The Touch of Magic Series, page 120
“And this is going to get you someone you love more than anything, too.”
“Yeah,” Sloan agreed, though her tone was reluctant. “Still, Sam doesn’t spit up on you and wake up screaming for no clear reason in the middle of the night.”
Rae laughed, then sobered in relatively quick fashion. “Just so you know, Sam and I decided to start trying.”
Sloan sat up straight. “To have a baby? We could be pregnant together?” She’d not heard anything about this. Shocked, she only looked at her younger sister and had a momentary thought that once again, Rae was doing it better than she was. Rae had a husband, Rae might have a baby like Sloan, but she wouldn’t be a single mother like Sloan.
“I doubt it’s going to happen that fast. But yeah, we decided to throw caution to the wind last month.” It was yet another thing Sloan wasn’t prepared for.
“You could be pregnant now.”
“But I’m not.” Rae scrunched her face as Sloan tried to calculate what it would cost her sister to her art and the upward trajectory she was on. Sloan had always out-earned her little sister, who cobbled-together a barely adequate income while she pursued art photography. Then, almost two years ago, Rae’s art had taken off. She made thousands of dollars per piece and was getting requests from some big name galleries. She’d even had a piece made into a poster.
Now Rae wanted to get pregnant. On a regular time scale. Planned. With her husband.
How had Sloan turned into the slacker? The one who was cobbling her life together? She tried to smile at her sister but only managed it halfway. Then, begging off due to a headache—she really was getting one—she had Rae drive her home and drop her off at the front of the apartment building.
Looking up at the structure she cursed. She’d been planning on moving out. Getting a house. Or cats. Or probably both. She really needed a house now, but she’d just screwed the pooch on her expendable income.
The thought she’d had while looking up at her building had stuck with her for days, and it pulled away her thoughts worked to stay focused on her job. So she sat at her desk and tried not to think about food and the price of a house in Los Angeles.
It didn’t work. Since the nausea of the first trimester had passed her world revolved around food. She hadn’t ever before enjoyed the act of eating quite this much. She was practically salivating over the sandwich, even though it wasn’t quite lunch time yet. Her mouth was open and the sandwich halfway there when the knock came at her door.
Through the glass she could see that it was Max. Uh-oh. But she couldn’t just not open the door. So, with a sigh of longing, she set the sandwich aside and let him in, before walking back to her desk and picking up the sandwich again.
“Don’t eat that!”
Perturbed, she set it down again. “Don’t you dare start doing the Pregnancy Police thing on me. It’s ham and whole wheat bread. It’s just fine.” She didn’t mention the gobs of mustard and mayo that she was sure he could see oozing out between the piled-high slices of meat and cheese as she picked it up again.
“I wanted to take you out to lunch.”
“Oh.” She set it down a third time and shook her head at him. “Trust me, you don’t want to feed me. I’m eating everything in sight.”
“I do want to feed you. Please.”
Please. Nice guys said please. But so did guys who wanted you to think they were nice. The one factor all the bad ones had had in common was that Sloan had picked them. Even the celebrities she had crushes on had always been found out later to be cheating on their wives. Or worse. So she spoke the words and smiled that smile that said, “No, thank you.”
“Please, it’s important.”
Important? Everything was important now, she was realizing. “Trust me, this baby isn’t coming for another six months. Maybe you should take a little more time to get used to the idea before you make decisions.”
He nodded. “You’re absolutely right.”
She let out her breath thinking she could finally get into that ham sandwich.
Max interrupted the thought again. “But I don’t need more time. I really want you to come to lunch with me.”
“No.” She made one last ditch effort to eat her sandwich, but he covered her hands with his.
“Please, I don’t want to do this here.”
“Do what here?” She sighed at him, realizing she was never going to get to eat that sandwich.
He quickly pulled his hands back and jammed them in his pockets. She realized, maybe for the first time, just how much it was bothering Max Summerland, deal-closer, to not have control over his world. “Ask you to marry me.”
It was a good thing she hadn’t managed to get a bite of the ham sandwich, or she would have choked and died. Instead, she sputtered out, “Marry you?” about as ungracefully as she possibly could.
“Yes, marry me.” He chewed his bottom lip, but stood his ground, back straight, shoulders square.
Well, he certainly was handling this better than she was. Before thinking, she blurted out a disbelieving, “Why?”
Hey, she was on a roll, why get her shit together now?
“That’s our child you’re carrying. You said yourself that you don’t want him or her going back and forth between two parents. It’s less expensive, it’ll be easier. You won’t have to do it all by yourself.”
She suddenly went very still, as though—just for a moment—the whole world had stopped turning. Then she finally managed to make her mouth move. She pushed the words out past the stabbing feeling in her chest that she didn’t want to analyze right now. “Those are all very nice arguments, Max—”
“I bought you a ring.... say ‘yes’.” He quit biting at his lip as he pulled the small black velvet box from his pocket. He looked confident and strong... and wrong.
“—but I’m not a deal. Stop trying to close me.”
“Sloan—”
“No. Please go.” Somewhere within her a little black ball had started to form, and she did the only thing she could. She ignored it while she stared at him waiting for him to leave.
It took a moment, but he did. With a small nod, he shoved the little black velvet box back in his pocket. He’d offered it up as proof, she guessed. And, finally, finally, she got to eat her ham sandwich. Even if she was shaking just a little.
She felt the knot growing inside her all afternoon. When she finally made it home that evening, she curled into her big fluffy couch and cried, great tears falling through great heaving sobs. She didn’t even know why until later that night, when she woke up, suddenly gulping air, alone in her dark condo.
It was because she had wanted Max Summerland to want to marry her. Not for a child, and even though she was well aware that he wasn’t what she was looking for. Still she wanted it. She wanted some great guy—anyone really—to want to be with her. That marriage proposal had been anything but that. It had been the modern day equivalent of marrying off the preggo girl to any man so desperate as to take her. In essence, it was a pity-proposal.
Her first proposal had been shit, because Joe had been sleeping with other women. It had looked good and sounded better and had been built on lies. The only thing better about this one was that Max had been honest. He didn’t want her, he just wanted a convenience.
Sloan also knew that now, with a child in tow, it would become that much harder to find Mr. Right. Most Mr. Anything’s didn’t want to raise another man’s child. Single mothers were not hot properties.
But this morning, as he stood there with that ring in his hand, for just a moment she’d wanted to believe it was true: that Max Summerland had really wanted to marry her. And not because of their child.
At least, she realized, she wasn’t really alone anymore, was she?
CHAPTER 14
Great. Everything was great.
That was the only way to describe it. Okay, there was that niggling little thought at the back of her mind, that she wanted more to go with it, but what she had was great. Sloan reminded herself of this often. She’d thought she could never carry her own child, yet here she was. It wasn’t the way she planned it, but—as Rae had astutely pointed out—what was?
She hadn’t planned to move to LA originally, she hadn’t planned to change divisions in the company, she hadn’t planned to get pregnant. So it was just another happening in a string of things she hadn’t planned, and many of them had turned out great!
In fact, she was better suited to be a single mother than most. She had a good income, great benefits, and…well, she needed a house with a yard, but since no one would be walking for about a year or so from now, she had a little time.
So her “great” was maternity clothes that she was just beginning to fit at four months along. She had looked and looked and decided that she didn’t need a $90 white shirt that was only going to fit until she was seven months along anyway. She also wouldn’t be needing a maternity ball gown, or sadly, a negligee. Sloan decided the positive outlook was to call that “money saved!” What she did need was some casual wear and suits for work. She remembered Lisette complaining about seven years ago, and in Ohio, about what was available for the pregnant woman with an average-sized budget. Sloan was grateful that LA was full of cool maternity clothes. So she was in a new skirt, new blouse, new jacket and new shoes, just for good measure. She’d piled her closet high, thinking she might save the clothes for the next time she was pregnant. It suddenly occurred to her that she wasn’t actually infertile.
She’d pulled out her pendulum and asked it but when she got a “yes” answer she almost smacked her head. Of course, she wasn’t infertile, she was freaking pregnant. She’d meant to ask “Could she have more children in the future?” but the universe answered only what you asked. Clearly not in any shape to be asking the universe anything, she’d put the pendulum down and eaten a bagel.
Sloan wondered if anyone would notice that she was pregnant now. She seemed to have gotten noticeably bigger over the weekend. Every day she stopped and waited to feel the flutters she knew were coming.
She had sunshine that seemed to have permeated everything starting in early March and she had little shoots all along the front walk of her apartment building coming up green. They all made her think about her baby. Her thoughts wandered off as she pulled into the parking lot under the building at work. It was dark and chilly with only random slashes of bright light letting on to the outside world, and she let her mind think of babies. Their chubby cheeks, and wide toothless smiles, tiny feet and bright little eyes. She had been having random flashes of thought about these things since the stick had changed color. Every doctor’s visit solidified it more, made the thoughts come faster, made her eyes pull towards babies and baby pictures.
The last time she’d gone in, she heard the heartbeat thundering along like a tiny train. Mesmerized by the fact that it was beating inside her, she’d sat for a moment, just listening and marveling that she had a child on the way. She had also, at last, scheduled her first ultrasound. The tech told her they could probably find out the baby’s sex. Sloan was anxious to know, but she didn’t need an ultrasound to find out. She’d pulled out her bowl and pendulum and asked whether she was having a boy or a girl. Unfortunately, it looked like she would be needing that ultrasound. Her pendulum had gone stubborn and refused to answer. Or rather, it had given every answer in the book.
So she let herself imagine. In her mind her baby was a little boy with blue, blue eyes, and for the first time her excitement didn’t cloud her thoughts and she wondered if the baby would have Max’s eyes.
She almost shuddered. She wanted the baby to be hers and hers alone. Instead she would have to share her child with a man she really didn’t know all that well, but who seemed to have all her old painful secrets in his back pocket. And he could just pull them out and dangle them in front of her whenever he wanted.
She rode the elevator up to her office, squeezing in with other random people from the building and a few she knew as acquaintances. She wondered if anyone noticed that her belly was sticking out more. She had shed her jacket after pushing the fifteenth floor button. Maybe they just thought she was getting fat and no one wanted to say anything. She didn’t care.
She walked the hall, wondering if she was starting to get the tell-tale waddle before realizing it was much too soon for that. Then she settled in at her desk, humming lullabies as she scanned copies and struck out phrases and re-worded them before sending out the files. Later, at ten a.m., after a handful of memos and recommendation letters, her phone buzzed.
She picked it up with a smile, as though it were a personal call. “Yes?”
“Hey, Sloan, Mr. Bernstein wants to see you in his office in five minutes.” Jenny’s cheerful voice rang over the intercom.
Mr. Bernstein?
But Jenny continued. “Oh, and don’t worry, he didn’t seem upset or anything. Bye!”
God bless Jenny. That was exactly what she’d been thinking, too. “Thanks, Jenny.”
Sloan organized the rest of her to-do list for the day and headed out to the elevator, happy as a little clam. Maybe there was a promotion in the works. Nah, it couldn’t be. She was just thrilled enough with how things were. The man just probably needed something and she would happily oblige, as she was going to be asking for maternity leave here soon, and a spate of afternoons off for doctors’ appointments. Starting in three weeks with that ultrasound appointment.
Janine was at her desk in front of Mr. Bernstein’s and waved Sloan in without dropping a beat from the call she was on. With her jacket draped over her arm, Sloan sauntered in, and stopped cold.
Max was sitting in one chair across from Mr. Bernstein and the other guest chair remained empty. What was this? The look he shot her clearly said he didn’t know either. Bernstein, however, was oblivious to all of this. He just started talking, and Sloan tried desperately to pay attention. She hadn’t spoken to Max in nearly a month. Since he hadn’t wanted to sign her papers giving up his rights as the father, she had managed to avoid him in the hallways almost completely. She sighed and sank into the unoccupied chair.
“—in Madrid. Now this isn’t a sightseeing trip. You’ll go, you’ll be back three days later. I need you here for the Petersen project. But I trust that the two of you can handle this yourselves.”
Blinking, she fought the urge to scream at him What did you just say? But she was pretty sure that it involved her and Max traveling to Madrid. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure it mattered. Luckily, Max seemed to see that she was out of sorts and he spoke up. “Now let me just clarify to be sure I have everything. Day after tomorrow we fly out, we sign with Delmonico incorporated, and then we’re back around three a.m. Sunday.”
This time she heard every word. Which was a good thing since she was about to be distracted by Mr. Bernstein staring at her waistband. At least he hadn’t asked. She would have told him, but didn’t think she’d handle herself very well after this little Madrid bomb dropped. “That’s it, you two. Finish up today and spend tomorrow getting ready and Thursday you’re off. Janine has papers and info for both of you. Or she will by five tonight. She promised me.”
Max nodded and stood, taking Sloan by the arm, looking casual, unbuttoning his jacket as he steered her out of the room. Confused, and hating to be led like cattle, she hissed, “You set this up, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t. But it wouldn’t hurt you to have a little bit of faith in me. I’m not asking for a lot of it, though I realize that that’s beyond you.”
Her jaw dropped open. How dare he?
But he seemed one step ahead of her, and he pulled her into a thankfully empty elevator. While she had felt put upon a few moments ago, now she was cornered, literally. Max even went so far as to pull the stop button between floors before he turned and pinned her with that wicked gaze. “You do remember that that’s our child you’re carrying? Mine, too. And maybe I can’t carry it myself, but I can do a lot. If you’d let me.”
She opened her mouth to protest but he spoke again before she got the chance. She had the distinct feeling he didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
“I don’t know why you’re so convinced to go it alone. As far as this little trip goes, I did not set it up. I didn’t know a thing about it until just now. But it wouldn’t kill you to act like maybe you didn’t hate me so much.” He took only a heartbeat to pause before he railroaded the conversation again. “Unless you think I did it. That whatever proof you had against Dylan wasn’t sound.”
Her voice was only a whisper even to her own ears. Shit. She’d been doing so well at avoiding all this. Now? She wouldn’t be able to. “No, I don’t think that you did it.” But he made her look him in the eyes before he believed her.
“Now, are you okay to fly to Spain? It’s a long trip.”
“Yes, I’m fine. I just need leg room and a few chances to walk around.”
“Listen, if you aren’t, I’ll think of a way out of it. You won’t have to tell him you’re pregnant. I’ll tell Bernstein that it’s because of me and that I want you off the trip.”
She wished she had kept her mouth shut a moment earlier, because he was being nice and being concerned about her and the baby. But she couldn’t go back and change it, so she shook her head, and at last he pushed in the red button. The elevator started up again with the tiniest of lurches and they rode the rest of the way in silence.
CHAPTER 15
Sloan jerked her head up as her brain snapped awake. With a few flutters of her eyelashes she tried to throw off the hazy layer that clung to her from traveling so far. The side of her head was still warm from Max’s shoulder, and he turned to look at her now, his hand absently rubbing hers. “Hey sleepyhead, we’re here.”
She frowned, ‘here’ was not what she had expected. ‘Here’ was not a large corporate hotel like all the hotels they had stayed at in every other city the company had flown her to. It was a long, low building with a basic design like many seedy motels back in the states. But the similarities ended at the side by side single rooms with doors opening to the long porch. The charm and upkeep gave away its class.
