Danger, Sweetheart Read online

  “No need,” she said again through clenched teeth, “to take my word for it. A blood test will show the baby has two dolts for parents and they’re both in this room. Which stinks of French fries and your hair product. In fact—“She held up a finger, then bolted for the bathroom. She could have made it to the toilet but spitefully chose the sink. Then felt bad: It’s not like he’ll be the one cleaning this up. Well, he’ll have to call the front desk. It’ll cost him seven seconds of his life.

  From behind her, a hollow, “Aw, man,” followed by the whump of him falling back on the bed. She heard rustling and assumed he was putting his robe back on.

  She rinsed her mouth and left the bathroom, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, hard, to shove back tears. She would cry; it was as inevitable as Tarbell’s instinctive ducking of responsibility. But not here and not now and never in front of Benjamin Tarbell.

  “So, rather like two people in a car accident, we should exchange insurance and contact information the better to wade through the legal and moral ramifications. Here’s mine.” She pulled the paper with her contact info, along with a picture of the ultrasound, out of her pocket and offered them to him. When he didn’t reach for them, she put them on the dresser beside his wallet. “Too soon?”

  “Um…”

  “Yes, I understand. I’ve had the better part of two weeks to adjust. In fact, I’m still adjusting. You need time. I need time. Once you are satisfied the babies are yours—”

  “Babies?” He said it the way she would have said, There’s a rattlesnake in my soup!

  “Yes. Twins.” The doctor was certain she had the date of conception wrong. When she explained, at length, that she well remembered her only sexual experience in fourteen months and thus was quite, quite sure about the date, he’d given her an ultrasound on the spot. And there they were: twin harbingers of the coming destruction of her youth.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “Exactly.” She nodded. “That is the perfect response.” She absently patted her stomach. Sorry, babies, I’ll probably come to love you in time.

  He sighed and his eyes narrowed. “So you want money.”

  “I want,” she replied with care, “support. From the other half of this equation. To which I am lawfully entitled.” She summoned a smile that felt as sour as her post-barfing breath. “If you’re going to be nasty about it.”

  “I’m not giving you a fucking dime.”

  “Please don’t make me get your address, credit card information, and phone number from the nice people at the front desk.” A bluff. The nice people at the front desk thought she was a stuck-up bitch, and she thought they were boring and small-minded (in every sense of the word).

  “You think you’re the first bimbo to try this?”

  “To ‘try’ getting impregnated with twins by you when we were both in our right mind and fully consented? Yes. I think I’m the first bimbo to try this, unless you have other illegitimate children out in the world—then God help the world. And it’s Ms. Bimbo, jackass.”

  “I’m not giving you a fucking dime,” he said again, doubtless assuming pregnancy hormones caused selective deafness.

  “That,” she replied, stepping to the room service cart and sticking her index finger through the hole in the metal plate warmer, “remains to be seen.”

  “You fuckin’ women, you’re all the same.”

  “Double X chromosomes?” she suggested. “Vaginas? Physiologically weaker but longer lived? Lack of prostate cancer?”

  “You dress hot and flirt and then go out and get yourselves pregnant—”

  “Behold, a virgin shall conceive!”

  “—and then comes the money grab, fuck!” Benjamin Tarbell hit her with every ounce of contempt a man who had never worked for anything was capable of. His expression was that of someone ankle deep in cow shit who blamed the cows and not himself for walking through the field in the first place. “Don’t any of you sluts have any fucking pride oh God ow.”

  “Oh yes.” She had hit him with the plate cover, which made a lovely bwoonngg as it connected with the side of his (possibly hollow) head. “Too much pride, in fact. How do you think I ended up in this mess?”

  He staggered, straightened, then seized her arm in a pincher grip and hauled her toward the door, ignoring her pained yelp. He was holding the side of his hand over the rapidly swelling bump and mumbling, “Oh God ow that hurt so bad fuck fuck God that hurt fuck ow,” as he shoved her into the hallway, then slammed the door.

  “What?” she asked the door, hands on her hips. “No tip?”

  A shattering clatter—his dinner plate imploding against the door?—was her answer.

  “Not even a lousy eight percent? Fine,” she said to the empty hallway. “Fine. All right. Plan C.” Plan A: abortion, tell no one, resume her life. Plan B: confront Benjamin; make child-care and/or custody arrangements, or arrange for a monthly check if he wished to support, but not love, his sons. Plan C: crawl.

  But where? And to whom? Back to Sweetheart and disapproval and small-town gossips who thought they knew her but never would? To the casual insanity of her hometown? No. To her father, who thought her motive for leaving was to trap a rich man? Other women could rely on their birthplaces for support, but as she had known long before the pee stick foretold her fate, home wouldn’t have her, and she wouldn’t have them.

  She thought Robert Frost, the city boy who came to love the country, put it in a way most people could grasp: Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

  Mr. Frost probably meant well, but his father had died when the poet was eleven and his mother when he was in his twenties. His sister and daughter had been institutionalized and the family was plagued with mental illness, mostly depression. Of course a man with that background thought home was a mythical place both magical and beautiful, stuffed with forgiving loved ones who were always happy to see you and never dropped hints about when you should leave again. The man’s entire career was a love letter to the power of wishful thinking and a denial of his sorrowful life.

  Shannah preferred Stephen King’s take on the poem about a dying handyman and his grudge-holding employer: Home was the place where, when you have to go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.

  Even if you’re the thing in the dark.

  So she would crawl, but not back to Sweetheart. She would start pulling every shift she could; she would become a most helpful, charming cocktail waitress. She would cultivate her acquaintances into friends—she could do that, could force charm and warmth when she had to. She would make friends and find a decent obstetrician and call in favors and keep Benjamin Tarbell’s contact information handy. She would do these things and be a mother—good or bad remained to be seen—and if nothing else she would do a better job than her parents.

  “Maybe set the bar a bit higher,” she murmured, and started for the elevator. She glanced through the wallet she had palmed and big surprise: no library card and not one but two Hooters gift cards.

  “Oh, boys. Or girls. Or one of each.” She sighed with another pat to her stomach, and stepped into the empty elevator.

  One

  Blake Tarbell rolled onto his side and eyed the long, lovely naked back beside him. He could tell by her breathing that she was awake, and ran a finger from the top of her spine to the last bit of it just above her fossae lumbales laterals, the Dimples of Venus.

  “God,” she groaned into her pillow. “You know that gives me the shivers.”

  “More effective, perhaps, than an alarm.”

  “Forget it.” She flopped over and jackknifed into a sitting position so abruptly, he put out a hand, thinking she was going to tumble off the edge of the bed. “I’ve gotta get back, so just holster the morning wood already.”

  He chuckled and let his hand drop. “Holster it where?”

  “Dunno. It’s a guy thing; you figure it out.” She bounded from the bed like a gymnast on crack and he fought down a
shudder. Morning people, dear God in Heaven. He liked Ava’s company, and last night she was as she always is: energetic and hungry in bed. It had been fast and urgent and delicious; they didn’t get together for long tender interludes.

  They’d met in the lobby for drinks, never dinner.

  (“Don’t ask me out. Don’t buy flowers. That’s not what this is.”

  “What is it, then?” he’d asked, amused. They’d met at McCarran four months ago; she was a pilot for Southwestern; his flight had been delayed. Drinks at the club had turned into a delicious sweaty tumble back at the hotel.

  “This is me enjoying my divorce. This is you being the sexual equivalent of a Fun Run. Less talking, Blake, and a lot more stripping.”)

  The evening had ended as it always did, with both of them agreeably sweaty and out of breath. Ava called him whenever she was in Vegas longer than three hours. If he was free, they met for drinks. If he wasn’t, Blake imagined she called someone else. He was bothered by how that didn’t bother him.

  “—the run to Boston,” she was saying. She’d done her usual efficient cleanup in the bathroom and was now wriggling back into her clothes. “God, sometimes I think it’d be easier to keep a spare set of clothes and some toiletries here. Ah-ha!”

  “What?”

  She pointed at him with one hand while zipping her slacks with the other. “You should see the look on your face. I’ve only seen people go pale that fast when the oxygen masks drop.”

  He opened his mouth to

  (lie)

  protest, but she ran right over his words. “’S fine. Really. I was teasing. I know you’re cemented in your bachelor ways.”

  He opened his mouth again.

  “Nope. Don’t even try that. And don’t go on about how you’re just waiting for the right girl, and maybe that girl could be me—”

  “I wouldn’t have used the word ‘girl.’”

  “It’s fine. This—” She gestured, indicating the suite. “What we do? It’s great, really.”

  Two reallys in twenty seconds: it’s not fine (really) and it’s not great (really). He knew the signs.

  “It’s just…”

  You need something more.

  “… I need something more. And…”

  There’s this guy.

  “… there’s this woman—oh. You didn’t know? I’m pretty flexible between the sheets.”

  “Figuratively and literally,” he managed. Discovering his soon-to-be-former lover was bisexual was not helping his nocturnal penile tumescence. “Why would you wait until now to bring that up?”

  She laughed, bent, gave him a quick kiss. “For a chance to see that look on your face. Hey. You’re great, Blake. This was, too, y’know? But I never go back for seconds.”

  “Fourteenths,” he couldn’t help pointing out.

  “Right. But I want to keep liking you, if not fucking you. So: You don’t pretend you’re going to miss me, and I won’t pretend you can’t fill my spot in your sex suite with one text.” He couldn’t help smiling, at both her astute observations and cheerful bluntness.

  “Fair enough.” She was fully dressed now and looked clean and pressed and like she’d had a full eight hours, when he knew she hadn’t. “Might not see each other again. But if we do, it’d be great to keep it friendly, okay?”

  “You’re wrong,” Blake replied. At her surprised expression, he added, “I will miss you when you’re gone.”

  “Awww.” She bent and gave him another kiss, the last kiss. “But not for long, I bet.”

  On that point, he conceded as she bounded out his door, she was correct. Though it was flattering that she assumed he could pull a companion de la nuit with a single text. He would never text for something like that; he wasn’t a (total) barbarian. A phone call, now—

  His phone rattled on the bedside table and he leaned over to grab it. Glanced at it, then looked again. Keyed in the password, saw the entire text, and thought: shit.

  Two

  Too soon, far too soon, he was in a terrible restaurant (French/Japanese/Cuban fusion) sitting across from his terrible twin, Rake.

  “Not that I don’t love being treated to your scowling face in the wee hours—”

  “It’s ten thirty in the morning.”

  “—but why am I here?” Rake had the ability to use any piece of furniture as a bed, and now he was lounging with no regard for his posture. All Blake could see was a shock of dark blond hair and bloodshot blue eyes. “Is Mom okay? Please say Mom’s okay. A hangover plus Blake plus Mom is just exhausting to think about.” He straightened and rubbed his temples. “My head is still attached to my body, right? It didn’t blow up or anything? My brain feels really explodey.”

  “Stop making up words, you hungover troglodyte.”

  “I will if you will.”

  “‘Troglodyte’ is a real word! God, why do I ever reach out to you?”

  “Dunno. But it makes you nuts, so I don’t know why you don’t quit it.” Rake had drained his water glass upon sliding into the booth and now snatched and slurped Blake’s.

  “Unlike some, I cannot simply jettison my responsibilities when they become tiresome.” But oh, in a perfect world … one where Rake isn’t terrible … “Not that I haven’t been tempted; surely I’ve done nothing to be saddled with you.”

  “Did so. It’s your own fault for insisting on being born first. You probably elbow-checked me on your way out of the womb. Now c’mon, why are we here? Why’d you call? What couldn’t wait until our birthday?”

  “Our mother is in Sweetheart and she needs us. She hates it, but she needs us.”

  The wiseass grin dropped off like it had been slapped away (which, Blake had to admit, he had been tempted to do on several occasions) and Rake’s teasing mien was replaced with utter seriousness. “Tell me,” he ordered.

  So Blake did.

  Three

  One year earlier

  “I don’t understand you, boy,” Shannah said, shaking her head. She was as slim as she had been in her twenties, twice as willful, fifteen times as wealthy.

  “‘Boy,’ really? Don’t you normally save that for Rake?”

  “He’s not here yet,” she replied, as if that made any sense at all.

  Blake sighed and stared into his scotch and soda. “We’re not actually interchangeable, you know.”

  “Hush,” she told the frowning man a head taller and forty pounds heavier, and he hushed. “Look at you.”

  “No need; I could just look at Rake when he arrives. It’s the same thing.”

  She ignored that. “Handsome, smart, rich, well-read.”

  “Well-read is last on your list?”

  “Fertile, ready to settle down and spread your seed.”

  “I am not. Discussing my seed.” Blake hid his head in his hands, the better to shut out the restaurant, the bright lights, his mother’s relentless interrogation about his seed, and his sudden desire for self-inflicted felony assault. “Please kill me instead.”

  “My point—”

  “Oh, good, you have one.”

  “—is you don’t have to do your silly lone-wolf thing.”

  “That,” he said, taking a careful sip of the scalding tea, “is a relief. I’ll stop immediately.”

  She smacked her knuckles, hard, on the table, an attention-getter he’d been familiar with since toddlerhood. When the knuckles hit the table/counter/top of his skull, it was past time to pay attention. “What was wrong with Carrie? Or Sandy?”

  “Terry and Mandy wanted things I didn’t.”

  His mother just looked at him, and after a long moment he elaborated: “Every girlfriend I’ve had—”

  “Some of them were older than you, boy, and not girls.”

  “Every womanfriend I’ve had—”

  “No, never mind; that sounds idiotic.”

  “Every female chum I’ve had liked my money far more than they liked me.” A little more would be tolerable, probably; somewhat more he could live with. How
unfortunate it was never a contest. It was always far more. Far more. Faaaaar more. And yes, he could hear the chorus of poor baby! in his head, thank you very much. They all sounded like the fiercely loving woman sitting in front of him. His self-pity, he often thought, was matched only by his self-loathing.

  (He would never say such a thing to his mother. Also on the list of things he would never say to his mother: The ones who didn’t care about his money liked him for his cock, and only his cock. And unlike the women interested in his checkbook, the ones who liked his cock were up front about it. On the whole, he preferred the latter.)

  “All right,” his mother was saying, “you haven’t found the right female chum yet; it happens. It doesn’t mean you won’t fall in love tomorrow.” And never in a hundred years would Blake point out his mother’s hopeful-yet-defeated tone to her. She had given up on herself, yes. But never on him. Never on his brother.

  “Love is an illusion fostered by the greeting card industry.”

  His mother opened her mouth. Closed her mouth. Shrugged. “I can’t think that’s true,” she said at last. “It’s too sad. And someone your age definitely shouldn’t think it’s true.”

  He would never point out she hadn’t found The One, either. In the beginning, she was living on tips and finding out about the world. Then she’d gotten pregnant, and the following years had been spent finding out what the world thought of single mothers.

  Then, of course, their father’s wealth. From Burger King to Trattoria Reggiano in one day, thanks to their absent father’s determination to re-create the erotic food scene from the 9½ Weeks remake (he had choked to death on a kiwi).

  And in all that time, Blake’s mother had dated here and there, and apparently having twins wasn’t nearly the baggage for a rich cocktail waitress as it was for a poor one (she still waited tables one night a month to “keep my toe in the cesspool of humanity”). But the men all left eventually, or she left them, and Blake knew why, because it was the same reason he hadn’t settled down: two Tarbells would never settle. The third Tarbell had structured his entire love life around settling. And see how that turned out.