He squeezed the phone. “Rose.”
Her smile was audible. “Nice. Excellent. I can’t wait to meet her.”
God forbid
. “So, I arrived last night after midnight and left around eleven-thirty this morning.”
“You should say we got shit-faced to explain why you look the way you do.”
“How do you know how I look?”
“Please,” she said. “As if I don’t know what a dude looks like in the morning after he’s been screwing all night.”
He put a hand on his stomach, feeling queasy. “Right. Shit-faced.”
April started to ask for their drink menu for the night before, “for realism’s sake,” she said, but he couldn’t deal with his fun-loving sister any longer and got off the phone.
As he walked toward the house, he hoped Rose would forgive him for taking off like that.
But
Sylly
…
He couldn’t find out either.
Will we be paying out a referral bonus every time you want to get laid, Mark?
he would ask, only pretending he thought it was funny.
He’d promised Sylly he wasn’t interested in Rose. Now he’d put both of them on the spot. Mark was fine no matter what happened, but Rose…
She needed that job—probably more than she needed him.
And Sylly was dancing around that drug company. Mark needed all the clout he could get to talk him out of it. Not embarrassed and defensive about starting an affair with the newest hire. One who was living in the boss’s house.
Damn, if only he had her number.
Maybe she’d call him. His mother was in the book, had been for years. He’d go in, shower, tell his mom to mind her own business, and—
Blair. Of course. He’d ask Blair for Rose’s number.
He got out of the car and stopped himself from going straight over. He was wearing his vampire suit. Now that it was Sunday morning, his outfit had a religious air, perhaps in even a door-to-door sort of way, but he’d feel better if he changed.
His mom was sitting at the old upright piano in the living room and stopped playing when he flew in.
“Morning! Sorry I didn’t call. I crashed at April’s last night.” He waved and ran up the stairs. “Can’t talk!” In sixty seconds he was in jeans and a T-shirt, leaping back down the stairs and out the front door. “I’ll get the paper!”
If his mother said anything, he was moving too fast to hear her.
He swept up the Sunday paper in the driveway and rapped on Blair’s front door.
John answered, a phone at his ear. “Oh, Mark. Hi.” His eyes were bloodshot, heavy-lidded, tired. “No, it’s just the neighbor… I don’t know, she’s in bed… I hope so.” He rubbed his hand over his face, glanced at Mark, eyebrows up, waiting.
Mark’s own troubles faded away. “Sorry. This looks like a bad time.” He took a step back but his worries overcame his manners. “Is everything all right?”
John closed his eyes for a moment, held up a finger, his attention back on the phone call. “She’s in bed. We’ll go in tomorrow to… induce.” He rubbed his eyes. “They have to… she has to, you know…” His voice cracked.
Mark fell back another step, his stomach clenching.
Oh, God.
John cleared his throat. “No, she wasn’t bleeding. If she had, we might’ve gone in earlier.”
Blood. The baby. Blair. The images struck Mark with such graphic detail he saw his vision go sparkly around the edges. He put a hand on the side of the house for support. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
John continued talking into the phone. “We were at home, just watching TV, started talking about how the baby hadn’t moved in a while. We went into the ER and they did an ultrasound.” His hollow, red-rimmed eyes met Mark’s. He listened for another moment then said, “No, please don’t come over. I’ll have to call you later. Really, I have to go.” He hung up abruptly, shoved the phone in his pocket, looking at Mark.
“I’m so sorry,” Mark said, trying to swallow over the dry lump in his throat. “Blair?”
John nodded, lips tight. Then he tilted his head, looked him up and down. “You all right? You look green.”
After everything John had probably been through, the last thing he needed was his neighbor to faint on his doorstep. “I was just… bringing your paper. It was in the driveway.” He held it out.
“Thanks,” he said with a sigh, taking it. “You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” Unlike Blair. The baby. You. “Let us know if we can do anything.”
“Thanks.” Nodding, John stepped back into the house to close the door.
Mark sucked in fresh air and hurried back to his own house, his skull floating a foot off his shoulders, trying to focus his eyes on the agapanthus, the Meyer lemon tree, the blue sky streaked with a single gash of fog. Anything to wipe away the image of blood. Blair, baby, blood—
Just inside his front door, his ears roared and the world shrank to a pinprick before the lights went out completely.
* * *
Rose got the call when she was waiting for her latte at Peet’s Coffee and Tea. As soon as she saw John’s number on the screen, she went out onto the street, fearing the worst.
Why else but for an emergency would he call her, after all?
“She was asking for you,” John said after he’d given her the news, sounding exhausted. Blair would have to go into the hospital the next morning to induce labor and delivery. She was already so far along—
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rose said, her throat tight.
In fewer than seven she was pulling into the driveway. Frowning at Mark’s VW next door, she strode up to the door and didn’t bother knocking before she went in. “Hello? It’s Rose.” She dropped her keys and bag near a large box, then saw it was a baby carseat and felt her eyes fill with tears.
“Hello?” she called again, her voice wobbly.
John wandered over, hands in his pockets. He looked terrible: unshaven, limp. “She’s on the sofa. Just fell asleep.”
Rose put her hand over her mouth, cursing herself for shouting her arrival. “Poor Blair,” she whispered. Then, perhaps belatedly, she put a hand on John’s arm. “You, too. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, looked away. “Yeah.”
“Thanks for calling me.”
“She asked.”
Rose bit her lip. He’d been through a lot, he could be rude. “Can I do anything?”
“What can anyone do?” Shoving his hands deeper into his pockets, he walked away.
Rose followed him into the kitchen. “I can stay with her if you’d like to go out—”
“Go out? Where the hell am I going to go?”
She drew back, palms out. Took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean that. I was thinking—I don’t know. Forget it.”
“You think I’m going to leave now, don’t you? That I’m only here because of the baby?”
Rose glanced over her shoulder. “Please. You’re going to wake her up.”
“Everyone thinks I’m the bad guy. What the hell did I do? I’m here, aren’t I?” He turned around, massaging the back of his neck. “I don’t know how everything got so fucked up.”
In a less friendly tone, she said, “Look, are you sure you don’t want to get out just for a little while? Get some air. Walk around the block. I’ll stay here with her.”
“I was a happy, fun-loving guy, on top of the world. Now look at me.”
He was feeling sorry for himself? After leaving Blair to face everything on her own for months? She wanted to slap him. “This is a lot harder for her than it is for you,” she snapped. “She has to—” she cut herself off.
She has to deliver her baby tomorrow.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
He raised his bloodshot eyes. They were shining with tears.
She took a moment to control her own emotions. Whatever he said, whatever he’d done or not done, this was no time to judge him. Admittedly she
had
thought this would be it for him, that he might even be relieved. Not swamped with grief, shaken and weak and afraid.
So, maybe she was wrong about him.
She touched his arm, struggled for words. “I’ll go to the store to get you some food. Fill up your freezer with easy meals. You probably won’t be up for cooking for a while.”
Deflating, he sank against the counter, face in his hands. “Food,” he said, voice muffled. “As if either one of us is hungry.”
“You will be.” She left him and went into the living room.
Blair was stretched out on the couch, her slight form nearly invisible under a pink checkered comforter. Rose waited a moment to see if she stirred. Satisfied that she and John hadn’t woken her up, she headed back out to her car.
Mark. She’d almost forgotten him. For a couple of minutes, lost in Blair and John’s loss, she’d forgotten about the smoothie of happiness and fear churning in her stomach about their night together.
She stared at his car. He’d left without saying goodbye—but she’d told him they had to hurry.
Did he even have her cell number? She didn’t have his. He could be sitting in there waiting for her to call the house. Or show up to work tomorrow. Or…
Rose put her car keys in her pocket and walked up to Mark and Trixie’s front door. She’d make it quick, explain why, with Blair going into the hospital tomorrow, she wouldn’t be able to see him for a few days, maybe longer. This was going to be a rough time for Blair and she had to be there for her. And, perhaps, even for John.
Trixie answered the door, her face unusually serious. “Oh! Hello.” She had a towel over her shoulder and a dog in one hand. Not the bug-eyed, tongue-happy Zeus, but a sleek little Chihuahua in an orange sweatshirt.
Belatedly Rose realized she had no idea if Trixie knew Mark had been with her last night. She wasn’t smiling in that giddy way she had earlier. Just polite. “Sorry to bother you,” Rose said, her mind stumbling around for a neutral reason to be standing there. “I was wondering if Mark is home.”
“He is, but…” Trixie glanced back into the house. She turned back to Rose, eyes looking past her. “Is it your car? Do you need the cables again? I can get them for you.”
“No, it’s fine. I just…” Obviously he hadn’t told her they’d spent the night together or she’d be dragging her inside, grinning at her, popping the champagne.
Wouldn’t she?
“I just wanted to…” Rose tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Well, this time she didn’t have to lie to wiggle out of an uncomfortable situation. “I wanted to tell both of you that Blair has lost the baby,” she finished, sighing deeply. “I thought you should know.”
To her surprise, Trixie nodded solemnly. “Yes, Mark told me.” Her mouth tightened. “It’s awful. I’m about to cook a casserole for them. Pathetic, but at least they won’t starve.”
So, Mark knew already. But where was he? “I was just about to go to the store. I don’t know what else to do.”
“She’s going into the hospital tomorrow?”
Rose nodded.
“Let us know if there’s anything we can do. Anything. Even if it means trapping Ellen in the basement.”
That surprised a smile out of her. “I will. Thanks.” Rose hesitated, more confused than ever about Mark—
where was he?
—then said goodbye and went back to her car.
Chapter 17
ROSE WENT TO WELLYNELLY MONDAY morning, wishing she were with Blair at the hospital, but she’d been asked to stay away.
“John and I need to be alone,” Blair had said, and Rose had to respect that. Even if she and John didn’t have a bad history together, it would be hard to have too many people around. She talked to John next, making him promise to call or text with any news, any requests, anything at all. They were starting the induction at nine, less than an hour from now.
When Rose got to her desk she found a yellow note on her keyboard folded into a tiny square. She unfolded it, some of her worry lifting as she read the note.
Come see me?
-The Count
Smiling, she folded up the note, then touched up her lipstick. Glancing around the cubicles, nodding hello at the people she’d gotten to know, she walked to Mark’s office. After all the pain with Blair losing the baby, it felt really good to have this life-affirming thing in her life. A little fling, a little fun. She could handle it.
Because Mark was a nice guy. When she’d vowed not to have any more sex without a long-term relationship, she was imagining a guy like John. A user, a ladies’ man, a mimbo. The kind of guy who would have sex all night and then pretend not to know you in front of his friends.
Mark wasn’t like that.
She opened the door slowly without knocking, peeked around the corner.
“Rose.” He stood up. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
He stared at her, glanced over her shoulder. “Got my note?”
“Count von Count, I presume?”
Smiling, he approached, sticking his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. He wore a crisp white shirt, open at the throat, the sleeves pushed up.
Caught up in the vision of his muscled forearms, Rose stood in the doorway and stared. Every time she saw him he got better looking. That Indiana Jones resemblance was no joke. Her heart was fluttering around her chest like a trapped butterfly.
Hey, this is Mark. Just Mark.
“I was thinking Dracula, but Sesame Street is better,” he said, moving closer. “I always related to that dude. Very OCD with the ‘von, two, tree.’” He strode over and pushed the door closed behind her shoulder. He was only inches away.
She tilted her head back, moistening her lips, waiting for him to kiss her. It seemed longer than twenty-four hours since she’d touched him.
But he didn’t kiss her. “Speaking of numbers, give me your phone number, woman,” he said, pulling out his phone and walking back to his desk. “I had no way to reach you.”
Rose watched his retreating back, let out a breath. She went over and picked up a stress ball on his desk, trying to calm herself the heck down. Back to reality. “Where were you on Sunday?” She tried to keep her voice casual. “I talked to your mom at the door but I didn’t see you.”
His annoyance was sudden and sincere. “You came to the house?”
“Yes. Just—I talked to your mom. I didn’t know what to say, about us, so I told her about Blair and left.” She watched his face, more confused than ever by the emotions twisting his face. First he was angry, then… uncomfortable.