to park there, but he didn’t care. A towed car didn’t matter now. He shrugged off his suit coat, put it over his arm, and ran past a parked ambulance and through the sliding glass doors. He got to the pediatric ER, where he had been in the past to visit one of his students, a teen girl having an ectopic pregnancy. He stopped, not sure if he could go in to see Natalie. He settled on a waiting room sofa, took out his cell. He needed to calm down. If Natalie saw him upset, she would freak out, too, and that wasn’t good for her health. He dialed his father’s mobile number.

  “Yeah, Dad. It looks bad. Yeah. Natalie’s losing,
we’re losing the baby. No, that’s all I know. Yeah, I’m going in there in a minute. Yes, Dad. She needs to be OK. This could just be a scare or something. It needs to be just a scare. It can't be as bad as… If I lose her and the baby, I don't know what I’ll…."

  He concentrated on breathing and keeping tears in check as he listened to his dad’s coaching. “Sure, I know. I’ll be a man. I’ll be the strong one for her. I know, Dad. I know. Yeah. Okay, bye.”

  He took out his pocket handkerchief, already dirty from wiping his fingers free of basketball gunk, found a cleaner spot and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath and held it. His dad was right. He had to be strong for Natalie. He had to tell her it would be OK, that it wouldn’t change anything between them, and that life would continue and would continue well. He would keep working hard, and they’d get another chance.

  JD’s breaths quickened. He got a flash of an image in his mind, an image he had fantasized about in recent weeks, of himself lifting little John Allen over his head in both hands, tossing the baby up and catching him, seeing his son smile, hearing him giggle. He felt himself choke, changed it into a cough. He was a school principal. He was a responsible man. He would be strong.

  ****

  Nurse What’s-Her-Face swung the door open wide for the umpteenth time and rolled her portable vital signs monitor up to the bed. Natalie couldn’t help but glance out into the hallway. Another bassinet rolled by with a young mother in a pink terry robe shuffling behind it. The door swung quickly back toward its closed position, but painfully lagged during the last few inches. Through the gap, Natalie saw people arriving, laughing, and pointing into the bassinet as the mother’s smile beamed through her fatigue.

  With a groan and a thud, the door shut at last. JD was with his parents in the waiting room, making calls, telling everyone they knew that their son was dead. Natalie read the name the nurse wrote in pretty cursive on the marker board again.