And Babies Make Four

Straightening, Jason looked toward the outer office door. He should be going. Now. Before he said something stupid and had to have his foot surgically removed from his mouth.

He was going to leave, Mindy thought. To go to whatever life he had outside of this office. Her evening and the weekend that was to follow was going to be spent trying to make the tiny one-room apartment she rented into a home.

Suddenly she didn’t feel like going there, didn’t feel like being alone.

She could always go to Manhattan Multiples, she supposed. There was always someone there to talk to, even as late as ten o’clock. She could even take Lara Mancini up on her offer, if the woman was there tonight.

Or she could go to see her parents. That was always a viable option. Her parents always made her feel welcome and wanted.

But she didn’t want to be someone’s patient or someone’s daughter tonight. She wanted to feel the way she used to, like someone who could have the world at her feet if she just applied herself.

Like someone whose husband hadn’t run her self-esteem into the ground and cheated on her. Like someone whose husband hadn’t said, “that’s tough,” when she’d told him she was pregnant.

She wanted the bright, shining life she thought she had when she’d graduated high school.

Without realizing it, Mindy allowed a sigh to escape her lips.

She might not have realized it, but Jason did. He heard her. It stopped him in his tracks and made him turn from the door. And say something he had absolutely no intention of saying.

“Would you like to go somewhere and get a cup of coffee?”

He watched Mindy brighten like a thirsty flower turning up its head toward the first spring rain. “I’d love to.”

Big mistake.

The warning echoed in his head. But the sound of her response drowned it out. So he smiled, ignoring the former, replaying the latter, and said, “Then let’s go. Places around here tend to fill up fast with people escaping to the first leg of their weekend.”

Purse in hand, she was on her feet instantly. “Let’s,” she agreed.

Chapter Four

Sitting outside at a table for two at a nearby trendy restaurant, Jason solemnly watched the late-afternoon sun making shimmering patterns on the surface of his coffee.

The noise of the city pushed its way in, surrounding him and Mindy. The silence that existed between them was all he was aware of.

He had to admit that he hadn’t thought this out.

Being moved exclusively by the desire for Mindy’s company, he’d forgotten that in order to share it comfortably, he was going to have to talk with her.

Talking, when it didn’t involve the care and feeding of investment funds, was not his long suit. It never had been. He had never been accused of being one of those people blessed with a golden tongue. Not even fool’s gold. And right now, his tongue felt as if it had been forged out of two tons of lead.

“So,” was all he could manage before he had utterly depleted his supply of words. It sank to the bottom of his cup of coffee like a stone.

Mindy smiled at him, looking over the rim of her recently stirred cup of foam and decaf, her eyes stirring him.

“So,” she echoed, waiting for him to make some kind of stab at conversation.

Well, that had gone nowhere, he thought darkly. When in doubt, ask questions. That way the spotlight was focused somewhere other than on him.

He took a sip of the strong, black cup of unaffected coffee, let it wind its hot, dark path down his throat and through his chest, then ventured forward. “Care to fill in the blanks?”

She tilted her head in that way he’d always thought hopelessly endearing. “Excuse me?”

He was going to have to stop talking in bits and pieces, he thought, and make sense before she thought he was hopelessly sentence challenged.

“The blanks between walking on stage to get your diploma and arriving at Mallory and Dixon on Monday morning.” He did a quick subtraction. “That leaves us with what, eleven years?”

Eleven years. The simple statement stunned her. My God, was it really all that time? Had that many years actually gone by since she’d left for Northwestern, determined to set the world on fire?

It didn’t seem possible.

She felt as if the distance between then and now was a little more than a blink of an eye. A year, maybe two, no more than three. Eleven? How had that happened?

“Eleven years,” she echoed out loud. Her mouth curved in a self-deprecating smile. “That suddenly makes me feel very old.”

He hadn’t meant to do that. “Someone once said everyone has to grow older, but you don’t have to grow old.”

She recalled reading that someplace. Mindy thought for a second, then her eyes brightened as she remembered. “George Burns, I think.”

He was surprised that she knew something like that. But then, she’d been surprising him all week. He took another sip of coffee, wishing there was something in the drink that would transform his stilted tongue into a glib one. He began to understand what had driven Christian to approach Cyrano and ask the character to do his talking for him.

“Good words to live by.” He allowed himself to study her face for a moment. He’d noticed women looking in her direction enviously as they walked by. “In any case, I don’t think you have anything to worry about in that department for a very long, long time.”

She raised her eyes to his, and for one moment he forgot to breathe.

“That’s very sweet of you.”

Embarrassed, not knowing what to do with his face, his eyes, his hands, Jason shrugged. “Just stating a fact.”

Sweet. Who would have ever thought that Jason Mallory could actually be described that way? Mindy mused. Tough, rugged, sexy, yes, but sweet? That was a new one.

She sat back, enjoying this lovely island of time that had materialized out of nowhere, not unaware of the envious looks she was garnering. She would bet that every woman who walked by wished that she was in her place.

The conversation had stopped again. Searching for something to move it along, Jason looked down at her hand. He heard himself asking another personal question before he had a chance to think it out. “So, are you divorced, or—?”

“Or,” she replied. It was a state of limbo, really, not quite married anymore, not yet divorced. “It’s not final yet.” Anyday now, she thought.

The sun was pushing its way into the restaurant, brushing against the wide gold band, highlighting it. “Oh, I was just wondering because you’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

Mindy looked down at the gold band as if it had somehow managed to offend her through no fault of its own. She wasn’t wearing the ring because of any real sentimental attachment. The truth was, the only part of her that had gained weight since she’d become pregnant was her hands. Actually, not even her hands, just her hand. Her left one.

The fingers of her left hand had swollen just enough to make easy removal of her wedding ring an impossibility. Tugging at it was futile. Like a guest who had intentionally overstayed their welcome, the ring refused to be dislodged. The only way to rid herself of it was to cut it off, and she really wasn’t ready to do that at the moment.

Somehow that would have underscored the mistake she’d made in giving her heart to Brad and putting her life on virtual hold. Cutting the ring off would have symbolized her making a complete break with that part of her life, and though she was struggling to be independent now, she wasn’t ready to bury everything just yet. But soon, very soon, she promised herself. And then she was going to have to send it back to Brad.

But she didn’t want to tell Jason any of this.

She thought of a movie she’d once seen. The heroine pretended to be married in order not to have anyone hit on her.