by Mara Wells
“I did not remarry.” Carrie’s lips didn’t move as she bit out the words.
“Oh.” Lance’s muscles tensed. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe the shock. Carrie, a single mom? From the beginning of their marriage, they’d been in agreement: no kids. They had their careers to focus on, and neither one of them wanted to re-create the disasters to be found on both sides of their family. What happened to not only change her mind but to also make her go for it on her own? He rubbed his temple, trying to imagine a scenario in which she ended up with a baby. He did not like the first option that popped to mind. “Wait a minute. How old is Oliver?”
“I told you. Three.” Carrie leaned down to hook Beckham to his leash. He protested by sprinting away, one of his favorite games. Oliver took off after him.
“No, you said ‘almost.’ Almost three.” Lance wasn’t the numbers guy his brother Caleb was, but he could handle the basics. Checking account, accounts payable and receivable. Counting forward and backward from nine months. “When’s his birthday?”
Carrie mumbled something he couldn’t hear.
“Did you say December?”
“Yes, he’s a Christmas baby. Is that what you wanted to know? Are you happy now?”
Christmas Day minus nine months equaled a March conception, but he and Carrie split up in February. In fact, he’d sent back the divorce papers on Valentine’s Day. Just because. So Oliver wasn’t his. He should be relieved, right? He’d never wanted kids, never would. That Carrie changed her mind didn’t mean he had to change his. Good for her. Girl power and all that.
“Congratulations.” Now he was the one biting out words. Deep down, he could admit he didn’t like the idea of Carrie having a baby with someone else. Tough cookies, Lance. “He’s a good-looking kid. Seems smart, too.”
Carrie choked on a swallow of smoothie. “Oh please. Complimenting him is like complimenting yourself.”
Lance’s eyebrows crashed into each other. “What’re you talking about?”
Carrie searched his face, her hazel eyes filled with messages he couldn’t read. “You don’t remember.”
Oliver and Beckham bounded back, the dog sliding to a stop directly in front of Carrie and the boy clinging to her leg.
“Say goodbye to the stranger,” Carrie coaxed her son with a stiff jerk of her chin that tipped the bun at an awkward angle. It dangled like it wanted to fall, but Carrie quickly rewound her long, dark hair and secured it with a green band.
Oliver looked up at him, those eyes as blue as Grandpa William’s. As Caleb’s and Knox’s. As his own. But women weren’t pregnant for ten months, and besides, Carrie wouldn’t have his child without telling him. Sure, they’d been angry at the end, but not so much that she’d keep something like this from him. No, ten months put Oliver in the safety zone of someone else’s problem. Lots of people had blue eyes, and in every other way, the kid was the spitting image of his mom, complete with double dimples and her fine, sable hair.
“Bye-bye!” Oliver waved a dirt-streaked hand at him.
Carrie tugged on the leash, and Beckham followed her to the gate. Oliver chased after them, turning his head every few steps to look at Lance and wave again. Lance waved back.
You don’t remember. Remember what?
And then he did. March. Grandpa William’s birthday party. They hadn’t told the family yet about the divorce, although Grandpa William knew they were separated. Even so, they’d been given the same bedroom they always shared when staying over, and rather than make a fuss, Lance offered to sleep in the reading chair by the window. But he’d had a few too many at dinner, and after dinner. So had Carrie. He hadn’t slept in the chair.
He’d reasoned that one more time wouldn’t hurt anything. The ink was barely dry on their divorce papers, and they were both willing. Who knew? Maybe it was the start of a reconciliation. It was hazy, all the details, but one memory stood out crystal clear. Waking up in the morning with an armful of Carrie, her sweet body curled into his. He’d felt peaceful for the first time in months. God, he loved this woman. He had tightened his grip, and she woke up, flipping to rest her head on his chest. She’d twisted her neck to look him in the eye.
“This doesn’t change anything. You know that, right?”
Even with her warm body next to him, he’d felt chilled enough to pull a blanket over them. “Of course,” he’d said, inching away from her. “Why would it?”
“Old habits.” She’d swung her legs over the side, her back to him. “They’re hard to break.”
He’d wanted to say she was more to him than an old habit, but she’d already shrugged on her bra and was shimmying into her panties. She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m sure your girlfriend wouldn’t like to know about last night. I’ll keep my mouth shut if you will.”
He nodded, her words a blow to his gut. She knew about Rachelle? How? They’d only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks, since he’d finally flirted back with his client’s daughter. After he signed the divorce papers, what did he have to lose? He’d hurried to finish up the Florida room Rachelle’s father wanted added to the back of his ranch-style home so there’d be no conflict of interest. As soon as the last screen was in place, he’d asked Rachelle out for drinks. They’d been having fun together, that was all. It wasn’t like he’d posted about it on social media or anything. His relationship status was still married, a situation he needed to update but couldn’t quite bring himself to do. Not yet.
“Well?” Carrie fussed with the bow on the waistband of her panties. The elastic stretched across her smooth stomach, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the freckle that lived an inch south of her bellybutton.
Lance shook his head, trying to get his mind right. “Last night never happened.” The words came out as a vow. He’d taken the whole episode and buried it deep in his mind.
“That’s the spirit.” Carrie had smiled at him and slipped into the emerald sheath dress she’d worn to the party. In their five years of marriage, he’d zipped her up a million times. That morning, she didn’t even ask. Her fingers fiddled with the zipper until she’d pulled it all the way up, taking twice as long as if she’d asked for his help. And somehow, that was the moment he really knew it was over. The zipper said it all.
Watching Carrie now as she carefully closed the double gate and held Oliver’s hand while they crossed the street to a small SUV across the street, it hit him harder than a ton of concrete pouring out of a mixer truck: Oliver was his son.
Worse, if he hadn’t run into them today, she never would’ve told him.
Even worse, he didn’t chase after them. Because honestly, he had no idea what to do. He sank back onto the bench, and LouLou jumped onto his lap. She licked at his chin, and for once, he didn’t push her away.
“I’m a father,” he told LouLou. She wagged her tail, and he smiled. “Yeah, it is pretty great, isn’t it?”
Chapter 3
She should’ve told him. Carrie chastised herself while she buckled Oliver into his car seat. He was such a good child, full of smiles and easygoing. He watched her out of his Donovan-blue eyes, patient as she fiddled with the complicated straps and buckles. Beckham was less patient, bouncing beside Oliver on the back seat. Once done with her son, she maneuvered Beckham into his red booster seat and strapped him in, too. He immediately pressed his nose to the window, adding more nose smears to the already smudged pane.
Taking her place as the chauffeur, she started up her Chevy Blazer and headed home to their small condo. It was only a few miles from the dog park they’d explored today, but with beach traffic, it’d take them fifteen minutes to get home. Why had she decided to go to Fur Haven? The write-up in the free local paper had described it as a paradise for dogs, and while it was certainly quite nice with all its shiny new equipment and fresh plugs of grass, “paradise” was stretching it a bit. She was always on the lookout for new places to tak
e Beckham. The dog did love novelty. Although she’d seen Caleb Donovan’s name attached to the park, she hadn’t thought he’d be around, and she surely hadn’t thought his brother would be anywhere nearby. Last she’d heard, the brothers hadn’t spoken in years.
Now Lance was somehow working with Caleb and Knox? If the brothers were pulling together after their father’s terrible trial, more power to them. She’d wanted to call Lance so many times during the media frenzy surrounding his father’s conviction and sentencing, but she never had. One, because she had no right to, not anymore, and two, because of Oliver.
Which brought her back to that moment at the park when she’d seen her son standing next to his father and something inside her had flipped over. Kerplunk. Maybe it was her stomach that made her so queasy at the thought Lance would find out. Maybe it was her heart that made her eyes tear at the sight of father and son together. Maybe it was her pride that made her march over to them like nothing was amiss and try to brazen her way through the encounter like she hadn’t kept a major secret from Lance, a secret she knew he was entitled to know but had rationalized away. He’d never wanted kids, and he’d stopped wanting her. She’d done him a favor, really, not telling him. What would he have done? It would only have led to more ugliness between them, and there’d already been plenty of that.
Besides, she’d intended to tell him. A few months after Grandpa William’s birthday party, she’d taken a home pregnancy test. And gone to her gynecologist. And thought long and hard about what she wanted to do. She’d driven to see Lance, who still lived in their old condo on South Beach, to tell him she’d decided to have his baby. She’d planned to reassure him that nothing was expected of him, but she imagined that at some point, the child would want to meet its father, and she hoped Lance would be open to that idea.
She should’ve texted. Instead, she’d gotten caught up in some ridiculous fantasy where the pregnancy news magically brought her and Lance back together. Months of distance and miscommunication would disappear, and they’d be a family. A reunion like that should be face-to-face. She’d convinced herself surprising him was best. Looking back, she could only blame crazy pregnancy hormones for such delusions.
Rachelle opened the door. Rachelle, with her spiked pixie haircut and heavy eyeliner. Rachelle, who Carrie knew about in a theoretical way but hadn’t actually met yet. Rachelle, who’d started dating Carrie’s husband the minute the divorce was finalized. No, Rachelle had not been part of her baby-news plans.
“Hi.” Carrie had stood on her old welcome mat, a sunburst made of coir fibers harvested from coconut husks, feeling uncharacteristically shabby in her stretchy yoga pants and off-the-shoulder knit top. “Is Lance home?”
Rachelle took her time looking Carrie up and down. Shabby and shabbier. Carrie looked back. It was hard to imagine a woman more different from herself. Rachelle was model-thin in a black tank top and satin shorts that looked like pajamas. It was midafternoon. Perhaps the shorts were a fashion statement of some kind.
“Lance?” Rachelle finally drawled out. “He’s still sleeping.” Rachelle yawned like Carrie was keeping her from joining him. “I’ll tell him you stopped by. What’s your name?”
“Sylvia.” Carrie gave the name of her best friend from high school. If Rachelle didn’t know who she was, Carrie wasn’t about to be the ex-wife popping in with some maternity news. No, Lance could ponder who the mysterious Sylvia was for five seconds and then shrug it off. He wouldn’t remember that Sylvia had taken a gap year in Europe, fallen in love with a Parisian, and never returned to the United States.
“Okay.” Rachelle leaned against the open door, light from the hallway catching on a ring. A diamond ring. On her left hand.
“Sorry to bother you. Tell him it wasn’t important.” Carrie lurched away, sure she was going to hurl all over the mother-in-law’s tongue plants lined up in a neat row in the courtyard. She hadn’t, though. Morning sickness was still a month away. She did, however, drive herself home and cry. She was going to be a single mom, and she was pretty sure it was going to suck.
Now, only a few years later, Carrie couldn’t imagine her life without Oliver. She checked on him in the rearview mirror, happily bobbing his head to the song playing on the speakers. She used to love her Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift, but these days, it was Disney songs and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” blasting from her sound system. Oliver was trying to create the thumb and pinkie finger ladder motion of the spider, but his coordination wasn’t quite there yet, and he kept going thumb-thumb, pinkie-pinkie. It was so funny Carrie was tempted to whip out her phone for a video to send her mom, but they were almost home, and she didn’t want to take the time to pull over. They’d see her mom, or Gamma as Oliver liked to say, in a few minutes, and Carrie’s hectic day would begin.
Pulling into street parking across from her building, Carrie began the detail-oriented process of unpacking Oliver, Beckham, and the assorted child and dog accessories that traveled with them both. Chasing down a runaway chew toy and stuffing it in her purse, Carrie ran down her plan for the day: new-client meeting first thing, then on to the downtown penthouse currently under renovation to check on the aurora-marble and pearl-glass bathroom tiles that were supposed to be installed yesterday but that she suspected were not. This contractor had been nothing but problems—behind schedule every step of the way for no reason she could discern. It made her nervous. If this bathroom went well, she had a feeling the client would hire her to do the rest of the dwelling. If not, as she’d learned in the past, it’d be hard to collect final payment from an unhappy client. Home for a quick snack and snuggle with Oliver, and then off to a cocktail hour where she hoped to get some new leads on jobs.
Working for herself was a lot of hustle, but it was a lot better than the position at the large design firm she’d had while married to Lance. As her own boss, she was able to make her own schedule, decide with whom and how much she worked, and most importantly, make time for Oliver. Yes, she missed her steady paycheck and premier health benefits, but thankfully, she and Oliver were healthy and doing fine on a low-cost health plan, and by hook or by crook, she was able to pay her bills.
“Here, let me help.” Gamma lifted Oliver out of his car seat and propped him on her hip. Carrie’s mom had recently turned fifty-two, but she sure didn’t look it. Dark hair dyed to silky auburn and cut in an easy-to-care-for short bob with long bangs, she could pass for Oliver’s mom herself. “How’re you, Oli-Oli-oxen-free?”
Oliver laughed at the familiar nickname and gave his grandma a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Don’t worry about him at all today, Carrie. I know you’ve got a lot going on. Oli and I will be fine.”
“I know.” Carrie hefted the bag with Oliver’s snacks, board books, and stuffed animals and Beckham’s treats, extra leash, collapsible water bowl, and chew toys over her shoulder. The dang thing seemed to get heavier every day. Who needed a gym membership when you had a kid and a dog?
She led the way through the propped-open gate of their condo building, taking the right pathway through the front garden—a landscape of overgrown bougainvillea, lush liriope, and the pièce de résistance: an enormous staghorn fern hanging off a gumbo-limbo tree. Honestly, she’d bought her condo primarily because of that nearly six-foot staghorn fern. It made her happy every time she walked to her front door, and Oliver enjoyed jumping to brush his fingers against the lower curling fronds.
At their door, Gamma fished a key out of the front pocket of her cargo pants, and Carrie relinquished the heavy bag to the bench she’d placed there for exactly that purpose. It also helped create the sense of a foyer in a space that was so small it had no business having a foyer. The condo had originally been a one-bedroom, but she’d worked her contacts to move the kitchen opening to another wall so she could enclose the small dining room, creating a junior bedroom as the real estate agents called it.
“Who wants to wear his red dinosaur shirt toda
y?” Gamma cooed while peeling Oliver out of his muddy dog park shirt. “And how about a bath first?”
“Beckham, too?” Carrie called, hopping down the short hallway to her bedroom on one foot while she took her cross-trainer off the other. She landed sideways on her queen bed, a decorating compromise between the king-size bed she’d wanted and the square footage of her bedroom. She toed off the other shoe. “And can it wait ’til I grab a quick shower? I’ve got a client meeting in less than an hour.” One bathroom meant many such compromises. Her son could be dirty a few minutes longer. Didn’t exposure to germs help build immunity?
“Sure, we’ll have a little snack, won’t we?” Gamma’s voice faded as she walked into the kitchen. Carrie heard the refrigerator door open, then the click-click of Beckham’s toenails on her hardwood floors. He was ever-optimistic about the refrigerator, and with good reason. Even if no one specifically meant to give the dog treats, Oliver’s eating habits—namely, his ability to get as much food smeared in his hair and on the floor as he got in his mouth—meant there was always plenty of cleanup duty for the dog.
Carrie was just stepping out of the shower when she heard the soft ping of her phone. She wrapped a towel around her hair and shrugged into her short satin robe.
We need to talk.
Carrie didn’t need caller ID to know it was Lance. After her divorce, she’d changed his entry in her address book from Lance Donovan and the picture of him stuffing wedding cake in his mouth to Don’t Answer and a picture of the yellow and black circles used to label toxic chemicals. She knew who it was, and she didn’t have time for drama right now. She checked the time. Less than half an hour now to put on her business face and meet Dimitri Orlov. If all went well today, she’d be drawing up plans for a redesign of his three restaurants. And if she got the job, she wouldn’t have to worry about income for the next year. What a relief it would be to take a break from the constant scramble for new clients. So Lance could wait. It wasn’t like Oliver’s paternity was some kind of emergency, and the kind of conversation they needed to have couldn’t be rushed. She needed this job, for Oli’s sake as much as her own. She would deal with Lance once Orlov signed her very detailed contract.