“Mom!” She should have brought the entire half gallon to the coffee table with her. “He didn’t break up with me. We…it’s complicated.”
She resigned herself to telling her mother the entire story, wondering how much it would change in the retelling to her father. In the game of parental telephone, her mother was the queen of judicious editing and embellishment.
When she was done talking, her mom sighed. “Why don’t you come back to Florida, honey? We’ll find you a nice apartment close by so you have family to help you.”
It was tempting. If ever she’d wanted her mother close, it was now. But if she’d thought the smothering was bad when she was younger, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like while she was carrying their grandchild. “I’m going to stay here, Mom.”
She could imagine all too well the look on Kevin’s face if he had to watch her get on a bus and take his baby away. Not that she intended to live in his back pocket, but she wouldn’t make him miss the birth of his child by fifteen hundred miles.
“Ask her if she needs money,” she heard her father say.
“I don’t need money. And, before you ask, I don’t want you jumping off the boat at the next port to fly up here.”
The sniffles came through loud and clear. “I want to hug you.”
Beth smiled and licked the last of the chocolate ice cream off her spoon. “Just hearing your voice is like a hug, Mom.”
“We should come home for Christmas.”
“No, you shouldn’t. It’s not like you can play with your grandchild yet, so enjoy your cruise and we’ll get together some time after you get back.”
“I shouldn’t be out in the middle of the ocean. What if you need me?”
Beth would have laughed, because she’d guessed right about the potential for hovering, but she remembered just in time the miscarriages her mother had suffered. “I’m okay, Mom. Kevin’s apartment is right across the hall and Paulie, his assistant manager, lives below me, so I’m not alone. And I’ll call you if I have any problems. I promise.”
They chatted a few more minutes—most of that her mother making a verbal list of all the people she had to call because she was finally going to be a grandmother!—and then Beth hung up and collapsed against the back of the couch.
She closed her eyes as her new reality sank in. It was official. At the end of June she’d be a mother. The doctor had confirmed it and Beth had told her mother. It didn’t get any more official than that.
No more stepping off a bus wherever the mood struck, with only one suitcase to her name. And no more walking away from lipstick-phone-number-collecting guys who were trouble, no matter how charming and good-looking they were.
It was going to take a bigger freezer to hold all the chocolate ice cream in her future.
***
Paulie ignored the new text message reminder beep for as long as she could—less than two minutes. Then she flipped the phone open while muttering every bad word she knew. And she knew a lot of them.
Meet me out front at six.
Pompous prick. Why?
Because I’m taking you to dinner. Dress appropriately.
Bite me.
Six. Sharp. Or else…
Paulie didn’t bother to respond. She’d either be out front or she wouldn’t. And she didn’t intend for him to know which it would be until exactly six o’clock.
At four she clocked out and went upstairs. A quick shower and then it was decision time. To go or not to go…that was the question.
She should let her absence send him a screw-you message because she didn’t live under any man’s thumb—especially the thumb of a blackmailing bastard. If she started letting him boss her around now, where would it end?
But there was a part of her—a needy, aching, missing-him part—that wanted to sit across from him in a nice restaurant, making eye contact over the rims of their wineglasses.
Maybe, if the wine was good and the vibe was right, she’d bring him back to her place because Mr. Samuel Thomas Logan the Fourth was as good in the bedroom as the boardroom. If he wanted to play games with her, she should at least get an orgasm or two—or three—out of it.
To hell with it. She’d go. Either it would go badly and he’d leave her alone or it would go well and she’d get some really good sex out of the deal.
Dress appropriately. From deep in the dark recesses of her closet, where she never had to look, she pulled a garment bag. She slid off the dustcover and laid the suit across her bed. It was five years out of date, but only somebody like her mother would notice it. It was a classically-cut jacket and skirt in a sedate navy. Matching pumps sat in a box at the bottom of her closet.