Indecent Proposal by Molly O'Keefe

Author:Molly O'Keefe [O'Keefe, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Women, Humorous
ISBN: 9780345549068
Google: HnZzAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Tuesday, August 27

Yesterday had been an unparalleled success and somehow at the same time a crushing disaster. Harrison went over the complexities of it while making espresso the next morning.

Press conference: success.

School (outside of Ryan flashing her underwear to some kindergartners): success.

And the victories were because of her—she’d nailed it. Just nailed it.

Every single other moment between them: disaster.

That conversation about the baby on the way home from the school, those had been the last words she said to him all day. When he got home from work, armed with takeout, she’d been asleep, or at least very unwilling to talk to him when he lightly knocked on her door. He’d eaten chicken lo mein by himself, ears tuned to the slightest sound coming from her room.

At some point, watching the blinking lights of airplanes across the night sky, he’d realized he was going to be a father.

He’d nearly dropped his lo mein.

Of course, intellectually he knew that Ryan was pregnant. That was why they were married. Why they were perpetrating this grand lie. But it had never fully occurred to him that he would be a father. It didn’t matter if the baby was his, or if they got a divorce in two years. That baby would be born into his home. His life.

I’m going to be a dad.

And honest to God, the thought had never occurred to him before.

And frankly, that thing she’d said in her apartment about the baby being hers—that had been fine with him. An easy excuse not to care.

And then she’d called him on it and he had the vague sense that he should do better.

Be better.

This morning he filled up Ryan’s red teacup with water and set it down in front of the stool he now considered hers. Because she’d sat in it once. He set the prescription bottle with her morning sickness pills next to it.

She should be eating more, he thought. Considering he’d seen her eat half a donut in all the time they’d spent together, more shouldn’t be too hard.

There was an apple in the fridge and he set it down next to the teacup. Stepped back. Shifted the teacup. Considered cutting the apple into slices.

From the hallway he heard the nearly silent sound of her door opening and the pad of her feet coming down the hardwood floor.

He found that he was bracing himself for the sight of her. Holding his breath, even. Not only for her beauty, fragile and bold at once, which seemed impossibly to knock him off stride every single time he saw her, but because he felt so damn bad about yesterday.

And he wanted, in some small way, to make everything that was wrong between them just a small bit better.

She came out of the shadows in glimpses—white thigh, chin, a swinging arm, and then she was there, in her shorts and tank top, her dark hair tucked behind her ears.

Her eyes diamond bright and hard.

Still angry.

“Good morning,” he said.

Her eyes raked over him, leaving him cold in his thin tee shirt.

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