Playing All the Angles (27 page)

“Are you really surprised, Dominic?” she asked. “You broke her heart. We both did. I don’t think either of us will be hearing from her again. I can’t say I blame her.”

“I know,” he agreed slowly. “I was a prick.”

“You
are
a prick.”

“Thanks. It’s getting annulled—the marriage. Fraud.”

“Fraud?”

“Yeah. I knew about the baby before we got married, and you and I were still fucking up until then. So, it’s fraud. I don’t know. It’s legal bullshit that allows her to dissolve it as though it were nothing.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No! No. It just wasn’t what I thought it would be. Or I wasn’t who I thought I would be. I don’t know. It’s fucked up, is what it is.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Is she with Patrick now?”

“Dom…how would I know? I just got a letter from the family attorney this morning, telling me ‘as a courtesy,’ that I’ve been removed from the will and informing me that if I attempt to ‘harass’ the family with ‘any contact or communication’ they may take legal action against me.”

“What?”

“Yes. Some inanity about suing me for the cost of the wedding reception and legal fees. I’m sure they can’t really do it. Mum just wants to be sure I stand where I’m stood. So, I’ll bugger off for now. Maybe I’ll send them a Christmas card, maybe not.”

Dominic let out a low whistle. “Your family is—there’s not a word for it. I mean, it’s bad.”

“Tell me! But the good news is that even though they had this long moment of horror, Tad’s family has been great about it.”

“You told them?”

“There wasn’t really much way around it. Now that all the cats are out of the bag, it should be a lot easier to lug around. I kind of like the idea of not having any real secrets to keep.”

“None at all?”

“Everything worth knowing about, someone knows at this point.”

“Good for you.”

“You always liked my honesty.” She smiled at him.

“How’d we get here, Evie?” He held out his hands.

She took them and squeezed his fingers. “We were selfish, and you wouldn’t stay away from my sister. I was selfish. Dominic, it was just wrong. It was wrong, and I’ll be tearing myself apart over it for the rest of my life. I just—I can’t fix anything I did. All I can do is try to live up to being this baby’s mother. I can’t be Isabelle’s sister anymore after what I’ve done. I can’t be anything other than this baby’s mother.”

“I just want the chance to be her father. However I can.”

Eve chewed her bottom lip. “I get that. I understand. Just…let me talk with Tad. We’ll figure something out with the three of us. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, standing up. “I’m leaving for LA next week.”

“I know how to reach you,” she responded, turning back to her home. “Good luck, Dominic.”

“You too, Evie.”

Once inside, she locked the door behind her. Tad was halfway across the world, and Marcus was in Milan. That’s really why she hadn’t let Dominic in. She didn’t want a fight, didn’t want to argue, and didn’t want to have to throw him out if he started pressing any issues. None of her cavalry were there to ride to the rescue if she needed them.

Her low back was hurting again, leaving her in misery, so she filled the tub with hot water and got in to soak. While she lay there, she thought about Isabelle. Marcus had made sure Patrick met her, and he’d reported back that, while they had spent the night, they had left early in the morning. She hoped they were still together. She was more than a little surprised not to have heard from her family. She hadn’t expected anyone to call and ask her side or to check in to see that she was all right, but she had thought they might call to confront her. Or she’d hoped they would. At least a fight would have given her closure. The silence was simply heartbreaking. Now, she was just dead to them.

Eve focused her breathing, the thought that she’d lost Isabelle forever making panic rise in her again. It was a battle she’d been fighting a lot since the party. She could go a few hours without thinking about it, but then it would hit her in the chest, and she couldn’t breathe for agony. More than once, she had started to call her sister, but had stopped herself. Isabelle was better off without her. She had their parents and Alora to care and fuss over her, and they would make sure she was in good stead. What could Eve do but upset her again?

She stayed in the water till it turned cold, and then got out and walked the floor awhile. She’d gotten used to hurting. Something was always hurting. Hips, knees, ankles, back, belly—something was always swollen or creaking or throbbing with pain. It didn’t feel like contractions, so she ignored it, or tried to. She took two ibuprofen tablets and curled up in a ball, trying to rest.

The doctor had said, “If you can sleep, it isn’t labor.”

And she was hazily congratulating herself on not being in labor as she dozed. She woke up with a groan an hour later, low back pulsating with pain. She couldn’t find relief in any position. When it let up after a few minutes, she rang Tad’s cell. It was seven in London and two in Beijing, but he answered blearily after the third ring. When she told him why she’d called, he insisted she phone her doctor and said he would start working on a flight home.

“No,” she begged. “I’d feel awful if this turned out to be nothing and you left this meeting. I’ll call my doctor and ring you back.”

Her next call to Tad was answered before the first ring was finished, and he sounded wide awake. She felt whimpery and alone, but tried to sound convincingly girded up.

“I’m going to go in for a look-see, but the doctor thinks it’s just a false labor. I haven’t broken water or any of the other things that are supposed to be happening first, so it’s probably just those Braxton-Hicks things, but I’m getting them in my back because she’s not in the right position.”

“Okay, I can get a flight at seven a.m.”

“No…no. Don’t do that. If it’s just a false labor…just wait. I’ll ring you.”

Better safe than sorry is what the doctor had said, so when she hung up with Tad, she rang a taxi and trundled out of the apartment with her bag. The evening sky was clear and rather cold. Glancing up at the twilight, she held her breath and took a long look at the stars—dusky pinpricks of light in the semi-darkness—until she exhaled, and the steam of her breath clouded them away. Tad had told her to call his mum, and she knew Samantha would come running, but she didn’t want to bother anyone until she was sure. Another deep breath, and she entered the cab.

By the time they reached the emergency entrance, Eve was sweating and clenching her teeth to keep from crying out. This hurt like nothing she had ever experienced or imagined. She was helped into a waiting wheelchair, and they took her directly up to the maternity ward, where one nurse helped her change into a hospital gown while asking questions and another worked to take her vitals.

It was a flurry of cheerful, rapt activity, and no sooner had the second nurse backed away, than there was an attending doctor three knuckles deep and another nurse at her belly with a sonogram paddle. The next thing she knew, she was under an oxygen mask, being wheeled into an operating room, the doctor explaining things as they hurried down the hallway.

The baby was breech and on her way, whether they liked it or not, but she was far enough along that it wasn’t a real worry. They expected things would be fine. They just needed to move quickly. At least, that’s what they were telling her.

She hardly understood a word. The pain was fierce and she was afraid, just nodding and agreeing. Whatever he thought was best. Just do it.

And half an hour later, she was lying in a recovery room, waiting, staring at the ceiling and hoping while staff bustled around her. A nursing team had whisked the baby away while Eve’s doctor stitched her up, assuring her that everything was going to be fine. They needed to be sure the baby was all right. She had been tangled up and strangling on her umbilical cord, but Eve had heard her cry, so she thought that meant good things. She hoped it did.

While she waited for them to return with the baby, and while waiting for her actual doctor to appear, she rang Tad again. “Get the flight, love. We have a baby. She’s six pounds on the button, and that’s all I know right now.” She told him what had happened, and then they hung up so he could make his arrangements and she could rest.

It was an hour later when she could move her legs that they wheeled her from recovery into a private room and brought the baby to her. Healthy and pink and wearing a perfectly round head, having not had to squeeze herself out of the birth canal.

She was entirely perfect, and Eve couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. She slept peacefully in her arms while she watched her, feeling almost overwhelmed by the amount of love that was filling her heart. The nurse helped her settle and told her the specifics of the baby’s birth—her length, her responses—all normal. Eve barely heard more than the fact that she was perfect, caught up in the wonder of the tiny fingers curling around her own.

There wasn’t much downtime. In between the hours it took for Tad and Marcus to arrive, there were nurses and doctors, lactation specialists, and baby experts. Now and then, the baby would open her eyes a slit to fix her mother with a narrow look, seeming to pass judgment on the whole ordeal, and Eve thought her eyes were brown. She wouldn’t open them wide enough to show, though, and Eve wasn’t about to try to open an eyelid. She’d tried to pry a fist from a handful of hair and had been met with a wail that sounded like a car alarm, and she’d been sure that the hospital staff was going to come take the baby away from her. They hadn’t, though, and Tad and Marcus did arrive, along with the Edmundses, filling her room with happy noises and flowers.

When Marcus hugged her, she said, “We did her birth certificate just before you got here.”

“Oh? And? What did you decide on?”

“What do you think, silly? She’s Xandra, of course. Who else could she be?”

He grinned broadly and tilted his head to look down at the baby. “She’s stunning, Evie. Just gorgeous. She’s going to be a star.”

“She’s already a star,” Tad said, bending to kiss Eve and then the baby’s forehead.

There was much cooing from the grandparents, then everyone played pass the baby before Xandra started to fuss loudly, demanding to be returned to her mother’s arms.

Eve looked around and smiled widely. She was actually happy. This was her family now, and she’d done pretty well for herself.

Later, when Tad had gone off with a nurse to watch and learn how to give the baby a bath, Eve picked up her phone and rang Dominic. “Congratulations,” she told him. “You’re a father.”

“What?”

She heard something drop. “Xandra is here. Apparently, your visit jarred her out of me. You wanted to meet her so badly that she decided to come meet you. She’s lovely, Dom. She’s perfect.”

“Can I come? Where are you?”

“Yes, you can come. I’m at Mercy.”

He hung up on her, and she laughed, fighting off tears again. Even if she herself didn’t have blood relations to call on, at least Xandra would have. And as terrible a husband as Dominic had turned out to be, Eve had a feeling this was going to be one girl he wouldn’t be able to walk away from. At least she hoped.

She dozed until voices woke her, Tad’s and Dominic’s coming down the hallway together. The two of them entered her room, Dominic carrying a stuffed bear so large that it obscured the top half of him. It was a little longer before the nursing staff brought the baby back to the room, where Tad lifted the little bundle and handed her over to Dominic, whose hands looked disproportionately large against her tiny body.

He sniffed hard and cleared his throat, tearing his eyes away only to say, “Thank you. Thank you both. My God…” He gazed down at the baby again. “I think this is the only thing I’ve ever done right in my life.”

Chapter 17

I
SABELLE
W
AS
S
TAYING
W
ITH
H
ER
F
RIEND
Jeanne temporarily while she got things settled between her and Dominic. She’d rung her parents and told them that she and Dominic were splitting up. She had tried to sell the story that she’d caught him cheating with some random groupie and that she’d filed for an annulment, but it was her mother’s attorney managing it, and she had the truth out of her in no time. Then further hell had broken loose with a flurry of legal activity to remove Eve from all family wills, trusts, and future business. Even in her heartbroken haze, Isabelle was horrified, but she didn’t know what to do, or if she wanted to do anything at all.

Her sister had been sleeping with her husband and was carrying his child. What could be worse than that? She hadn’t wanted to tell them about Eve’s role in it. She didn’t want there to be more animosity between her parents and her sister, even if she couldn’t bear to be around her, and she didn’t want to give Alora more ammunition. But when the story started rolling off her tongue, every drop of venom in her blood came out with it.

For the first couple of weeks, she reveled in the support of her family and was buoyed by how easy it was for them to hate her sister. Soon, it became exhausting and embarrassing, and she wanted to talk about anything else. She just wanted to get on with her life. She’d been in a nightmare, and she just wanted to wake up and move on.