“So she’s not really pregnant? It was all just a ruse to...” To what? Mess with his head? Trick him into marrying her? Keep him from dropping her from his label?
Yes, yes and yes.
He’d always known Missy was ruthless when it came to getting what she wanted. But he’d never thought even someone like Missy would stoop that low.
“That’s what they’re saying. The evidence is pretty damning. The woman who sold it to Missy was no fool. When she realized who she was talking to, she knew there was a bigger payday than just the hundred bucks she’d make selling the test. She kept screenshots of her email conversations with Missy and took a photo of her Jaguar leaving the parking lot where they met. Personalized plates and all. It’s all online if you want to look.”
Ian wished he had taken Keith’s advice and sat down. He stumbled over to one of the tall bar stools and leaned against it with one hip to steady himself. Missy wasn’t pregnant. Not pregnant. Could it really be true? It sounded like a pretty credible case against his fiancée, but Ian wouldn’t let himself completely believe the story until he spoke with Missy directly. More convincing lies had been printed in the tabloids.
Yet, it felt true.
He’d been meticulous in protecting himself over the years. There hadn’t been so much as a late period scare with a girl he’d dated since he lost his virginity. He never wanted to make the same mistake his father had made by creating a child he had no interest in. If and when he had a child, he was going to be dedicated to it, no matter what.
Missy showing up with that pregnancy test had thrown him for a loop, but he’d recovered. He’d tried to make the best of it and stay involved, but Missy seemed determined to keep the baby stuff at arm’s length from him. She had refused to let him come to the doctor’s appointment with her. He’d wanted to hear the heartbeat, but she’d said it was too early. When she hadn’t come home with one of those grainy pictures, she’d told him the sonogram machine was broken. Her flat belly hadn’t budged. No morning sickness. No sign whatsoever that she was having his child.
She’d lied to him about the whole thing. He felt sick. Lightheaded. Foolish. But the strongest feeling sweeping over him was that of utter and complete relief. A moment ago, he’d been devastated that he might have lost his unborn child. Now, the child had never existed, was nothing but the manipulative imaginings of its would-be mother. He felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in his chest that he absolutely couldn’t let out. Keith and Bree would confuse the sound for one of happiness, and that wasn’t an accurate description of the maelstrom swirling inside him.
“Ian? Are you okay?” Keith’s voice had more concern in it than Ian had ever heard before.
Ian cleared his throat, swallowing the emotions inside of him before his manager panicked. “Yeah. Thanks for telling me, Keith. It’s better I heard it from you.”
“What shall I do about the reporters?”
“Tell them that SpinTrax does not comment on the personal lives of their artists or employees. Then send them to Missy’s house.”
* * *
Bree was afraid to speak. Afraid to move. She was trapped in the kitchen, bearing witness to an uncomfortable situation she had no business in. She had only heard one side of the phone conversation, but that was enough. Judging by Ian’s suddenly pale complexion and unsteadiness, she knew whatever Keith told him was bad.
She waited patiently for Ian to turn off his phone so she could see if he needed anything. In a moment like this, there wasn’t much she could do, but she knew enough to offer. It was the sentiment that was important. If he preferred to be alone, she would go downstairs to give him some privacy. There, she could turn on the television so she couldn’t hear his voice upstairs.
“Ian?”
He looked up from the phone. He seemed shaken but, at the same time, eerily calm. She knew from experience that wasn’t good. He was thinking. Processing. Preparing. Fighting with Ian had always been frustrating for her because the majority of the fight seemed to go on silently in his head. She would say something and just sit back and watch the wheels turn in his mind while, outwardly, it appeared he was ignoring her. Eventually, she would just stomp away and he would throw himself into his music. Or his work. This wasn’t a problem he could ignore, though.
“Yes?” he answered softly.
“Can I do anything? Get you anything?”
“No,” he said with a slow shake of his head. It made Bree wonder if maybe he was in shock over the whole thing. She supposed that whether the baby was ever real or not, it had been real to him. He was still losing the idea of a child and the future he was planning with it.
“I need to call Missy here in a minute. You might not...” His voice trailed off.
Bree nodded. She wouldn’t want anyone else around when she had a hard conversation like that, either. “I’ll give you your privacy. Let me know if you need me.” Bree reached out and put her hand over his. She gave him a reassuring squeeze and a weak smile before heading downstairs.
When she reached the lower level of the cabin, she walked over to the leather couch and scooped up the remote. She put the television on a loud action movie with lots of gunfire and explosions. But even that couldn’t muffle everything.
The calm from a moment before was gone. She couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but Ian was yelling. Bree turned up the volume and wished she had packed some earplugs in her bag. She considered taking a shower. Or a walk. Or crawling under some blankets and covering her head with a pillow.
She felt awful for Ian. She knew he wasn’t happy, but he had been making the best of things for the child’s sake. He had always told her how important being a good father was to him. In her young, girlish fantasies, she’d imagined what Ian would be like with their children. She’d thought he would be a hands-on dad. She’d had fantasies of him singing them to sleep with lullabies he wrote especially for them.
To think that Missy had taken that loyalty and dedication in Ian and used it against him... It made Bree feel sick.
Despite the fact that Bree had broken up with Ian in college, she’d never wanted to hurt him. She’d tried to help him, but when that had failed, she had to err on the side of self-preservation. She couldn’t have sat back and watched his downward spiral any longer. Not when she’d loved him so much.
And she still cared about him now. She didn’t want that to be the case, but seeing Ian again had brought all those old feelings to the surface. In only a few short hours together, she’d been bombarded by her attraction to him and wrestled to keep herself at a physical distance. At the same time, her disappointment in his workaholic lifestyle was just as present. He was just as dedicated to the job now as he had been back then. But she couldn’t ignore her fierce protectiveness where he was concerned. Missy was lucky she’d never made it to the house last night. If all this had come to light with her here, Ian would have had to separate the women before someone had gotten hurt. And by “someone,” Bree meant Missy.
She entertained herself with fantasies of winning rowdy catfights. Eventually, she noticed the yelling had stopped. Bree didn’t know if he had hung up the phone or if his anger had finally run its course. Either way, she wasn’t going upstairs anytime soon. She flipped the television to a documentary on Pompeii and let her mind get lost in history instead of the eruption taking place upstairs.
About twenty minutes later, the dull thud of footsteps coming down the stairs roused her from the show. She turned down the volume and looked up in time to see Ian in the doorway. His face was stony and emotionless as he came over and dropped down onto the couch beside her.
Bree sat quietly and waited. He would talk when he was ready. She knew better than anyone that he didn’t like talking about his emotions. It might take him a while to be able to voice his feelings about what had just happened. Even Bree wasn’t sure she co
uld find the words if faced with a betrayal of this magnitude.
“It’s true,” he said at last. His voice was steady and even. The yelling was done and now he was back to the even-keeled Ian she knew. “Missy is not having my baby.”
At least now he knew for certain. “I’m sorry, Ian. Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” he said dismissively. “Missy has done enough.”
“I’m surprised she admitted to it.”
Ian chuckled bitterly. “She didn’t want to, I’m sure, but it’s the kind of lie where you’ll get found out eventually. I’d done my part by rationalizing away all my doubts, but eventually she would have had to start showing. Eventually, she’d have had to give birth to this baby.”
That was a hell of a lie to pull off. Had she really thought it through? “Did she tell you what she intended to do? If the story hadn’t hit the press, she couldn’t have kept the lie going on much longer.”
“She said she was hoping that we would stop using protection and she would actually get pregnant. If that didn’t work, she was going to pretend to miscarry after the wedding.”
Bree shook her head. “With so many women suffering through the reality of losing a child, I can’t imagine her faking something that terrible.”
“That’s because you don’t know the real Missy Kline. All anyone sees is the sexy blonde in music videos and on album covers. I’m sure people think she might be spoiled or a diva. But the truth is that she’s ruthless, especially when it comes to her career. She learned it from her viper of a stage mom.”
“Is that why she did it? For her career?” Bree’s career meant everything to her, but she had a limit of how far she would go to be successful. Most people did.
“That’s not what she said at first. When I confronted her, she cried and wailed that she thought she was losing me. She said she did what she had to do to keep us together because she loved me too much.”
Ian looked down at his hands folded in his lap. “That was absolute crap. I know what it feels like to have a woman love me and it was nothing like that. She barely knew me. She certainly didn’t love me. Missy has never been interested in anyone but herself. The truth was that her last album tanked and she was scrambling. I had no intention of renewing her contract and she’d burned too many bridges to jump to another label easily. That’s when her whole demeanor changed. She was buttering me up, using sex to get her way. I knew that much. What I didn’t know was that she’d realized it wasn’t working. Before I could end it, she’d cooked up the fake pregnancy to keep it going.
“That just turned into a publicity gold mine for her. Celebrity weddings and babies are big news. She started this whole charade to save her career, and it worked better than she’d ever imagined. The publicity about the engagement and the pregnancy boosted her mediocre songs to the tops of the charts. She’d sold the exclusive rights to our engagement and ceremony photos to Celebrity Magazine. The wedding was even going to be televised. Did you know that?”
She didn’t. Natalie might have mentioned it, but Bree had spent last Monday in a daze after finding out about Ian getting married. “Sounds romantic.”
“Doesn’t it? Every step she took was cold and calculated. She was going to revive her career so I would resign her. And if not me, she would see to it that she made enough headlines to get some other label to do it.”
“The whole thing sure backfired on her, though. Who’s going to sign her now?”
“I don’t care,” Ian admitted. “It sure as hell won’t be my label. The wedding is off and the minute she’s fulfilled the final obligations of her contract, I never want to see her pinched face again. If anyone else is dumb enough to offer her a record deal after all this, they deserve what they get.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, absorbing everything that had happened in the past hour. Apparently being held hostage by a blizzard was just the beginning. Finally, Bree spoke. “Well, I’m sorry about all this. There’s nothing I can really say or do to make it better, but I wish that I could.”
Before she could stop herself, she reached out and clasped his hand in her own. She expected him to accept the brief gesture of comfort and pull away, but he didn’t. He tightened his grip on her fingers, sending a surge of emotions through her. She probably wasn’t the best person to help Ian through a moment like this, but she was the only one here. She wanted to hug him. Comfort him. But was that dangerous with their biggest barrier suddenly removed?
“Thanks, Bree,” he said, running the pad of his thumb over her skin. “I guess I should be happy the snow kept Missy from getting here. Can you imagine the three of us trapped in the house when this happened?”
She shuddered, but she wasn’t sure if it was his words or his touch. “I would’ve had to cut a bitch,” she said with a sly smile to help lighten up the situation. “Seriously, I know how important being a good father is to you.”
Ian nodded. “I keep telling myself that everything works out for the best. A part of me is relieved. A part of me is so giddy to break things off with Missy that I want to skip through the house. At the same time,” he added, a sadness creeping into the green depths of his eyes, “even though I didn’t want Missy to be the mother of my child, I wanted that child just the same. Even though he or she was never real, it felt real.”
“Of course it did. And you should give yourself the time and space to grieve for the baby, imaginary or not. You can’t just blink and have the whole situation suddenly not matter anymore.”
“Thanks for understanding. You’re right, and that’s how I need to think about it. I’m glad I’m here instead of back in Nashville. I think some people there would just pat me on the back and say to get over it because none of it was real.”
“It was to you. So take the time you need. Do what you have to do. I think you should take advantage of the peace and solitude here to deal with all this. That way when you return home, you’re ready to face the fallout.”
Ian looked at her with a furrowed brow. “Peace and solitude? I don’t even know what that is, much less how to take advantage of it.”
“I’ll tell you what it is. And how to get it. You made fun of me last night, but unplugging is the best thing you can do right now. You start by turning off your computer and your phone. Forward your business calls to your assistant if you have to, but you don’t want the press and well-meaning friends pestering you about all this. Give yourself pure radio silence.”
“Turn it off,” he repeated, although he didn’t sound convinced.
“Yep,” Bree said with an encouraging smile. “It’s easy. I’ll show you how.”
Six
Silence wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Bree had sold the idea to him like it was the greatest thing in the world. Not true. Without technology to distract him, Ian found he was uncomfortable with his own thoughts. Bree had given him his space and he was drowning in it.
Less than an hour after unplugging from the world, he was suiting up for the cold and heading outside. He had too much nervous energy and too many thoughts swirling around in his head. When he was younger and had the same problem, his mother would give him a physical task.
Then, and now, there was nothing that some hard labor couldn’t fix.
In the garage, he grabbed the snow shovel and a plastic tarp, then headed through the house to the front door. He opened it carefully, leaving a preserved wall of snow going about three feet up the doorway. He spread the tarp down on the wood floor to protect it from snow that might fall inside and melt.
This was as good a place to start as any. From inside, he thrust the shovel into the top few inches of snow and hurled them to the side of the porch. Then he grabbed a second scoop and flung it to the opposite side. Again and again he shoveled until he was able to step out onto the porch and close the door behind him.
From there, he lost himself in the physicality and monotony of the work.
It took more than an hour to make a good path down the front steps to the road. It took another hour to clear in front of the garage doors and excavate Bree’s SUV. They wouldn’t be driving anywhere anytime soon, but if the snow started to melt then refroze in the night, it could turn to an icy shell around her car and damage the paint job. Maybe even crack her windshield.
The work had done wonders for his outlook. His arms and shoulders ached, but he had powered through the stages of grief in a rapid-fire assault on the snow in his driveway. The anger, the disbelief, the disappointment, the relief and the associated guilt came and went with every shovelful of snow. Two hours and three blisters later, Ian finally felt the mysterious sense of peace that Bree had mentioned earlier.
Resting his arms on his shovel, he admired Mother Nature’s handiwork. He normally didn’t come up here when there could be snow, so the sight of the familiar landscape transformed into a winter wonderland was stunning. The sun made the piles of snow sparkle like they were coated in a dusting of glitter. Icicles hung precariously from tree branches and the rooflines of houses in the distance. The chimneys of his neighbors puffed towers of gray smoke against the bright blue sky.
It was perfectly silent. No cars driving down the road in the valley below them. No people talking or walking around. Even the animals were deep inside their dens staying warm. He felt a sense of inner calm being out here that he’d never expected to find, especially after this morning.
When it was all said and done, he couldn’t be angry anymore because he’d been given a second chance. A chance to marry a woman he really loved. To start a family with someone he cared about. It was a life he really hadn’t given much thought to until Missy had reeled him into it. And now that he was free of her deception, the idea of a family—one the way he imagined—brought on an overwhelming feeling of hope.
That sense of hope was shattered as he felt something cold and soft slam into the back of his head.
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