“You’ll recall I scored a clean-sweep perfect ten in my team’s appraisals of my management skills,” she reminded Tony.
“So you did,” he said. “First time anyone’s done that. You’re a good girl, Rachel. Uh, I mean, a smart woman. But do you have time to help Garrett?”
“Tony!” Garrett near shouted.
“I’ll make time,” she said generously. “Not for my sake, but for women everywhere.” For a moment, she worried she’d overdone it; in the front seat, Clive’s enormous shoulders shook.
But Tony appeared to be in the thrall of an image of multiple harassment suits being filed against KBC.
“Thanks, Rachel,” he said. “That’d be great. You should start right away.”
“My pleasure,” she said, and meant it.
Quit,
you ill-mannered, manipulative,
motherless
Shark!
CHAPTER SIX
G
ARRETT
TOOK
THE
STAIRS
to his condo two at a time, powered by frustration and a buzz of adrenaline that caught him by surprise.
Rachel.
The woman he knew to be as predictable as yesterday’s weather had picked up on his intention to quit KBC, then gone all out to push him into action because it was what
she
wanted.
He hadn’t known she had it in her.
Garrett rounded the second-floor landing and kept going. Sure, it had taken Rachel until they were leaving Brightwater to click that his remarks were the screw-you salute of someone who didn’t plan to stick around. Even if they were true…particularly the one about her legs, which he’d never noticed before were sensational. But neither Tony nor Clive had worked out where he was coming from. They’d assumed Garrett was being his usual self, the guy who could never be accused of toeing the party line.
As he passed the black-painted number three on the third-floor landing, he wondered how he’d given himself away to Rachel. Quick thinking on her part, to come up with that sexual harassment stuff in an attempt to force his hand. She was a whole lot more devious than he’d given her credit for. Tony couldn’t see she was playing games, it seemed. Eight years of Goody Two-shoes had finally paid off.
Too bad her attempt to manipulate Garrett had triggered his natural resistance. Instead of resigning when they got back to the city, he’d sat in his office mulling over what he wanted to do. To his annoyance, he’d failed to reach a decision.
It was this time of year, that was all. Made it hard for him to
Let it go.
Tomorrow. He’d quit tomorrow.
Garrett fished his keys from his pocket as he pulled open the door to the fourth floor.
Right away, he saw the woman.
At least, he figured it was a woman, going by the ponytail of brown hair.
She sat huddled on the floor next to his door, a small backpack beside her, her head buried in her arms on jeans-clad knees. A light-colored trench coat pooled around her. There were only two condos per floor; she must be a friend of his neighbor’s, must have turned the wrong way out of the elevator.
“Miss?” he said.
No reply. He hoped she wasn’t drunk, or ill. Or if she was, he hoped his neighbor was home.
He touched her shoulder. “Excuse me, miss?”
She jolted awake with a cry of alarm and lifted her face.
Not a miss. A Mrs.
Mrs. Stephanie Calder.
“What are you doing here?” Garrett asked. Shouldn’t she be whipping up a pot roast in New London?
“Garrett—damn, I fell asleep.” She rubbed her eyes, then blinked up at him. “What time is it?”
“Why don’t you check your watch?” Yeah, it was churlish, but he’d decided years ago never to give his father’s wife anything.
She consulted the slim white-gold Piaget on her wrist. “Nine,” she muttered. “Do you always work so late?”
“Is Dad all right?” He didn’t think he’d ever seen Stephanie in jeans outside the house before. And the ponytail was positively sloppy compared with her usual elegant grooming.
“Your father’s your father,” she said, her voice clipped. “I gather your birthday celebration didn’t go too well last week?”
Celebration
wasn’t the word he’d have chosen. Garrett shrugged.
She tsked. “Did your father tell you…anything?”
Crap, his dad
was
sick. “He mentioned something about me getting a real job.” Garrett feigned casualness.
She groaned under her breath and rubbed her eyes again. Her makeup was smudged; she looked haggard. She stuck out a hand. “Help me up?” Then, before he could refuse, she dropped her hand again. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”
Standing proved a strangely awkward process. She rolled onto all fours then pushed herself off the thick carpet designed to cushion the tread of noisy neighbors.
When she was finally upright, the floor seemed to shift beneath Garrett, forcing him to put a hand to the wall.
“You’ve been overdoing the pizza,” he said, eyeing Stephanie’s enormous, round belly.
“The baby’s due in June.” She planted her fists on her hips, as if defying him to disapprove. The movement thrust her belly out even farther. “I’m seven months along. We would have told you sooner, except we haven’t seen you since Christmas—” he’d spent the holiday with them only because his brother had been home on leave from his naval posting “—and we didn’t know I was pregnant then.”
“And Dad was meant to tell me about this last week.”
“Among other things.” She bent at the knees to scoop up her little backpack. “Do we have to do this in the hallway?”
“Where’s Dad?” Garrett glanced around.
Stephanie slung the pack over one shoulder. “I left him.”
Once again, Garrett’s world tipped on its axis. “You mean, left him out in the car, right?” But he hadn’t seen a Hummer parked in the street.
“I mean, left our marriage.” She plucked the key from his suddenly nerveless fingers. “Let’s go inside.”
In the condo, Garrett used the time spent disarming the burglar alarm and turning on lights to try to get his head around this bizarre new development. Nope, he couldn’t do it. “Does Lucas know about the baby?”
“Of course.” Stephanie set her pack down next to the sofa and sat. “I wrote to him a few months back.”
Garrett wondered what his brother had made of the news. He’d tried to convince Lucas that Stephanie was the enemy, back when their dad had married her, but Lucas had been twelve years old and he’d wanted a mother. He hadn’t seen the wrongness of their dad marrying again so quickly after Mom died, without consulting them, without listening to Garrett’s protests. The wrongness of Dwight expecting them to welcome Stephanie and her clumsy attempts at stepmotherhood.
“Aren’t you too old to be doing this?” He waved at her stomach without looking. “Is it IVF?” He couldn’t imagine his dad submitting to the invasive process.
“I just turned forty-five—it’s within the bounds of possibility.” She cupped her hands over her stomach protectively. “Though it was certainly unexpected. Your father and I tried for a long time to have a baby. When this happened…the symptoms…I thought I was menopausal.”
Too much information.
Garrett headed to the kitchen area. “Coffee?” he said over his shoulder.
“Do you have decaf?”
“No.”
She sighed. “Okay, but make it a weak one. You’re supposed to cut back on caffeine in pregnancy—though since it took me four months to figure out I was pregnant that didn’t quite happen.”
Away from that telltale stomach, Garrett pulled his thoughts into order. Okay, Stephanie was pregnant, a little fact that everyone except Garrett had known. Due in June. At which point he would have a half brother or sister.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” he called.
“I don’t know.” Stephanie spoke from the other side of the island, making him jump. “I want it to be a surprise—your father wanted to know but it turns out the mother’s wishes prevail in this sort of thing.”
She sounded almost amused. Probably hadn’t been too many times her wishes had prevailed since she’d married Admiral Dwight Calder. Wait a minute…
“Did you say you
left
my father?” How he could have lost sight of that detail?
“That’s right.” She eyed the amount of coffee he was scooping into the press with misgiving.
“Is he upset about the baby? I would have thought he’d be delighted to have another chance at a son he could mold in his own image.”
“Dwight would never expect this baby to replace you,” she said. “Or Lucas.”
Mention of his brother was an obvious afterthought, presumably to make Garrett feel less left out of his father’s affections.
“I don’t care if it does, if it takes the pressure off me.”
The kettle began to whistle. Garrett poured water into the press.
“I asked Dwight to come see you because I don’t want him making the same mistakes with this baby that he made with you,” Stephanie said.
Garrett’s head jerked up; boiling water sloshed over the side of the press and onto his thumb.
He cursed and turned on the faucet. He stuck his thumb beneath the running water. Stephanie moved into the kitchen and took over the job of putting the lid on the press. She was so big with that—that thing in her stomach, Garrett felt as if he couldn’t get away from her.
“So now you’re concerned about me and Dad?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you have thought of that, say, fifteen years ago, and not married him two minutes after my mom died?”
She ignored his dig. “Dwight’s been supportive of this baby in the obvious ways… .”
“But not emotionally,” Garrett said.
She nodded. “I told him if he can’t prove to me he can be a loving father, I don’t want him in our child’s life.”
“He’s a loving father to Lucas.” Garrett still couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on, why Stephanie was really here.
“We both know that’s because Lucas is in the navy and hasn’t yet needed to butt heads with your dad. Dwight needs to open his heart to this baby no matter what choices it makes.” She pushed the plunger down on the press. “Cups?”
With his unscalded hand, Garrett indicated a cupboard to her left.
Stephanie poured coffee into one mug. She glanced from the press to the other mug, bemused.
“Fill yours halfway, then top it up with water,” Garrett instructed.
She shook her head, as if to clear it, and laughed. “Sorry, I struggle with the most basic decisions these days. Blame the hormones.”
“Yet you decided to leave Dad.” Garrett couldn’t keep satisfaction out of his voice. It seemed like poetic justice. Dwight had abandoned the memory of Garrett’s mom for Stephanie, and now Stephanie had abandoned him. He shut off the faucet. “Was he furious?”
She handed him his coffee. “I don’t know. I left him a note this morning, and I haven’t turned on my cell phone.”
Garrett couldn’t imagine how mad his dad must be. Served the old goat right to have someone else rebel against his coldhearted rigidity. He found himself grinning. “Well, I appreciate you coming to tell me what’s going on. Where are you staying?”
She blew on her coffee, then took a slow sip, closing her eyes as if even a watered-down jolt of caffeine was heaven.
“I thought,” she said, “I might stay with you.”
Garrett slopped coffee over the side of his mug, burning himself again. “Dammit, Stephanie!” He stuck his thumb back under the faucet. “Why the hell would you think that? Not even the kookiest hormones could make you believe I’d want you here.”
Her mouth slipped slightly. “I didn’t say you’d want me. I said I’d like to stay.”
“You can’t.” When she eyed him steadily, he said, “I’m not set up for guests.”
“And you don’t want me.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go, Garrett. You may remember my parents died some time ago.”
“There are hotels around here. Cozy bed-and-breakfasts. I’ll phone one for you.”
“I want to be with family.”
The fact that his father had chosen her didn’t give her the right to put that label on him. “You must have other family.”
“There’s no one,” she said flatly. “You’re it, Garrett. You and Lucas, and since Lucas is on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf…”
“What about friends?” he said. “I’m sure lots of people like you.”
“They do,” she said. “But at this stage I don’t want to humiliate Dwight by telling our friends I’ve left him, and when they do find out, I don’t want to make them take sides.”
“I bet they’d side with you,” he muttered.
“Probably. I just need a couple of weeks—a week,” she amended hastily, seeing him recoil, “to sort myself out. Then I’ll go.”
“Look, Stephanie—” he paced to the refrigerator “—you and I have never had any kind of relationship. I’m happy for you about the baby, and I hope you and Dad work something out. But don’t push your luck by claiming some stepmother bond with me now.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Crap,” she said, beating him to it. “These hormones.” She dug a tissue out of the pocket of her trench coat, and blew her nose.
Garrett was reminded, uncomfortably, of Rachel accusing him of making that account exec cry. Of her comments about him being insensitive toward women.
She’d had an agenda, he told himself. And the more he thought about it, the more he was damned if he was going to give her the satisfaction of him quitting.
The thought took him by surprise…because the alternative to not quitting was to actively pursue the partnership. Which he wasn’t even sure he wanted.
But if he quit, he’d be hanging around home until he found a new job. Stephanie would doubtless let the fact that he was out of work slip to Dwight. Who’d made it plain he didn’t think Garrett was up to the job of chief creative officer. Garrett hated to prove his father right.