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As if he was the one who needed to get distance between them now, Ross went to the French doors opening onto the back porch. Holding each of the curved handles, he stared out into the yard. “Drew won’t help you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. He won’t. I can.”
She shook her head, though he couldn’t see her.
“Damn it, Jennifer,” he said, sounding more tired than angry. “Take the money and run. Make a life for yourself. Leave Drew behind.”
Why did it matter so much to him? Who was he trying to protect? And didn’t he care, just a little, that he would miss the chance to know his niece or nephew?
“I can’t do that,” she said.
“You’ll have to. One way or another, you’ll have to.”
She studied him, searching for the meaning behind his words, the thing he didn’t say. The reason he was so sure Drew would never accept his responsibilities.
And then she knew the problem. Knew with a sick kind of certainty, an unexpected clarity.
She looked away from him, out the window over the sink. A line of trees at the back of the property blocked the afternoon sun, but still the yard seemed warm and inviting. Flowers bloomed in a bed running the length of the fence that marked the right-hand lot line. Daisies and daylilies and snapdragons. Herbs grew in a raised bed in the middle of the lawn, basil, oregano, mint, and others she couldn’t identify.
One of the daylilies was taller than the rest. Taller by almost a foot. Absently she wondered why it had grown that way, what trick of genetics or cultivation had made it rise over its neighbors.
“He’s married, isn’t he?”
CHAPTER THREE
ROSS TURNED AWAY from the French doors. She felt his gaze and slowly moved her head until their eyes met. He didn’t say anything, but the truth was evident in his expression.
Of course Drew was married. She shouldn’t have expected anything else from him. And she supposed there were worse things for her child, growing up, to face. Drew could be dead. Or in prison.
But she’d hoped against hope he might actually want to be involved in his child’s upbringing. Now that seemed highly improbable. Like her father when she’d run away to find him, Drew had another life, another family. Though her father, at least, had had the decency not to be married to another woman when he’d slept with her mother.
“How long has he had a wife?” she asked.
“A couple of years.” Ross pulled out one of the spindle-back chairs at the kitchen table and sat down. He leaned forward, forearms on knees, hands clasped. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s hardly your fault,” she said, her anger at Drew spilling into her voice.
Ross ignored her tone. “Have a seat,” he said, pulling out another chair and positioning a third in front of it. “Put your feet up.”
She was too agitated to sit. “I’ve been in the car all day.”
“Suit yourself.” He watched her for a moment. “My offer still stands.”
Idly she wondered exactly what his offer was. How much money was he willing to pay for her to go away? Of course, even if it was, to him, a pittance, it would surely allow her to take care of herself and the baby for a few years until she could finish paying off her mother’s medical bills. Start saving again.
She leaned against the counter, hugging herself. “You want me to leave town,” she said. “Leave before contacting Drew. Never tell him, so he can maintain his marriage without having to pay a price for what he did.”
Her words sounded confrontational, but she felt herself wavering, wondering if she should do as Ross suggested—take what he offered and disappear. She could drive the coastal route back to California, stop at cute tourist towns, pretend she’d only gone on a sight-seeing vacation. She might even be able to talk Benita Alvarez into giving her back her old job at the office supply warehouse.
“Yes,” Ross said. “That’s what I want.”
She had to admire his honesty. But suddenly her moment of weakness had passed, replaced by anger and indignation. Jennifer recalled her conversation with Drew at the tiny bistro—eight tables in all and the cheapest appetizer cost more than she made in an hour—when she’d asked him directly whether he was involved with anyone. He’d sat there across the linen-draped table and lied to her as easily as he breathed. No hesitation. No awkwardness. The perfect hint of self-deprecating charm in his answer. No clue that he was married. Committed.
“I thought we were two unattached adults,” she said, the words coming out hard.
“I believe you.”
“He’s put me in a really crappy position.”
“Jennifer.”
“So I’m not particularly in a mood to disappear. He lied to me, right to my face, and if I slink off, that means he gets away with it. And I don’t really want to hear how it’s going to be tough for his wife. She’ll just have to face reality.”
“Jennifer,” he said again, trying to slow her down.
She looked right at him. Waited to hear what he would say. Realized she wouldn’t like it, not a bit.
“His wife is pregnant.”
The news made her feel as if she were on an elevator that had stopped too quickly. As if her big belly had continued moving and was now ten feet below the rest of her body.
“Oh.” Somehow a pregnancy seemed even worse than if Drew and his wife had already had a child. She knew firsthand what a fragile and emotional time this was. Your whole life was filled with a sense of possibility and joy, but also fear.
Fear that something would go wrong. Fear that you would lose your unborn baby. Fear that your husband would desert you or have a trashy affair with another woman, some tramp he’d known in high school.
Shame washed through her.
But she hadn’t known.
Jennifer walked over and took the chair Ross had offered her a few minutes earlier, then sat with her hands clasped under her stomach. On the table was a single small flower in a narrow stem vase. She didn’t know the variety. White petals, each with a flare of blue moving out from the yellow center.
She stared at it and tried to keep her voice from wobbling. “How pregnant?”
“Six months.”
Six months? Six?
She told herself to keep it together, despite the awful coincidence. Told herself she could be better than this screwed-up situation.
Buck up, honey. Time to be strong.
“She’s due the week before you,” Ross said.
“Was the baby an accident?” she asked. “Or had they been planning to have one?” Not that Ross necessarily would have known.
But apparently he did. “Lucy has wanted kids for a long time.” His tone was grim.
Jennifer looked up, met his gaze. Now she understood why he thought Drew would never support or acknowledge his child—and she wished she didn’t. To harbor the illusion Drew was just a garden-variety sleaze would have been nice. Now she had to deal with the fact that he was despicable. He’d slept with her while he and his wife had been trying to conceive a child. He’d fathered two babies in one week.
“Does Lucy—” she tried the name on her tongue, not really liking the sound of it “—know the kind of man he is?”
And while she waited for Ross to reply, she had to ask herself the same question. Did you? The answer was painful. Because some part of her had known. Known not to trust him. Known he was capable of something like this. Yet she’d allowed him into her bed.
She took little consolation from the fact that it never would have happened if he hadn’t caught her at a vulnerable moment right before the holidays, a time that had made her feel raw and alone, with her closest friends out of town and the recent loss of her mother weighing more heavily than usual. She’d needed something familiar. Drew had been a person from her past. Somehow that had comforted her, even though their shared history was a source of ambivalence.
But she shouldn’t have been such obliging prey. She shouldn’t have been so easily taken in by him.
A married man. Whose wife was already pregnant.
The craziest piece of it all, though, was that she still couldn’t regret sleeping with him. It had given her the precious baby inside her.
“I don’t know if she does,” Ross said at last. “But I do know she loves him.”
“Will she still?” Will she still love him when she has proof of his infidelity? Will she still love a husband who impregnated another woman?
Ross didn’t answer. His jaw was tight. A vein pulsed at his temple.
It was a pointless question. No one could predict how someone else might react to such circumstances. But she sensed this woman’s feelings would matter to Ross. His sister-in-law was one of the people he cared about, whose well-being and happiness he wanted to preserve. It was very noble of him.
“Don’t think this makes me less interested in confronting him.” She placed a hand flat on the tabletop. “You want me to go away. But I hope you understand that if Drew is going to try to reject his child, he has to look me in the eyes as he does it.”
Ross watched her. He seemed to read something inside her, to assess her resolve. Finally he stood. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll arrange a meeting.”
ROSS CLOSED HIMSELF in his study to make the call. He sat for a long moment behind his dark mahogany desk, figuring out how to handle the conversation.
Jennifer was so sure of her need to see Drew. So sure it was the best thing for her and the baby. He didn’t agree, but perhaps he was wrong about his brother and the way Drew would conduct himself. Perhaps Drew would seize the chance to do the right thing, to become the man he always should have been.
Not likely. And who knew what the right thing was in this case? He didn’t see any resolution that didn’t result in someone getting hurt.
It was just past six, so he punched in Drew’s number at the law firm on the chance he would still be at work. Voice mail answered after five rings, and Ross hung up.
He dialed Drew at home in Vancouver. Lucy picked up, as he’d anticipated, but still he heard her familiar soft voice and had to force himself to sound normal. He hated to know more about her life than she did.
“Hey, Luce.”
“Oh, hi,” she said.
“The baby doing well?”
She gave a small laugh. “As far as I can tell.”
He thought of how it had felt to cup Jennifer’s stomach, to feel her child move inside her. Incredible. And not an experience he would ever share with Lucy. They had certain lines they were careful not to cross now.
“Is Drew there?”
“His car just pulled into the drive. I’ll go get him.”
Ross picked up a pencil on his desk and tapped it against a yellow legal pad. Gazed distractedly around the study. Like the living room, it was missing its drapes.
Drew came on the line a minute later.
Ross did the small-talk thing, something he and his brother were good at, and then got down to business. “I need you to come over,” he said, keeping his tone casual.
“Now?”
“Yeah. That would be good.”
“Hey, I just got home.”
Ross didn’t feel too worried about his brother’s convenience. “I know. When can you make it?”
“Not right now. Lucy’s got plans.”
“Later tonight, then.”
“Maybe. What’s this about?”
“Nine o’clock?”
Drew covered the mouthpiece. Ross heard a murmur of conversation.
Drew came back on. “I can be there at nine. What’s so important?”
“Just something I want to get handled. In person.”
“A mystery, huh? Okay, big bro. See you in a few.”
Ross hung up. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples, momentarily giving in to the frustration that rose inside him. He would have liked not to deal with this. He would have liked… What? For Jennifer not to have come to him? For her to have struggled on her own, raised his niece or nephew in a lonely little apartment somewhere? Or for her and Drew not to have conceived the baby—for them not to have slept together in the first place?
Well, yes, definitely that, he admitted to himself.
But it couldn’t be changed. And feeling the baby move had elicited an aching tenderness in him—one that vied with the wish for her not to be pregnant with his brother’s child.
Ross reached for the phone again. He needed to call someone from the free clinic who’d invited him to see an action flick with a group of friends that night. “Sorry to do this, Barbara, but I have to beg off.”
The nurse practitioner made an indignant sound. “Again?”
“Something came up.”
“Huh. That’s pretty convincing.”
“Seriously. Something did. Family stuff.”
“It’s not your mom, is it?”
“No, she’s fine.”
