“Aren't you going to talk to him?” Sophie urged her.
“Of course,” Laura replied. “But he's in there with all his firemen buddies.”
“Tough luck,” Sophie retorted scornfully. “His daughter is three months old and he's never even met her. I think this is worth interrupting his buddy time for.”
Laura turned and smiled gently at Sophie. She laid a hand on her arm to calm her friend down before Sophie could be overtaken by her righteous anger, storm in, and sock Daniel in the face.
“It's all right, Soph,” she soothed. “I've got this. I think maybe you should go home. I need to do this alone.”
“Are you sure?” Sophie asked her emphatically. “This is kind of a big deal and you don't look the least bit overwhelmed.”
“I think I'm in shock,” Laura admitted. “I didn't think I'd ever see him again.”
“What are you going to say to him?”
“What can I say?” Laura asked helplessly. “I can't not tell him about Annie. I'm just going to have to come clean.”
“Well, don't let him worm his way out of it,” Sophie said sternly. “Make sure he doesn't give you a fake number and skip town again.”
“It's not like he went to Colorado to get away from me,” Laura told her. “He didn't know about the baby then.”
“He's in for a surprise , then,” Sophie said.
“Please Sophie, go home,” Laura said softly. “I've got this. I'll call you as soon as it's over.”
Sophie didn't look pleased to be leaving Laura with this monster of a man who had impregnated her best friend and left her in the lurch, but she respected Laura enough to let her do things her own way and agreed to leave her to talk to him.
“You know where I am if you need me,” she told her. “And no matter what happens with Daniel, you've still got the rest of us.”
Sophie gave Laura a supportive hug and headed off down the sidewalk, leaving Laura to face Daniel alone. She stood for a few moments outside the café holding onto Annie's stroller and looking through the glass window at Daniel laughing and joking with his friends. He looked just as Laura remembered him; strong, handsome, confident. Even though she was about to face him with big news and big decisions, Laura still couldn't help the flutter that came into her chest when she looked at him. Memories of their night together came flooding back and although she recognized him, she wondered if he would recognize her as she was now. He'd left her as a sexy, available woman and would find her now as a pretty, worn out mother of a newborn. And what would he think of Annie?
Of course Laura's daughter was a beautiful, happy little girl, but as loved as she was now, she had still been a surprise and while Laura was over her own shock, she now had to present her little surprise to a man who had been blissfully unaware.
Inside the café, Daniel was smiling that incredible smile of his. He was more tanned than when he had left, but also more toned, if that was possible. He looked healthy and in good spirits, and Laura wasn't sure she liked being the woman who was going to bring that all crashing down.
People behaved as though she had a right to be angry with him, but Laura didn't see it that way. Their night together was supposed to have been a single night of passion, and neither of them had foreseen that anything more would come of it. If Laura hadn't have gotten pregnant, then her one night with Daniel would have been just that—one crazy, heated night with a stranger a year ago.
Daniel was a father now, and she a mother, and the three-month old baby in Laura's stroller was a living bond that now existed between her and the man inside the café. No matter how much she tried to forget about him or move on, they had created something together that no amount of time could undo. The time had come now to have a conversation with this man. that Laura had been waiting to have with him, for a very long time.
She pushed open the door of the café and lifted the wheels of the stroller over the doorframe. She pushed the stroller over to the table where Daniel was drinking coffee with two other tanned, muscular men and waited silently until he looked up and spotted her.
Laura wondered if he would recognize her, but the look in his eyes when they settled on her face told her he knew exactly who she was. His expression was firstly one of delight, chased quickly by surprise, and then, when he looked into the stroller and saw a little girl of an age that matched a certain timeline, a fleeting look of terror.
“Hello,” Laura said.
Daniel put down his coffee and smiled in a flustered, panicked way.
“Hello,” he said.
He turned to the other firefighters and told them that he needed to catch up with an old friend and then he followed Laura back out of the coffee shop and they walked together up the high street with a tense, uneasy silence hanging between them until they reached the park and stopped at a bench on the grass.