“I’m a supportive friend who recognizes hormonal chaos when she sees it.” She closes the laptop and leans forward slightly. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “I apologized. He looked like he thought I might bite him.”
“And he’d have it coming.”
“Told Jim about it, told him about the website.” I nod toward her laptop on the couch. “Which led to a whole conversation about my contract.”
Leigh immediately rolls her eyes. “Let me guess. Noncompete.”
“Exactly.” I spread my hands. “Apparently, my online clients can’t be in the Boston area.”
She waves that off immediately. “Please. Your clients can be anywhere.”
“Anywhere,” I repeat, thinking about it. The idea settles over me slowly. For the first time all day, something inside my chest loosens a little. “Thank you.”
Leigh shrugs like it’s nothing. “That’s what friends are for.”
I push myself out of the chair and stretch, suddenly aware of how hungry I am. “In that case, I’m making us dinner.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Dinner?”
“Toast.”
Leigh bursts out laughing. “You’ve been queasy about everything except toast.”
“Exactly.” I head toward the kitchen. “So that’s dinner.”
She grabs her laptop and stands up. “Hard pass.”
“You don’t want gourmet toast cuisine?”
“I have plans tonight. A date.”
I smile despite everything. “Good for you.”
I’m happy for her. And only five percent jealous. Dating feels like a completely different life right now. Dating while pregnant seems borderline impossible, and honestly, it’s not something I’m particularly interested in anyway.
Because no matter how much I try to focus on work, or the website, or the weird upside-down direction my life just took, my brain keeps wandering back to one very inconvenient memory.
Ronan Callahan, and the night he got me naked on his airplane. Naked, writhing, impossibly blissed-out…
Who the hell is going to compare to a man like that?
8
RONAN
Invitingone’s estranged son to dinner should not feel like preparing for a surgical procedure.
And yet that is precisely how it feels.
I stand in the kitchen of my penthouse with a glass of wine in my hand, staring at the dining table as though it might offer strategic advice. The place settings are symmetrical, the food is prepared, and the wine has been properly decanted. Everything is precisely as it should be.
Which is exactly the problem.
When one has no relationship with a person, there are no familiar rhythms to rely on. No conversational shortcuts. No shared history to fall back on that doesn’t carry the weight of a complicated past.
Connor will be here in fifteen minutes. My son.
