Little Secrets: Unexpectedly Pregnant

Holy crap, now he was really seeing stars. Tyce wiggled his jaw and started to lead them to the stairs. As his foot hit the bottom stair, an idea popped into his head. “If I ask you to, do you think you could get Sage somewhere for me?”

“Possibly,” Linc replied.

“And instead of reimbursing me for what I paid for the shares, could we do a swap?”

“What swap?” Jaeger asked, his eyes still amused. Yeah, it would be a while before he lived that punch down.

“There’s a red diamond ring in your family collection that Sage loves. I’d rather have the stone than the money because I’d like to put it on your sister’s finger.”

Linc looked at him, then looked at his brothers. Some sort of silent communication happened between them and Linc finally nodded. “I think we can work that out.”

Reame was the last one up the stairs and Tyce heard his chuckle. “I have to say that life is never boring with you Ballantynes.”

Now there was a statement Tyce fully agreed with.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sage didn’t want to go to an art exhibition and she deeply resented her bossy future sisters-in-law—sadly, her brothers were rubbing off on them—turning up at her apartment and bundling her into the shower. Amy had always been bossy so that wasn’t anything new. Art exhibition, cocktails and clubbing, they told her. Just the five of them setting Manhattan alight.

Ugh. The last thing in the world she felt like doing was having a girls’ night out: the point of which was to drink copious amounts of alcohol to make you forget about your lousy man and to give you the courage to dance with, possibly kiss, some random guy. She was pregnant and the thought of kissing anyone else but Tyce made her want to throw up. What she most wanted to do was to go over to Tyce’s warehouse to beg him, again, to reconsider her offer, to plead with him to love her.

Stupid heart, wanting what it couldn’t have. So, not having an excuse to stay in—being pregnant and miserable wasn’t a good enough excuse for the women in her life—she was out and about and wearing this silly dress with her bigger-than-normal boobs on display. It was a baby doll dress in a multicolored print and it effectively hid her blossoming baby bump.

“Take me home,” Sage begged as they piled out of a taxi in front of the gallery where she and Tyce met again several months ago. She frowned at Piper. “Why are we here? They don’t have an exhibition scheduled. And why are all the lights off?”

“It’s an exhibition by a Norwegian installation artist, something to do with bioluminescence,” Piper replied, tucking her hand into Sage’s arm. “It’s got to be dark to see the effect of the art.”

“Don’t want to go,” Sage said, digging her heels in and looking at the cab. “I’m tired and my ankles are swollen and I have a backache.”

Okay, she was whining but she couldn’t do art, any type of art, right now. Was she asking too much to be allowed to nurse her weeping, bleeding heart in peace? Her mind was too full of Tyce as it was; memories of what they did and said to each other replayed on the megascreen of her mind, and coming back to this place, the place where they met, was simply too much for her.

She missed him so much she felt like she was walking around with a fraction of her heart.

“You’re not far along enough to be complaining about a backache and swollen ankles,” Cady told her, placing a hand in the middle of her back and pushing her toward the door.

“And you’re not carrying twin boys so I have no sympathy for you,” Piper added.

Tate rubbed Piper’s big bump and smiled. “Fifteen minutes, Sage, and then we will take you wherever you want to go.”

Sage perked up at that suggestion. “Home?”

“If that’s what you want,” Tate replied as they walked up the flight of stairs to the front door. Tate pulled the door open and ushered her into the dark gallery. Sage rolled her eyes at the complete darkness. Honestly some of these exhibitions were just ridiculous and in trying to do something weird and wonderful they forgot to be practical. How was she supposed to see the art if she couldn’t see two inches in front of her face? Anyone could trip, she could bump into people…

Speaking of, why didn’t she hear any chatter, why was the gallery so very silent?

Light flooded into the room and Sage blinked, her eyes needing a moment to refocus. Well, that was going to ruin the impact of the bioluminescence.

Sage immediately, instinctively, looked right to the spot where she first met Tyce and frowned at the massive blue abstract oil hanging on the wall. It held the outline of what looked like a woman’s back and bottom and to the right of where her head should be; she could clearly see a fist-size hole in the canvas.