Free Right by Her Side by Christie Ridgway Page B

at her. “But yes, you have something to tell us?”
    Rebecca’s face burned. “I, um, I…” She tried imagining the words she would use. Trent Crosby and I…Yesterday, Trent Crosby and I… I’m married to Trent Crosby.
    â€œHey, hey, hey.” Sydney’s grin died. “I was just kidding around, not trying to make you miserable.”
    But that was how Rebecca felt. Miserable. How could she and someone like Trent Crosby, CEO, make things work between them? Her hand crept over her stomach. Eisenhower, I have to get us out of this mess.
    â€œCome on,” Sydney took her arm and led her toward a nearby table. “You sit down and I’ll bring you something hot to drink. It looks as if we’re almost ready to start.”
    Rebecca noticed the room had filled. She waved to a few friends and then managed a smile for Sydney when she sat down beside her with two disposable cups of fragrant herbal tea. “I’m sorry, Sydney. My mind is scattered today. How are you and my darling friend Nicholas?”
    â€œDarling Nicholas is more darling by the day.” Sydney’s sigh sounded bittersweet. “I never knew how much I could love him and—” She glanced over at Rebecca and there was the glint of tears in her eyes. “You’ll think I’m silly.”
    Rebecca touched her friend’s shoulder. “I won’t.”
    â€œI get so afraid sometimes that someone will come along and take him away from me.”
    â€œI understand.” Patting the other woman’s shoulder, Rebecca felt her own eyes sting. Knowing Sydney’s story—the baby had been abandoned by a former college friend who had been staying with her and that Sydney had applied to be the baby’s foster mother and then later adopted him—only made the voiced fearmore poignant. “It’s common to feel that way, you know that from what we’ve heard at our meetings here. It’s natural and not silly whatsoever.”
    Rebecca couldn’t imagine losing Eisenhower. The baby was so real to her already. And wanting the best for her child was why she’d agreed to marry Trent. But could they make it work?
    â€œIt’s worse because of these nightmares that Nicholas keeps having,” Sydney went on to say. “He wakes up screaming and all he can tell me is that someone is taking him bye-bye. When I ask him who, he just shakes his head and starts crying.”
    â€œSomeone taking him bye-bye?” Rebecca questioned. Five-year-old Nicholas was usually more articulate than that.
    Sydney nodded, her gaze trained on her cup of tea. “It seems strange to me, too, because he hasn’t used the phrase bye-bye since he was a toddler. It’s as if the nightmares cause him to regress…or he’s remembering something that actually happened.”
    â€œOh, surely not, surely—”
    â€œCan we bring the meeting to order?”
    Rebecca shot Sydney another sympathetic glance, but didn’t continue as the chatter in the room ceased. Morgan, wearing that big smile again, took his place at the front of the room near the fancy cake.
    â€œAre you trying to break our diets?” one of the male PAN members called from the back of the room. “I promised my wife I’d lose my spare tire by the time our baby arrives and you’re not helping, Morgan.”
    The crowd laughed. Morgan, too. “Today is not the day for diets,” he said. “Today is a day to celebrate, because one of our own is home, safe and sound.”
    Rebecca looked around, noting that everyone else was doing the same. Then, from the hallway outside the room, came the plaintive cry of a baby who had been jostled out of sleep. All heads whipped toward the door.
    In walked a smiling couple, a baby in the woman’s arms. The man turned to grasp the elbow of a teenage girl following behind them, then he brought her forward so he could wrap one arm