by Joss Wood
Crap. Joa narrowed her eyes and pointed her index finger at her non-blood sister. “If I do this, and that’s still a very remote possibility, you are so going to owe me, Keels.”
Keely flashed her an impish grin. “Oh, I don’t know. I think you might end up owing me.”
And what, exactly, did she mean by that?
* * *
“Are you okay?”
Sadie put her hand on the door to the sushi bar and yanked it open. She and Beth had been trying to have dinner for weeks and they’d made plans earlier in the week to hit this sushi bar on Friday night. Sushi and sake, followed by, depending on how they felt, clubbing or bar hopping.
“I’m fine, why?” Sadie asked as they shed their coats.
“You’re looking tired,” Beth commented, draping her coat over her arm.
Sadie was feeling a little exhausted and, she decided, as she ran a finger between the band of her skirt and her shirt, a little bloated. She needed to drink more water and eat more vegetables and she would...
Tomorrow. After she’d gorged on sake and sushi.
“I’m fine. I’ve just been working hard,” Sadie told her as she followed Beth across the restaurant to the corner seats. It was a great restaurant and as soon as she had a margarita in her hand, she’d be happy.
Beth placed an order for two margaritas—sake would come later—with the waitress before turning to Sadie
“Do you know that only the heart of the agave plant is used to make tequila?”
Sadie smiled. “I did not know that.”
Beth pulled a face at Sadie’s amused smile. “You know I collect useless facts,” Beth said. “Do you know that earthworms have five hearts? I learned that today.”
“I did not know that,” Sadie repeated her previous sentence. She grinned, enjoying her friend’s casual conversation. “Anything else you think I should know?”
Beth leaned back so the waitress could put their margaritas on the counter and Sadie was impressed by their ability to deliver their drinks that fast.
“I also know that dibble means to drink like a duck, butterflies taste with their feet and that you slept with Carrick Murphy.”
How on earth did butterflies taste... What?
“Uh...” Sadie reached for her glass, shoved the straw into her mouth while she decided how to respond. Denying it would be a lie and she didn’t like lying, especially to her friends. But she had slept with Beth’s ex-brother-in-law.
And Beth was very obviously not happy with her.
“There’s no point in denying it, Sadie Slade,” Beth told her, blue eyes concerned. “Your eyes get all squinty when you lie and you always, always wiggle in your chair.”
Sadie frowned at her and shifted in her seat. “I do not!”
“You so do,” Beth said. “Are you really going to look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t?”
Sadie looked glum. “No. And yes, we did.”
Beth winced and her expression darkened. “When?”
Did it matter? “Nearly a month back. He came around to my apartment the day after I was taken to the hospital to check up on me.”
“Sounds like he checked you out really, really well,” Beth stated, sarcasm personified.
He did. Very well indeed. Numerous times, to be precise. But that wasn’t something she could share with Beth because her friend was pissed. It was time to do damage control. Sadie lifted her hand, wanting to avoid a lecture. “It was one night, Beth. And nothing to get excited about.”
Sadie really wished she could open up to Beth, tell her that she’d loved being with Carrick, that, for the first time in her life, she’d felt totally at ease in a man’s arms. That, despite all the things she’d heard about him, Carrick made her feel both powerful and protected, treasured and cherished.
But Carrick was Beth’s ex-brother-in-law and Tamlyn was sort of Sadie’s friend. While Sadie didn’t believe she’d done anything wrong by sleeping with him—they were both single, unattached adults—it still wasn’t something she could freely discuss.
Not that she would talk intimacies, but Sadie thought the less said, the better this conversation would go.
“Carrick treated Tamlyn badly, Sadie. He was rude and ugly, ridiculously demanding and his behavior was destructive. His lawyers took her to the cleaners. He put down Jazz to spite her.”
Jazz, Tamlyn’s beloved golden Lab. Sadie still found it hard to square the Carrick she knew with a man who’d punish a dog to get revenge on his ex. She simply couldn’t reconcile the two versions of the same man.
But...
But it didn’t matter what Carrick did or didn’t do in the past; they’d shared their bodies and a slice of time. That was all. They now had a formal business relationship, nothing more. That suited her just fine.
“I’m not seeing him again, Beth,” Sadie said. “I’m not getting involved with him. It was one night.”
“And do you regret it?”
She knew Beth wanted her to say she did but she couldn’t. She didn’t regret a damn thing. Being with Carrick had been one of the best experiences of her life.
“Let’s not talk about it anymore, Beth,” Sadie said, feeling drained and a little emotional. Sadie blinked away burning tears, suddenly missing her apartment in Montparnasse. She missed her books, her brightly colored walls, her plants and her pillows. She missed the smell of croissants wafting up from the bakery below, the excitable French, the fresh food market down the road.
“Look, I know you are worried about me, but let’s not get carried away, okay? I have seen and spoken to Carrick since that night and we are both behaving like nothing happened.”
Seeing a new batch of sushi coming down the conveyor belt, Beth reached for an empty bowl and poured soy sauce into it. After stirring the sauce with her chopstick, her eyes met Sadie’s. “So was it good?”
Good was such a weak word for how it had been between them. Amazing worked. Unbelievable was better. But Sadie couldn’t share even the smallest detail with Beth. What happened between Sadie and Carrick was theirs and sharing any part of it would dilute the memory of the evening.
She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have that many perfect evenings. She couldn’t mess up the memory of the one completely perfect sexual encounter she did have.
Sadie sent her friend another hard stare, and Beth pursed her lips. “Okay, message received. We’re done talking about Carrick.”
Thank God. “Anything I should know about at work?” Sadie took another small sip of her margarita and wrinkled her nose. It didn’t taste as good as it normally did.
Beth ran through a couple of potential projects, one of which was an appraisal for a Basquiat recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Hey, did you hear about the lost Gauguin discovered in an attic in France?”
A neutral topic, yay. Sadie threw herself into the conversation, conscious that she and Beth were trying a little too hard to have fun.
Beth reached for a plate of nigiri and put it between them and Beth popped a piece into her mouth. She waved her chopstick at her plate. “Eat something.”
Sadie lifted her margarita to her nose and sniffed. “Does this margarita taste right?”
Beth took Sadie’s glass and a long sip of her drink and nodded enthusiastically. “It’s perfect.”
Huh. Weird. Either way, she didn’t think she could drink it anymore. Maybe she was coming down with a tummy bug, or the flu.
Beth reached for a plate of sashimi and Sadie pulled back as the smell hit her nostrils. She was definitely getting sick. She had to be because this was one of the best sushi restaurants in the city and they maintained exceptionally high standards.
“What is wrong with you?” Beth demanded, placing her chopsticks across the rim of her sushi bowl. “You’ve turned this amazing shade of green.”
S
adie looked down at the food and her stomach lurched. “It smells like fish.”
“It is fish, Sadie. That’s what sushi is...raw fish.”
Sadie’s stomach crawled up her throat and she placed her hand over her mouth. “I need to get out of here, Beth. Like now!”
“Oh, crap!” Beth hopped off the chair and scrambled in her bag for her wallet. Pulling out a couple of twenties, she placed them on the counter and took a moment to down the rest of her margarita.
“Not letting that go to waste,” she muttered, handing Sadie her coat.
Sadie pulled her coat on and pulled it across her body. “Ugh, I don’t feel well.”
Beth nodded slowly. “I’ve heard there’s a nasty tummy bug going around.”
Marvelous.
Sadie let Beth lead her out of the restaurant, sending the waitress an apologetic glance. “But look on the bright side...?” Beth suggested as they stepped through the door into the frigid evening air.
Sadie was as nauseated as hell and felt as weak as a day-old mouse. Was there a bright side? “And what might that be?”
“You could be telling me you’re pregnant. Now, that would be a disaster of epic proportions. At least with a bug, it’ll be over in a day or two.”
Beth sighed when Sadie scowled. “I’m joking, Sadie. Look, I’ll call you a cab. You should go home and climb into bed. Throw some Vitamin C down your throat and have an early night. I think I might carry on. I have friends at the Copper Kettle. I’m going to join them.”
Sadie nodded, happy to be alone, as her world tilted slowly off its axis.
She didn’t need an early night or to drink Vitamin C. What she really needed was a test. Because she had the gut-wrenching feeling that her so-called bug was going to be around for the rest of her life.
Four
Hi, I need to talk to you. Tonight. Can we meet?
Carrick’s reply was almost instantaneous.
Okay. When? And where?
Now. I’m outside your front door.
Sadie tucked her phone away, thinking that she not only had a baby growing in her womb and a million butterflies buzzing, but she also had anxiety and fear gnawing holes in her stomach lining. And, worst of all, guilt kept washing over her, hot and sour. She should’ve been more careful about contraception, paid better attention. But as far as she could remember, Carrick had worn a condom. What more could they have done?
But really, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was completely stupid to get pregnant in the twenty-first century. And deeply irresponsible. She was better than this, dammit, smarter.
But accidents, so they said, happened. This one was a multicar pileup.
Sadie had spent the past week thinking about her options, deciding what to do. She’d sent Carrick a message earlier in the week telling him she was going out of town to do an appraisal in New York, but she’d lied; she’d just holed up in her apartment and paced the floor.
There was a baby growing in her womb—a combination of her and Carrick—and she’d spent a lot of time deciding how to proceed. It wasn’t the eighteen hundreds, and she had options, but Sadie knew she’d have to live with any, and all, of her choices.
She was staunchly pro-choice, firmly believing it was a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. But up until this moment, pro-choice had always been an intellectual concept, something she believed in, but didn’t expect to face.
After days of rigorous internal debate, she’d made the decision to keep the baby. When she married, she’d wanted to get pregnant straightaway, but it hadn’t happened. After her divorce she’d been grateful to be spared the ordeal of raising a child with Dennis. He hated having to share her attention and it wouldn’t have mattered that it was his child taking her attention away.
Dennis was all about Dennis...
Ironic that she was pregnant by a guy who was reputedly so much like her ex-husband. She wished she was nice enough, a good enough person, not to fret about how much of Carrick’s personality her baby would inherit—and damn, she’d nurture the hell out of this baby to make sure he or she didn’t grow up to be a jerk—but she had worried. Worried still.
But at the end of the day, giving the baby up for adoption or having an abortion was out of the question because she’d always planned on having a child, maybe two, in the future, with or without a man. She could afford to raise a child; money wasn’t a problem. She’d have to cut back on her traveling but that was a bridge she’d cross when she had to. Having a child was part of her life plan; the timing was just earlier than she’d expected.
Sadie was already excited about having a person in her life she could unconditionally love. She already loved him, or her, loved the little bundle of cells growing inside her. Being a mother didn’t scare her, but telling Carrick she was pregnant with his child did.
How would she tell him? How would he react? What would he say after she broke the news?
Sadie shuffled from foot to foot, wondering why he was taking so long to open his front door. She turned around and looked out into the misty night, tendrils of dense fog touching her cheeks and forehead. It was the end of January; the baby would be born in late September, early October.
So near, yet so far away.
Sadie heard the snick of a lock and resisted the urge to bolt down the path and fling herself into her leased car. In an hour she could be at the airport; in another few hours she could be on a plane heading for Paris, or she could go to the UAE and hide out at Hassan’s apartment in Abu Dhabi. He wouldn’t ask any questions; in fact, he’d offer her marriage to keep her in the lap of luxury. There were benefits to having an Arabian prince as a best friend.
But his family, as much as they adored her, would not approve of their son raising another man’s child. She didn’t need Hassan’s parental help, nor did she need his financial help.
She just needed to not have this conversation with Carrick Murphy.
“Sorry, I’d just stepped out of the shower when you sent that message. That’s why I took so long,” Carrick said after opening the imposing front door to his house. He stepped back into the hallway and gestured her inside.
Sadie stepped into his hall, her eyes immediately going to the massive abstract painting on the large wall on her right. She unwound her scarf as she hustled over to the painting, wanting to fall into all that movement and color. Carrick was so lucky to see this painting every single day.
“When did you acquire this Pollack?” Sadie demanded. “I don’t know this painting.”
“My grandfather bought it in the forties from the artist himself.” Carrick tugged her coat from her shoulders and Sadie barely noticed.
“What’s it called?”
“Sadie, you didn’t come to my house at ten at night to discuss art,” Carrick said, hanging her coat and scarf on an antique coat stand in the corner. He frowned at her. “Or did you? Is this about the Homer?”
She wished. Sadie shook her head and pushed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “Can we...can we sit?”
Carrick nodded. “Okay. Let’s go to the library.”
Sadie followed him down the hallway, admiring his gorgeous butt in soft, faded jeans and the width of his shoulders covered by a thin, loose, long-sleeved shirt. His big, broad feet were bare on the harlequin-checked floor. Sadie’s eyes kept darting from his ass to the walls, equally fascinated by the art she kept passing. Was that a Picasso? A pencil sketch by Lucien Freud? A Rothko?
Carrick hung back to allow her to enter the library first and Sadie sucked in her breath at the floor-to-ceiling shelves and the massive desk holding a laptop and a printer. On the opposite side of the room, the shelves had been removed and a large fireplace dominated the space, in front of which stood two club chairs and a long, slightly worn leather sofa. The room was warm and cozy and all she wanted to do was to lie on the couch and fa
ll asleep.
Carrick went over to the drinks cabinet in the corner and lifted a crystal decanter. “Do you want a drink?”
Sadie shook her head and perched on the end of one of the club chairs. She placed her hands between her knees. “No, thank you.”
“Coffee? Tea?” Carrick asked, pouring some whiskey into a glass.
“No, I’m fine. I don’t need anything but for you to come and sit down so I can talk to you.”
Carrick frowned at her, but he walked over to the sofa and sat down, propping his bare feet up on the coffee table. He took a sip of his whiskey, swallowed and handed her an easy smile. “Why so serious, Sadie? Are you going to tell me you are pregnant?”
He said it lightly, like there was no possibility of that happening. She was about to burst that bubble and burst it hard. “Yeah. That’s exactly why I’m here.”
Carrick’s hand around his glass tightened and his eyes sharpened, but that was all the reaction she received. “That’s not even vaguely funny, Sadie.”
She wasn’t laughing. “I doubt this is something you wanted to hear, but I am pregnant and since you’re the only person I’ve slept with since my divorce, you’re the father. I thought I owed it to you to tell you that I’m carrying your child.”
“What?”
Sadie didn’t give him time to catch up. “Look, I know this is a shock and that you need time to let this sink in. When it does, the only thing you need to decide is what kind of dad you would like to be. It’s up to you if you want to support your child and be part of this journey, part of your child’s life.”
There. It was out now. She just had to wait for his reaction. Would it be explosive, vitriolic? Would he throw something, scream at her, blame her? Would she finally see the guy Tamlyn had lived with?
Show me your true colors, Murphy. Let’s get it over with.
She waited a minute, then another. Carrick just stared at her, his expression begging her to take back her words. Unfortunately, a do-over wasn’t possible.
Thinking that they both needed some time to process this life-changing news, Sadie stood up. “Let me know what you decide. I’ll see myself out.”