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small somebody was totally dependent on him and Kate. He felt a velvet bond wrap around him.
    The doctor removed the stethoscope, gave a few perfunctory instructions, and left. After Kate rearranged her clothing, she looked up at Michael and he saw the same awe-stricken sense of wonder and responsibility he felt mirrored in her eyes.
    He pulled her into his arms and put his hand on her abdomen and kissed her. The emotion he felt was electric and too big, too powerful to be contained in a single moment. Kate covered his hand with hers and passionately responded to him. Michael felt a wholly primitive need to claim her as his again. “Doctor’s office,” he muttered to himself and pulled back.
    “We could really mess this up if we’re not careful,” she said.
    “We won’t,” he said, and he was deadly determined.
    “How can you be sure?”
    “I’ve got the money. You’ve got the heart.”
    Her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “If anything should ever happen to me…” she began.
    “It won’t,” Michael said immediately, violently rejecting the notion. “I won’t let it.”
    She smiled gently. “I didn’t know you had final say over those things. Life and death happen, Michael,” she told him. “If something happens to me, your money won’t be enough. You’ll have to grow a heart.”
    The very thought of it made Michael break into a sweat.
     
    Time was ticking, and Kate felt her wedding date rushing toward her. Unable to bear the tension in Michael’s apartment any longer, she decided to pay a visit to the home for unwed teenage mothers. She must have stuffed the paper describing the charity in her purse. Despite the fact that she wasn’t a teenager and a marriage was in her near future, Kate felt a strong affinity for the group.
    The home, which had been a small bed and breakfast hotel in the early 1900s, was located in the west end of town. The building reminded her of a genteel elderly lady, a bit worn, but clean and, in a way, elegant. The receptionist, Tina, who greeted her was six months pregnant and sixteenyears old. “I’m sorry the director was called away. One of the girls went into labor. I can tell you a little about the place though.”
    “Please do,” Kate said, seeing in Tina a maturity beyond her fresh-faced years.
    “Everyone who comes here is drug-free and has pretty much been kicked out of home with no financial help. The home offers free counseling and medical care. An instructor comes five days a week and teaches us the basics. Everyone pitches in with cooking, cleaning and managing the office. We have a curfew, but since most of the fathers have disappeared, most of us aren’t interested in dating right now,” she said wryly.
    “What happens to the babies?”
    “Some girls put them up for adoption. Most don’t, which is part of what our director, Ms. Lambert, is working on right now. A lot of girls don’t want to give up the babies, but we don’t have good job skills. Ms. Lambert has been looking for someone to teach us computer stuff, but volunteers are tough to find because those people really rake in the bucks.”
    It was strange, but Kate felt more at home here than she did in Michael’s apartment. She would be bored out of her gourd if all she did was spend her days shopping and house-hunting. “I think I may know someone who can help,” she said. “What kind of computers do you have?”
    Tina wrinkled her nose. “One computer,” shesaid, pointing to an ancient machine in the back office.
    Kate glanced at it and sighed. “A little younger than the house, huh?”
    Tina laughed.
    “Well, we have no place to go but up.”
    Kate left the home, stopped by a computer discount store, and purchased two machines. She spent the afternoon and evening setting them up at her old duplex. She craved the familiarity and since her lease wasn’t up, there was technically no reason she couldn’t visit the place every now and then.
    A knock sounded at the door just before it