The Moment of Truth

by Tara Taylor Quinn

Still, she curled it, and then pulled a small section of it back, just as Lindsey had shown her to do. She clipped it with the black embellished flower Rebecca had given her for Christmas a couple of years before.

  The worst part was next—the makeup. On days when she had to dress up she’d put on a little mascara and call it done. That afternoon she pulled out all the crap her sisters had had her waste so much money on—from the clarifying wash that prepped her skin to the eyeliner that made her eyes look vampirish to her but, according to her sisters, made her eyes pop.

  She remembered how to apply it all. Dana had always been a quick study. She just didn’t like the feel of it on her face. Or the fake appearance it created.

  Still, Josh knew the real her. And he had the lovelies of the world vying for his attention. She wanted him to know he could have that at home, too, if it’s what turned him on. If the trimmings were what Josh found attractive, she’d get up earlier every day and go through the same rituals her sisters went through.

  At five-thirty, she pulled on skintight black jeans with a black, equally tight long-sleeved Lycra top and her thigh-length, black-and-silver lightweight sweater coat, which she left open but belted loosely with a thick leather belt. Silver hoop earrings went in both piercings in her ears. It hurt a bit getting them in—she’d stopped wearing earrings when she’d left Indiana.

  Still, the finished effect was what she’d known it would be. If someone didn’t look too closely, she could pass for any popular beauty her age.

  Dana focused on the loosely knitted sweater coat. It was the only thing she honestly liked. The only garment her sisters had encouraged her to buy that she actually wore regularly.

  At five minutes before six, after letting Lindy Lu out, she took a peek at the cat litter box. Still clean.

  Only then did she slip out of the tie-up ankle boots that she loved, for the slightly longer spike-heeled boots that her sisters had insisted were much sexier.

  She was ready one minute before six, according to her phone. Peeking around the front window blind, she saw Josh’s SUV out front and had a hard time breathing. He must have just pulled up because he wasn’t even out of the vehicle yet.

  Her heart pounding, she debated running out and jumping in the vehicle before he could come up to the door, but she didn’t want to risk falling off her spikes, short though they may be, as she ran over the desert landscaping.

  This was going to be the night of her life.

  * * *

  JOSH WAS BETTER prepared when he walked up Dana’s driveway on Tuesday night. Carefully chosen words were running through his mind. By the time dinner was through, Dana would be thinking that moving to a new home and letting Josh take care of her and their baby had been her idea to begin with.

  The door opened almost as soon as he knocked.

  For a moment he thought Dana had company. And wasn’t particularly pleased when he realized the heavily made up, sharply dressed woman was Dana. She looked like Olivia. Or Michelle. “Just let me get Lindy Lu in her kennel and I’ll be ready,” she said, while Josh stood there digesting the fact that Dana was just like other women.

  That body...he’d known she was curvy, but he’d had no idea her breasts were quite that voluptuous. Or her waist so curved.

  That body was carrying his baby. He didn’t want to take it anywhere dressed like that. Except to bed.

  And bed was off-limits.

  Standing with his hands in the pants he’d worn to work that day, his shirt wrinkled from sweating in his faux-leather chair and the knot of his tie not as tight as it had been that morning, Josh wasn’t particularly pleased.

  Emotion rose up inside him. Not the grief and shame that had besieged him at the time of Michelle’s crisis and become his accepted constant companion since. He wasn’t sure what it was.

  But he sure didn’t like it.

  “What have they done to you?” The words burped out of him. Shut up, man, he told himself.

  Excuse yourself to the restroom and find your way back when you’ve got yourself under control. His mother’s words that time.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever talked you into doing that to yourself?”

  At the look of horror on Dana’s face, Josh knew he’d blown it. His father would have fired him on the spot if he had ever lost control like that with a client.

  “We’re just going to dinner,” he said now. The business deal of his life and he hadn’t freshened up. He had his jacket in the car, but this was Dana—the one person in the world with whom he felt comfortable just being himself.

  Or the person he was trying to become.

  She slung her bag over one shoulder, locked her door behind them, and folded her arms.

  “I wasn’t sure if we were staying in town or going to Phoenix.”

  He’d never considered taking her to Phoenix. Perhaps he should have. “I’d planned to grab a burger or something at the campus pub.”

  “The pub’s fine. Good,” she said.

  Okay, he could still salvage this.

  “I just...” He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully because he wasn’t sure he trusted himself. “I’m sorry if I sounded derogatory about your appearance.” They were walking side by side to his SUV. “I was just shocked.”

  Her chin dropped.

  “You look great,” he changed course. “Like you just walked off the pages of a fashion magazine.”

  “Stop, Josh. I prefer your honesty to complimentary lies. I will never be fashion mag material.”

  He unlocked the SUV with his clicker and reached out to get her door, but she was there before him, opening her door and climbing in without his help.

  Oh, hell...

  “Look, if it’s honesty you want, then here it goes,” he said as he climbed in on his side of the car and turned to face her. “I shouldn’t be admitting this to you, considering the circumstances, but I find the real you far more attractive.” If he was going to screw up, at least it was going to be with an eye to getting what he wanted. “The world is filled with women trying to look like beach babes, or fashion magazine cutouts. Frankly, they’re a dime a dozen. The first thing that attracted me to you was that you didn’t need any of that stuff and didn’t seem to feel self-conscious about not having it on, either. You’ve got beautiful skin that looks healthy and that makes it a pleasure to look at. Your body is more enticing because of the mysteries your clothes hide.”

  She turned away as if she didn’t believe him. He’d been on nude beaches enough times to know what he was talking about. But he didn’t think she was ready for that much honesty from him at the moment.

  Her face turned back to him, and when he read the turmoil in Dana’s eyes, he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her until she was breathless.

  “Can you wait just a second?” she asked him.

  “Of course. It’s not like the pub takes reservations.”

  “Or needs them on a Tuesday night.” She was herself again, giving him that sassy tone of voice. As long as he had the real Dana back, Josh was willing to wait for as long as she needed.

  His mother would be shocked.

  * * *

  “WHAT?” DANA HAD BEEN about to put a carrot stick into her mouth and stopped. Josh was staring at her rather than eating.

  Maybe this would be the moment. Before dinner, not after like she’d been thinking.

  He’d ordered a beer. She had cranberry juice. Until she talked with an obstetrician, she wasn’t even going to drink diet soda, let alone the occasional glass of wine she’d read was permissible.

  “I’m just so glad you changed. I’m not kidding, Dana, you’re so much more beautiful this way.”

  The sincerity in his eyes was hard to miss, even for a disbeliever like her. He must really have it bad for her.


  “I’ve been with a lot of women,” he continued. “Women who spend more on their hair, nails and clothes than I’ve budgeted for my monthly living expenses.”

  Thinking about her sisters, she smirked and nodded.

  “And you really have them topped.”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised,” she said with a chuckle, but she understood him being perplexed. She was, too. They’d only known each other such a short time and yet it—them together—seemed so right.

  Natural.

  Or it would be as soon as he gave her the ring.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “SO, YOU SEE, if you look at the facts, the best option for both us and the baby is for me to buy that house and for both of us to move before next month’s bills are due. Sooner for you, if you can sublet now, because that’s more income that will just be added to our monthly overage for extra breathing room.”

  Dana studied his sheets. The amount of work he’d done in such a short amount of time, including a column for “profit sharing,” giving her a percentage of the money he saved by paying for one household instead of two, was mind-boggling. He’d already opened an investment account for the baby. Not a savings account, an investment account.

  At the moment it only had five hundred dollars in it, but he’d shown why he was putting the money where he was and how it was going to grow. And she understood why Montford had promoted him his first week on the job.

  “I have a question for you,” she said, sitting next to Josh in the booth rather than across from him as she had over dinner, so that they could both look at his charts together.

  “Sure.”

  His tone was confident. Obviously the man was in his element. Even with her own business success, she was kind of intimidated. She told him about the money she had in her savings. “Can you help me do this—” she pointed to the baby’s investment page “—with it?”

  “Better yet, I can teach you how to do it,” he said. “You already understand the basics. We can follow the market together, play around with it a little bit, and you’ll get the hang of it in no time.”

  “Is that how you learned?” Their faces were only inches apart, and her stomach turned over. In a good way.

  “I took a certain amount of money that could be lost without undue hardship and played the market,” he said.

  “How’d you do?”

  “I got lucky.”

  She wasn’t surprised. In spite of his need to come up with a budget to afford his plans for their family, Josh reminded her of someone who’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He just had that air about him.

  Motioning toward the spreadsheets before them he asked, “So, what do you think?”

  “I think it all looks good,” she said. He’d figured out a way for her to be able to afford to choose new furniture for the nursery. She’d been envisioning spending many spring days frequenting garage sales, hoping to score baby paraphernalia in good shape.

  “Oh, one more thing,” he said, putting another sheet in front of her. “Ian turned me on to this handyman guy who says he can build kennels in the back corner of that yard and have them climate controlled, so if you want to you can expand on Love To Go Around, you know, beyond what Zack and the clinic do—or in partnership with them—and have a place to house many more dogs. You could have potential families come to you rather than you taking dogs to them.”

  Staring at the picture, tears came to Dana’s eyes. Her own kennel. A real kennel. Not for purebreds, like her mother had raised, but for pups like Lindy Lu and Little Guy and dogs like Skyline—animals with so much love to give, with healing capabilities, and no home.

  It was better than the engagement ring she was still waiting for. “Oh, Josh, I don’t... No one has ever done so much for me... I...” She broke off. She’d almost told him she loved him.

  “You can change it if you like,” he said. “This is just a rough sketch based on what I thought you might need. Randy will work with you directly, when the time comes, and he’s doing it for a price I can afford, so...”

  “Have you already bought the house, then?”

  “No. I was going to sign the paperwork this afternoon, but then we ran over and you had to go. I’m not going to sign anything until I have your okay.”

  She nodded. And waited. There couldn’t possibly be anything else for him to do, or say, before he popped the question.

  “So? Is it okay?”

  “If you buy the house?”

  “All of it,” he said, sweeping a hand above the table. “The plan. Are you willing to share a house with me—platonically, of course, just as we discussed—and allow me to take on the expenditures I’ve outlined here as well as give you a percentage of the money I save to do with as you wish?”

  She couldn’t possibly have heard him right. “You want me to live with you.”

  “Platonically, like we discussed. I won’t expect anything from you sexually.”

  Cold and hot at the same time, she sat there, unmoving, as a strange calm came over her, and heard herself say, “But you’re not going to be having sex with anyone else,” she repeated the other thing included in the conversation to which he was referring.

  “Correct.”

  “You’re going to be celibate.”

  “Yes.” His response was unequivocal, without hesitation. Either the man was an amazingly practiced liar, or he was being completely sincere.

  “Just for the time I’m pregnant or for afterward, too? This is a small town. I don’t want to live in your home, raising your child, while you’re out with other women.”

  “I understand and I wouldn’t ask you to. As far as other people will know, we’re a couple, for as long as you want to keep up that appearance. I can’t birth that child, but I can give you the respectability and companionship you deserve as you do so. After the baby is born, if you want to pursue other men, you just need to come to me and say so.”

  “So if I meet someone, I’m supposed to come to you and tell you I want to start dating and you’ll move out?” Was it her or was the man nuts?

  “If it’s after the baby’s born, and depending on finances, yes.”

  “And if I don’t, we just live together forever?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Don’t you ever want to get married?”

  “What I want became unimportant the second I got you pregnant. But for the record, no, I do not see marriage in my future. Ever.”

  If she’d had any hope left, it settled quietly and died.

  “Just to reiterate, during the time you’re pregnant, I will expect you to be celibate.” Josh spoke quietly, although they were the only couple sitting in the back portion of the pub that night.

  His lips pursed as his eyes met her face.

  As if she’d be off having sex with a guy while she was huge. But wasn’t that exactly what her mother had done? She might not have been huge yet, but she had had sex while she was pregnant with another man’s child.

  She cringed when she thought of the choices Susan had made. And yet, she understood why she’d made them, too. She’d wanted what was best for the baby she was carrying.

  As did Dana.

  And the baby was the only reason why, when Josh asked her again if he had her okay for the plan, she nodded.

  * * *

  JOSH WAS LETTING L.G. run unsupervised in the backyard while he was on the computer the following Thursday, a week before Thanksgiving, when Dana called.

  “We haven’t talked about when and how we’re going to tell people about the baby,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Next week is Thanksgiving. I’m going to be speaking with my family and feel like I should tell them, since my address is going to be changing
in a matter of weeks.”

  “Oh, sooner than that,” he inserted quickly. “I forgot to tell you. I found someone to sublet your duplex yesterday. He’s a young guy who was here in the office on another matter. He’s been living in the dorm, but finding it hard to concentrate and his parents were more than willing to pay a third more than what you’re paying to get him out of there.”

  “You mean, I’ll not only be out of my lease, but making money on it, as well?”

  Make them feel like the choice is theirs.

  “I did it again, didn’t I?” he said, the world slowing strangely. With the phone to his ear, he stepped outside to the patio, glancing down as L.G. ran up to him, jumping up on his pant leg.

  “I should have called you before I finalized anything.”

  “Actually, Josh, I’m grateful.”

  Not the reaction he’d expected. He shook his head as L.G. cocked his puppy ears up at him. The woman was going to be the death of him.

  “Anytime you overstep rights I care about, I’ll let you know,” she continued when he was beyond trying to figure her out. “You have my word on that.”

  “Okay.”

  “In this case, I asked around at school and everyone I know of is set, at least until semester break. There were a couple of people interested at the break, though. I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to move before next month’s bills are due.”

  “We’re closing on the house within the week,” he said. A phone call to Boston for instant approval on a line of credit and an overnighted check were all it took for him to be able to buy the home and close the deal.

  He was putting the house in her name so if anything ever happened to him, the house was hers, free and clear.

  A detail he’d ironed out that morning and had not yet shared with her.

  “Wait a minute!” Her tone had grown shorter. “I just realized you said I’d be changing addresses within a week.”

  “The kid who’s renting your place wants to move in over the Thanksgiving holiday,” Josh explained. “His parents are flying in to see his new home and help him get settled. That way he’ll be ready when classes start up again the following Monday.”