by Amy Star
“Where are your parents at now?” he wondered, voice gentling slightly.
Casey was silent for a moment. “They pretty much worked themselves to death for me,” she answered eventually, shrugging again like it was no big deal. “Dad died of lung cancer a few years back. Mom followed a few months later with a bottle of pain pills. We were in the foster system for a few months, but then Annie—that’s my sister, you met her a couple days ago—aged out and took me with her.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Atticus offered, because really, there wasn’t much else to say on the topic.
Casey waved it off and chased a bean in a circle around her plate with her fork, though her mood improved dramatically when she was presented with a slice of lemon meringue pie by the chef, who never seemed to stop smiling. It was a good quality to have, Casey figured.
And on the whole, it felt good to talk about. It wasn’t a topic she enjoyed, of course, but it felt good to get it off of her chest. She always felt bad bringing it up around Annie; her sister had been in the middle of the whole mess just as much as Casey had, and she needed no reminders about it. And it didn’t seem like Atticus was looking at her any differently than he had been before, and that was… a relief.
*
It had been years since Casey had been in a proper doctor’s office. Typically, she just went to a walk-in clinic if she needed to see a doctor, and she didn’t think she had ever actually seen a specialist. But if she was going to have a baby, then everyone needed to know if she was healthy enough for that first. No one wanted any unfortunate surprises halfway through, least of all Casey.
Everything looked and smelled sterile, the receptionist was smiling cheerfully, and there were only a few other people in the waiting room. Lydia escorted her, since Casey was reluctant to go alone, but she wasn’t going to demand her sister take a day off from work. Lydia didn’t seem to mind; apparently, she really could just drop everything at her leisure.
Once she was called back to the exam room, Casey was poked and prodded, blood was drawn, and she peed in a cup. Preliminarily, she was given a clean bill of health and told that someone from the office would call if anything turned up, but in general, no news was good news.
*
Three days later, Lydia accompanied Casey to a gynecologist appointment. Casey had never seen a gynecologist before. She had certainly never had an internal exam done. The doctor was a polite, friendly woman with a warm smile, and it was all painless enough, but Casey couldn’t help but feel slightly embarrassed afterwards.
Once again, though, she was given a clean bill of health and told that if no one got in touch with her, then there was nothing wrong.
Lydia bought her coffee to cheer her up on the way back to the house.
*
Casey stared at the smart phone in her hand for almost a full minute before she finally convinced herself that she wasn’t going to break it just by touching it. It was a touch screen; she was supposed to touch it. That was the entire point.
Carefully, she typed in Jason’s phone number and hit the call button, listening to it ring and being silently grateful that she had been able to keep her original number. Jason could be a bit weird about answering the phone from numbers he was unfamiliar with, and it was always sort of up in the air whether or not he would actually listen to any voicemails he got.
When he answered, it was with a blunt, “It is nearly midnight.”
“Hey, don’t take that tone with me,” Casey huffed, folding her arms as best she could while still holding her phone to her ear. “I don’t choose when I start freaking out; it just happens.”
“What are you freaking out about?” he asked, his complaints about the time apparently forgotten.
“Right, so, it’s not like I managed to forget what this deal with Atticus is all about,” she began, and she started pacing across her sitting room, “but I had my first visit to the lady doc’s office today, and it sort of hit me that, yeah, I’m getting ready to get pregnant.”
“If you’re against it, you could still back out,” Jason reminded her, though in the tone of someone who knew it wouldn’t happen and was pointing the option out more out of obligation.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she protested, shaking her head slightly despite the fact that Jason wasn’t there to see her. “It’s just a lot happening all at once. Or at least, kind of all at once.”
Jason cleared his throat. “Not that I’m not cool with letting you vent or whatever, but I feel obligated to point out that your sister might be able to relate better to most of whatever you’re going to go through.”
Casey snorted. “Well, yeah, but she’s asleep. I know you’re awake at weird hours.”
Jason sighed wistfully. “I always love being the fallback plan.”
“You’re my favorite fallback plan,” Casey assured him. “And I’m not even expecting you to say anything, really. I just like knowing that you’re listening.”
“Whenever you need me to,” he hurried to reply. “But you’re fine, right?”
“I’m fine,” she confirmed. “Just waiting for the boat to stop rocking.”
“I’m not sure it’s going to any time soon,” he cautioned. “But I know you; you’ll find your sea legs soon enough.”
“Sometimes, I wish I had as much faith in me as you do,” she mumbled, toeing at the carpet with one foot.
“I’ve got enough faith in you to share,” he assured her wryly. “You can handle this, and it’s not like you’re on your own.”
*
There were so many doctors’ appointments after that. Casey had known it was coming, and her doctor was a very nice woman, but she hadn’t been entirely up to date on just how often she was going to need to see a doctor to determine when the perfect window to introduce the sperm would be.
It didn’t even happen for weeks after Casey moved in. Sometimes, Atticus took her to appointments, sometimes Annie, but for the most part, it was Lydia. Casey was learning to find her quiet mischief and her snide sarcasm comforting.
But obviously, one day, it was time. Or at least, they were figuring it was time. All of the observations on her ovulation cycle were saying it was. She had been warned over and over that there was no guarantee that it would take on the first attempt, so she was pretty sure she was ready.
It was actually sort of anticlimactic. Sperm was injected with a syringe, and she lay on a table for about forty-five minutes after that before the doctor declared her free to go. When she made her way back out to the waiting room, Atticus, Annie, and Lydia were all waiting, apparently engaged in a conversation that involved a lot of very broad hand gestures on Lydia’s part.
They went out for dinner afterwards, and the evening felt very normal compared to what Casey had expected. Granted, she knew it took a while to tell if conception actually happened, but she was expecting to feel… different.
But maybe it was good that she still felt pretty normal. Not everything had to be momentous and terrifying.
C HAPTER FOUR
“Give us a turn,” Lydia instructed. Standing beside her, Annie bounced eagerly on the balls of her feet, her hands clenched together in front of her chest.
With a sigh, Casey turned in a circle, the loose, swishing skirt of her knee-length dress billowing around her as she did. In its swirling shades of red and gold and orange and black, it almost looked as if the skirt had turned into fire. Her boots were shining black leather up to her knees, over a pair of red fishnet stockings. Her makeup was in natural tones, and her hair was simply braided down her back. As far as Lydia was concerned, trying to do anything that would disguise its length may as well have been criminal.
Annie practically squealed. “You look great!” she enthused, her feet actually leaving the floor for a split second. “You’ll knock the socks off of anyone who points a camera at you.”
Casey shifted uncomfortably. “Are we sure that’s actually going to happen?” she wondered. “I mean, we’re jus
t going out for dinner.”
The look on Lydia’s face—it seemed to translate to “oh, my poor child” —rather quickly dashed any of Casey’s hopes that she could slip through the evening unnoticed.
Granted, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. It was the first time she was really going to be seen in public attached to Atticus, even if it was only for something as simple as dinner. She just didn’t understand why it needed to be a huge production.
Or rather, she understood perfectly—his relationship with her was to save his reputation, so he needed to be seen with her—but that didn’t mean she had to be particularly thrilled about it. She had heard horror stories of what the paparazzi would do if they were really determined to get a scoop.
She smoothed her hands down her dress and linked them together in front of herself, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. “I’m as ready as I’m ever likely to be,” she decided. Not the most enthusiastic attitude, she supposed, but she would rather walk into something pessimistic and then be pleasantly surprised, rather than the other way around.
“Then, let’s get going!” Annie proclaimed before she caught Casey by the hand and began to tow her out of the suite at a jog. Lydia followed behind them at a more sedate pace.
They met Atticus in the foyer, and he cut an impressive figure in his black shirt and slacks and his red and gold vest. Casey felt strangely pleased when he gave her a rather noticeable once-over.
Annie escorted them outside to Atticus’s car, presumably to get some idea of whether or not Atticus planned to be a gentleman. Whether she was satisfied with her brief investigation or not, Casey wasn’t sure, but she waved goodbye as the car began to pull away, driving along the winding driveway.
Atticus’s car was an impressive beast. It wasn’t enormous, but the engine growled like it planned to devour the world and everything in it, and once they left the bumpy, pitted driveway behind in favor of the road, the car accelerated like it was trying to outrun the entire world. It was a metallic gold color, and somehow, that just seemed to make it seem like it was even faster.
All things considered, it probably wasn’t going to be a particularly long drive to the restaurant.
*
The restaurant was not what Casey had been expecting. She had been expecting crystal and expensive floors and chandeliers. Instead, it looked more like a log cabin once they were inside. There were blazing fireplaces and everything. It was actually pretty cozy.
They got inside painlessly, and the hostess led them from the door to a small, secluded table beside one of the fireplaces. She lingered just long enough to hand them menus and take their drink orders before bustling away again.
The conversation, at first, was less of a true conversation and more just Casey gushing about how cute she thought the woodsy aesthetic was, until she finally settled an expectant look on him. Leaning her elbows on the table and propping her chin up in both hands, she wondered, “Considering you actually do live in the middle of nowhere, more or less, why does this place look more rustic than your house?”
Atticus cleared his throat. “Because I’m spoiled and didn’t want to do away with any of the comforts I grew up with, but making a house the size of mine look like a cabin would be ridiculous.”
Casey snorted. “Well, points for self-awareness. Why the antiques, then?”
He shrugged a shoulder and leaned his chin in one hand, his elbow on the edge of the table. “I can be spoiled and self-aware and still appreciate it when a room feels like it has history in it. Those two things aren’t necessarily diametrically opposed. It just means I’m quirky.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Casey returned dryly, smirking behind her fingers when Atticus rolled his eyes at her.
The conversation lulled for a moment as the waitress trotted up to drop off their drinks and take their orders.
The wine was exquisite, considering that ordinarily, Casey didn’t particularly like wine. The appetizer was incredible. The salad that came with the entrée was amazing, and Casey didn’t even eat salad particularly often. By the time their actual meals arrived, she was convinced she would be too full to eat any of it, but after two bites, she was in love with it and finished the entire plate. Dessert, though it didn’t seem possible, was even better than everything else that had come to the table that evening.
Throughout the meal, they spoke surprisingly little. It wasn’t strange, though. It was comfortable. And when conversation did crop up, it was surprisingly easy.
All in all, it was a good night, though she avoided looking at the number on the bottom of the receipt afterward, just to spare her blood pressure.
*
Maybe Casey should have expected it. Okay, she definitely should have expected it. She walked into a restaurant with Atticus Grevieux. Though their entrance into the restaurant had been reasonably calm, she had no doubts that word about his presence had spread quickly. So, as they walked out of the restaurant, they were greeted—assaulted might have been a better word—by the flashing lights of half a dozen cameras. Casey squealed in surprise and ground to a halt in the doorway, blinking at the small crowd.
With an exasperated scoff, Atticus shouldered his way between her and the camera people. One of his hands settled against her back, between her shoulders, urging her forwards. She tripped into motion, tucked against his side to make herself as invisible as she could. Once he ushered her into the car, she slid down in her seat until she could hardly even see out the window anymore.
It was only after the car pulled away from the curb and made it a few miles down the road that she sat back up and wondered dazedly, “Is it always like that?”
“Unfortunately,” Atticus sighed. “I was hoping we might be able to get in and out before any of them showed up, but I suppose that was a bit optimistic.”
Casey snorted. “I didn’t know optimism was hoping for just the minimum amount of harassment.”
“Ah, the stories I could tell,” Atticus sighed, and Casey huffed out a laugh.
*
When Casey woke up the next morning, it was with the utmost of reluctance. It was too early. Not so early that Atticus would still be home, but still early enough that she didn’t want to be up. She rolled over and grabbed her phone from the bedside table, answering the call to make it be quiet and bringing it to her ear.
“What?” she whined, contemplating rolling over and burying her face against her pillow again.
Jason cleared his throat on the other line. “You should take a look at today’s news. I emailed you a link.”
Curiosity finally piqued enough to break her connection to the bed, so Casey sat up and dragged her laptop closer from where it had migrated down to the foot of the bed. She flipped it open, got to her email, and clicked the link.
She squealed in surprise as soon as she saw the pictures attached to the article.
Most of them were simply taken from the sidewalk outside the restaurant as Atticus led her back to the car, Casey looking flustered and affronted by the flashing lights and unwanted attention. There were a few, though, that were a bit more… personal.
There were three pictures of Casey in various stages of undress, taken through the window of her bedroom. One of them had been blurred out as it had been taken after she removed her bra.
She didn’t care what the actual article was about. It could have been about anything, good or bad, and nothing was going to redeem it from the fact that there were pictures of her sans most of her clothing without her permission. She wasn’t even sure where the pictures had been taken from, though she sort of hoped they had been taken from reasonably close to the house, because at least then they could go after the photographer for trespassing. That would be better than nothing.
“Yeah,” Jason sighed before Casey could gather her wits enough to come up with an actually intelligent reply. “I wanted to give you a bit of warning before you just stumbled over it later.”
“There are pictures of me nak
ed!” she reminded him, a bit more loudly than was strictly necessary. “Even having warning doesn’t make this much better!” She fell silent then, closing her mouth with an audible click. She sucked in a breath and sighed it out. “But thanks,” she mumbled, sullen.
“Are you going to be okay?” Jason wondered, and Casey could just barely hear the sounds of him pacing back and forth as his floor creaked.
“Yeah,” she sighed in return. “I’ll be fine. Atticus will have a better idea of whether or not we can do anything about this.” She scratched at the back of her head with one hand and tugged her fingers idly through a tangle. “I’ll call and let you know the verdict later.”
“If you’re lucky, the guy who took the pictures will get hit by a car,” Jason offered, his tone slightly soothing.