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It was different for him. He made outside calls. And even when he took a day off… “I take my cell phone everywhere. You can always reach me if there’s an emergency.”
“I had mine, too.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“I listened to the messages.”
Then she realized he’d been checking to make sure she was okay. And she hadn’t bothered to call him back, to assure him that she was.
Odd.
“Can I come in?”
She hesitated and then nodded, stepping away from the door.
He followed her through the formal living room, dining room and kitchen to the family room in the back of the house. He’d never understood why a woman who lived alone wanted so much space around her, but then, he’d never understood Elise, period.
Outside the office, that was.
A half-filled and perspiring glass of what appeared to be mostly juice and melted ice sat on the end table. The lamp was on. The large-screen television in front of the creamy white leather sofa was silent. There were no books, remote controls, or papers to indicate that his partner had been doing anything while she’d been sitting there.
Tucking her feet beneath her white skirt, she curled up on the sofa. And picked at her fingernails.
Her cats, Darin and Samantha, settled behind her on the back of the sofa.
“You mind if I get myself a bottle of water?” He wasn’t thirsty. Except, perhaps, for a shot of bourbon. Straight up.
He hadn’t consumed alcohol straight up since college.
“Of course not.” Her smoky gray eyes were more mysterious to him than usual as she glanced at him. Why did the woman’s expression so rarely show him what she was thinking, like everyone else’s did? “Help yourself.”
Retrieving a bottle from the top shelf of the refrigerator, he glanced around the kitchen. The red-and-gold-flowered canisters that matched the wall paper border topping the golden accent wall were all neatly in place. Salt and pepper shakers that went with the set were on the stove where he’d always seen them in the past. If she’d eaten anything, she’d already cleaned up. And dried the sink, as well.
She’d had Kelly and him for dinner on a regular basis when they’d still been married. Joe couldn’t remember her ever drying out the sink when she’d finished the dishes.
Hadn’t she eaten?
“So what’d you do today?” He tried for casual as he approached her again, unsure whether he should join her on the couch or remain standing.
Now her eyes were moist when she looked at him, as though, while he’d been perusing her kitchen, she’d been crying. Or was about to start.
This was new ground for him. In the almost fourteen years they’d known each other it had somehow always been her picking up the pieces for him. He stared at the polished gleam on his wing-tip shoes.
“Mostly I stayed home.”
Joe thought about the times he’d taken off work—they weren’t as rare as hers, but rare enough that the hours were filled to the brim.
“Mostly?”
Elise’s smile settled his nerves some. “It’s okay, Joe. You can go. I’m fine. Really.”
He wanted to go.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded. Darin opened one eye and closed it again.
Joe drank the bottle of water, recapped it, planning to throw it in the trash in the kitchen on his way out. He had a frozen Salisbury steak and mashed potato dinner to get home to. And then was meeting a couple of bankers for drinks at nine, after their racquetball game. If all went well, he’d be signing on their chain of financial institutions, Michigan Local Banks, to begin payroll at the beginning of July. It was a ten-million-dollar account—a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year payout to B&R—his largest yet.
Joe glanced at his partner, the woman who’d been his buddy in college, challenging his thinking at every turn, challenging him to put his money where his mouth was and go into business, intimidating the hell out of him a time or two, listening to him whine and then curse when Kelly left him to make babies with a man who wanted them. She’d gotten drunk with him the day his divorce papers came through.
“I can’t go until you tell me what’s going on.”
That perfectly sculpted chin lifted again.
“I’m six-and-a-half weeks pregnant.”
Joe dropped his water bottle.
“I WON’T LET the business suffer.”
Shocked at the emotions running through him—anger at the man who’d done this to her, feelings of protectiveness—Joe loosened his tie and sat. Darin and Samantha both leaped from the sofa and scurried out of the room.
The idea of Elise pregnant was so far removed from his idea of reality he couldn’t quite get his mind around it.
“B&R didn’t even enter my head.”
“Well, it will, and I want you to know that I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to handle my responsibilities the same as I always have.”
He didn’t doubt her. And at the moment didn’t care.
Looking her in the eye, he sought to explain the inexplicable. “Who’s the father?” And why did he already hate the guy so much?
“I don’t know.”
Fire burned beneath his skin. How did a woman—at least the kind of woman Elise was—get pregnant without knowing the father? Unless she’d been raped. Could a woman go through something like that and never let on? Surely even Elise, as strong and unflappable and self-contained as she was, couldn’t do that.
And how did he tackle such a sensitive and intimate subject? He didn’t want to trigger a breakdown.
He thought of the times he’d seen her cry.
There weren’t any.
The times she’d come to him with a personal problem.
There weren’t any of those, either.
“When are you due?”
“Christmas.”
He couldn’t help a quick glance at her midsection. It was as flat as ever.
“I won’t let you and the business down, Joe,” she repeated.
“I’m not worried about me! Or the business.” Did she think he was that shallow?
“You’re obviously upset.”
“I’d like to kill the bastard who did this to you.”
“I did this to me.”
Had her expression not been so earnest, the situation so tragic, he would have chuckled. “My friend, you are the most self-sufficient woman I’ve ever met, but even you cannot produce the necessary male ingredient for procreation.”
“No, but I can buy it.”
Her skirt had pink flowers on it. And dark smudges along the hem. He waited.
“I had artificial insemination.”
“You meant to get pregnant?”
“Yeah.”
“Good God, woman! What the hell did you do that for?”
“I want a family, Joe!” Her brows rose with her voice, giving her an air of desperation. Panic. He had no idea what to do.
“But—”
She shook her head. “Don’t ‘but’ me right now, okay? This isn’t up for debate. It’s a done deal.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“How could you?” Elise got up and left the room so quickly, he was pretty sure she wasn’t coming back. And wished there were a door that would allow him to quietly slip away without having to pass through the inner domain of her home. He wished she had a best friend he could call to take over where he was grossly inadequate.
“Here.” She was back. With a shot of bourbon mixed with water.
Joe accepted the gift without a word. Took a long sip. And stared at ice cubes floating in amber-colored liquid.
Sitting down on the other end of the couch, Elise leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and turned her head toward him. “How many guys have I dated more than once in the last five years?”
“Two that I know of.”
“Then you know of all of them.”
He was treading on uncharted ground. He’d been confiding in her about his love life for most of the time he’d known her. All he knew of hers was what they’d just covered.
“You’re a strikingly beautiful woman, Elise.” Surely she knew that. “You could have any man you wanted.”
Still she watched him. “I didn’t think you ever noticed I’m a woman.”
The glass started to slide through Joe’s sweaty fingers. He got a better grip.
“I noticed. But you made it plain from the beginning that you valued our friendship and wanted it to stay that way.”
“I did. I do.”
“I respected that.”
Staring at her clasped hands, she was silent for a long moment. “I have a little story to tell you.”
He waited.
“One I should’ve told you years ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, frowning as she peered over at him again. “My reasons seem silly now, and yet to me they make perfect sense.”
He had no idea what any of this had to do with her newly disclosed pregnancy, but knowing Elise, he was certain he was going to find out. What surprised him was how badly everything about this evening threatened him. He was generally a flexible guy. Took change on the cuff. Accepted other people and their choices, whether like his or not, without much difficulty. He’d grown up in a family with seven kids, and someone was always doing something he didn’t like. To survive, he’d learned the wisdom of withholding judgment.
“You mentioned my looks just now, as though my being beautiful was just part of who I am.”
“Isn’t it?” Joe asked her. She used to intrigue and frustrate him with her insights. He hadn’t realized she’d stopped sharing them until this moment when he realized that one was on its way. He sat back, waiting.
He’d missed them.
“No. My looks aren’t me at all.”
“We all have outer packaging,” he countered. A philosophical debate he could do. And even if he couldn’t, he was willing to try—anything to delay the moment they’d have to get back to the problem at hand. “It’s a part of you, just like your gender. And your sense of humor. It shapes many of life’s experiences and has no bearing on others.”
“Exactly, it’s a package. One we’re born with. It gives us a sense of self from our earliest moments.”
She didn’t usually agree so quickly. “Right.”
“It combines with our memories, our loved ones, to provide the rock upon which our lives are built. No matter what happens to us, we can go back to that rock and find solid ground.”
“Uh-huh.”
Joe watched her through narrowed eyes. There was a catch here. He could feel it coming.
“And that’s why I didn’t tell you my little story before now,” Elise said. “I didn’t want you to know I don’t have that rock. You treated me like I was normal, and normal was something I hadn’t felt in far too many years.”
“Too many years,” Joe repeated. “You sound as if you were forty when I met you.” He wondered if pregnancy had already gotten to her emotions. One second she was Elise, and the next she wasn’t making any sense at all. “You weren’t even eighteen.”
“And you treated me like it. You wouldn’t have if I’d told you what I’d already endured before I got to my freshman year at the University of Michigan.”
