“How do you know about that?”
“Catherine told Sheila.” His voice changed subtly on his wife’s name, but I didn’t pursue it. In retrospect I realize I should have, but at the time I had other things on my mind.
“That’s part of it,” I answered. “It was not a good experience.”
Understatement of the year. Bradley and I had lasted less than two years before we called it quits, so I guess it had been for the best, really, but at the time it had been difficult.
“I guess this’ll make Todd happy, anyway,” Dix said now, trying to look on the bright side. “Now you’ll have to marry him.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t bring myself to come right out and say it. “It isn’t Todd’s baby.”
And then I didn’t have to. When I didn’t say anything, Dix read my silence. His voice changed. “Oh, sis. What have you done?”
“Something stupid?” I don’t know why I posed it as a question.
“I’d say. You slept with him? And you didn’t make sure you were protected? What were you thinking?”
“That’s kind of the problem,” I muttered. “I wasn’t.”
I’d been feeling. Needing. Enjoying. But not thinking. Too wrapped up in the moment, I hadn’t given the possibility of getting pregnant a thought until I didn’t get my period on time. And Dix was right. I’d been an idiot. It had been bad enough to sleep with Rafe in the first place, when I knew we’d never have any kind of real relationship, but to do it without protection...!
“That’s obvious,” Dix said.
My voice was tiny. “So what do I do now?”
“You’re asking me?” I could picture him, running his fingers through his sandy blond hair, making it stand straight up. Fisting his hands in it in frustration and yanking. “All right. You don’t have many options that I can see. There’s not much chance you can pass this kid off as Todd’s...”
“No.” Any baby Rafe and I made would have its father’s dark hair, dark eyes, and golden skin. My blonde and blue-eyed fairness might lighten things up a little, like a liberal dash of milk in coffee, but we’re still talking café au lait, not plain vanilla. And since Todd is as fair-haired and blue-eyed as I am, there was no way we’d be able to explain something like that away. Or like he’d want to.
“God, sis,” Dix said, as if he were looking at the picture in my mind and freaking out all over again, “what were you thinking?”
The thing is, the picture was beautiful. A little baby... girl? boy?... with big dark eyes, thick black lashes, and a big toothless smile, holding on to my finger—
“Obviously marrying him is out,” Dix said, popping the bubble.
I nodded. Yes, and not only because he hadn’t asked. He probably didn’t want to. No, scratch that—he definitely didn’t want to. He’d been upfront about it. He wanted me in his bed, but he didn’t want a relationship. Not that he’d said so, but surely if he had, I would have heard something from him at least once in the past six weeks. The whole experience must not have been as mind-blowing for him as it had been for me. He’d achieved his goal of bedding Savannah Martin, and now he was on to the next woman. While I was here, barefoot and pregnant. Damn him.
“And I can’t imagine you want to be a single mother,” Dix continued, twisting the knife.
I shook my head again. I knew he couldn’t see me, but I couldn’t help the kneejerk reaction.
“So I guess that leaves the two As. Adoption or abortion.”
And there it was. Carrying the baby to term and giving it away to someone else. Or getting rid of it now, before it developed into a real problem.
There were issues inherent in these scenarios too, of course. While healthy white newborns are a hot commodity on the adoption market, this baby wouldn’t precisely be white. LaDonna Collier had been a blue-eyed blonde like me, but Rafe’s father had been black, and Rafe looked, if not specifically African-American, at least far from Caucasian, which might make things more difficult. Although not impossible. There was sure to be someone out there who’d be happy to have Rafe’s baby. Someone who’d love it and take care of it. A mixed couple, maybe, who couldn’t conceive. Or just someone braver than me, who wouldn’t care what people thought. After all, any baby of Rafe’s would be beautiful. Couldn’t help but be. And having gone through a miscarriage myself, I had all the sympathy in the world for people who couldn’t conceive. But if I carried the baby for nine months and then gave birth to it, would I be able to give it up? Or would I get attached, in spite of my fears?
And as for deliberately terminating the pregnancy, I wasn’t sure I could do that, either. It’d be the easiest solution, certainly, it was just—
“Did you tell him?” Dix interrupted my train of thought.
God, no. “I just realized it a few days ago.” And although I could have gotten hold of him if I really wanted to, through Detective Grimaldi with the Nashville police, I wasn’t yet sure I wanted him to know.
“I don’t suppose it would have mattered,” Dix said judiciously. “After all, there’s nothing he could have done about it. Your body, your choice. Although if he’d told his grandmother...”
“What do you mean, there’s nothing he can do?” He could do a hell of a lot, as far as I was concerned.
Dix was silent for a moment. “Who are we talking about here, sis?”
I took the phone away from my ear to stare at it, and put it back. “What do you mean, who are we talking about? Who do you think we’re talking about? Rafe, of course.”
“Right,” Dix said. “Rafe Collier. Isn’t he dead?”
Oh... shit.
“Darn,” I said faintly.
“He’s not dead? Sis?”
I drew breath and blew it out, thinking about knocking my head against the coffee table. Stupid, stupid, stupid...
Well, the cat was out of the bag now. Lying wouldn’t do any good; besides, Dix could always tell when I did. I might as well tell the truth. And beg him not to pass it on.
“No, he isn’t dead. He’s undercover. But you can’t tell anyone, Dix. You’ve got to promise me that you won’t. If word gets out that he survived that nutcase they sent to kill him, they’ll just send someone else. And I don’t want him to die.”
My voice shook. I could still remember that horrible feeling I got when Dix told me that Todd had told him that the sheriff had said that Rafe was dead. No doubt Dix remembered, as well.
He was silent for a moment. “Are you in love with this guy, sis?”
“Of course not,” I said, grabbing a strand of hair and twirling it around my finger.
“You’re blushing.”
“No, I’m not.” And even if I were, he couldn’t possibly tell from two counties away.
“Is your finger turning blue?”
“Why would my finger be turning blue?” I unwound the hair and inspected the finger. Not blue.
“You always play with your hair when you’re lying,” Dix said.
“I’m not lying.” I leaned back on the sofa pretending I hadn’t been doing exactly what he’d accused me of doing. “God, Dix, have you lost your mind? How could you possibly think I’d fall in love with Rafe Collier? Mother would kill me!”
“You forget,” Dix said, “I saw your face last month, when you thought he’d died. And don’t bother trying to tell me that you knew, at that point, that he was just faking it, because I won’t believe you. You thought he was dead, and you had a meltdown.”
“It wasn’t a meltdown.” I’d kept myself from becoming a blubbering mess, and as far as I was concerned, that was a major achievement, when all I’d wanted to do was break down in hysterics.
“You also told me you’d fallen for him.”
“A little. I said a little. And that was when I thought he was dead.”
“Right,” Dix said. “Relax, sis. It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. This isn’t something I’d want to get around.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not doing it for you,” Dix s
aid. “You’re up there in Nashville. You can turn off your phone. I live with these people. And if word got out that you’re pregnant, and with Rafe Collier’s baby—oh, and by the way, he’s not really dead after all, so guess what, he’ll be around, practically part of the family—can you imagine the flak I’d get?”
I could imagine, only too well. I suppressed a shudder.
“So no,” Dix said, “until you figure out what you’re going to do, I won’t be saying a word to anyone. And when you do figure it out, assuming there’s anything to tell at that point, you’re telling them.”
Fair enough.
“So Collier doesn’t know.” Dix picked up the conversation where we’d left off several tangents ago.
I shook my head, although he couldn’t see it. “He left that same night. And I haven’t heard from him since.”
“He seduced you and left town and he didn’t even leave a number? I’m gonna kill him.”
“Please don’t.” And not just because if he tried, chances were Rafe would kill Dix instead. “It’s not his fault.”
“Whose fault is it?”
I sighed. “It’s mine. I should have been more careful. He was always upfront about what he wanted, and it wasn’t anything permanent.”
“I should hope not,” Dix said darkly, “because if he offers to marry you, I want you to say no.”
I couldn’t help it, I giggled. Weakly, but it was a giggle. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
God, could you picture it? Rafe Collier facing mother over the Thanksgiving Day turkey for the next thirty years...?
And then, to my absolute mortification, the giggle turned to a sob, and then another. “I don’t know what to do, Dix. I can’t keep the baby—what will people think?—but I don’t think I can give it away, either. Not after carrying it for nine months. I’ll get attached, you know I will. And aborting it—just because I’m too much of a coward to keep it—seems wrong.”
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Dix said.
It was the last thing I expected him to say, and for a second I just sat there, stunned. Then—
“Are you crazy? I can’t tell him! What if he says he wants me to keep it?”
“He can’t force you,” Dix pointed out. “It’s your body.”
“But it’s his baby.” Our baby. And God, the thought of that—! “He has the right...”
“He doesn’t have the right to tell you what to do. Legally—”
I interrupted him. Mother taught me that interrupting is wrong, but I couldn’t keep it in. “Legally, schmegally. Come on, Dix. Morally and ethically, he has the right to an opinion. And I have an obligation to take what he says into account.”
“I always suspected Bradley Ferguson wasn’t the only reason you dropped out of law school,” Dix grumbled. “With an attitude like that, you’d never make it as a lawyer. Legally, it’s your body and you can do what you want with it.”
“But here in the real world, I offered him my body, and he put a baby inside it, and that means he gets a say in what happens to that baby.”
“If you tell him,” Dix said.
“Right. If I tell him.”
“And right now he’s gone. Any idea when he’s coming back?”
“None.” Could be tomorrow, could be never. He’d already been gone longer than he thought he’d be. Before he left, he’d told me he expected it to take a few weeks, maybe a month at the most. It had been almost two.
“Then I suggest you think fast,” Dix said.
# # #
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenna Bennett writes the Savannah Martin mystery series, as well as the nationally bestselling Do-It-Yourself home renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime under the pseudonym Jennie Bentley. A former Realtor® and home renovator, she makes her home in Nashville with a husband and two boys, a hyper-active dog, a dive-bombing parakeet, two African dwarf frogs and two goldfish. A native of Norway, she’s spent more than twenty years on US soil and still hasn’t managed to kick her native accent.
For more information, please visit Jenna’s website: www.JennaBennett.com
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