by Anna DePalo
But now she wasn’t on an even keel. She was already really overdue for her period and she’d always been regular. Maybe she was having perimenopause. She had read an article that some women started to experience symptoms at her age.
She met her sister’s eyes in the mirror and knew better than to bring up that subject again unless she’d taken a pregnancy test. As close as she and Angela were, there were some things that they both just kept to themselves and this was going to be one of them.
“If it were that easy, I would have done it a long time ago,” she said at last. “I’m not sure where things are going with Slade, but we both know it’s not going to last.”
“Good,” Angela said, giving her a breezy one-armed hug. “Are you okay?”
She wanted to nod but the hot rollers made her head feel heavy and awkward. “Of course. I’m always okay.”
“Except I know that you’re not. You said you wanted to be a mom...and suspected you were pregnant. Are you? Is he the father?” Angela asked.
She wasn’t ready to talk about pregnancy. She hadn’t even been to her doctor yet, even though she had bought more than a few over-the-counter tests. She hadn’t gotten up the courage to take them yet. She might want to be a mom, but she had in her mind the way it should happen. She was a traditional kind of gal. She wanted Slade to fall in love with her—desperately in love—and propose marriage, to have a huge society wedding—where her father, sister and family weren’t in the midst of a scandal—and then have a baby.
“I don’t know if I’m pregnant,” she said, dropping her gaze from Angela’s in the mirror. She wasn’t a big fan of lying to anyone, but she wasn’t ready to deal with being pregnant while the Chronicle was running a photo of her and Slade kissing. “I mean, Slade Bartelli doesn’t sound like the right kind of man for me, does he?”
Angela propped her hip on the edge of the vanity and looked pensively at Melinda’s bedroom. For the first time, Melinda realized that her sister might be hiding something of her own. “Are you okay? How are your wedding plans coming along?” Angela had just announced her engagement to Ryder Currin.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Nice try, but we are talking about you,” Angela said. “I don’t know what to tell you. If you say Slade’s a good guy... Well, I’m on your side. Just make sure you know what you’re doing. While fire is good and I have always thought that’s what you needed to shake you out of your routines and lists, it can also burn you. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Melinda turned and hugged her sister, resting her head against her stomach. “I don’t want you hurt either. Men are...way more complicated than they look on the surface.”
Her sister laughed as she started taking out the hot rollers in Melinda’s hair. “They are. Why can’t they just be hot, right?”
“Yes. And sophisticated and like the things we like and then go away when we need to get back to real life.”
Her sister laughed again. “If only we were in charge of the world.”
“Someday,” she said.
“Someday,” Angela repeated quietly.
Angela left a few minutes later and Pixie came trotting into the room and plopped herself on her bed. Melinda leaned into the mirror to finish putting on her makeup and fixing her hair and then she got dressed for the day.
She took extra care to make sure her A-line skirt was straight, and her blouse tucked in properly; she didn’t like it when it was too loose around the waist. She tied the pussy bow at the neckline and then switched the contents of her handbag to the purse that perfectly matched her magenta skirt. She had a lot of work to do at her foundation and meetings this morning.
She put her sunglasses on the top of her head, patted Pixie’s head as she walked out the front door, then took the elevator down to the lobby of her building. Downstairs, she was met by a barrage of flashbulbs.
Panicked, she ducked back onto the elevator. She went back to her condo, texted her assistant she’d be out this morning and then hit the treadmill. Walking always helped her figure things out. Things were definitely getting too complicated and now she knew she had to end things with Slade. No one had ever noticed when she kissed Donald.
Copyright © 2019 by Harlequin Books S.A.
ISBN-13: 9781488046810
Power Play
Copyright © 2019 by Anna DePalo
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