Every Tuesday, Lucy, Harper and Violet gathered at Emma’s apartment for dinner and their favorite television series. They took turns cooking or buying takeout. Tonight, she’d promised Lucy she would make her favorite baked ziti and she hadn’t even boiled water yet.
In the kitchen, she busied herself by preheating the oven and gathering the ingredients for the family recipe. The ziti recipe was one of the few valuable things her older sister had taught her before she’d died.
Everything else she’d learned from her sister was more of a cautionary tale. She’d been sixteen when Cynthia died, barely dating herself, and yet the truth of her sister’s secret life had scared her parents enough to clamp down on Emma with an iron fist. She was hardly a problem child, but of course, Cynthia had always seemed perfect on the surface, too.
When she was old enough to be in charge of her own life, she
’d thought about rebelling. Her hunt for a sorority had been a start, but instead, she went the other direction and chose Pi Beta Phi, the sorority of proper, well-off ladies out to do community service and build sisterhood. She’d seen how her sister’s scandal had hurt her parents and she didn’t want to be the one responsible for putting that look on their faces ever again. When she finally lost her virginity in college, it was to a well-groomed, polite premed major she’d been dating for nearly six months and had hoped to marry. She pretended to be the proper, sophisticated society darling her parents wanted, and after a while, it just became who she was.
She’d only really, truly let herself go that once. Emma let herself do shots of tequila with a stranger, licking salt from the musky skin of his throat and sucking a lime from his full, soft lips. From there, it was a slippery slope that led to the tattoo on her chest and a positive pregnancy test on the back of the toilet. One night had ruined a decade of good behavior. She had no idea how she was going to tell her parents.
Emma opened the box of pasta and dumped it into a pot of boiling water with an unsatisfying splash. It had been so easy to let herself get carried away that night. Too easy. There was a part of her that understood how her sister could get so wrapped up in a passionate and illicit relationship while she was engaged to someone else. The pleasure and the excitement were enthralling. The other part of her knew there was nothing worth derailing her whole life for.
There was nothing she could do about the choices she’d made in the past, but she certainly wasn’t going to make the same mistakes twice. Jonah Flynn was just the kind of man who could make her priorities get all out of whack. That made him dangerous. She would tell him about the baby once the audit was complete and she had done her job. He couldn’t know the truth about her identity or the baby before then, which made it imperative that she not let her guard down around him.
“We’re here!” Violet called out from the living room.
“I’m in the kitchen,” she replied, giving the pasta a stir and setting the timer. Since she’d added the girls to the approved guest list with the doorman, they tended to show up with little warning. “It’s nowhere near ready, sorry.”
The girls came around the corner with paper sacks and set them on the counter. “We’re not in a hurry,” Harper insisted. “Anyway, I brought a bottle of chardonnay and Violet picked up some cheese and crackers to keep us busy until dinner is ready. The wine is just for us, of course.”
Her best friends unpacked the items from the bags and set them on the counter. “Oh, and tiramisu,” Harper admitted, pulling the seductive dessert from the bag. “I had to.”
Emma groaned inwardly. “You said FlynnSoft has a gym, right? After all this I’m going to have to find it or I’ll gain fifty pounds with this kid. Now that I’ve gotten my appetite back, I’m hungry almost all the time.”
Harper smiled and nodded. “It’s on the ground floor near the rear entrance. You can’t miss it. There’s usually no one in there after six or so. You can have it all to yourself.”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Lucy said. She reached out and put her hand on Emma’s slightly rounded belly. “You look like you had a big lunch, not that you’re over three months pregnant. I think you can afford some indulgent carbs.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Emma quipped. “Now open those crackers. I’m starving.”
Violet opened the box of crackers while Lucy pulled wineglasses from the cabinet and the corkscrew from the drawer.
“So how is the FlynnSoft assignment going?” Lucy asked after Harper opened the bottle and poured her glass.
There was something about Lucy’s tone that worried Emma. She turned away from the marinara sauce she’d made and frozen to look at Harper and knew instantly that she’d spilled the secret about Jonah to the others. Emma swore under her breath and returned to mixing the cheeses and seasonings into the bowl.
“I’ll just presume you all are caught up on who Jonah is—thank you, Harper—and jump right into it. I have never met a man so persistent in my life. You should’ve seen his face when I told him I wouldn’t go to dinner with him. It was as though I was the first woman in his life to ever tell him no.”
“You probably were. I sure wouldn’t tell him no,” Violet spoke up.
“Well, someone needs to,” Emma responded. “He’s not a god. He can’t get his way all the time. That kind of arrogance makes me crazy.”
“I’ve never really thought of him as arrogant in the years I’ve known him,” Harper said, shrugging. “He’s confident, sure, very smart, of course. He knows what he wants and he goes after it. I find that attractive. But you’re determined not to like him, so he could save puppies from burning buildings and you would find a reason to hate him for it.”
Emma opened her mouth to argue, but knew there wasn’t much point. It was true. Mostly. She didn’t hate him. She couldn’t feel that way about the father of her child. But she had to find things wrong with him for her own protection. And if he was perfect, she’d make up lies in her head about all of Jonah’s evil doings and pretend they were true. “It’s better this way, trust me.”
“Why, Em?” Lucy settled into a chair at the kitchen table. “And don’t give me some story about your sister. We’ve all heard it before and know better than anyone that you’re not your sister. You certainly aren’t going to disappoint your parents with anything you do. You’re a better person.”
“There’s no sense in punishing yourself for sins you’ve never committed,” Lucy said.
Instead of answering right away, Emma drained the pasta and started mixing it with the sauce and cheese to put in the oven. What could she say to that? Was that really what she was doing? “I’m not punishing myself.”
“Yes, you are,” Harper insisted. “If not for your sister’s sins, then for whatever you did at that Mardi Gras party. I think the punishment far outweighs the crime.”
“That night was a mistake and I’ll never be able to put it behind me. Don’t you think getting impregnated out of wedlock by a stranger at a party will disappoint my parents?”
“They might not be thrilled, but grandbabies become a joy no matter what,” Violet said.