The Pregnant Mistress

He smiled at the pilot. Women were unpredictable creatures, he said, and clapped the man on the back. Then he returned to the house, dug out the address book he had not looked at since the night he’d first set eyes on Samantha, and placed a call to a brunette in London. He woke her—it was very early in the morning—but she squealed with delight when she heard his voice.

They made plans for what was surely going to be a memorable weekend.

Hours later, as Demetrios was en route to England, a worried housekeeper in Texas awoke Marta Brewster Baron with a soft knock on the bedroom door and then a whisper.

“Thank you, Carmen,” Marta said. She threw on a robe and hurried down to the big kitchen of the Texas mansion known as Espada. “Sam?” she said to the trembling young woman seated at the kitchen table.

Sam looked up. “Mom,” she said shakily. “I should have phoned first, but—”

“No, no, darling, don’t be silly.” Marta sat down next to her daughter and gently clasped her hand. “What’s happened, sweetie? Are you all right? I thought you were supposed to be in Greece until—”

Sam shot to her feet. “Oh God,” she said, and raced to the powder room down the hall.

Marta rose and hurried after her. “Make some tea,” she called back to Carmen.

Sam was bent over the toilet. Marta held her shoulders while she retched. When the spasms ended, she sat Sam down on the closed commode and sponged her face with cool water while she took in what had just happened, combined it with the subtle changes she saw in her daughter’s face and body and with the experience that came with years of living.

Marta knelt down and took Sam’s icy hands in hers.

“Sam, darling,” she said, very gently, “when were you going to let us know that you were pregnant?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“PREGNANT?” Sam said. “Me?”

“You,” Marta said gently.

Sam came as close as she could to laughing. “No. Don’t be silly. I have the flu. Half the population of Athens had it. I haven’t felt well for days…” She caught herself, heard what she saying and felt as if she were suddenly standing on the top of a cliff. “I’m not,” she said emphatically. “It’s the flu. And the long flight. And—and—”

She began to weep. Marta put an arm around her. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.

Sam shook her head. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Not even the name of your baby’s father?”

“I told you, I’m not pregnant. And even if I were—which I’m not—I wouldn’t want him to know. I hate him, Mom. I despise him. I—”

Sam put her face in her hands and begin to cry in earnest. Marta murmured words of comfort, took her upstairs and put her to bed. Then she returned to the kitchen and sipped the tea Carmen had brewed while she tried to decide what troubled her most, that her daughter was unmarried and pregnant or that the determinedly independent child who’d grown into an impossibly independent woman, had come home.

Marta would be forever grateful that she had, but that didn’t change the facts. That Sam should have felt desperate enough to come home wasn’t just upsetting, it was frightening.

* * *

The next morning, Sam borrowed Marta’s car, drove into town and bought a home pregnancy test kit.

A waste of time, she kept telling herself. There wasn’t a way in the world she could be pregnant. She took the pill. Besides, wouldn’t she know? A woman would certainly know something like that.

A little while later, she stood at the bathroom sink, clutching it for support while she stared at the little stick that said her life was about to turn upside down.

The stick must be wrong. She couldn’t be pregnant.

“Sam?”

She spun towards the closed door. “I’ll—I’ll be right out, Mother.”

Quickly, she scooped up the stick, the instructions, the box and dumped everything in the trash basket. She was trembling when she opened the door.

“Are you all right, Sam?”

“I’m fine.”

Flushed face. Trembling hands. And, sticking up out of the trash, the edge of a box with the word “Pregnancy” printed across it.

“Well,” Marta said brightly, “that’s good to know. Sam. I was thinking…Why don’t I call my GYN and ask him to take a look at you? I know, it’s only the flu. You’re probably right. You can glare at me afterwards and say you told me so.”

It was ridiculous. The whole thing. The test. Her mother. There was only one way to sort this out. “Go ahead,” Sam said. “Make the appointment.”

The doctor had a cancelation in an hour. Sam almost balked. She hadn’t been prepared to get up on the examining table so soon. On the other hand, the sooner she did, the sooner she’d know how stupid all this was.

“I can’t be pregnant,” she said as she climbed onto the examining table.

The doctor poked and prodded. “Well,” he said with professional good cheer, “I hate to argue with you, young lady, but you are.”

Sam sat up. “I’m not,” she said sharply.

“About three months, I’d say, but we’ll do an ultrasound to make sure. I can have the technician see you right now.”

“It would be a waste of time. I absolutely cannot be—”

“Have the ultrasound,” Marta said softly. “Then you’ll know.”

What was there to know? Sam thought stubbornly. But there was no way out; the doctor was already on the phone. Sam went down the hall to another examining room, climbed on the table and stared straight ahead while the technician rubbed gel over her skin, then skimmed a small transducer over her belly.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s just take a look…There we are. See? Right there, down towards the lower right corner of the screen.”

Sam reached for her mother’s hand and held it in a white-knuckled death grip.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Darling?” Marta squeezed her hand. “Look at the screen.”

“I told you, I don’t…” But she did. A tiny blob of protoplasm. A fetus. And she remembered what she’d fought against remembering, the weekend she and Demetrios had become lovers, when she’d skipped a pill and tried to make up for it by taking an extra the next day.

One missed pill. One little slip. Could your entire life really be changed by something so inconsequential?

Marta chattered nervously until they were halfway back to Espada, then fell silent. Jonas Baron came sauntering down the steps as they pulled up to the house. He was trying his best to look unconcerned but not succeeding.

“How you doin’, missy?” he asked gruffly.

Sam looked at her stepfather. “I’m doing fine,” she said, and went past him into the house.

Left alone, Jonas and Marta looked at each other.

“Well?” he said.

Marta sighed. “She’s three months pregnant.”

“I hope you told her she can stay with us as long as she wants.”

Mara smiled at her husband. “Thank you.”

“Nothin’ to thank me for. Girl’s like one of my own.” His jaw knotted and Marta thought how remarkable it was that her husband could still look so strong, so resolute, so young. “She tell you who did this?”

“No.”

“It’s that Greek, ain’t it? The one she was workin’ for.”

“She didn’t tell me, Jonas.”

“Yeah, well, who else could it be? I think what this son of a bitch needs is a talkin’ to.”

“Darling, I know you mean well—”

“What I mean is business.”

“It takes two people to make a baby.”

“I only see one of ’em on this ranch.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know.” Jonas gave a snort of disbelief. Marta put her hand on his arm. “It’s possible. Sam’s in denial. How would she have told him she’s carrying his child if she didn’t know it herself?”

“That stuff only happens in b

ooks,” he said, “not—”

“Not what?”

Not in real life, he’d been going to say, but a long-buried memory was struggling to the surface, a memory he wasn’t willing to stir up just yet.

“Not very often. Sam’s not stupid. She must have known.”

“Well, she didn’t. Or didn’t want to, I’m not sure which.” Marta looped her arm through her husband’s. Together, they climbed the steps and entered the house. “And she doesn’t want him to know. That much is clear.”

“That’s crazy. The man has to stand up to his responsibilities.”

“It’s Sam’s decision, Jonas.”

“But if she loves him—”

“If,” Marta said gently, “if, darling. This is a new world, remember? There’s love. There’s sex. And the two don’t always go together.”

Jonas sighed. “So, you’re tellin’ me it ain’t his fault he’s not here. Okay. There’s always that possibility. But now she knows. We know. Hell, the world’s gonna know. It’s time he knew, too. A man ought to take responsibility if he has a child.”