The Baby Clause: A Christmas Romance

by Tara Wylde

  She looks down at the note, then back at me with a wounded look. I’d hoped the hurt in her eyes would give me some satisfaction, but in the end, it’s just making me miserable.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” she says. “For this. For everything.”

  “Tell it to Quentin Pearce,” I say, leaving her in the hallway as I stalk toward my office. “I’m sure it’s the kind of thing he’ll really get a kick out of.”

  58

  10. SARA

  Who’s that in the bed next to you, Sara? Why, that would be the devil. Don’t worry, he gave me a check for $150 grand, so it’s all good.

  Yeah, as if I know anything about sharing my bed with someone. That’s a whole different issue I have to deal with some other time.

  Chance let me off easy, considering what I did to him. And what I’m about to do to him. It’d be easy for me to justify both – I just did what I had to do. I always do what I have to do. It’s how I’ve survived. That doesn’t make it any easier.

  I need an outlet for my frustrations, so I pull out my phone and dial the number that called me this morning.

  “Sara,” Quentin’s voice says in my ear. “I assumed you were having a bowel movement, so I didn’t stick around. You’re on the clock – best get to work.”

  What’s that line from The Grinch? As charming as an eel?

  “You do see the huge potential for conflict of interest here, don’t you?” I snap.

  “Why? Because you knew each other in high school? I thought you were a professional.”

  Shit. He’s right. I better seem professional if I want to keep my job. Here I was hoping to tear a strip off him and he ends up putting me in my place instead.

  “I just wanted to make sure that was on the record,” I lie. “Ethics.”

  “Ethics are overrated,” he says. “Work is underrated. Get to it.”

  He hangs up without saying good-bye, leaving me to wonder what the hell I’m supposed to do next. So I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do: I call Grace.

  “Fuck me,” she breathes after I’ve brought her up to speed.

  I’m sitting in a vacant office that the secretary, Karen, said I could use for the next month. The door is closed, of course. The last thing I want is to be overheard.

  “I know, right?” I say.

  “And I thought I had it bad just dealing with my hangover.”

  “Speaking of that, are you in the office yet? It’s after nine.”

  “Uh, not quite yet.”

  “How close is ‘not quite’?”

  “I’m on my way to the shower right now.”

  I sigh. What else did I expect? Grace has always taken the little sister stereotype to the extreme, ever since we were kids. Of course, it doesn’t help that I feed the beast by being the indulgent big sister. We both have a lot of shit to blame on our childhood.

  “I need you to let Mrs. Harrison know that I’m not abandoning her case,” I say. “I’m just sidetracked for a while.”

  “I doubt she’ll be happy to hear that.”

  “I doubt anyone would be happy to hear that the search for their missing daughter has been postponed,” I snap. “But life gets in the way. Just do it.”

  Grace is quiet for a few moments. Pouting, no doubt. Well, too bad. I’ve got enough to worry about on my end; she can suck it up.

  “Here’s a thought,” I say, trying not to sound sarcastic. “There’s a file in the shared drive called ‘Harrison.’ Why don’t you read through it and see if you can do some follow-up?”

  “Well,” she says. “I guess I could try…”

  “We’ve been over this, Grace. Ninety-nine percent of investigation is just making phone calls and asking questions. You can handle that.”

  “All right. I just worry that I’m going to say something stupid and screw it all up. You know?”

  “I do know,” I say. “We had the same mother, remember?”

  She snorts a laugh. “Fine, I’ll get on it as soon as I’m in the office. So what are you going to do first?”

  I’ve been thinking about that as we’ve been talking. Chance is obviously not happening. But I’m willing to bet Tre would be a lot more receptive. He was always the reasonable yin to Chance’s fiery yang back in the day.

  “I guess I’m going to start asking questions myself,” I say. I’m still not sure what I’m looking for, but we both know that’s never stopped me before.”

  59

  11. SARA

  “So this is pretty weird, huh?”

  Tre chuckles as he guides me to a chair in his beautifully understated office with a view of the Chicago skyline.

  “No,” he says, taking his own seat. “‘Pretty weird’ would be running into you at Wrigley Field. I think this qualifies as pure Twilight Zone.”

  I smile. Tre always did know how to make people feel at ease. It's almost like he’s the anti-Quentin. I sometimes wonder whether I might have fallen for him instead of Chance under different circumstances.

  Who am I kidding? It was always going to be Chance. He was the only one who’s seen me at my absolute craziest and never ran away.

  Until that final night, when he wanted to run away with me, and I couldn’t do it.

  “So what’s the Sara Bishop story in a nutshell?” Tre asks. “What have you been up to since you, uh… since you graduated?”

  Since you walked out on Chance and broke his heart, you mean.

  “It’s been a long and winding road,” I say. “First, I took journalism at Moorehead College in Pittsburgh…”

  His eyes narrow. “Really? An all-girls school?”

  I give him a wan smile. “You remember my mom, right?”

  His eyes widen. “Ah, yes,” he says. “How could I forget?”

  He doesn’t know the half of it. But that’s another story.

  “Anyway, after that I worked as a freelancer and met a guy who was looking for his birth family. Turned out he was rich, and he hired me to do research for him. After I reunited him with his peeps, he gave me a bonus and I used that to start Bishop & Associates.”

  “Wow,” he says. “So you specialize in due diligence now?”

  Should I tell him? I don’t know how long I can keep up the act of knowing anything about business.

  “Well…” I say.

  He holds up a hand and smiles. “It’s okay, Sara. It’s actually pretty standard to hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of key people during an acquisition. In fact, it usually means that the buyer is pretty confident about the financial side of things. But when people like Pearce are putting up billions, they don’t want any surprises.”

  Tre can’t imagine how much of a relief that is.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I say. “I’m not a good enough actress to pull off being a business expert.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to Chance and let him know, though he probably already suspects as much.”

  I wince. “Yeah, about that,” I say. “He’s not exactly receptive to my being here. Do you think you might be able to stand in for him and answer some basic questions?”

  He spreads his hands wide. “Shoot. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I told you about me. How about you tell me about you and Chance?”

  “Pretty straightforward. I went to Harvard on a football ride, Chance joined the Marines.”

  That’s not really surprising. Tre’s brains and skill always made up for his lack of money, and I would have been stunned if Chance hadn’t ended up in the military. He had his sights set on being a soldier from a young age. I always assumed it had something to do with growing up in the foster care system. He wanted a structured life to make up for the chaos he lived in after his parents were killed.

  So many nights I’ve lain awake in my bed, wondering what my life would have been like if I’d gone with him that night at the farmhouse instead of sending him away. Seeing him today made my heart ache
with what could have been.

  “What about Atlas?” I ask, shaking off my woolgathering. “How did this all come about?”

  Tre smiles. “That’s a bit longer of a story. You heard them talk about Patrick Sullivan in the meeting. Well, Sully was one of the private security contractors that popped up during the invasion of Iraq. Chance did some after-hours work with him for a few years, until Sully offered him a full-time job when he mustered out.”

  “He offered him a job as CEO?”

  “No, as a specialist. It was Chance who suggested changing the focus to war zone humanitarian work. There was so much need for experts who could get in and out of hot areas and help the people caught in the crossfire. So they expanded the business together.

  “I bet you had something to do with it, too,” I say.

  “I helped with the numbers, but it was really their dream. Atlas grew exponentially after that. When Sully passed away a few years ago, he left thirty percent of the company to Chance. The rest of the family voted to make him CEO and chairman.”

  “Wow. That says a lot about their relationship with him, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tre shrugs. “They’re family. You know Chance never had a real one, outside of me and Moms.”

  I know better than anyone. The two of us spent long nights in each other's arms, talking about our fucked up lives. Chance was shuttled through a dozen homes in the ten years before high school, so when he turned sixteen, he just started sleeping on Tre’s sofa, or breaking into the rec center and using the storeroom there. His foster parents at that time were a pair of real winners; they didn’t give two shits about him as long as they got their monthly check.

  “The Marines must have really turned him around,” I say.

  “I think the best word would be focused,” says Tre. “You know how smart he was, even though it was never reflected in his grades. And I’ve never known anyone with willpower like his. The discipline from the Marines honed that natural talent into something he could use like a tool to get whatever he wanted in life.”

  He sweeps a hand at the Chicago skyline outside the window. “Atlas is the result.”

  So is that Roman statue of a body, I’m assuming.

  “I assume that applies to women, too,” I say, not really wanting to know the answer.

  Tre nods. “Chance has had a pretty steady stream over the years,” he says. “But they never seem to last more than a few weeks. I guess he’s a little too… intense for most women.”

  He’s intense, all right. So many nights I spent stuck to him like a magnet, wondering how I could ever live without him. I guess I learned how, eventually. So much of me wishes I’d had the courage to…

  Stop it. Focus on the here and now.

  “Okay,” I smile. “I think that’ll probably do for now. Thanks so much, Tre. You’ve been a great help. And it’s been awesome reconnecting with you.”

  He pulls me in for a hug. “Same here, girl. I didn’t realize how much I missed you until you showed up again. And don’t worry about Chance – he’ll come around. Eventually.”

  I give him a peck on the cheek. “From your lips to God’s ear.”

  The clock in the hallway says 11:07 a.m. It feels like I arrived at the Atlas offices a month ago, and my head is still throbbing. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve earned my thousand dollars and Quentin Pearce can go fuck himself.

  I’m taking the rest of the day off.

  60

  12. CHANCE

  “Leave the bottle.”

  Tre glances at the waitress, then at me.

  “Is that a good idea?” he asks. “It’s barely past lunch.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m the CEO,” I grouse. “I get to make the rules. And the president gets to follow them, so drink up.”

  He shakes his head but does as he’s told. The scotch is a special single-malt distilled by a crazy Scotsman who lives in a basement apartment in Lincoln Park. A group of connoisseurs each chip in fifty grand in return for a dozen bottles of the specialty batch.

  It’s far and away the best scotch I’ve ever tasted, and it’s illegal as hell, but bars like this one will serve it to select customers who know what to ask for. But even it can’t bring me out of the state I’ve been in since Sara walked into the boardroom this morning.

  “I don’t know, man,” says Tre. “She sure didn’t seem like she was on a fishing expedition. I think it was just a coincidence that Pearce hired her. She didn’t know anything about the company.”

  “Maybe so,” I say. “But I’m still not talking to her.”

  “Sure, that sounds like the grown-up thing to do.”

  “I am your boss, you know.”

  “A real CEO doesn’t let a past relationship cloud their judgment about the present,” he says. “Especially when it has an impact on the company’s bottom line.”

  Why is he always right? Do they teach a class in it at Harvard, or something?

  “Just keep her out of my way. I have to come up with something over the next month to convince the Sullivans not to sell, and I don’t need any distractions.”

  “Heh,” Tre chuckles. “You always were distracted by Sara. Remember the time you walked right into the side of that delivery van when you first started stalking her? I thought I was going to piss my pants.”

  I scowl at him. “I wasn’t stalking her, I was just interested in her.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you were ‘just interested’ in all those terrorists you hunted overseas, too.”

  I pluck a pretzel from the dish and send it spinning at his head with a flick of my fingers. Mr. Football Reflexes catches it, of course, and pops it into his grinning yap.

  “I’m just saying you’re too intense sometimes, Randy.”

  He uses the nickname he’s had for me since grade school. It’s short for “Random Chance” and I still hate it to this day. Ah, that’s not true. I don’t mind it; I’m just in a shitty mood.

  “You would be, too, if you had a month to come up with a way to save your company,” I say.

  He gives me a sidelong look. “Who do you think is gonna be the one who comes up with that idea? Not you, motherfucker. Besides, I’m invested in this, too. You can bet Pearce wouldn’t be keeping me around as president.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure there’s a golden handshake built into the deal if I can’t stop it.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” he says. “Golden handshake? Maybe I’m all turned around on this thing.”

  “Fuck you,” I chuckle, launching another pretzel at him.

  “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” he says.

  “Hey, six hours ago, I was the one telling you not to worry.”

  “I didn’t mean that; you totally have to worry about the deal. I’m talking about Sara. I don’t think she’s going to dig up anything we’ve buried, especially if she’s not going to have any direct contact with you.”

  Hearing Tre say that helps ease my mind a bit. I wonder if he’s figured out why I want to stay away from Sara. It’s not about keeping Atlas’s secrets.

  It’s about making sure I don’t allow myself to go down that path with her again.

  The rec center is deserted at this time of night. Nobody cares where I am, and Sara has snuck out of her bedroom. It’s Friday night, which means her mom is so drunk and/or stoned that you could set off a firecracker in her underwear and she wouldn’t react.

  We tiptoe from the window, through the little gymnasium with the basketball nets toward the storeroom, where I jimmy the door open. Once inside, we curl up together on the little army cot that’s served as my bed more nights than I can count. I’m pretty sure Rev. MacFarlane suspects that I’m using it, but he’s never said anything to me about it.

  Sara reaches under my t-shirt and traces lines along my belly with her fingernails. We’ve done this a hundred times – it’s our way of shutting out all the shit that the world throws on us, and connecting with each other.

  “I
wish we could afford our own place together,” she sighs.

  I lean in for a kiss. Her lips taste like cherries. They always taste like cherries. Her tongue explores mine as she grips her arms around my neck, locking me in place. As if I’d go anywhere.

  “I wish I could afford anything,” I say when she finally lets me up for air. “Besides, your mom will never let you move out.”

  “The crazy bitch won’t have a choice when I turn eighteen in a couple months,” she scowls.

  “Hey, don’t talk like that,” I say. “She’s still your mom.”

  Sara stares wistfully at the water-stained ceiling tiles above us.

  “You don’t know her,” she says. “You only see a small part of what I see.”

  “You’re right,” I say, turning her face to mine. “You’re the only thing I see. And you’re perfect.”

  She takes me by the mouth again, only this time it’s more urgent. Suddenly her hands are all over my body, grabbing at my chest and my ass and my crotch.

  I pull back and our lips part with a wet popping sound. When I look at her face, I realize she’s not Sara. Not the Sara from back then. She’s the Sara from this morning. Grown up, filled out, with darker hair and more defined features.

  “I’m not seventeen anymore,” she says. Her hand rips her blouse open, giving me a full view of her breasts. They’re gorgeous: full and round and happy to see me. The look she gives me is pure lust.

  “Like what you see?”

  I don’t understand how this is happening, but I do like it. We’ve fooled around in the storeroom more times than I can count, feeling each other up, getting a glimpse of some skin, but never going all the way.

  Before I know what’s happening, she’s yanked my belt off and is tugging down my jeans. Only these aren’t my skinny high school legs – they’re the tree trunks I developed in the Marines through grueling exercise every day. Apparently I’m my adult self, too.

  There’s a tent under my shorts, and it’s making Sara grin like a Cheshire cat.