And Babies Make Four

Damn, why had she just said that? Mindy upbraided herself. Jason certainly didn’t want to hear about her life and she certainly didn’t want to talk about it. From the way he was acting, Jason didn’t want to hear about anything that had to do with anything that was outside of the company he ran.

He surprised her by leaning forward. “What do you mean?”

Panic nibbled away at her, followed by a wave of shame. Her husband had cheated on her. Not once, but a number of times. This after she’d tried so hard to please him. Had given up so much to make him happy. That meant there had to be something lacking in her. She didn’t want Jason to think that, didn’t want to see pity in his eyes. “You don’t want to hear.”

“I wouldn’t have asked the question if I didn’t want to hear an answer.” He leaned back in his chair, allowing himself to study Mindy for the first time. Along with the beauty, there were signs of stress that artful applications of makeup didn’t completely manage to hide. What did she have to be stressed about? What had happened to her since the years they walked the same halls together? “What are you doing here, Mindy?”

She raised her chin ever so slightly. Defensiveness rose in her chest. “Working.”

“Besides that.”

She glanced toward the doorway that Nathalie had just vacated. “Trying to go home.”

Jason sighed. What had come over him? Where did he get off, prying? He’d never appreciated probing questions aimed at him. The least he could do was treat her the way he wanted to be treated.

He waved her on her way. “Sorry, didn’t mean to keep you.”

This time the dismissal stung. She hadn’t meant to shut him out. “No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t very polite of me. You asked a question and I gave you a flippant answer.” She squared her shoulders. “The reason I’m not going home to my husband is because I’m divorced, or about to be,” she amended. The divorce was almost final. It couldn’t be fast enough for her.

Divorced. He and Debra would have been divorced by now if she hadn’t been killed. A wave of empathy washed over him. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Oh no, was that pity in his eyes? She wasn’t about to accept pity, not even from the hunk who’d inhabited her daydreams for so long. If possible, she squared her shoulders even farther. A tiny ache rose instantly in her lower back. A sign of things to come, she thought. But first things first.

“I’m not.” She glanced at her watch. If she hurried, she could just make her five forty-five appointment with her doctor at Manhattan Multiples.

He saw the way she looked at her watch. He was keeping her, he thought, and she was anxious to get away. Jason inclined his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was her cue to go. Still, she paused one moment longer. She needed to know. “Then it was all right? My work?”

“Your work was fine. Surprisingly so.” He saw her brows narrow. She probably took that as an insult, he realized, and was quick to make himself clear. “I didn’t think this kind of thing was up your alley.”

She was grateful for the presence of mind that had made her take business courses while at Northwestern. “Survival is up everyone’s alley.”

“No argument there.” He closed the folder for the last time that day. No use beating a stalled horse. “And Mindy—”

She turned from the door to look at him over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Tomorrow call me Jason. Mr. Mallory makes me feel like my old man.”

There was nothing old about Jason, she thought. Godlike, maybe, but not old. “Fine. Jason, then.”

Mindy smiled to herself. Workplace or not, it felt right calling him that. Like something had just moved closer in sync.

With that she withdrew, unaware that he watched her progress all the way to the front door. Or that he continued to look at the door, lost in thought, for a long while after that.

“You can sit up now.”

Digging her elbows in closer to her body, Mindy pushed herself up from the examination table. She sat up, dangling her legs over the side. She looked at the rugged profile of her doctor, Derek Cross, and realized that she was holding her breath. These days she kept waiting for the shoes to fall and disasters to line themselves up like macabre ducks in a row. His expression gave nothing away, short of the fact that he looked tired.

“Is everything all right, Dr. Cross? With the babies, I mean,” she added when he looked at her.

“Couldn’t be better.” He retired his stethoscope, draping the length of it along his neck while his nurse, Lara Mancini, removed the machine that had allowed Mindy to listen to the heartbeats of the babies she was carrying. They sounded like tiny hoofbeats. Looking at his patient, he smiled. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to prepare yourself to be losing that girlish figure of yours very soon.”

She’d forgotten about that. Mindy bit her lower lip, her thoughts shifting to Jason as if they were on automatic pilot. She wasn’t normally a vain person, but this time it was different. This time she was going to be facing Jason. She wanted at least a little time before she mushroomed.

“Am I going to be huge?”

Derek exchanged glances with Lara and laughed. “Not if you don’t take your condition to mean you have carte blanche at the dinner table. If you eat sensibly and exercise, there’s absolutely no reason for you to gain much more weight than what these babies of yours will come to on their own.”

Exercise. Didn’t Manhattan Multiples have a gym on the premises? “How much exercise?”

Flipping to a new page within her chart, Derek began to make some notes to himself. “Well, I wouldn’t go hang gliding in the desert anytime soon, but within reason you can continue whatever you’re accustomed to.” He glanced up at her. “One of my patients played tennis until the end of her eighth month. Of course, she wasn’t carrying twins. Don’t push yourself but don’t baby yourself, either, no pun intended.”

“Don’t let him kid you,” Lara interjected, grinning as she continued tidying up within the room, “Dr. Cross intended it.”

“A nurse is supposed to back up her doctor.” Derek managed to keep a straight face only long enough to get halfway through his sentence.

Lara laughed shortly. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she cracked.

It still seemed incredible to Mindy that the woman she had seen on the screen in more than one supporting role was now being supportive of her. It was no secret that Lara Mancini had given up a promising movie career to follow her heart’s dream of becoming a nurse.

If Lara could reinvent herself, Mindy thought, if she could walk away from budding fame and gobs of money to do something noble, then what she was trying to do with her own life should be a piece of cake.

After all, it wasn’t as if she had walked away from an actual career. Despite her education and her degree in journalism, Brad hadn’t wanted her to have a career. Her place was at his side while he forged his, he’d told her time and again. Because she loved him, she’d listened. And, she supposed, to his credit, there’d always been money to do whatever she wanted to do.

The trouble was, she always had to ask him for it. It embarrassed her, even though he had always dispensed it. Embarrassed her because she always had to tell him what she wanted the money for. At times, it felt like begging. She certainly never felt it was her money as well as his. He never lost an opportunity to drive the point home that he was the one who had earned the money, not her. When he gave it to her, he always jokingly referred to the money as her “allowance.” As if she were still a child in her parents’ house.

Or worse, just a child. A child who was supposed to stand obediently by as her husband satisfied some inner craving and had affairs.

She clenched her hands on either side of her as she sat on the examination table.

“Is something wrong?” Lara’s soft voice broke into her thoughts.

Mindy shook off the morbid memories that threatened to overwhelm her. All that was behind her, she reminded herself. The best was yet to be. Right? She looked at Lara. “No, why?”

“No reason. You just had a strange look on your face, that’s all.” Lara kept her voice cheerful. A cheerful disposition, Mindy had noticed, seemed to be a prerequisite for working at Manhattan Multiples, from the receptionist on up. “If you have any questions, I’d be happy to sit down with you and answer them. Or just talk.” Lara’s eyes were kind. “You’re the last patient of the day.”

Mindy was touched. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself, she silently ordered. She was around people who genuinely cared about her and her babies. That was the important thing, not if she was going to turn into a whale for a few months.

“Thanks, but no. I was just thinking, that’s all.” She pressed her lips together. The intimate moment emboldened her. “Do you miss it?”

Lara tossed away the used paper from the table. “Miss what?”

Mindy looked to see if the doctor was listening, but he was still busy making notations in her chart. “Your career.”

Lara smiled, as if this wasn’t an original question. “This is my career.”

Mindy didn’t want to give offense, but she was curious. “I meant, do you miss making movies?”