Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  “You’re not going to the office,” Owen said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not going to the office, yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re going to eat eggs and talk about,” Cara laughed, “eggs. Specifically, fertilization,” she said pointing a wooden spoon at Owen who had a t-shirt on now.

  Sarina looked at her knees, the robe was short. “I feel like I should at least be dressed for this.”

  Owen and Cara exchanged a look. Sometime between last night’s meal and this morning they’d found time to talk about donor sperm. Sarina had been too upset by Dev’s outburst to go home and risk him showing up, and so ferociously tired she’d let Owen and Cara feed her, pump her head full of Bruce Willis movies and send her to bed in borrowed pjs sexier than anything she owned herself. But this morning she felt vaguely silly. It’s not like she was unwell, or an invalid. She’d had a fight with her best friend that caused an unexpected emotional brain-melt and now she was expected to talk about sperm on an empty stomach.

  Owen sat at the table. It was already set with breakfast basics. “Dev told you I had an impotence problem, didn’t he?”

  Sarina pulled a face. She hadn’t meant to acknowledge she knew about the complication Owen experienced after his accident. “He did.” She’d known he was depressed at the time and she’d badgered Dev to tell her what Owen wouldn’t.

  “Thick as thieves, the two of you,” said Owen. “I shouldn’t have been surprised by that.”

  “A lot about yesterday was surprising.” In particular, how viciously Dev had rejected her.

  “No kidding,” said Cara. “You guys play for keeps.” She put a plate of scrambled eggs and mushrooms in front of Sarina and another in front of Owen and sat at the table with a bowl of fruit for herself. The cooked breakfast made her think of Dev again. She picked up her fork and toyed with the eggs. There wouldn’t be any more cooked breakfasts until she could find a way to forgive him. Better learn to scramble eggs herself.

  “Anyway, I’m not impotent anymore,” Owen said.

  “Gets it up good and proper,” said Cara. “It’s kind of annoying because now we need protection where before—ow!” She glared at Owen, who’d done something to her under the table.

  “Point is, we talked about it and if you wanted my sperm,” he shrugged, “I’ve got some to give.”

  “To a jar,” said Cara. “Big on sperm in jars.”

  There was no eating the eggs now. She looked from Cara to Owen. “Thank you.” The back of her eyes burned. “You’d really be okay if I had your child?” She blinked on a matched set of tears. “It’s a big thing to ask and I didn’t come at it with enough thought.”

  “Reid was right about it being obvious, though. Why would you not ask us?” He laughed. “You thought he was asexual.”

  “There is nothing asexual about that man,” said Cara. “Unless you mean a sexual deviant with Zarley.”

  Cara had lived with Reid and Zarley so she’d know. “Well, he is,” she said, when Sarina and Owen looked at her.

  Owen reached for Cara’s hand. “We just wanted to make the offer. We’d need to think through the details, but in principle, we’re in.”

  Which only highlighted how obvious it was that Dev was out.

  “I’m a little overwhelmed.” She had to say something about the tears dripping off her chin. “There are lots of reasons why this might not be a good idea.”

  Owen handed her a napkin. “If you decide it’s better to go with a totally anonymous donor, that’s okay, we just wanted you to know you had an option.”

  An incredible array of them, from the shortlist of candidates Reid was drawing up to the decision about whether she wanted to try for a boy or a girl. Nothing was a certainty, but everything was a possibility. Almost everything.

  “You’d make a cute kid, you and the jar,” said Cara.

  “And while you’re thinking about it, I want you to take some time off work,” said Owen.

  “Why would I do that?” She squeezed the wet napkin in her hand. Work was where everything made sense.

  “Because you’re overdue for vacation. You covered for my absence while I was in rehab and this is big, what you’re doing. You can afford to take the time to think, also you’re sitting in my kitchen trying not to sob, and that’s not you, so time out, okay. I’m confiscating your building security pass.”

  “I can’t just take time out with no planning.”

  “You have to plan around not planning with a kid,” said Cara. “I grew up living with host families so I could follow my coach. Babies and little kids suck. They totally have their own devious agenda and it’s not about your convenience. They get sick for no good reason, they rob you of sleep, they make terrible smells, all that and you have to love them. Take the vacation.”

  She’d have laughed but she was still sniffling. And it was clear she didn’t have her head together. A few days for extra sleep would make a difference.

  “Okay, I’m having a week’s vacation. Starting tomorrow.” She pushed back from the table. Give me fifteen.” She’d get Owen to drive past her place and do a quick clothing change before they hit the office.

  “Two weeks, starting from right now, final offer,” said Owen.

  Hearing him say that shouldn’t have made her feel a little panicked. She had a crack team, it’s not like everything would fall apart without her, and Cara was right about the structure of her life needing to change, not right away, but she’d have to look at things through the lens of a bundle of poop and wind with no respect for a working day.

  “If you’re that desperate for a distraction today, you can come and help me with a fabric delivery,” said Cara.

  “I get to call Christopher and sort out my calendar.”

  Owen carried their plates to the sink. “You get to do that.”

  She turned to Cara. “If I can borrow a fresh t-shirt, I’m all yours.”

  She didn’t fit into any of Cara’s tiny t-shirts but it didn’t matter, no one would care she was wearing yesterday’s clothes. She spent an hour sorting out her work priorities and then the rest of the day with Cara unpacking fabric. That meant she got to see the work in progress at Lucky’s because Cara’s fantasy fashion and lingerie workshop was above the newly renovated not-yet-open club.

  She’d never visited Lucky’s when it was the dive bar where Reid met Zarley, but Owen had said it was the least likely place to find love. With its planned ultra-luxury fit-out that was a rocking modern take on art deco, all red, black, white, and silver, it was likely to reverse the trend.

  Zarley joined them at lunchtime and they sat at Cara’s worktable with sandwiches and coffee, music from the pole-dance class next door adding a distinct I’m playing hooky from work vibe. The renovation was almost complete, being held up by the slow delivery of a specific antique bar top Zarley had bought at auction, and a trading permit she could do nothing to hurry along.

  “Stick that pose, baby,” called the teacher. “Get it in the pole pocket.”

  “That’s Lizabeth. You could take a class,” said Zarley. She sat cross-legged on Cara’s big worktable.

  Sarina laughed. She didn’t have time for other than the most perfunctory exercise routine, certainly no time to learn to pole dance. Except she was on vacation and there was nothing to stop her taking a class for fun.

  “If you want to feel like you’ve been dropped on your butt from a great height, repeatedly, while having your arms ripped out of their sockets,” Zarley finished,

  From next door, Lizabeth said, “Hook it, Miss Pole. Control the spin.”

  “Don’t do it,” said Cara. “I tried it once. Childbirth would be more fun.”

  “I’m not thinking that’s going to be fun,” Sarina said. That part she wasn’t looking forward to.

  “Watermelon, small opening,” said Cara with a shudder. “I’m flexible, but really.”

  “The whole birth process had to be invented by a man. And
you’re not even doing the fun lead-up stuff.” Zarley did something beyond flexible just stretching to pick up her coffee cup. “Men really are more and more optional when you think about it,” she said, which is where Reid must’ve gotten that sentiment.

  “When you can reduce them to a jar of spunk,” said Cara with a grin. “But you still have to love them. Except Dev who’s being a dick.”

  “Squeeze, squeeze,” said Lizabeth and the three of them laughed.

  She didn’t want to think about birth or Dev. “Subject change. Tell me how you managed the renovation,” she said to Zarley, and got a lesson in heritage-building issues and interior fit-out that took her back to the time they were leasing Plus’ office and arguing about what it would look like.

  They’d known it would need to be an attractive office with the right facilities to compete for talent, and the usual Silicon Valley standard was modern industrial warehouse crossed with playpen, open plan with lots of nooks for meetings and quiet time and large spaces for recreation. Individual offices and secrecy were out, bright colors and equality were in. But Dev had argued that they’d need to be able to shut a door on Reid if anyone was going to have any peace and there was nothing wrong with having offices for the four of them. That shouldn’t have seemed like a radical decision and their fishbowl offices worked well, but it’d got them written up in the press for being elitist at the time.

  And she’d thought about Dev again.

  “Shake it off,” called Lizabeth. The woman was a mind reader.

  “How did you manage to keep Reid out of the renovation?” she asked.

  Zarley snickered. “He’s so all or nothing, it had to be nothing and he hated it, but we’d have broken up over something like light fixtures or the taps for the bathrooms. He’s been surprisingly good about not having a say.”

  “Owen tried to help with this,” Cara rapped her knuckles on the worktable. “Set up meetings in Vegas for me, but it was too much too soon. I wasn’t ready for it and I didn’t realize it at the time. I needed to do this my own way.”

  From the room next door, Lizabeth said, “You’re going to hurt tomorrow like you don’t know your own name. Bruises on your bruises. Suck it up, pole princesses. Remember to stretch and see you next week.”

  All or nothing. Do it her own way. Suck it up. Remember to stretch. Lessons to live by. It was a kind of revelation she meditated on over the next week, in between sleep-ins, long walks, rereading Dev’s text messages, and some intensive study of Reid’s donor decision matrix.

  Dev’s messages made her feel uncomfortable. He was sorry for the way he’d reacted and he wanted to see her. She didn’t respond, and after three days of pestering he took the hint and went quiet.

  Reid’s decision matrix, and his provisional short list of donors, made more sense the longer she looked at it, because much as she loved her friends and partners, there’d be no way to control for the spin. Reid would be incapable of staying out of her business and it would be difficult to restrict him. Owen’s offer was incredibly generous but there was no way she could have his child and not want him involved, and Dev was repulsed by the idea.

  Dev’s rejection made her hurt like she didn’t know her name, bruised her so deeply she wondered how they’d recover as friends, but with think time she’d cleared her mind. They were the three best men she knew, as well as her business partners, but it was simply less complicated if she didn’t cross the strands any further and try to squeeze too much from their relationships. Without the easy cash to fund this, she might think differently, but that wasn’t her issue. They’d been successful as friends, partners and that was enough; it was tempting fate to expect the same result with a different arrangement.

  Trying to check her messages, she discovered her Plus access had been blocked and Christopher was under instruction, which meant Reid had threatened him not to talk to her about work issues. Christopher could handle Reid, and Sarina could handle another week of vacation. She’d talk to Owen and thank him for his generosity. She’d do her research.

  The timing turned out to be perfect.

  FOURTEEN

  Telling their parents had gone about as well as Dev and Ana had expected it to. Ana’s announcement was met with rock-hard silence by Dad, who’d simply ignored Ana from that point on. Mom had fled the room in tears. That left Rani to make it truly awful.

  “Shiva’s tits, Ana, how stupid were you. You’ve trashed your life. So damn smart but such an idiot. How could you not know to protect yourself? If you think I’m going to be around to clean up after you, that Mom is, you can think all over again.”

  All Dad said was, “Language, Rani.”

  Dev let Rani go on for a bit, absorbed Ana’s flinches and then ended it. “That’s enough, Rani. It doesn’t help.”

  “Help, she’s going to need help for the rest of the baby’s life.”

  Ana stirred at that. “I’m not helpl—”

  “Oh no, you don’t get to comment, because you are an idiot, child,” Rani snapped.

  Dev stood, “Do you have anything to say, Dad?” No eye contact from their father. “This is your grandchild.”

  “This is no grandchild of mine,” he said, face turned away. “No daughter of mine.”

  “Dad, I . . . Dev is going to help and . . . It will be all right.”

  Dev put his hand out to Ana. “Let’s go home.”

  “Dad,” she said. “Dad, please.”

  Vikram Patel closed his eyes, a look of disgust in the set of his jaw that hit Ana like death. With Rani jabbering on, Dev got Ana on her feet and out of the house. The hardest part was listening to her plead with Mom to open the bedroom door. He’d closed Ana into Gita’s front seat when Rani accosted him.

  “You’re siding with her?”

  “Would you listen to yourself? That’s your sister. She’s carrying your niece or nephew.”

  Rani blinked. “Why is she keeping it? She should have an abortion.”

  “It’s Ana’s decision.”

  “She’s going to ruin her life.”

  “It’s her life.”

  “It’s devastating for Mom and Dad.”

  “And you think it would be better if we shunned Ana, like this was 1950, and you and I weren’t playing the field, just not getting caught out.”

  “I don’t . . . I didn’t say . . . No one cares that you do, and at least I’m careful, but for them . . .”

  “Oh, yeah, the shame will kill them.” He gave vent to his anger at this, and the double standard that allowed him the kind of freedom Rani and Ana were denied, with ridiculous sarcasm. “Dad’ll lose his job, Mom will be a laughing stock, all their friends will spit on them, they’ll probably lose the house, end up living on the street.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, I do. This is about you finally getting to be the good daughter. Thought you had more backbone.”

  Rani scowled. “It’s so easy for you. You’re a man, you don’t have to follow the rules. And you think money can solve every problem.”

  “I know Ana would be in a worse place without it. You’re being a bitch and if there are sides, I’m on Ana’s.”

  He turned away and Rani caught his arm. “Did she even think about terminating it?”

  “The morning after pill has a five percent failure rate, Rani. It’s some kind of miracle she got pregnant. She’s spent weeks hoping it wasn’t true, hoping she’d miscarry. She’s in tears all the time, but thinks she’s doing the right thing having the baby. I’m with her whatever she decides.”

  “You always have to be the hero.”

  Rani had said enough and he didn’t have the stomach to argue about it anymore. He shook her off and walked around Gita. He’d take Ana, who was currently doing her own impression of Dad, to get lunch, and then they were moving her into his place permanently.

  “Dev, she’s going to be a single mom. You have no idea how hard that’s going to be.”

  He stood in Gita’s open doo
r and looked over her roof at Rani. “Way harder without the support of her family.”

  Rani shook her head. “She’ll never find anyone to be with.”

  “You and I have done such a bang-up job of that.” At the rate he was destroying things, he’d end up without Sarina and Shush in his life.

  “Dev, I—”

  He didn’t hear the rest. He closed Gita’s door and started her up. Rani knocked on Ana’s window, called her name, but Ana refused to look at her. “No surprises,” he said. That’d gone pretty much as they’d paced it through.

  “Nope,” Ana said. “If you could run over Rani’s feet, that would make me happy.”

  “She’ll calm down, you know she will. It’s all about Mom for her, and whether Rani has to nurse her through another depression.”

  Ana put her hand to the window to block Rani out. “She can still nurse with broken feet.”

  Dev pulled away from the curb, no bones were broken. They ate lunch, both of them with false cheer, then he helped Ana pack up her bedroom and moved her into his apartment. She fitted easily now, but he’d have to give up his games room to create a space for the baby, and the stairs were an issue, maybe he should move to a bigger place. Wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it.

  In the middle of flattening boxes, Ana cried. He’d been waiting for it. She was by turn frightened and angry, frustrated and brave. He’d never lived with that wild seesawing of emotions before and it left him floundering. He had no idea if it would get better or worse, but he had to be the steady one for as long as she couldn’t be.

  When he explained it, Sarina would understand. He had to pray she did.

  His only choice was to stalk her, because she’d not responded to text messages. He lay awake half the night composing what to say, then scrubbing it from his head when it was insulting or lame or woefully inadequate. There was no way to envisage his life without Sarina in it. It was oddly easier to imagine Ana with a baby in her arms, his living room a sea of squeaky toys, than it was to imagine never again watching a bad movie with Sarina’s head on his shoulder, not cooking her breakfast, not watching her changing hair color with amusement.