Chapter 5
MALLORY
Rourke comes home with rain dried into the hem of his trousers and his nose buried in his phone.
I'm standing in the kitchen with a mug of tea cooling between my hands when the elevator opens. For one ridiculous second, I think he might look for me first.
He doesn't.
He steps inside typing with both thumbs, overnight bag bumping his thigh, coat folded over one arm like an afterthought. He looks tired, but ready for the next crisis. There's no looseness in his shoulders. No slow exhale. No little pause that says he's made it back to me and now he can relax.
"You're back," I say.
His head lifts.
For one second, his face changes. "Mal."
It's just a moment. One blinking moment where he's that man on the beach, and I hate myself a little for how quickly I take the crumb.
He crosses the kitchen and kisses my temple. Damp wool, cold air, the faint mineral smell of rain. My body leans toward him like I've been waiting for this.
Because I have.
"Was it awful?" I ask.
"Inconvenient." His phone buzzes again. "Productive, though. The road flooded faster than expected, but Luis, one of the caretakers, stayed on-site. Got us into the cabins. We left as soon as the water dropped. Jocelyn already has revised numbers coming over."
Jocelyn.
One name, dropped neatly into my kitchen like a knife set beside a plate.
"Everyone was safe?" I ask, wrapping both hands around the mug. I want to ask so many questions. I swallow all of them, not wanting to ruin the moment. Not wanting her present in one of the few moments I have him to myself.
"Everyone was fine. Separate cabins. Basic heat. No real food except sandwiches the caretaker brought to us, but we survived." He sets his bag near the island and opens a message.
Everyone. Cabins. Caretaker. Sandwiches.
I line the words up in my head because that's what reasonable wives do. Reasonable wives don't build romance novels out of inconvenient circumstances.
The picture I have is ordinary enough to be insulting. Rourke, Jocelyn, and the seller stuck by weather at a luxury property that is not luxurious yet. Staff with flashlights. Damp shoes. Bad sandwiches. People inconvenienced and eager to leave.
Nothing to fear.
Nothing to love, either.
"And the seller?" I ask.
"Skittish, but workable. Jocelyn caught an inconsistency in his operating projections. Good catch. It may give us leverage."
I wait for more.
He gives me none of it.
"Do you want breakfast?"
"I ate in the car." His thumbs move again.
He looks up at me, and for a moment, I think he might say something that doesn't involve logistics, Ridgeline, or inconveniences. But something shifts in his expression, and he says nothing.
The tea has gone lukewarm. I take a sip anyway to keep my mouth occupied. That way, I don't ask the questions that are right there at the tip of my tongue.
There's no lie I can point to. He told me the road flooded. I knew Jocelyn was there. He slept in a separate cabin. A caretaker stayed. Everyone was fine.
The blank spaces are mine.
I've learned to fill them quietly.
"You must be exhausted," I say.
"A little."
He finally looks at me fully, and my foolish heart sits up like a dog waiting for a treat.
Then his phone rings.
"I'm sorry," he says, already turning. "This is legal."
He answers before he reaches the study.
I stand in the kitchen with his overnight bag on the floor and my tea cooling between my hands.
For three days, coffee smells wrong.
Not bad, exactly. Just too sharp. Too dark. The scent lifts from Rourke's cup in the mornings and slips under my skin until I have to turn away from the kitchen island.
I sleep nine hours and wake up as if I've spent the night moving furniture. My breasts ache beneath soft cotton. On Thursday, I cry because a white ranunculus in the lobby arrangement has bruised at the edge, one petal browned where someone must have touched it too hard.
"It's a flower," I whisper, pressing my fingers beneath my eyes before the concierge notices.
Stress, I tell myself. The gala. Ridgeline. Rourke moving through the penthouse with his attention three steps ahead of his body.
On Friday morning, I open the calendar app on my phone to check a vendor delivery and go still.
I count once.
Then again.
The bathroom feels too bright when I take the test from the back of the vanity drawer. I bought it months ago after a different late period and hid it behind unopened bars of guest soap, embarrassed by hope even then.
This time, I don't let myself hope.
I set the test on the marble counter and start the timer.
Three minutes.
I fold a hand towel, then unfold it because the corners don't meet. I straighten the little glass jar of cotton rounds. I wash my hands, dry them, and wash them again because the soap has left a slick feeling between my fingers.
The timer sounds too loud.
I turn it off and stand there a few seconds longer, as if the result can stay impossible while I don't look.
Then I look.
Two pink lines.
The room tips quietly.
No drama. No music swelling. No cinematic beam of sunlight through the window. Just the vent humming overhead and my breath catching.
I sit on the edge of the bathtub because my knees no longer feel stable enough for standing.
The test lies on the counter, small, white and ordinary, holding a new world in a plastic window.
My other hand moves to my lower stomach.
Nothing is different beneath my palm. Skin. Warmth.
But the penthouse feels different anyway.
The city beyond the bedroom windows looks less certain than it did ten minutes ago, all that steel and glass suddenly less permanent than whatever has begun inside me. My tired body is not failing me. It's been keeping a secret before I knew how to listen.
A laugh breaks out of me.
"Oh," I whisper.
I picture Rourke's hands, large and careful, closing around something tiny. Rourke standing beside a crib, looking down at a small, furious version of both of us. Rourke looking up at me the way he did on the beach seven years ago, startled into wonder.
For the first time in months, that old feeling is close enough to touch.
The clinic is across town, discreet enough that no one looks twice when I give my name.
The appointment is simple.
Too simple, honestly, for such a life-changing event.
A clinician confirms what the test already told me. Early. Very early. She reviews dates, vitamins, warning signs, and the next appointment.
"Congratulations," she says.
Congratulations.
A simple word, and somehow it contains a thousand tiny doors.
I blink fast and look down at the appointment card she's given me. The paper bends where my fingers grip it. Black ink. My name. A date circled in blue.
Proof I can put in my purse.
In the parking lot, I sit behind the wheel and pull up Rourke's name. My thumb hovers.
He might answer from the executive floor. From a conference table. From the back of a car with someone waiting beside him. He might say, "Mal, is everything okay?" in that quick, worried voice he uses when he wants the problem summarized before it makes a mess.
No.
Not like that.
This news is not becoming another bright notification on a glass screen. He's not hearing it with legal on hold or Jocelyn's notes open in front of him.
I want a table between us. Ordinary food. Nothing plated with design in mind or with some ridiculous garnish. No investors. No headset. No service corridor. No phone lighting up beside his hand.
I want my husband looking at me when I tell him he's going to be a father.
Hope is a frightening thing when it comes back all at once.
It fills the car until I can barely breathe around it.
I buy the booties from a little shop three blocks from the clinic.
They're cream cotton with rolled cuffs and two tiny buttons shaped like stars. Too small to be useful. Too plain for the kind of nursery a Carmichael child would be expected to have.
Perfect.
At home, I set them inside a small white box and line the bottom with tissue paper. I open the lid three times before dinner, just to check that they're still real.
I call Beatrice and ask her to protect the evening without specifying why. She never presses.
"Two hours?" she says over the phone.
"Three, if you can."
A pause. "For you, four. If anyone bleeds, they can use a towel."
I almost tell her then.
The words rise into my mouth, warm and reckless, but I swallow them back. Rourke first. He should hear it first.
The dinner will be lemon pasta with basil and too much parmesan, the first thing I ever cooked for him in my old apartment after a Saturday at the flower market.
On the chosen night, two days away, I'll make it again.
Until then, Rourke keeps moving.
He takes late calls. He leaves notes on Ridgeline spread across the kitchen island. He says Jocelyn believes the cabin phasing can move up. Jocelyn has an idea about the access road. Jocelyn thinks Moreland is sniffing around.
Each mention touches the edge of my hope and leaves it cold for a second.
Then I open the box and look at the booties.
On Sunday evening, Rourke leaves his phone on the kitchen counter while he steps into the bedroom to change for another call. I'm rinsing basil in the sink, leaves slick and bright beneath my fingers, when the screen lights.
Jocelyn King.
A photograph attachment waits beneath her name.
Evidence we survived.
The water runs over my hands until it turns warm.
I could touch the screen. One swipe. One tap. Whatever image she's sent him would open, and I wouldn't have to wonder what survival meant to the woman who's always finishing his sentences.
I remember burgundy silk at the gala. Jocelyn leaning close. Rourke saying her name after Ridgeline as if it belonged in the air between us. The flat tone of his answers.
Road flooded. Separate cabins. Caretaker. Everyone was fine.
My hand moves toward the phone.
Then my hip bumps the drawer where the white box waits hidden beneath clean dish towels.
I stop.
Looking would mean something.
It would mean I believe there's something to find. It would drag suspicion into these first private days with the baby, and I can't bear to give Jocelyn even that much of us.
So I turn the phone facedown.
When Rourke comes back, cuffs undone and hair damp from a quick shower, he picks up the phone without noticing.
"Still good for Tuesday?" I ask.
He looks up. "Tuesday?"
My chest tightens.
"Dinner," I say. "You promised."
"Right. Yes." His face softens with guilt. "Yes, Mal. I'll be here. Beatrice already threatened three department heads and one board member. I won't miss it."
I let myself smile. "Good."
He kisses me quickly, then takes his call in the study.
I wait until the door closes before I open the drawer. The white box fits in both my hands. I carry it to the table and try three places before choosing the spot beside his plate.
Not centered.
Close enough that he will notice after the first bite, when I tell him I have something for him.
I lift the lid. The booties rest in their nest of tissue.
The first time I try to say it, nothing comes out.
I press one hand to my stomach and breathe.
"We're going to have a baby," I whisper.
Those words feel like the most powerful I've ever spoken.
I say them again, softer.
"We're going to have a baby."
This time, I smile.
Beyond the study door, Rourke's voice lowers around some problem I don't have to solve.
The little box stays open on the table, holding the future I am about to give him. I close it and place it back in its place until nothing stands in our way.