“A little boy.” She swallowed. “Christopher.” She shifted in her seat and smoothed out her skirt again. She wanted to get up and run out of there.
She knew she wouldn’t be going back to work. She would miss her son too much. She would miss his sticky kisses and their walks around the neighborhood. She would miss reading him a story before his nap and the warm, sleepy smell of him when he woke up. She would miss hearing children’s programming on the TV in the other room as she made his lunches. She couldn’t leave it up to someone else. She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, erasing the image of her son from her mind so she could focus on the reason she was there.
She looked back at Trent Miller and admitted to herself why she was there. It wasn’t about the job. It wasn’t about catching up with him. It was about what Everett had been asking for, for months, and the only way she knew to make it happen.
EVERETT
Everett had been relieved when Bryte scheduled her meeting for the same afternoon as his appointment, but dismayed when she told him what she was going to meet about. She wouldn’t be home when he got home, which gave him time to think over how he was going to present whatever the doctor said to him. He would have a glass of wine or two, play with his son, and go over the best way to approach her while he waited for her. Trouble was, he now had two challenges: to talk her into whatever the doctor said, and to talk her out of getting a job right now if that meant they would not pursue having a second child. Of course she had the right to go back to work if she wanted. He was just surprised that was what she wanted all of a sudden. Until recently she’d been happy at home. His talk of another child had sent her running in the other direction, and he needed to find out why.
“I’m just covering my bases,” she’d assured him that morning. “Seeing what my options are. It could be good for us.”
The doctor bustled into his office and sat down at his desk, interrupting his thoughts. Dr. Ferguson opened a file folder and looked it over, then looked up. “I’ll say it again that this is quite unusual having a husband come in without his wife.” He gave Everett a conspiratorial smile, as if the two of them were in cahoots. He thought inexplicably of the kids he’d grown up with in the neighborhood, their many games of “boys versus girls.”
“I’m just covering my bases,” Everett said, echoing Bryte. “Seeing what my options are.”
Dr. Ferguson looked down at the chart. He kept his eyes on the words and numbers printed there when he spoke again. “Are you here to discuss a donor?” he asked. “I know some men struggle with that, but it’s done more often than you might think.”
Everett’s heart rate picked up, and he stared at the bald spot on the top of the doctor’s head, as he processed his words. “I—uh, a donor? For, um, what?” he managed to stammer the words out.
The other man raised his head. “A sperm donor,” he said. There was a weariness in his voice, a heaviness that told Everett he hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. No man wanted to tell another man he shot blanks, even if it was part of his job.
The doctor flipped through the file in front of him to avoid his eyes. “That’s really your only option,” he said to the paper.
Everett stood up abruptly, his sudden movement startling the doctor. “You know, you’re probably right,” he said. “I should probably come back another time. With my wife.”
Dr. Ferguson blinked at him a few times. Everett considered just bolting out of the room. In the silence, he was already piecing it together. If he was infertile, if they needed a donor to get pregnant, then where had his son come from?
“You didn’t know,” the doctor said in realization.
Everett considered lying. But how could he lie about this? Oh, sure, I knew. I just . . . forgot. He exhaled loudly. “No,” he said. “She never told me and I . . . never asked. When she got pregnant, I was just . . . happy.” He looked up at the doctor and decided he never wanted to see this man again. If it meant they never had another child, so be it. “I was just really happy.”
He started to walk out of the office, but the doctor’s voice stopped him. He stood still but didn’t bother to meet the other man’s eyes this time. “Mr. Lewis,” he said, “you can still be happy.”
Everett nodded once, then fled.
BRYTE
Trent still drank gin and tonics. And he still drank a lot of them. She watched him down the second one just as fast as the first, then raise his hand for another. His tolerance had to be incredible. Her own tolerance had dropped off significantly since she’d become a mother, and six a.m. wake-up calls became de rigueur.
It hadn’t taken him long to suggest they move from the hotel bar to the hotel couches. She stirred her drink, a weak Crown and ginger, and took a polite, dainty sip. The last time she’d matched him, drink for drink. When she’d stood to her feet and swayed upon standing, he’d been quick to offer to help her to her room, extending his arm gallantly. She’d rested her own hand unsteadily in the crook of his elbow and given him a coquettish smile. Tonight she met his eyes and saw not quite the same look she’d gotten that long-ago evening, but a look that was on the verge of that one.
“Stay for dinner,” he said. “We’ll talk more. About the job. And where I could use you.”
She almost said, “Oh, what the hell,” and ordered another drink. For a moment she was tempted to let things go the way they once went. It would work just the way it had before. She knew that in her depths the same way she’d known it back then, the knowledge settling inside her like a stone dropped into water. But Everett’s face filled her mind, edging out any possibility she might’ve been considering. Whatever she’d come here to do wasn’t going to happen. Time had passed. Things were different. She wasn’t a woman who could do that. She never really had been. Though her son wasn’t a mistake, what she’d done had been. She would wrestle with that for the rest of her life.
She smiled without showing any teeth and looked back down at her drink. “Can’t,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. The kid.” He rolled his eyes.
“Yes, there’s dinner and bath time and story and . . .” She looked up at him as Christopher’s face filled her mind. She held up her hands. “It’s quite a production.”
He received a fresh drink from the bartender and gave it a vigorous stir. “Sounds like it.” He took a greedy gulp and leered at her. “If I were you, I’d welcome a break from it.”
The words were on the tip of her tongue: Well, you’re not me. But there was no point in being contentious. She needed to get out of there, as politely and quickly as she could. He was still a good business contact. Someone she might need someday. No sense making things weird between them. Weirder.
“Actually, I enjoy it, as strange as that sounds.” She made a production of checking her phone for the time. “In fact, I better be going.” She pulled her wallet from her purse to pay for her drink, but he held up his hand. “I’ve got this. Business expense.” She’d always been business to him, and that was good. That was what she needed him to think. She didn’t need his affection, his emotion, his reminiscences of that night. He’d served his purpose when she’d needed him. She cringed internally at the thought of what Trent Miller had been to her.
She put her wallet away and gave him what she hoped passed for a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she said. She made sure she looked him in the eye when she thanked him, held his gaze.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek, leaving the faintest imprint of her lips behind as she pulled away. “It was so good to see you again.”
He looked at her and raised his eyebrows, his expression reminding her of Christopher. “Call me if you ever need . . . anything,” he said. He gave her that captain-of-industry grin and turned back to his drink. She rose from the bar and left him behind.