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Ross walked over to the front hall table. He picked up his silver letter opener—a wedding gift—and slit open a piece of junk mail from a wireless phone company.
The action was just the sort of thing Drew would do. Reading his mail while Ross tried to discuss something important with him. He knew it was rude. He regretted it. But it was the only way he could keep from hitting his brother.
Ross had never been a violent person. Outside of some martial arts training in his early twenties, he didn’t recall striking anyone in his life. His brother was the only person who ever made him feel this way, and he hated the power it gave Drew.
He scanned the contents of the envelope, not seeing it. Tossed the papers into the trash. “Yes, I believe her.”
Drew didn’t have anything to say to that. Ross expected him to make a fuss about family loyalty, about believing a virtual stranger over his own brother, but he was probably aware of how ridiculous that would sound.
Speaking of loyalty, he wondered what Drew knew about that summer, about what had happened between Jennifer and him. Because when you got down to it, his actions hadn’t been any more honorable than his brother’s. And he would have done a lot more than kiss her if she hadn’t called it to a halt.
“What are you going to do?” he asked Drew.
“Nothing. It’s not my baby.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Go to hell,” Drew muttered.
Ross took it as an admission of the truth, though he was sure Drew didn’t mean it that way. He felt his relationship with his brother shifting. Drew had failed the test. Things could never be the same. In the past he’d treated his brother with a kind of respect, had kept his hands out of Drew’s business. He’d suspected things, of course, but he’d refrained from digging, hadn’t wanted to know the truth.
And people who didn’t want to know the truth often got slapped with it.
“Lucy,” he said.
“What about her?”
“Think about it.”
“I’m thinking,” Drew said, in a tone that implied he saw absolutely nothing worth considering. “And I can’t think why she would find out Jennifer is trying to blackmail me.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“They don’t exactly move in the same circles.”
Lucy was wealthy. Not a snob, but from a world different from Jennifer’s. Under normal circumstances they would be unlikely to meet.
“I don’t plan to cover for you,” Ross said.
“Is that a threat?”
If you want to take it that way.
“Anyhow,” Drew continued, “I don’t see the problem. I looked up an old friend on a business trip. I took a girl I used to know in high school to dinner. Why would Lucy care?”
A lie. An outright lie. That was how Drew planned to play this. If confronted, he would deny everything but the fact that he’d seen her. He would claim they’d had an amicable dinner and nothing more. He would say she’d gotten herself in trouble and decided to blame it on him because she knew he had money. And how convenient that she chose to do it now, before a simple blood test could expose her lie—because no conscientious doctor would perform amniocentesis just to prove the identity of the father.
“You’ll have to face it eventually,” Ross said.
But his brother had never been much good at facing things. And God knew he probably just hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with this, either. That if he simply pushed it from his mind it would go away. That she would give up and leave town, or that someone else would step in to take care of things.
Someone like him.
Hell, he already had. He’d offered her money. A place to stay. And if Jennifer chose to keep his brother’s actions secret, he would have to be grateful for their mother’s sake, even though it meant he would be helping Drew and lying to Lucy in the process.
Lucy deserved to know the truth, but it wasn’t Ross’s place to tell her. She wouldn’t trust his motives. She might not believe him. She might not want to know. Hell, maybe she had lovers on the side, too.
Hard to imagine. But maybe she would accept Drew’s straying if she did find out, forgive him in order to keep what they had together. The outward success, the beautiful house, the social standing.
The family they’d started… Been able to start.
But Jennifer’s baby complicated everything. A couple could survive a simple extramarital affair with therapy, time and hard work on the relationship. But a child was something else. An embodied reminder, forever, of the moment of infidelity. A human being requiring care and attention from Drew, if he had such to give.
Which he surely didn’t.
It pissed Ross off that what was probably best for Jennifer and was definitely best for his mother—at least, right now—would also benefit Drew: for her to accept Ross’s help and stay, with her baby, out of Drew’s life. His brother would be getting off scot-free. But wasn’t that what he always managed to do? Obtain what he wanted from people, whether they liked it or not?
Ross wondered when he’d gotten so sour. When he’d started to want Drew to be shown up for what he was, to pay for his actions.
Drew jangled his keys, ready to go.
“So that’s it,” Ross said.
His brother shrugged. “Seems so.” He inclined his head toward the driveway. “Where’s she headed, anyway?”
Ah, so he wasn’t so unconcerned. Ross detected a trace of desperation in the question, a need to know that was more than the bland curiosity Drew tried to convey.
“Here.”
“Here, here?”
That, at least, got Drew worried.
“Portland. She left San Francisco.”
“Any chance she’ll go back?”
“I don’t think so. Not for a while.”
“Huh,” Drew said. “Interesting.”
Ross got the strangest sense that along with whatever anxiety his brother felt, a part of him also relished this series of events, treated it as a game, a negotiation. A tricky situation he could wriggle out of with charm and intelligence. Like a rock climber attempting a perilous route, he loved the adrenaline rush.
And the hell of it was, he might escape cleanly.
ROSS WAITED until Drew pulled out of the driveway before he opened the door to his study. Jennifer was sitting very still behind his desk.
He watched her, waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, he broke the silence.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” She rose, pushing down on the arms of the chair.
He supposed he’d thought she would have tear tracks on her cheeks. She didn’t. Her gaze was clear and direct, but her mouth was tight.
“You were right,” she said.
He shrugged. “My brother’s an ass.”
“I should have known.” She tucked a chunk of hair behind her right ear, leaving the other side to swing free. “I did know.”
“He denied sleeping with you.”
Her expression didn’t change. “I figured he’d do that.”
“He has things he’s trying to protect.” A lame excuse, which sounded lame on his lips.
“We all have things we’re trying to protect.”
“He doesn’t realize it’s too late.”
“People never do.” She walked toward the door. “I’m exhausted. This has been a long day. Thanks for giving me a bed—I think I’ll go use it.”
UPSTAIRS, JENNIFER SAT on the cream-striped duvet and stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror that stood in one corner. She saw herself as Drew must have. As a liability.
Badly cut hair, tired eyes, discount-store clothes.
Swollen belly.
She was a man’s worst nightmare. A pregnant lover. She was evidence, proof. She was a lapse in judgment.
Yet Drew had acted confident during their brief meeting downstairs. As if he’d already considered this eventuality and braced himself for it, talked him self through the steps to deal with it. What kind of man could do that?
Her image stared back at her, quiet and still. Her mother’s statement returned to her, overheard so many years ago. No one can resist a baby. Andrea Burns had said the words to a friend, regretting she hadn’t gone to visit Jennifer’s father until Jennifer was well past infancy. No one can resist a baby, not even a man like him.
Jennifer had often wondered what a man like him—her father—was supposed to be. After she’d tried Drew’s fake phone number in January, she’d suspected he was a similar type. Now she was convinced.
No one can resist a baby.
But a pregnant woman wasn’t a baby. A pregnant woman was terrifying.
If she hadn’t lost her apartment and been so far in debt, she might have waited. She might have been able to show up in Drew’s life with an adorable baby who would smile and coo and gurgle, and would trap his heart. Proving her mother’s theory.
Except, it wouldn’t have worked. He would already have had a baby to whom he would have given whatever fatherly love he had to give.
She imagined the scene as it might have played out. Sitting on a chair in Ross’s study, a baby on her lap. Drew walking in. Saying to him, This is your daughter, or This is your son. And having him stand there with a blank, shielded look, telling her he didn’t believe her, telling her she should have come to him sooner, within the first trimester.
That would have been worse than this, she told herself. It was better not to have false hopes. But much more depressing.
Jennifer roused herself, scooting off the bed. She reached for the lilac knit maternity tank and shorts she used as pajamas.
Enough self-pity and despair. She had tomorrow to think about. She had to figure out where to go from here.
Buck up, honey. Time to be strong.
ROSS LAY IN BED, listening to the quiet creaks of the house settling onto its foundation for the night. Light from the street outside filtered through the venetian blinds, providing enough illumination for him to see the outlines of familiar objects around the room. The photographs of family and friends on the dresser. The carriage clock he’d inherited from his grandmother, silent since he’d allowed it to run down a few weeks ago.
To have Jennifer in his home, sleeping down the hallway, felt strange. It made him aware of the house in a way he usually wasn’t. Of how large it was for one person to live in. Of course, when he’d bought it he hadn’t been alone, and he’d imagined there would someday be children to fill it.
Probably he should move, he thought. Get a condo in a downtown high-rise. Give in to the inevitability of it. Accept what life had offered him.
But he knew he wouldn’t. What was really wrong, after all, with a big, empty house? Except that, sooner or later, it made you lonely. Made you enjoy having a houseguest more than you should, and look forward to seeing that houseguest in the morning with an unsettling amount of anticipation.
It was just one night, he reminded himself. One night and one morning, because anything more than that would be too complicated.
And Jennifer was once again off-limits.
But as his brother had demonstrated on more than one occasion, just because you shouldn’t get involved with someone didn’t mean you wouldn’t.
CHAPTER SIX
Nine years earlier
It’s not as if I want to be an uptight killjoy. I can’t help disapproving of Drew and his lame-brained cohorts, though. Constantly partying, sleeping until noon, watching MTV. Lying around the pool. Not doing anything redeeming.
And that girlfriend of his. She’s got to be the third blonde named Jennifer he’s dated in the past year and a half. Just once, I’d like to see him bring home a brunette named Roberta. Or Phuong-Mai. Someone interesting for a change.
I know I’m not being fair. But sometimes he just pisses me the hell off. I can’t count on him to do what he says he’ll do, like helping me move some furniture for Aunt Lenora.
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” he tells me, his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, as he slouches on the kitchen chair, sockless in his dock shoes, taking a few seconds out of his busy life to shirk a commitment.
He’s just made plans to go to his friend Kurt’s house for a spur-of-the-moment party. They’re trying to figure out who can buy the beer. I guess he knows better than to ask me.
“Lenora’s not getting back until then, anyway,” he adds.
Our aunt broke her ankle a couple of days ago on a midnight hike, part of some New Age retreat in the mountains. Drew and I had plans to move her bed to the ground floor of her house so she won’t have to drag herself up and down the stairs for the next few weeks.
“I can’t do it tomorrow,” I tell my brother. “I’m working.”
And I’m not going to jeopardize my internship, which was damn hard to get, by scheduling it for my lunch break—since there’s no way he’d show up on time.
Drew shrugs. “Hey, you’re the one who offered to do this, not me. I said I’d help if I could. I never promised anything.”
“Jesus,” I say as Drew goes back to his phone call. Outside it’s raining but not windy. For a moment I watch the drops patter down onto the flat surface of the pool.
I glance over at Jennifer. She’s ignoring the whole exchange. For the past half hour she’s sat at the kitchen table while Drew’s been on the phone ordering clothes from the new J. Crew catalog and bullshitting with his friends. A copy of Smithsonian Magazine is open on the table, and I can see from the pictures that she’s reading the article about insects in the Amazonian forest. I’m surprised she knows how to read—then feel like a jerk for even having the thought.
Oh, what the hell. I decide to struggle with the mattress by myself. “See you later,” I tell them, and head for the front hall.
