Black Ties and Lullabyes (11 page)

The next day Bernie sat in Dr. Underwood’s waiting room, flicking her gaze to the clock every ten seconds. Was Jeremy actual y going to show up? Or did he go home last night, think about the prospect of a trip to the obstetrician’s office, and realize fatherhood involved way more than he wanted to deal with?

If he was going to bow out, she hoped he’d do it now. Now, before she started to count on him. Now, before he became one of those whenever-he-felt-like-it fathers who disappointed his child over and over. If he wasn’t serious about being there for the long haul, she truly hoped he’d just stay home. As the clock hands crept past one o’clock, she became convinced that he real y wasn’t going to show up.

Then al at once the door opened, and Jeremy walked in.

He stopped for a moment to slowly remove his sunglasses. Then he fanned his gaze around the room, until every woman in the place noticed he was there. And they were al staring at him, not overtly, but with little sideways glances that had to be wearing out their eyebal muscles. Did they recognize him from photos in the media? Or was he just so damned good-looking that they couldn’t keep their eyes off him?

That real y irritated Bernie. They were al married, for heaven’s sake. Wel , maybe not married, but committed. Okay, maybe not committed, but they were going to be mothers, right? It was time to keep their eyes off handsome men and concentrate on the task at hand. Having a baby.

So why was she having trouble taking her own advice?

Then Jeremy zeroed in on her. With a smile of supreme confidence, he made his way across the room to take the seat beside her.

“Did Max bring you here?” she whispered.

“Yep.”

“What reason did you give him for coming to a medical building?”

“I’m the boss. I don’t have to account for my actions.”

“Where is he now?”

“I convinced him to watch for bad guys from the comfort of my car.”

Thank God. Even though Max knew she was pregnant, Bernie was happy to keep the identity of the father under wraps for now. She could only imagine what Max was going to think when he found out.

“Bernadette Hogan?”

Bernie looked up to see a nurse she didn’t recognize standing at the door leading to the exam rooms. She looked nothing like Dr. Underwood’s usual nurse, a fifty-something woman with iron-gray hair and a depilatory issue on her upper lip. This one was slim, gorgeous, and not even thirty, with auburn hair and big blue eyes. Somehow the shapeless Snoopy scrubs she wore only made her look that much more feminine, as if she were a supermodel who’d slipped on a man’s flannel shirt over her baby pink undies. Bernie sighed inwardly. If she put on a set of Snoopy scrubs, she’d look like… Snoopy.

Out of the corner of her eye, she swore she could practical y see Jeremy’s antennae rise from the top of his head and tune in to Nurse Goodbody, and that irritated her more than it should have. After al , that he was the father of her baby didn’t mean there was anything between the two of them, nor would there ever be. And she was likewise certain that there was nothing about fatherhood that would ever shut down his legendary libido. But at least he could have the good grace not to look at other women as if he’d popped into his favorite club on ladies’ night.

Bernie grabbed her purse and rose from her chair, and when Jeremy rose right along with her, suddenly she was the one who was hit with the reality of the situation.

“Where are you going?” she whispered.

“With you.”

“No. You can’t go back there.”

“Sure I can. I’m the father.”

“And I’m the mother. It’s my body. I get to choose who sees it.”

“But there’s something in that body that’s half mine.” She leaned in closer. “And in a few minutes, this body wil be half
naked
.”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. I’ve seen you half naked.” He paused. “Wil it be the same half?” She didn’t want to stand here and argue with him.

She just didn’t. And since the other people in the room were starting to stare, Bernie decided it was time to just get it over with.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she muttered. “Come on.”

“How y’al doing today?” Nurse Goodbody said, her smile revealing pristine orthodontia.

“Just dandy,” Bernie said.

“Right this way,” the nurse said, leading them down the hal . Bernie glanced at Jeremy, whose gaze was trained dead center on the nurse’s ass, which was proof positive that to him, even a doctor’s office might as wel be a singles bar.

“Just think, Bridges,” she whispered. “In just a moment you’re going to experience the miracle of pregnancy.”

“Can’t wait.”

“I can practical y feel the estrogen in the air, can’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s my favorite hormone.” Bernie sighed. There was only one place on earth more estrogen-fil ed than an obstetrician’s office, and that was Jeremy’s bedroom. The last place he’d ever be uncomfortable was around a bunch of women. And the fact that most of them were pregnant didn’t seem to change his perspective one bit.

They fol owed the nurse into an exam room, where she motioned for them to sit. She spread Bernie’s chart out on the desk. “So you’re here for your first ultrasound?”

“That’s right,” Bernie said.

“How exciting. The two of you seeing your baby for the first time. You’l even get a photograph to take home with you!”

“Did you hear that, Bernie?” Jeremy said. “A picture of our baby. Imagine that.”

“The baby’s the size of my little finger,” Bernie snapped. “A black-and-white blob on a blurry screen.

You’l barely be able to tel what’s baby and what isn’t.”

“Oh,” Jeremy said, looking distressed. “So I guess this means we won’t be putting the photos on our Christmas cards?”

Bernie closed her eyes. Maybe this had been a mistake. A big one. She’d given him carte blanche to get in the big, fat middle of this situation when what she real y wanted was for him to go away and never come back. But she knew if she continued to act irritated that he’d shown up, he’d only irritate her by pretending to enjoy it even more.

The nurse took Bernie’s blood pressure and her temperature, then asked her to step on the scales.

“One hundred and forty-five pounds,” she chirped, and Bernie cringed.

“I’m sure that’s just water weight,” Jeremy said.

“Bite me,” Bernie said.

Jeremy turned to the nurse. “This is what I get for trying to be supportive.”

“And I’m sure deep down she appreciates it,” the nurse said, patting Jeremy on the knee. “It’s just those pesky pregnancy hormones,” she whispered. “They make some women a little testy.”

Jeremy gave her a mil ion-dol ar smile, and just like that, he was elevated to generous, supportive partner and Bernie became the bad guy.

The nurse rose and led them to an exam room.

“Undress from the waist down,” she told Bernie. “Put on the gown, open in the back. The doctor wil be with you in a moment.”

As the nurse shut the door behind her, Bernie headed for the smal curtained changing room. She took off her clothes and put on the paper gown. It rustled as she wrapped it around herself as best she could, refusing to think about Jeremy sitting in the other room. She was
not
going to be self-conscious about this.

She came out of the changing room, clutching the gown closed behind her. Jeremy was sitting in a chair beside the exam table. With an amused smile, he watched her shimmy up onto the table at the same time she made sure the two sides of the gown were adequately pul ed together before she grabbed the paper drape and placed it over her lap.

“Damned paper gowns,” Bernie said.

“I know,” Jeremy said, tilting his head. “You can see right through them.”

Bernie’s heart skipped a beat or two. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“On other women, maybe. Unfortunately, we were far too goal-oriented during a certain encounter for me to remember much of anything I happened to see.”

She turned and gave him a deadpan stare of disbelief. “Do you
ever
think about anything but sex?”

“Sure. Sometimes I think about… uh… wel , let’s see. Oh, yeah. Footbal .”

“Imagine that. A man who thinks about sex and footbal .”

“Which makes me think about the Cowboys. Which makes me think about the Dal as Cowboy Cheerleaders. Which makes me think about—”

“Sex with Dal as Cowboy Cheerleaders.” She shook her head. “So when you’re not having sex, you’re fantasizing about it.”

“When it comes to the Cowboy Cheerleaders, it’s not a fantasy.” He smiled. “It’s a memory.” Just then the exam door opened and Dr.

Underwood came in. She was pushing fifty, with prematurely gray hair cut short. She wore gray slacks, sensible shoes, and a white coat over her navy-blue blouse. No fril s, just competence. Bernie liked that in a person.

“Hey, Bernie,” she said. “How are you feeling?

Morning sickness letting up?”

Just the mention of it made Bernie’s stomach turn over for the hundredth time that day. “The barfing’s better. But I’m stil a little queasy.”

“If it keeps up, let me know. I’l write you something for the nausea.” She turned to Jeremy and stopped short. “And you are…?”

“I’m the father,” Jeremy said, holding out his hand.

“Jeremy Bridges.”

Dr. Underwood looked a little confounded as she shook his hand. Bernie didn’t think it was because she recognized the name. It was because she recognized that somebody who looked like Bernie and somebody who looked like Jeremy rarely ended up combining genetic material.

A few moments later, she was on her back on the table. The doctor lifted her gown to expose her abdomen. Bernie distracted herself from Jeremy’s gaze by tel ing herself that he wasn’t seeing anything more than the average woman showed on the average beach.

The doctor squirted some cold, goopy stuff on her abdomen, then grabbed a thing that looked like a microphone that was attached to the scanning machine by a cord.

“What’s that?” Jeremy asked.

“A transducer. It sends out high-frequency sound waves and then listens for the returning echoes from whatever’s inside the body. That forms an image on the screen.”

She spread the goop around with the transducer, and then stopped and pressed it gently into Bernie’s abdomen. Sure enough, a blurry image popped up, but nothing in it looked remotely like a baby. Dr.

Underwood moved the transducer around a little more. Final y she pointed. “There’s your baby. See?” Bernie looked closely, final y reaching the conclusion that she’d have to take the doctor’s word for that.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Bernie asked.
Boy, boy, boy,
she said to herself. A boy she could deal with. She’d take him hunting and fishing and teach him to play basketbal . But what if she had a girl who wanted to play with Barbies and dance in a tutu?

“It’s a little too early to be able to tel ,” the doctor said. “In a month or two—”

She stopped short, staring closer at the screen, then rubbed the transducer around a little more. “Wel , lookie there.”

“What?” Jeremy said.

“Just a minute… let me make sure… yep. Okay, if you’l look closely…”

Bernie and Jeremy both leaned in.

“… there’s your baby.”

“Uh… okay,” Bernie said, taking her word for it al over again.

“And right there,” she said, pointing to another blob on the screen, “is your other baby.”

Bernie’s heart seized up. “Wh-what do you mean?” The doctor just stared at her, slowly raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, no,” Bernie said, her voice suddenly edged with panic. “No. Don’t tel me that. Please don’t tel me

—”

“Congratulations, Bernie. You’re having twins.”

Jeremy just sat there, stunned. Had he heard that right? Bernie was having not one baby, but
two
?

The doctor looked back and forth between him and Bernie, clearly sensing she hadn’t presented the best news possible. She hurried through the rest of the exam, gave Bernie some perfunctory instructions, and left the room.

Bernie shimmied to the edge of the table and stood up, awkwardly holding the paper gown closed. “Go away,” she told Jeremy. “I have to dress.”

“I was here when you undressed.”

“I can’t deal with you right now.”

“Deal with
me
?”

“In fact, why don’t you just go back to your office?

There’s real y no need for you to hang around.”

“Come on, Bernie. Your doctor just dropped a bomb. We need to deal with the fal out.”

“We? There is no ‘we’ here.”

“First you want me here, and now you don’t? Which is it?”

“Get out of here, Bridges,” she said, her voice growing shakier by the second. “I mean it.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“When I told you I know a dozen ways to kil a man, I wasn’t joking. And make no mistake this time. That’s
exactly
what I intend to do if you don’t get out of here.”

“Bernie—”

“Get out of here now!”

Jeremy drew back. When the hel had this happened? When had Bernie stopped being calm and rational and cool y sarcastic and turned into a raging crazy woman?

Okay, so maybe it was the moment she discovered she was getting two babies for the price of one. Toss that together with overactive hormones, and she clearly wasn’t thinking straight, which meant he needed to take control of this situation.

As soon as she stopped
shrieking
at him.

“I’l be in the waiting room,” he told her. “Get dressed.
Then
we’l talk.”

He strode out of the room with as much authority as he could muster, which didn’t feel like much right about then, and went back to Pregnancy Central. As impossible as it seemed, there were even more pregnant women in the waiting room than there had been twenty minutes ago. He sat down in the only empty chair and grabbed a magazine. A moment later he realized it was a copy of
American Baby
and threw it back down as if it was on fire. He felt a sudden nervous energy that made him want to get up.

Walk around. Maybe punch something.

No. That reaction was for hormonal crazy women.

Twins.
Good Lord. Jeremy knew that very, very soon he’d have his own private mental breakdown over that, but as of right now, he was more concerned with Bernie’s state of mind. It wasn’t like her to fal apart over anything, and it rattled him more than he could have imagined.

Being a father was one thing. Being a father of twins? He couldn’t even fathom that. Then he thought back to something Bernie said yesterday that sounded like a chal enge he had to rise to.

My child could do so much better. Unfortunately,
he’s stuck with you.

When she said that, Jeremy felt as if she’d slapped him. Where fatherhood was concerned, he knew he stood an excel ent chance of screwing it up. But when he realized Bernie thought so, too, something inside him had snapped, and he felt as if he had as much to prove to her as he did to himself.

He took a deep breath. Let it out. Spent the next few minutes trying to think of a control ed, workable way he could deal with her and the babies she was carrying. He would have thought that magnifying the problem times two might make it easier to sort out, but it only made things even more complicated.
Two
babies, two babies, two babies…

The words reverberated inside his head until he thought his skul was going to explode.

A few minutes later, his phone rang. He looked at A few minutes later, his phone rang. He looked at the cal er ID, then answered. “Max? What’s up?”

“Bernie’s gone.”

Jeremy snapped to attention. How did he even know she was here in the first place? “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“She left the building through the back door and drove away. Five minutes later, you’re stil in there, so I thought maybe you weren’t aware that she’d left the premises.”

Jeremy couldn’t believe this. Bernie had given him the slip? He’d been sitting in here waiting for her, and she was already out the door?

Wel , that was just great. And wasn’t it great, too, that Max saw Bernie and assumed she was the reason Jeremy was here? Why else would Max alert him to the fact that she was gone?

“Bring the car around,” Jeremy said.

“Yes, sir.”

Jeremy stuffed the phone back into his pocket and headed for the door. As he walked outside, Max swung the car to the curb and he got in the backseat.

“Where to, sir?” Max asked, putting the car in gear.

Jeremy slipped out his iPhone. Opened his address book. “Creekwood Apartments. Fifteenth and Sycamore. Apartment two-fourteen.” Max glanced in the rearview mirror. “I wouldn’t recommend that, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s Bernie’s apartment, and it seems she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Watch yourself, Delinsky. This is none of your business.” Max shifted the car back into park, then turned around to face Jeremy in the backseat. “I know she’s pregnant.”

That statement didn’t come as a huge surprise to Jeremy. Chances were that everybody at Delgado & Associates knew it.

“And from what I’ve seen today,” Max went on, “it appears you’re the father.”

Jeremy froze. He hadn’t expected such an in-your-face accusation from a man with barely functioning vocal cords. He considered denying it, but it was pretty clear what was happening here, and this was al going to come out in the open soon enough, anyway.

“That’s right,” Jeremy said. “I’m the father.”

“There’s an obstetrician’s office inside that building.”

“Yes.”

“Why did she leave without you knowing it?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Slowly Max slipped off his sunglasses, revealing those dark, piercing eyes and a wicked slash of a scar on his left orbital bone. “Bridges?” Jeremy was instantly aware of the absence of the

“Mr.” that Max always inserted before his last name.

“I don’t know what’s going on between you and Bernie,” Max said, “and I don’t need to know. But I wil tel you this. She’s a good person. If you hurt her in any way, you’l answer to me. Are we clear on that?” Jeremy was flabbergasted. Was this man actual y
threatening
him? He leaned toward Max with an unblinking stare. “One phone cal to Gabe Delgado about your insubordination, and you no longer work for me. Are we clear on
that
?” Max’s gaze never faltered. “Make the cal .” Jeremy slumped back against the seat. “Good God, do you
want
to lose this job?”

“Nope. I just want to make sure we understand each other. Do we?”

For a second or two, Jeremy was on the verge of making good on his threat, only to think again. If Max was this protective of Bernie, they were better friends than he’d realized, so firing Max wouldn’t exactly put him in Bernie’s good graces. And right now, that was where he needed to be until he could get this whole mess sorted out.

Jeremy swal owed his anger and spoke evenly. “I have no intention of hurting her.”

With a slight nod, Max put his sunglasses back on and turned back around in his seat.
Great.
From now on, Jeremy was going to be forced to spend time in this car with a grizzly bear of a man who was just looking for a reason to rip through his jugular.

“She’s upset because she just found out she’s having twins,” Jeremy said.

True to his nature, Max didn’t overreact. He merely glanced at Jeremy in the rearview mirror. “Then you can take my warning times two.”

Bastard.

Jeremy had to practical y sit on his hands to keep from cal ing Delgado, but what would it accomplish? It would only make Bernie even more irritated with him than she already was. Stil , somebody needed to take control of this situation, and judging from Bernie’s state of mind, Jeremy had already decided that somebody was going to be him.