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“What’s up?” Savannah answered.
“I told you!” Kristina blurted, half angry. “We’ve got to talk. The baby’s almost here, and I just feel . . . out of control.”
Savannah tamped down her impatience as Baby St. Cloud started another round of bicycling. “Well, get in control,” she said. She could hear male voices down the hall, so she knew she wouldn’t be alone much longer. “This baby’s on his way, and you need to be ready.”
“Ready? My God, Savvy. How do you get ready? I don’t know how.”
“Well, figure it out.”
“I’m—I’m—I’m . . .”
“What?”
“I’m—I’m not sure Hale even wants this child,” she said in a rush, as if spitting out poison.
“Too damn bad. It’s too late for him to change his mind.” Savvy had been half expecting this. Things had just gotten so squirrelly these past few weeks, and Savannah was sick to the back teeth of both her sister and Hale waffling about this child. “Pull yourself together,” she muttered through her teeth, “and get the hell ready. You’re not the first person to have a baby.”
“Come over tonight. Please. Get out of whatever you’re doing. I need to talk to you. Really.”
“I can’t cancel.” She felt like throwing something, eyeing the paperweight on Lang’s desk, which was butted up against hers. It was a clear glass ball shaped like the earth, with the continents etched in frosted glass. Pulling herself back from the brink, she relented. “If I stop by, it won’t be till probably nine o’clock.”
“That’s fine. That’s fine,” Kristina said with relief.
“Okay . . . whatever.”
She clicked off, annoyed. Kristina’s inability to have children with her husband, Hale, had tugged on Savvy’s heartstrings in the beginning. One drunken night, when she was out with Kristina shortly after their mother’s death from a long battle with cancer, and after hearing Kristina ask—beg—for her “help” for months, Savannah had blithely announced that she would carry the St. Cloud baby. She’d wanted to connect with her sister, her only family member left, as their father had died when they were children. Kristina had shrieked with delight, hugged her fiercely, and sent out a Facebook blast within hours, going on and on about her wonderful, giving, generous, fabuloso sister.
When Savannah woke up the next day, slightly hung over and full of trepidation—her stomach felt filled with lead—she’d tried to think of a way to back out. But her sister’s joy and excitement were hard to squelch, and when Hale St. Cloud, one of those impossibly handsome dark-haired men, with gray eyes that seemed to pierce through all the layers of protection and burn into your soul, asked her, “Are you certain about this? Especially with your demanding job?” he kinda pissed Savannah off, and she declared, “Never been certainer,” which made Kristina jump up and hug her fiercely, and the deal was set.
Savannah had thought that she might still have a chance to get out of it, that maybe the procedure just wouldn’t take, but nope, one IVF session and bam, she was pregnant. Knocked up. With child. Hale’s sperm and Kristina’s egg had combined in one tenacious little embryo, and suddenly Savannah was in the midst of a gestational pregnancy—the correct term, as it was not a surrogacy, though she used both indiscriminately when explaining her situation to others—and that was all she wrote, folks. Savannah Dunbar was pregnant with Hale and Kristina St. Cloud’s child.
Now all Savannah wanted was to deliver a healthy baby to her sister, and soon, and then get back to being Savvy. Whatever problems, second thoughts, or God knew whatever else her sister might be having, didn’t matter. Kristina was going to have a baby with Hale, and Savannah was going to give birth to the little guy and become his aunt. Game over.
Pain in the ass, she thought now, not sure whether she meant her sister, her sister’s husband, or the situation as a whole.
And now she had to go to the bathroom. Again. Swear to God, once it started, it just wouldn’t give up.
Easing herself from her chair, she headed back to the bathroom, trying to remember what it was like to be able to bend forward and tie her sneakers, her footwear choice du jour. Her feet had swelled just enough to make other shoes feel like instruments of torture. Currently she had to sit down and bend her legs in one by one to bring her feet within reach.
When she returned to the squad room, Detective Langdon Stone was at his desk. He threw her a smile and said, “You look uncomfortable.”
“I am uncomfortable.”
“What the hell were you doing with that vagrant?”
“Mickey,” she said a little more loudly as a phone at a nearby desk began to ring over the hum of conversation and the rumble of the furnace.
“You shouldn’t have gone there. Start your maternity leave. Please. You’re making us all nervous around here.”
“Clausen was with me.”
“He came later,” he corrected. “This isn’t just me who feels this way. Sorry if you think we’re all misogynistic pigs, but you worry us.”
“I’m going to have this baby before you know it. Just don’t treat me like that’s all I am—a baby incubator.”
Lang gave her an “Oh, really?” look. Like Hale St. Cloud, he was handsome in a lean, hard way and had dark hair and white teeth. “How many weeks are left?”
“About three.”
