“How many do you have at home?” the older man sitting nearby asked him as he folded his newspaper shut.
“None,” Sawyer said, his attention still focused on the girl who had hair almost the same shade of blond as Clover’s. “Not yet.”
“You sound hopeful, that’s good.” The old man turned his face and watched the little girl who had added a spin move to her routine “They change your lives, those little ones, and mostly for the better once you get past the sleepless beginning.”
“How many kids do you have?”
The man smiled, pride filling his eyes. “Five. All grown now.”
“That’s a lot of sleepless nights.”
“Well, with the right woman, you barely notice it.” He reached into his pocket and brought out his wallet, flipped it open, and tapped on a photo of a much younger version of the man and a woman in a wedding dress. “You gotta make sure to get that part right first because the kids all eventually leave the nest and then you’re left with yourselves for the rest of forever.”
Sawyer’s vision of forever hadn’t involved Clover or kids or marriage or anything else, and then he’d walked out of his office one day and there she was. He was an idiot for not realizing sooner. He was just relaxing back against his seat when a voice over the intercom announced Sawyer’s flight was boarding.
“That’s my flight,” he said, nodding his good-bye to the older man.
“Have a good trip and good luck finding the right woman.”
Forever with Clover. It had a nice ring to it. “I think I might have.”
The old man snorted. “Youth is wasted on the young. If it was me, you can be sure I wouldn’t be lazing around thinking I had the right woman. I’d make damn sure and then do whatever it took to make sure she thought the same, too.”
The old man was onto something. Getting Clover to see the advantages of his proposal would be a challenge. He had to make sure it didn’t sound like he was locking her into the very life she most feared.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sawyer said with a laugh and hurried to the gate for his flight, confident that by the time he got back to Harbor City in three days he’d have the perfect negotiation plan ready to go.
…
Two days after Sawyer had left for Singapore, Clover was wandering the empty penthouse, still no closer to knowing if she was pregnant or what in the hell she was going to do after he got back when the intercom by the elevator buzzed.
“Ma’am,” Irving said through the intercom. “You’re…um… Mrs. Carlyle is on her way up.”
Colillas de mono. She gulped, her silent worry about what might happen suddenly superseded by what was about to happen. “Now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Glancing around the foyer for a hole that would swallow her up, she threw out the first thought that made its way through her freaked-out brain. “But Sawyer isn’t here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When her miracle getaway hole failed to appear, she took a deep breath and tried not to give into the panic. “Are you giving me a heads up so I don’t have a heart attack when she pops out of the elevator like the Wicked Witch of the West?”
Irving made what sounded like a strangled laugh that transformed into a coughing fit. “I can’t comment on that, ma’am.”
Of course not. He wasn’t the one about to be interrogated by Helene Carlyle. “Thanks, Irving.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Clover pressed a fist to her belly and wished she’d paid more attention during the meditation breathing course Daphne had dragged her to a few months ago. Instead of deep cleansing breaths, all she was able to accomplish at the moment was borderline hyperventilating. Great. Helene Carlyle, terrorizer of doormen and procurer of socially-acceptable wife candidates was—the elevator dinged and Clover’s stomach did a d
roopy loop and her shoulders sagged—here.
Helene swept out of the elevator, looking every inch like the queen of Harbor City’s elite from her perfectly understated and yet enormously expensive wrap dress to the simple pearl studs in her ears. She gave Clover a slow up and down from the hem of her skinny jeans to the straps of her loose chiffon tank top and gave a weary sigh.
Biting back a caustic comment, Clover hit the elevator down button because the faster it got all the way back up here the faster her fake mother-in-law to be could leave. “Sorry, but Sawyer’s not here.”
“I’m not here for him,” Helene said, brushing an invisible piece of lint from her dress—as if lint would dare to land on her. “We’re going shopping.”