He let out a contemplative breath. “Okay. I can respect that. And I appreciate it. So we’ll take this one step at a time. Start with the test. You could think about whether moving is something you’d consider and we’ll set something up to talk in a week?”
She nodded, relieved by his easy accommodation and perhaps by the distance he’d established between them with that last parting comment. It would be an appointment. Because they were going to handle this like business.
Exactly the way she wanted them to.
SIX
With his afternoon cleared, there was nothing Jeff would have rather done than call Connor. Tell his best friend he wasn’t the only one to pick up a souvenir in Vegas. Talk out the changes ahead of him and have the guy—the only guy on the planet who knew him as well as he knew himself—tell him he had his back.
But Connor had just reconciled with his wife—a woman he’d married within hours of meeting that same night Jeff met Darcy—and even if Jeff thought he could live with himself for interrupting them...he was fairly certain the two lovebirds were still off the grid.
Just as well.
There was someone else who deserved to know what was happening first.
Olivia. The woman he’d started a relationship with five weeks ago. The something Jeff had found to fill the empty spot in his life he’d only become aware of after Vegas.
Jogging across the marble-and-glass atrium, Jeff caught the elevator to Olivia’s top floor office.
How the hell was he going to explain this? And how would she take it?
Things had been going well with them. They’d been a smart fit from the start. Comfortable together, compatible.
She was open and pleasant. Harvard educated. Business savvy. Connected.
Two hours ago, he would have given it six months at the outside before he popped the question. And only because it seemed like an appropriate time to wait. In Olivia he’d found a woman who was all the things he’d known he wanted for a partner in life from as far back as he could remember—from the first time he looked across the table at his parents and thought to himself, someday, I want that.
The business journal over morning coffee. The dinners at the club. The shared interests for their shared lifestyle. The sparkling hostess championing the charities and foundations they supported.
It sounded shallow as he itemized it in his head, but it wasn’t.
He wanted the kind of good match that meant a lifetime of companionable, easy happiness. What his parents had up until the day five years ago when a heart attack took his father. The best man he’d ever know. The example Jeff had always hoped to live up to. Hell, he wished he was around to talk to about this.
Riding up to Olivia’s, he couldn’t help question what she would think when she looked at the woman he’d been with before her. The one who’d been his wake-up call about putting an end to the screwing around with women who weren’t right for him and thinking about getting serious with one who was. Settling down. Starting a family.
Olivia would see everything she wasn’t when she looked at Darcy.
And it would make her wonder.
Darcy had been a good time he hadn’t seen coming. And the only reason she’d gotten under his skin the way she had was because of the way she’d left.
So the chemistry between them had been hot enough that even months later, he could feel the lingering burn of it, so what? That was sex. Not exactly a foundation to build a solid forever on. But neither was it something he could, in good conscience, ignore when it came to a relationship with another woman.
“Hey, Mel. She in?” he asked, when he got to her office.
“She’s on a call. Should I interrupt?”
“No. I’ll wait.”
This was news he needed to tell her today and in person.
Sometime later, Jeff was searching stages of pregnancy on his phone, checking them against his calendar and travel commitments when Olivia’s office door swung open and she walked out to greet him with a welcoming smile.
“Jeffrey, what a wonderful surprise!”
“Got a few minutes for me?” he asked, unfolding from the deep sofa to lead her back into the office. And once there, he closed the door behind them. “Is it private in here?”
Olivia’s brow crumpled a bit at the question as she looked at the closed door behind him and then her neatly organized desk loaded with her current projects. “I was thinking you might be here to take me to lunch.” Her nose crinkled before reluctantly meeting his eyes again. “But are you here for something...else?”
A bark of laughter escaped him as he realized the direction of her thoughts. She’d thought he was here for some kind of afternoon desktop quickie. Yeah, now he got her confusion. It wasn’t exactly like that between them.
Shaking his head, he crossed to the cluster of club chairs across her office and held a hand out asking her to join him. “No, Olivia, I’m sorry. Something...unexpected has come up. We need to talk.”
A little furrow had cut between her delicate brows as she lowered herself into the chair across from him. “You’re worrying me, Jeffrey. What’s happened?”
Looking at her guileless face and earnest eyes, he wished there was some way to sugarcoat the bitter news he was about to give her. But it wouldn’t help either of them. “A couple of months before we met, I spent the night with a woman who came to my office today. She’s pregnant.”
Olivia sat stone still, her eyes gone wide. “Was there something between you?”
He opened his mouth to say no, but said instead, “It was one night.”
“Who is she? Would I know her? Is she the type to keep quiet? What does she want from you?”
“I doubt very much you know her, unless you’ve spent more time in Vegas than you let on.”
“She’s a stripper. Oh, God, Jeffrey, please tell me she isn’t a prostitute.”
“No!” He raked a hand back through his hair. “No, she was the waitress at a bar I was stuck at waiting for Connor the night he met Megan. I was killing time and one thing led to another.”
He didn’t like the sound of his explanation, but the deeper, expanded version of the truth wasn’t something Olivia needed to hear.
“You just found out? So, there hasn’t been any time for conclusive paternity testing, then. This baby might not even be yours. I mean, Jeffrey, one night with some Vegas cocktail girl three months ago. We don’t know anything yet.”
A part of him wanted to agree. Tell her she was probably right and to give him a few weeks to sort it out. Only she deserved the whole truth. “We’ll have the DNA testing done, but I already know this baby is mine.”
She didn’t ask for details but he could see the understanding in her eyes. The way the hope shifted toward disappointment.
She swallowed, withdrawing her hands from his to tuck them around her waist. “Are you going to marry her?”
Darcy’s emphatic pre-proposal rejection came to mind, pushing a wry smile to his mouth. “No.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding slowly before meeting his eyes with a steel he hadn’t encountered in hers before. “Then cut her a check.”
He stared hard at the woman seated across from him, the one he’d thought might be able to share his life. “To what, go away? Disappear?” He couldn’t even voice the next alternative he hoped to hell she wasn’t suggesting.
Something roared inside him, as a protective instinct churned hot in his gut. “It’s my child.”
“And we’ll raise it as ours,” she said quickly, taking his hands. “We’ll get married. Have a private adoption. We’ll craft an explanation to suit us both.”
Adoption. Of course, that’s where Olivia’s head would have gone first. Adoption and marriage. A neat package, except for the part where she’d completely discounted D
arcy as a part of the equation beyond a dollar amount on a check.
“Jeffrey, we have something here. Something I’ve been waiting to find for a very long time. We could make this work.”
Offering Olivia’s hand a quick squeeze, he pushed up from his chair.
He needed to cut Olivia some slack. She’d jumped to the wrong conclusion, probably because the few details he’d parceled out pointed that way. She was trying to come up with a solution to a problem he’d dropped in front of them. It just wasn’t the right one.
Walking over to the bank of windows, he rubbed his hand over his jaw. Darcy was right. They all needed a little time to get their heads around this new development.
“Darcy doesn’t want to give the baby up. She was offering me an opportunity to be a part of its life. Not to...option it off. You don’t know her.”
Olivia sat back, watching him the way he watched guys from across the conference table. Reading their tells and all the things their faces and bodies said without their mouths having to. “And you do?”
“Only enough to say, she wasn’t here to give her child up.”
“Okay. Then we’ll take it from there.” She followed him across the office, laying her hand gently over his arm.
“Olivia, I don’t know what this next year is going to bring. I think it might be better for everyone if we—”
“No. I’m not going to give up on us because things aren’t exactly the way I thought they would be.” She met his eyes. “We’re so well suited. So right. All I’m asking is you give us a chance before making any decisions. Please.”
Jeff wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She felt stiff against him. Like an off fit in a way he’d never noticed before.
Which he supposed made sense, considering he’d just put something between them neither of them knew exactly how to deal with. Now the least he could do was grant her request and give them a chance.
SEVEN
“You got the waitress pregnant?” Connor shook his head, rocking back on his bar stool as though the news had physically blown him over. “You’re sure? I mean, all the question marks...?”
Jeff nodded. “Had a DNA test pushed through, but even if I hadn’t—I’m sure.”
“A baby. How in the hell?”
At Jeff’s raised brow, the other man held up a staying hand.
“Don’t. I know how. Your dad did a bang-up job with the ‘talk’ back in high school. I just can’t believe—you—like this—now.” Then shooting him a concerned look, he asked, “Someone mentioned you were seeing Olivia Deveraux. That you two might be serious.”
“Before Darcy showed up at my office, I would have put money on a future with Olivia. But now.” Now, even two weeks later, he wasn’t any closer to knowing what their future held. Olivia hadn’t changed. “She wants it to work. Offered to marry me and adopt the baby.”
“Generous.”
“If Darcy were considering giving it up. But not for even a single second.”
He thought about her busting him looking at her narrow waist, and accusing him of trying to option her baby. Once again giving in to the reoccurring grin that stomped all over his face every time he thought about her outraged, accusing look, he held up his hands. “She’s going to be an amazing mother. You can see it.”
“Olivia?”
Jeff caught Connor’s stare and the subtle, unspoken question behind it. “Darcy. But, yeah, I’m sure Olivia would, too.”
Connor pushed his drink around in a neat square on the bar. “But you don’t see it with her?”
Worse, he wasn’t even sure he’d looked. Olivia had asked him to give them a chance and so far he hadn’t made the time to actually do it.
“I’ve been so focused on Darcy, there hasn’t been a lot of time for anyone or anything else. She’s living in San Francisco and I’ve been trying to talk her into moving down here. But she’s...stubborn. I think she intends to move, but not until the baby comes. She’s got a job and—” He shook his head. “And the job thing is a really big deal to her. But I’m not giving up. I want her here, like yesterday.”
“Am I missing something about the waiting tables thing? What the hell kind of job does she have that you can’t compete with it?”
Jeff rocked back in his chair and expelled a frustrated breath. “One she got for herself.”
Understanding lit Connor’s eyes. “She does know who you are, right?”
“She doesn’t care who I am.” He raked a hand through his hair. “She won’t take any money until the baby comes. And, damn it, she’s just very independent...and stubborn.”
Connor’s brows pulled together and his jaw cocked to one side.
Jeff scowled at him. “It’s not like that. Even if Olivia weren’t in the picture. We’ve already agreed, in no uncertain terms, neither of us is interested in picking things up from where we left them. What Darcy is to me is the most important person in the life of the most important person in mine. Our relationship is going to be about this kid and it’s got to work forever. Which means there’s too much at stake to risk any potential friction over some affair gone bad.”
And he knew from experience what the fallout from a failed relationship could cost.
Connor took a swallow of his drink. “Right. Definitely not worth the risk for an affair.”
Jeff stared at him. “I’m serious.”
A nod. “Okay.”
Oh, that burned. “Bite me.”
Connor grinned and flagged the bartender for the tab. “Sorry, my friend. Megan doesn’t share.”
* * *
The elevator doors opened at the eleventh floor and Jeff followed Olivia down the hall toward her apartment.
She cast a bright smile over her shoulder at him, her efficient steps eating up the distance to her door. “Thank you for dinner tonight. I know how busy you’ve been.”
That was Olivia. Not raking him over the coals. Sensitive to the situation he was in while letting him know she still enjoyed seeing him when the opportunity arose. He hadn’t meant for their relationship to fall by the wayside, but he’d been neglecting her for weeks. Working long hours and even through the couple of times he’d taken her out, he’d been distracted. There, but not really there. Because being with Olivia wasn’t enough to keep his mind from visiting all the places he didn’t want it to go. To Darcy.
To the space he was trying to give her, and how hard he was trying not to hate the space she already had. To wondering what she’d do if he pushed too hard.
It wasn’t fair. But Olivia had been so accommodating. Assuring him she understood. He shouldn’t put her off. He shouldn’t be able to.
And yet, as he walked behind her his mind kept drifting to another woman. How she was feeling? If anyone was making her laugh? If her belly was starting to show?
“You’re coming in?” Olivia asked at her door, putting the breaks on a train of thought threatening to go off the rails and pulling him back to the woman who ought to be holding his attention for the few hours they had together.
She was watching him expectantly. As if she knew, mentally he’d already dropped her at her door and was halfway back to the office. Where he’d have a fighting chance of losing himself in work.
“Olivia,” he started, catching her chin in the crook of his finger. “I’ve got a call scheduled with Hong Kong in three hours.”
She leaned a shoulder against the frame of the door and looked him over assessingly.
“Then you’ve got two and a half to spend with me.” Her fingers wrapped around his tie to tug him closer. “I know you’ve been waiting, not pushing the physical element of our relationship out of respect for me, but it’s time. You need a distraction, Jeff. Let me help you forget for a while.”
Respect. Maybe that was part of what had been holding h
im back. But to really respect her meant acknowledging that not taking the next physical step in their relationship had been far too easy. She deserved better than to be used as a distraction. And far, far better than a distraction he already knew wouldn’t work.
He’d tried to tell himself this was the woman for him. The perfect fit he’d imagined her to be when they first started seeing each other. Because she’d been so different from the one who’d walked away... But once Darcy stepped back into the picture he’d started making comparisons.
“Jeff, you said you’d give us a try. Can’t you please, come in and let me show you how it could be between us, if you let it?”
He hated the pleading in her eyes, hated knowing it was about to turn to hurt. But it was, because his hands had already moved to her shoulders, gently putting the space back between them. “I’m sorry, Olivia.”
* * *
Oh, no, not again.
Darcy sat at the folding table in the suddenly too warm back room of the party coordinating business where she’d been hired to inventory catering supplies, stuff envelopes, assemble favors, scoop birdseed satchels and anything else the overbooked business needed assistance with during their seasonal rush.
The pay wasn’t great, but she’d been lucky the manager of the restaurant where she’d been working had put in a good word with the owner to get her the temporary position. And at least she was maintaining an income, if somewhat reduced.
A few more weeks and the nausea would ease because it couldn’t get any worse. And once her stomach was back under control—
As if on cue, her belly lurched again.
“You okay?” her boss asked from the open doorway.
Darcy pushed to her feet, lifting a hand to let the older woman know she was fine. Except the shrinking edges of the room hazing into sepia tones warned she wasn’t.
She tried to get a hand back to the table, but too quickly everything went loose and dark and down until there was only one thought left in her head...and that was the silent plea that her baby be okay.