The Sweet Life

by Francine Pascal

  As they stood there not looking at each other, Bruce felt a surge of anger, too. Why had she thrown away everything they had? For what? For some stranger who had to be lying. But even as the resentment surged, it quickly faded. Bruce could never hate Elizabeth. She was his love. Even now, standing there, so beautiful, just the way he always saw her, dressed simply in her own classic style like she’d just walked off the set of a Ralph Lauren ad. Part of him wanted never to be in her company for another second; another part never wanted to leave her. Either way, he simply couldn’t bear it.

  She glanced up at him, but the pain in her eyes was something he couldn’t stand to see, so he looked away. Eventually, she left, moving into the living room. He should’ve felt relief, but instead he missed her. How long would he live like this? he wondered. Would every time he saw her rip him apart?

  Steven and Jessica walked through the kitchen as Steven wrapped up his phone call.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Steven said into his phone. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you when we know something, okay? Listen, let me put Jessica on the line. I have to go talk to the police.” Steven handed the phone to Jessica, who took it readily. Steven figured nobody would be better than Jessica at calming down the near-hysterical grandparents. After all, Steven felt like he was only barely fighting off hysteria himself, and he, above all people, needed to remain calm.

  He glanced over at Aaron, who was sobbing into Annie’s sleeve, and tried to focus. He was an attorney, and when things got stressful, he just got more analytical. That worked except when it was his own baby. Steven moved into the living room, where two police detectives were questioning a still distraught Agneta.

  “Tell us again what she looked like,” said Detective Lopez, a dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties wearing a smart black suit and holding a notepad.

  “Like I said before, she was a pretty girl, probably in her twenties. Average height, blue eyes, very fair skin, and blond—”

  “Wait, what kind of blond? Light blond?” Steven asked, suddenly starting to put the pieces together. “Shoulder-length hair? Almost white-blond?”

  Agneta nodded.

  Suddenly, Steven knew exactly who had taken Emma: Linda Carson.

  “The surrogate!” Steven shouted, smacking one fist into his open palm. Quickly, he ran to get his phone from Jessica.

  “Sorry, Mom and Dad. We’ll call you back.” He hung up the phone and pulled up his photo album. Steven had taken a picture of a very pregnant Linda a week before she was due, when they’d all gotten together for lunch.

  “Is this Melissa?” Steven held up his phone with the picture on the screen in front of the nanny.

  Amazed, Agneta nodded. “That’s her! But how did you—”

  “That’s the woman we paid to carry Emma,” Steven declared. “Linda took her.”

  “Linda Carson? Are you serious?” Aaron echoed, lifting his head from Annie’s shoulder.

  “I told you there was something wrong with that woman.” Jessica couldn’t quite keep the superiority out of her voice. After all, she’d had doubts about Linda from the start. “I knew it! You should have listened to me!”

  “We’re going to need her full name and anything else you can give us,” the police detective said, holding her notepad ready.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Steven, Aaron, and their family and friends waited a heartbreaking seven hours while police scoured Sweet Valley and San Diego, where Linda Carson lived, for any trace of Linda and Emma.

  It was an especially painful seven hours for Bruce and Elizabeth, who sat on opposite sides of the living room, looking anywhere but at each other. Jessica sat close to her sister and put her arm around her. She was probably the only one in the room who knew exactly how much her sister was hurting. No one could comfort Elizabeth like her sister.

  “It’s taking too long,” Aaron declared.

  “The police are doing what they can,” Steven said.

  “We should be out there looking for her,” Aaron said.

  “They sent police cars to her house and her work; they’ve got her license plate. They’ll find her.” Steven actually felt confident they would find her. Now that they knew it was Linda, the odds were in their favor.

  “But what if it’s too late?” Aaron said. “I should never have agreed to a nanny. If I’d stayed home and held her like I wanted to…”

  “It’s not your fault,” Steven told Aaron, sternly. “And we’re not going to even think about something bad happening to Emma. Linda would never hurt Emma. Believe me, she only wants money.”

  “She’s such a stupid woman. She wouldn’t even know how to take care of a baby.” Aaron ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Nobody can care for her like we can! Nobody! If we get her back—”

  “When we get her back, we’re going to figure something out.” Steve crossed his arms. He was determined to remain optimistic until it killed him.

  Just at that moment, a strange sirenlike wail cut through the conversation. Everyone stopped talking and looked around, confused, except for Steven and Aaron, who leaped to their feet and charged through the room to the front door and flung it open.

  Emma!

  And there she was, their baby, in an oversized basket, wrapped in a flannel blanket, red-faced and screaming the five-alarm wail that only Emma could do.

  Aaron bent down and swooped her up in his arms, and Steven wrapped his arms around Aaron and Emma and they hugged for a long, long time.

  “Oh, thank God,” Elizabeth said behind them.

  “Is that Emma? Oh, thank heaven,” Jessica said.

  Steven glanced down and saw a note pinned to the flannel blanket. He read Linda’s scratchy handwriting:

  Can’t stand that wail anymore! She’s all yours! Thank God!

  Greedy as she was, it was obvious that Linda was undone by the wail that only the fathers could love.

  “And you said it was bad that I was spoiling her,” Aaron said, holding up the note for the others to see as he hugged little Emma, who quickly calmed down now that she was back among the people who adored her. And in her father’s arms. Which father didn’t matter as long as she was being held.

  “She’s not spoiled, she’s perfect,” Jessica said. Steven hugged Jessica, never before so grateful they were related.

  The Jessica gene had saved Emma’s life.

  After that, Steven and Aaron decided to let Agneta go. Actually, she insisted on going. After the whole ordeal her nerves were shot. Police kept searching for Linda but seemed to have trouble finding her. But Aaron and Steven weren’t too bothered. They were happy little Emma was back with them, safe and sound. If the police found Linda, great. If not, they weren’t going to stay up nights worrying. In their hearts they felt she would leave them alone. Emma’s five-alarm wail ensured that.

  The bigger problem was figuring out day care for Emma.

  For a while, Aaron insisted on being a stay-at-home dad, but then Steven found a solution that worked for everybody.

  All it took were a few calls around at his office building. He found five other couples who had also recently had babies, and then it just took a few more calls, and the renting out of the empty office on the third floor. Some people at Leisten, Hartke & White had been clamoring for on-premises day care for years. Even Annie was glad to join in. In a few weeks, Steven had made it real.

  And somehow, being with other children was more interesting to Emma than being held by adults. As for the wail, she saved that for her fathers.

  Additionally, Aaron would be close enough to swing in at lunchtime to visit with Emma, and Steven could sneak down in between meetings. And the best part? Everyone who entered the day care had to have a special swipe card, ID tag, and background check. Steven wasn’t taking any more chances.

  Now, in the mornings, Steven, Aaron, and Emma got ready for work. From now on, there wasn’t going to be a stay-at-home anybody.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Seeing Baby Emma doing
so well with her doting dads in the weeks that followed made Jessica sentimental. Back at her stylish townhome, she watched as Jake built a new Lego tower with his aunt Elizabeth, and thought: Jake needs his dad.

  Not that Todd was returning her texts or phone calls. She’d tried earlier in the week, but she’d gotten nothing in response. She couldn’t blame him, if she was honest with herself. She’d lied about sleeping with Liam and he’d found out from Caroline Pearce’s blog—the worst way to get bad news.

  “Mommy?” Jake asked as he plunked a red brick on top of a blue one. “Emma has two dads?”

  Jessica glanced at Elizabeth.

  Jake didn’t wait to hear the answer. “Not fair!” Jake cried. “She has two, I have no dads!”

  “You do so have a daddy, Jake,” Elizabeth cried, surprised. “Your daddy loves you very much.”

  Jessica sighed. Todd had missed his last two scheduled visits—the last Wednesday and the weekend before—because he’d been out of town for work, covering the basketball team, which had back-to-back away games in Phoenix and then in Dallas. He wasn’t due to see Jake until the weekend. And a week in the mind of a toddler might as well be a year.

  “I know you miss Daddy, but he’ll be here soon,” Jessica said. In fact, Jessica knew he was back in town. The team had a home game tonight.

  “Want Daddy now! Want Daddy here!” Jake stood, stomped his Lego tower to bits, and ran off to his room. Elizabeth stood to follow him, and Jessica put up her hand.

  “Give him a minute,” Jessica said. “Trust me on that one.” If you got in Jake’s face during a tantrum, it wasn’t a pretty scene. After a minute or two, he was much calmer. Jake took the terrible twos to a new level sometimes. But who could blame him? Sometimes when Jessica thought about Todd, she, too, felt like having a full-on meltdown in the middle of the living room.

  Jessica sighed and glanced over at Elizabeth. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I know this is hard, but Jake is young. He’ll adjust.”

  “I don’t know if I want him to adjust,” Jessica said. What she wanted—as much as Jake did—was for Todd to come back home.

  Jessica’s phone dinged—another text from her former boss, Michael. He’d been relentless in trying to recruit her back to VertPlus.net. She scrolled down through her messages, hoping against hope she’d see one from Todd. What she saw instead was two more new messages from Liam.

  Liam had been away the last few weeks shooting a cameo for some new film. He’d missed the entire Emma drama, but some part of Jessica had been glad. She didn’t like the idea of Liam and her family getting too close. She wanted to keep Liam in the “casual fun” category.

  Not that Liam was in the mood to keep things light. Every one of his messages to her phone read like a dying love declaration.

  I MISS YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING! WISH YOU WERE HERE. LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

  Jessica tried to walk the fine line between encouraging him too much and hurting his feelings. And there were few things Jessica liked less than worrying about other people’s feelings all the time. It just went against her nature.

  MISS, YOU, TOO, LIAM! she wrote, wondering if it was a lie. Did she miss him? Or was she glad to have some breathing room?

  She pushed aside thoughts of Liam and tried to figure out the more pressing problem of Todd.

  “Maybe you should take up Michael’s offer and go back to work,” Elizabeth suggested.

  Jessica glanced at her sister. She was tempted to take her old job. She’d been a genius there. She missed all the excitement of the work, and more frankly, she missed all the praise. VertPlus.net had been the one place where she really felt like she belonged.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I can’t do it. If Todd found out, he’d think I was just using my job as some kind of bargaining chip.”

  “But aren’t you?” Elizabeth pointed out.

  “No,” Jessica said, and meant it. Sort of.

  Elizabeth let out a long sigh. “The last thing you want to do is take love-life advice from me. Look at the mess I’m in now.”

  “Well, I know how to fix that,” Jessica said. “Just tell Bruce you think he’s innocent.”

  “Even if I think I’m lying?”

  “Whatever you think, you have to help him. And what if you’re wrong and he is innocent?”

  Elizabeth wished she could believe in Bruce as completely as her sister did. Truth was, she didn’t.

  “I am helping him. I’m still trying to get to the truth—whatever that is.”

  “Good.”

  “But you can’t tell Bruce or anyone that I’m working on it, okay?”

  Jessica shrugged. “Whatever you want, just don’t give up.” And then it hit her: Don’t give up!

  “That’s it!” She snapped her fingers. “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to go over to Todd’s house right now.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “I’ve got to try. For both of us, Jake and me.”

  “Are you going to go get Daddy?” Jake peeked into the living room, obviously having been lurking near enough to have heard the entire conversation.

  “You bet I am,” Jessica said, scooping up Jake for a big hug. The little boy beamed. “Do you mind watching him?”

  “Not at all. Come on babe, let’s go.”

  Jake squirmed down from his mother’s arms and ran to his aunt.

  Jessica ran upstairs to change, putting on a formfitting dress and sky-high heels. In the car, on the way over to Todd’s, she practiced her speech, glancing at herself in the rearview mirror.

  “Todd, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but I’m here hoping you…” Jessica stopped. “No…begging you to listen to me.” Yes, begging sounded better. That’s what Jessica planned to do, after all.

  Begging was something she never imagined she’d have to do her whole life. But if there was anything worth putting aside her pride for, it had to be Todd and Jake. At last she had her priorities straight. If only Todd could see that, too.

  Butterflies whirled frantically in her stomach as she pulled up in front of Todd’s house. Luck was with her; he was home. His car was parked out front. Fear trickled through her brain. What if he slams the door in my face? What if this is all too late and he hates me forever?

  Jessica shook herself. She’d promised Jake she was coming to get his father back, hadn’t she? She wasn’t about to break a promise to her son. Being a mother was hard right from the start. Jessica thought back to her labor and delivery, and remembered all that searing, mind-numbing pain of labor before the epidural had kicked in. She’d gotten through that. She would survive this.

  She opened her car door and just sat there, mustering the courage. She took some deep breaths, stood, and slammed the car door behind her. No place to go but forward. Her sleek and sexy heels clacked on the concrete sidewalk as she walked up to the door. She looked good; the formfitting, short mini showed off her mile-long legs and her perfectly rounded hips. She knew it was one of Todd’s favorite outfits. He couldn’t keep his hands off her when she wore it.

  She hoped it still worked the same old magic.

  Taking another deep breath, Jessica reached out and rang the doorbell. She exhaled slowly, feeling the nerves tingling along her arms and down the backs of her legs. She never thought she’d be this nervous.

  This was the man she loved, she reminded herself. This was the father of her baby, and she was going to get him back—whatever it took. A little groveling was a small price to pay.

  She thought about her practiced speech as she watched the doorknob turn. She opened her mouth to begin, but when she glanced up all the words dried up on her tongue.

  It wasn’t Todd at the door.

  Instead, leaning casually against the doorjamb, stood Sarah Miller, her dark hair cropped short, her long legs naked, her feet bare, wearing nothing more than a black, nearly see-through lace teddy.

  A triumphant little smirk play
ed across her lips.

  “Jessica Wakefield,” she purred, as if soaking in the moment. “Can I help you?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Across town, District Attorney Tom Colton sat on the other side of the mirrored glass at the Sweet Valley police station and watched as detectives interviewed Jane Doe—again. This was the fourth or maybe fifth time they’d gone over the details of the night Bruce Patman had allegedly attacked her.

  Colton hated this case already. If he just looked at the facts, given the lack of hard evidence and Jane Doe’s sometimes shaky testimony (even now the girl seemed to get flustered when pressed too hard by the detectives), Colton would probably lean toward charging Bruce with forcible touching and third-degree sexual abuse, both misdemeanors.

  The bartender, whom Colton had also watched being interviewed, was a better witness. And he could testify to the fact that Bruce had had too much to drink that night and had been hitting on the girl. Bruce himself had also come in to be interviewed by police, and all Colton could tell was the guy couldn’t remember much of what had happened that night, which probably meant he’d drunk too much.

  Colton’s gut told him this was a misdemeanor case. While attempted rape was a terrible crime, this one just didn’t rise to the level of a felony. He also knew that if he brought it before a jury, he’d have a hard time making a felony stick. The defense could easily argue that Bruce Patman had simply had too much to drink and that the girl had, too; that it had been a simple misunderstanding, nothing more. These kinds of cases were a prosecutor’s nightmare.

  But there was something that stopped Colton from following his gut: Rick Warner.

  Warner was one of Colton’s best campaign supporters. Colton was up for reelection in the fall, and he had tough competition in newcomer Jill Gray. Warner had already lined up at least two big fund-raisers among his district’s wealthiest contributors, and Colton needed Warner’s help to fund his campaign.