“Is it weird that I like knowing the donor is from California?” Gwen says, scanning the list of sperm donors: no names, just numbers.
“No, I don’t think so. If helps you feel more connected, that’s not weird.” Flora scrolls past the first few rows of listings. “Elaine and Hattie chose a donor who listed an interest in sports. Not athletic ability. Interest. That’s weird.”
Donor number 5673: Green eyes. Brown hair. English, Chinese, African, Irish, and German descent. Add Flora’s half Colombian, one-fourth Italian, and one-fourth Portuguese ovum and this kid could have the whole world covered.
Flora scrolls on.
“Is an interest in Monday Night Football genetic?” Gwen had always found Elaine and Hattie a little off-putting. Sometimes they put the whole family in matching T-shirts—and not even for outings, just for the hell of it. Twins or no twins, that’s not right.
“I hope not.” Flora pauses. “Here we go: blond hair; blue eyes; Polish, Russian, and Danish descent.”
Oh. Like her. Only—Gwen brushes fingers through her white-blonde hair. “You know this is from a bottle, right?”
“Yes,” Flora says, turning to Gwen with a patient smile. “But you are still blonde. Ish. Just darker now. It was closer to that color once upon a time.” Her smile slips then, unsure; the corners of her mouth turn down. “Don’t you want the baby to look like you, too?”
It’s not really something she’s thought about, but her instincts say no. It doesn’t matter. The conversation about who would be pregnant was easy: Gwen had no desire to host a baby inside her body for any amount of time, and Flora very much did. A biological tie never felt essential. The people Gwen shares blood with barely tolerate her, and the people who mean the most to her, whom she loves completely, are no blood relation at all.
If the baby doesn’t look like her, she doesn’t think it will bother her. At least, not enough to prioritize it over a donor’s health history or the number of kids he already has running around in the world. Or whether he has an interest in men in spandex playing professional grab-ass.
She feels outside of the whole thing anyway. She’s just here for Flora, who has to do the hard part and grow the kid. Gwen glances at the time in the corner of the computer screen. Flora is home from work on the early up, early off schedule of an elementary school teacher, but Gwen still has to do a fitting with Grady, then finalize jewelry for Clementine. So, more than anything, she doesn’t want to fight about sperm when it really doesn’t matter that much to her.
“Well,” Gwen finally says. “Do you want the baby to look like me?”
Flora’s expression shifts to impassive; her mouth is a straight line, her eyes trained on the computer screen. She pulls her braid over a shoulder and twirls the end around one finger. She’s upset. Gwen has to act fast. “You know what. Yeah. Let’s go with the blond guy. I mean, his baby picture is adorable. He’s healthy. His family is healthy. I want him.” She pauses, makes a sour face. “I want his spunk?”
“Gwen, gross.” Flora hovers the cursor over the request donor button, hesitates, and then takes a breath and clicks. “It’s not quite official. I still have to get a physical examination.”
The clock ticks to three forty-five. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Gwen says in a rush, hopping up and giving Flora a peck. “Text me the appointment time, and I’ll make sure I don’t have anything else scheduled, okay?”
“Okay,” Flora says, and Gwen is gone, stopping by the hall bathroom to check her makeup: thick black liner, smoky shadow, dark burgundy lips. Check. Purple lace-up dress with thick black belt and knee-high black leather boots. Check.
Happy wife. Check.
She barely gets one foot inside the office when Nico asks, “Did you make the final call on the gala dress for next month?”
“Hello to you, too.” Gwen makes a show of setting down her bag and settling into her chair as if she can’t quite get comfortable. Nico gives her a ha ha, very funny look but does amend his greeting.
“Hi, how are you? How are things? Did you pick a gala dress or not?”
Gwen pulls up a picture of the dress, sent by the designer: an amazing, strapless bias-cut gown with gemstones that morph from blue to purple to pink depending on the lights and the curve of Clementine’s figure. It’s a showstopper. “Check it.”
Nico squints from his desk when she turns the screen, then glides over in his office chair. “Hmm,” he says with a dismissive flick of his head. “Let’s go with the Armani we talked about.” He scoots away again.
“You told me to trust my instincts,” Gwen protests. This dress screams at her instincts.
“I never said they’d always be right.” Nico gives her one of his patented, critically arched eyebrow looks. “It’s way too daring for this event. There is a time and a place for a dress like that, and a thousand-dollar-a-plate art gala is not it. Think dark, understated, classic.”
Nico is a great friend and even better business partner. They’re doing incredibly well, thanks to their dedication, and she knows he appreciates her. But he can’t tell her to take the reins more often and then hold them in a death grip high above her head.
Gwen swallows her irritation; Nico’s probably right about the dress not quite fitting the occasion, but she chose it for exactly that reason. What is style if not daring? What is the point of making a statement if that statement is: I look just like everyone else here?
She’s taking out her frustration on a pile of invoiced shipping receipts—every few whacks of the staple she imagines flattening the arch of Nico’s perfectly groomed judgmental eyebrows—when the studio door opens and Grady comes in like the sudden slant of a golden sunbeam.
“Hey, y’all!”
Nico’s whole demeanor changes when he’s around Grady. Gwen has often thought of Nico’s personality as a warm, tender heart surrounded on all sides by jagged barbed wire: incredibly kind, yet sharply guarded. She had watched him date with all the enthusiasm of a day spent waiting in line at the DMV, and while she had Flora all along for the ups and downs, Nico’s life was this job. His passion was devoted entirely to making other people shine, never himself, until falling in love became as improbable as a lightning strike; it just wasn’t happening, so why worry about it?
And then came Grady, who was so obviously never just a client—even when Nico denied it to himself. Gwen saw it, she knew.
Grady cups Nico’s face and kisses him so tenderly that Gwen has to look away. She staples the rest of the piles with gentle pushes instead of angry slams. With Grady, all of Nico’s sharp edges disappear, and Gwen knows true love when she sees it.
“Are you going to the art gala, too?” Gwen asks, after Nico and Grady have parted but not before they’ve stopped grinning dopily at each other. Honestly, they live together now; all this would be annoying if she weren’t so happy for them.
“Um,” Grady says.
“Yes,” Nico answers for him. “In fact, let’s go look at some jackets. It’s standard black tie, so nothing too exciting, unfortunately.”
Gwen follows them to the loft, debating with herself about suggesting they do something different: perhaps a deep-purple velvet coat, or a textured pattern that would catch the flash of a camera just right, like the rejected dress she’d picked for Clementine. She says nothing; the words are trapped on her tongue by the fear of getting it wrong again.
“Let’s start with a peak lapel,” Nico says, after Grady has changed into black trousers. They’ll need to be hemmed, Gwen notes, crouching to measure. She writes: pants, three-quarter-inch hem. From the floor she takes more notes, writing down the date and a description as decisions are made: Ferragamo belt, black, double buckle. Shoes: Ralph Lauren, monk strap, black. She misses having Spencer here to do this crap. Full partner, and she’s sitting on the floor waiting for Nico to call out his decisions as if he’s ordering lunch at a drive-through.
“Or should we do the shawl lapel?” Nico smooths the sleek material with both palms. “Yes,” he says, answering his own question immediately. He drags his hands up and down the lapels fit snugly to Grady’s chest. In a huskier tone he adds, “Yes, that’s nice.”
It’s Gwen’s turn to narrow her eyes. “Right.”
“Turn,” Nico says in that same husky voice. Grady looks at Nico with heavy-lidded eyes and a lusty smirk before turning slowly, his fingers twitching at his sides. Gwen shakes her head and writes: hem sleeves. The air is so thick with pheromones that people passing by outside are no doubt flummoxed by their own sudden horniness.
Nico checks the fit of the coat, making sure it lies flat without any creases from pulling too tight or bubbling from the cut being too loose, by slowly and very thoroughly dragging his hands across Grady’s back and shoulders, then over the seat of his pants.
Grady’s restless fingers clench. She can hear Nico breathing heavily, and that is quite enough.
“Boys,” she says, and they both look at her with wide-eyed expressions, as if they’d completely forgotten about her existence. She hops up, caps her pen, and closes her notepad. “I know I tease you a lot about your sex life, but I do not actually want to be part of your weird, tuxedo-fetish foreplay.”
Grady and Nico start to speak at the same time, then stop at the same time, and then start talking over each other again. Gwen waves off their flustered babbling. “Relax. I’ll go get lunch.” She remembers those days with Flora, being so gone with heady new love they couldn’t even brush by each other without making out a little.
But Grady shakes his head as he carefully removes his tuxedo jacket. “No, I’ll go. I have a meeting with my manager I’m late for anyhow. I’ll be back to try on stuff for the other event… the, uh…”
“Charity fundraiser,” Nico supplies.
Grady changes back into his snug black T-shirt and jeans and gives Nico a parting kiss that isn’t tender like the first one, but an obvious promise for later. He winks at Gwen as he leaves. No shame, that one, and she loves him for it.
Nico, however, looks mortified. “Sorry about that,” he says, hanging up clothing.
“No worries.” Gwen rolls up the belt to pack it away. “I’m just glad you didn’t get as far as measuring his inseam.”
“Yes, all right. Can we drop it?” He strides down the stairs with his chin lifted, and Gwen scurries to follow.
“Hey, if you’re gonna involve me, I have questions.” She hops up on his desk and kicks her heels against a metal drawer. “Do you do that at home? Slowly dress him instead of undressing him?” Nico pretends to be reading something on his computer screen. “Do you like to stay clothed the entire time and just wiggle around on top of each other like oversexed walruses?”
“Okay.” He pushes her off the desk. “That’s enough now.”
She slides off, giving him space before she pokes too much and he gets snappy; but he is actually chuckling. “Aw, look at you,” Gwen says. “So happy.”
He smiles widely, without turning away or hiding it. “I am. I really am. I do miss California, but I’m happier than I thought I would be here.”
Gwen nods and sits at her desk. One of these days, she hopes, Nashville will finally feel like home for her, too. Until then, she pushes the feelings of disconnection and restlessness away.
“Shit,” Nico says, jumping out of his chair. “I forgot the cuff links at my apartment. Can you take over Grady’s fitting when he comes back?”
“I was going to anyway,” she replies to his already retreating back, raising the volume of her voice when he opens the door. “Since you were ten seconds away from jumping him right in front of me!” The door clicks closed, which she takes as confirmation that he heard her, and she heads back to the loft.
5
When Grady returns, she’s in the loft setting his options out on their own rack for easy viewing.
“Hi Grady, come on up.”
He grins and takes the stairs two at a time. She does enjoy his happy, hyper energy, the way he seems to bring sunshine with him when he enters a room. She likes that he’s growing his hair again, too. Ringlets and spirals in golden chaos, eyes of sparkling—
“Hey, you have blond hair and blue eyes.”
Grady gives a confused smile. “Yes...”
“Hmm,” she says, then shrugs. “Anyway, I have three suits for you; peruse at your leisure.” She plops down on one of the white leather ottomans, then rests her chin on one fist. He is very handsome. Healthy. There is the family history of addiction, but… hmm. “Do you want kids, Grady?”
Grady pauses with a gray suit against his chest. “Um. I don’t know.” He puts it back on the rack, then thinks for a moment. “I spent a lot of time as a kid gettin’ left behind. You know what my life is like, here and there, doin’ this, that and the other thing all the time. That’s no life for a kid.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“I don’t think Nico wants kids,” Grady adds, picking up the black suit with cool pin-striping. She picked that one. “He says they’re sticky.”
Gwen chuckles. “That sounds like him.” It makes her happy anyway, knowing that when she asks Grady about his future, about his family, he thinks of Nico.
“Where is he, by the way?” Grady pulls aside the last suit, a more daring skinny-fit mauve. Gwen was planning to talk Nico into wearing that one; it suits his frame better. Grady is too beefy, but Nico’s enjoyment of Grady in tight, tight pants clouds his judgment sometimes. That’s why Gwen is here. “I think the black,” Grady adds.
“Agreed.” She pulls it from the rack and puts it on a hook on the wall. “And Nico said he forgot some cuff links, so he ran back to the apartment to grab them. He should be back any minute.”
Grady twists around, eyebrows low and eyes narrowed. “What apartment?”
The air in the loft has gone heavy and tense, she’s not sure why, and she doesn’t know what to say. Was Nico supposed to be somewhere else? Does Grady think he’s with someone else? Because Nico would never—
“His apartment,” Gwen reassures him. “Just by himself. Okay, let’s pick shoes.”
But Grady stands rooted next to the garment rack of suits, his hands balled tight at his sides, his jaw clenched. The door opens, and Nico rushes in.
“Oh, good, you’re still here. Did you pick the mauve suit? Because I...” He trails off when he reaches the top of the stairs and sees Grady’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t sell your apartment,” Grady says, without inflection.
“I—” Nico looks to Gwen, who quickly spins around to very carefully inspect the shoes for any scuffs or improper lacings.
“Why did you tell me you sold it when you moved in with me? What are you doing there that I can’t know about, Nico?”
“It’s not—Grady, I’m not—” Nico releases a frustrated breath, then says lamely, “I was going to tell you I—”
Behind her, Gwen hears the rapid footsteps of someone thundering down the stairs. A door slams, and she flinches. Then silence. She turns to find Nico slumped on the ottoman with his head dropped into both hands. “I didn’t realize, Nico. I’m sorry.” She feels terrible. If she’d had any idea that Grady didn’t know, of course she would have kept her mouth shut. Why does she never keep her mouth shut?
“No, it’s not your fault. It’s mine.” He looks up, one hand still gripped in his own hair. “It wasn’t selling, the apartment. So the realtor said I should take it off the market and do a few upgrades, then put it back up and...” He shrugs helplessly. “I just didn’t.”
Gwen says nothing, but sits on the couch near him.
“Is it so crazy to want to keep it? It’s a great location.”
Gwen lifts her eyebrows.
“I know, I should have told him. I know, okay.” He gro
ans and drops his head again.
“Nico, listen.” Gwen takes pulls his hands away, holds his wrists. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t consider all angles before making a huge, life-changing decision. Moving in with someone is a big deal.”
“Yes,” Nico says with obvious relief. “It is.”
“But, you can’t run a three-legged race alone.” She releases his wrists and smacks at his knees. “Not enough legs.”
“We’re a team. I know.” He sighs, loud and dramatic. “I’ll go find him.”
Nico helped her when she and Flora were going through a tough time, and she wants to help him—not to be some relationship guru, but because she wants to see her friends happy. “Why don’t you let me go,” she offers. “I’ll smooth things over a bit. I have to finish his fitting anyway.”
On the drive out to Grady’s house—or, Grady and Nico’s house—or, like, sort of Grady and Nico’s house—Gwen is on Nico’s side of the issue. The place is way out in the boonies, just farms and forest, the occasional gas station and lonely curving street with little squat houses. She understands why Grady would want to be secluded, somewhere with a little solitude and peace and quiet, but in a setting like this, she always half expects to be hauled off by some banjo-playing redneck who emerges mysteriously from the woods and disappears just as quickly. Not that she has a problem with banjo-playing rednecks.
She drives all way over the river and through the woods, down the winding dirt path driveway to Grady’s huge country cottage set on acres of trees, and he’s not even there. The house is dark and locked, and when she peeks in the windows of the garage, his various vehicles are parked, silent, and covered. The space where his pickup truck usually is and the spot next to it for Nico’s zippy little red Miata are both empty.
Gwen scoots up onto the hood of her orange Mini Cooper, thinks, and then reluctantly calls the one person who will no doubt know where Grady goes when he doesn’t want to be found.
Burning Tracks (Book Two: Spotlight Series) Page 3
