“I guess you’re right.”
“And you’ll get a lot more for your money.”
“Okay. Wanna go with me?”
“Sure, I’ll take you to my regular spot.”
He stowed his bike in the trunk of Chance’s BMW, and they rode to the west side of town to a pawn shop that looked a little seedy, even for a pawn shop.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah, it’s righteous. When the tennis types in the burbs have to sell their jewels, they don’t want to go to a pawn shop in their backyard because they’re afraid their neighbors will see them. And they don’t want to drive through a bad part of town. But this place is convenient because it’s right off the interstate. They can get in, and out.”
They pulled around to park and Wes counted three Mercedes, two Cadillacs, and a Volvo, so apparently Chance knew his shit.
They sauntered in through a metal detector into one large room lined with shelves and cabinets that appeared to house anything of value—musical instruments, leather coats, even a motorcycle. The cycle made Wes’s mouth water. He’d be getting his driver’s license back soon and needed to upgrade on horsepower.
In the back, women wearing tight pants and dark sunglasses were conducting business across a counter with a couple of beefy looking guys. A stocky older woman with hair piled on top of her head approached them, chin down to peer at them over reading glasses.
“What can I do for you fellas?” Her nose wrinkled and Wes conceded that after a night in a smoky illegal card hall, they probably were not the most fragrant of customers.
“We’re buying,” Chance said.
As opposed to selling, Wes presumed. The woman’s nose wrinkle disappeared.
“You got something in mind?” she asked, giving them another once-over, as if trying to assess their net worth.
Chance jerked his thumb toward Wes. “He’s getting married, needs a ring.”
The woman’s jowly face heaved upward in a smile. “Right this way.”
They followed her to a glass cabinet that held an array of rings so vast, Wes wondered about the rate of divorce in the metro area. How on earth would he pick one?
“How much are you looking to spend?” she asked.
“Three grand,” he said.
“Two grand,” Chance said at the same time.
“Twenty-five hundred,” he corrected.
She looked back and forth between them. “Okay, let’s start over here.” She unlocked the cabinet and withdrew a tray of rings, then slid it on top of the glass counter.
Wes’s heart beat faster in his chest. He was really going to do this. Really. He wiped a hand across his forehead and it came away sticky.
“What’s your girl like?” the lady asked with a grandmotherly smile.
Meg’s face popped into his head and his first thought was he could never describe her in a way to make someone else understand the way he saw her.
“She’s pregnant,” Chance supplied in his silence.
With a start, Liz’s face replaced Meg’s. Right.
“I see,” the woman said.
“She’s classy,” Wes said. “She’s an attorney and she likes nice things.”
“She’s older,” Chance said helpfully.
“Ah,” the lady said, as if she’d grasped the situation. “How about this one?” She removed a ring from the tray and held it up. “It’s one carat, beautiful setting, 14K gold.”
Wes took the ring and swallowed hard. “Do you think she’ll like it? It’s really important that she likes it.”
The woman hesitated, then reached for a different ring and held it up. “One and a half carats, emerald cut, white gold.” She handed it to him. “She’ll like it.”
He turned the ring in the light and the diamond sparkled like a thousand fires…that would consume him forever and ever and ever.
“It’s pretty. How much?”
“Cash?” she asked.
He nodded.
“The tag says twenty-eight hundred, but I’ll take twenty-five, tax and all.”
He glanced at Chance and his buddy nodded.
“Okay.”
The woman smiled. “Let me get this to Sam. He’ll clean it and put it in a nice box.” She returned the tray to the cabinet, then headed toward the back.
“I’m gonna look at the stereo stuff,” Chance said.
Wes nodded, too tired now to work up an interest in speakers. He rubbed his eyes, then leaned on the counter…and spotted a bracelet inside that made him look closer. It was dainty. Some kind of pink metal held together links of tiny flowers, their petals every color imaginable. Even his untrained eye could see it was something special—a work of art.
“You like the bracelet?” the woman asked.
He looked up to see her standing on the other side of the counter. He nodded.
She removed it from the case and set it in front of him. “You have a good eye.”
“It reminds me of someone.”
“Not the classy attorney?”
He shook his head.
The woman nodded in understanding. “It’s a very nice piece, one of a kind. The stones are semi-precious, set in pink gold.”
“Pink gold,” he murmured. He turned over the price tag and balked at the nine hundred dollar price.
“I’ll let you have it for five,” she said.
It was stupid to buy something for a woman who wouldn’t even talk to him, who probably hated him, and rightfully so.
“I’ll take it.”
She smiled and disappeared with the bracelet. He wandered over to watch Chance fool around with speakers and chat up the bored guy working there. A few minutes later, the sales lady waved to him from the back.
Two small gift bags sat next to the cash register, one black and one white. He didn’t have to guess which one was which. He leaned over and removed the fat wad of cash from his sock and handed it to her. She counted the bills like a teller, turning the bills face up as she thumbed through them. Without losing track, she handed the twenties and hundreds to the guy next to her, who held them up to the light and checked them with a counterfeit marking pen.
“All good,” the guy said.
The woman smiled and handed Wes a receipt. “Thank you. I hope everything works out.”
“So do I,” he said, then stuffed the gift bags into his backpack.
When they got back in the car, Wes sighed and leaned his head back.
“You coming home with me?” Chance asked.
“Nah. I’m going home to take a shower and feed Einstein before I go see Liz.”
“I’ll drop you off. You working today?”
“Thanks for the reminder.” He pulled out his phone and called McCormick, his boss at ASS. The man’s voice mail picked up. Wes altered his voice to sound like he had the flu and wouldn’t be in today—he didn’t want to spread it around. After throwing in a couple of coughs to make it sound good, he ended the call.
He really didn’t want to see Meg before he talked to Liz.
“How are you going to pop the question?” Chance asked.
“I thought I’d go to Liz’s office and surprise her, you know, take some flowers, get down on one knee. Women love that crap.”
“Sounds risky. Do you think she’ll say yes?”
“I think so. She’s talked before about us being a couple, going out in public and stuff. She offered to put me through college, so I could have a career and everything.”
Chance nodded. “Sounds mainstream.”
“It’s good,” Wes said, nodding. “I mean, I’m going to have a mouth to feed so I need a steady gig. I want my kid to be proud of me.”
“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“Nah…I think it’s probably too soon to tell.”
“So, dude…what’s your dad going to think if you marry his mistress?”
Wes shrugged. Anger sparked in his stomach—Randolph obviously didn’t want anything to do with him. “Things h
ave changed since he left. I’m a man now, and I’m with Liz. He’ll just have to deal with it.”
Chance pulled into the driveway of the townhome. “Whose car?”
Wes regarded the plain sedan and scowled. “Just some dick cop who’s got a hard-on for my sister.”
“Dude, who doesn’t? I mean, she’s smoking hot.”
“Shut up.” Carlotta was the other woman he didn’t want to face before he talked to Liz. “Change of plans. Do you mind to drop me off at Liz’s office?”
“No problem.”
A few minutes later when they pulled up to the high rise building, Chance leaned forward to look out the window. “Looks like a nice place.”
“Yeah.” Wes had never been to her office, had only seen Liz when he was in jail or at the police station or the D.A.’s office. Or in her bed.
“What if she’s not here?”
He pointed to the red Jag convertible parked in a premium spot. “She’s here, that’s her car.”
“Sweet.” Then Chance glanced over. “But dude, you stink. I stink, so if I can smell you, it’s bad.”
“I got it covered,” Wes said, climbing out.
“Good luck, dude.”
“Thanks.”
He retrieved his bike from the trunk, then walked it to a rack and locked it. From his backpack he pulled out a courier envelope and hat he sometimes used to gain access to places when he collected for Mouse. Then he strolled in through a revolving door and nodded to the receptionist sitting behind a vase of fresh flowers.
“Hi, there,” he said cheerfully, holding up the envelope. “Mail room?”
“I can take it,” the woman said.
“Sorry, it requires the signature of an official mail manager. Postal code stuff, such a pain.”
“In the basement,” she said, pointing to the stairs.
“Thanks.”
He walked down the stairs and through a door into a hallway. A couple of doors down, he found a vending machine room where he snagged a protein bar, a Coke, and a pack of breath mints.
A security guard walked in and nodded as he fed coins into a machine. “How’s it going?”
“Good now,” Wes said, holding up his snack. “Man, is there a bathroom down here I can use before I head back out?”
The guy pointed. “Down the hall, just past the mailroom.”
“Thanks.”
Wes wolfed down the food, then found the bathroom, which was, fortunately, empty. He stripped off his gray Cage the Elephant tee shirt and used hand soap and water to give himself a thirty-second wipe-down, then used paper towels to dry off. He put his shirt back on, this time with the stained emblem to the back, the plain back to the front. After wetting his hair, he held his head under the electric hand dryer for a quick, hot blast. He cracked open the breath mints and chewed a handful. Then he stowed the hat and envelope and walked back to the mailroom where he rapped on the half-door.
A handful of guys looked up from sorting bins, and one loped over. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, man, I’m lost. I’m looking for Elizabeth Fischer’s law office.”
The guy thought for a few seconds. “Fifth floor.”
“Thanks.” Then Wes leaned in. “Listen, I’m in trouble and I’m meeting her for the first time and now I’m regretting my wardrobe choice, you know?”
The guy scanned his tee shirt and jeans. “I’ve seen worse.”
“Still, I could really use a jacket for an hour,” he said, nodding to the guy’s navy blue special. “I got a twenty,” he said holding up the bill. “Help me out?”
The guy shrugged. “Sure.” He traded the jacket for the cash.
Wes slid into the jacket—a little loose, but not bad. “You’ll have it back within the hour. Oh, by the way, when I came in the building, there was a stray kitten out front in the landscape bed. I meant to tell the receptionist, but I totally forgot. Will you call her? It sounded hungry.”
“Sure,” the guy said, reaching for the phone next to the door.
By the time he got back to the lobby, the receptionist was on her way out the revolving door on a mission to save a kitten. He snatched a handful of flowers from the vase on the desk, and punched the elevator call button.
On the elevator, though, he had time to think on what he was about to do. It was easy enough to say he was going to do the hard thing, but would he stick with it long-term? Through thick and thin, in sickness and in health? He swallowed.
Until death.
He wanted to think he could be someone Liz and the baby could rely on, but honestly, he didn’t know. The few times Carlotta had depended on him, he’d failed spectacularly.
Maybe he was just a screw-up.
The elevator door opened onto a plush lobby and glass doors with gold lettering that spelled out “Elizabeth Fischer, Attorney at Law.”
Liz would expect nice things in life—money and travel and socializing with the right people.
Could he be that guy?
The elevators doors started to close, and he put his arm out to stop them.
He could only try his damnedest.
He took a deep breath and walked through the glass doors into a small waiting area. A receptionist looked up and smiled.
“May I help you?”
“Is Liz available?”
She gave the flowers a suspicious look. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“Your name, please?”
“Wesley Wren.”
“Just a moment.”
The girl turned at an angle so he couldn’t hear what she said into the phone. When she hung up, she smiled and pointed to a dark wood door. “Go right in.”
His feet grew heavier with each step that carried him across the carpet. He took a deep breath, then opened the door.
Liz looked up from her desk and gestured him inside. She was on the phone and held up a finger indicating she’d be through in a minute. She arched an eyebrow at the flowers and gestured for him to have a seat.
Wes sighed. More waiting.
He decided to stand, but slid his backpack off his shoulder onto a chair. He realized this would be a good time to get the ring, and with his back turned to Liz, he pulled out the black bag. He peeked inside for reassurance, grateful the sales lady had put a bow on the jewelry case.
The jacket was feeling hot and scratchy. He ran a finger around the collar and scanned Liz’s office. On her bookshelf was a picture of an older couple—her parents, he guessed. There was a lot he didn’t know about her, but there was time to learn.
When he heard her wrapping up the call, his heart jumped to his throat. But this was how all men felt before they proposed, he reasoned…it was natural to be nervous.
She put down the phone and came around her desk, looking long and lean in a pencil skirt and sleeveless blouse that make her boobs look even bigger…or maybe that was because of the baby. A matching jacket hung on the back of her chair.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“Just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.” He held out the flowers. His hand was shaking.
“Thank you.” She took the flowers, which were, he realized, dripping a little. She found a vase on her bookshelf and put them inside. “I’m glad you came by, I was going to call you today.”
“Have you talked to Dad?”
“Um…no.” She turned her back for a moment and seemed to be wrestling with something. Wes decided this was as good a time as any to do it.
He retrieved the jewelry case and dipped to one knee. Too late, he realized that cutting off the blood flow to part of his body might not be a good idea. He felt lightheaded.
Liz turned around and her mouth opened. “What on earth?”
He gulped for air. “Liz, I know I don’t have much to offer you right now, but I want to be here for you, and for our baby.” He cracked open the jewelry case. “Will you marry me?”
Liz seemed frozen. “I…Wesley, this is so unexpected.”<
br />
“Because I’m Randolph’s son, you didn’t think I would do the right thing?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He held the jewelry box higher. “Do you like it?”
“It’s very…pretty.”
Something in her voice made him peek at the jewelry case. The dainty pink gold bracelet mocked him. He snapped it shut. “Sorry, wrong box.” He stood and hastily retrieved the box from the white gift bag, opening it to reveal the diamond solitaire ring.
He got down on his knee again. “Now will you marry me?”
Liz’s eyes swam with tears. “I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.”
Adrenaline pumped through his veins. She was going to say yes.
“But I can’t marry you.”
Abject relief flooded his body like a tsunami, quickly replaced by a wake of confusion. “Why not?”
“I was going to call you today because I went to the doctor for some more exact testing.”
Concern blipped in his chest. “Is the baby okay?”
She smiled. “Yes. But I’m further along in the pregnancy than I thought.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re not the father.”
Emotions assaulted him, one after another. Shock…hurt…uncertainty…elation.
And when Meg’s face popped into his head, a final emotion descended.
Misery.
Chapter Thirty-one
“HERE’S TO WES NOT BEING A FATHER,” Carlotta said, lifting her glass.
“I’ll drink to that,” Hannah said with an obliging clink. She was happily back in her Goth garb, her face jewelry restored and her arm tattoos on display. “He really dodged a bullet.”
“I hope he’s learned something, but I have a feeling this situation wrecked his chances with the girl he likes.”
“There are lots of girls out there.”
“I suppose,” Carlotta said. “I just hate to see him get his heart broken on the first time out, you know?”
“Like you did?”
Carlotta nodded in concession. “Yes.”
“So what’s the deal with Richie Rich these days?”
“He’s been spending a lot of time at the hospital with the Tully family.”
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