Black Ties and Lullabies, page 6
When Bernie didn’t honor that nasty remark with an equally malicious comeback, Bill sat back in his chair and eyed her carefully.
“Hmm. The suspect is being evasive. Gentlemen, it looks as if we have a possible crime scene here.”
Bernie sighed. Okay. Fine. She knew the drill. Not one of these guys thought she could actually be pregnant, but they sure loved getting under her skin. They were all that way. Like a pack of wolves. The second they sensed vulnerability, they circled around and went in for the kill. She remembered the time a pair of Bill’s tightie whities ended up in the wash with the colored stuff and they turned pink. Once word got out about that, they took up a collection and made a donation in his name to the National Center for Gay and Lesbian Awareness. He was still getting fundraising phone calls.
Right now, Bernie was simply the target du jour.
“Will you guys just shut up and play?” Bernie said, taking a swig of beer. Big mistake. The instant the liquid hit her stomach, her insides felt like puzzle pieces rattling around in the box.
Bill gave her a smug smile. “Looking a little woozy there, Bernie.”
If she’d been operating at a hundred percent, she would have countered the smart remarks by reminding Bill of the time he’d gotten drunk on a fishing trip, cast his line, and hooked himself in the ass. But feeling the way she did right then, most of her attention was focused on keeping that swig of beer from sneaking back up her throat.
It was time to get out of there before it succeeded.
But just as she’d decided to fold her hand and clear out, Bill picked up a twenty and tossed it in the middle of the table. “I’ve got twenty bucks that says I’m right.”
“Are you nuts?” Lucky said. “We’re not even sure Bernie is an anatomically correct woman, and you’re betting good money that she’s pregnant?”
“Jesus,” Teresa muttered from the kitchen. “This is why I can’t take him to Vegas.” She came out to the dining room and grabbed Bill’s half-empty beer bottle. “I’m cutting you off.”
Bernie slumped back down in her chair. Now why did Bill have to do that? She’d been born way too competitive for her own good, and dealing with these guys over the years had only sharpened that inclination.
Bill grinned. “We can find out if it’s true right here and now.” He turned toward the kitchen. “Teresa! Where’s that home pregnancy test?”
She stared at her husband dumbly for a moment, then thunked her head against the door frame with a heavy sigh.
“You have a home pregnancy test lying around?” Lucky asked.
“Yeah,” Bill said. “Teresa’s excessive fertility demands it.” He turned to Bernie. “So how about it? Shall we see if you should be drinking for two?”
Unfortunately, this had just turned into one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations. If she backed down now, these guys would harass her endlessly, giving up only when nine months passed and nothing popped out. But if she went ahead and did it, they were going to laugh their asses off because Bill got her to pee on a stick for twenty bucks. At least with the latter, the harassment would die down faster and she’d be twenty dollars richer.
She pulled out a twenty and slapped it on top of Bill’s. “You’re on.”
To a round of applause and a few catcalls, she rose from the table and followed Teresa. As she entered the bathroom, she started to worry. Just a little.
What if she really was pregnant?
No. No way. She wasn’t even going to entertain the possibility. After all, what were the odds?
Still, it wasn’t as if there was no chance at all…
Teresa grabbed a blue and pink box from a cabinet, muttering that she was cutting Bill off forever from more than just alcohol, so she sure wouldn’t be needing a pregnancy test again anytime soon. Then she gave Bernie a crash course in how to use the test, apologized again for her husband, and slipped out the door.
Okay. She was supposed to pee on the indicator thingy and then wait five minutes. One line meant she wasn’t pregnant. Two lines meant she was.
She pulled out a few tissues and put them on the counter, then peed in the appropriate place. She shook it off and rested it on the tissues, then closed the toilet lid and sat back down again, leaning her head on the wall behind her to wait the requisite five minutes. No doubt Bill would be watching the clock, so she had to, too.
She closed her eyes, wishing the light wasn’t so damned bright in there. Not only was her stomach throwing her a curveball, but her head was getting into the game. Her brain felt as if it was booming against her skull. She’d had the flu before, but she didn’t remember it feeling like this.
It seemed as if eons passed before the second hand swept past twelve for the fifth time. She stood up, grabbed the stick, and started to leave the bathroom.
Then she saw the two lines.
For a few seconds, the sight didn’t register. She just stood there staring at it, thinking whatever dire disease she had was making her see double. Something. Anything.
Then her hands actually started to shake. She could squeeze off a shot at a target two hundred yards away with a high-powered rifle and never so much as twitch, yet suddenly her hands were trembling as if she was standing naked on the tundra. Like a DVD gone haywire, her mind leaped back to that evening with Jeremy. She saw him putting on a condom.
He had put on a condom, hadn’t he?
Yes. Yes, of course he had. No doubt about it.
But condoms weren’t a hundred percent, and suddenly she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a period. She squeezed her eyes closed, thinking about how she kept track of the rest of her life so carefully. Why the hell didn’t she keep track of that?
Because she didn’t have much of a need to before.
Suddenly her brain wouldn’t function. Her lungs wouldn’t breathe. Nerve synapses ceased firing. She slumped against the counter like a puppet without strings, overcome by the most horrendous feeling that she’d taken one step too many and fallen right off a cliff. The one man on earth she despised above all others… the man she’d vowed she’d never speak to again for the rest of her life…
She was carrying his baby.
Chapter 7
Bernie just stood there in that bathroom, staring at that stick and watching her life come to an end.
“Come on, Bernie!” Bill shouted. “Give us the verdict!”
She wondered how long she could survive in there on tap water and toothpaste. Nine months, maybe?
She opened the door. Slumped against the door frame. They all turned around to look at her. Bernie knew her expression said it all, but she couldn’t seem to wipe it away. She waited for the taunts, the laughter, the ridicule, but strangely, none of it came. They just sat there staring at her, and suddenly Bernie knew why. They were no longer looking at a colleague. A security specialist like themselves. Just one of the guys. They were looking at a pregnant woman, and the very idea of it short-circuited their brains. Even Teresa couldn’t hide her expression of disbelief. You? Bernadette Hogan? Pregnant? How in the hell did that happen?
Okay, so the how was pretty obvious. It was the who they were all wondering about, but they’d get that information out of her only over her dead body.
“Bernie?” Teresa said.
She opened her mouth to say something, but the words got lost between her brain and her lips.
Teresa turned to the men. “Okay, you guys. Out.”
They looked at her dumbly.
“I said out! Now!”
“But I live here!” Bill said.
“All of you!”
Bill and Lucky took flight like a pair of startled birds, scraping their chairs against the tile floor, stumbling over each other in their haste to get as far away from the pregnant woman as they could. Gabe was more measured in his exit, but Bernie could tell he’d still rather be anywhere else. Max, who never got in a hurry to do anything, stared at her a long, analytical moment before picking up his winnings and following the other guys to the door.
“Wait!” Bernie shouted.
They froze. Turned back.
“If one of you so much as breathes a word of this to anyone,” Bernie said, her voice low and malevolent, “I’ll rip your eyeballs out and squash them with my bare hands. Are we clear on that?”
Bernie didn’t make threats often, and these guys knew it. If they opened their mouths, they were blind men.
Bernie turned away and collapsed on the sofa, and the guys took that as permission to clear out, closing the door behind them with a solid thunk. The sudden screaming silence and Teresa’s sympathetic expression as she sat down beside Bernie made her want to duck her head under a cushion and leave it there until she asphyxiated herself.
“How accurate are those tests?” she managed to croak out.
“It depends. When was your last period?”
“I… I don’t know. I don’t really keep track all that well.”
But it had been a while. Maybe more than a month. Maybe more than two months. Maybe she didn’t know.
“Who’s the… I mean, do you have a boyfriend?” Teresa said.
As sick as Bernie had felt all day, the very idea that there was only one candidate for fatherhood made her stomach curdle with dread.
“I really can’t talk about it,” she said.
“So if it’s true, would it be a…” Teresa paused, wincing as she spoke. “Bad thing?”
Bernie turned slowly to look at her, feeling her own face falling into a you-gotta-be-kidding-me expression.
“Okay, then,” Teresa said. “You don’t have to panic just yet. Really. It was just a dumb over-the-counter test. Sometimes they’re wrong. Get another test. Do it again. It’ll probably be negative.”
“Have you ever had a false positive before?”
“Well… no.”
“Ever known anyone who did?”
“No, but I’ve heard that it does happen.”
I don’t want anecdotes! Bernie wanted to shout. I want somebody to tell me that these tests are worthless pieces of crap!
“I’m thirty-six years old,” she said. “Don’t the odds of getting pregnant diminish with age?”
“Yeah, if you’re forty-five or fifty,” Teresa said. “But thirty-six-year-olds get pregnant all the—” She stopped short. “But I’m sure not this time. It’s probably just—”
“I need to go.”
“Uh… yeah. Okay.” They rose from the sofa, and Teresa opened the door. “Let me know what happens. And tell me if I can… you know. Do anything for you.”
Bernie nodded. “Thanks. But I think it’s a mistake, you know? I’ll probably be laughing about this in the morning.”
“Probably,” Teresa said, just about as unconvincingly as Bernie had ever heard anyone utter a single word.
She left the house and headed for her car parked at the curb. There was no sign of Lucky or Gabe—apparently they’d really cleared out. Bill came back up the sidewalk, passing by her without a word, and returned to the house. Only Max remained, leaning against the driver’s door of Bernie’s SUV, his arms folded, staring at her.
No. No. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Not even him. She stopped in front of him. “Go home, Max.”
“Not just yet.”
“Get out of my way,” she snapped, “or I’ll move you out of my way.”
“Under normal circumstances, I’d take that threat seriously. But right now you don’t look strong enough to beat up a kitten.”
“You’re right. So I don’t feel like arguing. Will you just let me go home?”
“Nope. We’ve been watching each other’s backs for years. I don’t intend to stop now.”
He was right about that. The military had brought them together. Delgado & Associates had kept them together. They were friends, nothing more, but she’d always been able to count on Max, like the big brother she’d never had. The way she felt right now, though, she’d rather count on him tomorrow.
“There’s no reason to get all worried about this,” Bernie said.
“I’m not the one who’s uptight.”
“I’m not pregnant, you know.”
“The test was positive.”
“The test was wrong. I can’t be pregnant. No way.”
Max nodded thoughtfully. “Uh-huh.”
She threw up her hands. “I told you I’m not pregnant!” Then she closed her eyes in frustration. “Damn it, would you at least try to be as oblivious as other men? Just once?”
“I’d ask who the father is, but I’m guessing you’d rather keep that to yourself.”
She started to say that there wasn’t a father because she wasn’t pregnant, but it would have fallen on deaf ears. And first she had to believe it herself.
“Do another test,” Max said.
“I intend to.”
“Tonight. If it’s negative, maybe you can actually sleep.”
A nice thought, but Bernie could hear what Max wasn’t saying. And if it’s positive, you’re screwed.
“You okay to drive home?” he asked her.
“Of course I am.”
Bernie clicked open her car door. Max stepped aside and opened it. As she settled into the driver’s seat, her stomach did a slow, sickening heave. Good Lord. If this was what pregnancy felt like, how did the average woman stand it?
“Can I count on you to keep this quiet? Not a word to anyone? You know—until I find out for sure what’s up.”
“Hell, yes, I’ll keep it quiet,” he said with a tiny smile. “You think I want my eyeballs squashed?”
“Come on, Max. You know I wouldn’t really squash your eyeballs. Lucky’s maybe. Never yours.”
Squashed eyeballs notwithstanding, she didn’t know why she worried about Max. If the population dwindled away and there was only one discreet person left on this planet, it would be Max Delinsky.
“Don’t sweat this until you’re sure there’s something to sweat, okay?” Max said. “Get another test, rule it out, and then you can forget about it.”
Bernie nodded. She got into her car, and at the first red light she came to, she grabbed her iPhone and found a twenty-four-hour drugstore. It was twelve miles away, but she didn’t care. She tossed her phone to the passenger seat and drove there, where she picked up another pregnancy test. She was careful to get a different brand from the one she’d already taken just in case that particular manufacturer wasn’t quite up to par. As she made her way to the checkout counter, she felt as if everyone in the store was looking at her, so she also grabbed a Snickers bar, a bottle of shampoo, and a pack of razor blades, as if those would distract from her real intent: I’m hungry, my hair’s dirty, I have hairy legs, and… oh, yeah. I need to see if I’m pregnant. The teenage girl behind the counter didn’t blink as she rang the stuff up, but Bernie still felt as if a gigantic spotlight had appeared from nowhere to shine directly on her.
All the way home, her heart beat like mad at the same time her stomach flip-flopped like a fish on the deck of a bass boat. She came through her apartment door and headed straight for her bathroom, where she yanked the directions out of the box and read them from beginning to end, including a statement about the effectiveness of the test. “Supersensitive in detecting hCG levels” and “99 percent accurate after seven to nine days” didn’t exactly fill her with hope.
A few minutes later, there it was. Corroborating evidence. She was going to have a baby.
In dazed disbelief, she tossed the test into the trash. She made her way to the living room, where she plunked herself down on the sofa. She stared straight ahead, her hand on her stomach, trying to reconcile the test she’d just taken with the reality of an actual baby growing inside her. She’d always been proud of the fact that she had a job that one in ten thousand women couldn’t have qualified for, yet here she was in a situation any brainless teenager in the backseat of a car could have gotten herself into.
Then she thought about Jeremy. Oh, God. What was he going to say when he found out?
She couldn’t think about that now. Not when the majority of her energy was consumed with trying to keep from throwing up. Morning sickness? Wrong damned time of day. And it sounded so benign. There had to be another name for it, something more like bubonic plague.
She lay down on the sofa and tucked a pillow beneath her head, stifling a groan as she curled up in a semifetal position. She closed her eyes, willing the nausea to subside, only to hear a knock at her door.
No! Whoever you are, go away! I want to die in peace!
She closed her eyes again, only to hear more knocking. Finally she got up and staggered to her door, intending to open it only if somebody was carrying a five-foot-long Publishers Clearing House check for a million bucks. She looked out the peephole.
Oh, God. Her mother?
More knocking. “Bernadette? Open the door. I saw your car. I know you’re home!”
Bernie felt a twinge of panic. If her mother saw her looking like this, she’d call 911.
The flu. She’d just say she had the flu, because she sure couldn’t tell the truth. Not until she had a chance to think about it when she felt better. Whenever that might be.
She opened the door. “Mom? What are you doing here this late? You know you shouldn’t be driving after dark.”
“I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer. I got worried.”
“You called? I didn’t hear—” She stopped short. “Oh. I must have left my phone in the car.” And what a dumb, dumb move that had turned out to be.
Eleanor came into the apartment, her brows drawing together. “Oh, my. You really are sick. I can tell. You’re feeling worse, aren’t you?” She pressed her palms against Bernie’s cheeks. “Hmm. Still no fever. Do you have a headache? Muscle aches?”
“Yeah. I think it’s the flu.”
“Are you nauseated?”
Just hearing those words was all it took for Bernie’s stomach to turn upside down one more time. She yanked herself away from her mother and hurried to the bathroom. When she reached the toilet, she dropped to her knees, flung up the lid, and started to heave. A few moments later her mother was beside her, sitting on the edge of the tub, holding her hair and patting her back. When Bernie finally stopped throwing up, she took the wet towel her mother offered her and wondered what she’d done in a former life that was so bad that she’d get stuck with karma like this.
