Four
Hi, I need to talk to you. Tonight. Can we meet?
Carrick’s reply was almost instantaneous.
Okay. When? And where?
Now. I’m outside your front door.
Sadie tucked her phone away, thinking that she not only had a baby growing in her womb and a million butterflies buzzing, but she also had anxiety and fear gnawing holes in her stomach lining. And, worst of all, guilt kept washing over her, hot and sour. She should’ve been more careful about contraception, paid better attention. But as far as she could remember, Carrick had worn a condom. What more could they have done?
But really, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was completely stupid to get pregnant in the twenty-first century. And deeply irresponsible. She was better than this, dammit, smarter.
But accidents, so they said, happened. This one was a multicar pileup.
Sadie had spent the past week thinking about her options, deciding what to do. She’d sent Carrick a message earlier in the week telling him she was going out of town to do an appraisal in New York, but she’d lied; she’d just holed up in her apartment and paced the floor.
There was a baby growing in her womb—a combination of her and Carrick—and she’d spent a lot of time deciding how to proceed. It wasn’t the eighteen hundreds, and she had options, but Sadie knew she’d have to live with any, and all, of her choices.
She was staunchly pro-choice, firmly believing it was a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. But up until this moment, pro-choice had always been an intellectual concept, something she believed in, but didn’t expect to face.
After days of rigorous internal debate, she’d made the decision to keep the baby. When she married, she’d wanted to get pregnant straightaway, but it hadn’t happened. After her divorce she’d been grateful to be spared the ordeal of raising a child with Dennis. He hated having to share her attention and it wouldn’t have mattered that it was his child taking her attention away.
Dennis was all about Dennis...
Ironic that she was pregnant by a guy who was reputedly so much like her ex-husband. She wished she was nice enough, a good enough person, not to fret about how much of Carrick’s personality her baby would inherit—and damn, she’d nurture the hell out of this baby to make sure he or she didn’t grow up to be a jerk—but she had worried. Worried still.
But at the end of the day, giving the baby up for adoption or having an abortion was out of the question because she’d always planned on having a child, maybe two, in the future, with or without a man. She could afford to raise a child; money wasn’t a problem. She’d have to cut back on her traveling but that was a bridge she’d cross when she had to. Having a child was part of her life plan; the timing was just earlier than she’d expected.
Sadie was already excited about having a person in her life she could unconditionally love. She already loved him, or her, loved the little bundle of cells growing inside her. Being a mother didn’t scare her, but telling Carrick she was pregnant with his child did.
How would she tell him? How would he react? What would he say after she broke the news?
Sadie shuffled from foot to foot, wondering why he was taking so long to open his front door. She turned around and looked out into the misty night, tendrils of dense fog touching her cheeks and forehead. It was the end of January; the baby would be born in late September, early October.
So near, yet so far away.
Sadie heard the snick of a lock and resisted the urge to bolt down the path and fling herself into her leased car. In an hour she could be at the airport; in another few hours she could be on a plane heading for Paris, or she could go to the UAE and hide out at Hassan’s apartment in Abu Dhabi. He wouldn’t ask any questions; in fact, he’d offer her marriage to keep her in the lap of luxury. There were benefits to having an Arabian prince as a best friend.
But his family, as much as they adored her, would not approve of their son raising another man’s child. She didn’t need Hassan’s parental help, nor did she need his financial help.
She just needed to not have this conversation with Carrick Murphy.
“Sorry, I’d just stepped out of the shower when you sent that message. That’s why I took so long,” Carrick said after opening the imposing front door to his house. He stepped back into the hallway and gestured her inside.
Sadie stepped into his hall, her eyes immediately going to the massive abstract painting on the large wall on her right. She unwound her scarf as she hustled over to the painting, wanting to fall into all that movement and color. Carrick was so lucky to see this painting every single day.
“When did you acquire this Pollack?” Sadie demanded. “I don’t know this painting.”
“My grandfather bought it in the forties from the artist himself.” Carrick tugged her coat from her shoulders and Sadie barely noticed.
“What’s it called?”
“Sadie, you didn’t come to my house at ten at night to discuss art,” Carrick said, hanging her coat and scarf on an antique coat stand in the corner. He frowned at her. “Or did you? Is this about the Homer?”
She wished. Sadie shook her head and pushed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “Can we...can we sit?”
Carrick nodded. “Okay. Let’s go to the library.”