Page 191 of Boss of the Year

“How are you feeling?” Joni asked, as though she could read my mind. “You know. With…everything.”

I sighed. Because we’d been checking in almost daily, she was up-to-date on my situation. She was my first call when I’d left the clinic in Toulouse, where a very nice doctor had confirmed that, yes, I was pregnant. About five weeks along.

We had talked about my options, and at the time, I’d thought it was an obvious choice to accept a prescription for the pills to end the pregnancy. I hadn’t actually told anyone but Joni what had happened, and at the moment, that felt smart because I wasn’t going to keep the baby. Why would I? Lucas and I were never anything real to begin with, I hadn’t heard a word from him since leaving him in Paris, and I was certainly moving on myself.

Two weeks later, however, the pills were still in the bottom of my backpack along with directions in English on how to use them. I hadn’t looked at them once. I had, however, quietly discovered that Saint-Cyprien had primary and intermediate schools within walking distance of the center of town and that Sarlat also contained a hospital with an OBGYN and a midwife who traveled to the nearby communes, including this one.

I glanced around the café to make sure no one was close enough to overhear, then lowered my voice. “I’m fine. Just…taking my time.”

“Taking your time?” Joni looked genuinely confused. “It’s been two weeks. Isn’t there, you know, kind of a time limit on these things?”

I sighed. “Yes, but…”

I could have gone off on the abortion laws in France or made up something about how I needed a quiet place where I was going to stay for a bit to do it. But any excuse would have all been false. And I didn’t want to lie anymore, not to myself, and not to my sister.

“I keep meaning to take the pills, but then…I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“How do you think it happened? I mean, you were careful, right? I know I didn’t teach you wrong about wrapping it up.”

I sighed. We must have had this conversation at least five times, but Joni kept returning to it, almost like she was scared it could happen to her and needed to figure out how to prevent it.

“We used protection every time.” Heat flooded my cheeks as I remembered those moments. “But I’m not on birth control, and condoms aren’t infallible. Things break, and…I mean, it was only a few times, but I guess that’s all it takes.”

“Tell me you’re getting an IUD or something after.”

“Of course. They told me to come in after it’s all settled.”

I didn’t mention that the idea of needing birth control seemed abstract at best. Being with anyone else still seemed absurd. The idea of anyone else’s hands on me felt like sacrilege.

Vaguely, I wondered when that feeling would go away. Or if I would need another earth-shaking love to wake me from my obsession with Lucas the way he had disintegrated my girlish dreams about his brother.

Unfortunately, I suspected earth-shattering loves were few and far between. I also wasn’t certain I could handle another.

“Maybe you should just have it.”

I jerked my head back to Joni. “What?” She might as well have been suggesting I have an extra cup of coffee this afternoon.

She grinned. “You know, ride that gravy train for the next eighteen years. Lucas Lyons as a baby daddy would set you up for life. You’d have more than enough to support the kid, start your restaurant, whatever else you want to do.”

“Are you kidding me?” I practically seethed, then calmed my features when I attracted the curious glance of an older woman walking her dog. I nodded at her with a smile, then turned back to Joni. “How could you even suggest something like that? Idon’t care how rich Lucas is, I wouldnevertake advantage of him that way?—”

I was interrupted by my sister’s low, satisfied chuckle. “I knew it. I knew you still cared about him.”

The conclusion she’d already come to swept through me right along with the autumn breeze blowing orange maple leaves across the cobblestoned square. It wasn’t the suggestion that I could ever be a gold digger that bothered me, but the implication that Lucas was only good for his money.

Even now, even after everything he’d done, I was still protective of him.

My mouth fell open. “Youbrat.”

“A brat who loves you. A brat who wants to see you happy. Did you see this?”

A moment later, my phone pinged with a message from her bearing a link to a news article. I opened it to a feature in theNew York Post.

More Details on the ‘Wedding of the Decade!’

The article contained pictures of Daniel next to a slim, absurdly young Emma Hubbard, standing under a flowered arch in front of at least a few hundred guests. She was obviously pregnant if you knew to look for it, but otherwise her growing belly was hidden well in an empire dress. Daniel, in a crisp tuxedo, with his blond hair combed back in a neat coif, looked like a man attending his own funeral.

I had no doubt there was a flask hidden somewhere in his jacket.