Safe Love (Love Brothers #4) (7 page)

Six Weeks Later

Margot eased through the cardboard labyrinth that was her
life now, cursing when she stubbed her toe for the millionth time on some box
or another. She was already running late for her doctor’s appointment and had
spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get past the fact that it was the
week before Thanksgiving and she was, in essence, alone for the first time in
her life. At least last year she’d gone home and celebrated the holiday with
her sister’s family. It had been torture on some levels, but it was all she
had.

This year, of course, was a whole different ball of wax.
After spending a ton of emotional energy ignoring Antony and his regular calls
and text messages in the first couple of weeks after their encounter, she was
exhausted. The fact that he’d finally gotten the hint and stopped pestering
her—she had to use that word to convince herself that what they’d done was
wrong on so many levels there were no words for some of them—it had taken a
different sort of energy to not call or text him. To just get in her damn car
that he’d fixed the first day they’d met and show up at his house, beg him to
be with her where he belonged and leave behind his well-meaning, caretaking
compulsion to marry Rosalee Norris.

Whatever it was, she prayed to move past it. No matter what,
she woke every day wishing she could crawl under the covers and sleep. By the
time she hit four or five in the afternoon, she had to take a nap, just to get
through the rest of the evening.

“Come up early,” her sister Annette kept insisting. “Why
wait a week? You know you’ll hate being alone on Thanksgiving, no matter how
much you hate it here with all this damn chaos.”

She’d already made up her mind. The movers were coming the
Monday after Thanksgiving and it made zero sense to spend the money or time
driving up to Michigan and back only to turn around again—for good. She had a
few things to wrap up here, including the annual lady parts checkup she was
currently late for, plus having a final good-bye coffee with Antony’s mother,
which she anticipated and dreaded in equal measure.

The traffic between her place and her gynecologist’s office
was a mess, setting her back another twenty minutes. But she located a parking
spot and dashed inside, smiling her apologies, and settling in for the usual
extra forty minute wait she had to endure. Once she finally got settled in a
room, had her vitals taken and was dressed in a hospital gown with a bonus
paper lap blanket, the exhaustion stole over her again, making her sway on the
ice-cold exam table.

The doctor breezed in, looking down at her tablet computer.
Margot flinched, drawing the edges of the flimsy gown together over her bare
breasts. Sweat beaded up on her forehead even as she shivered.

“You don’t look so hot,” the woman said, unnecessarily, as
she tapped on her computer. Margot hated the new depersonalized approach
doctors took with their stupid iPads or whatever. She took a deep breath as the
nurse helped her down onto the back so the doc could commence with the usual
boob poking and prodding which hurt more than usual. “Sore?” The doctor asked
in a perfunctory fashion.

Margot yelped. “No, I mean, I didn’t think so. Ow!” She
resisted the urge to bat the woman’s fingers away. The doctor typed out something
on her tablet, washed her hands, then palpated Margot’s abdomen. When she dug
deep into her left side, low, near her hipbone it made Margo blow out a breath.
“That hurt,” she said, wiping the sweat off her upper lip with a shaking hand.

“Any chance you could be pregnant?” The doctor’s mild words
pierced her brain. “Don’t we have you on…?”

Margot gulped and tried to sit up, no longer hearing the
doctor’s words as a strange ringing sound was filling her head. She
was
on birth control and she
hadn’t
forgotten to take it… had she? Of course
not. She’d never neglect anything that important.

The nurse patted her shoulder and glanced over at the doctor
who was scrolling through her notes and frowning. “I’m not pregnant,” she
insisted, even as her brain fuzzed over and her throat closed up recalling in
an instant Antony’s tale about getting Crystal pregnant the second time even
though his mother had ‘finagled a way to get her on birth control’.

“Well,” the woman said as she helped Margot put her heels in
the stirrups. “I’m gonna guess you’ve been sexually active recently?” She
raised an eyebrow before she ducked down between Margot’s raised knees.

“I … uh… I’m gonna….” She lurched up and let the nurse hold
the plastic bowl under her lips.

The annoying doctor nodded while the nurse handed Margot a
wet cloth to wipe her mouth. “Okay, so, how long has it been since you had
unprotected sex?”

Margot’s hands shook so much she could barely hold the
cloth. Her teeth chattered and the room started to dim.

Pregnant? Dear Lord how could that be? I’m responsible. I
do the right things…but for that one…time.

The doctor patted her bare foot.

“How long ago, Margot?”

“S-s-s-six weeks or so.”

“And that missed period? You didn’t notice that?”

“I’ve been busy, trying to get…moved. Oh dear Jesus help
me.” She flopped back, hand over her mouth.

“All right then, I’m gonna skip this and have you go pee in
a cup for me. Pretty simple, this test. No dead rabbits required.” The doctor
took her feet out of the stirrups and helped her sit up. The nurse handed her a
cup and they both left the room. Staring down at the empty plastic cup, still
shaking so hard her neck hurt, she pulled her jeans and sweater on, slunk
across the hall to the bathroom, peed and put the sample in the little window
slot.

It only took five minutes and the words ‘congratulations,
you’re going to have a baby,’ for her entire world to shift off its axis. The
doctor had her get undressed from the waist down and used some kind of a
dildo-looking wand and a screen to locate it—her and Antony Love’s baby—a
peanut shaped little blob, with a faint but regular heartbeat.

“Holy…mother of…oh god I’m gonna puke again.” The nurse
appeared with the bowl but after a few minutes Margot waved it away. When the
doctor touched her knee and said she could recommend a reputable clinic but
that Margot would have to go there today, or it would be too late, she glared
up at the nondescript ceiling.

“You just showed me my baby, let me hear its heartbeat and
are now suggesting that I have an abortion?” Rage rolled through her, the likes
of which she had never experienced. She turned her head to look at the still
photo of it—the impossibly small living human being inside her, and the rush of
anger was replaced with her first real dose of mama bear protectiveness.

“Just wanted you to know your options,” the doctor said as
she put away the ultrasound machine and helped Margot sit up again. “You and
your husband aren’t together anymore, right?”

“It’s not his,” she said in a whisper, still woozy, dizzy
and more than a touch nauseated. “It’s…oh it doesn’t matter.”

“Nope, not if you’re moving home. I guess you can find a
good OB up there?”

“Yes,” she said as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Thanks.”

She re-dressed again, checked out and walked in a daze
through the mass of women in the waiting room, nearly running right into
someone who was standing and sobbing as if her heart was breaking. A nurse was
trying to coax the crier away from the middle of the waiting room full of
anxious looking women.

“Sorry,” she muttered, trying to maneuver past the two of
them. The woman looked up at her, her familiar face tear-streaked. “Oh. Hi.
Rosie,” Margot squeaked out. “What’s…what’s wrong?” She put a trembling hand on
the other woman’s shoulder.

But the nurse was tugging her away, wanting her out of the
public place while she had her breakdown no doubt. She watched as Antony’s
fiancée was led away with her shoulders hitching, her sobs echoing around
inside Margot’s aching head.

The weekend of Thanksgiving was the first time since his
hook up with Margot that Antony finally felt somewhat normal again. Of course,
‘normal’ implied his usual, edgy state of existence, not the blessed, totally
relaxed state he’d inhabited for a few brief hours in her arms. But he accepted
it as the life he must inhabit, the one that defined his new reality—married to
Rosie and stepdaddy to her wild child son, Jeffrey.

Rosie had planned and implemented the most amazing surprise
Thanksgiving dinner for Lindsay, Anton and the whole clan. Lindsay had taken a
bad turn with the cancer she’d been fighting and had lost her hair, due to the
chemotherapy, in October. So Rosie had taken it upon herself to make sure all
the boys showed their respect by shaving their own heads. It had gone over
beautifully, like most things Rosie did, he knew—had known for a lot of years.
He caught himself watching her a lot that day, admiring her soft, petite beauty
and musing on his luck. Until memories of how much he wanted Margot Hamilton
would invade his brain and he’d have to drink more beer in a vain attempt to
down them out.

Thanks to an over the top scene he and Aiden had initiated
and dragged Kieran and Dominic into at his mother’s annual neighborhood
Halloween party a few weeks before, Rosie had been ignoring him in the weeks
leading up to the dinner, which was nothing more than he deserved. But after
the Thanksgiving success he was more than ready to resume the status quo. Frankly,
he required her physically. He needed to reconnect, if for no other reason than
to re-establish themselves as a couple in his own rattled brain.

So he had taken steps, gone full romance on her, and she’d
succumbed in a lovely, gentle lovemaking session in her bed the Friday after
Thanksgiving. “I love you so much,” he’d whispered into her hair before falling
asleep, holding her close.

Now on Saturday morning, he whistled as he cooked bacon and
eggs and named each of the Matchbox cars Jeffrey held up for his inspection,
giving his honest opinion of the relative merits of the Shelby Mustang versus
the Dodge Coronet Super Bee. Finally, he sent the boy after to his mother to
wake her while he sat sipping his coffee, staring out the window onto Rosie’s small
yard, pondering just how in the hell he would ever be able to let go of his
obsession with his former therapist. A text hit his phone, letting him know
that AliceLynn would be staying over with Janey that night after her shift at
the pub.

Jeffrey came bounding into the kitchen and hit his legs,
gripping them like a barnacle. Antony’s throat tightened with long-forgotten
emotions as he tousled the boy’s hair, then lifted him up with little effort
and plunked him into his chair. “Eat up, boy. Grammie Love wants us to come out
and ride her horses later. You good with that?”

“Horsies!” the boy screeched around a mouthful of food.
Antony grinned at him then glanced up at the devastating vision of Rosie, her
dark hair curling around her flushed face, dressed in her PJ pants and his
shirt. “Mama! We’re gonna ride horsies!”

She smiled and slid into her seat, accepting the coffee cup
Antony pushed across the table to her. Something about her seemed sad and
distant but he refused to acknowledge it. He loved her. She loved him. They
were getting married in a month. The end. Happily ever after, forever and ever,
amen.

Once they’d finished and he’d made Jeffrey help with the
cleanup, he piled the kid into his car seat and distracted himself for several
hours with horses, the boy, his mother, and a picnic. After they’d washed and
put the horses up for the day, he drove over to his mother’s house at her
insistence, where she made them a huge lasagna dinner. She’d located some old
Lincoln logs and other vintage toys that Jeffrey attacked with a vengeance.

As some random movie played later, Jeffrey fell sound asleep
draped over Antony’s lap. As he settled in for the duration, pondering his own
nap, his mother’s voice jolted him out of that pleasant prospect.

“So, son, why is my new friend Margot Hamilton moving back
to Michigan?”

“I’m sure I don’t know Mama. Why don’t you ask her?” He
shifted, wishing he could escape to the kitchen or the pole barn, anywhere to
avoid having the conversation he somehow sensed on the horizon. But Jeffrey was
a heavy weight and Antony knew that if he woke the kid he’d be super cranky.

“Yes, of course I asked her. She claimed it was just ‘time
to go’ or some kinda nonsense I don’t believe for a hot minute.” Lindsay sipped
the small pour of bourbon at her elbow, making Antony squirm under her sharp,
knowing stare.

“What makes you think I know any more than that?”

“Just a mother’s intuition. Listen, Antony, I don’t know
what’s goin’ on between you, Aiden, Rosie and Margot, but I have a sense that
the Lord is working his well-documented mysterious ways and y’all should tread
carefully. There are a lot of lives at stake here.” She reached over and tucked
Jeffrey’s dangling arm up next to his body. “He’s such a sweetheart, when he’s
not being a hellion.”

Antony grunted, shocked that she’d figured all that out and
once again marveling at how very small and reduced she seemed, curled up in her
usual chair with her bare head covered in some kind of bandana printed with
horses, clutching the glass to her chest. “You all right, Mama?” The very real
possibility of losing her had hung heavy over all of their lives this year.
He’d dealt with it by simply not accepting that the word ‘death’ was something
Lindsay Love would tolerate in relation to herself. She would keep its dark
shadow at bay with the sheer force of her formidable will.

“They tell me I’m improving,” she said, keeping her gaze on
the sleeping boy in Antony’s lap. “I don’t know.” She sighed and wrapped the
Kentucky Wildcat emblazoned blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“I do. I know you’re gonna out live us all.” His throat was
clogged with emotion and raw fear.

She smiled at him, her nose crinkling up in that way he
remembered and had adored for so long. “Okay mister, nice job distracting me.
So, about Margot…”

To his extreme relief, Antony heard his father come in and
call out his usual “Hello? Anyone home?” that he’d done since Antony had been a
little boy, anxiously anticipating his parents’ every move, especially once his
little brother Kieran had been added to mix.

“In here, honey,” Lindsay called out, still looking at
Antony. “Be careful, son. Be happy but please, be careful.”

He drove a floppy and complaining Jeffrey home, pensive, his
heart racing at the memory of his mother’s words. If he were any kind of a real
man, he’d own up to what he’d done with Margot and allow Rosie to confess to
him—anything. Although the thought of being faced with what he believed about
her and Aiden made him tighten his grip on the steering wheel.

The Lord working his well-documented mysterious ways was not
how he viewed this, but maybe all his years in Sunday school and services would
prove out—maybe this was some higher power, showing him the way. Then again,
maybe he was just weak.

He tossed the boy into his bed and flipped off the light
with a stern warning about not getting up. Jeffrey made a whiny noise, and then
quieted. Rosie was on the couch, sipping wine and staring at the blank TV
screen. Knowing it was now or never, he sat opposite her and took her hands in
his. “Rosie, honey, I need to tell—”

“Mama!” Jeffrey’s sharp screech made them both jump.

She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then got up and headed
down the hall. He grabbed her wine glass and downed it. When she lingered, he
flipped on the television and found an early-season basketball game. He’d
poured himself another glass by the time she emerged with her hair pulled off
her face and a small smile playing around her lips. Without a word she
straddled him, kissing him and bringing him to full attention. He gripped her
ass and lost himself in her, willing this to be right, to be what he wanted.

She broke the kiss and slid down to her knees, unzipping his
jeans and sliding her lips over his cock, teasing, licking and sucking as he
watched her, fascinated by the scene as if he were watching someone else get a
killer blow job. His fingers twined in her hair. His hips thrust up, moving
faster as he let it take him, groaning in relief when it did. She sat back on
her heels, wiping her lips and grinning.

“That was nice,” he said, breathless. She picked up the wine
glass and sipped, tucking her bare feet up under her as she sat next to him,
keeping her disconcerting silence. “I think I owe you a little payback. That
right, baby?” Putting the glass on the table, he pressed her back onto the
couch, sliding his hand into her easy-access sweats as he kissed her, loving
this and loving her, but wanting something that was not this—and hating himself
for that wanting.

A sharp knock at the door was followed by the doorbell,
twice, in the way someone does when there is very bad news on the other side.

“What the hell?” he said, standing and zipping his jeans and
helping Rosie to her feet. He opened the door, catching sight of his friend
Mark the cop, his daughter with blood on her cheek and Margot, standing a
little behind them, gnawing on her lower lip. He opened his mouth to ask her
what the hell was going on but she shook her head, her lips pressed into a thin
line.