Free The Baby Agenda by Janice Kay Johnson Page B

three full weeks. He’d said it might be that long, but she couldn’t help worrying. He’d dismissed her concerns, but from what she’d read, Zimbabwe under Mugabe wasn’t a safe place. Not many nonprofits were working there right now, and she suspected the potential danger was why.
    There was no email from him today, either, she was disappointed to see. She’d send him another one tonight, Moira decided, something chatty and casual. She could tell him about the Fletchers. He’d undoubtedly had difficult clients and would sympathize.
    She ate quickly, drinking cranberry juice with her ham sandwich and longing for her usual iced tea. She missed caffeine. She craved caffeine. Especially these days, when she tended to get drowsy right after lunch. Her body really, really wanted her to take a nap. Even the nine hours she’d slept last night apparently didn’t cut it.
    Ruefully she laid her splayed hands on her belly and gently rubbed. For Pete’s sake, she was only halfway through this pregnancy, and she was so blasted big. Didn’t it figure? Of course, Will was an exceptionally large man, which meant his child probably wouldn’t be petite. She thought he was at least six foot three and maybe taller, with shoulders so broad he’d alarmed her at first sight. His enormous hands had dwarfed hers. She imagined what his hand would look like on her rounded stomach, and felt a disturbingly sexual twinge at the image. No one had ever touched her the way he had, so gently even though she could feel the power he kept curbed. She wondered if, as big as he was, he often felt like the classic bull in a china shop.
    With a sigh, Moira managed to get herself back to work.
    Jennifer Fletcher did want something else torn out when they met the next morning.
    Bright eyed, her dark hair artfully disheveled, she swept in and said, “I keep worrying that there won’t be enough storage here in the kitchen. And last night it came to me. What if we bump out the dining area here with a bay window instead—” she waved one hand towardthe large, small-paned window she’d been measuring for blinds last week “—and then we could squeeze in a sort of butler’s pantry on the other side of the doorway?” She gave first Moira, then Dave, a limpid look and waited expectantly.
    Moira heard a rumble rising from the middle-aged contractor and interceded hastily. “Let me do some measuring and we’ll see, Jennifer. Did you consult with Stella?” The kitchen designer, Moira suspected, had long since thrown up her hands, or maybe thrown in the towel was more accurate, but she might be a voice of reason.
    â€œOh, I know Stella will agree with me. Absolutely she will.” Jennifer’s smile was radiant. “With Ron and I entertaining so often, we can’t live without enough storage for serving pieces. And I have four different sets of china, you know.”
    Moira knew. Normally this would be Dave’s problem and Stella’s problem, not hers, but if they were to knock out this wall…
    She made no promises, but soothed Jennifer, who made a whirlwind tour of the unfinished house, pronounced herself delighted and left. Another fifteen minutes, and Moira had Dave settled down, too.
    As she walked to her car, the faint flutters she’d been feeling in her stomach intensified, as if the baby had decided to take up swimming the butterfly.
    â€œJust wait’ll you’re in the last month and the kid weighs thirteen pounds. And then discovers the trampoline,” Charlotte had warned darkly. She was eight months along now and could hardly get out of a chair. Moira had heard Gray clearing his throat to suppress his laugh at the idea of a thirteen-pound fetus, but he’d had the wisdom to have noticed that Charlotte’s sense of humor seemed to have waned recently. Moira was beginning to see why.
    She settled with relief behind the wheel of her