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Anger trickled down through my spine, but the baby fluttered against my hand as if to say, Hold on a second. He is Deputy Deadbeat Daddy because of you.
“How did you get in here?” I asked. Someone had to buzz him in the main door.
“I helped Tootie Vogler with some groceries.”
“I…ah…guess this is about the newspaper?” I asked.
His blue eyes burned like acid.
“Can I apologize again?” I asked. “I’m really, really sorry.” He didn’t respond, and my apology sat there between us like dog poop on a carpet.
“How…ah…did you find me?”
“Did you think you were hiding?”
“No.” My laugh was awkward, and I wanted to take myself out back and end this misery. “Of course not.”
The silence was awful. It pounded between us, pulling my skin tighter, sucking out every molecule of air.
He was terribly out of place in the middle of my chaos, a dark spot, leaking menace like a fog into the center of the glitter and beads, the embroidered silk and pillows.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked, pulling a bunch of pointe shoes and one of my more salvageable tutus off the pink-and-green watermelon chair. It was this chair or the velvet couch, with the much-maligned scarf.
His sharp blue eyes made me so nervous, so aware of the frivolity of my home, that I actually patted the seat in enticement.
Carter O’Neill, the cold fish, didn’t even crack a smile.
“How about something to eat?” I asked. “I have ginger cookies. I just made them and there’s some salsa in the fridge. Not that you’d want that together, obviously. But I have some chips. Somewhere.”
He tossed the newspaper on the coffee table, carelessly knocking my favorite pig mug onto the rug. Luckily it was empty. I leaned over to pick it up and caught sight of myself, right there on the front page of the paper.
On a chair, a little blurry, but obviously pregnant. And frankly, the look on my face was pretty good, if I did say so myself. It managed to say it all—I loved you, but you hurt me so much that I can never forgive you.
All those acting classes my mother insisted on had really paid off.
Carter cleared his throat.
Right. Matter at hand. Political scandal.
“Are you involved with someone?” he asked.
“Involved?” I asked, yanked sideways by the question.
“Yes. Dating, or—” he heaved a big sigh, as if all this were a distasteful job “—whatever.”
“No,” I said.
“The father?” he asked, gesturing vaguely toward my stomach. “Is he around?”
“How in the world is that any of your business?” I asked, horrified.
“They’re calling me Deputy Deadbeat Daddy,” he said. “You kind of made it my business.”
“I know,” I whispered, guilt choking me. “I saw.”
“Papers in Houston, New Orleans and USA Today,” he said. “Did you see those, too?”
I shook my head.
“All right, then how about you answer my question. The father—”
“Not…ah…” I got lost for a second in the absurdity of this conversation. “Around.”
“That will make things easier.”
Things like disposing of my body?
“Look, I didn’t know there was a photographer there. Or that any of this would happen.”
“Clearly,” he said, his tone dubious.
“You don’t believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Or what you thought when you stood on that chair like a child and made up lies about me.”
I gasped. I couldn’t help it, it just came out.
“Don’t you dare,” he whispered, his voice and eyes, everything about him so suddenly menacing that I collapsed backward in the watermelon chair. He was gigantic; his hands could palm my head. He could make mincemeat out of me in a second. Not that I thought he would, but still…
“Don’t pretend for a moment that you are in any way the injured party in this situation. You put us here.” He pointed to the front page of the paper. “And you’re going to do whatever I say to get us out.”
My eyes narrowed. Whatever he said? Not likely. “I can write a letter to the paper,” I said. “Tell people that I made it all up. Or we could just tell the truth, that someone paid me a thousand—”
“No,” he said, his laugh not sounding like a laugh at all. “We won’t be telling anyone the truth. Jim Blackwell is all over this like a dog on a bone.”
“So…ah…what are we going to do?” I asked, suddenly light-headed with nerves.
“You,” he said, pointing at me, pinning me to the chair, “are going to say nothing. To anyone. And we—” he waggled his finger between us “—are going to date.”
I laughed so hard I had to put a hand under my belly. And here I thought Carter didn’t have a sense of humor.
“I’m not kidding,” he said, stone-cold serious.
“You’ve got to be!” I cried. “There’s no way in the world anyone is going to believe that I am dating you!”
His face hardened, a cold mask that chilled me from across the room. Cruel and distant, his eyes raked me, pulled off my clothes, my skin.
