His brother bugged his eyes at him. “Seriously?”
“Yes. We had a birth control mishap.”
“Mishap? What happened?” He waved his hands back and forth in front of his face. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. What are you going to do?”
“Right now, we’re waiting to find out. And I feel like I’m holding my breath. There’s this part of me that’s hoping she is. And there’s another part of me that’s thinking it’s not great timing and it’ll force us into a decision we might not be ready to make.”
“So basically, your head and your heart are at war.”
Alec drew in a deep breath through his nose. “And they agree on some things, but not everything. And that’s the problem.”
“What will you do if she’s pregnant?”
“Obviously, I’m not going to walk away from her. I could never do that. Not in a million years. But that doesn’t mean that she’ll want me. There are a lot of factors.”
“Maybe you need to eliminate some of those details from your decision. You have to decide what your priorities are. Do you love her?”
Alec avoided eye contact with his brother, looking down at the kitchen floor, smiling to himself, his cheeks flushing with heat as he thought about Brooklyn. The last few weeks had been great. They’d really reconnected. “More than I thought was possible.”
“Then that sounds like a pretty major priority.”
Alec thought that made perfect sense, but he didn’t get a chance to think about it too much. His phone rang in his pocket, making him jump. “I’m so sorry. This is probably her.”
“Yeah. Go take it.”
Alec ducked out of the room and fished out his cell, hoping it would be Brooklyn. The caller ID showed that it was his agent, Olivia. This was strange timing. “Olivia, hi. Did I swear during the parade this morning? I don’t think I did, but the coffee they gave me was stupidly hot.”
“No. I’m not calling about a FCC fine. Plus, your last contract states that the network has to cover those for you.”
“Oh, right. So what’s up?” He passed Zina in the hall as he headed away from the kitchen, and she walked toward it.
“I hate calling you on Thanksgiving, but it’s good news, so I figured it would be okay.”
Good news? Alec could use some of that. “Yeah. Go ahead. Tell me.” He wandered into the family room, where his nieces were working on a jigsaw puzzle, and sat on the sofa near them.
“We’ve reached a deal in principal with the network for your news division spot. They agreed to our terms, but they sent a fax instead of an email, so I didn’t hear about it until now. My assistant stopped by the office and saw it.”
Oh.He’d expected this moment to feel triumphant, but it wasn’t that. If anything, he felt even more stuck in a web of decisions. If the news division failed to give him what he wanted, that could be a decision made for him. “They’ve agreed to everything?”
“Yes. There are still some points we need to work out with your exit fromGood Day, but the big things that you wanted are all there. Vacation, bonuses, creative control. I will email you my notes. The network wants to meet with both of us on Monday morning at nine to hammer out these final details and then the lawyers can pull together the deal memo.”
“I’m on set until ten.”
“It’s fine. They’ve got Wesley filling in for you starting at 8:30. I’ll meet you right after, at your dressing room, so we can go over anything last minute.”
“The weather guy?”
“Technically, he’s a meteorologist.”
Was Alec already being replaced? It sure sounded that way. He knew that he was supposed to feel excited about this, but he didn’t. This was everything he’d thought he’d wanted. But then he and Brooklyn walked back into each other’s lives, kissed by a ficus, trick-or-treated, a condom broke, and everything changed. Now the only thing he was certain of was that he wanted Brooklyn. “Okay. But we’re just sitting down to hear what they have to say, right? I can still walk away.”
“What are you saying, Alec? Are you having second thoughts? Because I’ve been busting my hump to get you this deal. I know I’m bothering you on Thanksgiving, but I’m interrupting my holiday, too.”
Now Alec felt like a real ass. Olivia was working incredibly hard on his behalf, but things were tenuous for him, too. “I’m only saying that everything has to be right. I think I deserve that. Let’s sit down with the powers that be on Monday morning and see how these last few details shake out.”
Olivia sighed. “Okay. But please don’t embarrass me. I don’t want to be caught with my dick in my hand at that meeting. If something is going on, you need to tell me up front.”
“Got it.”No embarrassing dicks.
