Pregnant by the Texan(33)
And she stuck to her guns. When they got back to the hotel, she told Aaron good-night early in the evening so she could get ready to leave for Lubbock with him the next morning.
As soon as she was alone in her suite, she went over her notes for the next day, but her thoughts kept jumping to Aaron. Every hour they spent together bound her a little more to him, making his friendship a bit more important to her. Now she was counting on him for moral support tomorrow.
* * *
The next morning, when she went to the lobby to meet Aaron and head for Lubbock, she saw him the minute she emerged from the elevator. The sight of him in a flawless navy suit with a red tie took her breath away and made her forget her worries about speaking. He looked incredibly handsome, so handsome, she wondered what he saw in her. She was plain from head to toe. Plain clothes, plain hair, no makeup. This handsome man wanted to marry her and she had turned him down. Her insides fluttered and a cold fear gripped her. Was she willing to let him go and marry someone else? The answer still came up the same. She couldn’t marry without love. Yet Aaron was special, so she hoped she wasn’t making a big mistake
This baby coming into my life is a gift, not an obligation. She remembered his words from the night before last. How many single men who had just been surprised to learn they would be a dad would have that attitude? Was she rejecting a very special man?
He saw her and she smiled, resisting the temptation to raise her hand to smooth her hair.
She was aware of her plain brown suit, her skirt ending midcalf. She wore a tan blouse with a round neck beneath her jacket. Her low-heeled brown pumps were practical and her hair was in its usual bun. When she crossed the lobby, no heads would turn, but she didn’t mind because it had been that way all her life.
When she walked up to him, he took her arm. “The car is waiting,” he said. “You look pretty.”
“Thank you. Sometimes I wonder if you need to get your eyes checked.”
He smiled. “The last time I was tested in the air force, I had excellent eyesight,” he remarked. “You sell yourself short, Stella. Both on giving this talk and on how you look.”
She didn’t tell him that men rarely told her she was pretty. They thanked her for her help or asked her about their problems, just as boys had in school, but they didn’t tell her how pretty she looked.
In minutes they were on the highway. She pulled out a notebook and a small stack of cards wrapped with a rubber band. “These are my notes. I have a slide presentation. I think the pictures may speak for themselves. People are stunned when they see these.”
When she walked into the private meeting room in a country club, her knees felt weak and the butterflies in her stomach changed to ice. The room was filled with men and women in business suits—mostly men. It was a business club and she couldn’t imagine talking to them. She glanced at Aaron.
“Aaron, I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can. Here comes Boyce Johnson, my friend who is president,” he said, and she saw a smiling, brown-haired man approaching them. He extended his hand to Aaron, who made introductions that she didn’t even hear as she smiled and went through the motions.
All too soon, Boyce called the group to order and someone made an introduction that Aaron must have written, telling about how she had helped after the storm hit Royal. And then she was left facing the forty or so people who filled the room, all looking at her and waiting for her to begin.
* * *