Tristan practically chortled. “It was Rotisserie Guy.”
Delilah cracked. Her voice rose probably a whole octave, and she was too loud, though knowing that fact didn’t seem to help her control it. “No, it wasn’t Rotisserie Guy. What would my Brandon be doing in here? It’s LA. There have to be a thousand brown-haired Brandons out on the street right now.”
He gestured to Becky, but spoke to his sister. “Then give her something she can work with.”
“Fine!” She turned to Becky, hoping the woman realized that Delilah wasn’t mad at her. She was just put out. She hadn’t eaten enough, hadn’t slept enough, and apparently her brother believed she hadn’t been pestered enough. “Did he look like he was the father of this baby?”
Delilah cocked her head to one side and gestured to her abdomen. And waited.
Becky looked shocked.
Tristan looked supremely irritated. “How the hell is she supposed to know th—”
Then he stopped, dead still.
So did Delilah. Ooops. She hadn’t meant to spill it like that. Probably the pregnancy made her cranky. Oh, crap.
Tristan blinked once, twice, then he found his voice. “Li?”
All she could do was nod. If she opened her mouth, she’d crack and start crying.
Before she could finish, he took the step covering the ground that separated them, and engulfed her in a huge bear hug that didn’t seem like it would ever end. Delilah hugged him back, already feeling better than she had just a few moments ago. She could hear and feel his smile for her.
This was why she let him pester her. Why she put up with him when he was a bear. Because he was instantly happy for her. She didn’t have to explain. He knew. He understood.
Eventually when he stepped back, Becky was gone. Likely she’d excused herself from the suddenly personal scene.
Tristan held her at arm’s length and looked her up and down, the smile still on his face. “Rotisserie Guy?”
She nodded. “Brandon.”
“Oh, Li, I’m so happy for you.”
She smiled, and felt like a ton of bricks had crashed on her. “Me, too. But I have to get home. Go to bed. I’m working again tonight, and I am so tired.”
As if to make her point, a yawn snuck up and overtook her.
Chapter 32
Tristan showed up for breakfast the next morning when she got off work. He called ahead and actually asked if he could come. He asked for a grocery list and made her clarify the whole thing to be sure he got everything right.
All in all, Delilah was entirely weirded out.
Tristan normally just appeared in her kitchen. He didn’t knock, and lately he hadn’t even asked her to feed him. He was like a baby bird—if he was there, then his mouth was open and he was hungry and it was just natural for her to supply the food.
None of that bothered her. But Tristan changing the game did.
He said it was because she was pregnant. Now he felt the need to take care of her. At least until he knew Rotisserie Guy had taken over the job.
But she sensed there was more to it than that.
Tristan suggested something with vegetables. Delilah complied, mostly out of curiosity. She wondered if Tristan figured out what she had—that Brandon already knew what she was.
She unlocked her own front door and let herself in, shedding the chef jacket as she walked toward the bathroom. She shoved it into the dry cleaning hamper and the checked pants into the regular wash, then stripped out of the tank, bra, undies and socks she was wearing.
She started the shower, and stepped back as she always did to give it a moment to heat up. Usually she stood there, breathing deeply, but this morning her reflection caught her attention and she searched herself for signs of change. For outward indications of the life growing within her. There was nothing she could put her finger on. No definitive signs of pregnancy. Her body looked the same as it always had.
Not that she would know what those changes would be. She hadn’t been far enough along the last time she’d gotten pregnant to see any changes then either.
She wasn’t sure if there was a glow or not. She didn’t really think she had that. But at least she was getting caught up on her lost sleep. There was also a recommendation in the pregnancy book for what to eat to keep her stomach settled. Since she only cooked normal fancy foods most of the time, Delilah had little experience with special diets and it was all news to her. It was also working. Her stomach had settled dramatically and she was back to eating pretty much what she wanted as long as she had crackers and ginger ale the moment she woke up.
She was clean and dressed by the time Tristan arrived. Fruit was cubed and arranged in a big bowl in the center of the table. He set salmon down, and Delilah set to cooking it. Since the book ruled out raw or under-cooked meats, lox, a long-time family favorite, was out for the next year or so until she finished nursing. Delilah pushed that thought into a small compartment and ignored it. That was just too far away to deal with right now.
As usual, Tristan waited a while before he brought anything of importance into the conversation. He ate, he chatted about the store, he kept things mundane. Then he sat back. The look on his face indicated he was formulating words. Delilah knew what was coming.
“Does he know?”
She didn’t bother asking about who ‘he’ was or what he might know. She nodded. “Yes.”
Tristan didn’t say anything. The raised eyebrows, the forward lean, the question in his eyes, all said and?
But where could she even begin? What should she tell him? It wasn’t Tristan’s baby after all, it was hers and Brandon’s. Tristan was her brother, but Brandon had to have priority here. Delilah started simple. “He agrees about keeping the baby, and wants to be part of his child’s life. We have an appointment in two days at the doctor’s to get everything confirmed.”
Then, at Tristan’s frown and subsequent upset that she waited so long for an appointment, she wound up explaining exactly what she’d explained to Brandon just a few days before. She sighed. Men. But didn’t voice the thought.
Luckily, Tristan didn’t push further. She half expected him to pester her about Brandon’s level of involvement and to press her for information regarding how and where they were going to raise this baby. None of which did she have an answer to yet.
She hadn’t yet come up with a single reasonable method for sharing this baby. She and Brandon had not gotten that far into the discussion. They both wanted the child. For now at least, that was end of story.
At least she’d thought it was lucky that Tristan didn’t push. Until he started his new line of thought.
“Li, if Brandon was in the store looking for spells on him, then you didn’t tell him about you—about what you are—did you?”
This time she did sigh. He deserved it.
Tristan shook his head. “And he figured it out on his own.”
Yeah, she’d come to that wonderful conclusion all by herself. It had woken her out of a deep sleep the same afternoon she’d done the banner job of breaking the news to Tristan.
Brandon had shown up at Blessed Be, trying to see the spells that had been cast on him. Her spells. There was only one reason for him to do that: because he knew they existed.
“Li?” The single syllable held a world of concern.
But all she could do was shrug. “I won’t see him until the appointment, our schedules completely conflict until then. But I will tell him then. We have to make a lot more plans after we figure out when the baby is due and everything. The appointment’s in two days.”
“But Li, what are you going to tell him? I mean, how, because apparently, he already knows.”
“I’m just going to confess and hope for the best.”
Though Tristan seemed willing to leave it at that, Delilah couldn’t. Her brain scrambled round and round working itself into ridiculous knots. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
Brandon knew about her.
Now she knew
that Brandon knew.
But did he know that she knew? She shook her head at the stupidity. Then went back. If he didn’t know that she knew, then he just might buy her confession. It might seem more spontaneous. That very idea produced waves of guilt that combined with hormones to threaten the food she’d just eaten.
It was dishonest to not disclose all that she knew. Even though she had been planning on telling him all along. Unfortunately, planning was all that she’d done. If she had bucked up and just told him when she first had the chance, she might have avoided this whole mess.
Then again, she might have had to go crawling to a man who hated her—rightly so—and explain that she was pregnant with his child. That would not have gone over well. Basically, the whole mess was her fault from start to finish, and there was no good way to detangle it now.
Not that any of it mattered now, because she couldn’t go back and change it. If she could, she would never have cast that stupid ‘forget’ spell in the first place. Damn thing hadn’t worked anyway. But if it had, she wouldn’t have Brandon. And she wouldn’t have this baby. This baby that in a few short days had become the very center of her universe. She was going to have to simply accept and deal with the consequences of her actions. And that sucked.
The appointment loomed ahead of her like the countdown on a time bomb.
Chapter 33
Brandon managed to talk Delilah into having lunch with him the day before the appointment. Her extra shifts at the restaurant allowed them no more time than that. Not unless she wanted to sleep at his place.
Even though he wanted that, he was still far too suspicious of his own feelings. So he didn’t voice the idea to her, and she didn’t suggest it or offer her place for him. That arrangement left them apart far more than they were together.
The communication between them dwindled to the necessary trickle of information keeping them linked together but not much more. He kept hoping she would volunteer some insight about her witchcraft. But she didn’t. He wondered if he should confront her but felt the situation was already too volatile. The last thing he wanted was to alienate her and have her run off with his baby.
He considered pulling the altar pieces out of the garage and casting on her to make her tell him what he wanted. But aside from the wood he didn’t have his supplies any more. Of course he knew where he could buy them, but purchasing what he needed from Delilah’s brother just didn’t seem wise. He was ashamed to say that it was the possibility of running into Tristan, and not the wrongness of the act, that really kept him from doing it.
He went through a brief phase when he wondered if maybe she wasn’t really a witch. If maybe it was all merely coincidental. But he’d been alternating reading the pregnancy book and the witchcraft book at nights—it wasn’t like Delilah was here to take up his time. He spent hours poring over them, and the more he read, the more the witchcraft explanation made sense.
He laughed out loud at the idea that ‘the simplest explanation is usually the right one.’ There was really nothing simple about this. There was nothing simple in her religion either. The idea at the very heart of the craft was that all beings were connected. Brandon had a hard time arguing that, in fact he was hard pressed to find a religion that didn’t state that. But Wicca included the earth. Wounding or wronging the earth was as bad as wronging another.
There was a whole chapter on Pagan religions in general. While Brandon always thought ‘pagan’ meant sacrifices, naked moon dances, and multiple gods, he found out he’d been woefully undereducated in his bible classes. ‘Pagan’ also included earth religions that had been around before Judaism, and were earth-centered. A surprising quantity of the rituals sounded like his own catholic holidays. Ultimately he wasn’t too shocked to see in print that the Christians took over a good number of pagan days in the effort to convert the ‘heathens.’ Rather than force an entire, new religion down their throats, the priests merely re-named a good number of the holidays and tweaked a few meanings. His Christmas tree sure looked a lot different after all that reading.
The thing was, he was getting caught up in it. He wanted to start this conversation with Delilah, ask her about all of it. He didn’t know if he could convert, but it was beyond interesting. Fascinating really.
Sadly, Delilah wasn’t talking to him. Not really. She didn’t even know they could talk about this. He was grateful she was coming to lunch, and he managed several ways he could work the topic into conversation as casually as possible. He finally went to sleep, glad he had a little more of a plan.
But lunch wasn’t very illuminating. Delilah spent most of it withdrawn and hardly talked at all. She’d picked at her food and done nothing but make him worry about her.
He asked every question he could think of, but he got only vague answers. Was she nervous about the appointment? Somewhat. Was her stomach feeling all right? Mostly. Had she thought about what to do up until the baby was born and after that? A little. How was work? All right.
He’d wanted to stand up in the middle of the café and scream that he was doing all he could, could she please give him something to work with here? He considered tearing his hair out, just to give them something definitive to talk about. Instead he stayed calm. He probed and got nowhere. He sent her home to bed and promised to pick her up the next day for the appointment.
At least she agreed to that.
So he was shocked to find Delilah a whirlwind of activity when he arrived at her apartment door. Again, he’d hit buttons until someone randomly let him in. That was going to have to change. Delilah and the baby weren’t safe like that.
He’d knocked on her door and known the second she threw it wide that this was not the same woman who sat docilely across from him at lunch yesterday. And, even though she talked non-stop and made little sense, he liked her much better.
She ran frantically around the apartment, and it appeared to Brandon that she was throwing random things into her handbag. Of course they didn’t all fit—the book, the pregnancy test, a small notepad, mints, and who knew what else? So she wound up searching for a larger bag and then having to transfer everything.
Once the bag was packed, she nodded—almost at him, Brandon wasn’t sure. When he asked if she was ready, she smiled. Then said, “Oh, crap” before running off to the bedroom.
Brandon just waited patiently, grateful he was the kind of guy who regularly showed up early. She appeared again about ten minutes later.
“Okay, I think I’m ready.” She stood with her right hand clutching the strap to her tote. Her feet planted apart, her lean legs showing beneath a swingy skirt where a few minutes before they had been encased in jeans. She’d also brushed her hair until it shone and redone her makeup after work, as though the baby needed to be impressed with its new mother.
He didn’t even try to interfere with the whirlwind she was, but kept an eye on the time. He was pleased she had announced her readiness about five minutes before he was going to have to stop her insanity.
She chattered on the way to UCLA saying she expected to have to wait, and could he take the whole afternoon off? Obstetricians routinely ran very behind schedule because babies had no concept of their appointment times. He could drop her off if he needed, but she really wanted him to stay, especially if there was a long wait. Brandon didn’t even want to picture a Delilah who’d been made to wait. Not if she was starting out like this. Still the thought brought a smile to his lips.
They parked in an underground lot, which seemed to make Delilah nervous. “I don’t think they’ve ever gotten an accurate blood pressure reading on me in this building.”
Before he could ask why, she forged ahead. “The parking structure makes me nervous. Earthquake Central should not have underground parking. Or a subway for that matter.”
He didn’t point out that no one was making her ride the subway.
She calmed down just a touch when the elevator passed above the ground floor. But they didn’t speak as he followed her through the
spider web of hallways to the door marked with a list of doctors’ names. He stood back while she checked in at the desk, then sat silent beside her in the office lobby crowded by women with various stages of rounded bellies and punctuated with the occasional very tiny baby. He tried hard not to stare.
Both of them thumbed through the magazines piled high on the end tables while they waited to be called. It took him a few minutes to realize that the magazines were advertisements and not real journals. The articles were each geared in praise of a particular product that a new parent just couldn’t live without. They seemed genuine enough, in spite of the matching coupon on the next page. But when he hit the second article, claiming that a different formula was the only formula clinically proven to be more easily digested, he caught on.
Time crawled. Especially once he gave up on reading the propaganda that was lying about. Then Delilah was called. The two of them jumped up like they’d just been announced the winners at bingo, and Brandon trailed Delilah to the wooden door that led into the mysterious beyond. Only the nurse refused him admittance, stating that they only needed Delilah.
With a placating smile, Lilah followed the round woman in the too-bright scrubs, and just left him standing there at the door.
Brandon blinked. He stood facing the closed door, dumbfounded. He’d come all this way, waited with her, tried to keep her calm, only to be shut out? Delilah hadn’t stood up for him at all. Not even an ‘oh, he’s with me.’
He considered just leaving. She could call when she was finished. But just as he made that decision, the door opened, spitting Delilah back out. Her face told him nothing. While he waited impatiently for some little tidbit about how it had gone—other than fast—she walked over and sat back down in her seat leaving him to once again trail behind.
“Lilah?”
She looked up at him, only just then catching on that he had no idea what was happening. “Oh! They just weighed me and took my blood pressure, and made me pee in a cup. But we should get to go see the doctor in a little bit.”
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