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FIVE
Present day...
Moments later the bathroom door swung open and the mother of what was presumably his child emerged.
The cool steely gray of her eyes met with his. Eyes he remembered warming through the course of those hours they spent together. Eyes he’d watched go soft beneath him, and had made him wonder if a single night was going to be enough. Eyes that had haunted him for weeks after he’d been back in L.A., until he’d forced himself to put them out of his head. Get a new game plan and move on.
Which is exactly what he’d done.
Olivia.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he gave his head a stern shake. One thing at a time.
Darcy took a nervous breath and then cleared her throat. “So, maybe we should start by getting a few things straight up front.”
Jeff nodded, checking the legal pad he’d started making a list on. “Agreed.”
Validate paternity.
Confirm/upgrade health care.
Establish child support.
Hire nurse.
Buy house with yard and security.
Start screening for nanny.
Private preschools (*gifted and talented programs?).
Top five universities in country.
Quality playgroups.
Safety reports *family vehicles.
“I don’t want to marry you,” she said abruptly, wincing almost as soon as the words left her mouth.
Jeff blinked.
Wait. She didn’t want to marry him?
He blew out a measured breath while mentally talking his ego down from the ledge. Because seriously, after slinking out of his bed without so much as a “thanks for the good time, sport,” that’s how she wanted to kick this conversation off?
“Not that I remember asking,” he said evenly. “But good to know we’re on the same page.”
Or maybe not quite so evenly after all, considering the slender brow arched in his direction, topping off an all too familiar look that did something to him not entirely bad, but not exactly welcome, either.
Their eyes held a beat before she glanced away. “And I’m not interested in picking things up where we left off.”
“Something the woman I’m seeing will appreciate, I’m sure.”
Yeah, and best to get that out there right away, even though he was fairly certain there wasn’t one thing about this Olivia was going to appreciate.
Especially if she ever got a look at Darcy. Because even having just spent twenty minutes losing her lunch, she was still a knockout. So far as he could see the pregnancy hadn’t done much to her body yet.
Before he realized where that thought was taking him, his attention was doing a slow crawl south of her neckline, roaming over the full curves and narrowing tucks of a figure that—
“That’s great about your girlfriend, but I’m not here to option my baby, either, so...” Her fingers came into his line of sight which happened to have stalled out around the navel he’d dipped his tongue into, snapping twice and then veering into the universal eyes up here mister flag. “...so whatever you’re thinking with that look on your face? Stop.”
“Optioning your baby?” he choked out. “Excuse me?”
Her shoulders squared up.
“Well, you were staring,” she shot back with an accusing jut of her chin. Then seeming to lose a bit of her bravado, she more quietly added, “With a sort of greedy, speculative look on your face. How am I supposed to know what you’re thinking?”
Jeff shook his head, opened his mouth once and then simply closed it again, because...
Really?
And then it was like the tension that had been accumulating since she’d first lunged past him...just snapped. And suddenly, all he could do was laugh. Which probably didn’t do much to alleviate the whole greedy, speculative vibe he’d been putting off, but oh, well. Apparently there wasn’t much lower he could sink to in Darcy’s eyes.
So instead, he simply rubbed his palms over his cheeks and looked across at the woman who’d turned his life upside down in a single night, and just when he thought he’d put it back to rights, showed up and sent him into a tailspin.
One he needed to pull out of and fast.
“Relax. I got distracted by your body. It doesn’t look like it’s changed much.” And at the risk of coming across like a jerk, he added the truth. “You look good, Darcy.”
“Oh.” Then after a moment she rolled her eyes as if making some painful, grudging acknowledgment herself. “Thank you. You look good, too. Even though it doesn’t matter.”
He couldn’t help the grin, but as it turned out, she didn’t seem to mind, answering with one of her own.
It caught him off guard, but he recovered quickly, suggesting they sit down and talk.
Darcy stepped away from the door and crossed over to the couch where Jeff set an empty can on the floor, out of the way but still within reach.
She looked down and her eyes fluttered through a few wet blinks. “You got a fresh can for me?”
She was looking at him like he’d just handed over the keys to a new Mercedes.
“I didn’t want you to have to put your face in the old one.”
Her hand moved to what was still the flat plane of her belly and she gave him a watery half smile he didn’t quite understand, but sensed meant something important to her. “You’re a thoughtful guy, Jeff.”
And there it was. Reassurance. Because she had to be scared out of her mind right now, coming to him when he was virtually a stranger.
Reaching for her hand, Jeff gave it a brief squeeze and looked her in the eyes. “Hey, this is all going to work out fine. Don’t be nervous.” He sat back, legal pad in hand. “So, where should we start—after, you’re pregnant, of course.”
She winced almost as if hearing the words was still new and shocking to her. But then maybe that was the best place. “When did you find out?”
“I didn’t know until a week ago. Which is late, but...” She offered a frustrated little shrug. “My cycle is irregular enough so I don’t really wait around for it and, normally I don’t have any reason to anyway. But the past few months...I’ve been running pretty much nonstop. I thought the stomach upset was nerves. Then it got worse and I thought I must have caught the flu everyone was talking about, except it didn’t get better.”
He was following her words, but a part of him was still stuck on this news being nearly as new to Darcy as it was to him. “Have you been to a doctor yet?”
“For the blood test.” She opened her purse, retrieved the printout she’d gotten from the lab and handed it over. “But my first appointment isn’t until next week.”
Jeff scanned the paperwork before setting it on the small table beside his chair. “So, if you don’t want to get married, or pick things up from where we left off...I think it makes sense to ask, what do you want?”
“I’d like you to agree to a paternity test.”
* * *
Darcy could see the wheels turning in his head, the man stepping back from the prospect of fatherhood with the idea maybe this child wasn’t his.
“Jeff,” she said as gently as she could. “You should understand, I’m only asking for the test for your benefit because I don’t expect you to take the word of some woman you knew for a handful of hours three months ago. But there are no other options. This baby is yours. Once you have the confirmation from a lab, the decision you need to make is whether you want to be a father to it. That’s what I need to find out.”
Jeff was watching her closely, his eyes so intense she had to fight the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. For a guy who could do irreverent like she’d never seen it done before, there was another, more serious, side to Jeff to balance it. And in this moment, the balance was a comfort.
“No other options? You’re telling me you haven’t slept with anyone else since we were together.”
She took a bracing breath, not insulted by his request for clarification. “I realize I haven’t given you much reason to believe this, but I don’t make a habit of going home with guys I just met. Or at all, really. There wasn’t anyone else.”
Jeff drew a long slow breath, his eyes still on her, but his focus seemingly directed inward. He nodded.
“Okay. So the test is basically a formality. I’ll have Legal look into it and set something up. In the meantime, I’m going to be a father. I may need to get used to the idea, but as to whether I’m up to the responsibility, there’s no deliberation necessary.” He pushed to his feet and walked back to his desk. “So how are we going to do this?”
“Could we start with the paternity test and go from there?” she asked. “This is still so new to me, too. I wanted to get in touch with you right away, but I haven’t worked out exactly how I feel about everything. I guess I just wanted to know where you stood before I started making too many decisions about a future you might want a say in.”
He let out a contemplative breath. “Okay. I can respect that. And I appreciate it. So we’ll take this one step at a time. Start with the test. You could think about whether moving is something you’d consider and we’ll set something up to talk in a week?”
She nodded, relieved by his easy accommodation and perhaps by the distance he’d established between them with that last parting comment. It would be an appointment. Because they were going to handle this like business.
Exactly the way she wanted them to.
SIX
With his afternoon cleared, there was nothing Jeff would have rather done than call Connor. Tell his best friend he wasn’t the only one to pick up a souvenir in Vegas. Talk out the changes ahead of him and have the guy—the only guy on the planet who knew him as well as he knew himself—tell him he had his back.
But Connor had just reconciled with his wife—a woman he’d married within hours of meeting that same night Jeff met Darcy—and even if Jeff thought he could live with himself for interrupting them...he was fairly certain the two lovebirds were still off the grid.
Just as well.
There was someone else who deserved to know what was happening first.
Olivia. The woman he’d started a relationship with five weeks ago. The something Jeff had found to fill the empty spot in his life he’d only become aware of after Vegas.
Jogging across the marble-and-glass atrium, Jeff caught the elevator to Olivia’s top floor office.
How the hell was he going to explain this? And how would she take it?
Things had been going well with them. They’d been a smart fit from the start. Comfortable together, compatible.
She was open and pleasant. Harvard educated. Business savvy. Connected.
Two hours ago, he would have given it six months at the outside before he popped the question. And only because it seemed like an appropriate time to wait. In Olivia he’d found a woman who was all the things he’d known he wanted for a partner in life from as far back as he could remember—from the first time he looked across the table at his parents and thought to himself, someday, I want that.
The business journal over morning coffee. The dinners at the club. The shared interests for their shared lifestyle. The sparkling hostess championing the charities and foundations they supported.
It sounded shallow as he itemized it in his head, but it wasn’t.
He wanted the kind of good match that meant a lifetime of companionable, easy happiness. What his parents had up until the day five years ago when a heart attack took his father. The best man he’d ever know. The example Jeff had always hoped to live up to. Hell, he wished he was around to talk to about this.
Riding up to Olivia’s, he couldn’t help question what she would think when she looked at the woman he’d been with before her. The one who’d been his wake-up call about putting an end to the screwing around with women who weren’t right for him and thinking about getting serious with one who was. Settling down. Starting a family.
Olivia would see everything she wasn’t when she looked at Darcy.
And it would make her wonder.
Darcy had been a good time he hadn’t seen coming. And the only reason she’d gotten under his skin the way she had was because of the way she’d left.
So the chemistry between them had been hot enough that even months later, he could feel the lingering burn of it, so what? That was sex. Not exactly a foundation to build a solid forever on. But neither was it something he could, in good conscience, ignore when it came to a relationship with another woman.
“Hey, Mel. She in?” he asked, when he got to her office.
“She’s on a call. Should I interrupt?”
“No. I’ll wait.”
This was news he needed to tell her today and in person.
Sometime later, Jeff was searching stages of pregnancy on his phone, checking them against his calendar and travel commitments when Olivia’s office door swung open and she walked out to greet him with a welcoming smile.
“Jeffrey, what a wonderful surprise!”
“Got a few minutes for me?” he asked, unfolding from the deep sofa to lead her back into the office. And once there, he closed the door behind them. “Is it private in here?”
Olivia’s brow crumpled a bit at the question as she looked at the closed door behind him and then her neatly organized desk loaded with her current projects. “I was thinking you might be here to take me to lunch.” Her nose crinkled before reluctantly meeting his eyes again. “But are you here for something...else?”
A bark of laughter escaped him as he realized the direction of her thoughts. She’d thought he was here for some kind of afternoon desktop quickie. Yeah, now he got her confusion. It wasn’t exactly like that between them.
Shaking his head, he crossed to the cluster of club chairs across her office and held a hand out asking her to join him. “No, Olivia, I’m sorry. Something...unexpected has come up. We need to talk.”
A little furrow had cut between her delicate brows as she lowered herself into the chair across from him. “You’re worrying me, Jeffrey. What’s happened?”
Looking at her guileless face and earnest eyes, he wished there was some way to sugarcoat the bitter news he was about to give her. But it wouldn’t help either of them. “A couple of months before we met, I spent the night with a woman who came to my office today. She’s pregnant.”
Olivia sat stone still, her eyes gone wide. “Was there something between you?”
