The Solid Grounds Coffee Company

by Carla Laureano

  And second, taking in the woman’s round, pregnant belly.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  BRYAN STARED AT VIVIAN, too stunned to form words. After she’d left him in Colombia, he’d expected never to see her again. But she was here.

  And she was pregnant.

  His mind didn’t want to comprehend that second fact, any more than it wanted to comprehend that Ana was standing next to him, taking in the scene with a look of shocked horror on her face. Vivian seemed to pick up on that as well, because she shifted uncomfortably.

  “Is there somewhere we could talk in private?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess we can . . .” He broke off and looked to Ana, unsure, in his shock, how to handle the situation.

  “I’m just going to go. There are obviously things you need to work out.” She kept her tone perfectly level, but there was something beneath it that told him inwardly she was seething. And then she seemed to remember how they’d gotten here. “But I don’t have a car.”

  “Take mine. I’ll come by to get it. We’ll talk later.” He willed her to look him in the eye, hear what he wasn’t saying aloud. I’ll explain. This can’t be as bad as it looks.

  But deep down, he knew this was exactly as bad as it looked.

  “Okay,” she said finally, holding out her hand. It took him another moment to remember that he’d offered his car. He dug his keys from his pocket and dropped them into her hand, then moved to kiss her goodbye. She turned her head so he only caught her cheek. His heart sank.

  As soon as Ana let herself out the front door, Vivian looked at him, her expression sorrowful. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to . . . That was not my intention. I just didn’t know how else to get ahold of you.”

  Mitchell and Kathy were watching the whole thing with carefully neutral expressions, but who knew what she’d already told them?

  “Let’s go talk out on the patio,” Bryan said quietly, holding out a hand for her to precede him. Vivian hesitated and he realized she’d never actually been inside his parents’ house. Funny that in all the years they’d been together, he’d never introduced her to his parents. Was that from some sort of unconscious understanding that they wouldn’t make it in the long term?

  He led her through the house to the French doors that opened onto the immaculately landscaped backyard, his heart hammering in his chest, his stomach churning. The last time he’d felt this panicked had been on the way to the hospital with Vivian, sure she wasn’t going to live. Now it was his life as he knew it that was on the line.

  She went straight to the patio table, as graceful and athletic as ever, even with the huge belly, and lowered herself into one of the chairs. Bryan took a seat directly opposite her and waited.

  “So, I don’t think I need to tell you that I’m pregnant.” A twinge of humor laced Vivian’s words.

  Bryan saw nothing amusing in the situation. “I think I figured that one out for myself.”

  She reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his, even though he had the strongest urge to pull it away. “Bryan, the baby is yours.”

  He’d known that’s what she was going to say; why else would she be here? But the air seemed to swirl around him, his balance compromised, making him light-headed and dizzy. “How do you know?”

  “Well, we had sex.”

  “And you said you were on the pill.”

  “It must have been the antibiotics they put me on in the hospital,” she said quietly. “Bryan, you have to understand, it’s not like I planned this. It’s not like I wanted this.”

  Bryan took a deep breath and wiped a hand over his face. As much as he wanted to believe that it was impossible, he knew it was all too possible. A quick count back put the . . . incident . . . in Suesca at nearly nine months. And from the looks of her, she didn’t have much longer to go before she popped. Which raised the question, why did she wait so long to tell him?

  Vivian hung her head and studied her chipped manicure when he asked. “I didn’t want to believe it. I was engaged to Luke. At first, I just assumed it was his baby. But all the tests and ultrasounds . . . they don’t add up to when he and I . . . you know.”

  Bryan was having a hard time drawing in full breaths. Vivian was pregnant. With his baby. Vivian. Had it been a few months earlier, he would have taken it as a sign he was getting a second chance. However nontraditional Viv seemed, she’d want her child to have both parents. And he would have married her without question.

  But that was all in the past. Looking at her now, he felt only regret over his poor choices and panic over what this meant for him now.

  Because he no longer loved Vivian, if he ever really had. He loved Ana.

  Someone who had already been betrayed by a man she loved, who had already had a pregnant “other woman” show up on the scene, an event that had been so traumatic that she hadn’t had a serious relationship in over fifteen years. And now, just as she was finally beginning to trust him, she had proof that no matter how much Bryan wanted to be different, he would never escape his past.

  “Bryan?” Vivian pleaded. “Say something, please.”

  He jerked his head back to Vivian, thrust back into the here and now. He tried to order his jumbled thoughts as he took deep breaths. “What does Luke say about all this?”

  She swallowed hard. “As you may know, Luke is not the most forgiving man.”

  Bryan laughed harshly in reply.

  “I’m not sure when he figured it out, but he worked backward to the conception date and asked me point-blank if it was your baby. And when I said, ‘Yes, I think so,’ he threw me out.”

  Bryan wiped a hand over his mouth. “You two are done.”

  She nodded.

  “Well.” Another deep breath. “I’m not going to abandon my child, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  The tension seemed to melt out of her body. “Bryan, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so horrible to you. I should never have come to see you in Colombia. I should have told you about Luke. But I think deep down, I wanted you to fight for me. I don’t think I’ve ever completely gotten over you—”

  Bryan held up a hand. “Viv, stop. I’m going to take care of my baby, because what’s happened isn’t its fault. It didn’t have anything to do with our bad choices. But that doesn’t mean I want to get back together. We’re over. We were over when you slept with me, knowing you were engaged to another man. We were over when Luke fired me but took you back.”

  A tear trickled down her cheek. “I don’t blame you. You have every right to hate me.”

  He sighed. “I don’t hate you, Viv. But I’ve moved on.”

  “The woman you came in with?”

  Bryan nodded.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interfere in your relationship.”

  “Well, after this, there probably isn’t a relationship.” He rose to his feet. “Do you have someplace to stay?”

  She shook her head. “No. I came straight here.”

  “Then we’ll get you set up in a hotel. And we’ll talk more in the morning.”

  Vivian nodded, pushing herself up from her chair with difficulty. “Okay. Thank you.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but it turned out he had nothing to say, so he just nodded. “Ana has my car, so we’ll have to take yours.”

  They went back into the house, where his parents were still sitting in the parlor, conversing quietly in a pair of wingback chairs.

  “I’m going to get Vivian checked into a hotel and then I’ll be back. After I check on Ana.”

  Mitchell Shaw just nodded, but there was something in his eyes that Bryan could only read as disappointment. Kathy wouldn’t even look at him. When she’d begged for grandchildren, she probably hadn’t expected this to be the way she got them. Would his parents ever forgive him?

  Even as he walked Viv to her car, he knew that the bigger question was, would Ana ever forgive him?

  He had a sinking suspicion that the answer was no.
r />   * * *

  Ana drove back to her condo in a fog, parked Bryan’s hatchback, tried and failed three times to lock the doors with the key fob. It was as if the minute she’d laid eyes on that woman’s pregnant stomach, she’d been taken back to the moment when Robert’s baby mama had shown up at their apartment, angry and defiant and eager to burn down everything Ana knew about her life.

  But no, this situation was different. Bryan hadn’t cheated on her. He hadn’t pretended to be something that he wasn’t. He had changed.

  And yet that didn’t stop history from replaying itself.

  She barely registered the doorman’s greeting, rode the elevator up in a daze. Found herself a little surprised that she could still punch in her code from muscle memory, because right now her mind was a blank of horror and fear and disappointment. She tossed Bryan’s keys on the countertop and made her way to the wall of windows in her gorgeous apartment where the city still hummed by, unaware and uninterested in the fact that twenty floors up, her life was crumbling around her.

  “Don’t be dramatic,” she told herself aloud. “Let him explain before you jump to conclusions.”

  But what explanation could there be when his ex-girlfriend, the woman he’d admittedly pined after for years and once wanted to marry, came back pregnant? If it were someone else’s baby, she wouldn’t have been sitting in his parents’ living room. Bryan might not pick up on it, but Ana knew how women in damage-control mode thought. Vivian’s arrival had been calculated to make sure that she couldn’t be ignored, that he couldn’t make her go away quietly. She knew that his parents would want to know their grandchild, whether or not its mother was married to their son.

  It. The baby wasn’t an it but a him or her, a human being, one who had the right to have two involved parents, regardless of how unideal the circumstances were.

  It felt like she stood at that window, thinking, forever. Maybe she had. When the knock she’d been waiting for finally came at the door, her muscles seized from standing motionless in one position for too long. She lurched toward the door, opened it, turned around before Bryan could even greet her.

  He shut the door behind him. “Can we talk?”

  She gestured to the sofa and plopped down on the far end, hugging a pillow to her as a physical barrier. Bryan sank down on the opposite end, about as far from her as he could manage and still be on the same piece of furniture. He opened and closed his mouth so many times, Ana couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Is the baby yours?”

  Bryan swallowed. “She says it is.”

  “And you believe her?”

  He let out a long breath and slumped against the sofa. “It would be really easy to dismiss her, given the way it happened. But what if it is my baby? I’m not going to let a child grow up without its father because its mom is unreliable.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  A long pause, and then he nodded. “If her due date is what she says it is, yeah, it’s possible.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Well, it’s really easy for me to say I’m going to support the child, but we both know I have very little income right now, so I don’t know how that would work. I’m going to have to figure something out.” He scooted closer to Ana, and involuntarily, she squished herself back into the sofa. He looked hurt, but he froze in place. “What reason would she have for lying?”

  “I can think of several.” Ana jumped to her feet and paced the room fitfully. “Did you even ask her what happened to her supposed fiancé?”

  “She said he figured out the baby wasn’t his and kicked her out. And I hate to say it, but Luke can be cold. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Ana stopped. “Ask for a paternity test.”

  He blinked. “I can’t . . .”

  “You can’t what? Ask for proof that the baby is yours before you commit to supporting a child for eighteen years? You can’t demand proof from a woman who slept with you while she was engaged to another man?”

  “Ana, you don’t understand. Vivian and I . . . we have a lot of history.”

  “Unless you don’t want to know for sure. Unless you’re looking for an excuse.” The idea almost knocked her off her feet. “This is what you’ve been waiting for.”

  Bryan jumped up. “No, that’s not true. I don’t feel anything for Vivian, not like that. I love you. I know it’s probably not what you want to hear right now—”

  “I’m going back to Massey-Coleman.” It was unrelated, but it spilled from her mouth before she could stop it.

  He seemed jolted by the change of subject. “What?”

  “Lionel asked me to come back. There’s a big new client that they can’t land without me. I’ve decided to take it.”

  He frowned, now switching gears along with her. “Okay. What does that mean for Solid Grounds?”

  “I’ll finish sending out the samples, and then I’m going to find you a good marketing consultant. I have a feeling that I’m not going to have any time for side projects once I get going with this new client.”

  “So . . . this is punishment?”

  Ana blinked. “No. I got the message today, and I’ve been debating whether to take it. But it’s a huge break, Bryan, my biggest client yet. If this goes well, Lionel might make me a partner. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  Bryan nodded slowly. “I trust your judgment, and we have the money for a consultant thanks to Adrian. Send me your picks and I’ll consider them.”

  She faltered. She’d expected him to say that he needed her, that he couldn’t do this without her. But that was silly, because nothing she was doing for him couldn’t be done by any other marketer. She hadn’t founded the company or come up with the idea. All she’d done was write some copy and arrange for a website. Nothing more than she would have done for any of her friends.

  “Then I guess that’s it.”

  “What about us?”

  She looked at him. “What about us?”

  “You and me. This hasn’t changed anything. I still love you, Ana. Vivian might be the mother of my child, but I don’t want a relationship with her. Not in that way.”

  Ana couldn’t help it. When the words mother of my child left his mouth, she flinched.

  Understanding registered on his face. “I see.”

  “Bryan, I’m not saying that I can’t . . . get over it. I just need some time. And you need some time. You’ve got to sort this whole thing out for yourself first.”

  “That’s a cop-out, and you know it. First it’s that I need to figure out this whole thing, and then it’ll be that the baby is born, and then that I have to figure out how to co-parent with a woman I can barely stand.” He rose and took her by the shoulders, forced her to look him in the eye. “Tell me right now, Ana: Do you love me or not?”

  Ana swallowed, her heart clenching in her chest. “Yes.”

  He relaxed, letting his breath out in a long stream.

  “But sometimes that’s not enough.” She stepped back out of his grasp. “I don’t know if I can handle all this, Bryan. It’s a lot to ask of any woman—”

  “—let alone someone who’s already been through it once.” He took a big step back and dropped his chin to his chest, defeated. “I get it. I wish to God your answer was different. I wish to God that I hadn’t thought I could do a better job of ordering my life than He could. But I did, and I guess now I’m having to deal with the consequences.”

  He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he just picked up his keys on the way out and left without another word.

  Ana waited until the door closed behind him and then let out all the feelings she’d been pushing down in a long, keening wail that didn’t even sound human to her own ears. Big, gulping sobs poured out of her, and she sank to the Persian rug, her entire body shaking with the force of her tears.

  She let herself fall apart there on the rug for a handful of minutes, until her throat was raw and her head ached. Somehow, through h
er blurred vision, she managed to find her phone and type out a message on her group text with Melody and Rachel: I need you guys now. And just as quickly, she deleted the text before she could send it.

  Then she did what women like her always did.

  She picked herself up, washed her face, and began repairing the mask that protected her from the rest of the world.

  Chapter Thirty

  BRYAN SAT IN THE DRIVEWAY of his parents’ house for he didn’t know how long. His head felt dull, his stomach knotted, his chest tight. Too much had happened. So much that he didn’t even know what had happened. For example, had he and Ana broken up? She’d asked for time, and he’d pushed the issue, feeling like she was giving him the polite brush-off. In the end, he’d just walked out, and he had no idea if he’d thrown away the person who was most important to him.

  He pulled his keys from the ignition and trudged up the front steps, letting himself into his childhood home. Most of the lights were dimmed except for the kitchen, so he made his way through to the back of the house, where his dad was sitting at the island, doing something on his cell phone. Mitchell looked up when Bryan entered.

  “Hey,” Bryan said.

  “Hey.” Mitchell looked him up and down. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  Bryan raked his hands through his hair. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  His dad got up and pulled two lowballs from the cabinet, dropped a couple of ice cubes in each, and then poured amber liquid from a decanter. Bourbon, Bryan thought. His dad had never been much of a Scotch man, thought it would make him seem pretentious. Mitchell shoved one glass over to him.

  Bryan took a sip. He had been right about the bourbon at least. He waited for the beginning of the lecture that he knew was coming, knew he deserved.

  “So, what now?” Mitchell lowered himself onto the barstool and looked at his son.

  “That’s it?”

  Mitchell shrugged. “You’re a grown man. I’m not going to treat you like a teenager who knocked up his girlfriend. What now?”