by Cat Schield
“I have.”
In fact, Sammi had thought a great deal about her mother. About how Celeste had pushed her daughter into an industry before she was a year old. An industry that had defined her worth by how she appeared. Sammi wasn’t a top model in New York—although she’d had a great deal of success overseas—but by working her ass off, she had a significant income. Money that supported her mother in style. A mother who’d emigrated from the Philippines because she wanted a different life for her daughter. A mother who’d capitalized on that daughter’s beauty and was now reaping the benefits of Sammi’s success with a comfortable Manhattan apartment and luxurious lifestyle.
“I don’t believe you,” Celeste snarled. “This is just like you to jump before you’ve thought everything through.”
Sammi wished she had snappy answers to give to her mother, a definite plan all worked out. It was just that she so rarely got to think for herself.
“Just because I don’t have all the answers doesn’t mean I haven’t given this a great deal of thought.”
Noting her daughter’s defensive stance, Celeste’s gaze narrowed, and she capitalized on Sammi’s uncertainty. “Well, you should just continue modeling while you figure it out.”
Why? Because Sammi had wanted to figure out what she would do with the rest of her life when modeling was no longer an option, but her mother never gave her the breathing room to do so. It would be no different now.
“Because I don’t have time,” Sammi said.
“What do you mean you don’t have time?” Her mother waved her hand dismissively. “You’re twenty-six, for heaven’s sake. Xiao Wen Ju wasn’t even discovered until her twenties.” Celeste often bullied her daughter by referencing non-Caucasian top models. “If you worked as hard as she did, you might land on the cover of Vogue or be signed as the face of a top designer. Until then you can still walk the runway.”
Sammi shoved aside her anxiety and focused on irritation. Her mother never stopped badgering her about working. Well, at least that was at an end.
“I’m pregnant.” She braced herself for her mother’s explosion, but what came next shocked her even more.
“Oh, is that all?”
“Is that all?” Sammi echoed. How could her mother be so blasé about something so momentous?
“You can take care of that in an afternoon.”
Sammi recoiled. “Take care of...?” As in terminate the pregnancy? Tears sprang to her eyes at Celeste’s insensitivity. She’d barely taken a moment before dismissing what the pregnancy might mean to Sammi. A second later the acid burn of resentment flared in her stomach. Or maybe it was the crackers she’d eaten earlier intending to make a reappearance. “I’m not taking care of anything.”
Her mother’s almond-shaped eyes went nearly round with astonishment. “You can’t possibly mean to go through with the pregnancy?” After a second she gave a scornful half laugh. “You’re such a foolish child. Do you have any idea the sacrifices being a mother requires?”
Do you?
The question demanded release, but Sammi didn’t dare voice it for fear that once she ventured down that path, she’d say things that would cause irreparable harm. As focused and stubborn as her mother could be, she was all the family Sammi had. Without her mother, Sammi would be all alone. The thought terrified her.
“How will you support yourself?” Celeste demanded when Sammi remained lost in her thoughts.
“I’ll find a job.”
“A job?” her mother scoffed. “Doing what? You don’t know how to do anything but pose in front of the camera.”
The harsh truth made Sammi wince. While this was true, she couldn’t believe that this was the limit of her abilities. She’d never had the opportunity to explore anything other than modeling. What could she do? What did she want to do?
“That’s not all I can do. I will start at the bottom.”
“You can’t seriously expect to start from the bottom and be able to support yourself in Manhattan?”
“So maybe I don’t stay here,” Sammi said, fear making her breathless. Aside from the five years she’d spent modeling overseas, she’d never lived anywhere but New York City. She didn’t know how to drive a car or what might await her outside the fashion industry.
Her mother’s mocking laughter rang in her ears. “I didn’t raise my daughter to be a fool. Don’t be one now.”
“I’m not a fool,” Sammi said, clamping her teeth together as bile rose in her throat.
What if her mother was right about everything? Did she seriously think she could raise a child on her own without modeling? What could she do to make money? Swamped by uncertainty and fear, Sammi headed for the front door. More than anything she needed to clear her head.
“Where are you going?” her mother shrieked after her.
“Out.”
She was on the street and signaling a cab before she had any sense of where she intended to go. Not until she settled into the back seat, and the man asked for an address, did she give into the tears she’d been holding back. Where was she going to go? Who could she turn to for help? All her friends were models. It was likely their advice would be no different from her mother’s recommendations. Celeste jealously guarded her influence over Sammi, blocking anyone else who might have offered career counseling.
Sammi gave the driver the address of her modeling agency. She needed to have a conversation with them about her condition and take that first step into her future. If they fired her on the spot, it would certainly galvanize her to make a plan. As she dashed away her tears, Sammi realized she still held Oliver’s card in her hand. That was another difficult conversation she needed to have. Yet for some reason it was the one she was least afraid of.
Before they’d gone more than a few blocks, she directed the cab to the new destination and asked him to let her out two blocks from Oliver’s loft. The walk would afford her a few minutes to make up her mind about what she intended to say. She turned the card over and eyed his personal cell phone number. Should she call first? What if he avoided her call? Or refused to see her? He hadn’t asked for her number that night, so obviously he had no interest in pursuing her.
Sammi’s steps faltered as she approached the final intersection. Ahead, she could see Oliver’s building. She looked up to the top floor, wondering if he was even there. Her mouth went desert dry. Was she really going to ambush him with her pregnancy? Would he believe her? Or would he assume she was trying to manipulate him? She could see how his elusiveness might make women desperate.
And what if Oliver Lowell was a terrible father for her child? No matter how amazing the sex or the connection she felt toward him, the fact of the matter was she didn’t know anything about him, and his reputation for being temperamental and difficult worried her.
The traffic light changed twice while she stood rooted to the sidewalk.
What harm would it do if she just walked away and never told him he was going to be a father? Sammi considered how much she’d hated growing up not knowing who her dad was. She didn’t even know if he knew about her, because Celeste refused to discuss him at all. That had never been fair. Somewhere she had a whole other family she’d never get to know.
Could she do that to her child?
Her feet were moving before she was even aware that the light had changed. It wasn’t wise to be distracted while walking along a New York City sidewalk, but lately she found herself all too often caught up in her own thoughts and oblivious to her surroundings.
She approached Oliver’s building, his card clutched in her hand, and stopped ten feet from the entrance. Frozen with indecision, she stared at the door through which she’d passed with Oliver six weeks earlier and dreaded the conversation to come. He surely wouldn’t welcome the news she brought. He’d be upset. Angry. How could he not be? She was about to change his life and not for the better.
“Oliver Lowell’s phone.”
Sammi was so startled by the feminine voice that she hung up. Confused fragments of thought tumbled around in her brain for several seconds until she lifted Oliver’s business card and compared the numbers. Only when she’d confirmed that she’d dialed correctly did she recall how the woman had answered the phone.
Her phone came to life with Oliver’s number. Cursing, she stared at the screen, wondering what to do.
“Hello?”
“We got disconnected,” said the woman who’d answered the moment before. “Are you looking for Oliver?”
Uneasiness slid through her at the question. “Actually, I came by to see him.”
“You came by?” The woman pounced on this bit of information. “Are you here now?”
Hearing the woman’s urgency, Sammi realized she’d made a huge mistake. She’d assumed the lack of publicity surrounding Oliver’s private life meant he had no girlfriend. But here was a woman with Oliver’s phone, so obviously he was already in a relationship. Heat flared in Sammi’s cheeks as she remembered how she’d blatantly offered herself to him. The power she’d enjoyed in that moment had faded by the following morning.
“I’m sorry,” Sammi murmured. “I have to go.”
“Wait.”
Ignoring the woman’s command, Sammi hung up the phone. It instantly lit up with Oliver’s number again. Sammi stared at the screen for a long moment, letting the call roll to voice mail. She’d really screwed up.
Despite the voice in her head warning her to leave, Sammi lingered in front of Oliver’s building. The need to tell Oliver that she was pregnant hadn’t vanished just because he was involved with someone. Sammi had a hole in her life where her own father belonged. She’d never understood why her mother kept his identity from her. How could Sammi live with herself if she did that to her own child? Decision made, she squared her shoulders and lifted her phone.
“Excuse me.” The familiar voice jolted Sammi out of her thoughts. A woman had pushed through the entrance to Oliver’s building and was advancing on her. “Are you the one looking for Oliver?”
“Um. Well.” Cupping a protective hand over her lower abdomen, Sammi backed away from the woman’s aggressive approach. “That is...”
“Are you Suzi?” The woman showed every intention of getting answers out of her.
“I’m Sammi.” She took another step back, retreating from the woman’s determined expression and focused pursuit. This was so much worse than she’d imagined. She extended Oliver’s business card. “We met a few weeks ago. He gave me this.”
“Sammi?” The woman frowned. “Not Suzi? But you’re a model, right?”
“Yes.”
“Watch out!” The shout came from behind her and to her right, followed by honking.
Movement caught in her peripheral vision. Something bright red was coming at her fast. So many things registered at once. The horror on the doorman’s face. The screech of brakes. And then something was hitting her left side with enough impact to send her flying. Pain exploded in her wrist and shoulder as she landed hard on the sidewalk. Lights flashed in her head, and then all went dark.
Three
In the week since the news had come out that his father was alive and being extradited from the Caribbean, Oliver had taken to leaving his smartphone behind while he roamed Manhattan in search of inspiration. The barrage of calls and texts from his mother and brothers regarding the legal matters surrounding Vernon Lowell left no room for Oliver to think about anything else. Only when he stepped away from the electronic device could he control his focus and direct his attention where he wanted it to go. Unfortunately, the outings rarely lasted longer than a couple of hours.
Putting away his camera, Oliver raised his hand and hailed a taxi. Giving the driver the address of his SoHo loft, Oliver settled back and opened the floodgates to the myriad of his responsibilities awaiting him. Besides the family crisis that dominated his to-do list, he had a business to run and clients that expected results. The strong desire to chuck it all and find his own tropical island to hole up on brought his father to the forefront of his mind. He hated acknowledging this common ground between them, but the similarities were too obvious to ignore.
In rehab, he’d confronted that his drug habit had been all about running away from his problems and learned that only when he faced his demons could he take control of his actions and turn his life around. The stronger he’d become, the more he’d regretted his youthful choices, recognizing if he’d pursued his passion for photography from the beginning instead of trying to please his father by pursuing a business degree at Harvard, he might not have fallen into addiction. Those dark, hopeless years, followed by the harrowing fight to get sober, left him with invisible but painful scars. Yet he couldn’t deny that the struggle had not only made him stronger but also allowed him to appreciate his successes.
“Looks like there’s something going on at your building,” the cabbie said, rousing Oliver from his thoughts.
He leaned forward and gazed through the windshield, spotting the flashing lights of an ambulance up ahead. With the traffic snarled by the emergency, Oliver decided he would get to his destination faster if he walked. After glancing at the meter, he pulled out his billfold and said, “You can drop me off here.”
He slid out of the taxi, attention on the pair of EMTs as they loaded someone into the ambulance. Between the numerous bystanders and his approach angle, Oliver couldn’t see much detail and wondered what had happened. As his ground-eating strides carried him toward his building’s entrance, he spotted a familiar figure in the crowd and made his way toward her.
“What’s going on?” he asked, stopping beside his assistant, his gaze on the ambulance as the EMTs slammed the rear doors. Heidi started at his question and turned worried brown eyes his way.
“That woman you asked me to find came by to see you and was struck by a bicycle messenger who swerved to avoid a car that unexpectedly cut him off.”
“Suzi?” Oliver’s gaze slashed toward the departing ambulance as it pulled away from the curb, stunned that she’d slipped through his fingers a second time. “Did you speak to her?”
“Her name isn’t Suzi,” Heidi explained, extending his phone toward him. “She called herself Sammi.” Heidi held up a backpack. “This is hers. I looked inside, and her name is Samantha Guzman.”
Oliver took the bag and his cell phone from Heidi, irritation flaring at his mistake. If he’d only cut short today’s outing, he might have arrived in time to save her. “How badly was she hurt?
“She hit her head when she fell and blacked out. That’s why we called the ambulance. She came to as the EMTs checked her out and complained that her wrist hurt, but she’s really groggy.”
Oliver flagged down a taxi and followed the ambulance to the hospital. With Sammi’s bag in his hands, he was able to convince the staff that they were together and followed a nurse’s directions toward a curtained area where she’d been parked. A hard knot of worry began to unravel at his first glimpse of Sammi—Samantha Guzman—after nearly six weeks, but seeing her lying so still and pale on the gurney tempered his relief.
Her lashes fluttered as he stood just inside the curtain, momentarily rooted to the spot. His breath lodged in his chest as she blinked several times, then gazed around in confusion. He could claim that they had unfinished business or that the amazing sex accounted for his obsessiveness, but the truth was she’d somehow wormed her way past his guards. For six weeks he’d been searching for this woman, and now that he’d found her, Oliver had no idea what to say first. Before he figured it out, a nurse entered the room.
“I understand you were in
an accident,” she said to Sammi, glancing Oliver’s way as she bustled about checking vitals and asking standard questions. “The doctor should be in to check on you in a few minutes. Is there anything else we need to know?”
While the nurse had been busy, Sammi had spied Oliver looming off to one side of the cramped space. Her shock had registered as a brief widening of her eyes before she’d glanced away and not looked his way again.
Now, however, as she hesitated before answering the nurse’s question, her gaze darted his way once more. She murmured something too low for Oliver to catch, but he could see her eyes were dark with worry in her white face.
“How far along are you?” the nurse asked, making a note.
“About six weeks.”
This time Oliver picked up on her words. Six weeks.
That described how long it had been since he’d last set eyes on her. Oliver’s heart gave a strange lurch as several things collided in his brain. They’d slept together six weeks ago. She’d appeared at his apartment today. Had she come by to declare that she was pregnant and he was the father? Then he remembered the boyfriend who’d broken up with her the night they met. Wasn’t it more likely that he, not Oliver, was the child’s father?
At least he hoped that was the case. The idea that Oliver could be a good father was completely outside the realm of possibility. What did he know about being a loving, supportive parent? Absolutely nothing.
The nurse left while he’d been lost in thought, and he missed the chance to flee. Alone with Sammi, he fought for calm.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes.”
Is it mine?
“Is that why you came by today?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest as his heart thundered painfully against his ribs.
“I thought you should know,” she said.
“You thought I should know,” he repeated, thoughts racing. “Because you think it’s mine?”
She appeared unperturbed by his question. “I know it is.”
Although she didn’t come right out and tell him he was a jerk for questioning her, he flinched as if she’d flung criticism at him. Oliver frowned.