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That meant something.
    “I should have helped more with the party,” she said. “I could have had the crew decorate this morning so Beth wouldn’t have to.”
    Randy chuckled, leaning his head back against the wall. “I doubt Beth would have given up that much control. Besides, if it is her appendix, this would have happened whether she was decorating or not.”
    “But she’s so stressed with the wedding.” Will slid one denim-clad leg beneath her. “I could have taken care of the party. It’s not as if Sid cares one way or another how fancy the decorations are.”
    Randy rolled his head to the right to meet Will’s eyes. “The same way you want to go in there and take care of Beth, she wants to take care of Sid. That’s what friends do.”
    Will rubbed her upper arms as if trying to warm herself. “I guess you’re right. I haven’t had friends like this for a while.”
    He let the silence hold for a few extra seconds, then asked, “Why’s that?”
    His gypsy, as he’d come to think of her, met his eyes with wide blue ones. The color reminded him of his mother’s birthstone, blue topaz.
    “I—”
    “Where’s Curly?” Sid yelled, charging through the front door of the clinic, Lucas close on her heels. “What happened?”
    “Take a breath,” Randy said, irritated that they’d interrupted whatever Will had been about to say. “Beth bent over in pain while we were at Dempsey’s. We rushed her here, and now she and Joe are with the doctor.”
    “Did she get hit?” Lucas asked. “Fall off of something? Was there any warning?”
    “Joe says she’s been acting strange for a couple weeks,” Randy answered, “but that might not have anything to do with this. She started sweating, then her face went pale. Next thing we knew, she was bent over and moaning.”
    “We need to go back there and find out what’s going on,” Sid said, heading for the door to the exam rooms.
    “Wait,” Randy said, but in that second, Joe walked through the door, his face fish-belly white.
    Everyone in the lobby fell silent, frozen in place as if the slightest twitch would shatter the man before them. Without a word, Joe dropped into a chair.
    Randy flashed back seventeen years, to the day his world changed forever. His mother, the beacon of the family, happy and healthy only hours before, was gone. She, too, had curled over in pain.
    “Joe?” Lucas said, giving Sid’s shoulder a squeeze as he slid by her. “What is it? What’s wrong with Beth?”
    Joe looked up with surprise in his eyes, as if he’d forgotten they were all there. He shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with Beth.”
    Randy let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Then what is it?” he asked. “Why was she screaming like that?”
    Joe leaned back in his chair. “We’re going to have a baby.”

CHAPTER 3
    I can’t believe it,” Will muttered for the third time in the last hour. Maybe the fourth. “Did you see that coming?” she asked Sid, who was sitting to her left and staring at her beer bottle.
    Sid shook her head. “Nope. Not at all.”
    The party, though it was more subdued than the word implied, had returned to Dempsey’s without Joe and Beth. Beth had been given strict orders to put her feet up and get plenty of rest. Her blood pressure had been through the roof, which had stressed the baby, forcing the little bugger to make his irritation known. Or her irritation. Too early to tell on that one.
    So strange. A baby.
    “Why do you all look like this is the end of the world?” Randy asked. “She’s having a baby, not carrying the plague.”
    “Mom and Dad will be home tomorrow,” Lucas said, returning to the table after calling his parents to share the news. “I told Mom that Beth and Joe wouldn’t want them to cut their vacation short, but I think she started packing their suitcases the moment I said ‘baby.’”
    Relief fluttered through Will. The Dempseys’ return meant she wouldn’t have to