Ever Since Eve (The Keeping Secrets Series, Book 1)

by Pamela Browning

  The procedure had been simple. An egg extracted surgically from Kelly's ovary united with Derek's sperm in a lab, and in an incubator set previously at the temperature of body heat, the fertilized egg shivered and shuddered and clove in two. In sudden bright bursts of energy, nuclei split, chromosomes energetically aligned themselves, and the unique design of a new baby was irrevocably created. Once again, in a process as ancient as the ages but no less miraculous for all that, a fertilized egg became a new human being, child of Kelly and Derek Lang, citizen of the universe.

  When it was several cells in size, the tiny embryo was injected into Eve's uterus by Dr. Perry. Kelly had been present in the room and clinging tightly to Eve's hand when it was done.

  "Are you all right?" she'd kept asking Eve, her eyes intent on Eve's face.

  Eve, lightly sedated, barely felt anything. Kelly's presence made the tiny morsel of life seem more like Kelly's baby. And she must remember, Eve told herself fiercely, that it is Kelly and Derek's baby. She, Eve, was merely providing a temporary home for it.

  If they were lucky, the embryo would embed itself in the lining of Eve's womb, and Eve would be pregnant. If. That one little word with its myriad possibilities had never seemed so big to any of them before now.

  Afterward, the three of them settled down to wait, Kelly and Derek in Myers Park and Eve, nervous despite her calm front, at home in Wrayville with Al.

  An elated Eve knew by the end of the first week that the procedure had been successful. Her breasts began to swell, and she knew from her recent research that this was one of the first signs of pregnancy.

  Eve cautiously told Kelly, who called every day, that she thought she was pregnant.

  "On the first try? Oh, Eve, I can hardly dare to hope!" Kelly's voice quavered with emotion.

  "Neither can I," Eve replied, her heart in her mouth. She wanted this to be the real thing.

  Al answered the phone one day when Kelly called. "Who's that?" he asked after Eve hung up.

  "A new friend of mine," she said casually.

  "Oh," said Al, who was engrossed in a tired rerun on television. "I didn't think I recognized her voice."

  Eve agonized. She almost wished Al had been more curious. She'd never kept secrets from him before. When would she tell her father what she was doing? What would he say? How would he react?

  Al Triopolous was the product of an old-time Greek culture where marriages were arranged, where husband and wife didn't kiss in front of the children, and where women didn't date anyone not approved by their parents. True, he had broken those traditions himself when he left Tarpon Springs, never to live there again, and when he had subsequently married Eve's mother. But what would Al think of a woman, his own daughter, who deliberately impregnated herself with the child of a couple she hardly knew? And for money at that? Though her motives were pure and would benefit everyone involved, Eve dreaded telling Al.

  Nights, lying awake and listening to Al's labored breathing in his room next door, Eve stared into the darkness and worried the problem in her mind. She hugged her secret close in the dark, running her hands over her breasts, her midriff, her hips, searching for some sign that her body was betraying her to Al. But no, her stomach was still flat. And so she still didn't tell him.

  * * *

  "Well, ladies, how does February sound for your baby's due date?"

  Kelly and Eve, side by side in Dr. Perry's office after his examination of Eve, turned to each other in glee. Eve never knew who held her arms out first, she or Kelly. She only knew that she was happy, joyful, ecstatic, on behalf of Kelly and Derek.

  Kelly pulled away from Eve and wept into a daintily embroidered handkerchief. "I'm just so happy. And oh, Derek will be, too!"

  Eve was elated, too, but that wasn't why she wept. She wept because she still didn't know how she was going to tell Al.

  * * *

  "They want me to move to Charlotte," Eve said carefully.

  "Ah," Al said, and he paused to cough. "It must be a pretty good job, eh? What exactly will you do?"

  "I'm going to be a sort of personal assistant," Eve said, getting up and rummaging in a drawer. "Have you been using your inhaler, Al?" she asked. "I don't like the sound of that cough."

  "Don't worry," he said.

  "I wouldn't if I thought you were taking good care of yourself while you're living here alone," she told him firmly, setting the inhaler within Al's reach.

  "Mrs. Baker will be glad to take care of me," he retorted. His dark eyes sparkled at her.

  "Oh, Al, you know what I mean," she said.

  "I'll miss you, daughter. But we'll still have weekends."

  "Yes," Eve said, trying not to wince as her swollen breasts chafed against the fabric of her too-tight bra. "We'll still have the weekends."

  But for how long? How long would it be before she started to show?

  * * *

  It took only a week of living with the Langs to turn Eve's act of self-survival into an act of love.

  Yes, the allowance that Derek gave her made it possible for Eve to tackle the tall stack of her and Al's bills. Yes, the contracted agreement that she would receive twenty thousand dollars when the baby was born ensured a brighter future for her and Al. But after being with Kelly and Derek and Kelly's Aunt May, who lived with them—well, Eve would have been an emotional cripple if she hadn't loved them.

  "Eve," Kelly would say, popping into her room after breakfast, "I'm going shopping. Won't you come with me? Oh, please say yes," and Kelly would bear Eve away in the Mercedes, drive to the mall or any of the other wonderful shopping places Kelly knew, and they would shop for baby furniture or baby clothes or maternity clothes for Eve, giggling and carrying on like two teenagers.

  Or Eve would say after she had been there a few days, "Kelly, play something on the piano, will you, please?"

  And Kelly would sit dreamily playing tune after tune while Eve listened attentively and with admiration for Kelly's considerable talent.

  Eve loved Kelly for her lack of pretense. Kelly was easy to be around. She was a good conversationalist. The two of them talked and talked, Kelly of her upbringing in upper-crust Charlotte, Eve of her childhood in a small town. Their backgrounds were dissimilar enough to be interesting to each other, and they had the common ground of the baby. After only a few weeks, Kelly was the sister Eve had never been privileged to have.

  Aunt May was nearly eighty, a spry type with a great cloud of curled white hair sheened with lavender. Her plump figure, because of her addiction to frivolous shoes with absurdly high heels, reminded Eve of a pouter pigeon wearing stilts. A box of chocolates was never far from hand, and Aunt May was deplorably hard of hearing and kept misplacing her hearing aid. She pronounced herself "tickled pink" about the baby.

  "I don't think much of space flights and computers and all that," she confided loudly on Eve's first day in the Myers Park house. "But I do approve of modern technology that lets somebody have a baby for somebody else. Now that's progress. Here, dear, have a chocolate-covered cherry. No? You're not into bean curd and health food things, are you? What's that? What?"

  Eve, who had only been trying to tell Aunt May that she was determined to eat properly for the baby's sake, gave up. It was enough that Aunt May liked her.

  And Derek. The unfailingly methodical Derek, who rose at the same time every day, dressed in a well-cut hand-tailored suit before going outside to retrieve the paper, and then read it carefully front to back before driving off to work at his job in one of the gleaming glass-and-chrome office buildings on Tryon Street. Who always kissed his wife as soon as he walked through the front door and whose love for Kelly beamed from his gray eyes, which could sparkle with humor or darken with empathy.

  Was there ever so perfect a husband as Derek? Did he ever fail to compliment his wife on her appearance or neglect to hold her chair for her at dinner or listen when she spoke? Eve's admiration for Derek grew day by day. If I ever marry, she thought more than once, let it be to a m
an like him. But this was only daydreaming. Such men, Eve had decided long ago, were few and far between. Even the one man she'd ever been serious about, and that was more than two years ago, had a few rough edges. Derek had none of those, at least none that Eve could see. I'm glad Kelly has Derek, Eve thought on several occasions. The best part was that Eve knew that Kelly understood her own good fortune.

  A thoughtful host, Derek even took time to inquire gravely after Eve's health.

  "You need to eat regularly," he chided her one day when she admitted that she'd skipped lunch.

  Eve shrugged. "It's an old habit."

  "Seriously, Eve, the baby's health depends on what you eat. Or drink."

  "I don't drink. Not even wine with dinner."

  "That's one of the qualities that Kelly and I picked out of your profile. You don't drink, and you don't smoke. That was important to us."

  "I never cared much for drinking. And smoking—well, I tried a cigarette once. I hated it."

  Derek laughed. "I tried it once, too. And hated it." He smiled warmly.

  "Now junk food's something else again," Eve admitted with a grin. "I love to fill myself full of potato chips, pretzels—"

  "Have you ever eaten cheese doodles dipped in Pepsi?" asked Derek with a rare look of mischief.

  "Don't tell me you're a junk-food junkie, too!" said Eve, shocked to amazement. Junk food simply did not fit in with what she knew of the ultraconservative Derek Lang.

  "Don't tell anyone. It wouldn't be good for my stuffed-shirt image," he whispered.

  "I won't," Eve whispered back. "If you won't tell anyone that I still occasionally snitch a potato chip behind Kelly's and Aunt May's back."

  Derek laughed again. Then he became more serious. "I can keep a secret. If you'll promise not to skip any more meals."

  Eve sobered. "I promise," she said, meaning it. "I want this baby to be healthy, too, Derek." But she was secretly amused that Derek could laugh at himself for projecting a staid and conservative image. Maybe he wasn't so serious after all.

  It was shortly after that when Derek intercepted Eve on one of her secret solitary forays into the pantry at midnight.

  "Aha!" he said, flicking on the light. "Caught you!"

  Although she was startled, Eve's mouth curved upward in a smile. She had just crammed it with a double handful of caramel corn.

  Derek relieved her of the bag of caramel corn and stuffed his own mouth, and they stood solemnly munching until Eve swallowed hers and burst into laughter.

  "Do you raid the pantry often?" Derek asked curiously. He had just returned from an eighteen-hour day at the office. Eve was clad in her nightgown with an old bathrobe over it. He stared down at her bare feet.

  "Umm—well." She curled her toes under so that the hem of the long robe covered them.

  "The truth, Eve," he said sternly.

  "No," she said boldly, looking him straight in the eye. "Because if I did, you would have caught me long before this."

  He stared at her before throwing his head back and laughing long and loud.

  "Shh, you'll wake everyone up," Eve said in consternation.

  "That would be a terrible mistake. They'd eat all our caramel corn."

  The episode had ended with their sitting at opposite ends of the breakfast-room table, co-conspirators passing the caramel corn back and forth until it was all gone. When, at one in the morning, yawning, they both traipsed off to bed, she and Derek were friends.

  Eve was pleased that Derek cared about her. And she was happy that, like Kelly and Aunt May, he had accepted her temporary presence in his home as part of his life.

  Despite the easy camaraderie, in the third week of Eve's residence in the Myers Park house Kelly confided that Derek was distracted by problems at work.

  "I just thought I'd mention it, because we don't want you to think he's not interested in you and the baby. But Lang Industries has a lot going on." And Kelly shook her head ruefully. "Derek took over as president after his father retired. He was so young and inexperienced that it shocked him when he found out how haphazardly his dad ran the company. Derek came up with a new management concept, and he wants it to work."

  "He seems very busy," Eve said diplomatically.

  "Always. Anyway, Derek's job is going to gobble up a lot of his time for the next few weeks," Kelly said. She lit up with a brilliant smile. "That's why I'm so glad you're here, Eve," she said, linking her arm through Eve's and making Eve feel more a part of life in this house than ever.

  Eve knew without a doubt that this baby she carried, this baby who was now no more than the size of Eve's thumbnail, was the luckiest baby in the world, being born to Kelly and Derek.

  Still, even the most perfect couple were bound to have disagreements. Nevertheless, for Eve it was a surprise when she finally encountered one.

  On a warm summer evening five weeks into her pregnancy, Eve lingered alone in the study, thumbing through a book Kelly had suggested she might like, when she heard Kelly and Derek talking on the terrace. She started to leave but didn't want to draw attention to herself.

  "But Derek, I just thought if you felt like talking about it, I—"

  "Kelly, no. I'm tired when I get home at the end of the day. We're so bogged down in the usual business dealings and do-gooder stuff that I wonder if I ever should have been so hardheaded about changing things after Dad left." Derek's voice was tight with worry.

  "With the baby on the way," Kelly said slowly, "I know I haven't been exactly attentive to you, and that worries me. I don't mean to ignore you. It's just that I'm so excited, and I love having Eve here, and maybe I've been spending too much time with her. I have to confess that I—I was lonely before Eve came, with you so busy."

  "Lonely?"

  "Yes, Derek. There are so many things I've wanted to talk about, and—"

  "Don't I talk with you? Don't we do things together? Didn't I text you this afternoon and ask if there were errands that needed doing downtown so that you wouldn't have to go out in the heat?"

  "Of course, but that's not what I mean. With the baby coming, we should be closer than ever, and we're not." Her voice lowered a half tone. "We haven't made love in weeks!"

  "You know how tired I've been!" Derek snapped. Then, wearily, he said, "Oh, hell, Kelly, I'm sorry. I love you—you know that—and I'm happy about the baby."

  "I know," Kelly said, sounding anything but happy herself.

  A long silence. Then Derek said tenderly, "Come over here," and that was when Eve, very disturbed by this time that she had eavesdropped on this highly personal marital discussion, crept quietly out of the study and upstairs to her room. This incident was nothing. Of course it was nothing. So why did she feel so unsettled?

  Naturally there was no mention of Kelly's discussion with Derek when Kelly knocked gently at Eve's bedroom door the next morning.

  "Eve?" Kelly said.

  Eve, still wearing her bathrobe, lay on her back fighting nausea. Eve hadn't told Kelly that she'd begun to have morning sickness. It would only worry her. The nausea only lasted for a short time, and besides, it was just a slight queasiness.

  "Come in," Eve said, sitting up. She wondered, a little guiltily, how Kelly and Derek's discussion had ended last night. She hoped—but then, it was none of her business.

  "You're not sick, are you?" Kelly asked in concern.

  "Just a little tired. I asked Dr. Perry about it, and he said it's normal to be exhausted during the first couple of months."

  "I'm back from the gym and was going to ask if you wanted to come with me this morning," Kelly said with a grin. She looked happy and also very pretty in her workout clothes. "But I've changed my mind. If you're tired, you'd better rest."

  "No, I—"

  "My music club is staging a benefit concert next month, and I'm going to order the programs this morning. I'll only be gone for an hour or so, so it's hardly worth your getting up and getting dressed. I'll be back before you know it." Kelly cast a look out the windo
w. "Anyway, it looks like rain. One of those summer storms is probably brewing. We can't have you traipsing about in the wet, little mother!"

  Eve fell back upon the pillows with a wry grin. "Well, as long as you put it that way," she said.

  Kelly laughed. "See you later. If for some reason I'm not back before lunch, look after Derek for me, will you? In his present frame of mind, he's not able to take Aunt May for more than fifteen minutes at a time."

  "Will do," Eve said, and Kelly jingled her car keys at her as she cheerfully waved goodbye.

  Moments later, Eve heard the Mercedes backing out of the garage, and shortly afterward the raindrops began. A distant rumble of thunder rattled the window. Soon the melody of the rain on the roof lulled Eve to sleep, and she slept until almost twelve.

  When she awoke, she was amazed that she'd slept so long. She went downstairs to ask Aunt May or Louise if Kelly was home yet, yawning in spite of her long nap.

  She couldn't find Louise and remembered belatedly that Aunt May had been planning an outing with friends. When a car wheeled recklessly into the driveway, Eve peered out the hall window through the steady downpour. Derek had arrived home for lunch as usual. She turned to go upstairs.

  Something about the way Derek angled out of his low-slung Corvette stopped her. He hurried through the rain without a raincoat, which was peculiar in a man as meticulous as Derek. Derek was never without an umbrella; when it rained, he always wore a tan Burberry even for the slightest shower. His shoulders seemed oddly slumped.

  And now he was striding toward the house, his suit coat flung open, his tie flying up against his shirt, and his face was the face of a man demented.

  Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Eve froze, unable to move.

  Derek threw the front door open and saw her standing there. His eyes were rimmed in red, and in a heart-stopping moment, Eve was positive that the water on his face wasn't rain.

  His face, his handsome face, crumpled before her very eyes. "Eve," he said, his voice hoarse with anguish.

  Petrified, in horror, she didn't know what to do.

  "Eve, there's been an accident. A terrible accident. Eve, oh, Eve, Kelly is dead."