One Wild Night. Heidi Rice
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Название: One Wild Night

Автор: Heidi Rice

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Контркультура

Серия: Mills & Boon By Request

isbn: 9781474003872

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ good mood evaporated. Ally had left without even saying goodbye.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      WELL, THAT WAS UNPLEASANT. Not the best way to start a Monday, either. Ally leaned on the sink and took a deep breath. Then she grabbed the toothbrush she’d learned to bring to work with her and brushed her teeth. Wiping the moisture from the corners of her eyes, she was glad she’d switched to waterproof mascara last week.

      “Look, Kiddo, I’ll make you a deal. You let me keep my breakfast and I’ll give you a new car when you turn sixteen, okay?” Another wave of nausea had her leaning against the bathroom door taking shallow breaths until it passed. “No deal, huh? Your loss.”

      Turning off the light, she opened the door to the office she shared with her friend and business partner. Molly stood waiting with a peppermint and a bottle of water.

      “Seriously, now. How much longer is this going to go on?”

      Ally took both offerings gratefully. The peppermint helped settle her stomach these days. “According to all the books, about six more weeks if I’m really lucky.” She sank into her desk chair and rested her head on her hands.

      “You’re kidding me, right? Six more weeks of listening to you yak up your toenails every morning?” Molly’s pixie face wrinkled in an amusing mixture of concern and disgust.

      Ally sipped at her water cautiously, but the nausea had gone as quickly as it had come. “So sorry to inconvenience you, Molls.”

      “It’s not that. I’m just worried.”

      Ally sighed. Snapping at Molly made her feel as if she’d kicked a puppy. “I know, and I’m sorry to be so witchy this morning. Dr. Barton says this is normal. Unpleasant, but still well within the range.”

      It was Molly’s turn to sigh. “‘Unpleasant’ is an understatement.”

      “You’re not wrong about that.” Six weeks to go? Between the sickness in the mornings and the unbelievable fatigue that set in around three o’clock, this first trimester wasn’t going well at all.

      “Can I get you anything? Crackers? A soda?”

      “Just help me find the Miller paperwork. I swear, this baby has stolen all my brain cells.”

      Molly casually tapped a folder sitting just left of Ally’s elbow. “By the way, I talked to the landlord. He said we can have that storeroom for just a little more each month. I thought you could move your desk back there along with the baby’s stuff, and we’ll put a conference table out here to meet with clients.”

      Tears gathered in Ally’s eyes. After the initial shock of Ally’s announcement had passed, Molly had gone into “prep mode,” never once questioning her decision to keep the baby, focusing instead on how they’d work out the logistics. Ally sniffed and reached for a tissue. Seemed she could check “overly emotional” on her list of symptoms, as well.

      Thank goodness for Molly. She’d be a wreck without her. Her mom had flipped at the news, seemingly shocked that anyone accidentally ended up pregnant in this day and age. Ally had had to bite her tongue not to bring up her brother’s pregnant girlfriend, Diane—no one seemed overly surprised about that baby. Molly had been the voice of reason then, too. Her family was just too used to Ally being the sensible, smart, reliable one, she’d argued. In a rare moment of snark—showing how truly angry Molly was with the lot of them—she’d postulated that the real reason the family was upset over the news was that Ally’s attention would be focused somewhere else in the future. God forbid her family might actually have to take care of their own problems and not be able to run to her to sort them out.

      Molly frowned. “You’re leaking again.”

      Ally fanned her face. “No, I’m not. Just something in my eye.”

      “Hey, I’d cry, too, if I went on my honeymoon alone and still managed to wind up pregnant.” Molly tossed the comment over her shoulder as she returned to her own desk.

      “Yes, yes, I’m aware of the irony.” Right after she’d recovered from the shock of seeing a positive result on the pregnancy test and had realized she’d somehow ended up in the two-percent failure rate of the Pill, that irony had hit her right between the eyes.

      It would almost be funny if it were someone else.

      Molly’s keyboard clicked as she went back to work, and Ally tried to focus on the books from Miller’s Printing Company. She had to get their payroll data entered and their checks printed before the need for her afternoon nap hit, but she was having trouble concentrating.

      From the moment her plane had taken off from San Juan, she’d tried to put Chris out of her mind. She knew she needed to forget him, to just let him and their hours together fade into a dim memory. But it hadn’t worked. She’d felt like a different version of herself, as though she’d been on the verge of something only to have been jerked back by her family responsibilities.

      She’d caught a cab directly from the airport to the hospital, expecting to find her brother barely clinging to life. Instead, Steven was slightly battered from flipping his dirt bike, but awake, lucid and not near death at all—a situation she’d been tempted to remedy when he’d shown no remorse at all for ruining her vacation. After all, as her mother had added, Steven needed someone to deal with the hospital billing department and transfer money from his small trust to pay bills with.

      The bitterness of missing out on more delightful days with Chris because of her family…well, she’d almost been over it by the time she’d missed her period, but any hope of forgetting about him had vanished at that point.

      She was carrying his baby—a permanent reminder of those two wonderful days. How long would it take for her not to remember him every time she looked at their child? Her child, she corrected. This baby was hers alone.

      Chris climbed the stairs to his office on OWD’s second floor two at a time. His mornings had taken on a pattern these days—an hour at the gym, a few hours on the Circe’s renovations, lunch, then into the office. Today, though, he came straight from the yard, bypassed his assistant’s desk without stopping for messages and went straight for his computer.

      The damage to the Circe’s keel was greater than expected, and he’d contacted a friend for suggestions when he and Jack had clashed over the best course of action. He’d snapped a few quick photos with his phone, but couldn’t get them to send properly for some reason.

      He dug the USB cable out of its drawer and waited for the files to download onto his computer. A few clicks later, and the photos and measurements were off to Pete. Aesthetically, Circe’s rehab was going well, but structurally they kept finding new issues to deal with. He’d barely gotten her home—the constant problems had stretched his trip to almost four weeks, much to Victor’s and Mickey’s amusement and Pops’s dismay.

      Hopefully, this problem with the keel would be the last.

      With the photos sent, Chris closed his e-mail account. The window open on his screen, though, showed another file had been in the download. That’s odd.

      He clicked it open, СКАЧАТЬ