by Violet Paige
“I remember your sister. She graduated ahead of us, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, she was a senior when we were freshmen.”
“Thought so. And she was a cheerleader.”
“Yes.” It was ridiculous, but I had a slight twinge of jealousy that Jeremy remembered details about Frannie. It was practically a lifetime ago. I might have had some little sister issues. It was hard when your sister looked like an Italian goddess.
“Ok, keep going. I can tell there’s more to this story.”
I closed my eyes. “No, there isn’t.”
“What? Your budding writing career couldn’t have gone off-track just because of your family. Come on. There’s something you’re leaving out.”
I shook my head. There wasn’t anything else—that was the most shameful thing about it. The part I couldn’t excuse. I had settled for a mediocre life. “No. I stayed for the wedding. And then I stayed after the wedding. Then Frannie got pregnant. Everyone wanted me to stay for my niece. And then it was a nephew. And then another niece. More showers. More nurseries to decorate.”
His eyes widened. “Frannie has three kids?”
“What did you expect? She married a damn pediatrician.” I covered my mouth. “Sorry, that sounded bitchy. I really didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Evie, I don’t give a shit what you say about your sister.” He grinned and I relaxed. He might have been the only person who didn’t put Frannie on a pedestal.
I hadn’t finished my wine, but Jeremy was already topping it off. I took a sip. It tasted full and expensive.
“So that’s it. I came home. And I never left. But you know, I have an incredible screenplay.” I leaned on the table. “Ok, I actually have ten incredible screenplays. They are very successful in Bella’s cellar,” I joked.
“If you’ve married off your sister and played aunt, why don’t you leave now instead of living out a tragic Jane Austen character’s life.”
I almost choked on my wine. “You remember Jane Austen? And used her in a social reference? Who is this version of Jeremy Hartwell?” I teased.
“Steel trap.” He tapped the side of his tanned face. “And I’m well-read.” He took the banter well. I couldn’t be the first girl to throw a dumb jock joke in his face. “You should do it, though. Go. Get out of this town a second time. Write and do something else. I’ve been back all of twelve hours and I can see it—nothing is happening here.”
“You think I could show up in L.A. now? I’m practically thirty, Jeremy. Thirty.” I said it like the numbers were a death sentence looming in front of me. They felt like one. A lethal blow to my biological clock.
I stared into my glass as if it held the answers to aging. Was there a fountain of youth potion inside Italian wine? Was that why my father kept it buried in the back of the cellar? Is that why we never drank it?
“What’s thirty? I’m thirty.”
“First, you’re a guy. That basically disqualifies you from this conversation. A guy at thirty, at forty, even fifty is not the same. Second, your resume at thirty blows mine out of the water.”
He stretched his arm against the back of the booth. His forearms tensed as his muscles flexed. I had to stop staring at his every little movement. What if he noticed he made my mouth water?
“Let’s see, my resume includes a failed three-year career as a professional athlete, which prepares me for exactly zero other careers in life. Other than commentating. And have you ever listened to baseball play-by-play? Not my true calling. So you can mark that off your list while you’re doling out career counseling advice.”
I laughed. The banter came easily between us. I didn’t think we had ever talked together this long as teenagers.
“Come on. You’re a Hartwell. What about the family business?” I didn’t believe life was hard for him. He’d always been privileged and wealthy. Stellar at everything he touched.
“I don’t want it.” His eyes flared.
“You don’t want to run Hartwell Global? Why not? Isn’t that your destiny?”
“Do you want to devote your life to running Bella’s?” he retorted.
I sighed. “Ok. That’s fair. I guess the family business is the family business whether you’re serving gasoline or spaghetti.” I paused. “So if it’s not HG, then what do you want?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. But I’m going to be doing it on my own. My father made sure of that. I learned today I have to start from scratch. So I will.”
Jeremy kept topping off my wine. I lost track of how many half glasses I had possibly drunk. Was it four or five? And how did I add that to the first one I drank too fast? It could have been more like two it was so full. The candle fell into the chianti bottle and a small swirl of smoke drifted upward. It should have been my cue to clear out for the night, but Jeremy pushed it to the side and staggered to the table behind us to grab another candle. He returned, placing it in front of me. The small flame struggled to flicker, but finally glowed between us.
“There. Much better.” He smiled. “I like how your eyes look in the candlelight.”
I didn’t mean to frown, but I did. Was he hitting on me? And what if he was? Shouldn’t that be ok? He was an attractive man in town for the night. And we had a history even if it was a very loose and distant one. Maybe I didn’t think it was ok for him to flirt because he was Jeremy Hartwell. Known wealthy playboy. A teenager and now a man with a reputation for loving and leaving. He had slept with the entire cheerleading squad. I couldn’t remember a single time he had ever flirted with me in high school. But now? Alone at Stella’s, twelve years later, and he was offering wine and candlelight?
I wanted to pull my hair down around my shoulders as a shield from his flirting, but it was in a ponytail. I couldn’t help the way he made me blush. Taking my hair down would throw him a signal. I couldn’t do that.
“Going back to you, there’s one part of your story you haven’t told me,” he pried.
“What’s that?”
“Frannie’s married, but what about you?” He looked at my left hand. I could feel his eyes focus in on my ring finger.
“In Newton Hills?” I laughed. “Marry someone here?”
He laughed too. “Ok. That’s fair. But you’re here. You can’t be the only single person in the dating pool. There has to be at least one eligible bachelor in this town.”
I eyed him. “No. There’s not.”
“So no kids? No husband? No boyfriend? An ex maybe?”
I shook my head three times. “None.”
“Me either. But you didn’t ask. I’m a little hurt, Evie.”
I giggled. “I think it would make the news here if you were married. And no ring.” I pointed to his hand.
“I could be one of those guys who doesn’t wear a ring.”
I tested him. “Are you?”
He shook his head. “Hell no. I’m not the marrying type.”
The wine was circling my head and swarming my limbs. I felt warm and loose. Almost light enough to dance out of the booth. Holy shit, I was drunk.
“I’ve decided I’m not either,” I announced.
“Is that so? Don’t think I’ve ever met a girl who actually believed that. That philosophy works really well when you first start dating, though.”
“You would say something like that.” I rolled my eyes. He thought he knew women so well. As if sleeping with a hundred of them gave him insight into how women thought and felt. Sex had nothing to do with intellect or a woman’s goals. He had clearly confused everything into one pot.
He licked his perfect bow-shaped lips. “You don’t want to get married? You’re not interested in what Frannie has with Dr. McKids? You expect me to believe that?”
I didn’t want to talk about my sister’s white picket fence existence. “Actually, to tell you the truth, I’ve been working on a project since I’ve been back. And I don’t have to be married to do it.”
“What kind of project?”
I grin
ned, holding the wine glass in my hand. I leaned against the table. I have no idea why I said it. I don’t know what possessed me to tell Jeremy Hartwell my most precious secret, but I did. I whispered it across the table as if he were my best friend. As if he were the kind of confidant I could share deep secrets with.
“I want to get pregnant.”
5
Jeremy
There were a lot of things Evie Rossi could have confessed right then in Bella’s. She could have told me she had a regrettable tattoo on her lower back from a drunken spring break. She could have admitted she was planning to audition for a game show. Hell, she could have told me she had a three-way last night. None of it would have shocked me like the words that just came out of her mouth.
“Did you say pregnant?”
“Mmhmm.” Her lips pouted. When did they get so pillowy and lush? Fuck. “On my own.” She wagged a finger. “Without a husband. I don’t need anyone to have a baby. I can do it without a ring on this finger. I don’t need what Frannie has. I can have a family on my own.”
“That’s the big project? Not a movie you’re trying to produce? Or going back to school to be a theater teacher? You want to have a baby?”
She nodded. “I’m tired of waiting. And I’m going to turn thirty, Jer. Thirty.”
“We’ve established how old we are. Same age here.”
“So, you know my clock is ticking. And there’s no one here. And I’m tired of hearing my mom tell my sister how disappointed she is I’m not married. Oh, Evelyn,” she mimicked, “Why don’t you just date Stan from the Farmers Market?”
“Stan Sedgwick from the debate team?”
“Fuck. You really do remember everyone. Yes, that Stan. I don’t want to date him. Or marry him. Or have kids with him.” She pounded her fist on the table, inhaling deeply. “Do you know he has a creepy mustache?”
I shook my head. “Had no idea.”
“Oh yeah. Like mugshot creepy. So I’m going to have a baby. On my own. I can do the entire thing by myself. And my parents will finally have a complete family and stop harassing me every damn day about dying before they see their grandchildren. There’s always a cloud over my head that I’ve failed them as a daughter.”
She was fired up. “Doesn’t seem reasonable to me. But I have to ask. How are you going to accomplish this with no prospects in town?”
She sighed. “Listen to this. I calculated the entire time table. Because really, if I met someone now. Let’s say hypothetically someone moved to Newton Hills tomorrow—that’s a long shot, but we’ll pretend. And we dated and maybe in a year we’d be engaged.”
I tried to follow along through the wine haze. “Yeah. You’re engaged next year. Got it.”
“By then I’m thirty-one. And we’d have to be married a year or more before we even started trying. Because there’s that whole buy a house, move in together, figure out how to live together thing. So now I’m looking at maybe thirty-three.”
“Ok?” I was confused as hell. What in the fuck was she talking about? Suddenly she was thirty-three?
“Wait until I’m thirty-three? Three more years from now? No way. And that’s the absolute best case scenario. No. I’m not waiting around for some guy to fall into my lap. No. I want a baby now.”
She sounded resolute on her decision. “All right, you have a plan then?”
“I do, but I might have run into some hiccups.”
I poured the last of the wine into both of our glasses. “Go on, tell me about it. I’m dying to hear this part.” Her story had taken a turn. A big fucking detour from where she started.
“Money.” She took a big sip. “I’m doing in vitro, but you have no idea how expensive it is. I can’t afford another appointment until I pay what I owe the fertility clinic.” She slouched in the booth. “I don’t know when I can try again. I’m back to the beginning. I’m still not any closer to being pregnant and every second I sit here I keep getting closer to thirty.”
“You’re right, I don’t have any idea. It’s not something I’ve looked into.” I studied her. “What kind of money are you talking?”
“But of course, money’s no object for you, right? You could pay for a hundred treatments. A thousand treatments. And I’m too in debt to afford one.” She threw her hands in the air. “All I want is one baby. Just one.” Her eyes landed on me. “That’s not asking the universe for much, is it? My own baby?”
“It doesn’t sound like it to me.”
“My sister has three. I want one.”
My hands pushed into the tabletop and I slid around to Evie’s side of the booth. I put an arm around her. She nuzzled into the open space next to my chest.
“I sound crazy, don’t I? Hysterical and hormonal. I’m drunk with Jeremy Hartwell and all I can talk about is in vitro that’s too expensive. I just told you my biggest secret. No one else knows. Why did I tell you that?”
My fingers dug into her shoulder, pulling her closer to me. “Probably because we’re drunk.”
“Probably.”
“Evie?”
“Hmm?” She snuggled against my chest as if she belonged there.
“I have something even crazier to tell you.”
She sighed. “Are you trying to top my sob story?”
“I think I can.” I tried to stroke her hair, but her ponytail holder snapped and it fell around her shoulders. She didn’t seem to care. It felt like silk between my fingers.
“Now I remember.” Her hand tucked against my waist. She wrapped herself around me like a cat.
“Remember what?”
“That was your thing. You were always so competitive in high school.”
“Competitive?” I huffed. “I was a teenage boy. All teenage boys are competitive.”
“But you still are.”
I wrapped her hair around my hand, using it as leverage to lift her face toward mine.
“I fucking swear to you, this time I’m not being competitive.”
She nodded. “All right.” She chewed on her lip. “Then what is it?”
I could smell the wine on her breath and a sweet scent of citrus in her hair. Holding her against my chest made my cock twitch. Something I was fucking certain shouldn’t be happening right now. We were two old friends sharing shitty family sob stories.
“I told you the attorney read my father’s will today.”
“Yes, and it went horribly wrong.” There was innocence in her eyes, mixed with something wildly alluring.
“Depends whose side you’re on.”
“Well, I’m on yours, of course.” Her smile was cute.
I traced the side of her jaw. “See, what the attorney told me today is that I’m supposed to inherit almost all of my father’s assets. More than half a billion dollars—if I want it.”
She gasped. “Jer, that’s incredible.” I don’t know when she decided to shorten my name, but it seemed like it was something she had always done. As if we were closer than we actually were.
I shook my head. “There’s a catch.”
“You have to work for the company and be a stuffy CEO the rest of your life?”
“Oh no. That would have been kind of my father. Generous by his standards. I think I might have been able to stomach that.”
“Then what? What do you have to do to gain your inheritance? What could possibly be so bad?”
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Evie had laced that Italian wine with truth serum. I wasn’t going to tell anyone what my parents had done. I swore I’d never repeat how they planned to trap me in the family business and ensnare me with a bloodline that would always tie us together. It was humiliating. Forcing me to live a life I didn’t want.
I looked into her big brown eyes. Soft, trusting eyes. And I spilled my fucking guts.
“I have to get married. And I have to get my new wife pregnant. And then. Only then. Do I get half a billion dollars.”
6
Evie
At first I giggled. And then I la
ughed. The laughter turned to snorting as I doubled over. I gripped Jeremy’s clean white shirt. I shook harder, the more I tried to reign it in. I inhaled his cologne every time I giggled. Damn he smelled good. It should have been enough to sober me up, but the nearness of him made me more tipsy.
“Evie, I’m serious.” Jeremy looked pissed.
“No—not possible.” I sniffed ridiculously, trying to control my laughter. “You’re totally bull shitting me right now.” There were now tears in the corners of my eyes. I had to stop, but the wine made it nearly impossible.
He gripped my upper arms. “I’m dead serious. I have to get married and have a baby.”
My face fell, and suddenly I was quiet.
I cleared my throat. “This isn’t a joke?” I whispered. “That’s what the lawyer told you today? Your father put those exact words in his will? He actually demanded you become a father? That’s… I don’t really have words for it.”
“You think I would make something like this up?”
I wiped the corner of my eye. “I don’t know. It sounds like something out of a romantic comedy. Guy walks into a bar and needs to find a girl. I could write the script.” I squeaked, forcing myself to get a grip. “Really? Jane Austen? I spilled my sad spinster story about wanting to have a baby, and now this? The golden boy bachelor returns home after a decade and is forced into fatherhood? You can’t write this shit, Jer.”
I pushed back, attempting to read his expression. He didn’t think it was funny, I could tell. The wine had lulled me into thinking we were closer than we were. That I could suddenly rib him when I had crossed a line I shouldn’t have.
“You’re exactly right. It’s not a movie. It’s my fucking life.”
I sat up, startled into sobriety for a brief second.
“I’m afraid your romantic comedy isn’t going to have a happy ending.” He cocked his head to the side. “No beautiful love song for the rolling credits at the end of this story.”