“Hmm.” She forced her mind back to the task at hand. “Have you ever been married?”
Marcus seemed mildly surprised by the question. “Never had the pleasure. I’ve been in more than my fair share of weddings, but never as the groom. I’m also currently single, totally unattached. Well, except for Arnold, but he doesn’t really count.”
Claire couldn’t help it. She had to ask. “Arnold?”
“My pet beta fish.” He held up a hand. “I know, I know. I don’t look like a pet beta fish kind of man. I’m not either. A friend of mine gave me the damn thing and I can’t bring myself to flush him.”
“A girlfriend?” she guessed.
He nodded, a sardonic smile twisting his lips. “How’d you guess?”
Her lips twitched, but she managed to stifle her laughter. “I don’t think guys usually give each other pet beta fishes.”
“They don’t.” Marcus scowled. “She thought I was commitment phobic. Said it would help if I had something else to take care of.”
“And are you commitment phobic?” She was curious.
“No.” His tone was offended. “Of course not. Not with all women, anyway. Just with some.”
“Ah.” She did laugh then, unable to contain it any longer. “Selective commitment phobia?”
“You got it.” He raised his glass of lemonade to her in mock salute. “I’ll always drink to a smart woman.”
“I don’t know that I’d fit into that class at this point,” Claire told him wryly. “My life is proof of that.”
“We all do things we regret. You’re being too hard on yourself.”
She didn’t think she was. She could have done a great deal of things differently. Better. Like not sleeping with Logan. Of course, if she’d never slept with Logan, she wouldn’t be pregnant now. Despite everything, she was looking forward to her baby’s arrival. Its conception was one thing she would never regret, Logan or no.
“It’s not that I regret the baby,” she hastened to add. “I can’t wait for him or her to be born. But sometimes I wish I had better circumstances to offer her. Or him.”
Claire had begun to think of the baby as a girl recently—maybe because she’d begun having dreams in which she held a baby wearing pink booties. She didn’t know. But what she did know was that she could not bear to let Baby Thumper, as Derek had begun calling him or her, down in any way. She wanted to give the baby the best life possible and the most loving, stable environment she could.
“You’ll be a good mother, Claire,” Marcus said softly, reassuringly.
She looked up, startled by his perceptiveness. “How do you know?”
“It’s in your eyes, in your voice.” He reached across the table and covered her hand with his.
His grip was warm and comforting, a stable lifeline in the storm-tossed sea that had become her life. She looked at Marcus’ hand covering hers, glad for his presence and for his understanding. “Thank you,” she whispered, tears choking her throat. “That means a lot to me.” Claire sniffed, trying to hold back the good cry she felt coming on.
He squeezed her hand gently, then released it. “Hey, I’m not that much of a pain in the ass. No matter what Trevor tells you.”
“No,” she agreed, swiping at the lone tear that clung to her lashes, “you’re not. Not that Trevor ever said you were, of course.”
Marcus threw back his head with a bark of laughter. “You’re a terrible liar. But I’ll forgive you if you order some dessert.”
Hmm. Dessert. Claire’s stomach rumbled at the prospect, suddenly eager for food once more. An image of a creamy chocolate cake loomed in her mind. She sent him a sly smile. “I think I might have room for that after all.”
There was a goddamn siren blaring in Logan’s ear.
Groggily, he swiped in the direction of the offending noise. The warm, silky texture of cat fur tickled his palm. The fog of sleep began clearing from his mind.
It wasn’t a siren, he realized. It was Caesar, making his Hungry Noise.
Logan forced his eyes open and glared at the cat. His head pounded furiously, the after-effects of one too many martinis last night. “Damn you, cat. You’re fat enough. Go back to sleep.”
Caesar glared back from narrowed, yellow-green eyes, unleashing another ungodly howl. A wave of cat breath washed over Logan’s face. The jackhammer inside his skull felt as if it was tearing his head apart.
“Christ.” Logan shoved Caesar from his pillow and the cat landed on his feet with a loud thump on the floor. “I’m calling the Humane Society. They’ve got a little cage with your name on it.”
Caesar emitted another wail of protest.
“Oh shut it,” Logan grumbled. “You know I’d never do that.”
Yet another meow sounded that could have traveled straight from the gates of hell.
Logan’s eyes even throbbed when he opened them. Damn. Derek had flown out to LA on Wednesday to meet with his divorce attorneys and settle matters with Trina as quickly and as painlessly as possible. With his friend gone, Logan had allowed himself to wallow in his own self-pity. And now he was paying the price.
Hangover.
He really hated that word, hated it almost as much as the word love, which was the cause of most hangovers anyway. It sure as hell had been the cause of his. But drinking himself into a state of oblivion hadn’t had its desired effect. He still missed Claire like hell and he still wanted to crawl back to her on hands and knees. The only thing it had succeeded in doing was giving him a bastard of a headache.
Caesar meowed loudly again, jumping back up onto the bed and landing on Logan’s stomach, knocking the wind from his lungs. Was it just him, or had his cat been dramatically putting on weight in recent weeks? God, it felt like it.
“Fine,” Logan ground out, scratching Caesar under his chin. “What time is it, anyway?”
He had to pick up Derek at the airport at one o’clock this afternoon, and before he did that, he had to remove the vodka he’d smuggled into his house in Derek’s absence. This early after detox, Logan didn’t like to offer Derek any temptation. God knew how easy it had been for Derek to fall off the wagon in record time in the past.
Shit. His alarm clock read twelve-thirty. No wonder Caesar was meowing like he was on the verge of death by starvation. Logan normally fed him by eight. Double shit. He’d have to rush like hell to the airport now.
Head still pounding, he hefted Caesar from his chest and threw back the covers.
Caesar unleashed a loud meow of protest.
“Damn it, cat.” Logan rushed to his closet, tossed on a pair of pants and a button-down shirt, not bothering to see if they matched. “I’ll feed you in a minute.” Raking a hand through his hair, he rushed from his bedroom and headed downstairs.
Caesar raced ahead of him, practically catapulting himself down the winding staircase in an effort to reach the kitchen first. The click click of the cat’s claws on the tile floor could be heard before Logan made it to the end of the hallway. Apparently, Caesar had forgotten in his eagerness to reach his bowl that it was still empty.
Cats. Logan began to shake his head, but thought better of it as his headache asserted its presence once more. Loud purring echoed in the silence of the house.
“You really are a dumb bastard, aren’t you?” Logan asked with a laugh, rounding the bend in the hallway and entering the kitchen.
Seated at the island, a sandwich before him on a plate, was Derek. He looked up at Logan’s arrival. “Yes, I am.”
Logan swore. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here? Your plane didn’t even land yet.”
Caesar leapt up on a barstool, then the island, rubbing himself insanely against Derek’s arm. Logan glared at the cat before returning his attention to his friend.
“Actually,” Derek said around a mouthful of sandwich, “it did. I took a redeye flight—finished up things sooner than I thought, but I couldn’t stay. A taxi brought me home.”
“Shit.” Logan rak
ed a hand through his hair again. “Why’d you take a taxi? Now every tabloid photographer on the East Coast is going to be lurking in my bushes.”
Derek frowned. “I tried calling, but you didn’t answer. If the tabloid thing bothers you, I can leave. Now that I’ve officially filed for divorce, they’ll be crawling all over me. They always want fresh blood.”
“No.” Logan crossed the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and pulled out the cat food bag. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. You know you can stay here as long as you want, even if I can’t go outside without being mugged by the paparazzi.”
“It won’t be that bad.” Derek’s tone was grim. “I’m washed up, so not that many will even bother with me. It’s Trina that they’ll be following, especially now that she’s pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” Logan paused in the midst of pouring cat food into Caesar’s bowl. “Is it yours?”
“No,” Derek hastened to assure him, a bitter twist to his lips, “not mine. It’s Billy’s. Turns out they’ve been screwing longer than I thought.”
“Hell.” Logan’s gut clenched at the naked pain on his friend’s face. This was the last thing Derek needed, the kind of news that could send him over the edge again. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” Derek said determinedly, stroking Caesar’s back. “It’s water under the bridge. I just want to focus on getting my shit together now.” He paused. “Speaking of which, how goes it with you and Claire?”
Logan shook some more food into Caesar’s bowl, its rhythmic plink plink plink grating against his nerves. “It doesn’t go at all.”
“What do you mean?” Derek pried.
“I mean we’re done. Over. Finished.” He shoved the bag of cat food back into the cabinet with more force than necessary. It caught on a metal shish kabob skewer and tore, food raining out into the cabinet. “Damn it.”
“How can you be done?” Derek pressed. “You’re having a baby together.”
“We’ll be parents to the child, nothing to each other,” Logan said, forcing all emotion from his voice. He didn’t want anyone, not even Derek, to know just how much that thought was killing him inside.
“What? I thought you said you were going to fix things while I was gone.”
He had said as much, but that was before he actually thought the whole thing through and realized he and Claire were better off apart. Logan loved her. She tolerated him. Besides, he would never be capable of completely opening up and giving her what she wanted, what she deserved. All he succeeded in doing was making her miserable.
And he didn’t want to dwell on any of that. In fact, he wanted to ignore it all, with a desperation wrought by the raw emotions surging inside him.
“Goddamn it,” Logan burst out. “Stop asking me questions. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Derek countered. “Claire’s good for you. Why do you insist on keeping her at arm’s length?”
He started cleaning up the mess of spilled cat food, angrily stuffing it inside a trash bag. “Just leave off.” Damn it, why was he constantly cleaning up messes he’d caused by his own carelessness? All these messes seemed like mocking little metaphors of the one huge mess that was impossible to clean up. His life.
“Loge, when I got here this morning, I opened up your liquor cabinet,” Derek said quietly.
Logan shot his friend a startled glance, a sinking feeling crushing his gut. “Jesus, Derek, tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.” He paused. “But not because I didn’t want to. God knows that after being with Trina—after seeing her with him—I could use a drink more than ever. I didn’t do it because I’m finally beginning to realize that my addiction is destructive. What you’re doing right now is destructive too.”
Logan shook his head. “It’s totally different. I’m trying to make my life easier, not harder. Claire can’t stand me three quarters of the time. I’m just the guy she slept with on the rebound who happened to get her knocked up in the process. If I weren’t the father of her baby, you and I wouldn’t even be having this discussion.”
“You’re looking at this all wrong, Loge.”
Logan looked up again and caught Derek in the act of slipping Caesar a hunk of his sandwich. “Damn it. That’s why he’s been getting so fat.”
Derek put on an air of innocence. “You’re trying to change the subject, Logan,” he pointed out. “And for your information, this is the first time I’ve ever given Caesar any people food.”
“Right.” Logan cleaned up the last few pieces of cat food and stood, tossing the trash bag aside. “Just do me a favor and let the whole Claire thing drop, okay?”
Derek nodded. “For now.”
“Forever.”
His friend just shrugged. “No can do. Forever’s a long time.”
Weeks went by. The leaves gave a final, fiery show before turning brown and falling from the trees. The winds became harsh and cold, nipping Claire’s cheeks on her way to and from work. Her belly grew into a firm, round ball. She could only see her toes by cocking her head to the side and craning her neck.
Claire pinned the November page of her Impressionist calendar to the refrigerator with a sigh. In the upper right corner of the block for December first, she’d penned in a countdown to her due date. Forty-nine days. Less than two months until Baby Thumper arrived. Excitement fused with awe, washing over her as she looked at that simple number.
Forty-nine.
She couldn’t wait.
Her stomach rumbled noisily, reminding her that it was lunchtime. Pulling open the fridge, she inspected its contents. “Hmm. What do we want today, Baby?” She’d begun talking to the baby when Sophie and Trevor moved out. She really had no one else for conversation.
Because while so many things had changed, one thing had not. She and Logan were still functioning at arm’s length. Their work relationship remained strictly professional and their only contact outside the office was doctor’s appointments and phone calls. The calls were always polite and distant, inquiring after her welfare and the baby’s and nothing more.
Nothing personal. God forbid.
Sometimes, she brushed past him at work and she wanted to scream with the frustration of being so close to him, yet so far away. The chasm between them widened each day. Claire tried to be strong, to tell herself she didn’t need Logan. Lots of women tackled single motherhood. She could do it too. Of course she could.
But she missed him.
She missed seeing genuine smiles lighting up his face, missed his devouring kisses, his arms around her at night. She missed laughing with him, sharing her baby with him. She missed, well, everything about him.
Logan, on the other hand, didn’t seem to miss her at all. It was as if he had an emotional on-off switch. He seemed perfectly happy with their relationship, or lack thereof. At her last doctor’s visit, Logan had watched the sonogram for all of fifteen seconds before excusing himself for a meeting he’d forgotten. As though any meeting could take precedence over the sight of his own child. Claire could still recall the look of naked pity on her doctor’s face at Logan’s hasty exit.
Somehow, the caring, considerate man he’d been in Maryland had disappeared in the harsh light of reality. King Monroe took his place. She didn’t think she could manage to peacefully coexist with him like this, pretending not to care at all. Pretending not to be hurt by his sudden defection.
“Knock knock.”
Claire started and turned to find Marcus hovering in the doorway of the kitchen. “Marcus.” She smiled, truly happy to see him. He had become a much-needed friend to her in the last few weeks. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I know.” He grinned, looking utterly gorgeous in faded jeans and a soft gray sweater that complemented the vibrancy of his green eyes. “You really should lock your doors, or you’ll have unwanted guests just inviting themselves inside.”
“Like you?” She couldn’t resist teasing him.
&
nbsp; Marcus pressed a hand to his heart. “I’m wounded. Should I take that as a hint and drive all the way back to New York after I just drove four hours through weekend traffic to get here?” He consulted his watch. “I’m sure it’ll take me five hours to get back if I leave now, but that’s okay. I don’t mind long drives. Really.”
Claire was laughing so hard she was crying by the time he finished his melodramatic don’t-mind-me speech. “When you put it that way, I guess you can stay.”
“Big of you,” he murmured dryly, “especially since you invited me.”
She had invited him to an apple festival in a nearby town. Sophie and Trevor had invited her, and she hadn’t wanted to be the third wheel on the bicycle, so she’d asked Marcus to accompany them. He was a bit early, but she didn’t mind. She was grateful for the company.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, belatedly realizing she was still holding the refrigerator door wide open. “I was just about to sneak a snack.”
“Nothing, thanks.” He winked. “I’m saving myself for all that apple crisp and pie you promised would be waiting for me at the festival.”
“Suit yourself.” She whipped out a raspberry yogurt, grabbed a spoon from the silverware drawer and sat down at the kitchen table with a happy sigh.
Her feet ached more and more each day and her stomach felt so large she knew she looked like Humpty Dumpty. But Claire didn’t mind so much, as long as she didn’t fall off any walls.
“Are you eating raspberry yogurt?” Marcus asked with disbelief as she dug in with typical zeal.
“Mmm-hmm.” She didn’t bother forming a coherent response. Her mouth was too full of delicious, gooey raspberry yogurt.
“Yep.” He nodded. “You’ve got to be pregnant. No one else could possibly like yogurt that much.”
“Mmm.” Claire scraped the bottom of the container, finished it off with record speed. “I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or an insult.”
Marcus laughed. “Take it as an observation.”
Trevor and Sophie arrived then, holding hands and as nauseatingly in love as ever.
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