A Pregnancy Scandal (11 page)

“Sorry, she didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Alex blinked and met Phillip's gaze. A warm breeze filtered through the gazebo, bringing with it the barest hint of honeysuckle and a clarity she hadn't realized she'd needed.

“She didn't. She's a lovely person.” Her mind whirling furiously, Alex settled deeper into Phillip's embrace. “Did she make
you
uncomfortable? You don't talk about Gina much.”

Bingo.
Phillip shifted as if he couldn't find the right position. “Not much to talk about. She's gone.”

He
was
uncomfortable talking about Gina. But if he didn't talk about her, how was he ever supposed to move past his feelings for her?

“But you loved her. That's a big, beautiful thing worth honoring.”

At that, he full-out froze. Sounds of the party drifted through the sudden stillness and Alex had half a mind to quit while she was ahead. This was exactly the kind of foot in mouth she should be avoiding. But something about the way he'd talked to his mother, the relationship they had, made her ache. Physical needs she knew all about slaking. This man had a talent for it, and she had a pretty good handle on how to reciprocate. But what about emotional needs? His
and
hers? Why wasn't fulfilling those part of their deal?

Or was the real problem that neither of them knew what their emotional needs were? What if she could take this opportunity to find out and didn't?

She went for broke. “I've never been in love. What's it like?”

Phillip exhaled, and with it, some of the tension eased. “A miracle. A song that your soul can't stop singing. Energy. Light. Motivation. When you have it, things you never thought possible become achievable.”

Transfixed, Alex listened to her husband express the poetry of his heart and her own twisted. The wrenching in her chest was equal parts awe and pain, like she'd glimpsed heaven only to have angry storm clouds race across the opening in the sky.

Because what he'd just described was what love meant to Phillip. Now that she'd heard it, experienced it in watching the way he interacted with his mother, she wanted it for herself. She wanted Phillip to believe he could have that again. That they could achieve it together, with each other.

And that was against the rules.

Alex bit her lip and held back additional tears. Barely. “No wonder you don't think you'll find that again. It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”

Which didn't necessarily mean that it was. There were no rules when it came to things of the heart. That was why she shied away from them so quickly. But this time, she didn't want to.

He nodded, surprise dawning in his expression. “You give me a lot of grace. I appreciate that. I keep expecting you to make demands of me that I can't fulfill and you never do. I've made some mistakes due to that and I'm sorry. I'm trying to stop operating on false assumptions.”

He meant their fight about her working too hard. And the distance. All smoke screens to keep her from expecting too much. Because he didn't think he had any more to give than what he'd laid out at the beginning of their relationship.

And finally, she understood his emotional need in this relationship—to become a believer in second chances. Who better to help him learn that than someone who understood the power and mercy of being granted a do-over?

* * *

She carried the explosive secret with her for the remainder of the weekend.

When they got home from the party, where Phillip had done exactly as he said and spent the entire time with Alex having fun, he didn't disappear, mentally or physically.

They watched a movie on the giant theater screen in the media room and Phillip held her hand through the whole thing, except for the five minutes he left to get her a drink. They slept in the same bed, wrapped around each other like lovers. Because they were.

Just not yet the kind she'd started to believe—and hope—might be possible.

At breakfast Sunday morning, Phillip looked up from his English muffins, jam and scrambled eggs with a bittersweet smile. “I hate that I have to go back to Washington tonight.”

“It's not ideal,” she agreed. “I was hoping to get to a point where I could come with you, but this week is impossible with quarter end. I have meetings all week.”

“Speaking of which, a week from tomorrow, there's going to be a preliminary hearing about your FDA application. In Washington. I was planning to cover it for you.”

“That would be great.” She asked him a few questions about the process so she could report back to the other ladies in Fyra's C-suite about the next steps, which Phillip answered easily and thoroughly. Fyra had been truly blessed by his help.

He forked up a bite of eggs and chewed thoughtfully, his gaze on her. “We've known each other for a while now, and I don't think I've ever asked why cosmetics.”

The question was so out of left field she had to take a minute to figure out what he was talking about. “You mean why did Cass, Trinity, Harper and I open shop to sell mascara instead of something else?”

“Yeah. I knew I wanted to be a senator by the time I was a senior in high school. And really for me, it was more of a decision on whether I wanted to go to the House or the Senate, not whether I'd go into politics at all. You had the whole world at your feet and chose mascara. I'm curious why.”

She could lie. She did it all the time. But something about the way he asked, with no judgment, just a man curious about his wife's thoughts, made her want to answer honestly. If she hoped to reverse Phillip's stance on second chances, what better way to accomplish that goal than to tell the story of how she'd got hers?

“Cosmetics is their thing. I'm just along for the ride,” she admitted, and the earth didn't crack open at her feet, so she went on. “I never planned to go to college. I wanted to have fun and hang out with my friends. Who were a boatload of trouble, but they were mine. You know? They listened to me and cared about me in the midst of my parents' painful divorce.”

He nodded, but didn't interrupt.

“The first time we got arrested, they let us go with a warning. We thought we were invincible and did a lot of things we shouldn't have—drugs, shoplifting, graffiti. You name it, we did it.”

It was a bland recitation of facts, but the anguish she still felt sometimes about her past came out in her voice. The concern painting her husband's face wasn't the revulsion she deserved.

“You needed your family and they weren't there,” he said simply. “So you found a new one.”

“Yeah. Then the music stopped when I was fifteen. I finally got the attention of someone who saw the train wreck about to happen and knew exactly how to fix it. Judge Miller. She was compassionate, just and really cared about her job.”

Alex had realized all of this in hindsight, of course. At the time, she'd been disrespectful, mad about being caught and not about to let anyone know how scared she'd been. Judge Miller had told Alex she couldn't let her ruin her own life. The first of many second chances. Alex had quickly embraced them for the miracles they'd been.

And according to Phillip,
love
was a miracle. Maybe she'd been the recipient of more love than she'd realized over the years. The concept didn't feel so foreign all at once.

“How did she fix it?” Phillip had forgotten about his breakfast and sat with his attention squarely on Alex.

“After she sentenced me, she called me and my mother into her chambers and gave my mother the talking-to of her life. Said she was the one who could change things for me, and Judge Miller was going to hold her accountable for my probation. That was a turning point.”

Her mother had taken that advice to heart, got Alex into a rehab program that actually worked and applied for every scholarship she thought her daughter had a marginal chance of receiving. With a lot of hard work, Alex had got her grades up enough to be accepted to the University of Texas.

She told Phillip about walking into freshman algebra, her first class as a college student, and sitting next to a friendly redhead who had knocked her pencil to the floor four times in fifteen minutes. Each time, Alex had picked it up with a smile of commiseration. Her own nerves had been strung tight, too.

By the end of the hour, Alex had known her classmate's name was Harper, that they shared a decided social awkwardness and that Harper had hoped to be a chemist when she grew up. Since Alex had had no clue what she'd wanted to be the following day, let alone in the future, and because she'd had a lack of friends without criminal records, Harper had seemed like someone from another planet.

A bit starstruck, Alex had expended monumental effort to match her new friend's over-the-top math skills. But it wasn't until the professor asked her to tutor another student that Alex had understood she possessed an unusual aptitude for numbers.

“The other student? It was Cass,” Alex finished and had to swallow the sudden lump in her throat. “She was such a beautiful person. Still is. She believed in me from the very beginning. When she introduced me to Trinity, the first thing she said was ‘I found our finance guru.'
Me.
Alex Meer, fresh from Podunk, Texas, and barely clear of my probation period. I never would have majored in finance without Cass. I never would have realized I liked numbers if I hadn't sat next to Harper that first day.”

“That's a great story.” Phillip squeezed her hand.

She hadn't even registered him taking it into his, but the silent comfort soothed the emotional smashup going on inside. “That's why I can't just quit. Cosmetics mean nothing to me, but friendship? That's everything. I would paint my body with mascara brushes if one of my partners asked me to.”

“I see.” He went quiet for a moment. “No wonder you got so angry with me when I mentioned it.”

The fact that he got that squeezed her heart harder than he'd squeezed her hand. How did he affect her so much with simple words? Probably because she'd started to glimpse what could be possible between them and every moment in his presence reinforced it. She
wanted
to be affected. The emotional highs were addictive. Necessary. Wonderful.

“I didn't deserve a second chance, but I definitely believe in them.” Let him do what he wanted to with that.

“I'm starting to get the point.” With that cryptic comment, he kissed her fingertips and wandered down her arm to her elbow with so much serious intent that finishing breakfast became the last thing on either of their minds.

By the time he left that night, she hadn't got any closer to figuring out how to take their relationship to the next level. Or what that would even look like. Quandaries of the heart were not logical, and she was the last person who should be attempting to unravel this.

But comments like
I'm starting to get the point
gave her hope. Phillip had loved Gina so much. Maybe it was clouding his judgment about whether it could happen again. Lightning might not strike the same place twice, but who stood around in the exact same place waiting for it?

What had he said at the party?
Things you never thought possible become achievable.
She totally understood that now. Because she was pretty sure she was falling for her husband. That was so huge a revelation, it rendered her mute. And made the long week without Phillip seem that much longer.

On Monday, Melinda called her to the front desk because a dozen roses had just been delivered with Alex's name on them. Entranced, she rushed to the reception area to claim her vase. The note inside read: “One bouquet to commemorate our wedding day. —Phillip”

It was so sweet and surprising, she floated through the rest of the day.

On Tuesday, she received another delivery. Two dozen stargazer lilies with a note: “Two bouquets in honor of our twin babies. —Phillip”

She stared at the bouquets on her desk for a solid hour instead of focusing on the quarterly reports she needed to absorb before a meeting that afternoon. Phillip was obviously thinking about her. Missing her, maybe, like she was missing him. Their big house seemed so empty without him in it. Like her heart. She yearned to fill it with Phillip.

Perhaps he wanted to fill her heart and she just needed to let him.

On Wednesday, the reception area nearly burst at the seams as the entire office came to see what Phillip had sent. Three dozen larkspurs with a note: “Three bouquets. One for each month you've carried my children in your womb. —Phillip”

That one drew tears from her and at least half of the onlookers. She got it now. He was grateful for his children and wanted her to know, that was all. She'd never received flowers from anyone before and three in a row was something special. But she couldn't help wishing the flowers had been sent for more personal reasons.

Thursday, it was four dozen dendrobium orchids. The note: “Four. That's how many orgasms I gave you last weekend. —Phillip”

No one in the reception area got to read that note and she blushed the rest of the day. Had the flower delivery people read it? Surely not. Next time, she'd be more careful what she wished for. But still. The flowers weren't just about the babies, like she'd convinced herself, strictly to avoid being disappointed. So what
were
they about?

On Friday, five dozen tulips in orange, red and yellow made the reception area look like the sun had burst open all over Fyra. The note read: “Five days I've had to wait to see you again. It's too many. —Phillip”

Something sharp and sweet spiked through her. Was all of this her husband's subtle way of saying his feelings were changing, as well? He was a rule follower, too. It was one of the many things they had in common. Maybe he was waiting for her to make the first move, in case she wasn't on board with coloring outside the lines. How could she find out?