Black Ties and Lullabies, page 11
Being a father was one thing. Being a father of twins? He couldn’t even fathom that. Then he thought back to something Bernie said yesterday that sounded like a challenge he had to rise to.
My child could do so much better. Unfortunately, he’s stuck with you.
When she said that, Jeremy felt as if she’d slapped him. Where fatherhood was concerned, he knew he stood an excellent chance of screwing it up. But when he realized Bernie thought so, too, something inside him had snapped, and he felt as if he had as much to prove to her as he did to himself.
He took a deep breath. Let it out. Spent the next few minutes trying to think of a controlled, workable way he could deal with her and the babies she was carrying. He would have thought that magnifying the problem times two might make it easier to sort out, but it only made things even more complicated. Two babies, two babies, two babies…
The words reverberated inside his head until he thought his skull was going to explode.
A few minutes later, his phone rang. He looked at the caller ID, then answered. “Max? What’s up?”
“Bernie’s gone.”
Jeremy snapped to attention. How did he even know she was here in the first place? “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“She left the building through the back door and drove away. Five minutes later, you’re still in there, so I thought maybe you weren’t aware that she’d left the premises.”
Jeremy couldn’t believe this. Bernie had given him the slip? He’d been sitting in here waiting for her, and she was already out the door?
Well, that was just great. And wasn’t it great, too, that Max saw Bernie and assumed she was the reason Jeremy was here? Why else would Max alert him to the fact that she was gone?
“Bring the car around,” Jeremy said.
“Yes, sir.”
Jeremy stuffed the phone back into his pocket and headed for the door. As he walked outside, Max swung the car to the curb and he got in the backseat.
“Where to, sir?” Max asked, putting the car in gear.
Jeremy slipped out his iPhone. Opened his address book. “Creekwood Apartments. Fifteenth and Sycamore. Apartment two-fourteen.”
Max glanced in the rearview mirror. “I wouldn’t recommend that, sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s Bernie’s apartment, and it seems she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Watch yourself, Delinsky. This is none of your business.”
Max shifted the car back into park, then turned around to face Jeremy in the backseat. “I know she’s pregnant.”
That statement didn’t come as a huge surprise to Jeremy. Chances were that everybody at Delgado & Associates knew it.
“And from what I’ve seen today,” Max went on, “it appears you’re the father.”
Jeremy froze. He hadn’t expected such an in-your-face accusation from a man with barely functioning vocal cords. He considered denying it, but it was pretty clear what was happening here, and this was all going to come out in the open soon enough, anyway.
“That’s right,” Jeremy said. “I’m the father.”
“There’s an obstetrician’s office inside that building.”
“Yes.”
“Why did she leave without you knowing it?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Slowly Max slipped off his sunglasses, revealing those dark, piercing eyes and a wicked slash of a scar on his left orbital bone. “Bridges?”
Jeremy was instantly aware of the absence of the “Mr.” that Max always inserted before his last name.
“I don’t know what’s going on between you and Bernie,” Max said, “and I don’t need to know. But I will tell you this. She’s a good person. If you hurt her in any way, you’ll answer to me. Are we clear on that?”
Jeremy was flabbergasted. Was this man actually threatening him? He leaned toward Max with an unblinking stare. “One phone call to Gabe Delgado about your insubordination, and you no longer work for me. Are we clear on that?”
Max’s gaze never faltered. “Make the call.”
Jeremy slumped back against the seat. “Good God, do you want to lose this job?”
“Nope. I just want to make sure we understand each other. Do we?”
For a second or two, Jeremy was on the verge of making good on his threat, only to think again. If Max was this protective of Bernie, they were better friends than he’d realized, so firing Max wouldn’t exactly put him in Bernie’s good graces. And right now, that was where he needed to be until he could get this whole mess sorted out.
Jeremy swallowed his anger and spoke evenly. “I have no intention of hurting her.”
With a slight nod, Max put his sunglasses back on and turned back around in his seat. Great. From now on, Jeremy was going to be forced to spend time in this car with a grizzly bear of a man who was just looking for a reason to rip through his jugular.
“She’s upset because she just found out she’s having twins,” Jeremy said.
True to his nature, Max didn’t overreact. He merely glanced at Jeremy in the rearview mirror. “Then you can take my warning times two.”
Bastard.
Jeremy had to practically sit on his hands to keep from calling Delgado, but what would it accomplish? It would only make Bernie even more irritated with him than she already was. Still, somebody needed to take control of this situation, and judging from Bernie’s state of mind, Jeremy had already decided that somebody was going to be him.
Chapter 13
Bernie sat on the sofa in her living room, staring like a zombie at the wall, her hands resting on her abdomen. She’d managed to absorb the fact that she was having one baby, but to find out she was having two made her brain waves flatline.
This isn’t real. It’s a nightmare. Be patient—you’ll wake up in a moment and this will all be over.
Then she heard a knock at her door, jolting her out of her trance. Was that part of her nightmare, too?
She rose and looked through the peephole. Yep, nightmare. Jeremy had actually followed her home.
She didn’t want to talk to him. She felt stupid for flipping out the way she had at the doctor’s office, but if she hadn’t shut him down, he would only have started in with his usual way of handling things, which included commanding and controlling at all costs. And if she let him in and he went off like that, she might just rip his head off, and the last thing she needed was a murder accusation. Being pregnant with twins was one thing. Being pregnant with twins in prison was quite another.
Jeremy knocked, louder this time. “Bernie! Answer the door!”
Bernie continued to look out the peephole, willing him to go away.
“I’m not going away!” he said.
So much for her willpower.
Bernie grabbed her cell phone and dialed Max’s number. The line clicked. “Hey, Bernie. What’s up?”
“I assume you’re in Jeremy’s car downstairs?”
“Yep.”
“Uh… you probably know the whole story by now, don’t you?”
“What? That Bridges is the father, and you’re having twins?”
Leave it to Max to get right to the point. “Yes. And right now, he’s banging on my door, and I just don’t want to deal with him now. Can you make him go away?”
“Sorry, Bernie. No can do.”
“Come on, Max. Help me out here!”
“For now, Bridges is calling the shots on my end. Here’s some advice.”
“What?”
“If you don’t deal with him now, you’ll deal with him later, so just go ahead and deal with him now.”
“Bernie!” Jeremy shouted. “Open the door!”
She slumped with resignation. Max was right, of course. Avoidance only bought her another day or two of worry until he showed up again.
“Bernie?” Max said.
“Yeah?”
“Gotta admit it was a hell of a surprise. How did you and Bridges… you know—get to where you are now?”
Bernie sighed. “I’d have to be extremely intoxicated to tell that story.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it.”
Yeah, buy me a six-pack in about eighteen years.
With a sigh of extreme frustration, Bernie laid down her phone, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
“It’s about time,” Jeremy said as he swept into her apartment. “I was beginning to think you hadn’t come home, except your car is out front. Which suggests—crazy as it seems—that you may have been ignoring me.”
“May have been ignoring you?”
“You shouldn’t have left alone. You’re not thinking straight.”
“Will you stop being so condescending? Of course I’m thinking straight!”
“Yeah? Then why do you have your shirt on backward?”
Bernie flicked her gaze down to look at herself. Damn.
The longer he stared at her, the dumber she felt. She brushed past him and went to her kitchen. For what, she wasn’t sure, but she was absolutely sure she wanted to escape his prying eyes. “You can go home now, Bridges. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with this by myself.”
“Yeah? Well, you went a little nuts in the doctor’s office.”
She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “I was just surprised at the news. That’s all.”
“Freaked out is more like it. But you know, I’ve been thinking. This might actually work out pretty well.”
“Oh, yeah? How’s that?”
“You’re having twins,” he said. “One for me, one for you.”
Bernie wheeled on him. “For God’s sake! They’re not a pair of Twinkies!”
“Will you laugh a little? It won’t kill you.”
“Is everything just a big joke to you?”
“Sometimes you gotta laugh, or you’ll cry.”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Bernie felt her eyes fog up. Then they burned a little. Oh, God.
Tears?
For one of the few times in her tightly controlled life, the power of suggestion had power over her. She tried to blink them away, but she wasn’t having much luck. If it were up to her, she’d damn all female hormones to hell.
“Oh, crap,” Jeremy said, his joking expression vanishing. “I didn’t mean you actually had to choose.”
“I’m not choosing,” she snapped, turning her back to him as she unscrewed the cap of the water bottle. “And I’m not crying. I don’t cry.”
“Oh. My mistake.”
Damn it, now her nose was running. She set down the water bottle, grabbed a napkin, and wiped her nose surreptitiously. “Two babies is just kind of overwhelming, and crying is a reflex. That’s all.”
“Right. A reflex.”
And just like that, the reflexive action kicked in again, and she grabbed another napkin to wipe her eyes. Don’t do this. Don’t start crying, or you may never stop. She started toward her bedroom, just in case the eternal weeping was about to begin.
“Where are you going?” Jeremy asked.
“To turn my shirt around.”
“The shirt doesn’t matter. Sit down for a minute.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
But as she brushed past him, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to the sofa. “Forget the shirt.”
“Bridges—”
“Sit.”
With a heavy sigh, she sank to the sofa. He went to the kitchen, grabbed a stack of napkins, and plopped them onto the coffee table in front of her. But she didn’t need them, because by God, she was not going to cry. At least, not much.
But two babies? How was she ever going to deal with that?
“Look, I have enough problems already,” she said. “The last thing I need is you adding to them.”
“Problems? What problems?”
“None of your business.”
“Have you been able to work?”
“That’s none of your business, either.”
“Let’s get something straight, Bernie. You’re carrying my children—”
“Our children.”
“—which means ‘none of your business’ is no longer an acceptable answer. Are you going to be able to work?”
She paused. “Not as a bodyguard.”
“Yeah. Pregnancy would tend to make that a nonstarter. So what are your job plans?”
Bernie hated this. Saying it out loud made it sound even more mundane, boring, and dead-end. “If you must know, I talked to Gabe Delgado. He has a contract job for me at the Lone Star Museum of Art monitoring their security cameras.”
Jeremy shook his head. “You’re not cut out to sit at a desk all day. You’ll be miserable.”
“For the next week or two at least, I probably won’t feel like doing much else.” She dropped her head to her hands, then rubbed her temples.
“What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked.
“Head’s swimming a little. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh. Probably aggravated by all that crying you’re not doing.”
“It’s just morning sickness.”
“I thought that was a stomach thing.”
“Nope,” she said, lifting her head again. “It’s more like an ‘every organ in your body’ kind of thing.”
“How can you have morning sickness when it’s not morning?”
“I don’t know why they call it that. It lasts all day and halfway into the night. But it’s way better than it was, which tells you how bad it used to be.”
She took a deep, cleansing breath that did no good at all. Another breath. Same story. Maybe she should stop breathing altogether. That would definitely solve her problem.
The distant sound of music wafted through the air. Jeremy glanced out the window, where her neighbor across the way sat on his balcony playing his guitar. The guy had spiky red-tipped hair and was tattooed just about everywhere that showed. Bernie had met him. He was nice enough. He just looked a little… alternative. Judging by the way Jeremy twisted his mouth with disgust, he thought the guy was a little too alternative.
“I can’t believe you live in a place like this,” Jeremy said.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Weird people. Potholes all over the place. Peeling paint. The stair railing outside is falling out of the wall.”
Damn. With everything going on, she’d forgotten to call Charmin again about that damned railing.
“I paid you really well for two years,” Jeremy went on. “You could have spent an extra three or four hundred a month and found a decent place to live. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I like saving money.”
“Yeah? What good will those savings do you when you’re attacked by some lunatic?”
“Do you have to be so dramatic? You know I can take care of myself.”
“Under normal circumstances, of course you can. But pregnant women make excellent targets.”
“Will you stop? You’re just comparing this place to that castle you live in. This is where normal people live.”
“Yeah? I saw a few out front who were decidedly abnormal.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve met a lot of men in business suits who were rotten to the core. Most of the people who live here are just regular people who are trying to get by.”
“I’m the father of the babies you’re carrying,” Jeremy said, “so I should have some say-so when it comes to your health and well-being. And you won’t be healthy and well very much longer living in a place like this. Move somewhere else.”
Bernie wanted to pull her hair out. Here he was, acting as he always did, as if the entire population of the world should fall in line the moment he snapped his fingers. He saw absolutely nothing wrong with that, but in Bernie’s eyes, there wasn’t anything that wasn’t wrong with it. The moment she let him dictate something as basic as where she lived, she’d be under his thumb from now on.
“You’re not telling me where to live,” she said. “And it’s a moot point anyway. Even if I wanted a nicer apartment, I couldn’t afford it.”
“Uh… have we met before?” He held out his hand. “Hello, I’m Jeremy Bridges. I’m a multimillionaire.”
She took his hand. “Hello, Mr. Bridges. I’m Bernie Hogan, the mother of these babies, and you’re keeping your money to yourself.”
He pulled his hand away. “So you’re telling me you’d deprive your children of a decent place to live when their father can easily foot the bill for it?”
“When that money comes with so many strings attached that it chokes their mother to death, you bet your life I would.”
“I’m just offering to help. What’s wrong with that?”
What was wrong with that? Was he serious?
“It might interest you to know,” Bernie said, “that your paternity can’t be legally established until after these babies are born. Until then, I have sole custody and all the rights that go along with that.” She stood up, suggesting it was time for him to go. “In other words, I don’t have to listen to a damned thing you say.”
Jeremy stared at her a moment through narrowed eyes, then stood up beside her, shaking his head. “My God. Tell me you’re not that naive.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you actually think a recitation of your legal rights is going to make me go away?”
He spoke with such conviction that she couldn’t help feeling intimidated, especially with him staring down at her as if he held all the cards. She inched closer, folding her arms and staring up at him.
“You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” she said. “Having a baby is no walk in the park. Neither is taking care of one. Or two, as the case may be.”
“People have been doing it since the dawn of time.”
“How did you like going to the doctor with me today? Feel right at home? Can’t wait to go back?”
“It was an interesting experience.”
“Interesting. Uh-huh. Trust me when I tell you—it’s only going to get harder from here.”
“I built a multimillion-dollar business from the ground up in an economic climate that should have chewed me up and spit me out. Do you really think I can’t deal with a baby?”
“Business. Right. Try telling a screaming baby what a big-shot businessman you are. That’ll put him to sleep.” She paused, raising an eyebrow. “Then again, maybe it will. I know it makes me yawn.”
