The Pregnancy Test (4 page)

That’s why this little trip to the Caribbean was nothing short of a major catastrophe.

Mandy grabbed the railing and took a deep breath, wishing for a little air circulation in the hallway. She was burning up. “Just two more steps, then we’re home. I can do this.” She heaved herself up toward her front door and took a minute to rest while searching out her key.

Maybe it was time to read that
Yoga for Mothers
book Jamie had pressed on her about two minutes after the stick had turned pink. She felt like an anemic turtle.

The door opened, and Allison walked out, wearing a hot pink sundress and heels that sent her over six feet tall. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and she looked cool, classy, put together.

Mandy remembered feeling like that a long time ago. Well, she’d never rivaled Allison for that supermodel look, but she had been cute in a blowsy jean jacket kind of way, with a good complexion and high metabolism. Now she had zits and undereye circles.

Allison jumped. “Jesus, what are you doing lying on the wall? If you lost your key, you should have buzzed us.”

“I was just taking a minute to rest. I think I’m having triplets or something. There’s no reason why I should feel this tired.” Fifteen weeks into this gig and she already sucked at it. Other women were bouncing around looking adorable at this point—pink cheeks, shiny hair, showing off their little bubbles with low-waisted jeans.

She, on the other hand, was becoming really familiar with loose, concealing clothes since the morning sickness had hit her hard and fast. Elastic was her friend.

“You do look kind of bad.” Allison leaned over and peered at her. “Maybe you should take a nap. But hey, at least you’re not puking all the time anymore.”

“Yippee, lucky me.” Mandy tried to peel herself off the wall, feeling emotional and crabby. It was the idea of going to the Caribbean with Damien Sharpton, spending days and days in his company in the hot sun, blue sky and ocean waves lulling her, music wafting over the sand. And her trying to pretend she wasn’t pregnant and alone.

“Remind me never to get pregnant,” Allison said, shifting her clutch from one hand to the other.

Suddenly, without warning, Mandy felt tears well up in her eyes. “It’s not like I did this on purpose, you know! Ben was using protection and yet I still got pregnant, and now this poor baby is stuck with a mother who doesn’t know what she’s doing and can’t even walk up the damn stairs!”

Allison’s eyes widened as Mandy sobbed, swiping at her cheeks. She didn’t know why she was crying except that it just seemed as though there had been so little in her life she’d been successful at that the odds were against her being a stellar mother as well.

“Oh, shit, Mandy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” Allison stuck her head in the open door of the apartment. “Jamie, come fix this! I made Mandy cry.”

“I’m fine,” she said, even as her eyes swelled up and her cheeks went damp with tears.

But she didn’t protest when Jamie came and put her arm around her and led her into the apartment, clucking and cooing. “What’s the matter, honey? Did that nasty boss of yours do something horrible to you?”

She nodded, plopping onto the couch and hugging a velvet sage green pillow when Jamie gave her a gentle push down. “He’s making me go to the Caribbean with him for a week.”

“The bastard!” Allison said, then pressed her lips together when Jamie shot her a dirty look. “What? I would kill to go to the beach and get a real tan instead of paying fifty bucks to get sprayed with fake color. What’s wrong with going to the Caribbean? It’s been a lousy spring. It’s May, and most days it doesn’t even crack fifty degrees.”

“It doesn’t stop you from wearing a sundress, though,” Jamie remarked, bundled up in a chocolate brown hoodie and pants.

“I have to show off this fake tan.”

Mandy tucked the pillow under her chin. “I know it sounds stupid, but the thing is, he doesn’t know I’m pregnant. I’m not sure I can hide it for a whole week.”

“But you’re barely showing at all. A man is never going to notice that, and you’re not getting sick anymore.” Allison shrugged her shoulder. “I say you go and relax, soak up some rays and hit the spa. Pamper yourself a little—you deserve it.”

“Do you think so? I mean, he has to find out sooner or later that I’m pregnant, but I’d rather it be later.” Preferably after the baby was born and she was in the hospital. “I actually like working for him, you know, but keeping this a secret is stressing me out.”

“Stress is not good for the baby.” Jamie had moved around the back of the couch and was massaging Mandy’s shoulders.

Jamie’s light fingers kneaded the knots in her muscles, and Mandy whimpered. “I feel completely overwhelmed. There is so much I’m supposed to know. Fetal development, what to ask the doctor, what foods to avoid, how to know when you’re in labor…I can’t keep up.”

“So take all your reading material with you on this trip and just kind of take stock. It’s a lot to learn, but some of it is just common sense. And what’s important is that you be relaxed and stress-free, not whether you know which kind of bottle to buy. That stuff is trial and error.”

“Listen to Jamie,” Allison said, perching on the coffee table, her long legs crossed. “She’s the only one of us who knows a damn thing about babies.”

“I know you shouldn’t swear in front of a baby,” Jamie said.

“The kid’s not even born yet! And damn isn’t a swear word, it’s a pejorative.”

Mandy’s eyes were half closed, and she rubbed the last of the tears off her cheeks. Jamie’s slow and steady massage was lulling her, relaxing her. Maybe she could do this.

Motherhood was common sense, that’s all. She knew not to swear in front of a child, just like she knew babies could drown in mop buckets. She knew babies needed powder so their bums didn’t get sore, and she knew a fever in an infant meant a visit to the pediatrician. She could handle this, one day, one diaper at a time.

She wanted her baby with a fierceness that surprised her. She wanted to love this child unconditionally and guide it to be a responsible, ethical, confident person.

It was scary, but exciting.

Now if she could just stop having sex dreams about Damien Sharpton giving her multiple orgasms, she would really have a handle on things.

“M
other, I’m trying to pack for this trip for work, can I call you later?” Mandy tossed a pair of khaki pants aside. She’d never get the button closed on those.

“What trip for work? What is this all about?”

“I thought I told you…my boss is going to Punta Cana and needs me to accompany him.” Linen skirts were a good choice, comfortable and cool. She stuck two in her open suitcase.

“Punta Cana? Isn’t that in the Caribbean? That doesn’t sound safe in your condition. They don’t wash their fruits and vegetables there, you know. And no air-conditioning, rough roads, huts…”

Mandy rolled her eyes, glad her mother couldn’t see her. “Mother, I’m not staying in a hut. It’s a resort, catering to Americans and Canadians.”

“Just as bad. Think of all those French-Canadians in thongs, dear.”

Now she did laugh, tossing her blow-dryer into her bag. “There’s nothing wrong with wearing a thong. It means they’re comfortable with their bodies. It’s probably very liberating. Maybe we should try it—I’ll get Daddy a thong for Christmas, and he can wear it to the lake.”

Mandy knew she shouldn’t tease her very proper mother like that, but she was feeling so much better, she was almost giddy. It was as though the minute her pregnancy hit the sixteen-week mark, the curtain on her fatigue had lifted. And her stomach had popped up like a waffle in the toaster. She rubbed her waist, the Capri pants she was wearing digging into her flesh.

“Mandy, you’ve lost your mind.”

“Possibly. Do you think I should go topless on the beach? I finally have a chest worthy of baring.” Not that she would, ever in a million years, but shocking her mother brought a sick sort of glee.

“On a business trip! Good God, you really have gone off the deep end. It’s the result of being left pregnant and alone by that old man you were dating. You never should have gone out with a man so much older than you. They’re all having their midlife crises in their forties…it doesn’t surprise me he didn’t want a thing to do with real responsibility.”

The conversation was no longer amusing.

But before she could tell her mother to take a long walk off a short pier, she followed up with a slur on Mandy’s toy shop.

“At least you finally have a real job. I know you’ve always enjoyed your hobbies, dear, but now is time to settle down and do what’s best.”

What made her feel the lousiest was that she really couldn’t argue with her mother. The shop had never felt like a hobby, but after diddling around with it for three years, it hadn’t turned a profit, and she couldn’t say that she had ever really aggressively sought its success. It
had
been a hobby.

“I still wish you’d come home and let your father and I help you out.”

About as appealing a prospect as self-mutilation with a rusty knife. Thanks, she’d pass.

“I’m fine, Mother. And while I miss you both”—when she got in the wine and was feeling nostalgic, but otherwise never—“I need to stand on my own two feet.”

Her mother sniffed. “Well, I’m proud of you for working so hard. But I can’t help but worry.”

“You don’t need to worry.”

“Promise me you won’t eat anything while you’re there.”

She was supposed to go five days without eating?

Mandy clamped her lips shut so she wouldn’t giggle. “All right, I won’t eat anything.”

“Where are you staying? I should know how to reach you.”

Against her better judgment, Mandy lifted the folder off her nightstand and recited the hotel contact information. If her mother showed up in the Caribbean when she was on a trip with her boss, Mandy would disown her.

If parents could disown their mortifying children, surely she could do the same.

“And be careful your boss doesn’t try anything funny with you. Businessmen view these kind of resorts as sexual buffets.”

What her mother knew about businessmen and their sexual habits was a mystery to Mandy.

“Sexual buffets? Have you been watching those news programs again?”

But at any rate, Mandy wasn’t the one who had to worry.

It was Damien Sharpton. Because Mandy’s dreams had intensified, if that were possible, and the thought of a sexual buffet, with Damien as the main course, had her body tingling and her breath racing.

And if she had her way, that buffet would be all you can eat.

Damien had his suitcase in the corner of his office and was clearing out the last of his e-mails before he caught a cab to LaGuardia when Rob Turner stuck his head in the open door.

“Hey, Damien, what’s up?”

“I’m just about to head out. What can I do for you?” Damien stood up, hitting the button to shut down his laptop. He was much more eager to take this trip than he ever would have thought when he won the thing.

The last two years he’d taken these incentive trips and spent the whole time wishing he were back in New York. But this time, it was different. He wanted to go.

And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why.

“So you’re really taking your assistant with you on this trip?” Rob came into the room and sat down in the leather chair in front of Damien’s desk, like he planned to stay awhile.

“Yes. Why?” Damien was suspicious of the casual tone Rob had employed. He leaned on his desk and crossed his arms, alert to any antagonism.

Rob shrugged. He was one of those guys who always had a grin, a charming compliment, an easy-going confidence. He looked comfortable in an expensive suit or a T-shirt to go jogging in and could switch from beer to wine and back again depending on the crowd.

“This is a prize trip. Most guys take their wives or their girlfriends, or if neither of those are available, their brother or something. No one ever takes their secretary, unless she falls in the girlfriend category.”

“She doesn’t.” Damien’s answer sounded sharp even to him and he felt a hot rush of angry embarrassment. It did look odd that he was taking Mandy, and he knew it. But he hadn’t been able to resist the impulse to spend time with her, assure himself that she didn’t think he was the boss from hell.

It had never bothered him before, what anyone thought. Yet it did now, with Mandy. But he would toss his laptop into the East River before he would ever admit that. “You know me. I can’t stand being out of touch. We’re going to get a jump on some of next month’s projects.”

“You really mean that. You’re not sheet diving with your secretary.” Rob looked at him in total disbelief.

“I really mean that.” He didn’t sheet dive with anyone, not anymore. And Rob was probably the only one who knew that, since he was the only person who had known Damien from before, when he’d lived in Chicago with Jessica.

But that wasn’t to say that part of Damien hadn’t been much more, well,
alert,
since Mandy Keeling had been hired. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he wanted to have sex with her, but he was attracted to her.

That alone was something of a miracle given that he had thought himself incapable of any emotional or physical interest in another human being.

“Maybe you should.”

“Should what?” Damien had lost the thread of their conversation.

“Have sex with your secretary. A little island fling under a tiki hut.”

“That would be professional.”

Rob crossed his feet on Damien’s desk, making him itch to shove them off. His sense of neatness and order was offended by Rob’s shoes nudging his inbox of papers a little to the left.

“She’s hot.”

“Excuse me?” Damien stared at Rob, not sure he was following him again. His foot tapped impatiently on the carpet; his hand rattled the change in his pocket. He needed to get to the airport.

“Mandy. Your assistant. She’s hot.”

“Is she? I hadn’t noticed.” And he really hadn’t. He remembered finding her pretty in that initial meeting, but now he couldn’t even dredge up a memory of what she looked like, not in any detail anyway. The niggling attraction he felt had more to do with her wit, her intelligence, her sharp sense of humor.

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m worried about you.” Rob dropped his feet to the floor, relieving Damien’s blood pressure. “She’s got that simple rich-girl look going on, like she went to a girls’ school during the day, then snuck out at night to go skinny-dipping.”

“You’ve given my assistant a lot of thought.” Which somehow infuriated him. A feeling he had no right to claim. Rob was probably more Mandy’s type anyway.

“Just scoping chicks for you, man, since you won’t do it for yourself.”

“Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe I’m not interested.”

“Damien.” Rob’s voice was soft, serious. “This isn’t healthy for you…You’ve got to move on, do something besides work twenty-four/seven. She died, not you.”

As if he didn’t know that. He fucking felt that guilt every day. And it had eaten a piece out of his soul that could never be replaced.

Damien just stared at Rob, coolly, eyebrow raised. He didn’t say anything, didn’t blink. Until Rob squirmed and straightened his tie.

“I just think you work too much. There has to be more to life than that.”

Picking up his suitcase, he nearly cut Rob down with a cruel remark, a dig at Rob about male bonding. But there was genuine concern on his friend’s face, one of his only friends. Most had abandoned him during the investigation, and since he’d lived in New York, he hadn’t bothered to make any new friends.

“I’m fine. My life is the way I want it.”

But if it was, why was anticipation coursing through his veins for the first time in over three years?