One Secret Night, One Secret Baby(8)
By Thursday morning, nothing had changed. She spent the morning in the bathroom next to her new best friend. Suspicions were running rampant in her head. What if she didn’t have the flu? What if there was something else wrong with her? Something permanent? Something rest and hot soup wouldn’t cure?
Eyes wide-open now, she fought the invading rumblings in her belly, quickly dressed and dashed to the local drugstore. Once she got back home, she peed on a stick at three different intervals of the day, only to get the same result each time. Opening her laptop, she keyed it up and researched a subject she thought would be years down the road for her.
She was as sure now as she would ever be; she had all the symptoms.
She was pregnant.
And Dylan McKay was her blackout baby’s father.
Three
“You’re trying to hide a smile, Brooke. You don’t fool me.”
“I’m not trying to fool you, Emma. I think it’s kinda cool that you and my brother...”
“No, it wasn’t like that, really.” Oh, boy.
Having Brooke stop everything at the office and come over right away might have been a mistake. But this was big and she couldn’t hide her pregnancy from her best friend. Especially not when Brooke had a stake in this, too; she was Dylan’s sister after all. Emma needed her right now. She had no one else to turn to and time was running out. She had morning sickness, big-time. Immediate decisions had to be made and she’d have to deal with Dylan at some point.
“We’re not romantically involved,” she said to Brooke.
Her friend sat on the sofa next to her, her mouth twitching, the smile she couldn’t conceal spreading wider across her face. This was no laughing matter. Obviously, Brooke thought differently.
She’d given Brooke the bare facts about what had happened that night between her and Dylan, explaining how she’d panicked when all the lights had gone out in that nightclub. The entire city had gone dark from what she could tell and she hadn’t been in any shape to drive home. At least she got that part right. No drunk driving for her.
But instead of Brooke coming to pick her up as she’d hoped, Dylan had come to her rescue, as any good guy would. Emma tried to make clear to Brooke that she’d been the one to initiate the lovemaking. Emma remembered that much; she’d begged him to stay with her. She had no recollection of exactly how it all went down, those hours fuzzy in her head, but it was all on her. She’d been scared out of her wits and inebriated. And Dylan was there. She’d lived out her fantasy with him that night, but she didn’t tell Brooke that. Some things were better left unsaid.
“Brooke, I’ll say it again, and this is hard to admit, but I probably climbed all over him that night. I swear, he didn’t take advantage of me.” The worst would be that Brooke would hold anything about that night against Dylan.
Brooke covered her ears. “Emma, pleeeze! No details. I can’t think of Dylan that way.” And then she lowered her hands. “But it’s sweet that you’re trying to protect him. You don’t want me to think badly of my brother. I get that, Em. And I don’t. No one’s to blame.”
“Okay, no details.” Not that she could remember any. “Dylan doesn’t know any of this happened.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I’m sure. I’d know it, if he remembered. I’d see something in his eyes. And he’s never mentioned my phone call that night, or the fact that he came to pick me up from the nightclub. When he came to my apartment the day we went to the children’s hospital, he didn’t seem to recognize anything as familiar. I’m certain that night was erased from his memory.”
“I think so, too. Just making sure there were no signs.”
“Nope, not a one.”
Brooke nodded and then gazed warmly into Emma’s eyes for several ticks of a minute. “You’re going to be the mother of my niece or nephew,” she said as softly as Emma had ever heard her speak. The tone was rich and thick as honey. “And my brother is going to be a father.”
The way Brooke put it was sort of beautiful. Emma could get lost in all the wonder of motherhood, of nurturing a new life and having a man like Dylan father her child. But the wonder didn’t come close to erasing the plain facts. That she and Dylan didn’t plan this child. That he didn’t even have a clue what was happening, yet his life was about to change forever.
“Oh, Brooke. I’m just wrapping my head around it. The baby part has me feeling...I don’t know, protective already and scared.” Emma shivered. “Very scared.”
“You’ll be fine. You have me. And Dylan. He’d never turn his back on you.”
“Gosh, it’s all so new. Part of me feels guilty not telling him about that night. It might’ve triggered some of his memories.”
“You’ll have to tell him now, Em. He has a right to know.”
It was inevitable that she tell Dylan. But she wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Gosh, he’d been like a big brother to her and now nothing between them would ever be the same.
“I know. I will.”
“Good. You’re in no shape to do the golf event, Em. You’re exhausted and still having morning sickness.”
Emma chewed on her bottom lip. She didn’t want to miss this weekend. All those hours, all that planning. Brooke needed her, but how could she function when she was running to the bathroom all morning long? “Yes, but it’s getting better. Maybe I could come along and help out in the afternoon and evening.”
Brooke was shaking her head. When had she turned into a mama bear? “I’ve got it covered, Emma. You can’t come. You’d be miserable. I’ve got Rocky and Wendy on standby.”
The part-timers?
“I’ve been briefing them and they’re up for the task. I don’t want you to worry about a thing. You should concentrate on the baby and feeling better. We’ll do fine.”
“Are you saying you don’t need me?”
“I’m saying, we’ll make do without you, but of course, we’ll miss you. Thanks to your unending efficiency, we’ve got all the bases covered. You should take this weekend to adjust to all of this. That’s what I want for you. It’s what you need.”
Emma sighed and gave her friend a reluctant nod. Brooke was right. She couldn’t very well carry out her duties in San Diego with her stomach on the blink every hour and her body feeling as though it had been hit by an eighteen-wheeler. “Okay, I’ll be a good girl.”
“It’s too late for that,” Brooke replied with a grin.
“Don’t I know it.”
Brooke’s eyes melted in apology. “You’re not letting anyone down, Emma. Just the opposite. I know the situation isn’t ideal right now, but you’re having a baby with Dylan. My best friend and my brother...how can I not think it’s just a little bit wonderful?”
Brooke’s arms came around her and the hug warmed all the frigid ice flowing through her veins. She was wrapped up in comfort and support and friendship. “How come you always know the right thing to say?”
“Since when?”
“Since...now.”
“Oh, Emma. Do you want me to be there when you tell Dylan?”
“No!” Emma pulled away from her friend. The thought of having that conversation gave her hives, but having Dylan’s baby sister there? There was no number on the Awkward Scale high enough to describe such a scene. “It’d be too weird. I can’t even picture any of this in my head right now, but I suspect this is one time I need to be alone with Dylan.”
The tight lines on Brooke’s face crumbled and her expression resumed some semblance of normalcy. “Whew, thanks. I have to agree. I love my bro and I love you, but...”
“But I made my bed, now I have to toss off the tangled sheets and come clean.”
“Yeah,” Brooke said, giving her that same melting look. “Something like that, sweetie.”
“Promise you won’t worry about me this weekend?”
“If you promise me the same. Don’t give a thought to the golf event.”
They stared at each other, knowing unequivocally that would be impossible.
“Sure,” Emma said.
“Gotcha,” Brooke added, her smile falsely quick. Then Brooke kissed her goodbye on the cheek and brought her mouth near her ear to whisper, “The sooner you tell Dylan, the better.”
“I know,” she said, nodding. “I will.”
Problem number one: she didn’t have a clue how or when she could bring herself to do that.
* * *
“A little bit of fresh air will do wonders for you, Emma,” Dylan said as he strolled into her apartment wearing jeans and a vintage T-shirt, the Stones logo stretching wide across his chest. The shirt hugged him tight and hinted at a ripped torso underneath. Before she got caught ogling, she shifted her attention to his face and was struck by the scruffy, tousled look that appealed to her on so many levels, it was ridiculous. “Brooke is worried sick about you.”
Emma had had about half an hour advance warning from Dylan that he was coming to visit her, his text announcing he was on the way, leaving her no option. He was on a mission, commandeered by Brooke, no doubt, and Emma had raced around her apartment destroying evidence of just how sick she’d been. She’d picked up blankets tossed across the sofa and folded them, sprayed the room with cinnamon spice air freshener—the place now smelled like Christmas—slipped off her smelly sweats, taken a shower and put on a sleeveless denim dress and a pair of tan boots.