His Surprise Son by WENDY WARREN

now, she’d choke. How high can a person’s blood pressure rise anyway, before she has a stroke?
    When Izzy’s phone chimed inside her purse, she grabbed it, letting her spoon clatter onto the saucer that held the cup of whipped cream. Holliday’s face appeared on her cell phone screen.
    Thank you. “Excuse me,” she mumbled. “Hello!”
    “Hi. Just wanted to see how you’re doing. You looked so vulnerable when Derek and I left.” Holliday’s voice was gentle with concern.
    “Thanks. Wow. I completely forgot about the July Fourth band shell committee meeting.”
    “What?”
    “Yeah. Are you sure you need me tonight?”
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m at Hooligan’s with an old friend from high school.”
    “You’re with Nate?” Holly’s voice rose.
    “That’s right.”
    “Holy kamoly. And you want to leave?”
    “Right, right. Well, I suppose I can still make it if you absolutely have to have details about the food booth tonight.”
    “Oh, yes. I must have details tonight,” Holliday confirmed. “Not about the food, though.”
    “Obviously. Okay, I’ll leave here in a few minutes.”
    “Call me when you get home.”
    “Will do. Bye.” Izzy ended the call and arranged her features in what she hoped was an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. I’ve got to go. Committee meeting. I completely forgot.” Oh, man. Her relationship with Nate was turning her into the town Pinocchio.
    Nate’s head tilted speculatively, his smile gone. “No problem.”
    His lips barely moved, and guilt stabbed her. She needed to see him again, to ask important questions before she decided if, when and how to tell him about Eli. But first she needed to regroup. Right. I am not running away. I am regrouping.
    “Well, thanks,” she said, already sliding across the booth. Talking to Holliday would help. Holliday, after all, had a lot more experience with men, even if she’d never been in exactly Izzy’s situation. “Thanks for dessert and...everything.”
    Nate gave her a brief nod, that was all, but he rose politely. After an awkward moment—Handshake? Hug?—Izzy stupidly patted his arm and started walking. She felt his eyes on her back until Hooligan’s heavy oak door closed behind her.
    She didn’t wait to get home to phone Holliday. Switching to her headset, she made the call and pointed her car toward home. Holly answered instantly.
    “Nate was coming back. Before his parents told him I’d miscarried, he’d planned to come home from college.” The words spilled out like the tears suddenly running down Izzy’s cheeks. Her friend inhaled sharply. “And that’s not all. He bought me ice cream tonight, and I got déjà vu, and I don’t think—” She gulped. “I don’t know if I ever really stopped l-l-lov—” The tears began to pour in earnest.
    “It’s okay,” Holliday soothed quietly as Izzy became unable to speak. “I get it. I get it.”
    * * *
    When Izzy left Hooligan’s, it had not occurred to Nate that they would be together the next afternoon, watching a placid stretch of Long River, tracking the progress of kayakers and tourists on bikes as they navigated the trail along the water.
    “I was surprised when you phoned,” Nate said, trying not to stare at Izzy, who had donned pale blue shorts, a deeper blue tank top and a sheer, patterned overshirt for this, their second deliberate get-together. She looked utterly casual and sexy as hell. Her hair was loose, falling below her shoulders in the straight, silky curtain he remembered. “When you left the way you did last night, I wondered if I would see you again at all.”
    “Sorry.” She glanced at him, seeming shy and...something else. “I was caught off guard last night,” she admitted. “Especially when you said you’d decided to come back home. It was a surprise.”
    He nodded. “It was frustrating not to know where you went or how to get in touch with you. I’m not blaming,” he hastened to add. “Just saying.”
    Izzy began to