“Get in line,” Oscar said, the eyebrows sticking out more than ever.
Dyma said, “Whatever. I guess we’re not going to that show, Annabelle. Right. Chairs.”
Jennifer couldn’t figure this out. Harlan looked mad, and not just because his hair was short again, which made him look tougher. Why would he be mad, though? There were no real surprises here.
A few minutes, then, crowding a couple more places onto a table that was a stretch for five, let alone seven, dishing up lasagna and salad in the kitchen, her grandpa pouring wine. But finally, she was looking across the table into Harlan’s twilight-sky eyes, focusing on him, on this, and saying, “I don’t get it. Why do you look mad? I should be the one who’s mad.” Clearly, her dangerously manipulative stage was going to happen sometime later than age thirty-four.
He said, “I don’t look mad. I look serious and determined.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Oscar muttered.
Dyma said, “Excuse me. What?”
Jennifer took a deep breath and said, “Well, as it happens, I’m pregnant. And I need to ask you for that job in Portland,” she told Blake. “With your company, I mean, if the offer’s still open. This is the part where I tell you that I’m going to need maternity leave in about six months, and also beg in an undignified way and tell you that I’ll take anything, and I’ll work harder than anybody else you could possibly hire, and whatever I have to learn, I’ll learn it, and you won’t be sorry.”
Blake had a hand up. “Hang on. Yeah, I can give you a job. I told you I would. You’re talent, and I want talent. But you’re pregnant? Wouldn’t have guessed that one. You know,” he told Harlan, “the NFL offers these sessions that cover this. Usually when you’re a rookie, because they figure the veterans already know. There’s a little thing called a condom. Could be a thought. Excuse me,” he said to Annabelle.
Jennifer said, “The condom broke.” Which was not something she’d expected to ever have to tell both her teenaged daughter and her eighty-four-year-old grandfather, not to mention her once-and-future boss, but there you were.
“Now, see, that’s just pathetic,” Blake said. “Technique, man.”
“Yeah,” Harlan said. “We don’t need to go into that much detail.”
“Maybe Dyma needs to know.” That was Dakota, of all people. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a single mother, but it’s not the easiest path. And, hey, birth control fails. And sometimes, a guy forgets to use it. There’s that, too.”
Blake looked distracted. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Nope,” she said. “Not yet.” She smiled, slow and secret, and Blake got even more distracted.
“So,” Oscar said. “You’re pregnant, and Harlan’s the father.”
“Well, I didn’t know if he was or not,” Jennifer said, which was, whoops, her telling Dyma exactly what she’d been determined not to tell her. “Since I, uh, met Harlan a few days after I broke up with Mark. Which was extremely unusual for me,” she hurried to add. “Unprecedented, in fact. But it happened.”
“Mom,” Dyma said. “We get it. I was there.”
“So,” Harlan said, “she came to Portland a couple weeks ago to tell me all that, straight up, in case you’re wondering, which you shouldn’t, if you know her, and we got DNA-tested. Which was why she was with me when you called and told me about Dad,” he told Annabelle.
“Oh,” Annabelle said. “I kind of wondered, when she wasn’t there after that. Sorry,” she told Jennifer. “It’s just … you were so nice to me, and Harlan’s not exactly used to having other people around that he has to think about, so it would have been better if you’d been there. It explains why he looked so sad after we dropped you off, too.”
“I didn’t look sad,” Harlan said. “It was a rough day, that’s all.”
“His father killed his mom,” Dyma told Blake and Dakota. “Which is about the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard. They just found her body and arrested him for murder.”
“Oh,” Dakota said. “Well, that’s … awful. I’m sorry.”
Blake’s face had changed, too. He said, “Sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
Oscar said, “Excuse me.” Loudly, and everybody shut up. “Excuse me,” he said again, “but I still haven’t heard what happened with this paternity test.”
“Oh,” Jennifer said. “Harlan’s the father.”
A long silence, then, and Harlan said, “Which I only found out today, because Jennifer didn’t call me.”
What? She said, “You got the results the same day I did!”
“No, I didn’t. I got them this afternoon. I was in L.A. all week, doing this modeling thing. The one that got put off because I had to go to North Dakota.”
Annabelle said, “Coming out of the water with a surfboard. In slow motion, it’s going to be, with the water sort of dripping off him. Like, a single drop of water rollllling”—she dragged the word out—“down his chest. ‘So women want to lick it off,’ the producer told me, which was pretty gross to hear about your brother. And then pulling on his T-shirt in slow motion again, so everybody gets to look at his chest some more. For cologne. Are you sorry you’re pregnant, though, Jennifer? I get that, but it seems kind of exciting, too.”
Dakota said, “Mr. Darcy in the wet shirt, but backwards. I can totally see that. It’d work, too, on him.”
Blake said, “I think you’re straying from the plotline, darlin’.”
Harlan said, “I’m not sure why we can’t keep this discussion focused, but here’s the deal.” He looked straight at Jennifer, no humor at all in his deep-blue eyes. “I found out today, yeah, and I need to know—why didn’t you call me as soon as you knew? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Because I …” Her hand was shaking, holding her fork. Clack-clack-clack-clack, against the porcelain. She tried to stop it, and she couldn’t, so she set her fork down and put her hand to her cheek. “Because I thought …” Her face was working, and she couldn’t stop it. “You didn’t … say anything, and I thought …”
“Oh, boy,” Dyma muttered under her breath.
“Son,” Oscar told Harlan, “I think you’d better take this somewhere else. Whatever you came here to say—take her into her bedroom and say it. But I’m telling you right now, it had better be good.”
40
Blundering Through
When they got into the bedroom, which was about a hundred square feet, Harlan shut the door behind them. And Jennifer still hadn’t said anything.
He said, “Let’s sit down,” which would be on the bed, because there was no place else, but she shook her head violently, her arms wrapped around herself. Like it was too much. Like she’d held it together all this time, but now, she couldn’t.
Because she’d thought, as those days went by without a word from him, that he was throwing her away. That he was throwing this baby away. That he was the kind of asshole he couldn’t stand to think he’d become.
He couldn’t stand any of it. He got his arms around her, pulled her head into his chest, and held on. And, yes, that was exactly what his lawyer had just told him not to do, but what was he supposed to do, let her cry?
“Decide what you’re going for before you get any more involved with the mom,” Alexis had said when he’d called her today. On the jet, because as soon as he’d opened that envelope, standing in the kitchen with his duffel still over his shoulder, he’d been arranging the jet. Even though he’d just stepped off of one.
“Joint custody?” Alexis had gone on. “Visitation? Or just child support, and that’s it? I’m going to tell you one thing for sure going in. If you don’t want to be involved with the baby, being involved with the mom isn’t going to work.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m going for,” he’d said, which was an understatement. He didn’t know at all what he was going for. Also, he’d wished that Annabelle wasn’t hearing this. That Annabelle wasn’t seeing this, since she’d been acros
s from him on the jet at the time, making shocked faces. He also wished that she hadn’t seen him bumbling around here during Jennifer’s announcement, for that matter, but he couldn’t exactly have left her home alone. Which was also why he’d taken her to L.A. Along with the tutor, because those AP exams were coming right up, and he couldn’t very well tutor his sister in chemistry while he was striding out of the ocean carrying a surfboard about ninety times. If he’d remembered any chemistry, that is.
He thought about that now, and he thought about how he didn’t know what to do, so he’d just do the obvious thing, and hope that the next thing would come to him. He held on to Jennifer, guided her over to the bed, sat down with her, and said, “Of course I was coming. Of course I was. I wouldn’t have left you to face this alone.”
“I thought …” That was all she got out, because she was crying.
“Yeah.” There was a lump in his throat, a constriction in his chest, that were threatening to overwhelm him, but he fought the words out. “But I didn’t, baby. I didn’t. I didn’t know yet, that was all.” He kissed the top of her head and stroked his hand over her soft curls and held her tight, and when the sobs finally died down, he said, “Also, I’ve spent so much money on jets this year, my accountant’s probably going to tell me to just go ahead and buy one.”
She looked up at him. Eye makeup streaked, her hand over her nose and mouth before she rolled over and grabbed a handful of tissues from the bedside table and started mopping up. She said, her voice still wobbling all over the place, “You haven’t … made enough money yet to buy a jet. You need at least five … hundred million for that, if it’s not a corporate jet.” And blew her nose.
He laughed out loud, hugged her hard, and said, “See, now, that’s why you’re so good for me. And I should be offended, you know.”
“W-why?”
She kept on mopping. It was an effort. Her face was blotchy, like a redhead who’d just cried like crazy and had no walls left to hide behind, and he took her head in his hands, kissed her swollen eyelids, one after the other, and said, “What kind of a man would I be, to treat the woman who saw me through the worst three days of my life like that?”
She pulled back and looked up again. Her gaze direct, not caring a bit how she looked. “If that was how you felt,” she said, “why didn’t you even … I don’t know. Text me? After you got home? That was … I felt …” Instead of breaking down again, she took a breath, lifted her chin, and said, wobbles and all, “I felt stupid. Like I’d cared too much. Like you were stomping on my heart.”
This tenderness. This pain. All of this scared him to death, but there was no choice. He ran his hand over her hair again and said, “You couldn’t care too much. You care because it’s who you are. Do you know how lucky I felt to have you with me for that? And I know. I was …” He drew in a hard breath. She was so honest, always. She pulled the emotions up from the place where it hurt. How could he look at himself in the mirror if he didn’t even try? “I was scared,” he admitted. “Overwhelmed, I guess. Trying to set stuff up for Annabelle, getting ready to head to L.A. But that’s not the reason. The reason is that I was scared. Too much happening. Too much emotion I couldn’t … couldn’t leave behind. But I should have known that it wasn’t about me anymore. That I couldn’t …” Oh, boy. How did you say this? “That I couldn’t just think about myself, because that wasn’t who I wanted to be. The man my mom …”
His voice was shaking. He couldn’t help it. Jennifer had her hand over his. Just like that, she’d gone back to caring, and that wasn’t right, not unless he was doing it, too. Not unless he was doing it more. He said, “The man my mom tried to raise.” Getting it out fast.
“The man your mom did raise,” she said. “Harlan. She’d be so proud of you. She’d be proud.”
That was it. He lost it. The sobs ripped right out of him like they hadn’t, all this time. He’d thought he was past it, that the hard emotion was done, that he could move on, but it must have been here all along, because it was bursting out. He kept trying to stop, and he couldn’t. It was horrible. He tried to say, “Sorry. I’m supposed … I’m supposed to …” But she had her arms around him this time, and she was holding on.
He said, when he was finally done, when he was drained and shaken and empty, “You know they’re all going to …” Now, he was blowing his nose. “They’re going to be thinking we’re getting busy in here. And instead, I’m crying. Where did that even come from?”
She laughed, and after a minute, he did, too. “Taking turns weeping,” she said. “You mean I shouldn’t tell the media? This image wouldn’t have worked for your, what was it? Cologne ad?”
“Yeah,” he said, and gave her a sheepish smile. “The surfboard deal. The dirty secret is that I can’t surf.”
“No?”
“Nope. Never even tried. But that wasn’t the worst one.”
“Now you have to tell me.”
She was snuggled up now, all wrapped up in him, or as wrapped up as you could get without lying down. He got behind her, so he could hold her against him and kiss the back of her head and look at her. She was wearing a dress tonight, the first time he’d seen her in one. It was pale green and made out of some sort of crinkly fabric, and it had a whole line of tiny buttons fastened with fabric loops all the way from the V neck to the floaty little hem. She looked soft, and pretty, and so feminine.
He said, “I’m only telling you because I don’t have to look you in the eye,” and felt her silent laughter. “So in this one shot—magazine ad—I’m supposed to be lying back in a chaise by a swimming pool. One of those Hollywood types of pools. Very glamorous. Hot as hell, because they’ve got umbrellas and lights out there, not to mention it’s about ninety degrees in LA. Got me oiled down, too, so I’m sticky and sweaty, and all I want to do is dive into that pool. And I come out of the house in this swimsuit no guy in North Dakota would be caught dead in—”
“Oh, that’s not enough,” Jennifer said. “I need more description than that.”
“I guess it’s kind of a Speedo thing. Except not as small. More like boxer briefs. Tight boxer briefs. Short boxer briefs. Almost no boxer briefs. Black.”
“Mm,” she said. “Well, I’m sold.” And he laughed.
“I have a feeling women might not be the only market they’re going for,” he said. “And we’re not even at the worst part. So I walk out there, and Annabelle starts laughing. Did I mention that Bug’s there?”
“No. You left that out.”
“Yeah, well. She is, back with the production assistants and things, but I can see her laughing. And I’m thinking, that’s good she’s laughing, with all the death and jail and life upheaval and all. And then the photographer, who I’m sure is some kind of Hollywood legend, about the campiest guy I’ve ever met in my life, with platinum hair in a brush cut and eyeliner and more piercings than Dyma, takes a good long look at me and says, ‘Darling, that’s gorgeous, but I think we’d better tone it down, don’t you? There’s such a thing as too exciting.’ And I think, ‘What the hell?’ and look down. Thinking I’ve got some … slippage happening.”
“Oh, no,” Jennifer said, and she was giggling. Just like the night with the painkiller, but drug-free.
“But I don’t have a hard-on,” he went on, “and I’m not slipping out like I’ve got an anaconda in there, so I’m thinking, ‘What?’ And the photographer snaps his fingers and says, “Try putting a second pair on him. We need some compression here.” And all the production assistants, who are about Bug’s age, I swear, are smirking, thinking I’m semi-hard or something, and Bug’s back there laughing. And that was before I was lying on that chaise with my arm behind my head, so I could show off my bicep—which I had to do about fifty pushups on that pool deck in order to get pumped up enough for the photographer, so now I’m really sweaty—and I’m trying to smolder.”
She said, “Oh, dear. Size matters, I guess. So that’s why they wanted you.”
“Yeah, y
ou go on and laugh. It was embarrassing. He had to put the camera down and give me smoldering lessons. Turns out I don’t have a clue how to smolder. He said I just looked constipated. And Bug’s back there the whole time, laughing like a hyena. I kept thinking, ‘Thank God Owen’s not here,’ except that I’m betting he’ll hear about it. They’re going to be making me smolder in the cow pasture next time I go to the ranch, and everybody’s going to be laughing. Exactly like you. See? That’s what I’m talking about. Totally humiliating. From now on, I’m only endorsing manly things. Power saws. Pickup trucks.”
“Wrenches,” Jennifer suggested. “Cattle feed.” They were both laughing now.
“It’s so much easier to maintain your image,” he said, “if nobody sees that much of you. All Annabelle’s illusions are shattered now.”
Jennifer turned, wound her arms around his neck, kissed his mouth with her own curvy, complicated one, and said, “I think the real man could be even better than that guy, though.”
When he took over the kiss, her mouth was just as delicious as it had been every other time. And he didn’t want to talk. He wanted to do this. To take that pretty dress off her and show her what he felt in the only way he actually knew how. Unfortunately, there were all these other people around, and anyway, there were words that needed to be said. Some kind of words. Words that he hoped would come to him as he blundered along. He said, “The real man’s got some work to do. Some questions to ask, because I’m not the one growing a baby. How are you doing?” He sat back a little and looked her over, put his palm out, then hesitated and asked, “Can I touch?”
He could practically hear Alexis, his lawyer, jumping up and down in her Ferragamo pumps, screaming, “No! No!” Here in his real life, though, Jennifer was sitting back on a not-even-queen-sized bed in the tiniest bedroom known to man, taking his hand, smiling at him with her golden eyes, and putting his hand on her belly.
Shame the Devil (Portland Devils Book 3) Page 32
