Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  “I’m serious—if you get it—no sweat.”

  Sarah blinked at Thad. He still had her hand between his, and speaking of sweating . . . he was.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said.

  I have to go throw up. For more reasons than one.

  She left Thad rehanging himself in the doorway as she charged to the restroom.

  Chapter Three

  “If you will take your places at the starting line, the United Financial 500 is about to begin.” Matt Evans held up a fan of ten-dollar bills. “Any more bets?”

  A cigarette-alto rasped from inside the cubicle behind him. “There are laws against that in this state, Evans.”

  Matt grinned. “You’ll get your cut, Cherie. You on lookout?”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  “That’s my girl.” Matt poised the money-laden hand in the air. “Gentlemen, start your engines . . . wait for it . . .” He lengthened the pause until the veins bulged in the drivers’ necks before he said, “Go!”

  Amid a burst of cheers from the white-shirted, neck-tied crowd standing on desks to see over the tops of their cubicles, Caleb Clark and Michael D’Amato shot from the end of the hall, pushing their wheeled desk chairs at a speed that rivaled the L train. When they reached the edge of the first doorway, Wes Oliver yanked away a yellow legal pad repurposed as a caution flag, and Caleb and Michael leapt into the chairs with their knees in the seats and leaned toward the finish line.

  This was the part that made the whole thing. Matt was already grabbing his sides as Caleb’s chair sideswiped Michael’s and sent it careening against Cherie’s cubicle. He barely heard the expected, “You guys are dead to me,” over the money-mad cries of the fans. Michael recovered and knocked Caleb into a three-hundred-sixty–degree twirl, crossing the finish line a chair-length ahead of his competitor.

  “Yes!” Matt shouted over the deafening din. Caleb had been the clear favorite, which meant after everyone got their cuts, including Cherie, he’d be forty bucks richer.

  The noise spilled into the hallway as Matt’s fellow would-be financiers made their way toward him, hands out.

  “That was so rigged!”

  “C’mon, man—it was a clear win.”

  “I wanna see a replay.”

  “I should have thought of that,” Matt said. “I’ll take video next time.”

  “If you’re still here next time,” a voice croaked. “Red flag. Red flag.”

  Bodies escaped into offices with the skill of Houdini. The two who had no chance of getting back to theirs without being apprehended dove into Matt’s, Wes under the desk, Caleb flattened against the inside of the partition. Matt had hardly stuffed the winnings into his pocket and slid his chair into place to conceal Wes when Clay Nelson appeared in the doorway, stroking his rusty goatee.

  “Hey, Uncle Clay,” Matt said. “Something I can do for you?”

  Clay didn’t answer. He merely beckoned with one hand, left eyebrow cocked. Matt sighed. The man missed nothing.

  Matt slid his chair back and nodded Wes out. While Wes extricated himself, Caleb peeled his back from the partition wall. Clay stood aside to let them both pass. Matt had to suck up a grin as they raised their thumbs over Clay’s head and disappeared. They knew as well as he did Matt wasn’t going to catch any heat. Although . . . Uncle Clay’s eyes didn’t have their usual gleam this morning.

  He folded his arms across his tweed jacket front and leaned in the doorway.

  “What next, Matt? Betting on elevators?”

  Matt picked up his cell phone and checked for text messages. “Dude, that was this morning.”

  “No surprise there. You know, if Novak gets wind of any of this, I’ll be forced to make an example of you.”

  No message from Sarah. Matt set the phone down and picked up the tennis-sized ball of colored rubber bands he’d constructed himself. “Why me?”

  “How ’bout because you’re the ringleader.”

  “No. More like . . .” Matt pretended to gaze out a nonexistent window. “The circus master.”

  He looked back at Clay. No laugh. Time for another approach.

  “Hey,” Matt said, “saw my mother last night. She says hello.”

  Matt could almost feel his own eyes sparkling as he waited for Clay to deliver the perfect one-liner about his sister. There was nothing like the reassurance that Clay thought she was as bordering-on-ridiculous as Matt did.

  But he didn’t get so much as a lip twitch.

  Matt tossed the ball onto the desk. “What’s wrong, Uncle Clay?”

  “Wrong? What could be wrong?” Clay grunted. “Unless you count the good news your Aunt Jerri gave me this morning.”

  “She’s cutting up her credit cards again.”

  “No. She’s pregnant. Again.”

  Matt sat straight up in the chair. “No way! Come on, that’s amazing. Congratulations, Uncle Clay.” He let his grin go wide. “Any idea who the father is?”

  Clay squinted at him. “You’re funny. Like a colonoscopy.”

  “What’s funny is you with a little baby. I mean, you’re so . . . old.”

  “Come to think of it, you have something else in common with a colonoscopy.”

  “Man.” Matt pressed a hand to his chest. “That was needlessly harsh.”

  “Do you realize I managed to get through three children without changing a single diaper? Now I’m forced to defend my record.” He glared at Matt. “And don’t even think about starting a pool.”

  Matt raised both hands. “What? You think I’m insensitive?”

  No reply.

  “But seriously, Uncle Clay—haven’t you two ever heard of birth control?”

  “You mean that thing that works 100 percent of the time? That birth control?”

  Matt waved him off and picked up the gripper a guy at the gym had talked him into buying. Something about a crushing grip being essential to your overall fitness. “It’ll be okay. You guys are great parents.” He bit off: Better than mine. His mother was Clay’s sister after all, and the poor guy didn’t need to go there today.

  “Do you know how much it’s going to cost to send this kid to college?” Clay said. “We’re looking at a hundred grand minimum. Maybe a hundred and fifty. And that’s a state college. If he commutes.”

  Matt’s desk phone rang. Clay nodded at it.

  “Take your call. I need more coffee. A lot more coffee.”

  Matt leaned back and grabbed the phone, eyes still on Clay’s retreating form. Poor dude.

  “Your girlfriend’s on the line,” Cherie croaked in his ear.

  “Sarah?”

  “I’ll tell her you asked that.”

  “Just making sure. Last time you told me it was my girlfriend it turned out to be my mother.”

  “Yeah, well, you hadn’t talked to your mother in a month.”

  And it had been a good month until then.

  “Put her through,” he said.

  He still held his breath until he heard Sarah’s voice. Sarah’s excited voice.

  “I think I got it!”

  “Nice!” Matt gave the chair a celebratory twirl. “What did I tell you, Sar? Didn’t I tell you you had that thing? Didn’t I call that?”

  He waited and pictured Sarah shaking all that fudge-colored hair over her shoulders and wrinkling the exactly five freckles on her cute nose.

  “So tell me where you’re taking me to celebrate.”

  Just the right touch of flirty with a hint of edgy. He loved it.

  “And not where we took your parents last night. What were you thinking with that Mexican hole in the wall? I thought your mother was going to pull a surgical mask out of her purse.”

  “I warned you she was like that.”

  “So you took them right to a spot where I could see it in action.”

  “Are you mad at me? You’re mad at me.”

  “No.”

  Matt grinned. “Yeah, you’re mad.”

  “No I’m not. I
think she would have complained if we’d gone to a White House dinner.”

  That was his girl.

  “Don’t think you’re getting out of talking about last night,” she said, “but where are you taking me tonight?”

  “How ’bout that’s for me to know and you to find out?” he said.

  “Who says that anymore?”

  “I’m reviving it.”

  “What time am I going to ‘find out’?”

  “I’m picking your sweet self up at your place at seven and I’m gonna take you for a ride. Wait ’til you check out the new suspension system I put in the ’Maro.”

  “That’s what I live for,” she said.

  Her voice was syrupy with sarcasm. Yeah. He loved that too.

  Sarah wanted to leave work on the stroke of five that day, just in case Buzz completely died and she had to take a tow truck all the way to Oak Park. But she had to put together the anticipated website costs for the ConEx account and she wanted the report on Nick’s desk before tomorrow’s deadline. Before Thad got his part turned in. That’s what Megan had advised over lunch since, as she put it, “This job is not a fait accompli yet, so keep showin’ ’em what you’re workin’ with.”

  So it was closer to five thirty when Sarah hurried through the parking garage. Not enough time for a bubble bath, but still enough for a total hair redo. A whole morning of trips to the ladies’ room to heave had landed it in a messy bun for the rest of the day. At least she didn’t feel like losing her lunch any more.

  Her steps slowed, though, when she saw Audrey standing next to her big-enough-for-quintuplets Suburban with an arm full of bulging “It’s a Boy!” gift bags. Sarah hadn’t made it to the lunchtime shower; Megan had insisted they go out so Sarah could give her every detail of her meeting with the Big Three and they could plan her continuing strategy.

  The red-faced Audrey was clearly losing the battle with the bags and the briefcase and the lunch and the knitting. Where was Thad now? Sarah reached her just as a tiny sweater impaled on steel needles threatened to take a dive to the garage floor.

  “Thank you!” Audrey said as Sarah relieved her of the three biggest bags.

  Sarah nodded—into the face of a neon-blue teddy bear.

  “Isn’t that the cutest thing?” Audrey’s blunt-cut dark hair splashed against a round cheek. “Everybody was just too generous. We won’t have to buy another thing.” She gave Sarah a smile with a slight endearing overbite. “Thank you for the gift card. If we do need to get anything else, that should do it.”

  “That was from Megan and me,” Sarah said, and didn’t add that Megan had footed the bill for the whole thing. “Do you want these in the back or . . . ?”

  “You can just put them on the other side of the car seat.”

  Sarah leaned into the car and almost collided with what looked like the bucket seat out of a limousine. The thing had so many straps on it, she was sure a master’s degree was required to operate it.

  She deposited the bags and backed out of the car. “You already have the baby seat in there?”

  “Well . . .” Audrey patted the belly protruding from the coat she could no longer button. “I already have the baby.”

  “I guess there’s that.”

  “So did they give you the job?”

  Sarah felt her eyes widen. Audrey had gone from Ultimate Mama to Account Manager with the merest shift in tone.

  “Um, they called me in but they didn’t say anything definite.”

  Audrey shrugged. “You’ll get it. Just between you and me, I don’t think Thad is quite ready yet.”

  It took every amount of willpower Sarah had not to grab Audrey by both arms and shout, What do you know? You know something, don’t you? You can tell me!

  And then Megan would stop speaking to her.

  But another tactic showed itself, one so easy Sarah almost felt guilty as she said, “Thanks, but the job’s only temporary anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Audrey shifted back to Mama Mode, hands on her belly again. “I’m getting quite attached to this little guy. Oh! He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”

  Gee, Audrey, we were never that close—

  “Here.” Audrey grabbed Sarah’s hand and pressed it against her stomach. The “little guy” did not seem pleased and pressed back. There was no doubt a tiny foot was staging the protest.

  “Did you feel him?”

  Once again Megan was right: Audrey glowed, although Rudolph wasn’t the image she brought to mind. Audrey might have had trouble getting pregnant, but being pregnant was obviously what she was made for. “He’s just so wonderful,” Audrey said. “I can’t imagine myself leaving him to fly to Baltimore five times a month. What could be worse?”

  Sarah couldn’t even begin to relate, which made her feel somehow small at the moment. She groped for humor and found a piece.

  “Actually living in Baltimore,” she said. “That would be worse.”

  Audrey laughed and opened the driver’s side door. “Okay, time to squeeze myself in here. I better have him soon or I’m not going to be able to fit behind the wheel.”

  Sarah didn’t stay to help her with that.

  Chapter Four

  Matt kept where they were eating a secret until he pulled “the ’Maro”—his red-velvet-cake–colored 1969 Camaro—up to valet parking at Lola, where he practically made the valet sign a sworn statement not to scratch, dent, or ding it. They hadn’t been there since their one-year-of-dating anniversary six months before. Only a step down from the highest-end restaurants downtown, Lola featured classy, low-lit ambience, a menu full of served-with-a-(insert something unpronounceable)-sauce entrées, and a wine list Sarah had never been able to get all the way through before the server came for the order. She was sure this was more what Matt’s father had had in mind the night before when he told Matt to pick a restaurant.

  “We’re not splitting the tab tonight,” Matt whispered to her as they passed through the bar to the maître d’s stand. “I’ve got this.”

  “I won’t argue with you,” Sarah whispered back, although she usually did. She wanted this to be a good night and she wouldn’t mess it up by arm-wrestling him for a check she couldn’t afford.

  “Isn’t that Nick what’s-his-nose?”

  Sarah looked where Matt was nodding and almost groaned. Nick Kellog was ensconced at the bar, sipping a Manhattan and watching ESPN. Even with his tie loosened, he looked exactly the same as he did in the office. Same gelled-in-place hair. Same sardonic expression.

  And probably the same attitude toward women of childbearing age.

  “Just keep going,” Sarah murmured to Matt. “It’s you and me tonight.”

  The maître d’ led them to a cozy booth tucked into the back of the dining room. Matt took Sarah’s hand and kissed her fingers. One of about five hundred reasons why she couldn’t resist being with him.

  She’d sworn off relationships after college, after the one she’d thought was serious had turned out to be one-sided. Hers. Since at that point she couldn’t imagine one turning out any other way, she’d focused on grad school. She dated some but purposely kept it casual because she was so close to getting a good job and being more likely to meet guys who were interested in building a life.

  And then life had become about her dad.

  After that, she’d gone for a social life for sure. It hadn’t been hard to find guys to date for fun. She was in a profession full of young, ambitious, educated people with bright personalities, and most of them were visibly and shamelessly relieved to hear that she wasn’t in the market for a husband. It didn’t matter to them why and she never bothered to tell them.

  But then there was Matt.

  It was hard to ignore his red-tinged dark curls and his this-side-of-puppy brown eyes and his runner’s build. Or, more than that, the personality package: part goofy wit, part still-innocent, part just plain decent. The decent had grabbed her first and kept her as close as she intended to g
et.

  It was a good thing he had those three parts, because the fourth part drove her a little nuts.

  At least he waited until the maître d’ left the table before he gave the menu a low whistle and said, “Man, look at these prices.”

  “It’s not like this is the first time you’ve been here.”

  “Thirty-eight bucks for a pork chop?”

  “You picked the place!”

  “Maybe I’ll just have an appetizer. Aw, c’mon—three shrimp on a skewer for nineteen-ninety-five?”

  “Matt!”

  The brown eyes sparkled at her over the top of the menu. “Gotcha.”

  “You are made of slime.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ll have the bread and water, please. The bread is complimentary, isn’t it?”

  “Sar, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t tease you tonight. Come on. Tell me what you’re dreaming of with this promotion.”

  “Paying my bills.”

  “And after that?”

  Sarah had no resistance to the coaxing.

  “After everything’s paid off, I’m thinking of a loft apartment at Water View. Megan showed me her place and it’s in a great neighborhood. Well, better than the one I’m in right now.”

  “Sar, the ’hood is a better neighborhood than the one you’re in right now.”

  “And when you call the building manager with a problem, he actually comes and fixes it.”

  “You dissin’ Catfish again?”

  “When did I ever stop?”

  “You’re going to let me help you pick out a newer car, right?”

  “Pick one out, yes,” Sarah said. “Build me one, no.”

  “What? What is that?” He touched the tip of her nose. “Have I told you that I love it when you wrinkle that thing?”

  “One hundred and three times. But don’t stop now.”

  “Not planning on it. And listen, don’t get too comfortable.”

  “With what?”

  “You may be ahead in the wage race for now—”

  “There’s a race?”

  “But soon, I’m going to be pulling in multiple streams of income from every which direction.”