The Baby (The Boss #5)

by Abigail Barnette

  “I’m really proud of you,” I said. “The work you’ve been doing with Doctor Harris. You’ve made so much progress.”

  “I’m glad you can see it. I certainly can’t,” he said with a self-effacing scoff.

  I leaned forward and put my arms around him. “I’ll always see the best parts of you, eshkan min.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Sophie, elskan mín, your Icelandic is still atrocious.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center had started off as a bank. The headquarters for a bank, actually. They’d used some of their sweet government bailout money on a swanky new office complex, and Neil had snapped up the old one for a price tag that had almost made me vomit.

  Then I’d remembered that we would never be able spend the stupid amount of money we had, and that throwing some at a good cause wouldn’t bankrupt us.

  That was the weirdest part of being wealthy, and one that I hadn’t gotten used to, even after three years of living with a billionaire. Our money seemed to be in never-ending supply. And it made me weirdly cheap. I’d gone to Target with Penny and Holli a few weeks before and spent three-hundred dollars. Sure, Holli had done the same thing, but she’d lamented it. I’d just been totally confused as to how I could walk away from a twenty-five-dollar lamp that was super cute, then come home to think it was no big deal that my husband had bought yet another car.

  No car, no matter how fast or street legal it might have been, could possibly make Neil prouder than the building we stood in now, the culmination of years of anger and deeply internalized pain.

  I thought of what Emir had said the night before. “I’ve never seen pain so artfully transformed.” I had, and it was right here, all seventeen floors of it.

  “So, this is the atrium,” Neil said as he led Emma, Michael, and me through the building’s stunning lobby. He carried Olivia in his arms, because when she was around, she was never not in his arms. She watched her grandfather’s face intently as he pointed up, trying to get her to follow his finger. The floors over our head were open all the way to the glass ceiling, and the four lower floors had balconies that looked onto the space. Above that, smooth white walls intensified the light from overhead. Windows dotted those floors; they weren’t open, Neil had explained, because of suicide risk.

  That this beautiful place had such a grim purpose made me sad, angry, and a little defeated. There were two city shelters already planning to send at-risk teens to the facility as soon as it opened, and there would be a never-ending stream of people requiring the legal, medical, and mental health services the center would provide.

  “Those stairs,” Emma said, wrinkling her nose at the staircase. Neil thought it was brilliant, but I shared Emma’s opinion of the wide, round dais that segued into circular steps that grew progressively smaller on their curved journey to the second floor.

  “What’s wrong with the stairs?” Michael asked, as though Emma had just compared the Mona Lisa to a three-year-old’s finger painting.

  “Thank you, Michael,” Neil said, casting pointed glances at Emma and me. Olivia babbled and pointed, whatever she said in her baby language ending breathlessly as she stared. Neil kissed her cheek. “You love Afi’s beautiful staircase, don’t you?”

  “I think she was pointing to the fountain,” Emma said, gesturing toward the water feature nestled in the curve of the staircase. The fountain was one of the few things Neil had kept from the building pre-remodel. It was a tall sheet of copper with patches of contrasting texture, and water burbled over the dull surface.

  Even as recently as the week before, everything had smelled of paint and construction dust. The marble floors had been covered in plastic sheeting to protect them from work boots. The receptionist’s built-in desk hadn’t been fully built in yet. The exit sign over the big fire doors to the conference center had been just a tangle of capped wires hanging from the ceiling. And now, it was all…this.

  “You look like you’ve never seen it before, Sophie,” Emma said, laughing.

  I wrinkled my nose as I squinted up at the glass ceiling. “I’ve seen it a lot. I just can’t believe the difference.”

  “Come on,” Neil said, like an eager child wanting to show us his bedroom. “Let’s start at the top and work our way down.”

  Neil’s tour led us from the temporary shelter floors—there were even studio apartment-style units for people who needed to flee a situation with their children or their pets—to the medical center where survivors could get emergency and continuing care, and the call center where an existing hotline would move their operations in July. The consultants and experts Neil hired had thought of everything; security, privacy, even the needs of caregivers who might suffer from compassion fatigue.

  I’d already seen everything, so I could concentrate on Neil. He was beyond proud of the facility, and he should have been. It was something the city needed. Something every city needed, unfortunately, but I wouldn’t express that to Neil. He would want to save the whole world, and he was incapable of thinking on a small scale.

  “I’d like to expand, someday,” Neil said as we exited the elevator into the atrium, our exploration of the building over. “Or fund a private, off-site lab to process backlogged rape kits.”

  “Daddy, how much is this costing you?” Emma asked, totally blunt, as always. I wondered if she’d seen the Forbes article.

  “A lot.” That was the obtuse answer Neil gave everyone except me and our accountant, but anyone could just Google the project and find out the official tally. “But don’t worry. There have been major donations, both corporate and private, that will keep this place going under its own steam.”

  “Your father is in a unique position to provide start up as well as encourage high-profile, high-dollar philanthropy,” I added. That was how I kept myself from freaking out about the possibility that even after all of this work and money spent, the center could conceivably fail.

  “And there are several existing groups working with us and sharing their income to—”

  Olivia cut him off by making a sound like a soft-serve ice cream machine breaking down. And the sound did not originate from anywhere north of her diaper.

  “Well, thank you for your support,” Neil said dryly, and handed her off to Emma. “I believe this belongs to you?”

  For as much as Neil loved his granddaughter, he was adamant that his diaper-changing days were over.

  “Let me change her!” I eagerly volunteered. “I can show off my skills. I’ve been practicing.”

  “Practicing?” Emma raised one brow. Her facial expressions were eerily like her father’s.

  “Yes,” I deadpanned. “I’m paying someone to teach me how to change a diaper, and they let me practice on their baby.”

  Emma’s jaw dropped. “Sophie, I want to believe that you are joking, but we both live in this city, and we both know—”

  “Chill out, I’m fucking with you.” I shook my head as we started walking toward the restroom. “But think of the missed opportunity. You could be renting this beautiful baby butt out to strangers for diaper training.”

  “I’m not sure if I should be disturbed by the fact that you’re advocating selling my daughter’s bum, or if I should applaud your ingenuity.”

  “You get your unfettered capitalism from your father.”

  The gender-neutral restroom had a separate facility for parents with small children. There was a built-in changing table with a molded plastic oval to prevent a baby from rolling off.

  “Wow, they’ve really thought of everything,” Emma said, running her fingers over the smooth plastic.

  I gently laid Olivia in the recessed groove but kept one hand on her as I rummaged in the diaper bag Emma set on the counter beside me.

  “I don’t think she’s going to manage to flop out,” Emma said, though I could tell from her smile that she appreciated the care I took with her daughter.

  “It only takes a second,” I repeated the word
s my grandmother always had said about potential infant disasters.

  Emma watched me as I slid the new diaper beneath Olivia’s bottom before undoing the one she was already wearing. “You’re getting really good at that.”

  “Thank you. That’s high praise, coming from an expert.” I wrinkled my nose and made a goofy face at Olivia as I cooed adoringly, “Oh, my goodness, it smells like a sewer in your pants!”

  Emma laughed. “You’d be a great mom, you know?”

  It was a well-intentioned comment. Though Emma was aware that her father and I had aborted a pregnancy early in our relationship, and I had, on occasion, mentioned to her that we weren’t planning on having children, I was sure that I’d never told her definitively that I didn’t want any and that the subject wasn’t up for public discussion.

  “Well, in another life, maybe,” I said, intentionally glib.

  “Or in this one.” Emma shrugged. “I see the way Dad is with Olivia. He’s always loved babies.”

  “Your father can’t have children, anymore,” I reminded her. In fact, one of Neil’s biggest fears was that we would accidentally get pregnant, and the baby would be all messed up from the chemotherapy he’d gone through. Though the chances of conception post stem cell transplant were statistically rare, thoughts like that kept Neil awake at night.

  “He can’t, but it’s not like there aren’t—” She stopped herself. “That’s not fair of me, is it? If you two wanted children, you would have had them, by now.”

  “Yup,” I agreed. “And we had the chance. We didn’t take it.”

  I rolled up the baby wipes into the dirty diaper and slipped it into one of the provided disposal bags before dropping it into the waste bin through the hole in the counter. Emma picked Olivia up while I went to wash my hands.

  “Besides,” I went on as I waved my wet hands in front of the automatic paper towel dispenser, “if we had a baby of our own, we couldn’t enjoy your baby so much.”

  Something about the conversation picked at my brain, and I didn’t like it. As I watched Emma button up the crotch of Olivia’s pink-striped onesie, I slammed into the realization like a snowmobile hitting a tree.

  Neil had said something to her.

  I never would have suspected him, if I hadn’t found what I’d found a few weeks ago. I’d gone into Neil’s desk for some blank checks to refill my checkbook, and while I pawed around in there, I’d found the small black and white print-out from the ultrasound I’d had when I’d first found out I was pregnant. It had actually been the way I’d broken the news to him, though in hindsight, I could have been gentler about it. After we’d had the abortion, we’d never really talked about it all that much, except in the immediate aftermath. Then, we’d gotten so buried under cancer-this and chemo-that, and time had just gone by. Maybe we’d had a few discussions in passing, but nothing earth-shattering, that I could recall. Finding that printout had been a surprise, but nothing I’d thought too deeply on. I’d figured it was just Neil wanting to hang onto it for sentimental reasons, and I’d put it back where it had been and gone on my way.

  Emma’s timing was obviously coincidental, as no one knew about the picture in Neil’s desk except for Neil and, now, me. But there was a reason he’d saved it, and I was beginning to question that reason a little more.

  We rejoined the guys in the atrium, where Neil and Michael were once again admiring the stairs.

  “There’s my favorite girl,” Neil said, taking his hands out of his pockets and coming toward us. He snagged Olivia right out of Emma’s arms.

  “Well, I see where I stand in the rankings,” Emma said, her hands on her hips.

  “It could be worse. You could be the distant third.” I cast a sly gaze at Neil, and he winked back. I turned to Emma. “Do you guys want to grab some lunch or something?”

  Emma and Michael shared a look. It was one I recognized, and had been both the giver and receiver of many a time.

  “No…” Emma began with an apologetic cringe. “You know, Michael’s taken the long weekend, and we were…”

  “There are a lot of things that need to get done around the house,” Michael stepped in. “Since I’ve got the day off—”

  “You guys want to sit around in your underwear watching Netflix. I get it.” There were definitely no hard feelings. Neil and I had done the oh-god-how-do-I-make-an-excuse-to-get-out-of-this dance of mental communication more than once, for that exact reason.

  “We knew you would understand,” Michael said with a sigh of relief. He cleared his throat and said, “You, as well, Mr. Elwood, I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “Go on, then. Take my darling girl from me. Again.” Neil said with feigned exasperation. He kissed Olivia’s cheek before handing her off to her father.

  Usually, seeing Neil with Olivia made my biological clock scatter its gears. I don’t know what it was about men and babies, but the combination just did something to me. I knew I wasn’t alone in that; Holli said the same damn thing about Chris Hemsworth. But thinking something was adorable in a totally horny way isn’t the same thing as wanting it for yourself, in your real life.

  I hoped Neil knew that.

  * * * *

  Because the gala was only one more night away, Neil and I were staying at our Fifth Avenue penthouse. Though we no longer lived there full time, it had been his home when we’d first gotten together, and where we’d resided after we’d moved back to New York. It would always feel like home to me. Just a different home.

  I sat on the bed, rubbing lotion into my calves and staring up at the television. Neil came into the bedroom, fresh from a shower, his wet hair slicked back from his face and a towel around his hips.

  “Looks like we’re going to get some weather tomorrow night,” I said, my stomach knotting with anxiety. “I hope it doesn’t interfere with the party.”

  “It shouldn’t,” Neil said, pulling off his towel and casting it aside to get into bed. “Almost everyone coming is already in the city.”

  “True. But I can’t see them cracking out the old snow shoes and trekking across town.” I smiled over at him. “Sorry. I’m not trying to cast a black cloud over everything. I just really want this to go well for you.”

  He fluffed up the pillows behind him. “It will go well. And, if it doesn’t, it won’t matter. The checks have already cleared from some of these donors. They’re just coming to claim credit for their philanthropy and drink up all of my good champagne.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m going.” I pumped some more lotion into my hands to work on my thighs. Thinking about the benefit got me thinking about the center, which got me thinking about my conversation with Emma. “Hey. Emma said something today in the bathroom that was a little weird.”

  “I can’t imagine Emma saying anything weird,” Neil said dryly.

  “No, the thing she said wasn’t weird. It just seemed weird to me. She asked me why we haven’t had a baby.” Okay, in hindsight, maybe it was weird for Emma to have asked me that, especially in the past when she’d seemed so terrified that her father and I might procreate.

  Neil picked up the remote and flipped the channel—without asking me if I was still watching, which was so annoying. “I wonder if she and Michael aren’t thinking about trying for another.”

  “I just wondered if you said anything to her that might have given her the impression that…” I shrugged.

  His lips tilted in a wry smile. “If I had said anything that might have given her the impression I wanted to keep you barefoot and pregnant?”

  I gave him a push. “No. Don’t be stupid. I just meant…” Time to come clean about it. “I was looking for blank checks the other day, and I found something in your desk.”

  His brow crumpled in confusion.

  “Something I thought you threw away, a long time ago.” God, I didn’t want to have to say it. “The, um, ultrasound.”

  “Ah.” He looked down.

  “It doesn’t bother me that you kept it.” I would h
ave preferred that he hadn’t, but I also knew that, deep down, the choice we had made together had been more difficult for him than for me. “I know you had a different experience than I had. If you needed that to grieve—”

  “No, not to grieve,” he said quickly. “Just to remember. We did what we had to do, at the time. If things had been different, perhaps you would have felt differently. Perhaps not. Do I have regrets? Of course I do. It’s one thing to say that you don’t want to have another, hypothetical child. When you’re faced with your actual child, when you think of it as a child—”

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t mean for it to be so audible.

  His expression softened into one of helplessness. “Sophie, this is an area where our thinking is— I don’t want to say it’s incompatible. But our perspectives aren’t the same. For one, I’m from an entirely different generation. To me, the subject of abortion is still fairly taboo. And I have a child. So, I’ll always think of the one we didn’t have as…well, as my child. That’s why I kept the picture. But that doesn’t mean I want to have a baby, now. Especially knowing how you feel about it.”

  “Oh.” That was more of an answer than I’d been expecting.

  “And I certainly wouldn’t have discussed something like that with Emma,” he went on. “I would come to you. But those days are behind me, Sophie. I’m speeding toward sixty like it’s a brick wall—”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re fifty-one, drama queen.”

  “Be that as it may,” he said in the semi-stern tone he used when I wouldn’t humor his age-related hyperbole. “When we moved in together, and when we got married, it was always with the understanding that we wouldn’t have children. The only thing that would change my mind would be if you came to me and said that you wanted them.”

  “And I don’t foresee that happening,” I said, wiping the rest of the lotion into my hands. “I’m sorry to bring this up, when you’re already under so much pressure about this gala.”