The Pretend Fiancé

Bella endured more pretentious rich people reminiscences (remember that time we were all in Lisbon at Christmas!) and sipped her water in silence. She gave Harvey a wavering smile, trying to be encouraging. At last the fish course was served. There before her sat a beautifully presented avocado stuffed with a heap of pinkish shrimp. She felt droplets of sweat form on her neck and face, and she retched, gagging and heaving right there at the table. Shutting her eyes, it seemed she couldn’t block out the vision and smell of that atrocious shrimp and avocado monstrosity.

“Are you okay?” Harvey asked as servants cleaned up and she leapt to her feet, tears in her eyes.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry. I just have—a stomach bug. Forgive me.” Bella dashed out of the dining room. Ill and crying humiliated tears, she overheard Sylvia’s comment as she departed.

“That tramp had better not be pregnant.”

“Of course not, Mother,” Harvey said. He didn’t come after her. She lay in the bathtub crying, wondering if it were really a stomach bug that made her so queasy, so lightheaded and emotional. Or if Sylvia could be right after all.

Later that night, as she lay in bed, worrying and desolate, her stomach churning, Harvey came to her room.

“Are you feeling better?” he whispered.

For the first time since they’d been together, Bella pretended to sleep. She didn’t want to face him with her suspicions that she might be pregnant, with her miserable confession that she’d heard what his mother said about her, or that what Ryan told her about his brother knocking up the maid was coming true again. She vowed if she was pregnant, no amount of money would make her get an abortion. He left silently, and she didn’t tell him any of it.

Chapter 19

The next morning, Bella was up early and drove into town to the nearest drugstore. Knowing that she was recognized by the media everywhere, she’d taken the precaution to dress in a baggy hoodie and sweatpants, sunglasses and a ball cap. She piled magazines and Dramamine into her basket, lip balm and hand lotion and shampoo, to cover the three-pack box of home pregnancy tests she was really there to buy. She checked out, keeping her eyes on the card scanner and punching in the correct numbers, never looking up at the cashier. She used to hate people like that when she worked at the convenience store—they were such snobs, too good to say hi to the cashier, but now she thought maybe they just had something to hide.

Bella dreaded going back to the compound, and she considered calling Greta to see if she could go to her apartment to take the pregnancy tests, but then there would be a way for Harvey to find out. It had to be nothing. A false alarm. The only other time she’d peed on a stick, she’d been nineteen and it had been negative. There was no reason for people in his life to know that she was paranoid and thought she might be pregnant just because of his mom’s rude comment. It had to be a stomach bug. After all, she still felt queasy this morning and she hadn’t even eaten anything. The smell of coffee made her want to gag when she walked into the mansion by the back door. Up to her room, she locked the bathroom door a

nd peed on the sticks, lining them up on the marble countertop ominously.

She looked at the magazines she’d bought randomly—flipping through them only to discover they were those horrid home-cooking magazines full of casserole pictures. Dumping them in the trash, she refused to let herself look at the tests until the timer on her phone pinged.

When she finally glanced at them, cautiously, carefully, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed six little blue lines—two on each screen glaring at her accusingly. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.

Bella laid a hand protectively over her belly and dropped her head to cry. This poor baby. Unexpected and impossible. There was no way that Harvey, aka Mr. Not Ready to Settle Down, would be interested in playing house with her when baby makes three. She was appalled that this had happened, that she’d been carried away and careless and ready to throw it all away on Harvey Carlson. Now she was going to be a mother. She had to do better for her baby than these careless, impulsive decisions she’d been making. She had to use her better judgment and choose wisely for her child. After all, she was all that this baby had. Bella wrapped the pregnancy tests in yards of toilet paper and buried them in the trash can.

She shut the drapes, turned off the lamp and climbed into bed. Spooling up in the covers, she cried and cried. When Harvey came in to see her that evening, she told him she was still sick from the stomach bug and to give her apologies to his mother.

“It’s fine. You just take care of yourself. If you feel better later, come and join us.” Harvey had kissed her cheek and left her there in the dark with instructions to ring for the servants if she needed club soda or crackers.

If only it were that simple, she thought ruefully. If only club soda would fix her troubles—his mean snob of a mother and his smarmy brother with the annoying revelations about Harvey’s past, and Harvey’s stubborn resolve not to settle down this young. If only she could rewind the past twenty-four hours and move forward with excitement about this pregnancy, being thrilled to tell Harvey about it because she wouldn’t know that she wasn’t the first maid he’d knocked up. She could be happily oblivious then instead of filled with dread.

She might as well try to make peace with his family now. They were downstairs ready to see her, and she could at least throw on a dress and say hello, pleading the stomach bug to excuse her absence from dinner. If they saw how she loved Harvey and that she wasn’t after his money, maybe they’d tone down the ugliness. Maybe they’d prove to be decent people, people who might be happy for them when the time came for the baby to arrive. She tried to envision Sylvia turning up with a huge stuffed bear and a box of fancy baby clothes at the hospital, but it was too much a stretch of her imagination. Still, she put on a sundress and sandals and went to join them.

She hovered outside the door of the dining room where they were probably enjoying dessert. Her stomach churned now at the thought of Fabrice’s fantastic creations. Wincing, she paused to compose herself and heard—as she strained to eavesdrop—the voices of those within the room.

“I understand your protest, son, all I am saying is that you had better not have impregnated the staff again. Think of the headache of the courts—we’d have to go through all that red tape to secure the infant before its white trash mother had a chance to corrupt it. No Carlson would be raised in a trailer park in Kentucky.”

“Arkansas, Mother, and that’s hardly an option. I told you, she isn’t my fiancée. I hired her to pose as one.”

“So she’s hired help. And nothing more.”

“Initially. But…”

“You couldn’t keep your dick in your pants.”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She’s amazing, and if you got to know her, you’d love her.”

“So bottom line. You’re sleeping with her. So she could be pregnant.”

“She’s not. Besides, I could pay her off easily in that extremity. A million dollars and she’d sign away anything I asked. She’s completely under my influence, I assure you.”

“Are you so confident in your charms, Harvey?” she heard Ryan say.

“She’s besotted with me. It’s not a problem anyhow because she isn’t pregnant. It’s all a scam to get the board of Bellingford back under my control. She’s a woman I hired, nothing more. However, if she were, I could easily secure any hypothetical child. There’s no reason for such a furor over nothing, Mother,” he said, sounding exasperated.