He flashed another of those warm, amused grins at her. “Who says I want to escape?”
“How could you not want to escape?”
He looked over her and swept a glance around the room. CJ had pulled out a box of vegetables, and the men—even the family friends—were picking from a box of animal-ear headbands. “Where are the elephant ears?” Mikey demanded. “I got the trunk—”
“Hush,” Dahlia said with a laugh.
“Mighty good idea to keep quiet, Mikey,” Will chimed in. “You show us that trunk, it’ll give us proof otherwise.”
Lindsey wrinkled her nose. “Now you hush.”
“So this is normal family,” Tony said quietly. “I like it.”
That wasn’t fair, making her heart meltier. Reminding her of how much she shouldn’t take for granted.
“Give it another five minutes,” she said.
“Get me the cheetah ears and a banana for these two,” Gran called. She gripped Pepper’s wrist with one frail hand and Tony’s with the other. “Where’s the karaoke machine and the camera? I want this one played at my funeral. Basil, don’t you make me come flush you out of the bathroom. Pregnant ladies out front. Now, Mrs. Billy, don’t you be shy. Singing ain’t ever hurt anyone.”
“Beg to differ, Gran,” CJ called.
“She killed three cats with her voice alone last year,” Mikey added.
Lindsey moved herself and her belly gracefully between the tables. “You’re just jealous of my trophy.”
“This is going on YouTube,” Pepper warned Tony.
He glanced back at Will—Billy Brenton to his legions of country music fans—before shedding his Pepperoni Tony’s hat and jacket. “I don’t have a clue what’s going on here, but I wouldn’t want to look too cheesy,” he said to Pepper’s questioning glance.
His lips hitched up on one side, and a laugh bubbled out of her. “Or saucy?”
“You catch on quick, Miss Blue.”
“Aw, now, aren’t you two adorable?” Gran shoved the banana at Pepper and the cheetah ear headband at Tony. “Now line up. It’s showtime.”
They were jostled into line between the bar and the tables, facing a camera set on a tripod in the corner. The first chords of “Yellow Submarine” blared out of the speakers in the corners of the bar, eliciting a few groans that Gran shushed quickly.
“How—” Tony started.
“First rule of the family—you don’t question the halftime show.”
It had morphed over the years from the first family talent show—Saffron’s fault, of course, for saying she could’ve done a better show than *NSYNC—and no one could agree on when the props had been added, but Tony was right.
The Blueper Bowl family lip-sync battle with weird headbands and random fruits and vegetables was Pepper’s normal.
And she was dang lucky to have it.
* * *
Pepper left Suckers with butterflies in her stomach and a smile in her heart. She wouldn’t interrupt Tarra’s wedding week with the news that she was pregnant, but hanging with her family—and having Tony be such a good sport about the fake-boyfriend stuff—had been a great way to spend the night.
“He has a secret,” Margie said beside her as they walked to Pepper’s car.
“Everyone has secrets.”
“Yes, but he has more than usual.”
Pepper clicked her key fob to unlock her doors. Her taillights flashed in the dark. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Science.”
“Science?”
“Science invented the internet, so yes. Science.”
“Ah. You’ve discovered he’s divorced.”
Margie was four years younger than Pepper in birth order—CJ and Cori were between them—and she was the most analytical of her siblings. Everything was logical with Margie, but more, she had an old soul. She’d understood things about the world as a teenager that Pepper still struggled with in her mid-thirties. Were Tony a real boyfriend, she’d be worried about Margie’s concerns.
“Yes, but I can’t determine if his ex-wife is still alive. He might be a psychopath or a serial killer.”
Then again, maybe the Blue genes were finally overriding Margie’s analytical obsessions. “I’ll make sure to swing by the police department tomorrow and ask for a background check.”
They climbed into Pepper’s car, and she cranked the engine. Now would be a good time to sow a few seeds of doubt so it wouldn’t come out of left field on Friday when Pepper told the family she and Tony had broken up and he wouldn’t be accompanying her to the rehearsal dinner or the wedding.
“Cinna knows something, but she’s not telling,” Margie said.
“Oh, please. One, she always wants everyone to think she knows something, and two, she’s probably already taking bets on when we first slept together.”
“Negative.”
“What?”
“She’s taking bets on whether Poppy will bring her boyfriend to the wedding, but she hasn’t said a thing about you. Why do you think that might be?”
Irrational irritation knotted Pepper’s shoulders. “Psychological warfare? She wants me to think she doesn’t care?”
“Her past behavioral patterns would indicate it’s because she’s worried about you.”
“She took bets on CJ and Nat, and he needed more worrying over than I ever will.”
“He needed the goading. Also, she’s matured in the last two years and may be more inclined to consider the repercussions of her actions.”
“Cinna?”
“She might’ve mentioned a concern about you becoming an old maid and the toll your love life has taken on your mood lately.”
An unexpected burn took up residence behind her nose. The mood swings were all hormonal, but the fact that Cinna had noticed and chalked it up to something being wrong rather than to Pepper being bitchy was touching. “How kind of her. But she doesn’t need to worry. Obviously. I’ve found a successful businessman boyfriend who lives next door for easy booty calls. Life couldn’t be better.”
Margie snorted.
She was an exceptional snorter.
Pepper rubbed away the sting in her eyes and cranked the engine.
“He’s my boyfriend, and he’s a very nice man,” she said, and she didn’t have to reach hard for the overly defensive tone that would make Margie wonder if something was wrong.
“Because you like him, or because you don’t want to know who Gran will deliver for you next?”
Both, along with her pregnancy test tomorrow.
“Because he’s different.” There. She was getting into this story now. “I’ve never dated a divorced guy who doesn’t like to talk about himself before. Maybe this one will work.”
“This guy doesn’t sound like the marrying type. He wants to have a one-on-seven orgy with us.”
“What? No, he doesn’t.”
“He asked again about pillow fights after the halftime show.”
“He was joking.”
“Seemed rather desperate to me. Like a man who needs to prove his virility by making crude jokes. Almost Mikey-ish.”
“Oh, stop. Tony is so not Mikey-ish. And you know Mikey’s getting some, in addition to being ridiculously happy with Dahlia, and he’s still a dog.”
“I applaud your attempts to break your streak, but this feels off. And you know how I feel about feelings.”
Given half an opportunity, Margie would rationalize how feelings had led to global warming, every war in history, and—to quote her—that awful cat website that started internet memes. It wasn’t a family gathering until someone spun Margie up over politics or human behavior. So if she was willing to embrace a gut feeling, Pepper had a bigger problem than Cinna failing to start a pool about her dating life.
“You think I should call it off with him.”
“He’s an unknown quantity with unknown motivations.”
Her gut said he was everything he’d said he was last night—a lonely divorced
man trying to fit into a new home. And her gut had been turned inside out by fertility treatments, IVF procedures, and the abundance of babies coming in Bliss these days.
“Be careful,” Margie said. “Have fun if that’s all you want, but don’t… Just don’t, okay?”
There were so many don’ts, Pepper didn’t even want to ask. They started with don’t get hurt and ended with don’t do something you can’t undo.
Wise advice from the wisest of her siblings.
And after tomorrow, none of it would matter.
* * *
It was nearly midnight before Tony collapsed face-first on his bed, still in his jeans and a marinara-smeared Pepperoni Tony’s polo. Lucky leapt onto the bed on light feet and tiptoed across the quilt to sniff him, her whiskers tickling his face.
Good night for pizza sales. Good night for his business.
Good night for fifteen minutes of fun with Pepper’s family.
The mere thought of her caused a stirring in his pants.
He was getting better. Back to normal. Healthy again.
Lucky pawed his cheek. He shoved to sitting and scrubbed his hands down his face. “Hungry?” he asked the cat.
She mewled and climbed into his lap, turning three times before leaning in to knead his thigh.
Not hungry, then. Just looking for affection.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked his email. His cheek twitched at a note from his sister—You haven’t RSVP’d to Bella’s wedding yet, and you know she wants Uncle Tony there—and none of the other emails held any interest, so he switched over to his text messages instead.
Nothing interesting there either.
Not like his favorite niece getting married too young to a guy Tony didn’t know enough about. One more thing he’d sacrificed in the divorce—while he’d been playing the playboy over here in Bliss, he’d let too many people in his family drift away.
Or maybe he’d drifted away from them, and they were just trying to give him space.
But he wasn’t going there tonight. Or ever, if he could help it. His thumbs hovered over the screen. Texting Pepper was veering into relationship territory, and they weren’t in a relationship. Not really.
But she’d been a friend. A friend who let him kiss her. A friend who made the world seem brighter than it had been two weeks ago.
It was never wrong to text a friend.
She was probably sound asleep and wouldn’t answer anyway.
Thanks for a fun halftime show, he texted, and he hit send before he could rethink it.
She was probably still irritated with him for ignoring her and delivering pizzas to Suckers tonight. He grinned to himself while he scratched Lucky behind her ears.
He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed playing the game. Pushing the limits. Testing.
His phone buzzed.
Thanks for stripping for Gran, she’d replied.
He barked out a laugh that sent Lucky skittering across the bed. She slowed on the far corner, hunched over and watching him, ready to pounce if he moved wrong. “Sorry, kitty,” he murmured.
My pleasure, he typed back to Pepper. What are you still doing up?
The typing bubble appeared and disappeared about six times before an answer came. Exciting day.
Today had been an exciting day, or tomorrow would be an exciting day?
Her typing bubble lit up again. He stood and pulled his shirt off, watching the phone on his bed. His pants hit the floor next.
She was still typing.
Was she in bed? What did she wear to bed? Those flannel pajamas? Or did she strip out of them? Maybe she just wore the shirt.
With nothing beneath.
Nothing beneath.
Ah, there was that sweet feeling of his manhood growing to its full potential. He slid between his sheets and wrapped his hand around himself.
His phone dinged.
Thank you again for your help. You’ve been a really great friend. I’ll make sure no one retaliates against Pepperoni Tony’s when we break up.
He deflated in his own palm.
Right.
This was temporary. No more kissing her. No more hanging with her hilariously cool family. No more having excuses to talk to her.
Just as well.
She deserved a forever kind of guy, and he was done with forever.
Thanks. Sleep well, he sent.
You too. xo
He snorted. Kiss hug, huh?
In his dreams.
8
Pepper didn’t eat breakfast Monday morning. Her belly was already full of butterflies. She made herself maintain a dignified walk into her doctor’s office, chatted pleasantly with the lab tech who drew her blood, and sat flipping through Redbook beside a potted plant in the muted waiting room. Any minute now, she’d be called back, and her doctor would tell her that this round of IVF had worked.
That she was going to be a mother.
The failed artificial insemination and her first two rounds of IVF were warm-ups. But this time, she’d done everything to the letter to combat the effects of her PCOS. She’d taken her pills at the exact same time every day. She’d maintained her blood sugar at normal levels without exception, even though it had meant passing up pizza and cookies and countless other treats. She’d taken her temperature six times a day and paid more attention to her natural rhythms than she would ever publicly discuss. She was the healthiest she’d ever been, and she’d spent enough hours with babies, between Saffron’s new little girl and Nat and CJ’s new little boy, that she was sure her maternal hormone level had never been higher.
Her first failures had been the emotional price to pay to make her appreciate today. The work she’d had to put in so that she could earn being a mother.
This test? Merely a formality.
She was sure she was pregnant.
She had to be.
After thirty minutes, the nurse called her back.
And thirty minutes after that, she left her doctor’s office with a shattered heart and a gaping hole in her soul.
For everything else in her life that hard work could accomplish, it couldn’t get her pregnant.
And according to her doctor, it probably never would.
* * *
She wouldn’t cry.
She was a hard-ass businesswoman. She had great friends. Great family. The sweetest dog in the entire universe.
A bright future.
Alone.
She sucked air through her nose while she sat in her car and quickly swiped mascara over her lashes. No eye contact with herself in the mirror—she couldn’t bear the grief she might see, nor could she mask it if she acknowledged it. She had eight hours to get through at the boutique before she could go home and fake food poisoning and hide herself in her room all night.
Maybe the test was wrong.
Maybe her doctor had done it too early. Or they’d mislabeled the vial with her blood. Or—
Or she needed to accept that she was a thirty-five-year-old woman with polycystic ovary syndrome. No husband, only a fake boyfriend who wouldn’t go with her to her sister’s wedding this weekend and who didn’t have the slightest clue she was trying to get pregnant.
Her options for motherhood were convincing a man to marry her so she could pursue adoption more easily, though she’d need to save a lot more money for it, or asking one of her sisters to carry a baby for her.
Her other option was to get out of this car, walk into Bliss Bridal, and make the most of the life she’d built for herself. Considering there were a dozen bridal consultants, five seamstresses, and two full-time support staff who depended on her for their jobs, she needed to get to work.
And then she needed to find a hobby. Be something more than a businesswoman, friend, sister, and aunt.
Find another way to leave her mark on the world.
She shoved her mascara back in her purse, applied a quick layer of lipstick, and forced herself out into the frigid morning. Her flats slapped the pavemen
t on her way to the back door. The scent of cake wafted through the chilly air from the bakery next door and stuck in her nose, a little celebration in the midst of her desolation.
Pepper didn’t fail. She learned, she adjusted, and she succeeded next time.
But for getting pregnant, there would be no next time.
Three of her girls were already prepping the shop for the day when she walked in. She called a greeting to them before settling herself in the office to look over yesterday’s reports. Normally on a Monday, she’d peek at the distributor catalogs that had come in during the last week and flag the dresses she might want to stock for the next season, just to get her in the mood for selling dresses, but today, she was so over this whole idea of happily ever after.
She should’ve bought a tech start-up instead. Something far, far from people and weddings and babies.
Shortly after ten, someone knocked at the office door. Before she could double-check her makeup, voices swelled as the door swung open.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
Pepper straightened, taking a blow straight to the heart at the sight of Nat weighed down with a purse, diaper bag, and baby carrier. Guilt added the follow-up punch. Just because she couldn’t have babies didn’t mean she needed to be mad at women who could.
“Double digits, Nat.” Pepper stood and gestured her to sit. “I really thought you could make it ten days before you showed up.”
“TJ wanted to see where Mommy works.”
“You realize Cinna will find his birth certificate sooner or later. You shouldn’t have given her a key to your house.”
“TJ is his name.”
“You’re a better liar than CJ, but I still don’t believe you.” She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. “Hand over the baby and kick your feet up. Need anything to drink?”
Nat pulled a full water bottle from the green zoo animal diaper bag she’d brought in. “Someone won’t let me leave home without water. And speaking of your relatives, the Blueper Bowl was fun last night. And Tony was a good sport. Lindsey told me he was a nice guy, but she didn’t mention the smile and ass. You’ve threatened him with something worse than death if he dumps you and gets married right away, haven’t you?”
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