Sleeping with Beauty (19 page)

“Do you think I don’t know when you’re trying to change the subject?”

Jana just smiled. “So, don’t you want to know why the happy tears?”

“What? Oh, right! What didn’t Grady tell me because he was too busy being a closed-minded jerk?”

“Nothing. I mean, I barely mentioned it in passing. He probably forgot. It was hardly even newsworthy at that point, since we’d only started trying, and I only mentioned it then because I wanted to take his mind off of—” She broke off, looked panicked for a split second, then downed the rest of her drink. “Work,” she managed. “Take his mind off work. He really is busy.”

“You’re babbling,” Lucy said, more confused than ever. “You never babble. Come to think of it, you never cry, either.” She grabbed the empty can away from Jana. “What’s in this, anyway?”

Jana just grabbed another one and popped the top. “My last night of caffeine, that’s what.” She swigged, hiccuped, then looked at Lucy with a big scared-as-hell grin plastered on her face. “What I’ve been trying to tell you is, Dave and I decided it was the right time to start thinking about, you know, moving to stage two, and—”

“‘Stage two’? What was stage one?”

“Marriage,” she said, as if Lucy was completely dim. “And well, you know neither of us had an exactly traditional upbringing, so it made sense for us to wait. To be sure we could handle it. Except when it comes to the two of us, we’re apparently incapable of waiting. I should have learned that when I slept with him on the first date, then married him eight months later. And really, who ever really knows if they’re ready, right?” She polished off the rest of can number two in one long swig.

Lucy took the empty can when she was done, staring at her like she’d lost her mind. Mostly because she was fairly certain she had. “Did you try and play hockey again with Dave?” She reached out and groped around Jana’s scalp. “Because you’re acting like you got hit with a puck.”

“Actually, that’s a pretty good description,” Jana said. “My short-term memory is shot and I’m constantly forgetting where I put things, probably because I throw them down wherever I happen to be standing when I have to suddenly run to the bathroom.”

“You’re sick?”

“It’s okay; I’m getting used to it. Well, I’m not, but then, I don’t seem to have any real say in the matter. They tell you saltines, but that’s crap. Sour balls are the real key to survival.”

“‘They’? Who are ‘they’?” Lucy finally grabbed Jana’s waving hands and gripped them tightly so her friend had to look her in the face. “Survive what? For God’s sake, just tell me already!”

“I was all prepared to make charts, the whole routine, you know? But we won’t have to.”

“I’m so glad for you. What kind of ‘charts’?” She’d known Jana almost her entire life and she’d never once seen her like this. Giddy, bordering on hysterical.

“We won’t need the charts!” Now Jana was squeezing Lucy’s hands so tightly the blood flow had stopped and the tips had started to tingle. “God, Luce, it’s all so damn scary. And I swore I was going to wait a while, until I was sure, you know, that it was going to take, before saying anything to anyone. Or at least until I got used to the whole idea. But I can’t wait.”

“Great. Please don’t hold back on my account.”

Her smile shifted then; it became sort of smug, like she had this awesome private secret. Her eyes, on the other hand, were filled with a kind of awe and more than a little fear. “Terror” still seemed the appropriate adjective. “Apparently Dave is as good at scoring off the ice as he is on the ice, because we only stopped using protection last month and I’m already—”

“Pregnant!” Lucy gasped as it finally hit her. “Oh, my God! Oh! Jana!” Then she smacked her friend on the arm—lightly, given her condition, but still. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jana laughed, sounding almost drunk. “What do you think I’ve been doing? You just needed to listen.”

“And Grady knows? And he’s not here to celebrate with us? God, all men
are
jerks.”

“No, you’re the first. Outside of me and Dave, that is. I only told Grady we were trying. It was while you were gone. I was going to tell you, too, but it all sort of progressed past that part really fast. God, now that I think about it, I guess I was already pregnant when I told him we were trying!” Her laugh was a bit dazed, and Lucy noticed her hand hovering protectively over her stomach.

“How long have you known?” Lucy felt even more awful now. Here she’d been all preoccupied about playing dress-up for a stupid school dance and her best friend was embarking on one of the most exciting and terrifying journeys of her life.

“Not long. A week.”

“A
week
? You’ve known for an entire week and you didn’t tell me?” Lucy couldn’t imagine keeping something that huge from Jana, but then, this was huger than huge. Life-altering huge.

“You know I wanted to call you first thing, but Dave and I were sort of in a state of shock. I couldn’t even really process it. I mean, I was a few days late, which I figured was like Nature’s joke on me, just to psych me out or something. We’d really just gotten comfortable with the idea of not using anything, you know? It’s easy to say you want to start, but scary as shit when you actually don’t put that diaphragm in. Then,
bang!
, no period and, well, we both knew there was no way I was pregnant the first time out. But we went out and bought the tests.”

“Plural?”

Jana smiled a bit sheepishly. “You see one blue line and you don’t believe it. But when you’re surrounded by blue lines and pink X’s, well, it’s sort of hard to deny reality then.”

“How did Dave react?”

“We were both sort of stunned speechless. In fact, we’re still kind of in a daze. Like it’s not real yet. Except I’ve spent the past five days puking my guts up and it’s not because I ate the moo shu at Pagoda House again.” Again with the somewhat loopy-terrified grin. “So I guess it’s real.”

Lucy leaned forward and pulled Jana into a tight hug. “I’m so thrilled for both of you,” she whispered fiercely. “You’re going to be a great mom.”

Jana shuddered. “Please, dear God, don’t mention the M-word. Not yet.”

Lucy laughed. “You might want to start applying it, since you’re gonna come out the other side of this as one whether you want to or not.”

Jana shook her head. “I can’t even contemplate telling mine, much less think about all the ways I can screw up being one myself.”

“All first-time parents think that.”

Jana nodded. “Some with more reason than others.”

“I bet Dave isn’t worried.”

“About being a dad?” Jana paused for a second. “Once he gets the stupid I-knocked-her-up grin off his face, he might be. But, nah, you’re probably right. With his gargantuan family, he’s got nothing to worry about. He’s already diapered half of Quebec, just with his nieces and nephews alone.”

“When are you going to tell his family?” She knew Jana was in no hurry to tell her own mother, who would just as likely freak out at the prospect of being forced to admit she was a grandmother than anything else.

“Not until I’m through my first trimester. Unless he can’t wait that long. We’ll see them at Christmas like we always do.” She groaned. “I’m not even letting myself think about that. I’ll be suffocated.”

Privately Lucy thought that would probably be the best thing that could happen to Jana. But she knew better than to say it. “Well, I think it’s amazing and fantastic and I can’t wait to play Auntie Lucy.”

“Yeah, don’t be so smug, Auntie,” Jana informed her. “Just because you don’t have to lug this thing around in your stomach all winter and give birth to it at the end, don’t dare think I don’t have every intention of completely using you afterward. Dave and I will need personal time to deal with the whole being-parents thing, so you and Grady will be our default babysitters. Dirty diaper changes and all.” She pointed at Lucy. “Fair warning.” Then she snagged the cookie bag. “Now, can we please dive into that pizza? I’m eating for two here.”

Still digesting the whole idea of babysitting, Lucy didn’t move fast enough and Jana commandeered the pizza box, as well. “Should we, you know, call Grady?” Lucy asked. “Maybe if he knew your news, he’d get over being mad at me long enough to come celebrate with us.”

Jana flipped open the box and took out a heavily meat-laden slice.

Lucy craned her head to look over the lid. “What happened to our veggie special? You hate ‘greasy meat products’ on your pizza.”

“Apparently, pregnancy hormones bring out the carnivore in me. I’m just going to puke it all up, anyway,” she said, happily sinking her teeth into the cheesy slice.

“Gee, thanks for that lovely visual.” But Lucy’s stomach growled as the smell of bacon and sausage assaulted her senses. She snagged a slice of her own. “If I gain more weight during this pregnancy than you do, I’m going to make you pay. I don’t know how, but I will.”

“Yeah, body weight being such a big issue for you.”

Lucy snorted. “Says the woman who has never been called ‘scarecrow.’ ”

Jana patted her belly. “Which means you get to smirk when they call me ‘balloon belly.’ ”

“Except your balloon will naturally deflate,” she reminded her dryly. “Scarecrow is forever.” Just because Lucy was tall and skinny didn’t mean she’d thought of herself as having a good body. Ever. When you spend your adolescent years being called “beanpole,” “stick,” “praying mantis,” and the like, you didn’t look in the mirror and see Heidi Klum staring back at you. You saw knobby legs, scrawny arms, lumpy hair, and a seriously flat chest . . . no ass or hips, either. In her world, everything was baggy and shapeless, because she was shapeless.

And yet, somehow, Vivian had managed to find clothing—and padded lingerie—that created at least the illusion of a shapely figure. Vivian dePalma, the Houdini of dressers. Lucy had begun to see why she’d been so popular with the Hollywood stars. But she was still getting used to having clothing that felt so . . . binding. Even if it was the binding that created the curves in the first place. Slight as they were.

Beauty, it turned out, was a merciless mistress.

Chapter
14
                                                                                                                                       

I
t wasn’t until Jana had left several hours later that Lucy realized they never had called Grady. She stared at the phone in the kitchen as she shoved the half-empty pizza box into the fridge and tossed the empty soda cans in the recycling bin. It wasn’t her place to tell him. And Jana hadn’t said what she planned to do about telling the rest of the world, other than she didn’t want her editors to know until absolutely necessary. It was hard enough being a female reporter in the bastion of male-dominated sports. But surely she’d tell Grady.

Lucy snagged the crumpled bag of Milanos before retreating to her bedroom. If he called her, what would she say? They’d never kept anything from each other. It would feel weird, like lying by omission.

She snorted and shook a cookie loose before tossing the bag on her nightstand and heading off to turn on the shower. “Like he’s going to call me, anyway.” Her heart squeezed a little at that. She was alternately pissed or hurt at his recent cold shoulder. But at the moment, she just felt guilty. This was Jana’s time, and they had to be there for her, a united front.

She stepped into the shower and squirted on her specially purchased shampoo for highlighted hair, swearing when she raked her scalp with her acrylic tips before remembering, again, that she had talons now.

So, the only question was, would she just confront Grady on her own, tell him to act surprised when Jana spilled the beans, then demand he patch things up with her for their friend’s sake? Or did she hang back and hope he wasn’t being such an ass that he wouldn’t figure out for himself that their friendship came first?

She still hadn’t figured out what to do as she slathered on her tan-maintenance moisturizer and creamed the makeup off her face.
God, this is exhausting,
she thought, missing her old Dove-and-water routine. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

“You did the right thing,” she told her reflection. “You’ve finally figured out how to shed the ugly duck and don your inner swan.” Even she couldn’t spew that crap without laughing.

But as she yanked on her shapeless, comforting ratty old nightgown—so what if it was like a pacifier and she was pushing thirty—she admitted that, while she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the new Lucy, she wasn’t ready or willing to revert to the old one.

She unwrapped the towel from her head and was just detangling the snarls, which highlighting made worse, by the way, when there was a knock on her apartment door. She checked the clock, frowned, then scuffed to her front door and eyeballed the peephole.

An instant later she was flipping the locks and opening the door. “Grady? What are you doing here?”

“Any pizza left?” He didn’t even bother trying a sheepish smile, much less a single word of apology.

She knew this was the opportunity she’d so badly wanted, but now that he was here, unrepentant and looking tired and grumpy, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from bracing her arm on the door, blocking his entrance. “I let Jana take the leftovers home for Dave,” she lied. “The Pagoda House is still open this time of night.”

“Very funny.”

“Not really.” And she knew from the way he shifted his feet that he understood they weren’t talking about death-by-moo-shu.

“So, does that mean I can’t come in?”

“It depends. I’m really not in the mood for another lecture on the evils of self-improvement.”

“Good. I’m not in the mood to talk about the reunion. So we’re even.”

The comment stung, though she knew she probably deserved it. Even if he hadn’t been present for her endless analytical dissection since her return, no doubt Jana had filled him in.

“So what are you here to talk about?”

“Did you really send the rest of the pizza home with Jana?”

Lucy wanted to be mad at him. He’d abandoned her in her time of need. But then, she hadn’t been there for Jana when she should have been. Maybe Grady was also in the throes of some life-altering event and here she was making it all about her. “No. I was just trying not to be a pushover after being all but shunned for the past two weeks.”

“Not everything I do or don’t do is about you.”

Well. Hadn’t she just thought that? She should have been relieved. It wasn’t her. It was him. Except she was still pissed. “So your playing Invisible Man since you dumped me on my doorstep is all about you?”

His lips quirked a little, while his soulful eyes still managed to look a little sulky and oddly intense all at the same time—a Grady Matthews trademark.

“No,” he said flatly. “That was totally you.”

She started to close the door. He stopped it. For a guy with shaggy hair, who looked like the only muscle he flexed was the one between his ears, he had surprisingly fast reflexes. She knew it was from all the racquetball. So, okay, maybe it wasn’t just the puppy-dog eyes that attracted women.

“But this isn’t about either of us,” he told her.

Jana.
Had she called him after leaving earlier? “Okay.” She stepped back and let him in. “Help yourself to the pizza and I’ll be out in a minute. If I don’t finish detangling my hair, it will be murder with the flatiron tomorrow.”

Grady shot her an unfathomable look, but wisely remained silent. He just shook his head and sauntered to the kitchen.

“What?” she asked, knowing better, but when the hell had that ever stopped her? “What’s with the look?”

“You’re just so . . . girly now.”

She clasped her hand to her chest in mock horror. “Oh, my God, no. Not that. Please tell me it’s not true.” She flipped her wet hair at him and walked to her bedroom door. “And I thought tonight wasn’t about me.”

She closed the door behind her before she could hear his answer.