Rather than argue with her, he leaned on the counter and smiled. “You’re getting prickly again.”
When her gaze dropped to his mouth, he knew she was remembering the last time he made mention of her being prickly. The night he’d kissed her in the moonlight and changed their lives forever.
She sighed. “Okay, maybe a joint checking account isn’t a bad idea, but only for the medical bills and I’ll give you photocopies of all of them.”
It was tempting to say
there, that wasn’t so hard,
but all he said was, “Let me know when you’ve got time and we’ll go down to the bank.”
“Okay. Right now I have to get ready for work.”
“You just got home.”
“I’m bartending another wedding tonight, so I’ve got just enough time to take a power nap, shower and eat before I go.”
“Should you be working so much?” That seemed like an awful lot of time on her feet.
“I’m fine.” She was gone before he could do something stupid like tell her she should quit her job. As stubborn and full of pride as she was, that would only piss her off.
“Aren’t we a pair?” Paulie said as she reached past him for a glass.
“At least I’m not breaking all the glasses.” Yet.
Beth waited until after the doctor confirmed what the calendar and home pregnancy test has already told her before picking up the phone and dialing her mother’s cellphone. She was armed with a dish of chocolate ice cream. A big dish.
“You moved again, didn’t you?”
She would have laughed at her mother’s exasperated tone if not for the jittery nerves. “Actually, I did.”
“You owe me a new pair of shoes,” she heard her mother say, presumably to her father. “I wish you’d call
before
you move. When you don’t, there are times I don’t even know where my own daughter is. Where to now?”
“Same city. Just a new apartment.” She snuck a quick swallow of frozen chocolate courage. “I have some news, actually. I’m, uh…having a baby.”
The silent seconds ticked by, then her mother’s screech pierced her head. “Oh my goodness, I’m going to be a
grandmother!
”
In the background there was an eruption of cheers and congratulations that made Beth groan. “Mom, where are you?”
“We’re at the all-you-can-eat luau buffet. Did you buy some of that frozen sperm? Or canned…however they do it.”
Beth almost choked on her ice cream. Hopefully her mom had at least moved away from the crowd. “No, I…there’s a guy.”
She’d spent so much time focusing on how her parents were going to react to her pregnancy, she hadn’t really thought about how she was going to describe Kevin. He wasn’t just some guy who’d come and gone. But she didn’t want her parents getting their hopes up on the matrimonial front, either.
“Artie, she has a man!” Beth licked ice cream off her spoon while her parents jabbered. “What’s the man’s name, Beth? We want to know everything!”
“His name’s Kevin Kowalski and, well…he owns a sports bar and has a big family.”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
A lot longer than she’d intended to. “We’re not exactly seeing each other.”
More silence. More ice cream. “Did he break up with you because you got pregnant? Somebody should tell that man it takes two to—”
“Mom!” She should have brought the entire half gallon to the coffee table with her. “He didn’t break up with me. We…it’s complicated.”
She resigned herself to telling her mother the entire story, wondering how much it would change in the retelling to her father. In the game of parental telephone, her mother was the queen of judicious editing and embellishment.
When she was done talking, her mom sighed. “Why don’t you come back to Florida, honey? We’ll find you a nice apartment close by so you have family to help you.”
It was tempting. If ever she’d wanted her mother close, it was now. But if she’d thought the smothering was bad when she was younger, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like while she was carrying their grandchild. “I’m going to stay here, Mom.”
She could imagine all too well the look on Kevin’s face if he had to watch her get on a bus and take his baby away. Not that she intended to live in his back pocket, but she wouldn’t make him miss the birth of his child by fifteen hundred miles.
“Ask her if she needs money,” she heard her father say.
“I don’t need money. And, before you ask, I don’t want you jumping off the boat at the next port to fly up here.”
The sniffles came through loud and clear. “I want to hug you.”
Beth smiled and licked the last of the chocolate ice cream off her spoon. “Just hearing your voice is like a hug, Mom.”
“We should come home for Christmas.”
“No, you shouldn’t. It’s not like you can play with your grandchild yet, so enjoy your cruise and we’ll get together some time after you get back.”
“I shouldn’t be out in the middle of the ocean. What if you need me?”
Beth would have laughed, because she’d guessed right about the potential for hovering, but she remembered just in time the miscarriages her mother had suffered. “I’m okay, Mom. Kevin’s apartment is right across the hall and Paulie, his assistant manager, lives below me, so I’m not alone. And I’ll call you if I have any problems. I promise.”
They chatted a few more minutes—most of that her mother making a verbal list of all the people she had to call because she was finally going to be a
grandmother!
—and then Beth hung up and collapsed against the back of the couch.
She closed her eyes as her new reality sank in. It was official. At the end of June she’d be a mother. The doctor had confirmed it and Beth had told her mother. It didn’t get any more official than that.
No more stepping off a bus wherever the mood struck, with only one suitcase to her name. And no more walking away from lipstick-phone-number-collecting guys who were trouble, no matter how charming and good-looking they were.
It was going to take a bigger freezer to hold all the chocolate ice cream in her future.
***
Paulie ignored the new text message reminder beep for as long as she could—less than two minutes. Then she flipped the phone open while muttering every bad word she knew. And she knew a lot of them.
Meet me out front at six.
Pompous prick.
Why?
Because I’m taking you to dinner. Dress appropriately.
Bite me.
Six. Sharp. Or else…
Paulie didn’t bother to respond. She’d either be out front or she wouldn’t. And she didn’t intend for him to know which it would be until exactly six o’clock.
At four she clocked out and went upstairs. A quick shower and then it was decision time. To go or not to go…that was the question.
She should let her absence send him a screw-you message because she didn’t live under any man’s thumb—especially the thumb of a blackmailing bastard. If she started letting him boss her around now, where would it end?
But there was a part of her—a needy, aching, missing-him part—that wanted to sit across from him in a nice restaurant, making eye contact over the rims of their wineglasses.
Maybe, if the wine was good and the vibe was right, she’d bring him back to her place because Mr. Samuel Thomas Logan the Fourth was as good in the bedroom as the boardroom. If he wanted to play games with her, she should at least get an orgasm or two—or three—out of it.
To hell with it. She’d go. Either it would go badly and he’d leave her alone or it would go well and she’d get some really good sex out of the deal.
Dress appropriately.
From deep in the dark recesses of her closet, where she never had to look, she pulled a garment bag. She slid off the dustcover and laid the suit across her bed. It was five years out of date, but only somebody like her mother would notice it. It was a classically-cut jacket and skirt in a sedate navy. Matching pumps sat in a box at the bottom of her closet.
It was all nothing more than a designer straitjacket. For the hundredth time she reminded herself she didn’t
have
to do this. She could tell her Jasper’s family who her real family was—the Athertons. Old Boston money. It’s not like she’d lose her job or her home.
But they’d look at her differently. They’d wonder why a nice girl like her was tending bar. The other waitresses would resent every dollar bill she took in tips when she had millions of them in her trust funds. Word would get around, as it inevitably did, and even her customers would treat her differently. Men didn’t laugh and joke with wealthy women, or ask them what they thought of the Bruins’ chances for the Cup.
No, she’d go along with Sam’s stupid blackmail scheme for now. To keep her secret, as well as taking care of a certain itch Sam was particularly good at scratching.
It was a pain in the ass, but to avoid catching hell from her regular patrons, she went out the back door and walked around the building at six. She wasn’t surprised to find a limo double-parked on the street, with a chauffeur holding the door open. Not wasting any time in the hope nobody watching through the bar window would recognize her, Paulie slid onto the seat and pulled her legs in.
And bumped shoulders with Sam.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said, just as the door closed, leaving them isolated in a dimly lit, expensive leather-scented cave.
“Hello, arrogant ass.” She wasn’t going to make this easy for him. “I’m ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, just so you know.”
“Nice to know some things never change.”
“You’re a funny guy.” She braced her feet so she wouldn’t lean into him as the car turned a corner.
“You look nice tonight,” he said after a few minutes of awkward silence.
“You mean I look like you think I should.”
“Are you going to be like this all night?”
“Like what?”
“Antagonistic.”
“If your question is whether or not I’m going to behave like a woman being blackmailed into doing something against her will, then yes.”
When he threw back his head and laughed, she had to fold her hands in her lap to keep from backhanding him in the gut.
“We both know,” he said, “that you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to be and to hell with any threats I may or may not have made.”
“Oh, you made them.”
She braced herself for more wise-ass banter, so she was really thrown off-kilter when he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve watched you while you work. You look really happy.”
She was…mostly. Sure, she’d spent more than a few lonely hours lying awake, playing the what-if game. What if she hadn’t bolted from the church? What if she’d vowed to love and cherish him until death did they part? They’d be five years married now and, no doubt, the parents of the golden child—Samuel Thomas Logan the Fifth.
She’d be pearl-necklace deep in managing households and nannies and the endowments that would ensure no door was ever closed to Sammy the Fifth. Serving on charity boards. Attending benefit dinners and balls.
Blowing out an exasperated breath, Paulie shifted herself away from Sam. How freaking unfair was it that the man of her dreams came wrapped up with the life of her nightmares?
“Are you happy?” he prompted.
“I was.”
“Was?”
Yeah, or at least she’d thought she was. Until the only man who’d ever heard the L-word cross her lips had strolled back into her life. “Blackmail’s a bit of a mood killer.”
The restaurant was expensive and classy—just the kind of place Paulie went out of her way to avoid—but she had to admit the wine was good. And, so far, Sam had resisted the siren call of whatever latest and greatest smartphone he was using now, giving her his undivided attention.
“You haven’t asked me about your parents,” he said after they’d ordered their entrees.
The rosy glow she’d been nursing while gazing into his eyes over the flickering candle evaporated like a drop of water on a hot skillet. “I look them up on the internet occasionally. Same society pages, different year.”
“Have you called them at all?”
“No.” If he was trying to weasel his way back into her pants, he’d picked the wrong topic of conversation. “What are we doing here, Sam?”
He took a sip of his wine, then shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m here to enjoy a good meal and the company of a beautiful woman.”
“And then what?” He smiled at her over his wine glass, just the way he used to when the evening was winding to a close and making love was on his mind. It wasn’t a cocky look, exactly, and maybe she’d pondered an orgasm or two herself, but she didn’t like the assumption. “What’s your endgame? Payback?”
His smile faded. “I’d almost managed to make myself believe I was over you but, when I saw you again, I realized I’d been lying to myself.”
She didn’t want to hear that and had no idea what to say to it, so she sipped at her wine. It had hurt to leave Sam behind, but she’d had to for her own sanity and she’d convinced herself he wouldn’t care. That he was only marrying her because it was expected of him. If he’d really loved her…
“Can’t stand an acquisition slipping through your fingers,” she said, determined not to go there.
She saw the flash of hurt and anger cross his face before he forced the smile back. “I didn’t bring you here to argue with you. Tell me about the people you work with.”
They managed to get through the rest of the meal making benign small talk, but Paulie’s stomach was so tied in knots she couldn’t even have dessert. And when the limo pulled up outside Jasper’s, she turned toward the door before Sam could even think about moving in for a good-night kiss.
“Thank you for dinner.”
“Paulette, I—”
But she was on the sidewalk, closing the door behind her, before he could finish his sentence. If there was any chance at all she’d really hurt him by leaving the first time, she had to end whatever this was now because she’d just hurt him again.
***
“Joseph Kowalski, nobody wants to hear about your rear end while we’re eating!”
Kevin tried to stifle a chuckle as his oldest brother drew their mother’s wrath, but he must not have succeeded because she turned her maternal evil eye on him. “Come on, Ma. It’s funny!”
“That’s because you didn’t have sand in the crack of your—”
“Joseph!”
“I was going to say bum.”
“Sure you were.” Mary Kowalski turned her attention to the kids’ table and her only granddaughter. “You don’t like my mashed potatoes anymore?”
Stephanie shrugged. “I’m on a diet.”
“You don’t need to diet. You’re perfect. Plus, bathing suit season’s over. Why do you think women live in New England and put up with the snow and the wind chill? Because sweaters and winter coats hide all sins, that’s why. And we’re supposed to gain weight in the winter. It’s insulation.”
Kevin managed to avoid pointing out his mother was well insulated from the summer heat, too, by shoving a forkful of pot roast in his mouth. Even though Thanksgiving was right around the corner, they were having a family dinner to celebrate Joe and Keri returning from their honeymoon on some tropical island where an amorous, sunset moment had apparently led to Joe getting sand where the sun didn’t shine.
When there was a rare lull in the conversation, Kevin set down his fork and cleared his throat. “So Beth and I have some news.”