by Holly Hart
“Softy,” I tease even as I rub Kahn’s soft ears. They’re the only part of him that isn’t covered in scars.
“I know,” Jeremy says easily.
He sets the basket down between the lawn chairs I’ve set up. He sits down on the second chair and reaches into the picnic basket, withdrawing a battered rubber frog that’s roughly the size of a bowling ball. Kahn takes one look at the frog and dances away from me. He whines and play-bows in front of Jeremy, his eyes pleading while his tail goes a mile a minute.
“One.”
The start of the countdown sends Kahn into a frenzy. His tail moves twice as fast and his eyes bug out of his head, while his feet tap and paw at the floor.
“Two.”
Jeremy’s voice shakes with laughter as Kahn starts making a strange chortling noise.
“Three!”
Jeremy cocks back his arm and lets the rubber frog go sailing toward the far side of the roof.
With a happy yelp, Kahn gives chase. He turns so fast that his legs slide out from underneath him and he falls, hard, onto his side. Unfazed, he scrambles to his feet and resumes his pursuit of the toy. Jeremy and I shake with laughter as he grabs it and throws it high in the air, repeating the motion half a dozen times before he settles down.
Jeremy reaches back into the picnic basket. “So, do you think kids will be as much fun as dogs are?”
I think about it a moment. “I have no idea. Other than swinging by the school for special needs from time to time, I haven’t spent much time with them.”
“Me either.”
I stare at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shakes his head. “No. Why would I joke about that? And when would I have time to hang out with kids?” He holds up his hand. “One, I’m president of one of the biggest businesses in the country. Two, I volunteer several hours a week at a local animal shelter.” Each time he rattles off an item, he holds up a finger. “Three, I have my own dog to walk every single day. Four, I have to clean a litter box because my wife refuses to do it and keeps telling me that it’s my cat. Five, I also have to cook a handful of meals for my wife each week, and six – find time to make sure she’s completely satisfied with her husband.”
By the time he reaches this point, I’m laughing so hard my sides hurt. “Okay, okay. I get it,” I gasp. “You’re a busy man.”
“Damn right.”
As my composure slowly returns, I place a protective hand over my belly and think about the little clusters of cells growing there. Soon (ish) it will be a full-fledged baby and it’s going to be relying on Jeremy and me for everything.
“This is going to be like the blind leading the blind,” I murmur as I wonder just what the hell we’ve managed to get ourselves into.
“Maybe it will be.” Jeremy leans over the side of his chair and reaches into the picnic basket.
I shoot him a side look. “And you’re not worried?”
“I’m worried about a lot of things.” He pulls out two champagne flutes and hands one to me. “But our lack of experience isn’t one of them. The way I see it, there are lots of parents out there that probably knew even less than we do who are raising great kids. And we have a lot of people in our lives who’ll help out. And if we get into a bind, I’ll hire a nanny.”
“Well, when you put it that way, we have nothing to worry about.” I force myself to relax against the back of the chair and watch Kahn gnawing on his green toy. Even though Jeremy has made a good point, it doesn’t completely silence the little voice whispering in the back of my mind that keeps hinting we’ve bitten off more than we’re ready to chew.
Jeremy pulls a heavy, long-necked champagne bottle from the picnic basket. He removes the top, which he obviously loosened while he was still in the kitchen.
I stare at it. “I can’t drink that. Pregnant, remember. That means no alcohol for me until this kid is born.”
“Which is why I went out and bought the most expensive sparkling grape juice I could find.” He rotates the bottle, holding it the same way a waiter in an expensive restaurant does, allowing me to read the label. “I found it right after you took that first pregnancy test and hid it away so that we’d have it when we did finally create a child. I also brought up some chocolate covered strawberries.”
“Well, in that case…” I hold out my glass. “Fill it up and let the party start.”
88
Caitlin
I love spring time. Especially days like this when the breeze blowing down from the mountain tops is cool and crisp and carries the faintest hint of snow, the sun is warm on my face, and everyone is smiling.
Humming to myself, I tug the fancy basket full of cheerful Gerber daisies that I was hired to design and deliver for one of the teacher’s birthdays off my car’s backseat and use my hip to slam the door shut before walking toward the front door of the Hunt’s School for Special Needs. Halfway across the parking lot, I spot a familiar face and quickly alter my course.
“Sheila!”
She looks over her shoulder and quickens her pace. Determined to talk to her, I break into a long-strided trot. “Hey Sheila, hold up a minute.”
I manage to catch up with her just a few feet from her car. She blows out a resigned sigh and stops walking. She stares down at the faded asphalt, bending her neck so that her hair falls around her face, shielding herself from my gaze.
“What do you want?” Her voice is so flat and devoid of emotion, it’s almost robotic.
“I just want to talk to you.”
“Why?”
Why? It seems like an odd question, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get her to talk to me for a few minutes.
I bite back my instinctive, sarcastic response, and choose one that’s a little friendlier. “Because you’re a friend, someone I’ve always liked and admired, and now you and I are family. I want to know how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine.” Sheila shoves her hands into her pockets.
“Me too. Actually, I’m better than fine, I’m loving married life. It’s so much more interesting than I ever thought it would be!” I inject a ridiculous amount of cheer into my voice. “And how’s your—” I try to remember the name of her child. I know I’ve heard it a few times, but I draw a blank, “—son coping with the change?”
“He’s staying with his father.”
“While I have you here, Jeremy and I are planning a dinner party next Thursday, about sevenish. We’d love it if you and Evan would come. And your son too, of course. Jeremy and I have a cat and dog that I bet he’ll love playing with.”
It’s an impulsive comment, designed to help bring her out from behind the wall she’s thrown up between us and to use sentences that are more than one or two words long. I’m not planning any dinner party, and when Jeremy finds out I invited Evan, the top of his head is going to blow off.
“We can’t.”
“Is the date bad for you, or the time? ‘Cause if that’s the problem, I’m happy to work with you, come up with something that fits into your schedule.”
“Evan doesn’t like dealing with people. He says he needs his space.”
I shift my grip on the basket of flowers and nod. “I can see that. The privacy probably feels really good after so many years without any. But you don’t have to bring him, if he doesn’t want to come. Come by yourself.”
“I don’t think so,” Sheila mumbles.
“Oh, come on. I promise it’ll be fun.” Tired of talking to her mostly hidden profile, I leap into action, putting myself between Sheila and her car. One look at her face and the words dry up in my throat.
She’s tried covering the damage with makeup, but if anything the heavily applied foundation actually draws attention to her bruised and swollen left cheek and the deep split bisecting her lower lip. Another bruise, this one somewhat less swollen and looking just a bit older, adorns her left eye.
Bile burns my stomach lining. “Sheila. Did Evan hit you?”
89
“And she didn’t say a word. She just ran around me and jumped into her car.” I pace from one side of Jeremy’s office to the other, pivoting and reversing the process whenever I reach a wall. I can’t get the image of Sheila’s bruises, and her shattered expression, out of my mind.
Jeremy braces this elbows on the top of his desk and tracks my movements. “Caitlin, you have to calm down. Getting this upset isn’t good for you or the baby.”
“Calm down?” Anger, dark and forceful, swells inside of me. “You think I should calm down?”
“Yes.”
“I just told you that your brother has hit his wife, and your response is to sit there like some kind of useless bump on a log, and try to order me around?”
“Caitlin, we don’t know that Evan hit her. There are lots of different ways she could have been hurt.”
“Really,” I snap. “Like what?”
“She could have slipped and fallen. A patient could have hurt her. Or even her own son. Haven’t there been reports of children, particularly special needs children, lashing out at their parents and doing some serious damage?”
He makes a good point, but even as I consider those possibilities, I reject them.
“No. If it was as simple as that, she would have said something, but she didn’t. She was ashamed and afraid, and that tells me this is your brother’s fault.”
Jeremy closes his eyes. “Even if you’re right, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
His words cause something to snap inside of me. If he’d driven a knife beneath my ribs, it wouldn’t hurt as much as his words.
I stop pacing and stare at him. Tears burn the back of my eyelids. I came straight to his office after my parking lot encounter with Sheila because I thought he’d support me, help me decide what to do about the situation. It didn’t occur to me that he’d take a passive role. I thought he’d be as angry as me.
“The hell with that,” I hiss.
Jeremy’s eyes pop open. “What?”
“You might not care that your asshole of a brother is hitting his wife, that she’s suffering because of him, but I do. And I’ll be damned if I sit around and just let it happen.”
I spin on my heel and charge out of the office, ignoring the sound of Jeremy calling my name, insisting I come back and calm down.
90
Caitlin
The address I got from Evelyn leads to a pretty, two-story house in an upper lower-class section of Denver. The home’s dark brown siding looks like it’s just a couple of years old. The window boxes hanging from the first-floor windows are full of plants which make my florist’s heart sink.
A ten-speed bike covered with stickers lies, forgotten, in the front yard on grass that should have been mowed a few weeks ago. The entire place has the vibe of being somewhere that was once well cared for, but that no one has had the time for in the past several months. Kind of like a house does when its occupants go away on an extended vacation and don’t arrange for anyone to take care of things while they’re gone.
I turn my car into the short, paved driveway and park beside the same maroon mini-van Sheila got into at the school. It’s the only car. Good, Evan is probably at Caldwell Industries, trying new ways to pit the employees against one another – and undermine all the work Jeremy has put in repairing things over the past few years.
Right now, I’m still so angry with my husband, I almost hope that Evan does something really horrible that will cause Jeremy all sorts of problems.
I think about the different things I’ll say to Sheila as I park my car and walk toward her front door, trying to come up with the exact combination of words that will convince Sheila that she needs to remove herself from this situation.
I pound on the door. My foot taps impatiently against the ground as I wait for it to open.
When it finally does, Sheila pokes her face around the edge of it. She’s still wearing the same thick makeup, though it’s now smudged, giving her face an odd, off kilter appearance, like half of it is starting to melt.
“Caitlin?”
“We need to talk. Now.”
Sensing that she’s about to slam the door in my face, I shove my way past her, letting myself into a kitchen that has been scrubbed to a high polish. Whatever neglect the exterior of the property is suffering from, it doesn’t extend to the interior.
“Caitlin.” Sheila wrings her hands. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you,” I retort as I turn to her. I nod at her face. “Sheila, did Evan hit you?”
She doesn’t respond, but her hand flies to her face, covering the bruised cheek. Beneath the makeup, her skin pales. I take these two things as a sign that I’m on the right track.
“Sheila, you can’t let him get away with that. You deserve better. You need to do something.”
“Is that so?”
The smooth, calm sound of a man’s voice startles me. I spin on my heel, my heart lodging in my throat as Evan, who clearly isn’t at the office after all, stalks into the room. “And just what do you propose my wife should do?”
91
Caitlin
Heart pounding, I put myself between Evan and Sheila. He and Jeremy might be identical twins, but their mannerisms, the way they move, the aura they project to the world is completely different. Jeremy is laid back and relaxed. Everything Evan does has a predatory, threatening grace. Still, the resemblance between the two is strong enough to throw me off guard.
I keep my eyes locked on his, the one feature that doesn’t look just like his brother, that serves as a reminder that they’re two completely different people.
I’d feel better if Evan’s weren’t burning with madness and desperation.
Every instinct I possess tells me that he’s been pushed right to the edge. That he’s fighting for survival and that he’ll do everything in his power to get exactly what he wants.
And I’m in his way.
Moving with the speed of a striking snake, Evan puts himself between me and the door, cutting off my one means of escape. Heart pounding, I roll my eyes to the other side of the kitchen, trying to figure out the most likely position for a back door.
“Well, Caitlin?” Evan presses. “I asked you a question.”
I doubt Evan has ever had a woman stand up to him. Maybe if I do, he’ll be so surprised he’ll let his guard down, giving me and Sheila, assuming she comes, a chance to escape.
I square my shoulders and straighten to my full height. “Did you hit Sheila?”
“So what if I did? She deserved it. And it’s not any of your business. It’s a private matter between me and my wife.”
Fury unfurls inside of me. I try to stamp it down. The last thing I need is to get so angry that I make a foolish mistake.
“No one deserves it,” I hiss between clenched teeth. “I’m going to drive Sheila down to the police station, so she can file domestic assault charges against you.”
Evan laughs. “Is that so?”
I tilt my chin defiantly. “Yes.”
“And just why would you want to do such a thing? Aren’t you supposed to be at home, like a good little wife, waiting for my brother to get there and fuck you until the two of you finally manage to make a baby? After all, isn’t that what this whole marriage sham is all about? Fulfilling the terms of my father’s will so that he can gain those all-so-important shares in the company that are up for grabs? If the two of you don’t get a move on things, Sheila and I will beat you to the punch.”
His cold, crazy gaze flicks to Sheila. “Won’t we, darling?”
Sheila doesn’t make a sound, but I sense her cringing away from his stare.
Unimpressed with her, Evan redirects his attention back to me. His gaze slides down my body. “Oh!” He floats a brow. His hands clench into fists. “Then again, it looks like you and my brother don’t have to worry about all the fucking around. Seems his seed has already borne fruit.”
I look down and realiz
e my arm has curled protectively around my lower body, instinctively protecting the child nestled there.
Sheila squeaks, and the sound makes my gaze snap upward. Evan stalks close to us. Fury blazes in his brilliant blue eyes.
“I’m disappointed in you, Caitlin. Everyone keeps telling me that you’re a bright girl. They keep saying that Jeremy got lucky when he found you, but coming here today, that was a very stupid thing to do.”
Without taking my eyes off him, I step sideways, moving toward the doorway that leads to the interior of the house. I don’t know what he intends to do to me, but I’m not his passive wife. I have no intention of just standing here and taking whatever he dishes out.
“I did warn Jeremy,” Evan says as he takes yet another step closer. “I very specifically told him that I’d do whatever it takes to win this baby race. He knew, I told him, that I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure my child is born before his. He listened. Pity you didn’t do the same.”
Sheila screams as he lunges for me. Not daring to waste breath on a scream of my own, I spin and dart to the left. The soles of my shoes slap against the linoleum as I run faster than I’ve ever run before.
But I’m not fast enough.
Before I can get clear of the kitchen and into the much larger living room. Evan’s hand catches hold of my shoulder, his fingers biting through the muscle until they bruise the bone. He uses his grip to yank me backwards and off my feet. My ass and shoulders hit the ground with a teeth-rattling crash. Less than a second later, my head connects with both the floor and a table leg.
Stars and other bright lights dance before my eyes as darkness fills the edges of my vision. I fight to keep my eyes open rather than give in to the blackness that beckons me.
Someone screams—I think it’s me—as Evan lifts a foot and aims a kick in the direction of my stomach. I realize he wants to hurt both me and the baby.
