“And these are what I wore to my wedding,” Roseanne said, a soft smile on her face when she showed me a pair of white satin pumps with a simple gold buckle. “They cost me twelve dollars, and I love them best of all.”
I leaned back on my palms and smiled. “They’re beautiful, Roseanne.”
She gave me a strange look then and asked, “Have you and Jared talked about marriage?”
I coughed, caught out by her question. “I-um-no. Not… Not yet.”
She hummed. “And have you told him?”
Blinking, I tried to make sense of her question. “Told him what?” That I wanted to marry him? That would be a resounding hell no, I hadn’t told him I wanted to marry him. He was still paying me for my presence, after all.
Roseanne gave me a look that was almost chiding, edged with fondness. She placed her wedding shoes back on the shelf in their place of honor and said, “About the baby, of course.”
The world tilted. My vision went wonky. Roseanne turned to look at me, and her face looked like a distorted caricature of what it had been moments ago. Somehow, I found my voice. “The what, now?”
She laughed and came to sit next to me. “Darling, you don’t have to pretend with me. I fell pregnant within a few months of being married to Wilbur, and I remember feeling all out of sorts. But you’d better tell him soon; otherwise, he’s in for a shock. Jared doesn’t seem like the kind of man who takes unexpected news very well.”
I let out the most awkward, half-assed laugh of my life. “I think you might be mistaken, Roseanne. I’m not pregnant.”
She arched her brows. “No? I could have sworn…” Her gaze narrowed on me. “I felt just like you do when I was early in my pregnancy. Exhausted beyond belief, a little queasy, having to use the bathroom seventy-three thousand times a day…”
“No,” I blurted. “No, that’s not it.” I shook my head and leaped to my feet. “Nope.”
Roseanne didn’t push it. She just inclined her head and said, “I’m so sorry to have presumed, darling. That’s my big mouth getting in the way again. Come on. Let’s go out to the patio and have a nice refreshing drink, just us girls. The chef makes fresh juice from the fruit from our orchards, and it’s to die for.”
She swept out of the room, and I had no choice but to follow her. I felt dizzy and nauseous and terrified.
What if…
No. There was no way. With every step, my horror grew. I hadn’t gotten my period in…a while. But my cycle was irregular, and I never tracked it. Maybe it hadn’t been that long? I rewound the weeks in my head and couldn’t remember ever having to wrestle with my period while wearing a designer gown or attending a fancy event. That was over two months without my cycle showing up.
I’d gone without my period for two months before. It didn’t mean I was pregnant.
We’d used condoms every time. We were feral for each other, but we hadn’t…
Horror dawned. The first time-the first time we hadn’t used a condom, because we hadn’t had one. At Garcia’s anniversary weekend getaway in the Hamptons, there were bodily fluids all over us. That was about six weeks ago.
But that was crazy. I couldn’t get pregnant from that.
…Could I?
Roseanne settled me onto a lounge chair and called for fruit juice. I’m sure it was delicious, but I tasted none of it. I sat there, slurping down my juice made from the fruit belonging to a disgustingly wealthy couple, staring at the azure Caribbean water all around their private island, and felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
“You have a real talent with styling,” Roseanne said in the silence, making me jump. Her eyes slid over to study me, and I felt like she could read my panic like words flashing across my face. “Have you ever considered making a career of it?”
“A career?” My voice sounded flat.
“Many of my friends would pay you for what you just did down there. Not to mention having you at our side when we go shopping.”
“I don’t…”
She took a sip of juice and set it down on the side table before glancing at me curiously. “What is it you do for work at Branson, again?”
The world was pressing in on me. I couldn’t think straight. Roseanne’s gaze was on me, and I felt like she’d be able to tell if I trotted out the tired old lie that I was a consultant for Jared. What did a consultant even do? All she had to do was ask me a few questions and the whole charade would fall apart, because I sure as hell wasn’t able to dodge any incisive questions in my current state of mind.
The thoughts in my head were basically going around in a loop that went like this: I’m not pregnant. No way. But what if I am? But I can’t be. Oh, God, she’s looking at me. Try to look normal. But looking normal made her think I was pregnant. There’s no way. But what if I am…
And on and on and on. And we were on a stupid private island so it wasn’t like I could dart to a pharmacy when no one was paying attention to get a pregnancy test. I’d have to wait.
Hands landed on my shoulders, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. Jared chuckled, looking at me curiously. “Are you okay?”
“You gave me a fright,” I said.
“We’ve had a big day,” Roseanne cut in, watching me. “What if you head to your room for a rest?”
“Rest,” I repeated dumbly. “Yeah.”
“I’ll take you,” Jared said, and he had such sweet concern written on his face that I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t blurt out what Roseanne had said, because what if I wasn’t pregnant? Which obviously I wasn’t. Jared took my arm and led me away from the couple, cradling me against his side as we walked through the house. “Are you okay?”
“I think the sun got to me,” I mumbled. “I’m used to being a vampire.”
He huffed a laugh and squeezed me closer. When we got to our room, Jared picked me up in his arms and settled me on the bed before drawing the blinds. He got me a glass of water and helped me strip down to my underwear, handing me one of his T-shirts to wear to sleep.
I wanted to refuse, because I was panicking and wearing his clothes while he took such sweet care of me would just make this whole thing that much worse. But the shirt smelled like him which settled my stomach somewhat, and I couldn’t resist the temptation. I snuggled into it and fell into the lush pillows. The adrenaline that had left me feeling so panicked just moments ago drained away. Exhaustion slammed into me, and I was asleep in an instant.
Jared’s POV
I closed the door as gently as I could, not wanting to wake Iris from her nap. Worry squirmed through me-it wasn’t like her to react like that to anything. Maybe she’d gotten a bit of heat stroke? We hadn’t been out in full sun for a long time, but it was possible.
All I wanted to do was stay in the room beside her and make sure she was okay, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was here to close the biggest deal my company had seen in years. Wilbur and I had ironed out some specifics, but he had yet to sign on to anything.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.