Buch lesen: «A Promise for the Baby»

CHAPTER ONE

VIVIAN SAT ON an uncomfortable chair in the starkly decorated lobby of her husband’s apartment building and waited for Karl to come home from work. She’d been waiting for hours, her feet propped up by a couple of suitcases, garnering suspicious looks, but the doorman hadn’t kicked her out yet. He’d tried, but she had a marriage certificate that said she was Karl Milek’s wife. Unwilling to throw her out onto the street, he’d also been unwilling to let her into Karl’s apartment.

She was pretty sure he was regretting both decisions. At least Xìnyùn, her father’s blue parrot, had stopped talking an hour ago. His chipper conversation wasn’t welcome in this modern building and his brightness was an unwanted distraction in the white-and-black interior.

Every time someone came through the rotating doors, the February winds whistled and Xìnyùn responded with his own tune, dancing up and down the rainbow ladder in his cage. Not a single person who’d walked past had smiled at Xìnyùn’s antics. Her husband lived in a building as cold as his hands.

She had called his office five times, but “he is in a meeting,” they said. “We will pass on the message,” they said. She didn’t tell them she was his wife. With divorce terms agreed upon, he probably hadn’t told his coworkers about his Vegas mistake. He’d probably figured—as she had—that their secret would keep until the divorce was finalized, and then it wouldn’t matter anymore. They’d be divorced and have moved on with their lives. But now she needed him, and she needed him to be her husband. Outing him to his coworkers seemed a poor way to gain his cooperation.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

She was supposed to have stayed in Vegas.

The energy in the lobby flared when her husband walked through the door. He was the cold, stiff man she remembered from their morning after, and he didn’t seem to be any warmer with all of his clothes on—and not hungover. Maybe he didn’t notice the freezing temperatures outside. He wore a forest-green scarf wrapped around his neck and a tan wool coat as though they were for show, so the people around him wouldn’t wonder at his ability to walk through snow naked and not get frostbite. No hat covered his brown hair. His hazel eyes were more attractive when not bloodshot, but glasses didn’t soften the sharp planes of his face. She had assumed his face only looked hard when angry—but he didn’t have a reason to be angry. Yet.

She needed Karl to be the man whose eyes had been mostly brown when he’d offered to buy her a drink, but had turned a lush green when she’d brushed her hand against his as she reached for that drink. The man who’d noticed her shiver and tucked her tightly against him as they walked out of the hotel, even though they had both known she wasn’t cold. The man who had made her laugh when she felt as if nothing in her life could ever be funny again.

Perhaps that man had been an illusion and as fake as the Luxor pyramid, given flesh only by the carnival lights of Las Vegas. That she was even sitting here in the lobby of this apartment building was evidence that she wasn’t as immune to Las Vegas magic as she thought she’d been.

The doorman scurried over to her husband, his arms out in supplication and face creased in apology. Tingles shot down her spine when Karl looked over at her. He showed no hurry as he walked across the lobby to her, his face as blank as she remembered.

“You were the woman calling my office today,” he said in greeting.

“Hello to you, too.” They hadn’t planned on seeing each other again, but there was no reason not to be civil. In theory, theirs was an amicable divorce. “Can we talk somewhere private?”

His eyes took in the pile of suitcases and the birdcage sitting next to them. He didn’t nod or say a word, just picked up the birdcage and a suitcase and walked toward the elevator. Vivian scrambled to her feet, slung her purse over her shoulder, picked up two more suitcases and hurried to follow him, the heels of her boots clicking on the marble floor.

On the elevator ride up to his apartment, Vivian opened her mouth a couple times to speak, but Karl silenced her with a raise of his eyebrow. “You wanted private. We can at least wait until we are in my apartment.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. She’d waited for hours; another couple of minutes wasn’t going to kill her.

In his apartment, she put down her suitcases in the entryway and followed him to the couch, taking the birdcage with her. Dark wood floors made his apartment more welcoming than the lobby, though his furniture looked to be just as uncomfortable. The only sign of softness amidst the leather, glass, steel and stone was a plush rug in the living room. He didn’t even have any curtains to soften the floor-to-ceiling windows. She sat on the couch. He sat in one of the armchairs and looked at her expectantly.

If she was waiting for a greeting of some kind, apparently she would be disappointed.

“I’m sorry to drop in on you like this,” she said, gesturing to the luggage near the door. “I didn’t feel I had any choice.”

“Were the terms of our divorce not sufficient?” His elbows rested on the arms of the chair and he’d laced his fingers together in a bridge over the chest of his charcoal-gray suit. Anyone looking in on the scene through the windows would see Karl’s cocked head and casual pose and imagine they were discussing some local curiosity. Vivian imagined that he must have soon-to-be ex-wives drop in on him as a regular occurrence if he managed to remain so self-possessed about the whole thing.

His absolute composure was the reason she’d answered “sure” when he’d gestured to the doors of the chapel, a half smile on his face, and asked, “Shall we?” She had wanted to be a part of his stability then; it was unfair of her to be irritated by it now. And what if she also wanted the passion they’d shared? Well, that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

“Yes. I mean, no, they were fine. But I don’t want a divorce right now.”

If she’d shocked him, his only reaction was to lean back in the chair and lift his left foot to rest on his knee. She was glad he hadn’t sat on the couch next to her. She felt crowded enough by him without having to make room for his knees and elbows—and his infinite placidity, which took up far more space than any single lack of reaction should.

Xìnyùn said, “I fold.” At least the parrot showed a reaction.

“I’m pregnant and I want to keep the baby.”

* * *

“HIT ME,” THE bird squeaked.

Karl looked at the blue bird dirtying his coffee table and wondered what was more ridiculous, his one-night stand/wife telling him she was pregnant or the bird asking to be punched.

If this was his punishment for indulging his emotions with liquor, he would pour every ounce of booze in the apartment down the toilet and shatter the wineglasses. Unfortunately, humoring his impulses was unlikely to allow time to flow backward until he walked into his apartment building and passed through the lobby up to his apartment without a wife—pregnant wife—in the way.

“Are you sure you’re pregnant?” Three weeks ago—his birthday—he’d sat at a hotel bar and gulped down whiskey every time he remembered he was older than his father ever had been or would be, only without a wife or child. Now he had both, and he didn’t want either of them. “Are you sure it’s mine?”

“Yes, I’m sure. About both questions. I don’t make a habit of sex with strangers.” A series of rapid blinks over her light brown eyes—barely a shade darker than her skin—were evidence of her nerves, but she didn’t shrink away from him. She was on a mission and determined to see it through.

“I don’t know anything about you other than you did once have sex with a stranger.” And her maiden name was Yap. He’d learned that from the marriage certificate he’d found under some tiger lilies on a table in his hotel suite.

“I wasn’t the only one in that room.”

No, but he wished to God the man in the hotel room had been someone other than himself. His office was in the middle of a sole-source contract investigation; he didn’t have time for whatever she needed from him. “If the only thing you know about me is that I also did once have sex with a stranger, then I assure you, if you are pregnant with my child, I can change the terms of the divorce. You’ll get sufficient child support.”

“No argument about my keeping the baby?”

He swallowed his irritation. The night they’d stumbled around Las Vegas now seemed like a mirage, and if he concentrated on his memories, the images wavered before disappearing completely. The alcohol and the lights had made every smile the secret smile of a lover, and when she’d slipped her hand into his, he’d felt as though they’d shared souls. Also the alcohol talking. The alcohol and being surrounded by the constant—fake—sounds of people winning had turned him into a man charming enough to pick up a woman in a bar.

Vivian would soon learn that the man who had made jokes and removed the sadness from her eyes didn’t exist outside of that night in Vegas.

But she’d taken a chance coming here. She couldn’t know for certain that he’d meant what he said when he’d spoken about the responsibility a man had to his family. Or that he would never argue about an abortion with a woman, because her body was her body and his faith was his faith.

That night she had also talked about the importance of family—had argued with him when he had referred to a “man’s responsibility to his family.” Every member of a family, she’d said, had responsibility for keeping the unit whole. She’d squeezed his thigh when she’d said that, probably more to make her point than out of any sexual advance, though he hadn’t had the wits about him to care either way.

Were the opinions she’d expressed about family a product of the night—as his sudden charm had been—or were they as heartfelt as his words, alcohol or no alcohol? It didn’t matter. She was pregnant and he’d learn about her dedication to family soon enough.

“I respect your choice, though you don’t need to be here in Chicago for me to send you child support.”

She drew back in surprise, covering her jeans and still-flat stomach with a hand. “You wouldn’t want contact with our baby?”

He thought about the tiny infant she would give birth to. With its small fingernails and fat face not yet grown into Vivian’s pointed chin. Food poisoning. Croup. The shattered glass of a car accident ripping a dimpled face to pieces. Better not to see the child at all. Better to get them both out of his apartment and back to Las Vegas.

“I would want to know you cared for it.” Him? Her? When could you find out the sex of the baby? What was he supposed to call it until then?

She folded her other hand over her stomach. There was a baby under there. “I need health insurance.”

“You said you had a job.” Back in his hotel room, when he’d been sober, and the harsh lights of the hotel bathroom had ripped the dream away, he’d accused her of marrying a stranger for money. She’d told him to keep his damn money and that maybe there was room for it wherever he stored his ego. She’d said she had a job and didn’t need to have sex in exchange for handouts.

“I lost it.” She kept her hands on her stomach, the twisting of her fingers another sign of her nerves. “I will find another—I was hoping to find one in Chicago—but until then, I need health insurance. The baby needs health insurance. I have no other place to go.”

Karl did some quick math in his head. They still had four days to get Vivian and the baby on his health insurance. “I’ll need the marriage certificate.”

“Just like that?”

“Double,” the bird squeaked, then whistled.

“Do you want health insurance?” At one time in the distant past, he’d thought he understood women. Exposure had cured him of such idiotic thinking.

“Yes, but, you didn’t say so much as ‘hi’ to me downstairs. You accuse me of trying to sell you a pig in a poke, insinuating I’m some kind of slut who bangs tourists for fun, but when I say I need health insurance for a baby you don’t believe is yours, you say ‘sure’?”

“Even if that baby isn’t mine, you should have insurance while you’re pregnant. And you are my wife. If the baby is mine, I can provide it with health insurance and child support. If it’s not mine, I can provide it with health insurance until you are able to provide for it yourself. I won’t force a fetus to get less care than I can provide because I don’t trust its mother.”

“I can get a DNA test done while pregnant, as early as the ninth week.”

“Where are you staying?”

She turned her head to look out the windows of his apartment, the first time she’d not been willing to meet his eyes since he had walked into the lobby of his building. “I was hoping to stay here.”

“You don’t have another place to go?”

She faced him again, the pertness of her chin softened by her full, pale pink lips. How had he not remembered the lushness of her lips? “I have ten dollars, three suitcases and a parrot to my name.”

“Family?”

“They’re not available.”

When he’d considered her presence punishment for his behavior, he’d lacked the imagination to envision how the situation could get worse. If mother and child needed medical care, they also needed a roof over their heads. Not to mention the little bird she called a parrot. Chicago had enough wild parakeets without him adding to the population.

“What did you do in Las Vegas?”

“I wasn’t a prostitute.”

Any twinge of guilt he’d felt over accusing her of that the morning he’d woken up married to a stranger had long since vanished. Three weeks ago he’d hurled accusations at her, but he hadn’t asked what she actually did. He wasn’t going to ask more than once now. If he was silent long enough, she would share. She needed a place to stay and didn’t know him well enough to know he’d offer her a bed regardless.

She blinked first. “I was a table dealer. Craps, blackjack, roulette.”

God, how much had he had to drink to take her up to his room? At least she wasn’t a stripper.

“At Middle Kingdom?” His assistant had booked him a room at the Chinese-themed resort instead of the conference hotel. Greta had thought it would be good for him to have a minivacation—her words. But he’d ignored the brochures about the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon she’d tucked into his work papers in favor of overpriced hotel whiskey. If he’d listened to Greta, he would’ve come back with a couple of postcards instead of a wife.

Though postcards wouldn’t have looked nearly as pretty sitting on his couch in a pink cable-knit sweater and cowboy boots.

Thoughts like that had prompted him to engage Vivian in conversation, to fall under the spell of her mysterious smile and be hypnotized by the rise and fall of her breasts when she breathed. If all he’d done was invite her up to his room, the night in Las Vegas would make more sense, but he’d been thinking about marriage and families, and in his drunken haze had decided he wanted to wake up with her warm skin pressed against his for the rest of his life.

Reality had intruded the next morning and, almost a month later, was sitting on his couch.

“And you’re not working there anymore because...”

“My supervisor disagreed with a decision I made.”

“Was I your decision?” She wouldn’t have been the first woman unfairly fired because of sex, and she wouldn’t be the last.

She turned her head to look out the windows again. An effective nonanswer, which he let go for now. She was—the fetus was—his responsibility for another eight months. He’d get his answer eventually.

“I have a guest bedroom. You can sleep there for now.”

She closed her eyes, the light pink of her eye shadow sparkling in the lamplight, and exhaled. The wool of her sweater must be stiffer than it looked, because even though she went boneless with relief, she didn’t sink into the back of the couch. “Thank you.”

“Have you eaten dinner?”

“I’m fine.”

He took that as a no and didn’t ask how long it had been since she’d eaten. The worry lines at the corners of her eyes said it had been too long. “What do you like?”

“I’m fine,” she said again, as though hoping if she said it enough times he would believe her. Or maybe she hoped to believe it herself.

Karl stood and walked over to the small table in his entryway. He riffled through the menus in the drawer until he found the one he was looking for, then he handed it to Vivian. “Pick out what you want.”

She looked up at him, one thin black eyebrow raised. “Chinese?”

He ignored the uncomfortable reference. “They have the fastest delivery.”

“Buddha’s vegetable delight. Brown rice, please.”

“Soup? Egg rolls?”

Her stomach growled, betraying the casual look on her face and making a lie of her insistence of being “fine.” How long had those ten dollars been all she had to her name? Had she had no savings? All things he could learn tomorrow, after she’d eaten and had a good night’s sleep. He called in her order and his, adding enough extra food to give them leftovers for days. He didn’t know if she could cook, and he sure as hell didn’t. If not for takeout, the baby might starve.

“Let’s get your bags put in the guest room.”

* * *

FOR ALL ITS personality, the guest room might have been in a hotel. There was less glass and more wood than in the living room, but that was because the single piece of furniture in the room was a large, wooden platform bed with a built-in nightstand. The bedspread wasn’t white or black, so Karl must at least know color existed, but the geometric pattern and primary colors didn’t invite Vivian to snuggle. Still no curtains. What did this man have against curtains?

“There’s a dresser in the closet.”

“Thank you.” Thank you for acknowledging I might be here longer than just tonight. “Is there something I can put Xìnyùn’s cage on?”

“Who?”

“The parrot’s name is Xìnyùn. It means luck in Chinese.”

He eyed the cage sitting on the floor. Xìnyùn eyed him back nervously. “Are you sure it doesn’t mean bad luck?”

She picked the cage up off the floor and opened the closet doors to find the dresser to set the cage on. Parakeets didn’t like humans to loom over them and Karl loomed as naturally as most people breathed.

“Double,” Xìnyùn whistled in approval.

She was pregnant, unemployed and homeless. Her father had fallen off the face of the planet and taken her life savings with him. Xìnyùn, at least, was happy to be off the floor. “At this point, I’m not sure of anything.”

He nodded, left the room for a moment and returned with a small table. “Here’s a table for the bird.” He had his hand on the doorknob, about to leave the room, when he turned back to face her, his eyes in shadow and his expression unreadable. “How did you get to Chicago?”

“I drove.” As her gas gauge edged toward empty and the ten dollars felt lighter and lighter in her pocket, she’d turned the dial on her radio until she found a country music station and Carrie Underwood singing “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” She hadn’t run out of gas, even if she had coasted into Chicago on wishes and a prayer.

“Where’s your car?”

She described where it was parked.

“Give me your keys and I’ll move it into the garage. I’ll leave money for dinner with the doorman and bring it up when I return.” Without so much as a goodbye, he closed the door, leaving her alone with the skyline.

Inviting or not, all she wanted to do was curl up on the bed and sleep until the nightmare of her life was over and she woke up single, employed and not pregnant. Impossibilities. Time didn’t travel backward.

She picked up one suitcase and hefted it over to the closet, which—except for the dresser and some hangers—was completely empty. Karl didn’t accumulate crap. Or, if he did, he didn’t store it in the closet of his guest bedroom. The room gave her nothing to judge her husband by, other than that his decorating sense was as cold as his hands and as lacking in expression as his face.

No, she was being unfair. She opened a small drawer and shoved underwear in. He’d invited her—a near stranger, no matter that the marriage certificate said otherwise—to stay in his home. He was moving her car and buying her dinner. And the morning she’d woken up naked in a hotel room with him calling her Vivian Milek and asking her if she was a prostitute, he’d handed her a cup of coffee and gotten her a robe.

Maybe he wasn’t as unfeeling as his language and his composure made him seem.

She tossed some hangers on the bed and unpacked the rest of her clothes. When she was finished, she turned back to the other suitcase on the floor. Even if she’d wanted to unpack her mementoes, there wasn’t a flat surface in the room to hold them. She shoved the last suitcase, without bothering to open it, into the closet and shut the door on her past.

Too melodramatic, Vivian. You just don’t want it to look like you’re moving in.