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He sat up straighter. She’d quit her job as his assistant and left him in…May. Seven months ago.
In his mind’s eye, he saw her answering the door again, her hand on her stomach. Her beach-ball-size stomach.
Marcus was no expert on pregnancy. But didn’t she look further along than seven months? Really, she looked to him to be almost ready to have the kid…
His heart slammed into his breastbone and his stomach rolled as the world seemed to tip on its axis.
No ring on her ring finger. And the husband. He wasn’t there because…
There was no husband.
Marcus yanked the key from the ignition and got out of the car. He raced across the sidewalk and up the three stone steps to the gate.
Which was locked.
He swore, a harsh oath, though there was no one but the night to hear him. Earlier, he’d lucked out and slipped in behind a couple too busy groping each other to notice they had company as they entered the complex. Not this time. He stood at the gate alone. Muttering another bad word, he punched the button that went with Hayley’s apartment number.
She answered immediately, as if she’d been waiting by the receiver for him to finally add two and two and come up with four. “Marcus.”
“Is it mine?”
By way of answer, she buzzed him in.
She was waiting in her open doorway when he reached the top of the stairs. Waiting in silence. No Christmas music now.
He asked, low, “Well?”
And she nodded. Slowly. Deliberately.
“And the husband?” he demanded. When she frowned as if puzzled, he clarified. “Is there a husband?”
Her head went back and forth. No husband.
He stared at her. He had absolutely zero idea what to do or say next.
She gestured for him to come in. Moving on autopilot, he reentered her apartment. She indicated the blue couch. So he went over there and lowered his strangely numb body onto the cushions again.
He watched as she reclaimed the blue chair, those ringless pale hands of hers gripping the chair arms. His gaze was hopelessly drawn to her belly. He tried to get his mind around the bizarre reality that she had his baby in there.
His baby. His…
“Oh, Marcus,” she said in a small voice at last. “I’m so—”
He cut her off by showing her the flat of his palm. “You knew, didn’t you, when you left me? That’s why you left me. Because of the baby.”
She shook her head.
“What?” he demanded. “You’re telling me you didn’t know you were pregnant when you walked out on me?”
“I knew. All right? I knew.” She pushed on the chair arms, as if she meant to rise. “Do we have to—?”
“Yeah. We do.”
She sank back to the chair. “This is totally unnecessary. Really. I’m not expecting anything of you.”
“Just answer me. Did you leave me because you got pregnant?”
“Sort of.”
“Damn it. Either you did, or you didn’t.”
She shut those shining eyes and sucked in a slow breath. When she looked at him again, she spoke with deliberate care. “I left because you didn’t love me and you didn’t want to marry me and you’d already told me, when we started in together, you made it so perfectly clear, that you would never get married again and you would never have children. I felt guilty, okay? For messing up and getting pregnant. But still, I wanted this baby. And that meant I couldn’t see it as anything but a losing proposition to hang around in Seattle waiting for you to feel responsible for me and this child I’m having, even though you didn’t want me and you don’t want a kid. It was lose-lose, as far as I could see. So I came home.”
Her tone really grated on him. As if she was so noble, just walking away, telling him nothing. As if, somehow, he was the one in the wrong here. “You should have told me before you walked out on me. I had a damn right to know.”
Spots of color stained her pale cheeks. She straightened her shoulders. “Of course I planned to tell you.”
“When?”
She glanced away. “It’s…arranged.”
“Arranged.” He repeated the word. It made no sense to him. “Telling me I’m going to be a father is something you needed to arrange?”
She let go of the chair arms just long enough to throw up both hands. Then she slapped them down again. Hard. “Look. I was stressed over it, all right? I admit I didn’t want to face you. But I have it set up so you would have known.”
“You have it…set up?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Set up for when?”
“As soon as the baby’s born. You were going to know then.”
“You were planning to…call me from the hospital?”
She swallowed. “Uh. Not exactly.”
“Damn it, Hayley.” He glared at her.
She curved a hand under her belly and snapped to her feet. “Come with me.”
He stayed where he was and demanded, “Come where?”
“Just come with me. Please.”
“Hayley…”
But she was already moving—and with surprising agility for someone so hugely pregnant. She zipped over and grabbed her bag, flung open the entry area closet and dragged a red wool coat from a hanger in there. She turned to him as she shrugged into the coat. “Where’s your car?”
“Out in front, but I don’t—”
“Are you drunk?”
“Drunk? What the hell? Of course I’m not drunk.”
“Okay.” She flipped her hair out from under the coat’s collar. “You can drive.”
He muttered a string of swearwords as he rose and followed her into the cold, mist-shrouded night.
* * *
Ten minutes later, she directed him to turn into the driveway of a green-shuttered white brick house on a quiet street lined with oaks and maples.
He pulled in where she pointed, stopped the car and took the key from the ignition. “Who lives here?”
“Come on,” she said, as if that were any kind of answer. A moment later, she was up and out and headed around the front of the vehicle.
Against his own better judgment, he got out, too, and followed her up the curving walk to a red front door. She rang the bell.
As chimes sounded inside, he heard a dog barking and a child yelling, “I got it!”
The lock turned and the door flew open to reveal a brown-haired little girl in pink tights and ballet shoes. The dog, an ancient-looking black mutt about the size of a German shepherd, pawed the hardwood floor beside the girl and barked in a gravelly tone, “Woof,” and then “woof,” again, each sound produced with great effort.
“Quiet, Candy,” said the child and the dog dropped to its haunches with a sound that could only be called a relieved sigh. The child beamed at Hayley and then shouted over her shoulder, “It’s Aunt Hayley!”
Aunt Hayley? Impossible. To be an aunt, you needed a brother or a sister. Hayley had neither.
A woman appeared behind the child, a woman with softly curling brown hair and blue eyes, a woman who resembled Hayley in an indefinable way—something in the shape of the eyes, in the mouth that wasn’t full, but had a certain teasing tilt at the corners. “Hey,” the woman said, wiping her hands on a towel. “Surprise, surprise.” She cast a questioning glance in Marcus’s direction.
And Hayley said, “This is Marcus.”
“Ah,” said the woman, as if some major question had been answered. “Well. Come on in.”
The kid and the old dog backed out of the way and Hayley and Marcus entered the warm, bright house. The woman led them through an open doorway into a homey-looking living room. Just as at Hayley’s place, a lighted Christmas tree stood in the window, a bright spill of gifts beneath.
“Can I take your coats?” the woman asked. When Hayley shook her head, she added, “Well, have a seat, then.”
Marcus hoped someone would tell him soon what the hell he was doing there. He dropped to the nearest wing chair as the kid launched herself into a pirouette. A bad one. She stumbled a little as she came around front again. And then she grinned, a grin as infectious as her mother’s—and Hayley’s.
“I’m DeDe.” She bowed.
“Homework,” said the mother.
“Oh, Mom…”
The mother folded her arms and waited, her kitchen towel trailing beneath her elbow.
Finally, the kid gave it up. “Okay, okay. I’m going,” she grumbled. She seemed a cheerful type of kid and couldn’t sustain the sulky act. A second later, with a jaunty wave in Marcus’s direction, she bounced from the room, the old dog limping along behind her.
Hayley, who’d taken the other wing chair, said, “Marcus, this is my sister, Kelly.”
It occurred to him about then that the evening was taking on the aspect of some bizarre dream: Hayley having his baby. The kid in the pink tights. The decrepit dog. The sudden appearance of a sister where there wasn’t supposed to be one.
“A sister,” he said, sounding as dazed as he felt. “You’ve got a sister…”
Hayley had grown up in foster homes. Her mother, who was frail and often sick, had trouble keeping a job and had always claimed she wasn’t up to taking care of her only daughter. So she’d dumped Hayley into the system.
“Oh, Marcus.” Hayley made a small, unhappy sound in her throat. “I realize this is a big surprise. It was to me, too. Believe me. My mother always told me I was the only one. It never occurred to me that she was lying, that anyone would lie about something like that….”
“Ah,” said Marcus, hoping that very soon the surprises were going to stop.
The sister, Kelly, fingered her towel and smiled hopefully. “We have a brother, too….”
Hayley piped up again. “I just found them back in June—or rather, we all found each other. When Mom died.”
His throat did something strange. He coughed into his hand to clear it. “Your mother died….”
“Yeah. Not long after I moved back here. I met Kelly and our brother, Tanner, in Mom’s hospital room, as a matter of fact.”
“When she was dying, you mean?”
“Yes. When she was dying.” Before he could decide what to ask next, Hayley turned to her sister. “Could you get the letter, please?”
Kelly frowned. “Are you sure? Maybe you ought to—”
“Just get it.”
“Of course.” Kelly left the room.
Marcus sat in silence, staring at the woman who was soon to have his child. He didn’t speak. And neither did she.
It was probably better that way.
The sister returned with a white envelope. She handed it to Hayley, who held it up so that he could see his own address printed neatly on the front. “Tell him, Kelly.”
Kelly sucked in a reluctant breath and turned to Marcus. “I would have mailed it to you, as soon as the baby was born.” She held up two balloon-shaped stickers, one pink, which said, It’s A Girl and the other blue, with It’s A Boy.
Hayley said weakly, “You know. Depending.”
Marcus looked at the envelope, at the long-lost sister standing there holding the stickers, at Hayley sitting opposite him, eyes wide, her hand resting protectively on her pregnant stomach.
I’m going to wake up, he thought. Any second now, I’m going to wake up.
But he didn’t.
Chapter Two
Hayley despised herself.
