Free Vegas Pregnancy Surprise by Shirley Jump Page B

“Lost.”
    Alex had pushed her dinner aside, too, the three of them engrossed in the conversation instead of the meal. “Lost as in needing a GPS system or some other kind of lost?”
    “Like he was searching for who he was.” And oh, how she could relate to him. To the year she had spent married, thinking she’d made the biggest mistake of her life, then the two years after the divorce, looking for her footing again. That was what she had felt, too. Lost, trying to find out who she was and what she really wanted in life. She thought she’d known—until the last couple of months. “So I started talking to him.”
    “You started talking to him?” Alex repeated. “You? The woman who gave us a stern lecture about not talking to strangers the whole way down here?”
    Molly laughed. “Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was being in Vegas. Maybe it was seeing what happened to Jayne when her engagement broke up so disastrously and I just sort of had this carpe diem moment, but, yes, I introduced myself, and mentioned that I was a kindergarten teacher in town with friends for the weekend.”
    “How did you go from that to…?” Serena gestured toward Molly’s belly.
    “We found out we had a lot in common.” Or at least, she’d thought that at the time. The man she had met that night had been so much more relaxed, looser. Happier. Not so buttoned-down and scheduled. Had it been the alcohol? The setting? Or something else? Something real? “And there was an attraction there. A really big one.”
    She could still feel the desire that had sizzled between them. The breathless anticipation that had caught in her throat after the first time they’d kissed and she’d wondered when he would kiss her again, touch her again. Her mind painted a crystal clear picture, as if she was there now and Linc was a breath away from touching her.
    “And you decided to act on that attraction with a perfect stranger?” Alex said, interrupting Molly’s thoughts. “That is so out of character for you, Molly.”
    “I know. Which I guess is why I did it. One minute I’m talking to him, the next we’re holding hands, then kissing, and before we know it we’re getting a room upstairs. I wanted to…” She let out a long breath and looked past her friends, down the Vegas strip, not seeing the flashing neon and endless sea of twenty-four-hour businesses, but seeing instead the person she’d been for that one night. Someone other than dependable, predictable Molly, who did the same thing every single day, and hadn’t seen anything good come out of it except a bad marriage and a worse divorce. “I wanted to see what it would be like if I acted on my impulses. Just once.”
    “And how was it?” Serena asked, a devilish grin crossing her lips. “Acting on your impulses, I mean.”
    Molly sighed. “Wonderful.” Amazing. Incredible. There weren’t enough adjectives in the thesaurus to describe that evening. The way he’d taken his time, made her feel like the only woman in the world. She’d felt treasured, special, beautiful. The night had been hot and passionate, yes, but at the same time oddly romantic.
    “So…where is Mr. Wonderful? Does he know about the baby?”
    “He’s here, in Vegas.” Completely not the same Mr. Wonderful as that night, but Molly didn’t add that. If she did, she’d probably cry, and she refused to shed one tear over Linc. She had too much to look forward to right now with the baby. “And, no, he doesn’t know. I’ll tell him. Soon.”
    Alex sat back and eyed Molly. “I get the feeling you’re leaving out part of the story. Maybe the most important part. Like what happened when you got to Vegas and reunited with super-hot guy from the bar.”
    “Nothing happened. When I saw him again, he wasn’t…the same as when I met him before.” She toyed with her drink. Her appetite had deserted her, replaced by the bitter taste of disenchantment. She’d pictured such a different scenario than what