by Teri Wilson
Once they were alone again, Evangeline strode to the sink, wet a paper towel and pressed it to her forehead. She closed her eyes and her voice dropped to a raw whisper. “I might need to go home for a while. I think I’m coming down with something.”
Ryan watched as she tossed the paper towel in the trash and stared at her reflection in the mirror.
She wrapped her arms around herself, like she was trying as hard as she could to hold herself together. Her gaze dropped lower, and Ryan’s heart lodged firmly in his throat as her hand slid to her stomach.
Surely she knew.
He couldn’t be the only one. All the signs were there—the nausea, the fatigue. Hadn’t he seen her nodding off in the wine cooler a few days ago?
But the clincher was her sudden aversion to alcohol. No one loved wine more than Evangeline. Ryan had never met anyone so knowledgeable or passionate about the stuff.
And yet she’d turned her nose up at every glass she’d come across in the past week. Somewhere on his desk he had a copy of an irate email from a vendor who’d written to him to complain that Evangeline had refused delivery on a case of Bordeaux shipped all the way from France because the wine had allegedly turned sour. It was a wonder he hadn’t figured out what was going on days ago.
He hadn’t suspected a thing until moments ago in the conference room when she’d opened the bottle of red and looked as though she might faint. The truth had hit him like a ton of bricks, and now it was so obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it sooner.
On some level, she had to know, too.
All that was left was for one of them to say it.
He took a deep breath and met her gaze in the mirror. “Evangeline, you’re not sick. You’re pregnant.”
Chapter Nine
Pregnant.
Pregnant!
How could she have let this happen?
It was official. She was an abysmal failure at one-night stands. She would never, ever have one again. One little slip, and now her entire life had changed.
“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t be.”
She’d missed her period last month, but not entirely. There’d been some spotting and even a little bit of cramping. Granted, she’d been tired a lot. And there’d been that strange night at wine group the other day when she hadn’t been able to identify a single vintage. She hadn’t had much of a taste for wine at all lately.
“Eve.” Ryan’s tone had suddenly gone so quiet, so serious, that she couldn’t bring herself to chastise him again for calling her by the name she now associated with her adventurous, sexy alter ego...that passionate fool.
He was right, wasn’t he? He hadn’t needed to say it. The truth had slammed right into her right around the time she’d fallen to her knees in front of the toilet bowl—she was pregnant. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it.
She had all the early symptoms. Every single one of them.
“It’s going to be okay.” Ryan’s mouth curved into a tiny smile. “I promise.”
He was smiling? At a time like this?
She tore her gaze from the mirror and turned to face him. Her knees wobbled, and she had to grip the counter behind her to steady herself, but something about the subtle lift of his lips took the edge off her panic.
Until some semblance of clarity descended on her and she fully grasped what his smile meant—the baby growing inside her wasn’t just hers. It was his. She was pregnant with Ryan Wilde’s child.
She shook her head. Hard. “We don’t even know if it’s true. It could be the flu. I need to see a doctor.”
Maybe multiple doctors. A whole team of medical professionals. She needed to be sure before she could begin to wrap her head around this.
A baby.
Ryan’s baby.
There was no doubt in her mind. She’d never been as amorous with Jeremy as she’d been that night with Ryan. She couldn’t even remember the last time she and Jeremy had slept together, which should probably have been a warning sign that the relationship wasn’t all she’d believed it to be.
Now here she was, possibly pregnant by a man with whom she had no relationship whatsoever.
She studied him, marveling at his composure. How was he so calm? Aside from drenching her in Côtes du Rhône, he seemed completely unruffled.
The wine.
She let her gaze travel to his hands, his fingertips, and she stared, remembering the way he knocked the glass out of her grasp...the unmistakable intention in his eyes. He’d deliberately stopped her from drinking because he’d suspected she was pregnant and he’d been worried about the baby.
It was sweet, in a controlling, maniacal sort of way. But it still didn’t mean she was actually pregnant, and it definitely didn’t mean she was chomping at the bit to start a family with him. Or anyone.
“I doubt it’s the flu,” he said evenly. “But seeing a doctor is a good idea. I’ll ring the driver.”
He gathered his cell phone from his pocket, but before he could dial, Evangeline grabbed his wrist. “Wait a minute. How are you so intimately acquainted with early-pregnancy symptoms?”
His expression went blank. Guarded.
Oh God.
“I see.” She swallowed, and a fresh wave of nausea rolled over her. “You’ve been through this before.”
Of course he had. How naive could she be? The man had a literal harem. There were probably tiny Ryan Wildes running around all over Manhattan.
She released her hold on his wrist and brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. She hadn’t even realized she’d started to cry. And when had her hands begun to tremble so violently? Her body felt as though it was crumpling in on itself.
“Have I been through this before? Yes and no,” he said after a long pause.
What did that even mean?
The bathroom door swung open again, revealing the young mother who’d tried to enter moments ago. She narrowed her gaze at Ryan and planted her free hand on her hip. Her tiny daughter maintained a firm grip on the other one. “It’s been three minutes. Time’s up. We’re coming in.”
Ryan held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “My apologies. Do come in.”
They had a brief conversation, wherein Ryan asked if she was a guest at the hotel and promised to have an extensive selection of complimentary desserts sent up to their room in return for her patience. Everything on the menu, from the Italian cream cake to the triple banana split. The little girl’s eyes lit up, and her mother exchanged a few more words with Ryan.
Evangeline couldn’t keep up with what was being said. All her attention was focused on the toddler—the bright red bow in her hair, her patent leather Mary Janes, the lace trim on her ankle socks. But above all else, Evangeline couldn’t stop marveling at the way she never let go of her mother’s hand.
She inhaled a shuddering breath. Fate had made some kind of terrible mistake. Evangeline didn’t know the first thing about being a mother. The very word was almost foreign to her.
“Let’s go.” Ryan wrapped his hand around her waist and ushered her out the door, toward the Bennington lobby.
She wanted to tell him not to touch her. Pregnancy aside, she still wasn’t over the humiliating events of the night before. Plus they were at work. Zander was probably back in the conference room, mopping up wine and getting termination papers in order for both of them. The usual crowd of blushing bachelorettes was gathered beneath the massive gold clock that hung above the sitting area’s sumptuous velvet sofas, beaming at Ryan as they walked past.
But Evangeline didn’t protest. It had been a long time since she’d had anyone to lean on. A very long, very lonely time. And even though she knew she shouldn’t—even though she was painfully aware that they weren’t a real couple and never would be—she rested her head against his broad shoulder and let him bear the weight of her burden
ed heart.
Just this once.
* * *
Ryan had Tony take them to the closest urgent care center. A hospital seemed like overkill, but the likelihood of getting an appointment with a regular doctor in Manhattan on the spur of the moment was dubious at best. Evangeline sat beside him, growing paler by the minute as she stared out the limousine’s window.
A baby.
Ryan’s chest seized. He took a deep inhale, but the limo felt short on air all of a sudden.
Could he do this again? Could he hold Evangeline’s hand through nine months of doctor’s appointments, attend birthing classes and cater to her nutty pregnancy cravings?
Could he open his home and his heart to an infant?
This won’t be like last time. It can’t.
He couldn’t possibly be that unlucky twice in a lifetime. Then again, his present circumstances didn’t have anything to do with luck. He’d chosen Evangeline that night. He’d known next to nothing about her, but he’d broken every rule he’d lived by since the Natalie fiasco and taken her to bed. He wasn’t altogether certain he’d used a condom either. That was a definite first.
A shrink would probably tell him he’d chosen these circumstances, that a part of him still longed for the family he never had as a boy. A real family, a mom and dad instead of an aunt and uncle who’d been kind enough to take him in when he’d had nowhere else to go. Hell, Zander would probably say the same thing.
He’d be wrong.
Ryan knew better than to reach for things he’d never had. He’d wanted Evangeline. He still did, now more than ever. But wanting her...needing her...wasn’t the same as believing they could have forever. He’d accepted his fate. Having a family, a life, ripped out from under you not once, but twice, did that to a person.
The car slowed to a stop in front of a small building just off Madison with a red cross in the window and a sign indicating no appointment necessary.
Tony met Ryan’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Shall I wait here, sir?”
Evangeline grasped the door handle closest to her, ready to bolt. “That’s not necessary. I can take it from here.”
“No,” Ryan countered. Over his dead body. “I’ll accompany Miss Holly, Tony. Stand by and I’ll give you a call when we’re finished.”
“Yes, sir.”
Evangeline sighed, but didn’t put up more of a fight. Ryan suspected she was probably too preoccupied to argue, and for that he was grateful.
Once inside, Evangeline explained to the receptionist that she needed a pregnancy test. A blood test, she specified. The most reliable one available. The woman on the other side of the frosted glass partition nodded and handed her a clipboard full of forms, which Evangeline completed at warp speed despite her trembling hands.
A nurse in scrubs called her back almost immediately. At the sound of Evangeline’s name, Ryan stood.
Evangeline squeezed his hand, but at the same time said, “No. Please. I’d like to do this on my own.”
Then she was gone.
The door clicked closed behind her, and he found himself alone in the sterile waiting room, shut out and enveloped in antiseptic odors and the monotonous, even beeps of medical equipment. Sights, sounds and smells that were all too familiar.
He’d been in a waiting room eerily similar to this one when he’d learned the truth. When the grand charade had fallen apart. Natalie had given birth just five hours previously, and at first, everything seemed fine. Not just fine—wonderful. Better than Ryan ever imagined.
He and Natalie had only been seeing each other for four months when she’d told him she was expecting. To say it had been a shock would be a massive understatement. He’d been so careful. But there wasn’t a birth control method on earth that was one hundred percent effective, and even though it would have been a stretch to say he and Natalie were in love, they were going to be parents. Together.
Letting her raise the baby alone was never an option. Ryan couldn’t fathom the thought of not being a part of his child’s day-to-day life. He moved in with Natalie right away, and he was there for every moment of the pregnancy—every bout of morning sickness, every sonogram.
Then came the contractions. The birth. And Ryan was there for that, too, squeezing Natalie’s hand and urging her to push. The moment the baby boy’s cries pierced the air, something had come loose inside Ryan—some part of him that had been bound up tight, cutting off his oxygen since the day his parents had abandoned him and left him to fend for himself at six years of age.
He could breathe again, and the future seemed so blindingly bright. A shimmering, soulful place where he had someone to call his own. He remembered with absolute clarity sitting in that hospital lounge—the one that so resembled the polished, sanitary space where he sat now—with his head in his hands, overcome with relief. As soon as he’d seen that baby, heard his plaintive cries, Ryan had loved that child. The doubts he’d had all along about Natalie didn’t seem to matter anymore. They could raise the baby together. They could be a family, and love would come. Eventually.
Then came the hand, heavy on his shoulder, and the look of alarm on the doctor’s face—the same doctor who’d just smiled at Ryan in the delivery room minutes before. It’s a boy.
Ryan had known right away that something had gone terribly wrong. There was no misinterpreting that expression. He tried to ask for specifics, but the words stuck in his throat.
“The baby is in distress,” the doctor bluntly stated.
After Ryan had stepped out of the room to call Zander and the rest of the Wildes, the baby had started bleeding internally. They’d stopped the hemorrhage right away but as a result he’d become severely anemic.
“Is there anything I can do?” Ryan had asked once he’d regained the ability to form words. “Donate blood, maybe?”
“That would be a huge help. In cases of neonatal transfusions, we try to use direct donations from family members as much as we can.”
So Ryan had gone straight to the hospital’s blood lab, and that’s where he learned that Natalie’s baby—the tiny little boy he’d fallen in love with on sight, the family he’d never had—wasn’t his, after all.
His blood wasn’t a match. Both Natalie and her son had O negative blood type, and Ryan’s blood was AB positive. It was medically impossible for him to be the father.
Natalie had known the truth all along. Once the baby was out of the woods and she was presented with the irrefutable evidence, she’d confessed.
She never apologized, never shed a tear. “I wanted you to be the father. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
With those words, the best day of Ryan’s life had become the worst.
The crazy thing was, he might have still stuck around. He’d anticipated the birth of that baby for months. But Natalie didn’t wait for him to decide. When he showed up at the hospital the following morning to talk things out with her, she’d packed up her son and gone.
“Can I get you anything, sir?”
Ryan looked up. The nurse who’d just escorted Evangeline to the back of the urgent care clinic stood a few feet away with a bottle of water in one hand and a steaming disposable cup in the other.
“You looked so worried, I thought you could use a distraction.” She held both offerings toward him.
“Thank you.” He chose the coffee. It was terrible, but he was grateful nonetheless.
“You’re welcome. And don’t worry. Your wife will be out in just a few minutes.” She padded away, her white sneakers squishing softly on the polished tile floor.
Your wife.
The words echoed in Ryan’s consciousness. He waited for the inevitable tightness in his chest that usually came when someone mentioned his name in the same breath as marriage. It happened on a surprisingly frequent basis, most notably on the pages of Vows, the New York Times’ wedding section.
He usually laughed it off. Made a joke out of it, which was undoubtedly why Zander thought hanging the Hottest Bachelor magazine cover in his office was hilarious.
But he didn’t feel much like laughing now. Nor did his chest feel like it was being squeezed in a vise. For reasons he didn’t want to examine too closely, he felt fine. Happy, almost.
Which defied all logic.
He was losing it, he thought bitterly as he sipped his coffee. Evangeline emerged moments later, just as he choked down the dregs. Their gazes locked, and he stood.
“You were right.” She took a deep breath, and then her hand slid to her stomach and settled there in a protective gesture that rendered her following words unnecessary. “The test was positive. I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Ten
She was going to have to quit her job.
Obviously.
It wasn’t as if she could be an effective sommelier if she couldn’t even drink wine. Although she knew her pregnancy wouldn’t last forever. And she could always use a tasting spit cup. Sommeliers did it all the time, but something told her Zander Wilde would be less than thrilled to know his wine director was expelling every sip she took into an empty glass. Even if the empty glass was Baccarat cut crystal, which was what sat on every table at Bennington 8.
Besides, at the moment Evangeline couldn’t tolerate even the smallest whiff of alcohol, much less the taste of it. So, the morning after the surreal visit to the urgent care clinic, she typed her letter of resignation and then strode into the Bennington with it tucked neatly into her handbag.
She glanced at the sitting area where Ryan’s fan club usually assembled, but for once it was unoccupied. The little zing of relief that fluttered through her told her the resignation letter in her bag had less to do with her ability to do her job and everything to do with the father of her baby.
She couldn’t work with Ryan day in and day out while his unborn child grew inside her. She just couldn’t. It was hardly professional, but more than that, it was just plain dangerous.
She’d practically thrown herself at him before she knew she was pregnant. How was she supposed to maintain her distance from him now? When he’d turned her down before, she’d been embarrassed. But there was more at stake now than her pride. So much more. Now she had everything to lose.
