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okay?”
    “Yeah, I guess it’s first-time jitters.”
    “Jake will make her feel better. He knows how to handle her.”
    I nodded. “I can’t believe she’s going to be a mother. I mean—”
    “She’s young,” he said. It wasn’t what I’d been about to say.
    “Not really. I meant, it’s such a life-changing event, and it wasn’t planned. I think she would have liked to have had a bit more time for it to be just her and Jake.”
    Luke chuckled. “I’m sure Jake feels the same way.”
    I got the impression from Jake that their pregnancy was exactly what he wanted. He’d been talking about kids for a while. Luke clearly saw things differently, or he was projecting his own feelings about being a father. It was evidence of how new our relationship was that we hadn’t discussed a family. Perhaps we didn’t need to. He’d been clear about not wanting kids when he was with Emma, and he’d joked with Jake when Haven said she was pregnant that he was glad it wasn’t him. I guess I had to accept that if I wanted Luke, a child wouldn’t be part of the equation. A hollowness swelled inside me.
    “You okay?” he asked, stroking my hair and bringing me back to the present.
    “Yeah, just feel terrible about lying to Haven.” And about giving up the possibility of being a mother.
    “Don’t feel bad, beautiful. We’ll tell her tomorrow.”
    Telling Haven would be the next step. I couldn’t even manage spending my sleeping hours away from Luke, so she needed to know. Still, my head was full of possibilities of how she would react.
    “I need her to be on board, but I’m ready.”
    “I know. She will be. She was just worried before. She thought I was going to jerk you around, or that it would all go wrong and she’d be left with a broken family. But it’s fine. It’s different now; she’ll see that.”
    I placed my palm just under his ribcage and watched my hand move up and down with his breathing. “It worries me too,” I said in a small voice. “I couldn’t handle not having . . .” I had to stop talking because I could feel my voice begin to quiver. The thought of losing him and Haven was too painful.
    Luke slid his hand beneath mine. “I’ll never let that happen, Ashleigh. We’ll always be family to each other. I promise.”
    I took a deep breath and let myself be comforted by his words.
    “How are we going to tell her? This is new and—”
    “Ashleigh, this is anything but new. I’ve known you my whole life. Leave my sister to me. I’ve got it covered.”

 
    Luke
    Shopping wasn’t something I enjoyed, and I certainly would never normally interrupt a day in the office to elbow my way between shoppers, but that was exactly what I was doing. Ashleigh had made it clear that I was going overboard on the flower buying. I just felt such an urge to keep her thinking about me, to make her smile, to do things that I knew would make her happy. So I found myself making some time in the middle of the day to buy her a gift.
    I rarely saw her spoil herself. I knew she’d struggled when she bought her flat, and Haven had told me that she hadn’t gone to Chicago with them because she couldn’t afford it and wouldn’t let Jake pay for her flight and hotel room. So if she couldn’t spend money on herself, I would make up for it. I had in mind what I wanted to get her. We were going to tell Haven tonight, and I wanted her to feel as good as she looked when we did. I wanted her to be thinking about what I’d do to her later, rather than nervous about dinner. I’d never bought women’s underwear before. I really wasn’t that kind of man. Emma had once told me I was the least romantic person she’d ever met, and while we’d been together, she’d been right. Ashleigh had uncovered a new side of me.
    “Can I help you, sir?” One of the sales assistants asked as I wandered into the high-end boutique I’d found on Google earlier that morning.
    “Yeah, I want to buy a present for . . .” We