Waking Up in Charleston by Sherryl Woods

“Can somebody get the door for me?”
    Nadine sprang up to do it. Maggie and Dinah immediately began poking in the bags to see what he’d brought for lunch, pulling out huge containers of coleslaw and barbecue and potato salad.
    “Pickles?” Dinah queried. “Where are the pickles?”
    “Right here, little mother-to-be,” Maggie responded, retrieving a plastic container of dill pickles. “I imagine you think they’re all for you.”
    “Of course,” Dinah said, reaching for them.
    During the exchange Amanda kept her gaze on Caleb. She’d never seen him looking quite so out of his depth before. She crossed the room. “Can I get you something to drink? A soda, maybe? Or the guys have beer in a cooler outside.”
    “No, I’m fine,” he said with another of those halfhearted smiles.
    “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she pressed, keeping her voice low while Maggie, Nadine and Dinah chattered on.
    “Nothing’s going on,” he said more tersely than he’d ever spoken to her before. He immediately winced. “Sorry. Bad morning, I guess. I’ll go outside and take out my foul mood on some wood. Hammering a few nails should make me feel better.”
    Amanda reluctantly let him go. How could he claim that the two of them were friends when it was apparently so one-sided? He was always there for her, but the one time he looked as if he needed a friend, he shut her out.
    She might not have a lot of experience with friendship, but she knew that wasn’t the way it was supposed to work, which meant that the minute this crowd dispersed, she and Caleb were going to have a chat. She was going to get to the bottom of whatever had put that lost and devastated look on his face.
     
    Caleb wanted to kick himself for betraying even a hint of his reaction to Amanda’s comments about having another baby. Thankfully she’d only picked up on the fact that there was something wrong, not what had triggered his mood. He had a hunch, though, that he hadn’t heard the last of it. She was going to get in his face the very first chance she had.
    Which meant, of course, that he needed to be away from her house one step ahead of everyone else. The minute the food had been served and the kids had gone inside for their naps, he made his excuses and started around the side of the house. Even though it made him feel like the worst sort of coward, he did it while Amanda was inside.
    Unfortunately, the woman apparently had radar. She met him the second he turned the corner into the front yard.
    “Going somewhere?” she inquired sweetly, her expression knowing.
    “I have an appointment,” he said. It was only a slight stretch of the truth. He was going over to Mary Louise’s later to talk to her parents about the baby. She’d called that morning and asked him to be there when she broke the news. She’d sounded so nervous and uncertain, he’d agreed immediately.
    There it was again. The whole baby thing. It seemedlike everywhere he turned these days people were talking about babies. It was beginning to take a toll.
    “Oh?” Amanda said, her expression skeptical. “Anything you’d care to talk about?”
    “Sorry, it’s confidential,” he said evasively. “And I really do need to get going.”
    She studied him with apparent disappointment. “I thought you trusted me more than this.”
    “I told you, this appointment is confidential.”
    “I’m not talking about that,” she said impatiently. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re obviously upset and you’re trying to hide the reason from me.”
    “I can’t talk about it, Amanda. I really can’t.” He’d never discussed it with anyone, and Amanda was the last person with whom he’d share it. He hated the idea that it might change the way she looked at him.
    “Then it’s all part of this confidential meeting you’re going to?” she asked.
    For the first time since he’d known her, Caleb lied. “Yes,” he said. He could live with the lie far more