Guarding Her: A Secret Baby Romance

by Lexi Whitlow

  “I’ve never tried to find anyone before.”

  “How hard can it be? The city is finite. Finding a pregnant American girl should be easy.”

  “And convincing her to marry a prince for her own protection?”

  “That one is up to you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mallory

  “Do you need to puke again before we go?” Emilie looks at me from across the room. I’m still working on the skirt and draped top I’m supposed to make for my class. Ready to wear. Simple, appropriate, expensive looking. Sometimes I think I should have stayed in the States and auditioned for Project Runway instead of going to graduate school. I wouldn’t be pregnant, living in a tiny apartment, and wondering how to squirrel away my sister’s money for the rest of my child’s life.

  My child. My hand absently goes down to my belly.

  “No. I think it might be just about cleared up. The sickness. They say it takes a turn right before the second trimester.” Twelve weeks. A scan this morning showed a perfectly formed body, a heart with four beautiful chambers, ten fingers, ten toes. The next scan will show us for sure, but the tech said she thought it was a boy. My boy. Emilie started work on a wardrobe for him, using scraps from her projects. I tried to stop her, but she declared I didn’t need to spend a dime on baby clothing, not when we know how to make clothes. And I’ve been too sick to try.

  “You’ll be showing soon. You need to make an impression at the brasserie today so you can stay there.”

  “And save money. And get a new apartment. And figure out how to hire a nanny.” And when he’s born, I’ll send Matthias another letter. Right now, he doesn’t need a damn word from me. He’s got enough to deal with—and I know I’ll be the last thing on his mind. He made that clear when we parted ways. I don’t know what kind of child support he’s required to give, or if he’ll sneer at me and demand a paternity test.

  I’d rather spare myself the pain. I half-considered leaving an email or phone number at the bottom of the letter. But a man dealing with his own problems shouldn’t be expected to connect with his pregnant—what? I’m nothing. Not a girlfriend. A friend maybe. An acquaintance with a new-found penchant for public sex, and the idiocy to forget to renew her birth control the week after she left Brussels.

  But God, it felt so good. He felt so good. His length buried deep inside of me, nothing between us. I didn’t even think of the danger then. Just trusted him when he told me he kept himself clean, and he’d trusted me when I told him I was on the pill.

  I betrayed that trust, didn’t I?

  I didn’t follow through on picking up Plan B. And I waited three days to start a new pack of birth control when I got into Paris. I went years thinking that my own caution would always take care of me. But it only takes once to slip up.

  I put the finishing touches on the shirt and put my hand on my belly again as I stand up. There’s not much of a bump growing there yet, but I can feel my body starting to change, my hips shifting, belly tilting forward. The drunk, sick feeling of my first trimester is starting to wear off.

  If anyone had asked me a year ago if I would have considered terminating an unexpected pregnancy, I would have said yes. Yes, I’d consider it, without hesitation.

  And if the follow-up question had anything to do with my being excited or looking forward to something like this—I’d have said no. Twenty-three, heading into graduate school, heading into a career. No, I’d never be so foolish.

  But I do look forward to it. As Kim’s death has sunk in over time, I feel in my bones how important family is—how important I am. And now, how important I could be in a child’s life.

  I throw the skirt onto the overlock machine. “There. C’est fini. I’m ready for the brasserie. I can serve food in the evenings, make clothes to sell all night, and ace my classes during the day.”

  “And you’ll sleep when?” Emilie takes my arm. “You can use some of that money your sister left you to put a down payment on a real apartment. And I can move in with you, and you charge me rent. How about that?”

  “I still need the money from the brasserie. And I need to start my own brand long before I graduate if I’m going to be a mom, too.” She walks me downstairs, and I wonder how long it will be before my body is unwieldy. Maybe weeks. Maybe months. I don’t know how these things go.

  “But we should still consider the apartment.” Emilie tosses her blond hair over her shoulder and hands me my sunglasses from her purse. When we’re at the door, she fixes my scarf, and pulls my deep plum blazer so it closes beneath my breasts. “You’re a sexy pregnant woman, Mal. Show it off to the guy who owns the brasserie. We’re going to get you this job.”

  “He said it’s all mine.”

  She pulls me out of the door beside her. “I think it can be. But you need to do well this evening, and it doesn’t hurt to show your figure. Hell, this man might like pregnant ladies. You can never tell about these shop owners.”

  “So you say.” I laugh out loud, and she puts my arm in hers.

  “We’ll make it. Both of us,” Emilie says.

  “You keep saying ‘we,’ Em. I’m just some American girl you barely know. And I’m knocked up. And I have baggage. I might flunk out of school. I might never make a name for myself. I might hold you back and—”

  She turns to me and puts her hands on my shoulders, stopping me in the middle of the sidewalk as people push past us. “There’s a ‘we’ now, because you’re my friend. You don’t have family. I’m an only child, and I don’t have much either. So, we can be family in a big new city. Mm?”

  I nod, tears stinging my eyes. “Okay.”

  “And I’d wager you haven’t seen the last of Matthias.” She walks me along to the brasserie, leaves falling around us.

  “Oh? I think he’s got enough to deal with on his own.”

  “Some guy was by asking about you when you were in class this afternoon, and—”

  My heart stops. “And what? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “You were working on your designs, finally. Can’t a girl get a break around here?”

  I shiver involuntarily, and Emilie pulls me down the street. I didn’t leave enough information for Matthias to find me, did I? He may know from the postmark that I’m in Paris, but that’s the only information he has. Matthias even told me it would be best if he had no idea where I was. I think back to the comment, his voice echoing in my head. At the time, that had merely seemed hurtful, like he wanted nothing to do with me. But could it have been something more?

  I can only hope the man asking for me was Matthias. The alternative is too scary to consider.

  “What did the guy look like, Em? This is important.” I whisper the last words as we approach the brasserie. There are a few people outside, eating fries and drinking coffee. One of them has a steaming soup. The smell from it almost knocks me out, but it makes me hungry at the same time.

  “I dunno. Tall, handsome. Blond. Wearing a long coat even though it wasn’t that cold. He didn’t leave his name.”

  “What color were his eyes?”

  Emilie looks at me and takes my hands in hers. “Mal, why wouldn’t it be Matthias? Or someone else you already know? Maybe a friend from home visiting Paris? You can’t really think that someone from his family—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about them. I don’t even know if I want it to be him. That would mean that we’d have to talk about all of this.” I gesture broadly to my abdomen, which hasn’t quite started straining against my jeans yet, but there’s a tight firmness there that didn’t exist last week.

  “Yeah, well. You know that’s coming at some point. Maybe you misread him when you were traveling together. Maybe he’d want to be part of your life—”

  “You’re talking like it’s definitely him. And you don’t even remember what color his eyes were.”

  “I do,” she protests, chewing on her lip. “I think they were blue. I’m not sure. But whatever it was—it was
probably him, don’t you think? He might be back.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “Mal, we need to get you inside that restaurant so you can work and get that steady income you’ve been talking about.”

  “Just tell me what you told him.”

  “Relax. I spared your privacy. I said that you lived in this apartment but you were looking for a new place. I left it at that. I know how you are about people, Mal. I’m not stupid. You can text him. If he’s here, you can meet somewhere neutral. It doesn’t have to be painful or awkward, and he doesn’t need to know where you live. We can start looking for a new place now. Okay? You’ve got the ball in your court, and you can do what you want. Now go inside, okay? Go to your shift, kick ass, and you can think about it when you’re serving up steak frites and practicing your French.”

  I nod warily. I wish it were that simple, but Emilie doesn’t know Matthias. She doesn’t know how he told me repeatedly that he didn’t want a family or a marriage. Or even a long-term relationship. He couldn’t have made it any clearer. On top of that, his family. Anything that could get a man to move that quick could easily be dangerous.

  And I know nothing about them.

  Matthias said it was better that way, but now I’m carrying his child. He knows it—does that mean they do, too?

  I walk into the brasserie, nearly shaking. The manager greets me kindly and steals a look at my growing breasts as he talks to me about the menu and the schedule of daily specials. I nearly burn myself trying to work the coffee machine, but after an hour of work, I fall into a rhythm, letting the noise of the cafe drown out my thoughts until I’m moving by instinct. When I leave, the manager smiles and compliments me, and I nod and smile back because it’s what I’m supposed to do.

  All the while, I go over the images of Matthias in my head, trying to match him up to Emilie’s description. Her details were so vague that I come up empty each time. There are no more pictures of him on my phone—I deleted them all shortly after I found out I was pregnant. And the lines of his face are starting to blur.

  As I walk home in the darkness, hands shoved deep in my coat pockets, my throat tightens. Tears sting my eyes, and I start to cry in earnest, the wind whipping around me.

  None of the passersby pay attention to me. No one stops to lend me a shoulder. Em is back in the apartment, probably sewing, waiting for me to come back. But while I’m anonymous, I let myself think the things I’ve been avoiding for the past months, as summer truly turned to fall and I settled into my new life.

  Matthias, I miss you. It’s a blasphemous thought. I’m not supposed to miss someone I barely know, someone who made it clear our relationship was casual, that we weren’t really meant to be.

  I miss him, and maybe something more. There have been men who’ve asked me out—friends of Emilie’s, one or two of the straight guys from my classes. I turned them down immediately, even before I knew I was pregnant. They weren’t Matthias. They didn’t look at me the way he did, like he wanted to know me, the small details of my old life, like those things meant something to him.

  I wonder as I walk up the stairs to our apartment if things would have been different had Matthias and I met in a different time, a different way. Maybe I owe it to him to text or call.

  Midway up the stairs, I take out my phone and look at his number again.

  I click my phone off and stand still for a moment. There’s a change, a shift in the air. Our apartment door is slightly cracked.

  Emilie would never leave the door open, not at this time of night, and not in the part of town where we live. I shift closer, tiptoeing up the stairs so I’m standing just below the entrance to the apartment. There are voices inside, Emilie’s sing-song French ringing through the space. I can tell she’s speaking louder than usual, and there’s an edge to her voice that I can’t quite place.

  “She’s not here right now, no. I don’t know exactly where she is,” she says. I can tell she’s angled her body toward the door, that she’s speaking directly to me. “She went out, and she didn’t say when she’d be back.”

  There’s a male voice that responds, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. My heart skips a beat. It might have been the main from earlier today. It’s definitely not Matthias’s voice. The cadence and tone don’t match, and there’s a gravelly undercurrent to it that makes my blood run cold.

  “I’m quite sure she won’t be back until after midnight. And she’ll be tired. I don’t think she’ll want any company. In fact, I bet she’s spending the night at school tonight. She said she had some projects to work on, and she needed the studio.”

  There’s more rumbling from the man, and I pick up that he’s asking about the pile of baby clothes Emilie has made.

  “Those are for a friend,” she responds. “Mallory’s not—no—and I don’t see why it’s any of your business.”

  There’s a pause, and I can’t tell if anyone is speaking.

  Blood buzzing in my ears, I back down one step and then another.

  “I have the police on speed dial, right here. They’re down the street. Now, I’d ask you to get out before I call them, or I think we’ll have a problem. I don’t want you here.” There’s another pause, and I hear shuffling in the apartment, a muttered apology from the man, a promise that he’ll return.

  “Well don’t come back tonight. Mallory, no matter where she is, is not coming back here tonight.”

  Before the man makes it to the door, I’m at the bottom of the stairs and at the door. My heart pounding hard, I run back in the direction of the brasserie, phone clutched in my hand. I back into a shallow alleyway beside the restaurant, leaning against the wall, and I take the phone in my hand, bringing up Matthias’s phone number again. This time, I call.

  The phone rings once, and a frazzled voice comes through on the other end of the line.

  “I know you’re probably in Amsterdam—and you probably don’t want to hear from me—but I need your help—”

  “Mal,” he says, his voice tired. He sighs deeply, with what sounds like relief. “Thank God.”

  “I’m sorry I called. I know I said I wasn’t going to, but there’s some guy at my apartment, and I don’t know anyone else on the entire continent. And I’m pregnant. You know I’m pregnant, right?” The words tumble out in a rush, and I hear Matthias on the other end trying to get a word in. I stop speaking. My pulse races.

  “I’m not in Amsterdam, Mal. I’m in Paris.”

  I hold the phone away for an instant, staring at it, like it might be lying to me.

  “Mal?” His voice is hoarse and worried. “Mal? Answer me.”

  I sink down to the ground, jeans against the cold pavement.

  “I’m here,” I say, after a minute, maybe more. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  I let the tears come, and he stays silent, just listening.

  Matthias is here.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Matthias

  I pace the apartment floor. It’s nothing like my real home in Amsterdam. The floors are worn and sag in the middle, and the windows are painted shut, which doesn’t make much sense for a place like Paris. Whenever I’m here, I see people with their windows open the entire season of autumn, in winter until the deathly cold and rain take over, and again in spring.

  I think of Mallory’s rental back in Amsterdam. I never saw the place but briefly, but it was nicer than this. In the past two months, I’ve thought of her again and again, staying in tiny places, fitting herself in, trying not to be noticed.

  Here I am, blending in, trying not to be noticed, on the run from something far more dangerous than my past.

  This was the only place I could find on short notice that would take cash by the day. No questions asked. I can only hope that my family—or their henchmen—don’t approach the dodgy little owner. This type of individual always sings for the right price. And I’m sure my parents have more cash on hand than I have.

  The phone is off, battery
discarded in a dumpster. Mal only has directions here, and I can only hope she makes it in one piece.

  There are soft steps on the stairs, coming up from below. When the steps reach the old, wooden door, I go to it and open it before a knock even comes through.

  “Mallory,” I say, pulling her into my arms. “I had no idea where you were, not a damn clue. Why didn’t you give me your address in that letter?” I breathe the words into her hair, taking in her scent. Her arms are around me, but loosely, and I pull back, looking into the blue-gray eyes I’ve thought of every day since I left her in Brussels.

  “I didn’t—I didn’t think you’d want to see me.” Tears come to her eyes as she stands there, solemn, in front of me. These aren’t the first of tonight’s tears—it’s easy to see. She’s already been crying, and I wonder if it’s because of me. I was the one who told her that we needed to part, we needed to stay away. She doesn’t yet know all the reasons why.

  “I told you I wanted to see you again, Mal.” I tip her chin toward my face and kiss her. Her eyes are filled with tears, mixed emotions of guilt and relief crossing her face. I notice that there are pale freckles covering her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and I wonder if they appeared there because of the Parisian sun in the fall.

  I remember telling her I would see her again. But the message I gave her with each one of my actions, with all of my old stories of wandering the continent and taking tourist women home with me, I’d told her the opposite.

  And the baby. That wasn’t something I’d wanted—no. But with Mallory standing here in front of me, warmth takes over my body and expands through me like nothing I’ve ever known.

  This is right. This is what I want. This is everything I never dreamed, circumstances be damned.

  “You didn’t want anything more than what we had.” She says the words simply, directly. And they sting.

  “I know what I said.” I take her hands and lead her to the faded leather sofa in the corner of the dusty little apartment. “But I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you left.”

  She sits down and pulls her hands to her lap. She’s wearing jeans and the same purple shirt she wore on our trip to Brussels. Her letter told me she was carrying our child, but she doesn’t look any different. Just like the Mallory I sent to Paris, stupidly, without me. The Mallory I lost. Inside of her, there’s a life that’s hers and mine, an extension of ourselves.