“No Polish blood in you?” His question was lightly asked, but she’d been asked that question about ten different ways over the past two hours.
“I didn’t realize you were also obsessed with my ancestry.” Being offended warred with her fear of losing the little stability she had managed to grasp.
And she’d thought better of him.
“Of all my mom’s questions that you avoided answering, that’s the one I care least about. Tell me why you got fired and why you’re hiding from your dad, and I won’t bat an eye when you tell me that your grandparents are from Jupiter.”
“Is that why you didn’t stop your mom from combining dinner with a security clearance interview?”
He didn’t sigh, but she could feel the frustration come off his body in waves at her remark. “Vivian,” he said finally, “I haven’t known you very long, but you don’t strike me as the type of person who wants a man to rescue her just so he can prove he’s not neutered. You were holding your own. If you had needed to be saved, I would have done so.”
“What do you call me living in your apartment, eating your food and using the transit cards you leave on the table?” Suddenly she needed the parameters of their relationship defined. If he didn’t see her as helpless and dependent, how did he see her?
“Providing you with a helping hand isn’t the same as a rescue. If I were rescuing you, I’d have done this whole thing differently.”
“How?”
“I’d have a suit of armor and horse,” he said with the same flat tone with which he said everything else.
Something between a snicker and a sigh escaped her mouth. She hadn’t told his mother anything about her heritage because she was offended that it seemed to matter. When Karl said he didn’t care, she believed him.
Besides, if she offered him some answers, perhaps she’d win a reprieve from the questions about her father and why she was fired. She didn’t know that much about “her people” anyway. Her father had a habit of alienating people, even family. Maybe especially family.
“The last name and most of the blood on my father’s side is Chinese, but there’s some Mexican and Sicilian in there, too, I think. There were lots of different ethnic groups working on the railroads, fighting forest fires and mining out west. My mom’s a hundred percent Chinese, though.” She let the silence consume the oxygen in the car and extinguish her fear. “Would your mom like me more if I had Polish blood?”
She didn’t want to care what his mother thought, but this was his baby, too, and that woman was the baby’s grandmother. If the baby’s grandmother couldn’t get past her nonwhite skin, well...well, she’d figure out something. She always had.
“It would give her something to hang on to until she got to know you better. Being Catholic would work just as well.” Her leather seat creaked as she turned from the window to look at her husband, but the darkness swallowed his expression—if he had one.
She turned back to the window, disappointed in his answer and disappointed in herself for caring. “The Mexican and Sicilian parts are probably Catholic.”
She started when his hand rested on her knee and squeezed. She’d touched him once or twice, but he’d steadfastly avoided initiating any contact with her since putting his hand on her back as they’d left the library that day. She’d noticed that he watched her when they were in the apartment together—whether out of suspicion, curiosity or some other emotion she didn’t know and his expression didn’t reveal—but he never touched her.
“It’s not about you. My mom is mad at me for marrying someone she doesn’t know and didn’t get a chance to approve of, first. Since I am otherwise the golden child, she’s not used to feeling disappointed in me and her disapproval is landing on you. She’ll get over it, and you shouldn’t feel that you need to put up with it. If she continues, I’ll tell her to knock it off. Or you can opt out of future family dinners. Attendance isn’t a requirement for my help.”
If she hadn’t been staring so intently at his expression, she wouldn’t have noticed the slight lift of his mouth when he said “golden child.” As it was, she wasn’t sure she believed her own eyes. She ticked off her memories on her fingers, a laugh, two smiles and a touch all in the span of a couple days.
But the hint of a smile disappeared as quickly as it had come when he continued talking. “I don’t know if that helps. I’ve never been—”
“Anything but the perfect man all mothers dream their beloved daughter will marry?”
He laughed. If she wasn’t careful, she might have to take off her socks to keep track of the number of times she got a reaction out of him. “I was going to say ‘on the receiving end of a mother’s interrogation,’ but we can let your statement stand.”
“How your mother feels about me doesn’t matter in the long run, I guess. I’ll get a job, get my own health insurance. We’ll have a baby and get a divorce. You’ll be free to marry a Polish Catholic girl your mom has known since birth.”
Karl didn’t respond. But neither did he remove his hand from her knee until it was time to get off the freeway.
CHAPTER FIVE
VIVIAN WAS SHIFTING, trying to get comfortable in the waiting room chair and filling out yet another form with her medical history, when Karl came in.
“Hi,” she said, surprised. She’d told him the time and date of her first doctor’s appointment, and he’d said he’d come, but she’d expected some work emergency to conveniently detain him. Despite his touch of her knee on the way home from his mother’s and his promise they would be friends, he’d been the same distant man of the previous week. And he still seemed to work all the time. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I’m sorry. Scheduling my own doctor’s appointment made me late.” He put a heavy hand on her head, smoothing down her hair before giving her neck a reassuring squeeze and sitting down. No, she wasn’t being honest with herself. He hadn’t been quite the same man. Instead of going straight to work after the gym, he’d come home and eaten breakfast with her yesterday and today. They’d talked about how her job search was going, and she’d reminded him of today’s appointment.
And yesterday, instead of getting home from work after she’d gone to bed, he’d come home and taken her out to dinner. As she’d taken a bite of her stuffed mushrooms and peered at the pictures on the wall of the steakhouse that seemed to be a Chicago institution, Karl had turned into a different man.
No fewer than ten people, not including the gruff waitstaff, came to their table to say hello. Each time, he introduced her as his wife, accepted their congratulations, ignored their looks of surprise with ease and asked about their families. She’d started to wonder if the taciturn man she shared an apartment with had fallen into the twilight zone and been replaced by a politician. Then she’d noticed his glad-handing didn’t extend to his eyes. He smiled, but the twinkle wasn’t there. Her husband played Mr. Important out in public, but he didn’t enjoy it.
The man next to her in the waiting room, silent, steady and present, was the natural Karl.
“What are all the forms for?”
“Everything.” She handed the clipboard to him, embarrassed to be sharing her complete medical history with a man she barely knew. But he was going to learn more about her as soon as they got into the doctor’s office so why hide it now? Jelly Bean was his baby, too. “Family medical history. Vitamins I take. Past illnesses. My doctor in Vegas hasn’t sent over all my records yet, but I think they’d make me fill everything out, anyway.”
“You missed information here.”
She looked at the space he was pointing to. “I don’t remember how old I was when I had my first period.”
Karl’s head jerked and he started to blush. “I guess, I didn’t, I mean...”
This time she put the supportive hand on his knee. “It’s okay. We have one night of
sex and now my menstrual cycle has become important to both of us.” She chuckled because her other option was to cry. “When we leave this office, I probably won’t have any secrets left.”
“Why’d you come to me instead of finding your father?”
Of course, she couldn’t blame him for asking the question—she’d practically invited it—but still Vivian tried to pull her hand off his knee. He stopped her, placing his hand on top of hers and keeping it there. She could feel his touch all the way down to her toes.
“I thought I should tell you about the child in person,” she said. It was the same stupid reason she always gave him.
“So, still some secrets.” Someday, she knew, he wasn’t going to let it slide.
“Yes.” And she would keep those secrets as long as she could. He needed to know about her health and her body because the child growing inside her was his as well as hers. He didn’t need to know how she’d waited until the last minute to decide not to sell her integrity, and how the fates had punished her anyway.
“You said you wanted me here. I can go back to my office if you need the privacy.”
“No. We’re a team on this—” if on nothing else “—and I’d like a friend.”
* * *
IN THE SMALL exam room, Karl turned his back to give Vivian privacy while she changed into the hospital gown. He cracked the door once she had changed, then took a seat in a chair while she sat on the examination table, swinging her feet in the air. The false intimacy of the exam room, combined with the very real consequences of their night of sexual intimacy, made for an awkward situation.
“Oh, the father is here,” the doctor said as she walked into the room. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
Karl had felt discomfited enough as the only man in the waiting room without the doctor commenting on his presence in that chipper voice people use to inform their dogs a walk is coming. But the woman didn’t seem to notice his discomfort—or she didn’t care—and the visit wasn’t about him, anyway.
“Considering how many times I hear people say ‘we’re pregnant,’ I almost never see the father.” His head jerked up when the doctor sat and patted them both on the knees. She looked old enough to be his grandmother, but he hadn’t expected her to treat them like children. “Good.” Pat. “This should be a partnership.” Pat. “And I expect this means both of you will be abstaining from coffee, alcohol, soft cheese and lunch meats.” Pat. “It’s not fair for the mother to bear those burdens alone.”
He knew about the coffee and alcohol. He hadn’t known about the cheese. How much feta had been in the Middle Eastern food he’d brought home? Had Vivian picked it out? Had she eaten it? Was it even a soft cheese? Karl glanced at her and she lifted her eyebrows in what he expected was supposed to be reassurance, but he still felt as if he was swimming through a bizarre dream the consistency of gelatin and the color of black coffee—with grounds trapped beside him in the jelly.
“So.” The doctor clapped her hands. “I imagine you have lots of questions...”
How had offering a drink to an attractive woman at a hotel bar in Las Vegas led to him sitting in an exam room with a stranger in a hospital gown?
“...let me tell you what’s going to happen at this exam, and you can ask all the questions you want when we’re done.”
Now was probably not the best time to ask that question—or to ask when he was going to wake up. Although, he cocked his head to the side and caught sight of Vivian’s pink toenails as they swayed in and out of his vision, the dream didn’t really seem terrible. Still bizarre, but not definitively bad.
“The last thing we’ll do is an internal ultrasound. It’s early yet, so you won’t see much, but we might get to listen to the heartbeat.”
“The fetus has a heartbeat?” Karl asked, and immediately felt stupid.
“If the date of your last period is right, the fetus may have a detectible heartbeat. Don’t worry, Dad.” The doctor patted his knee again. “People ask questions when they’re scared and sometimes they’re silly questions. Babies are scary and they’re also wonderful. Stick with your beautiful wife, here, and you’ll be fine.”
Vivian’s legs had stopped swinging and her lips had pursed as though she might cry. Or—he reevaluated the brightness of her eyes—burst into laughter. He wasn’t the only one who found this scene ridiculous.
The exam was reinforcing all the many things he didn’t know about his wife. He’d seen the stranger he’d married in a hospital gown, knew she couldn’t remember the age at which she had her first period and knew she’d been exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke on her job. He didn’t know why Vivian had lost her job, why her father was missing or why she wouldn’t tell him about her pregnancy. Until she told the doctor, he hadn’t realized she spent most of her days walking around the city when she wasn’t applying for jobs and cleaning up after the stupid bird.
These were the repercussions of having a child with a stranger. These strange half intimacies of hearing her describe how regular her menstruation had been—really, did such details matter now that she was actually pregnant?—but not knowing if she’d ever gone to college defined their relationship.
Vivian and the doctor were talking about genetic testing, but Karl only heard half of it. This wasn’t how he’d planned to have a baby. When he’d sat at the hotel bar knocking back whiskey and waiting to die because being older than his father was inconceivable, he’d thought back on what he’d accomplished in his life.
And he’d come up short, which had probably been the alcohol and his thirty-ninth birthday talking. He had a job that was more than just important to him, it was important to the city of Chicago. He was the independent watchdog for the taxpayer and that didn’t mean he was looking out only for their money.
The worst effects of corruption and fraud weren’t wasted dollars, but wasted lives. Two dead Milek men on the side of the highway and one dying Milek boy in the hospital were testimony to the devastation a bribe and a blind eye could leave.
He averted his eyes when Vivian started to scoot her butt to the edge of the exam table and put her feet in the stirruplike things. The doctor had a wand-ish instrument covered with a condom and lubricant. The woman who had just been patting his knee was now telling Vivian how the ultrasound would feel compared to a vaginal exam and he nearly leapt out of his chair and headed for the door.
His presence here was a mistake. Whatever was involved in an internal ultrasound was far, far too private for him to witness. They were strangers. He’d planned on having babies with Jessica, who would’ve known better than to ask him to come to the doctor’s office to witness this. Jessica had wanted two children—preferably one boy and one girl. They were going to buy a house in Andersonville and he was going to have the beautiful wife, two perfectly behaved children and a meaningful job. And when his thirty-ninth birthday hit, he was going to compare his life to his father’s and see that he’d lived up to all the man’s expectations.
“Dad.” The doctor’s voice broke through the existential crisis he wouldn’t admit he was having, even in confession, should the priest ask. “If you look on the monitor you can see the embryo. And your date for conception looks pretty spot-on with the embryo’s growth.”
The last, lingering nugget of doubt he’d had about Vivian’s pregnancy burst when Karl looked up. On the screen was some pulsing gray matter and, in a flash of emptiness, a little thing that looked like a mouse standing up and dancing. Only it wasn’t a mouse. It wasn’t anywhere near the size of a mouse. It was his baby and the doctor was saying it was a quarter of an inch in size.
From somewhere in the room came the sound of a horse clopping. Vivian’s wide smile made her cheeks pop like a chipmunk’s, but he didn’t know the source of the sound until the doctor said, “And this is your baby’s heartbeat.”
The blood pulsing in his ears took on th
e same rhythm of the horse galloping, the sound that the doctor was claiming was his baby. The baby he made with the beautiful woman lying back calmly on the exam table, looking at him as if she expected him to say something.
“Holy shit.” His life was never going to be the same.
* * *
KARL WAS SILENT as he pushed the cart through the aisles of the grocery store. Normally, his quiet didn’t bother Vivian, but there was quiet and then there was the silence that buzzed between them.
“Are you okay?” she asked for probably the tenth time since they’d left the doctor’s office.
“Fine.” He held the plastic bag full of apples high in the air, twisted it and tied the bag in a knot.
Already in the cart were bananas, oranges, clementines, grapefruit, grapes and strawberries that looked pretty but would probably be tasteless since it was only March. And that was just the fruit. They also had sweet potatoes, kale, Swiss chard, carrots, cabbage and a rainbow of peppers. If a doctor sitting on Oprah’s couch had ever called a plant a “superfood,” Karl had put it in their cart. His previously empty fridge was likely to expire with the pressure of the extra work. At least she’d be able to make every recipe on the planet without having to go to the store again.
She weighed the bleak look that had been on Karl’s face when their baby’s heartbeat had filled the exam room and the fact that they were strangers and she was dependent on him. The bleak look won. She put a hand on his before he could bag some rocks masquerading as peaches.
“You are not fine. You nearly fainted at the doctor’s.” A muscle pulsed where his ear rounded into his jaw, but Vivian ignored the warning. “And your silence has a deathlike quality about it. We’re partners in this. Friends, right?”
At the word death the twitch had stopped. Karl left the peaches on the display and moved on to the pears. When he’d bagged five pears, he turned his attention to her. “This is not how I expected to have a child.”
Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She GoesA Promise for the BabyThat Summer at the Shore Page 34
