Hot Christmas Nights (13 page)

The next day, after Wendy lost her equilibrium and had to grab the wall to keep from dissolving into a heap on the floor, the same female student who’d asked her if she was okay yesterday, asked again today. Only this time she added, “Dang, Miss Wendy, my sister’s in college in Atlanta and she came home just last week because she was having the same problem as you. She’s not a dancer, though.”

“Oh?” Wendy wiped the perspiration from her forehead with the towel that was dangling around her neck. “Is she burning the candle at both ends, too?”

“No, she’s pregnant.”

Chapter 6

“H
ave you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

The tone, more so than the question itself, was what caught Frazier’s attention. It wasn’t necessarily irritation that he’d heard in it, but he couldn’t completely rule out impatience. Either way, it was a definite hint that he wasn’t being a very good host.

Unfortunately, the question was a valid one and he could appreciate that the woman sitting a couple of feet away from him on his living-room couch had the guts to ask it. Another woman might have pretended not to notice that he was distracted and kept talking anyway, a concession that he would’ve immediately picked up on and been a little put off by.

But not Simone Patterson.

She was an NYU-educated attorney, in town only for the next couple of months while she and another partner in her New York law firm acted as cocounsel on a high-profile, politically charged embezzlement case. He’d been introduced to her at a charity fund-raiser a week ago and tonight was the first time that their schedules had both been clear at the same time, so they’d gotten together for a late dinner.

After-dinner drinks back at his apartment were her idea, but he hadn’t exactly protested when she’d brought the subject up, so he supposed the outcome was just as much his fault as hers. Simone was interesting and funny and sexy as hell, but, no, he hadn’t been listening to a word she’d said.

His smile was guilty and apologetic at the same time. “I’m sorry,” he said as he refilled their wineglasses. “I did wander off for a moment, but I’m back now.”

She took her glass with her when she sat back and crossed her legs, sipping slowly and eyeing him curiously. “So...who is she?”

A sip of wine almost went down the wrong way. It took him a moment of clearing his throat to get himself together enough to answer the question. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, come on now, Frazier.” When she smiled, the small gap between her even, white teeth flashed at him. “You’ve been wandering off all evening. I’m almost used to it by now, but the attorney in me can’t help but be curious. Was it a bad breakup or something?”

“Uh, no,” he said, chuckling. There was no way in hell he was about to tell Simone about the particulars of his relationship with Wendy. “Nothing like that.”

“So there is no woman?”

“Oh, there’s a woman, all right. But there was also a breakup and it’s over, so...”

“So you’d rather not talk about it.”

“Something like that, yes.” He reached for his own wineglass and sipped. “I would, however, like to talk a little more about you.”

“Okay. What would you like to know?”

He already knew that she was a successful criminal attorney, a full partner in a very well-known law firm, and she had only just celebrated her fortieth birthday last month. She’d never been married and she didn’t have any children. She liked to cook, though she didn’t get to do it very often, and she was the middle child in a family of seven. All of that, he’d learned over dinner.

What he couldn’t quite figure out, though, was why she was still single. And he’d been wondering about that all evening.

Simone was a walking, talking wet dream, with her Coke bottle figure, seductive brown eyes and smooth, shapely legs. She was petite and voluptuous, and just as capable of holding her own conversationally as she was at crossing her legs and making a man’s mouth water.

She was nothing like Wendy and that in itself should’ve been enough to hold his attention, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine, though, that there was a shortage of men in New York who wouldn’t have an issue with staying focused on her.

“Why aren’t you married?” His gaze wandered to her ample cleavage for a second before returning to hers. “Or at the very least involved with someone?”

“What makes you think I want to get married or be tied down in a relationship?” Simone shrugged indifferently. “It’s not every woman’s dream, you know.”

Appreciating her more and more, he decided to keep it light. “It’s not?”

A warm, rich laugh curled out of her mouth as she shook her head at him. “Of course it’s not. I know it’s hard to believe, Frazier, but some of us women like things as uncomplicated and stress-free as possible.”

“Ah.” They stared at each other. The gauntlet had been thrown down.

“Take me, for instance,” Simone went on. “I travel a lot and I do miss sleeping in my own bed sometimes, but I also enjoy the change of scenery. So it’ll probably be a while yet before I decide I’ve had enough and cut back. Maybe I’ll be ready for a relationship then, and maybe I won’t. Right now, though, uncomplicated and stress-free works for me.”

“Yeah, but how exactly does that work? Do you just travel back and forth across the country, leaving a trail of broken hearts in your wake or...”

“Are you asking me if I’m a serial dater, Frazier?”

She was a straight shooter and he liked that. He liked that a lot. “Are you?” He watched her intense gaze drop down to his lips and narrow speculatively. Her tongue darted out and wet her top lip and arousal tried to whisper in his ear.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been celibate by choice for the past two years. I said I was into uncomplicated and stress-free, not reckless and irresponsible.” She finished her wine and set her empty glass down on the coffee table. “But you could probably get it.” His eyebrows shot up and she giggled. “Don’t act surprised, Frazier. I’ve been sending you signals all night. You’ve just been pretending not to get them.”

“Not pretending,” Frazier put in, holding up one long finger. “Just contemplating and evaluating.”

Her cell phone beeped and, instead of taking it out of her purse, she glanced at her watch. “That’s my taxi and it’s right on time. Now I know I’m not in Kansas anymore because I’d still be waiting if I were.” She stood, then picked up her purse from the coffee table and tucked it underneath her arm. “I, uh, guess I’ll leave you to your contemplating and evaluating...for now.”

Frazier rolled to his feet and towered over her five-foot-three frame. “That sounded like a threat,” he joked. “Should I be afraid?”

“No, that was more like a promise. Walk me downstairs?”

“Of course, just let me grab my keys from the other room.” With a hand on the small of Simone’s back, he ushered her out of the living room and into the foyer. “I’ll be right back.” On his way into his bedroom, his landline phone rang. The closest extension was in the kitchen, which was close to the door. “Would you mind getting that for me?” he called out as he disappeared into his bedroom.

A minute later, when he joined Simone in the foyer, she was shrugging into her coat.

“They hung up,” she told him. “But before they did, I could’ve sworn I heard heavy breathing.”

He caught the teasing glint in her eyes and chuckled. “You’re cute,” he said as he helped her into her coat.

“So are you, Frazier. So are you.”

They were out in the hallway, waiting for an elevator, when Simone said, “So, this relationship of yours—it’s really over?” The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. Frazier pressed a button for the lobby and slid his hands deep into his pants pockets.

“I think so, yes.”

In another week, two months would’ve passed since Wendy had left for Las Vegas. They spoke over the phone a couple times a week, but never about anything of importance and certainly never about where things stood between them. He knew that things were going great with the youth program, that she liked the weather in Las Vegas and that her tiny apartment was making her feel claustrophobic. But he didn’t know what she was thinking or feeling.

Did she miss him? Miss them? They had always been able to talk about anything and now they barely talked at all and, if there was one thing he regretted about crossing the line with her, it was that. He missed having her as a lover, but he missed her friendship even more.

At some point, he hoped they could regain at least some of what they’d shared before he screwed up everything, but with her in Las Vegas and him in St. Louis, that point couldn’t be now.

Wendy needed something that he was incapable of giving her, something that, until now, she’d been searching for, for years. As much as he’d wanted her to stay in St. Louis with him, she would’ve grown to resent him if he had asked that of her and that wasn’t what he wanted for either of them. He wanted her to be happy, even if it was without him. And, sooner or later, he was going to have to try to be happy, too.

Simone’s sultry voice crept into his thoughts. “Well, in that case, maybe we’ll see each other again soon.”

There it was again, an open invitation. If he wanted to, he could bring her back upstairs with him and they’d probably be in bed, all over each other, in fifteen minutes flat. He’d be lying if he said there wasn’t an attraction between them, that her sexiness didn’t arouse him on a couple of different levels. But he’d also be lying in all the ways that counted if he took one woman to bed while he was craving another one. He was a man. He could appreciate an attractive woman and Simone was definitely an attractive woman.

But she wasn’t Wendy.

“Maybe we will,” Frazier said, catching her eyes and returning her smile. He clasped her hand, released it and then watched her walk out of the building to meet her waiting taxi. As he rode the elevator back up to his floor, he wondered where Wendy was right now and what she was doing.

* * *

Pregnant?

Seriously?

It had to have happened the first time she and Frazier were intimate. It was the first and only time that they hadn’t used protection. But it only took one time, didn’t it? Now that she was thinking about it, spotting wasn’t quite the same as having a full-fledged cycle, but she’d been so caught up in work that she hadn’t thought to question the difference.

Until now.

Idiot!

Wendy was beyond incredulous. She was also scared and confused...and angrier than she had ever been in her entire life. If she really was pregnant, she didn’t know what the hell she was going to do. The timing couldn’t have been any worse if she had planned it that way and, besides that, she was nowhere near ready to be anyone’s parent at this stage in her life. And, really, did she even like children?

She stopped pacing a tread into the bathroom floor long enough for her shoulders to sag with guilt. What was she thinking? Of course, she liked children. Why wouldn’t she? That didn’t mean she wanted one, though. Maybe she’d thought about being a mother when she was a little girl, but now? Not so much.

After everything she’d been through in the aftermath of the accident, she finally had a shot at achieving some of her professional goals and this had to happen? God, if it weren’t for bad luck, she swore she’d have none at all.

She thought about diapers and formula and lack of sleep and the responsibility of it all and a rush of fear punched her in the gut, buckling her knees and forcing her into a seat on the edge of the bathtub.

She’d never had a pregnancy scare before and it was a strange feeling to find herself in the middle of one at thirty-three years old. Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been the end of the world. Actually, far from it. She was an adult, she was capable of supporting herself reasonably well, and she wasn’t exactly getting any younger. Even as a single parent, a child could do a lot worse than ending up with her as its mother.

But it
was
the end of the world.

Wendy didn’t quite know why it was the end of the world or exactly how, but the ball of anxiety sitting like lead in the pit of her stomach made the feeling very real.

Suddenly she was confused about everything—who she was, what she was doing, where she was going, how she was supposed to get there...everything.

There was a sliver of a chance that she was getting herself all worked up over nothing, but the thought wasn’t especially comforting at the moment, not when she still had hours of waiting ahead of her before she’d know anything definite. Tomorrow morning couldn’t get here fast enough and she was too upset to even think about trying to get some sleep between now and then.

Steeling herself to get through the rest of the night in one piece, Wendy dragged herself up from the edge of the bathtub and splashed cold water on her face at the sink. If she was pregnant, she’d have to deal with the consequences. But she couldn’t even begin to think about what those consequences might be until she knew for sure that life as she knew it was really over.

When Wendy finally did crawl into bed, her thoughts were back in St. Louis, with Frazier. She tried calling his cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail, so she dialed his home phone. After two rings, a woman answered...and Wendy lost her voice.

* * *

“Move...move...move!” Wendy’s walking stick tapped the floor rhythmically as she circled around the perimeter of the room, studying her students’ movement and technique. “Here’s your count...one-two-three, one-two-three! Kick...kick...kick! Good! Now, shuffle to the left, Group A! Keep up, Kimberly!”

She couldn’t have asked for a more talented group of teenagers to work with and they were coming along quite nicely, but something was missing, something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“Group B, you should be moving to the front now! Faster! Nice job, Carlos! Here’s your count...two-four-six, two-four-six!” The stick kept tapping and she kept circling the room, but her mind was a million miles away.

After leaving the women’s clinic she’d gone to this morning, she had climbed into the back of a taxi and, instead of coming straight to work, asked the driver to take her on a scenic tour of the city.

They had driven past museums, through parks and residential communities and then along the Vegas Strip before the taxi had finally pulled up in front of the school and let her out. And she barely remembered any of it.

Her students were already in class, warming up, when she arrived and only a few of them seemed to notice that she was late. Or that she was even there, for that matter.

At home, her students would’ve pounced on her as soon as she walked into the room, demanding to know where she’d been and why they hadn’t known beforehand that she was going to be late. It would’ve turned into a whole big thing and half the class time would’ve been gone before they got around to the reason they were all there.