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

by Pamela Browning

  Poor Eve. She'd been through so much. He got up and walked around his desk until he stood in front of her.

  "How long have you worked at the L & D Cafe?" he asked, and his voice was low.

  "Since I left your house." She dared not look at him, or she would begin to sob. She hadn't minded the work, the feet that swelled until she wore a shoe a size larger than she had before, the lower back pain that had become almost constant now that her center of gravity had shifted forward. It hadn't been easy, although she'd never complained. But now, with Derek Lang standing before her, so handsome and unchanged by the series of events that he and Kelly had set off and that had changed everything for Eve, the burden she carried seemed heavier than ever before.

  "All that time you've been working at the L & D Cafe so you could afford to have my baby?"

  He had called it his baby again. "Yes," she said, staring down at his wing tips.

  He touched a finger to her face and slid it under her chin. Her skin felt like velvet. He tipped her face toward him.

  "Eve, let me take care of you," he said gently. "I'm ready to accept responsibility. Let me."

  "I'm not sure what you mean," she whispered.

  He reluctantly allowed his finger to fall away from her face and walked back around his desk to hide his pain at a situation that never should have happened. He fiddled with his letter opener to hide his unaccustomed confusion. He and Kelly had ruined Eve's life, perhaps permanently. Now that she sat so quietly in his office, asking nothing for herself, the fact was brought unavoidably home to him.

  He shot Eve a glance of assessment. She looked as though she were concentrating on keeping herself pulled together. Something about her in that instant seemed very courageous. For some reason another picture of her leaped to his mind, one of Eve at the opposite end of the breakfast-room table from him as they both gobbled caramel corn.

  "Do you still eat junk food?" He didn't know why he asked.

  The shadow of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "More than I should. But since I've been working in the restaurant, Lenny sees that I eat the right things. He and his wife have four children. They know the drill."

  The gregarious Lenny had taken her firmly under his wing the day she'd vomited at the smell of bacon sizzling on the grill. It was the second day she worked there, and Lenny sized her up shrewdly and said, "Pregnant, huh?" All he'd done was pat her on the shoulder and say, "Let me know if you need time off to go to the doctor or anything," and he'd asked no questions. After that she'd tried even harder to do a good job.

  "You're not skipping meals, then?"

  "No, it wouldn't be good for the baby," she said.

  "Then you'll go to lunch with me." And he picked up the phone and said, "Maisie, call the Versailles Room and make reservations for two for twelve-fifteen."

  "I can't. I'm not dressed for it. I didn't—"

  "You're dressed just fine," he assured her, noticing for the first time what she wore. Her loose dress was fashioned of a light nubby material in rose-beige; the print scarf at her neck was folded artfully into the vee where two buttons were unfastened.

  "Let's go," he said, suddenly wanting to be out of the office and in the fresh air.

  Eve felt bloated and big and definitely not up to walking into the Versailles Room, the fanciest restaurant in downtown Charlotte, with Derek Lang. People would think—but then, did it really matter what people would think? She'd stopped worrying about that when she decided to become a surrogate mother.

  She trudged doggedly after Derek until he slowed his step to match hers and tucked a proprietary hand under her elbow. They walked to the restaurant, which was only a few doors away. Eve sent halfway-frantic glances at Derek, who kept his hand firmly cupped around her elbow. Once she tried to shake his hand away, but he demurred.

  "In case you should stumble," he offered by way of explanation, waving at nearby sidewalk construction.

  The restaurant was crowded, but they were ushered quickly to their table. Derek gave their order to the waiter, hesitating over the wine list as his eyes seemed riveted on Eve's stomach.

  "No wine for me," Eve said, and when Derek didn't shift his eyes away immediately, she blushed.

  After the waiter disappeared, Eve tried to regain her customary composure. She'd never eaten in the Versailles Room before, with its inverted waterfalls of glittering crystal shimmering with light and its creamy gold-rimmed china and its fresh flower centerpieces on every table.

  "It's not much like the L & D Cafe," she explained when Derek's quizzical glance intruded on her observations.

  His expression darkened at that, and she knew she had said the wrong thing. "It can't be pleasant working there," he said, looking uncomfortable.

  "It's not so bad," Eve retorted, her defenses up now. "Lenny has been good to me. He lets me stay in the house nearby. It's his house, and he could rent it, but it's mine now for practically nothing, and—"

  "You live there alone?" he asked sharply. He and Kelly had talked about Eve's private life, but it had been so long ago. He didn't remember much about her family. Or about her, really. Memory had been lost, set adrift on the sea of grief in which he had been floundering for the past three months.

  "My father lives with me," she said.

  "I see." He was immensely relieved. What if she had been living with a man, a boyfriend? At the moment he couldn't have imagined anything worse, although he supposed that for Eve at this time in her life, such a situation was unlikely.

  Eve said, "How's Aunt May?"

  "Lonely and as daffy as ever."

  "I never found Aunt May daffy," Eve objected seriously.

  Derek raised his eyebrows. He hadn't expected Eve to stick up for Aunt May. Eve's defense reminded him of Kelly; that was something Kelly might have said and which Derek would have attributed to family loyalty.

  "Really?" he said thoughtfully.

  "Aunt May's lonely, as you say. Her hearing problem makes communication difficult. She was nice to me," Eve said reflectively and with more than a little sadness. She'd hated not saying goodbye to Aunt May. She'd left a fond note because she couldn't have faced Aunt May's questions.

  "She misses you," Derek told her. "It was a mean thing you did, running off like that. Aunt May cried for days. And on top of Kelly—"

  "Stop," Eve said fiercely. Her eyes flared with a brief spark of anger; then, like a snuffed candlewick, it went out.

  "Sorry," Derek said, looking down at the tablecloth. He paused. Lately his wife's aunt had been rubbing him the wrong way more than usual. It felt good to be able to open up about it to someone who might understand.

  "Aunt May drives me crazy," he went on a little desperately. "Remember how Louise used to serve roast beef on Sunday and things like chicken breasts and veal cutlets on weekdays? Well, Aunt May buys oddments like hot pickled sausages and Twinkies and something called tofutti and expects Louise to make a meal out of it. Aunt May says she sees people eating these things on her favorite soap opera. I never get a decent meal anymore."

  "That shouldn't pose a problem for a closet eater of junk food," Eve pointed out.

  "But it's not fun to eat junk food if you don't have regular food to compare it with," Derek said. "Actually," he went on in a more controlled tone, "I think the old girl needs something worthwhile to do with her time. Planning for the baby gave her that. Did you know she sewed a complete christening gown by hand, all daintily embroidered? The gown, the bonnet, everything. She showed it to me after you left. She worked on it in her room every night. She'd wanted it to be a surprise for Kelly, she said. And after—afterward, she wanted me to have it. I—I had to tell her that you'd had the abortion, because I thought you had."

  "Oh," Eve said in a small voice, feeling as though the breath had been knocked out of her. She ached at the thought of Aunt May's thinking that she, Eve, would have allowed harm to come to this baby.

  "I was wrong to have told her that," Derek said heavily. "But at the time..." />
  "Derek, please tell her—tell her the truth," Eve said, her voice breaking.

  "Tell her yourself. Show her yourself. Come back home, Eve," Derek said softly. "Come back where you belong."

  His eyes, so compelling, would not release hers.

  "I can't," she said, wishing he wouldn't look at her like that.

  The waiter served their food, providing an untimely interruption.

  The waiter left. "Why can't you?" Derek asked as Eve, striving for normalcy, was about to delve into her fruit salad. His tone of voice was so commanding that she didn't think she'd be able to eat a bite.

  She set her fork on the table. She inhaled a deep breath, trying to be as rational as possible. "Aunt May aside, it would be wrong of me to accept your hospitality, Derek, when you don't even want the baby. Besides, my father lives with me now, and I can't leave him. I'm his sole support." She picked up her fork again, only to find that her hand was shaking.

  "Eve, I'm reassessing this whole situation, but I need time. I'm sorry, but I still don't think I can take the baby, for more reasons than I want to go into right now. But, Eve, you shouldn't be working that waitress job. I want to take care of you. I feel responsible for you and for the baby; you must understand that."

  "You didn't feel too responsible for us three months ago," she pointed out.

  A white line bisected the space between Derek's eyebrows. "Do you know what it was like for me then? Losing my wife and then faced with rearing a child all by myself? Don't you have one iota of understanding for how I felt?" His expression was agonized, and with a shock Eve thought, Why, he's felt this more than I ever dreamed, and her thought was followed with a rush of unexpected compassion for this man who spoke with such anguish and passion. Never had she expected to feel so sensitive to Derek Lang and his heretofore incomprehensible emotions.

  "Maybe I do understand," she said slowly and with great surprise.

  "At least if you were under my roof I'd have the comfort of knowing you were eating properly and that you didn't have to work in that restaurant. And it would be so good for Aunt May to have someone around the house; you got along with her well."

  Eve remembered the two of them baking cookies together. It was the kind of thing she had always imagined she'd have done with her mother if her mother had lived. She'd enjoy showing Aunt May how to make Greek pastries. Aunt May would like it, too.

  "I have my father to think about," she reminded Derek doubtfully.

  "Your father could come with you. There's plenty of room in that big barn of a place, plenty of room for all of us. It's so empty now."

  Eve picked at her lunch, nudging morsels of broccoli quiche around her plate. Al, feeling as resentful as he did, would never move into Derek's house.

  "Will you think about it at least?" Derek couldn't understand why she didn't jump at this chance to make things easier on herself. The world was filled with women who would hang on to a man as though they had a problem with static cling—and not in their panty hose, either. Obviously Eve Triopolous was not one of those women.

  Thoughts whirled through Eve's head. If she lived at the Myers Park house with him, wouldn't he begin to feel a curiosity about and perhaps an affection for the baby she carried? She'd pegged him as a warm, caring person—or at least as one-half of a warm caring couple—before. Couldn't Derek Lang become that person again? Didn't he deserve that chance for the baby's sake as well as his own?

  Again she thought of Kelly, of this much-wanted baby who was the product of a union of Kelly and Derek. Eve didn't doubt that she loved it enough to take care of it for the rest of its life. But it was Derek who was the sole surviving biological parent of this child, and father and child belonged together.

  The piece of quiche she was toying with broke apart. "I'll think about it, Derek," Eve said slowly. It was all she could promise at the moment.

  Derek smiled, illuminating his handsome face. She didn't know how it happened, but his hand found hers on the tablecloth, was warm as it covered hers, and as his fingers curved around to press against her palm, her back stiffened, and she uttered a single involuntary "Oh!"

  "Eve," he said, not yet knowing the import of what had just happened. All at once she wanted to get up from the table and throw her arms around his neck, to laugh, to sing, to let everyone in this restaurant experience her boundless joy.

  She smiled, a big smile that revealed her quirky bicuspid, and it brightened her eyes and warmed Derek's heart unexpectedly.

  "Eve, what's wrong?" he asked in alarm when he saw the moisture collecting in the corners of her huge brown eyes. But she was smiling with such brilliance that she couldn't be in pain.

  "Derek, oh, Derek," she said, pressing her free hand to the gentle mound only partly concealed in the folds of her dress. "I think I just felt the baby move. For the first time!"

  And he couldn't breathe with the wonder of it, he couldn't speak, he couldn't do anything except squeeze Eve's hand tighter and tighter, and she was squeezing back, their energy flowing back and forth one to the other, conveying their awe and reverence and amazement at this irrefutable evidence of the baby's existence and its reaffirmation of life. And they sat like that, unaware of clanking silver and glassware, of passersby brushing the sides of their table, unaware of anything at all, clasping hands across the linen tablecloth and clearly shaken at their sharing of this special moment.

  Chapter 6

  "And so your mind is set, daughter?" Al regarded her over the apple cobbler that reposed on their dinner table that night courtesy of the L & D Cafe.

  "Yes," she affirmed. "I've given Lenny notice, but he says you can live here as long as you please. I'm moving into the Myers Park house, and Derek is very happy. Al, please understand—this is something I have to do." She watched him anxiously, hoping that this new direction wouldn't send him off into another coughing spell.

  "I'm sure Derek is 'very happy,'" Al huffed. "You moving into his house like that. In my day it would have been a scandal, and I still think it's highly improper."

  "Nothing improper has taken place between Derek and me. You know that. I'm convinced that moving into the house with Derek would be the right thing to do under these very unusual circumstances."

  Al shoved his chair back from the table and walked to the window. It looked out on the highway, and down the road the neon lights of the L & D Cafe were flickering on.

  "You ask a lot, Eve. You've always been a good girl, getting top grades in college, then a good job. You never ran around with men or acted wild. This surrogate-mother idea is out of character for you. I don't know why you ever did it. I can't believe you didn't ask me first."

  "Ask your permission? Al, I'm a grown woman. And we needed the money."

  "In the old days, the daughters in Greek families didn't date or marry without their fathers' permission."

  "In the old days, there was no such thing as in vitro fertilization," Eve reminded him gently. "Couples who wanted babies had to do without them, because infertility couldn't always be cured. Isn't the new way better?"

  Al looked sad. "Maybe." He reflected on this for a moment. A car's headlights illuminated his face, and then Eve drew the curtain across the window. She sat on the sofa and beckoned Al to sit next to her. She placed one hand protectively over her abdomen, hoping she might feel the baby move.

  "Did I ever tell you, Eve, that your mother and I wanted more children?" Al asked so suddenly that it startled her.

  "You've said you wanted a bigger family."

  "We did, but we never had any children after you. Your mother never became pregnant again."

  "Do you know why?"

  "Her doctor couldn't tell her. It just never happened. I've often wished we'd had more children, lots of children, like the big families I knew when I was growing up."

  "So you see, Al," Eve said, encouraged by this revelation, "what I'm doing is a sign of progress. There's no stigma attached to being a surrogate mother."

  "You're going to
live with this man, the father of your baby." Al was stubborn, just as she was. His lower lip stuck out, underscoring his implacability.

  "You could come live with him, too," Eve said. "Derek invited you. In fact, you and Aunt May would be the perfect chaperones."

  "No," Al snorted. "That's where I draw the line. I'll not go with you, Eve. I cannot stop you from doing what you will do. But I needn't put my seal of approval on such goings-on."

  Eve sighed. "If you're going to be that way, I know you'll be happy here in Lenny's house." Lenny had agreed that Al could stay as long as necessary.

  Al stuck out his chin. "Eve, you've taken matters into your own hands once too often. I won't live in Derek Lang's house, but I'll not presume on Lenny's generosity, either!"

  Eve was dumbfounded. "What will you do?" she asked.

  "I'm going," Al replied loftily, "back to Wrayville. I'll rent a room from Nell Baker. I won't be lonely, and my social security money will cover the expense."

  "But Al—"

  "I miss my friends from the mill. I miss Wrayville. I didn't want to tell you that before because it tore me up to see you working so hard so that we'd have a place to live and food to eat—" Al's voice broke.

  "Oh, Al," Eve said, on the verge of tears herself. "Oh, Al."

  "Anyway," Al went on, recovering, "maybe this is for the best. You won't have to work so hard in the restaurant, eh?" In that moment Eve sensed how difficult it had been for her father to be dependent on her.

  "I wish you'd go with me," Eve whispered, knowing it was hopeless.

  "That I cannot do, Eve," Al said, heaving himself up from the sofa.

  "I'll miss you," Eve said, trying not to burst into tears, which seemed to be precipitated these days by any little emotional crisis.

  "I'll miss you, too, daughter," he told her, but his face was set in an unyielding expression, and she knew that however much Al loved her, he was not going to change his mind.

  * * *

  "Eve?" It was Derek, home from work for the day. Tonight, her first night back, he was early.