The Pregnancy Test (18 page)

M
andy picked at her chicken Caesar salad and worried. Caroline stared at her as she wiped her lips on a napkin. “You’re really worked up over him. You’ve fallen for Demon Sharpton, haven’t you?”

Her head snapped up, and Mandy glanced around the restaurant. They were just across the street from their office and anyone could be listening. That was the last thing in the world she needed, rumors running around the office about her and Damien. Not seeing any secretarial spies, Mandy waved away a fly and dropped her fork. “Is it that obvious?”

“I’ve never seen you like this.” Despite a summer breeze tumbling down Fifty-second as they ate outside, Caroline looked cool and put together.

As usual, Mandy felt as though she’d run an obstacle course on her way to lunch. She was hot, blown, and sticky. And she was certain her deodorant had given way on the elevator down.

“Ben certainly didn’t produce this kind of reaction from you. It makes me wonder if there is more to your feelings than you realize.”

Oh, she realized them all right. “I’m terrified that he’s got into trouble. We had this sort of fight yesterday at the ultrasound.” Maybe
fight
was the wrong word, but they’d certainly not left each other in a happy place. “Then he just took off. He never leaves the office like this. And he hasn’t even checked his e-mail. Where could he have gone?”

“Maybe he’s at home. Maybe he just needed a mental health day.” Caroline touched her hair, smoothing it. “Did you know that sixty percent of women and twenty percent of men have called off sick because of a bad hair day?”

Mandy knew without a doubt Damien wasn’t a contributor to that statistic. “Damien would not call off sick because his hair looked bad. He would be bleeding out his eyes before he called off work.” Which made her wonder if he was in his apartment, bleeding out his eyes.

Her stomach churned. “I don’t even know where he lives! Oh, my God. He could be dead.”

“If he was dead, he would not have had the forethought to cancel all his appointments first.” Caroline took a bite of her Cobb salad. “Why don’t you just call his cell phone? You’re his secretary. Surely you know his cell number.”

Mandy felt a huge sense of relief that she could contact him. “You’re right. I have it in my Palm Pilot.” She bent over and started digging around in her purse. “How did you know you were in love with Brad, Caroline? Was it this eureka moment?”

“Well, no, not really.” Caroline’s voice was puzzled. “I just knew that Brad was the man I wanted to spend my life with. I knew we were right for each other. And of course, I love him.”

Mandy lifted her head. She stared at Caroline, thinking that somehow her roommate had managed to do it all so nicely and cleanly. She’d met a responsible, attractive man at her previous job, dated, gotten engaged, bought a great apartment with him, and was planning the perfect wedding.

While Mandy was pregnant with one man’s child and in love with another.

She’d never thought of herself as a difficult person, but she sure in the hell wasn’t making things easy on herself either.

“Do you mind if I try Damien’s cell real quick?”

“No, go ahead.”

Mandy dialed Damien’s number on her phone and held her breath. After six rings, she was despairing and preparing to leave a rather pathetic sounding message when he answered.

“Damien! Oh, good, I’m so glad you answered.”

“Mandy?” His voice sharpened. “Is something wrong?”

Relief and irritation intermingled. “I could ask the same of you! I’ve been worried sick. Where are you?”

“Chicago. I had some things to take care of.” He sucked in his breath quickly.

“Chicago?” Mandy frowned. He’d just winged off to Chicago, canceling their dinner plans, and nothing was actually wrong? She thought she might be angry about that.

“You were worried about me?” He winced, then said, “Oww, damn it, that hurts.”

Well, excuse the hell out of her.

“Stop moving,” she heard someone say in the background.

“What are you doing?” If it was kinky and involved a woman, she was going to become seriously unpleasant.

“Getting a tattoo.”

Oh. That seemed as unlikely as him taking a bad hair day off, but then she remembered the tattoo on his arm. How she had suggested he get it fixed to cover Jess’s name—before she had known his wife had died.

“Where?” She wanted to confirm what she suspected. Crumpling her napkin, she waited for his answer.

“Over my old one.”

Mandy closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she thought it meant Damien was trying to leave the past behind. That he was trying to move forward.

Please, God, let moving forward include her.

Trying to make light of it, she swallowed hard. “Is it a demon?”

Instead of answering, he gave another wince. “So why were you worried about me?”

“Surely you’ve figured that out.” Probably everyone except Ben had figured it out. She felt she might as well be wearing a sticky note on her forehead announcing it. “It’s because I’m in love with you!”

And over the cell phone probably wasn’t the best way to tell him that for the first time.

“Shit,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if he’d been stabbed by a sharp needle or if her love caused him to swear. “You don’t mean that, you can’t mean that.”

Oh, the hell she couldn’t.

“I most certainly do mean that.” Mandy glanced over at Caroline, who was gaping at her, but now that she’d opened her mouth, she couldn’t stop. He had to know, had to understand how much he mattered to her, how wonderful she thought he was.

“I am in love with you, Damien. Completely and totally. So what are you going to do about it?”

There was a pause where her entire future hung in the balance, as traffic on the street shot past her and cigarette smoke from a pedestrian drifted up her nostrils.

Then he said, “I have to go.”

Not quite the sentiment she’d been hoping for.

“This is really uncomfortable, Mandy.”

Lovely. Her feelings made him uncomfortable. Her face went hot.

“I don’t remember this hurting so much the first time I did it.”

Even better. She was painful. Her mouth opened but no words came out.

“So let me call you back when I’m done getting the tattoo.”

He said goodbye and hung up before she could even say a word. Not that she could think of any. A strange wheezing sound came out of her mouth.

“What did he say?” Caroline was leaning across the table eagerly. “Did he say it back? God, I envy you the courage to just blurt it out like that.”

“He said he had to go. He’s getting a tattoo and he’ll call me back later.” It was a small comfort that he’d been talking about a needle and not her when he’d been using words like uncomfortable and painful. On second thought, no it wasn’t.

Caroline’s lip curled back in astonishment, and Mandy was so certain her face looked exactly the same that she covered her mouth and started to laugh. Air squeezed between her fingers and made a snorting sound.

She had blurted out her feelings for Damien, and he had rushed off the phone. It was so horrible it was almost comical. She had fallen into a country-western song.

Tossing her napkin on her plate, she said, “Gee, I’m so pleased I called him. Now I only need to be mortified instead of worried.”

It was one in the morning when Damien’s plane landed at LaGuardia. By the time he had waited in the cab line and ridden through the tunnel, it was two when he pulled up in front of Mandy’s building in the Village. He had been planning on picking her up there for the dinner plans they’d had the night before.

The plans he had canceled on her after he’d walked out of the hospital.

And now she’d told him she loved him.

Biting his fingernail, he climbed out with his carry-on and paid the driver.

She couldn’t mean it. She couldn’t possibly.

He wasn’t worthy of her love.

Damien took a deep breath and hit the buzzer for her apartment. His foot tapped impatiently on the sidewalk. The June evening air was humid but breezy, and it felt like rain might fall before the morning.

No one answered the buzzer. He hit it again, holding it longer than was courteous. But damn it, he knew she was in there, and he needed to talk to her. After his tattoo was completed, he’d finished up his business with George and caught the first plane back.

He needed to look her in the eye and tell her to stop feeling whatever she thought she felt for him.

Before he admitted that he loved her as well, however flawed that love was. Before she tried to convince him that it would be enough. Before he believed her and then later hurt her.

“Who the hell are you and why are you ringing my doorbell at two in the goddamn morning?”

That most definitely wasn’t Mandy’s voice. Damien had forgotten about her roommates. He’d also forgotten that most of the world was asleep at two in the morning.

“Uh, sorry. This is Damien Sharpton. I’m looking for Mandy. Is she there?”

“Of course she’s here, but she’s sleeping. Like a normal person who has to go to work the next day is.”

“Can you wake her up for me?” He was her boss, after all. He wasn’t going to dock her pay if she slept in tomorrow.

There was total silence for a good sixty seconds.

Damien hit the buzzer again. It got a reaction.

“Stop it, jerk! There are three other people still sleeping in this apartment.”

“They’ll all be awake if you don’t go get Mandy for me.” So he was being the jerk she’d labeled him, but there was no way he could go and wait until the morning. He just couldn’t. “Please? I really need to talk to her.”

The voice sighed into the intercom. She groaned. “You really won’t leave, will you?”

“No.”

With a slur on the character of his mother, she hit the buzzer to open the door. Damien grabbed it and ran up the three flights of stairs at top speed so she wouldn’t change her mind. He knocked on the door.

It yanked open, and a woman with long brown hair and even longer legs glared at him. “You’re a lunatic, you know that?”

“No, I’m just assertive.”

She rolled her eyes. There was only one muted lamp on behind her in the apartment and a dim hall light, but Damien could read the antagonism on her face. “Assertive…asshole. Same difference.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up. But I just got back from Chicago and I really, really needed to see Mandy, and I sort of forgot she has roommates.”

Damien suddenly became aware that she was basically in her underwear, and he started to question the wisdom of this impromptu visit. Not that she looked worried about the fact that she was in bikini panties and a tank top, but he felt something like embarrassment.

“Allison, did I hear the doorbell?” A blonde with white spots of cream all over her face stumbled down the hallway in blue satin pajamas with fat pink pigs on them.

“Yes, you heard the doorbell. Damien wants to see Mandy.”

The blonde’s head snapped up, and her eyes widened. “Mr. Sharpton? Oh, my God!”

Yep, this had been a bad idea. “Hi, Caroline. I, uh, didn’t recognize you there at first.”

Her hand flew to her head and the hair that normally was so well contained and was now puffy and flyaway.

He realized what a stupid thing that was to say.

Her hand moved to her face and touched one of the white spots.

Feeling extremely uncomfortable, he cleared his throat. “Sorry to wake all of you up. I just wanted to see Mandy for a minute.”

Caroline dropped her hand. Her eyes narrowed. “She was worried about you. I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you.”

It was a reprimand, plain and simple, for leaving without telling Mandy where he was going. He didn’t know what to say since she was most likely right, so he set his suitcase down and pushed down the expandable handle.

“Are you moving in?” Allison asked, sounding amused.

“I came straight from LaGuardia.”

Allison yawned. “First door on the right. Go for it. I’m going back to bed.”

She went down the hall, tugging her tank top down. But he’d already seen way more than he’d meant to, including her left butt cheek. With a grimace, he glanced at Caroline, who did not look pleased with him.

“You share a room with Mandy, don’t you?”

“Yes. Just let me grab my pillow and a blanket and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I’m not going to be that long,” he protested.

She snorted. The pink pigs on her shirt wiggled as she stomped into her bedroom and reemerged with a huge comforter and double-wide pillow. Passing him, she clipped him with her shoulder and stumbled a little. Damien reached out and tried to steady her, but she shook him off.

Feeling like a gigantic jackass, he went into the bedroom and stood still for a minute, adjusting to the dark. He could hear Mandy breathing in her sleep to his right. Some light filtered in through the white wood blinds and cast stripes on her legs, covered by a sheet.