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They both laughed then, largely because Stephanie was right.
Desi closed her computer and locked up all of her paper research in her desk. It was early days yet, but it was never too early to be careful with her information. Another lesson her father had taught her before she’d hit her tenth birthday.
“Ready to go?” she asked after gathering her purse.
“Absolutely.” But before she could step out from behind her desk, Stephanie leaned closer and whispered, “Actually, I was hoping you had a tampon I could borrow. I always carry a couple in my purse, but for some reason I only had one today and there’s no way I’ll make it through the afternoon without an extra.”
“Oh, right. Of course. I keep mine in my desk.” Desi turned to open the drawer where she kept her personal stuff and pulled out the box of tampons she’d put in there weeks ago. But as she opened the box, it hit her that it was unopened. As in it had never been opened.
But that was impossible. She’d brought the box to work eight or nine weeks ago, when she’d used up the last of the old one. How could she have not had a period in the past nine weeks? And, more important, how could she not have noticed? She’d never had the most regular periods, despite being on the pill, but she’d never gone this long without one before, either. Alarm bells should have sounded at one point or another. They were definitely sounding now.
“Are you okay?” Stephanie asked as she reached out a hand to steady Desi’s suddenly shaky form. “You’ve gone pale.”
Desi didn’t answer. She was too busy doing the math in her head. And then redoing it. And then redoing it again. But no matter how she looked at it, no matter how she counted, she should have had a period before now. Even worse, if she’d been close to her regular schedule last month, she would have been ovulating right about the time she and Nic had met.
Her knees gave way at the realization, and she probably would have fallen if Stephanie hadn’t shoved the desk chair under Desi at the last second.
“Are you okay?” her friend asked again.
“I don’t know.” The words sounded hoarse as she forced them out of her too-tight throat. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible. She had been on the pill for years. And except for that first time on the balcony, she and Nic had used condoms. Which shouldn’t have mattered in terms of pregnancy because she was on. The. Pill.
Except…except, she hadn’t had a period. And—she took stock of her body, which felt totally normal except for the low-grade dizziness she’d been fighting for a few days—she had none of the signs that she would soon be getting a period. No cramps. No aching. No spotting. Nothing.
Nothing but dizziness. Nothing but a missed period. Nothing but—oh, God. Ohgodohgodohgod. For a second she thought she was actually going to have to put her head between her legs.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Stephanie asked, crouching down beside her. “Are you sick?”
Desi laughed a little hysterically then. “No, I’m not sick.” And she wasn’t, though she was very afraid that she was going to get sick if she didn’t stave off this dizziness. And since the last thing she wanted to do was throw up in the middle of her office, she started breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth in the same steady rhythm she’d once seen a pregnant professor use.
It actually worked and in less than a minute she was feeling a lot steadier. At least physically. “Um, maybe you should go to lunch without me,” she told Stephanie as she thrust the whole box of tampons at her. All she could think of was getting to the nearest drugstore and buying a pregnancy test. It would come back negative—of course it would come back negative because she was on the pill—but she needed to see the minus sign. Or the blank box. Or whatever the hell it was she was supposed to see, or not see, to prove to herself that she wasn’t pregnant with Nic Durand’s baby.
Except something in her wildly erratic behavior must have given her away—could it have been her death grip on the box of unopened tampons?—because Stephanie hauled her gently to her feet. Then whispered softly, “The convenience store on the corner should have a pregnancy test. If you’d like, I can run and get it for you.”
Desi should have said she was fine, that she appreciated the offer but she could get the pregnancy test herself. Or better yet, she should have pretended that she had no idea what Stephanie was talking about. But the truth was, she was suddenly exhausted and shaky and terrified. So terrified. The last thing she wanted to do at that moment was to walk down the street and buy a damn pregnancy test that might change the course of the rest of her life.
And so she said yes to Stephanie’s very kind offer. And then, after fumbling a twenty out of her wallet, she sat at her desk as her friend took off for the street as fast as her four-inch heels could carry her.
Desi didn’t know how long Stephanie was gone, but she knew she didn’t move, didn’t think, barely even breathed in the time between when her friend left and when she returned, a small brown paper bag in her hand. How could Desi move when it felt as if her whole life hung in the balance?
“Go do it now,” Stephanie urged as she handed over the bag. “It’s better to know than not know.”
Desi agreed, which was how she found herself alone in a bathroom stall, peeing on a small white stick. According to the directions, there’d be one line no matter what—pregnant or not pregnant. But if she was pregnant…
Except, she didn’t have to wait five minutes. She didn’t even have to wait one. By the time she had pulled her pants back up, there were two purple lines. Two very distinct purple lines.
She was pregnant with Nic Durand’s baby, and she didn’t have a clue what she was supposed to do about it.
Six
“Nic, there’s a reporter on line two for you,” his secretary
said from where she was standing in the doorway to his office. “A Darlene Bloomburg from the Los Angeles Times.”
He didn’t bother glancing up from his laptop, where he was reviewing his marketing team’s suggestions for Bijoux’s winter ad campaigns. It was only July, but he wanted to ensure they made a huge splash with the holiday crowd. It was the next step in his plan to make Bijoux diamonds a household name. “Pass her over to Ollie,” he suggested, referring to the head of Bijoux’s public relations department. “She can get whatever she needs from him.”
“I tried that,” Katrina told him. “But she’s determined to talk to you.”
Something about the urgency in her voice snagged his attention, had him looking up from the proposed ad campaign and trying to figure out what he was missing. His secretary was a thirty-year veteran in her field, and totally unflappable most days, so the fact that she was standing in front of him, wringing her hands and biting her lip, didn’t bode well for any of them.
