The Pregnancy Test (15 page)

He never did that. He never spoke about Jess like that out loud. He never talked about the arrest, the charges, the feeling that he might as well be dead like Jess. He had felt empty, soulless, when they had charged him with her murder. And only marginally less so when the grand jury had voted not to indict him.

But the reins of his tight control slipped through his fingers at Rob’s accusation. He felt anger, hot and bright. He couldn’t have anything he wanted, and yet his only friend had the balls to accuse him of feeling sorry for himself?

“Look, Damien, I know you’ve been through some serious stuff. But I’ve known you since we were kids. We’ve got a lot of history, and you’re just not the same guy anymore.”

No shit. When had Rob figured that out? Damien had known it for a long time. “Of course not. I can’t be the same stupid kid I was, the one who thought my dad was as strong as a superhero and that my mom was the perfect woman. I can’t be the same stupid twenty-two-year-old who met Jessica and thought I’d be happy and in love for the rest of my life.”

Rob shook his head. “If I could go back to that day at the lake, the day you and I cut out of work at the bank early to hit the beach, I would. I’d throw the football the other way so it wouldn’t hit Jessica’s friend…what was her name?”

“Patty.” Damien’s maki churned in his gut. He remembered that day with agony. Patty had been a flirty little thing, who had zeroed in on Rob after he’d beaned her with the football on accident. Jessica had been more aloof. It had taken Damien the whole afternoon to convince her to give him her phone number.

“Even though she was a hot little thing and we had a fun weekend together, I wish I’d never met Patty so you had never met Jessica. Because ten years later she’s still fucking with you.”

“She’s not fucking with me. She died. That wasn’t her fault.”

But Rob gave a sound of exasperation. “It’s not her fault she was murdered, of course not, and I wouldn’t wish that on any woman. I’m damn sorry that happened to her, I really am. But apart from all of that, before that, you have to recognize that Jessica was just a bitch, Damien. She was a bitch the day we met her and she was a bitch every day after that. She played you for all you were worth.”

Damien’s face went cold. He sat very, very still, thinking it was a good thing they were sitting in a restaurant, because he felt like pounding Rob. It was wrong to say those things about Jessica. “That’s my wife you’re talking about.”

Rob’s voice was low, urgent, his hand gripping the table. “I know that. And maybe you’ll never talk to me again after today, but I have to say this. I can’t stand watching you die a little day by day, becoming this person I don’t know. You’re miserable. Tell me this—when you think of Jessica, are your memories happy?”

No. The answer was in his head before he could consider it. Of course he had some pleasant memories of Jessica. He had loved her, in his own youthful, flawed way, and there had been some fun times. They had been married, they’d lived together, they’d made love. But something had always been wrong between the two of them, and they both had known it. He was always insecure that she would throw in the towel on their relationship, and smart woman that she was, Jessica had always used that to her advantage.

“That doesn’t change the fact that she was killed.” Something he had never really dealt with. He knew what had been done to her in excruciating detail thanks to his grand jury indictment, but he hadn’t dealt with any of that. He had rammed it into a dark, hidden corner of his head to prevent him from losing his mind.

“No, no it doesn’t.” Rob ran his fingers through his hair. “But you need to let go of your relationship, don’t you think? Don’t you deserve a chance to be happy?”

But Jessica had never been happy. Running the tip of his finger over a stray grain of rice on the table, Damien told the truth. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I deserve anything.”

“If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?”

Mandy. And her baby. The realization didn’t surprise him at all. The knowledge had been creeping in for days. He cared about Mandy, he worried about her and the baby, he wanted to protect them. “A family. I would want a family.” But he was broken, inside, and couldn’t expect any woman to take that on.

“Your mother asks my mother about you all the time, you know. She wants to know if I’ve seen you, how you’re doing, if you’re dating. I tell my mom I don’t know, because I don’t. I don’t know you. Maybe that’s a good place to start—talk to the people who actually still like you.”

Damien snorted, feeling something deep inside of him that was almost like hope. It was such an alien feeling he wasn’t sure he understood it right. But Rob made sense. He didn’t know how to lay Jessica to rest, but he could reach out to the people he loved, let them know he did care, that he would try to dig inside and find the parts of him he’d thought were gone. Parts that Mandy had proven still existed.

“Are you going to charge me for this psychobabble?” But he slapped Rob on the back to show he was kidding.

Rob gave a grin, but his eyes were searching. “No, but you have to buy lunch.”

“I can do that. And Rob, you pushed your luck with calling Jessica a bitch, but I’m still talking to you. And thanks for still talking to me after all these years.”

That was as gushy as he was willing to get, but Rob seemed to get the message.

He picked up his chopsticks again. “That’s what friends are for.”

Damien decided it felt good to have a friend again. And maybe, if he couldn’t offer Mandy a real relationship, he could be her friend.

I
f Damien sent her one more link on the benefits of breastfeeding, Mandy was going to shove a breast pump up his nose.

This was not how she had envisioned the first two weeks back to work after Punta Cana. Frankly, she had been concerned that Damien would be overtly sexual to her, shooting her hot glances and brushing body parts along hers so that she was in a constant state of arousal.

She had worried that if he was suggestive in any way to her, she would crumble like a cookie and leap into bed with him, forgetting all her concerns.

She needn’t have worried.

Damien was being as sexual as a bath mat.

No, he wasn’t interested in her at all. But he was fascinated by her pregnancy. He had purchased his own copy of
The Everything Guide to Pregnancy
, along with a half a dozen other books, which she had seen on his desk, and he quoted from them quite frequently in the deluge of e-mails he sent her every day.

She had seen him in person only once, and that had been a mistake on her part. She’d been sneaking in some phone messages to put on his desk, and he’d caught her on the way out. But what could have been awkward, or sensual, had seemed to her just rather friendly. He had been big smiles and all kind concern.

It was infuriating.

And now she was in her cubicle, trying to banish all thoughts of him from her head, when she saw in her inbox she had three e-mails from Damien.

With a sigh, she tucked her feet under her rolling chair and clicked the first one. She was wearing a tight stretchy maternity top, and it kept riding up and exposing her stomach. Tugging it down for the twelfth time, she glanced through Damien’s message.

This looks cool.
And there was a link for a cot that turned into a toddler bed, then an adult full bed.

“Oh, my God.” She brushed her hair back. He was checking out baby furniture for her. It wasn’t at all obvious to her how they had reached this point in their relationship.

But it was a rather pretty cot. Damien had good taste. It was a sleigh bed. Glossy, rich wood, dressed up with a pink lace ruffled comforter. Then Mandy saw the price and gasped. It was two thousand dollars. She didn’t have two thousand dollars.

By the time she had paid off her debts from the shop, paid closing costs, and had invested five hundred dollars in maternity clothes, she had only enough left over for a nest egg. Money for emergencies. Rent money for when she was on her six weeks without pay maternity leave. Not money for buying two-thousand-dollar baby beds.

If she had to, she’d ask her parents for the money, of course, but the thought made her wince.

Then there was Ben. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with him, or how to maneuver her way through their new relationship as parents-to-be who weren’t dating. Could she ask him to split the cost of the furnishings? Was that tacky? Was it too much, too little?

Ben had called several times, suggesting they go to dinner and talk, but she had been putting him off. It wasn’t something she could do indefinitely, but she found she couldn’t think about Ben without getting angry over his initial offer of money to relinquish his responsibilities. It wouldn’t serve either of them if they met and she was angry, so she felt as though she needed to work through that before she saw him.

Not to mention, she had the sneaking suspicion he wanted to leap right back into bed with her, which was not going to happen.

Sighing, she clicked on Damien’s next e-mail. It was a link to childbirth classes at the hospital.

Have you signed up yet? Most seem to last six to eight weeks and suggest starting at twenty-eight to thirty weeks gestation.

She almost wanted to laugh. If she didn’t know how to categorize Ben, she sure in the hell didn’t know what to do with Damien.

And while she knew they couldn’t renew their physical relationship, and that it wasn’t practical that they could be friends when he was her boss and she was pregnant with another man’s child, they had slept together. She thought about Damien nonstop. She cared about him a great deal, which she could admit when she was feeling honest. And she worried that he needed something more than she had been able to give him.

He needed to relax, not work so hard. He needed a distraction, and not one that was her baby. Because that was driving her batty.

His final e-mail was actually work related, of all things, and Mandy was typing a response to his inquiry when her instant message window popped up. She knew it was Damien before she even read it because of the ring tone she had set up exclusively for him.

Have you thought of any names?

Names for what?

She lost the thread of what she’d been typing in the e-mail and sighed with frustration. Maybe she needed more sleep. Her ability to do two things at once seemed to have disappeared lately.

The baby.

Of course. Why didn’t she think of that? It made perfect sense for her to discuss naming her child with her male boss. She debated telling him she hadn’t thought of any, but she did want to put out feelers about a couple of names. Somehow it seemed more natural to do that with Damien than it did with Ben, which was completely wrong, but it was too late to fix that.

I was thinking about Cecilia for a girl and Simon for a boy.

Her heart swelled a little at the thought of giving a name to her child. Giving him or her an identity.

I don’t know…those sound very British.

All the good feelings she’d been having fled.

I am British!

“Bloody idiot.”

Mandy’s groan of frustration was so loud that the woman in the cubicle next to her peered around at her. “You okay?”

“Yes, I’m just thinking that my boss is insane.” What on earth made Damien wonder at eleven
A.M.
on a Tuesday more than four months from her due date what she was going to name her baby? And then criticize her choice.

The woman next door laughed. “All bosses are insane, but I’ve heard yours is the worst.”

That brought Mandy up short. “Oh, he’s not so bad as all that.”

He wasn’t bad at all, in fact. Damien was at least asking—that was more than she could say for Ben. He seemed more concerned with investigating her new breasts than wondering about their child. Maybe she wasn’t being fair to him, but then again, maybe she wasn’t being fair to Damien.

I was thinking that Rebecca is a nice name.

Did he now? And who the hell had asked him? Pursing her lips together, Mandy clicked the “close” button to get rid of the offensive window.

She was done with that conversation.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t get rid of her thoughts about Damien as easily as that window. Especially when the tickets she’d ordered for the Saturday Yankees game showed up in her mail at the office.

She had bought them in a moment of weakness, thinking that Damien really needed to pursue outside interests. At the time, she had been secretly hoping those outside interests would involve her and how many sexual positions they could try, but she realized now that was exactly the wrong thing to do.

She’d told herself all along that she couldn’t get involved with Damien, long term or short term. She had a child and Ben to contend with. But that didn’t stop her from repeatedly entertaining making love to Damien again.

So she had ordered the tickets as a reminder to him of their time together. But Damien seemed completely over his attraction to her, given all the energy he’d put into pursuing her since their return.

Which was none. He hadn’t once even tried to see her in person, yet he’d obviously spent hours surfing the Internet looking up baby furniture and birthing classes.

The tickets shouldn’t go to waste, but she didn’t think she could spend an afternoon listening to Damien extol the virtues of breastfeeding.

As far as she knew, Rob Turner was Damien’s only friend in the office. She’d take the tickets to him and suggest he invite Damien. If she gave the tickets directly to Damien, she had no doubt he would stick them in his fastidious drawer and never use them.

Rob was hanging up his phone when she knocked on his open door. He looked at her curiously. “Mandy, isn’t it? Come on in.”

“Thanks.” Feeling a bit ridiculous, she slapped the envelope with the tickets in her hand. “I was wondering if you’re busy Saturday. I’ve got tickets for the Yankees game and I thought you might like to go.”

His eyebrows shot straight up. “Does Damien know? Because I kind of thought you and he…”

Mandy stared at him for a second, not sure what he meant. Then she felt her face flush. “Oh, God! I didn’t mean you and me. I meant you and Damien.”

Rob laughed, but she wasn’t feeling very funny at the moment.

“Oh, okay. But what a disappointment for me.” He winked at her.

Embarrassed, she rambled on. “If I give the tickets to Damien, he won’t go. He’ll just come up with some excuse and work the whole day. So I thought if you dragged him there, at least he’d get out a bit.”

That little speech had been way too revealing, given the fact that Rob’s grin fell right off his handsome face. “It sounds like you know Damien pretty well.”

She shrugged.

“Why don’t you go with him? Given the way he talks about you, he’d rather be with you than me.”

She would not ask, she would not ask…

“He talks about me?”

Rob nodded. “He’s mentioned you quite a bit. And though he hasn’t said anything specific, I get the feeling something happened between the two of you in Punta Cana. And if that’s the case, I’m happy for both of you. Damien needs someone in his life.”

Rob leaned back, tipping his whole chair off the ground. He had a stress ball in his hand, and he tossed it up in the air.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted, because sooner or later people were going to figure it out, and given the whispers she’d heard from some of the other secretaries, they were already wise to her situation. It was getting hard to hide. And she wanted Rob to stop his thoughts there, because she didn’t want any rumors swirling about her and Damien. Nor did she want Rob suggesting to Damien that they could have a future together.

Rob’s stress ball plummeted to his desk. His feet hit the floor hard. “Are you serious?” He glanced at her stomach. “Well, hell, that’s the best damn thing that could have happened to Damien.”

Mandy clenched her teeth. Damn it, she was making a complete muck of this. “It’s not his.”

His eyes narrowed. “Come again?”

“Damien isn’t the father.” And for the first time, she was willing to admit that she almost wished he were.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” What did she look like?

Rob sighed. “Oh. All right. I’ll take the tickets then.” He held out his hand. “It’s a damn shame though. I thought you might be the woman who could finally get through to Damien.”

“He doesn’t see me that way.” She was still hurt and seething over that. “He thinks I’m a good assistant, and he’s curious about the baby. That’s all there is between us.”

His hand closed around one end of the envelope she held out to him. “You’re wrong. He’s attracted to you and trying to pretend he isn’t. You’re the first woman I’ve seen him have any interest in since Jess.”

Mandy dropped the envelope with the tickets. “You care about him.”

Rob nodded. “I’ve known Damien all my life. You should have seen him before. He was a great guy.”

“He still is,” she whispered.

And she meant it.