Seven months later
Tess stared at the wall display containing various types and sizes of screwdrivers and muttered a curse. She could screw an adulterous husband to the wall in court, and did so with great pleasure on a regular basis as a top-notch divorce attorney with Atlanta’s premier law firm, Hightower, Leggett and Beck. So why couldn’t she just as skillfully navigate this maze of tools and figure out which one she needed?
Obviously, furniture assembly was another matter, and when she’d rushed to Do-It-Yourself Depot to buy hand tools for her latest project, she had not realized she would have such a sizeable variety from which to choose.
Nick would have known without hesitation. She had accompanied him to this store on many occasions to buy supplies for his furniture-refinishing hobby. She had even paused in the cabinet section and considered buying new knobs for the chest she needed to assemble. Being in this store brought back memories, and she glanced right and then left, wondering if maybe he was shopping there today as he did on many Saturdays.
She shook off the thought because odds were he wasn’t even in town.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” A tall, sandy-haired boy who didn’t look old enough to be out of high school, much less know anything about hand tools, rocked back on his heels and adjusted the nametag that read “Rick.”
“I’m putting together a chest of drawers and need a screwdriver.” She glanced at her list, which contained several other small tools she needed as well.
“What kind?” the boy asked. “Slotted? Phillips head? What about a socket screwdriver? Is it a square or star drive? Or sometimes furniture requires an Allen wrench. Did you check to see if it came with an Allen wrench?”
Tess stifled another curse along with the urge to pummel the boy with the claw hammer in her left hand. This was definitely not her favorite way to spend a Saturday morning.
“The directions specifically said screwdriver, so I’m going to operate on the presumption that no wrench is needed nor was one provided.”
“But you don’t know if you need a slotted or Phillips, do you? And what about the size?” He moved to the display, removed a red-handled tool and balanced it in his palm. “You have your blade length and then the driver head width to consider with a slotted one, whereas your Phillips head comes in numbered sizes that correspond to various screw sizes.”
Tess’s head swam with the overload of unsolicited screwdriver information delivered by the young store clerk. She closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose between two fingers in an attempt to fend off an impending headache.
“Or maybe you’d like one of these cordless screwdriver sets,” Rick suggested, moving a few feet further down the aisle and pulling a box off the shelf. “This one is variable speed and has a hex-type chuck. Of course you’ll need to buy the accessory set of bits and those will pretty much cover most any slotted or Phillips head screws you’d ever come in contact with. And this one is free with a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar purchase.”
“Maybe I should just go home and check the directions and make sure of what I need.” Tess needed a cordless screwdriver set like she needed a third thumb. Maybe she could just use the end of a kitchen knife and accomplish her task.
“Or you could just ask your husband. Heck, he probably has whatever you need out in the garage anyway. But if he doesn’t you tell him to come see Rick and I’ll fix him up with whatever the little woman needs to put together that chest.”
Tess tightened her grip on the hammer and revisited her earlier thoughts about using it. She knew she would be committing a felony. At the moment, though, she wasn’t sure she cared. Calling the manager and pointing out that Rick was a prime candidate for demonstrating how to drive away customers in one easy step was beginning to look like a reasonable alternative. If she didn’t use the hammer first.
Exhaling slowly, she chose her words carefully and said through gritted teeth, “I don’t have a husband, Rick, and this little woman resents your insinuation that she can’t buy a screwdriver by herself or that she needs a man to help assemble a piece of furniture. I’ll just come back when I’ve read the directions and know for sure what I need.” She mentally castigated herself for being so ill-prepared. On the job, she prided herself on solid and thorough preparation for every case she handled.
Must be the hormones, she thought.
“Should you even be assembling furniture in…you know…your condition?” Rick blushed as if embarrassed by the mention of pregnancy.
The headache was full-blown now, a brutal throb behind one eye, and she could feel the infusion of acid to her stomach as her anger level increased.
“Probably not, because women in…you know…my condition are weak, helpless little creatures who can’t even think for themselves much less put together a piece of furniture. But since I don’t have a husband—because it is possible to have a baby all on your own these days—I’ll just have to figure this out all by my weak, helpless little self. And once I do, Rick, I won’t ever be coming back here to shop since your employer obviously hasn’t sent his employees through sensitivity training and I certainly don’t like being insulted when I’m spending my hard-earned money.” Her voice rose in tone and anger with each sentence.
“But what about your hammer?” he asked as she turned to walk away.
Tess slammed the tool down on an adjacent counter with all the strength her anger and headache had given her. The noise echoed through the open building like a gunshot and knocked over several display stands of small items.
“What about it, Rick?” she yelled in a challenge.
The young man swallowed and grabbed the hammer with one swift move. “I’ll just put this away for you, ma’am. You have a nice day now and thank you so much for shopping at…” His words trailed off and he beat a hasty retreat as Tess skewered him with a disdainful look that could best be described as a death stare.
She stomped through the store, madder than an angry hornet and vowed never to set foot in Do-It-Yourself Depot again. Why did they have to put the hand tools section so far from the front door anyway? As she wove her way around other customers, she mentally composed a scathing letter to their CEO, castigating him and his entire operation for hiring employees with misogynistic attitudes and automatic assumptions that pregnant women should have husbands and were too helpless to do things for themselves. She would make damn sure the words “complete failure to pass sensitivity training” would be front and center in her letter.
She had managed quite nicely for the past seven months, and she would continue to manage for the remaining eight weeks of her pregnancy. Of course, she hadn’t needed a screwdriver up until this point. Would raising a child be this complicated?
When she reached the paint department, she felt the baby shift and kick as if in response to the clerk’s patronizing and sexist attitude. She had dealt with men like him throughout her career in family law, and she achieved enormous satisfaction from slicing them off at the knees in court.
Her own childhood had been marred and scarred by her father’s misdeeds. With the help of the other attorneys in the firm where she was employed, they made sure cheating husbands paid the price instead of letting their innocent wives and children bear the brunt of the emotional and financial consequences of divorce.
Tess shuffled past the paint sample cards and continued toward the exit. As she reached a display of light fixtures directly in front of the main exit, the muscles in her belly contracted. She paused, grabbed the edge of the display shelving and breathed through it. She’d been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks, but this one was especially strong.
“Calm down, sweetie. I’m not quite ready for you yet, and thank to Rick the Prick, it’s going to take a little longer.” She patted her belly as she spoke to her unborn child, not caring if anyone overheard—not even Rick himself.
As the automatic doors whisked open, a breeze swept across her and cooled her overheated face. It also blew her shopping list out of her hand and whipped it down the aisle behind her.
“Oh, hell.” Huffing out an exasperated breath, Tess absentmindedly rubbed her lower back, turned to chase down her list and found herself face to face with Nick Russo.
*****
Lately, every woman with short, spiky dark brown hair had begun to resemble Tess, including the waddling pregnant one he had spotted with a hammer in one hand at Do-It-Yourself Depot. Pregnancy aside, it couldn’t be Tess. She didn’t shop for paint and tools and plumbing supplies. Tess shopped at major department stores and trendy boutiques and had a landlord who would handle repairs to her apartment. The same apartment where he had spent many nights up until the previous spring when he’d made a serious decision about the two of them—a decision he had questioned often.
Nick had found the stain and varnish he needed for his current refinishing project, which was a rough-hewn antique sideboard he planned to give his sister Bella and her fiancé as a gift for their as-yet-unscheduled wedding. Then he had selected drawer pulls and was heading toward the self-service check-out when he saw the pregnant woman again. This time she was leaning against a display shelf and was massaging her back, which undoubtedly hurt given the advanced stage of her pregnancy. He had learned enough about pregnant women from his other sister Angie to know they suffered from backaches and wild mood swings.
He couldn’t imagine Tess pregnant any more than he could imagine her shopping here. She was married to her job and he was married to his, much to his mother’s utter disappointment. At least once a week she called, texted or emailed and somehow hinted that she wished he would find himself a nice girl, marry, settle down and give her more grandchildren.
He was pulled from his woolgathering when he saw a piece of paper, which had blown from the woman’s hand and was skittering toward him along the concrete floor. He hurried to retrieve it for her. The woman looked ready to deliver and he was sure she couldn’t touch her knees, much less pick anything up off the floor. Carol Russo might have a son who was allergic to marriage, but she had raised a gentleman.
Nick shifted his shopping basket to his left hand, scooped up the paper with the other and rose to face the woman. “Here you go, ma—,” he began. He froze then stumbled backward a few steps as he stared into Tess Callahan’s green eyes.
“Tess,” he began, scrambling for something—anything—to say to her and trying not to stare at her abdomen, which was prominent beneath the form-fitting top she wore. His mind raced as he counted back the months since he had left for Australia. Then, like an idiot, he said the first thing that came to mind. “How’ve you been?”
Good going, Russo. How the hell do you think she’s been?
Tess glanced downward at her protruding abdomen, then leveled her gaze at him. “I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “Much as I’d love to stay and chat with you, I really need to get home, have a meltdown and assemble a chest of drawers.”
“Assemble a chest of drawers? You?” Nick bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh then remembered how he had seen her rubbing her back earlier. “Should you be doing that in your…uhm…condition?” He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of her belly. “Aren’t you supposed to take it easy? You know, no hot tubs, no standing for long periods, no heavy lifting, no attempted furniture assembly?”
“And you’re an expert on pregnancy from which medical school?” She cocked her head to one side and raised an eyebrow.
Nick was no expert on pregnancy, but the strong possibility that Tess was pregnant with his child kept edging its way into his thoughts.
“Give me that.” Tess snatched the piece of paper from his hand and ripped it in the process. “Dammit, I am not an invalid. I’m just pregnant. And I can do whatever I damn well please.” Her voice climbed an octave on the last word.
“I didn’t, I wasn’t—”
“Yes you damn sure were. You and that asshole Rick in hardware and everybody else have been trying to run my life and tell me what I can and cannot do.”
Nick opened his mouth to remind her he had been gone for the last seven months and couldn’t possibly have tried to run her life. He thought better of it and let her continue with her rant.
“I can run my own life and assemble whatever I want. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of—”
Tess stopped mid-sentence and bit back a groan. Her arm cradled her belly and she drew in a sharp breath of air before doubling over and crying out in pain.
Nick rushed to her side and steadied her. “Tell me what I can do to help. Do you need me to call anyone?” he asked.
Tess shook her head. “No. It’s okay. I just need to sit down for a few minutes and I’ll be fine.”
Nick led her to a stack of pallets and helped her get situated. “You don’t look fine to me, Tess. You look awfully pale. Are you sure you don’t want me to do something?”
She glared at him. “Like boil water? No, really, I’m—” She cried out again, this time wrapping both arms around her middle.
Nick watched a tear escape from one eye and track down her cheek. Tess never cried. Never. Then she moaned as another wave of pain overtook her, and she squeezed Nick’s hand like a vise.
“Are you in labor, Tessie?” he asked, reverting to his pet name for her. Now wasn’t the time to ask the dozens of questions he had about her being pregnant. She was obviously in distress. Should he offer to drive her home? To the hospital? Call 911 and let them handle it since his experience with labor was several degrees removed from firsthand? Given the size of her belly, could her baby be on the way? He mentally castigated himself for not paying more attention when his sister and sister-in-law were pregnant.
She shook her head as she took long, deep breaths then relaxed against him. He wiped away the tear and let the pad of his thumb linger at her jawline.
“I’m okay. I had to run errands today and I probably just overdid it. I need to go home and—”
“Put together a piece of furniture? Won’t that be overdoing it a bit too?” he asked, his concern for her genuine.
“Go to hell, Nick.” Tess pushed against the pallet and stood, wobbling a bit to regain her balance. She took four steps before doubling over again.
Nick was at her side immediately and frog-marched her back to the pallet. “Don’t move,” he commanded, not caring if she cursed at him again or not. “And don’t argue either.”
The answer to his earlier dilemma was clear now. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, dialed and held it to his ear. “911? I have an emergency at the Do-It-Yourself Depot in Stone Mountain. Yes, that’s the one. It’s a very pregnant woman and I think she’s in labor. Please hurry.”
“I do not need to go to the hospital,” Tess protested. “This is just practice contractions for the real thing. I’m fine. Really.”
“Fine?” Well, yes, she was beyond fine in many respects, but her current situation was another matter. “You’re what? Seven, eight months pregnant, waddling like a drunk penguin and obviously in a lot of pain. Why not just go to the ER and make sure everything is okay?”
“I told you. These are practice contractions. Something you’d know nothing about. I just need to get to my car and—”
By this time, both the store manager and the assistant manager had arrived on the scene. The store manager hovered nearby.
“I have someone posted at the front door to direct the paramedics right here to you. We’ll make sure your wife and your baby get to the hospital as quickly as possible,” the assistant manager assured Nick.
“I am not his wife,” Tess responded defiantly through clenched teeth.
Nick’s job had trained him to notice details, and while Tess had insisted she wasn’t his wife, she had never said anything about the baby. Nick had already done the math in his head. If she was ready to deliver now, that meant she’d been pregnant the last time they’d had sex and never let on—if she had even known.
If she hadn’t been pregnant then, that meant she was in premature labor, and a wave of apprehension grabbed at him like relentless undertow. He had watched enough cable TV to know this wasn’t a good thing. It was even more imperative she get to a hospital as quickly as possible.
He closed his eyes, willed his body to relax and demanded his heart cease pounding and his brain stop imagining every negative scenario. He had to tamp down the panic for Tess’s sake. And the baby’s. If this was his baby—or even if it wasn’t—he wanted to make sure it had every chance for survival, even if its mother was acting like an out-of-control banshee.
Within minutes the wail of sirens could be heard. Efficient paramedics loaded Tess onto a gurney and wheeled her, over her protests, to a waiting ambulance. Nick started to crawl in the back with her.
“Are you her husband?” the young, female paramedic asked.
Nick started to lie, but decided against it. Better not to get off on the wrong foot at this point. He shook his head.
“Then I can’t allow you to ride along,” the woman advised.
“Where are you taking her? I’ll follow you.”
Tess tried to sit up on the gurney in protest.
“Please lie still, ma’am.” The second paramedic wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm, and she gently pushed against Tess’s shoulder.
“Go home, Nick. Or go buy whatever you came here to buy. I am not your problem.”
“Maybe not,” he said. Or maybe she was; that was yet to be determined. “But I’m coming along anyway because you don’t need to be alone. And don’t argue.”
The paramedic called out the hospital name as she stepped up into the back of the ambulance and pulled the doors closed.
Nick ran through the parking lot to his decade-old gray Range Rover, jammed the key into the ignition and turned it, the engine roaring to life. He slammed the column shifter into reverse and peeled rubber out of the parking lot, racing toward the hospital as he tried to keep the ambulance in sight. He wondered if anyone had called Tess’s family. He knew her mother lived somewhere in the Atlanta area. He and Tess had usually been too busy in bed to talk much about their relatives and had never reached the step of swapping family addresses and phone numbers. That information had never seemed relevant—until now.
He would deal with that later, but first he had to call his own family and give them some reason for not returning with the varnish and drawer pulls.
Hey, Mom and Dad. I’m not sure when I’ll be home. I might have knocked up a woman I’ve been sleeping with off and on for a couple years and she’s in labor now. Gotta run.
Oh yeah, that would go over great with Ben and Carol Russo. They were gracious enough to let him live in the carriage house behind their home, and it provided the perfect housing for a bachelor who was only in town briefly every few months. But he didn’t need to flaunt his sex life in their face—not yet anyway. Maybe he should just call his mother’s cell phone. More than likely she wouldn’t have it in the basement workshop where they had been working on the sideboard, and he could just leave a message.
Hi, Mom. I ran into an old friend at the hardware store and am following the ambulance to the hospital right now. My friend started feeling bad in the store and needed someone to go along for help. I’ll call you later and let you know more.
Better. It contained no references to the nature of the hospital visit, the gender of the friend in question or the fact he’d had sex with this friend. He practiced several times before calling. He released a sigh of relief when he got his mother’s voice mail, and he left the somewhat cryptic message, hoping it would be quite some time before she got around to checking it. By then he hoped he would be able to tell her…something. He wasn’t sure what he’d say, but he would deal with that hurdle later.
Within minutes of dropping his cell onto the passenger seat, he had reached the hospital. He navigated the expansive multi-level parking structure, finally maneuvering the Range Rover into an empty space near the top level. He shifted into park then made a beeline for the emergency room entrance.
He rushed through the doors and saw the paramedics wheel Tess past the admissions desk and start down a long hallway.
Nick scrubbed his hand across the back of his neck and wondered just what in hell he’d gotten himself into. Too many questions pinged through his brain, one big question in particular, and he wanted answers. He just hoped he could get Tess to provide them.