Declan stood in our private honeymoon suite, a drink in hand, some stubble on his handsome jaw. He wore lightweight pants and nothing else, the warm island breeze caressing us. “Let’s go to the Kavanaugh holiday party.” And here I was thinking I was the one about to drop a bomb. I’d just taken a test in the bathroom, the kind with the stick you peed on. It had a cross on it and if my shaking hands and nervously excited brain were correctly processing the instructions on the folded-up piece of paper from the box, it meant that I was pregnant. Declan and I were going to have a baby. But here he was telling me that he was ready to meet his family. He’d had time to think it over, to adjust to the bombshell of his father’s identity. He’d gotten over the pain and hurt and fear and now he was ready and willing to take a chance. “You want to go, right?” he asked me as I stood there, stunned and silent. “Um, yeah.” I shook my head, trying to clear the thoughts of baby rattles and baby blankets and soft, pink little baby hands holding on to my finger.
