The Baby Deal

by Pade, Victoria

  But there wouldn't be any “everything else” if he didn't at least stick around through tomorrow morning for the will reading, so he knew he had to do that.

  The minute it was over, though, he would be on the first plane to California. To Delia, he promised himself. No matter what.

  With the decision made, Andrew raised his head from his hands and tipped it back to the door, staring up at the steps in front of him, picturing Delia at the top of them, overhearing what he'd said to Jack this morning and actually feeling a wave of what she must have felt.

  “Tomorrow,” he said as if she were standing there now. “Just hold on until tomorrow when I can get to you.”

  But it wasn't only Delia who needed to hold on.

  It was Andrew, too.

  He needed to hold on and get through the hours until he could get to Delia.

  He needed to hold on and just hope that he was going to be able to repair the damage he'd done….

  Chapter Fourteen

  In spite of the bombshell that had been dropped by his father's will, as the estate attorney left the conference room after the reading on Friday morning, Andrew checked his watch for the time. He had a plane to catch.

  Luckily he wasn't scheduled to leave for the airport for another twenty minutes because the moment the lawyer was gone, his brother Evan revealed his displeasure in a snort of disgust.

  “I'm so glad I came back here to be a part of this family again and do what I could for the business when I didn't get so much as a mention in the old man's will.”

  The omission of the middle son had been glaring.

  “Why'd I bother?” he added.

  “Please don't feel that way,” Helen said, jumping in to console him. “We want you to be a part of the family, of the business.”

  “And you're in the position to say it, aren't you, Helen?” Jack said, obviously still reeling—as was everyone else—by the revelation that their father's trophy-wife had just inherited the controlling interest in Hanson Media Group. That as owner of fifty-one percent, they were all suddenly working for her.

  “None of this has to be a negative,” Helen insisted. “I've been honest and open with you, Jack and David about how much I want to be involved in the resuscitation of Hanson Media Group and now I really can be.”

  “The offices are already decorated, Helen,” Andrew contributed wryly. Knowing his marriage was hanging in the balance had sent him into this meeting with little patience. What little there was had been stretched even thinner to learn that his barely tolerated stepmother would now be running things. Just when he'd thought it was difficult enough to be working under the jurisdiction of his uncle and brother, the situation became more difficult to tolerate.

  The attractive Helen sat up straighter in her chair and leveled them all with an unwavering stare. “As a matter of fact, it was your father's wish that I stay out of the workforce as long as he was the breadwinner in the family. But I happen to have an MBA—”

  “We don't really buy it,” Andrew said.

  “I also have ideas that none of you have given me the chance to share,” Helen insisted. “I can be more of an asset than you all realize.”

  “And now you have the power to make us all realize it, don't you?” Jack said.

  Andrew couldn't blame his brother for being even more angry than he was about this turn of events. After all, everything Jack had left behind in his own life in order to take over the helm of Hanson Media Group since their father's death now seemed like a waste since he was working for Helen just like the rest of them.

  “Please, can we call a truce?” Helen beseeched them. “Can we put the past behind us and simply work together as a family?”

  “A family minus one,” Evan said, his anger seeming to gain steam the more it sank in that he'd been overlooked by his father.

  “We are not a family minus anyone,” Helen said forcefully to the middle son. “And keep in mind that George may not have included you directly, Evan, but any kids you have will be in line for their share of the twenty percent interest in Hanson Media Group that's to be held in escrow for all Hanson grandchildren. And there was also nothing in the will that prevents you from working here, from holding just as high a position as any of the rest of us. That's something you and I can work out together.”

  “Can we?” Evan said facetiously, clearly leery of his stepmother's overture when the truth was that he and Helen had even less of a relationship with each other than Jack or Andrew had with her.

  But Helen seemed determined to develop one now because she met his sarcasm head on and said, “Yes, we can.”

  Andrew was surprised to see his brother's eyebrow arch as if Evan might actually be willing to hear her out at some point.

  Then to the room in general Helen said, “I think we should look at this as a new beginning, not as something divisive. As a basic structure from which we can now all join together to rebuild Hanson Media Group for the benefit of every one of us and for the benefit of all the Hansons to come after us.”

  “She has a point,” David finally chimed in after a prolonged lack of contribution. “Evan, I—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Evan cut him off, pushing himself away from the conference table and abruptly getting to his feet. “I get it. Helen is in charge. She'll try to find something for the black sheep to do so we can all pretend that isn't what I am. I need some air,” he concluded, storming out of the room.

  “As I was saying,” David continued, “I agree with Helen that we should look at the will as just a foundation to work from. Now we know where we stand, what we have to work with and we can proceed accordingly. Now we really can move forward. With Helen at the helm, but with none of us inconsequential.”

  “More than just not inconsequential,” Helen was quick to amend. “Vital—every one of us in this room, and Evan, too, is vital to getting Hanson Media Group back on its feet. The bottom line is that we all just have to work together.”

  Andrew checked his watch again and with no more time to spare, he stood. “That does seem to be the bottom line,” he said, thinking that nothing—not even the prospect of working with his stepmother—was as important as getting to Delia. “And now I'm sorry to duck out, but I have some personal matters that have to be taken care of. I'll see you all on Monday.”

  Andrew expected Jack to jump on that, to question him, to demand that he work the day, to play the role of super-boss that he'd been playing since Andrew came on board.

  But instead Jack pushed his chair away from the conference table and stood, as well. “To tell you the truth, little brother,” he said with a sigh, “I think a three-day weekend is what I need, too.” Then to their stepmother, he added, “I guess we'll see you here first thing next week, Helen.”

  Helen's expression was slightly forlorn and Andrew almost felt sorry for her.

  But he had enough problems of his own to deal with. She'd just have to make her own way when it came to running Hanson Media Group.

  It was eight o'clock Friday night when the doorbell rang at Kyle's and Janine's house in Los Angeles. Delia was finishing dinner cleanup with her nephew while Kyle and Janine went for donuts.

  “I'll get it!” K.C. announced the minute the bell sounded, leaping off the chair he'd been standing on at the kitchen sink beside Delia in order to hand her plates to rinse and put in the dishwasher.

  “Hold on,” Delia called after him, grabbing a towel to dry her hands before racing after her five-and-a-half-year-old nephew.

  She reached the front door just as K.C. opened it.

  Then she stopped cold.

  Standing on the other side of the open portal was the last person on earth Delia wanted to see.

  “It's that guy from your wedding, Aunt Dealie,” K.C. told her without first greeting their visitor.

  “Andrew,” Delia said flatly, feeling a sudden resurgence of all the pain, all the disillusionment, all the embarrassment, all the disappointment, all the betrayal she'd felt since
overhearing his phone conversation the morning before.

  “Go away,” she added when the feelings she'd been contending with and trying to keep at bay all washed through her.

  “We need to talk,” Andrew said, not bothering with a greeting either.

  “No, we don't. I've heard what you really have to say. I don't need to hear anything else from you.”

  She also didn't need to see him looking the way he did. She didn't need to see those refined features, which any soap opera actor would have envied, tense and strained. She didn't need to see those dark, dark eyes that looked troubled now as they stared at her from above the faint bluish-gray hammocks left by no sleep. She didn't need to see the day's growth of beard that shadowed his sharp jawline and proved he hadn't been thinking about his appearance enough to shave. She didn't need to see the two vertical lines that formed from his brows pulled together, or the downward curve of his lips or the rumpled blue suit and less than crisp shirt he wore that were evidence that he'd been too distracted to pay attention to his clothes.

  She just plain didn't need to see him. Or to feel—even amidst the awful things he'd just caused her to suffer again—the warmer, softer feelings that had grown for him since they'd reconnected, since they'd gotten married.

  No, she definitely didn't need to feel those things….

  After a moment of staring at her as hard as she was staring at him, Andrew altered his line of vision to take in K.C. instead.

  “Hi there, buddy. I came to talk to your aunt. Think you can give us a minute alone?”

  “This is his house. He doesn't have to go away, you do,” Delia said before K.C. could answer, not wanting to lose her nephew as a chaperone. Or as a barrier between herself and Andrew.

  “It's okay,” K.C. said. “I can't have a donut unless I put away my puzzles, remember?”

  And with that reminder, the little boy dashed around Delia and went down the hallway of the ranch-style house to his room, leaving her without a buffer.

  But that didn't mean she was any more eager to be with Andrew.

  “Please go,” she said firmly, taking the edge of the open door in hand, making it obvious she intended to close it.

  But Andrew crossed the threshold before she could, making it necessary for her to step out of his way.

  “I'm not going anywhere,” he said. “Not before we talk.”

  “I don't have anything to say to you.”

  “But I have plenty to say to you,” he countered, taking the door from her grip to close it behind him.

  Delia backed farther away from him. As far away as she could get before she came up against the archway that separated the entry from the Spanish-style sunken living room of her brother's home. But it felt good to have the bolster of the wall bracing her spine so she stayed put.

  Andrew didn't come any closer, apparently getting the message that he needed to keep his distance. He merely stood in the center of the entry, tall and broad-shouldered, handsome and haggard at once.

  “I know that you heard what I said to Jack yesterday morning on the phone,” Andrew said then, cutting to the chase. “And I know it must have sounded bad—”

  “It must have sounded bad?” she repeated. “It sounded like what it was—the truth. And yes, bad. Really, really bad.”

  “It wasn't the truth—”

  “It wasn't?” she said, cutting him off again. “It wasn't the truth that you gave up your playboy status and lifestyle against your will? It wasn't the truth that you had this marriage shoved down your throat? That you were forced to marry me? That you sacrificed your personal life for your family's company to avoid more scandal? It wasn't—isn't—the truth that you would rather be on a beach in Hawaii than chained to me in Chicago?”

  “No, it wasn't and isn't the truth.”

  “I don't know what's worse—that you're here because your family made you do this, too, or that you're still willing to stand there, look me in the eye, and go on lying to me.”

  “My family doesn't even know I'm here.”

  “Because you didn't want to tell them that you blew your cover and I left you because of it? You're hoping to mend fences before they find out?” Delia said snidely.

  “My family doesn't know I'm here because it wasn't any of their damn business,” Andrew answered.

  “Oh, I don't know, since this marriage was a business arrangement it seems to me that that's exactly what it is. In fact, that's about all it is—part of the family plan for the family business.”

  Andrew closed his eyes and shook his head.

  When he stopped and opened his eyes again, he said, “What I said to Jack came out of being mad at him and at myself. It was dumb. It was stupid. It was—”

  “All the truth.”

  “Okay, yes, it was all the truth. But only at first.”

  That sounded too heartfelt not to be honest and Delia couldn't bring herself to refute it this time so she didn't. She merely stared at him, waiting for him to go on, torn between being glad he was dropping the façade and being struck yet another blow to hear that what he'd said the morning before really had all been the truth at any time.

  When he did continue he told her about the pressures his brother and uncle had put on him to do the right thing by her, to marry her. He admitted that that might not have been the route he would have taken initially without their insistence.

  “But the only thing that actually got me down the aisle was thinking about you,” he said then. “Not that I realized what that meant last Saturday, but I came home after work yesterday and spent too many hours scared to death that something had happened to you to explain why you were never getting home, and then Marta and Henry showed up and told me why, and after another flirt with thoughts of flight, it all came together for me.”

  More thoughts of flight…

  That stuck in Delia's mind as he went on to tell her about going from those thoughts to the rest of what had gone through his head both about his work and about her.

  “That's when it occurred to me, Delia, that thinking about you to get myself down the aisle was only the beginning. That I've spent this past week wanting to get home to you. Wanting to see you, to spend every minute I could with you. Wanting to share my fledgling successes with you. Wanting to do everything, share everything, with you. And not because my family made me. Only because of the way I feel when I'm with you. The way you make me feel. I realized that pregnant or not pregnant, family pressures or no family pressures, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. You're who I want. Being married to you is what I want.”

  Delia's eyes filled with tears she wouldn't allow to fall. But they weren't happy tears. Because as she looked at him, as she listened to him say words she could only wish to believe, she knew two things.

  First, she knew that he'd made a strong case for her to marry him based on sentiments much like what he'd just relayed. But he'd already admitted that that had been something he likely wouldn't have done at all if not for his family forcing him to. Which meant that regardless of how convincing it had been, it had been an act. Just as this could well be.

  And second, she knew that he was young and hadn't been ready to settle down. That she'd been right about him early on when she'd seen that vast difference in where they both were in their lives. When she'd told him that while she was at a place in time where having this baby, becoming a parent, were things she could embrace, he wasn't at that same place in time.

  So she merely shook her head no.

  It clearly wasn't something Andrew wanted to accept because his voice gained strength and frustration echoed when he said, “I'm telling you that the responsibilities are real to me now, Delia. The responsibilities to my family and the business, to you, to the baby. That they're as real to me as if they actually were things I was carrying around on my shoulders. And I'm not only willing to meet them, it feels good to meet them. To take them on. To know I can handle them, that I can be more, do more, contribute and take care of what I
should be taking care of—”

  “That has the ring of burden to it,” she pointed out the way it seemed to her. And she didn't want to be a burden any more than she wanted to be the wife he was unduly influenced to have.

  “Okay, sure, it was all daunting at the start. But now that's not how it is. Now it's nice to be…” He let out a half laugh. “This sounds hokey, but it's nice to be a full-grown man instead of some kid who flies off to the beach of the moment whenever the going gets tough. It's as if I've had my eyes opened to the person I can be and I like that person a whole lot better than the person I was before.”

  “I'm happy for you,” Delia said, meaning it.

  “Then you'll come home to Chicago with me and we can go on the way we were before that damn phone call?”

  She was genuinely happy that he'd achieved what he had. But that didn't change the situation for her. And for her, the situation was that this was a much younger man who was just now growing up because he had to, not because he was necessarily ready to or had chosen to. A much younger man who was reveling in his newfound ability to carry some weight.

  But it was new to him. Too new to consider him stable or reliable in that role. And she couldn't bank her own future and the future of her baby on something like that. On someone who could very well, at any moment, decide that having responsibilities wasn't his cup of tea after all and abdicate them—as Marta's father had done despite even his feeble attempts to be some part of his daughter's life.

  And Delia definitely couldn't trust her own future or her baby's future to Andrew when she couldn't get that phone call out of her mind—the words and the tone that had made it obvious how close to the surface was still that inclination to blow off everything and go back to the lifestyle he'd loved and only left because other people had forced him to.

  So again Delia shook her head. Only this time she said, “No.”

  “No?” he parroted as if the answer confused him.