Her Best Friend's Baby
Auteur·e
Tara Taylor Quinn
Lectures
19,1K
Chapitres
20
Harlequin🏰 Historical
HarlequinChapter One
A wedding was happening.
Sitting alone in the back of a cab, on her way to the hotel that would be her home away from home for the next bit, Megan Latimer stopped the train of thought, stiffened her spine, refused to wallow.
What did it matter that a whole group of her friends were there, and she wasn’t? Really, was she going to play a “poor me” card? Feeling all sad and lonely and pathetic? Like she couldn’t be laughing and celebrating at the afternoon destination wedding at the all-inclusive, adults-only resort in Jamaica if she wanted to be?
Okay, well, reality check; she couldn’t actually be at that particular wedding celebration.
She hadn’t been invited.
After all, the groom wouldn’t generally invite his ex-fiancée to his fancy dancy, three-day-long nuptial celebration on the beach. Especially when they’d been broken up for just six months.
And therein lay the rub. Megan had been with Kurt for three years. Had been engaged for half that time. And he’d never even been willing to talk seriously about setting a wedding date, let alone delving into any kind of actual wedding plans.
Yet six months after their breakup, he was married to someone else?
She checked her watch. Three twenty-five. The extravagant, romantic ceremony had been scheduled for three, and her phone would have blown up if it hadn’t happened.
As the shops and bars and office buildings of downtown Milwaukee flew past in a blur, Megan sat stiffly, hands folded atop the gray dress pants she wore with the white long-sleeved cotton shirt and gray, black-and-white sweater and reminded herself that she’d been as ready as Kurt was to end their relationship. It was time to turn her focus to what did matter—the job ahead and the family who’d hired her for her expertise in pediatric psychiatry. They needed her to help save their seventeen-year-old daughter from what they claimed was abusive mental manipulation by the teen’s boyfriend and his mother.
Megan had a new challenge ahead. Married ex-fiancé or no.
Her newest client was a young woman, Samantha Everson, who claimed to be in love with her boyfriend and wanted to live with him and his mother.
Lindy and Joe Everson, her parents, were panicked at the change they’d seen in their daughter. With the help of expert consultants, renowned child and family court lawyer Daniel Tremaine, and Megan, the Eversons were intending to petition the court to force Sammie to live at home. Megan, who was privy to medical records, knew Samantha was newly pregnant. Danny didn’t yet.
The law was on their side: Wisconsin mandated that children live with their parent or legal guardian until the age of eighteen.
Not that Megan had to worry about state law. Danny would handle all of the court stuff. He’d work his magic. Rely on her opinion as to what was best for Samantha—then get things done.
And...relax.
Just the thought of her best friend had her chest easing, her back sinking into the car seat rather than sitting rigidly against it, and her smile finding its way out.
Danny. Quintessential ladies’ man. The guy every one of her sorority sisters in college wanted to sleep with. Except cute little blond-headed Megan.
A lot of them had had their one time doing it with Danny. But Megan had had the last laugh. She was the only one still in touch with him. She had the real man. The Danny no other woman knew. Her kind, funny, easy-on-the-eyes best friend.
Daniel Tremaine. The hotshot lawyer who had answers for everything.
In a few short hours, she’d be looking into those big blue eyes, seeing herself there, finding her sense of humor, and her mojo, too.
Even if her ex-fiancé had just married someone else...life was good.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?” The words themselves were sedate. Commonplace. Had been said all up and down the plane’s too skinny aisle. But the sultry tone of voice, the appreciative look in the woman’s seductive gaze, the clearly welcoming smile, told him quite clearly what she’d like to offer him.
What she was offering, if he wanted it.
“No, thanks.” Danny flashed a smile, softening the rejection, and turned back to his computer. He’d have to shut down soon and wanted to get through the legal brief, so he’d have all night free.
It was a stroke of good luck that he’d managed to get on an earlier flight, and no way he was giving up time he got to spend with Megan—even to go have sex. Physical pleasure was great and something that had never been in short supply for him, or from him, either—but a whole evening to spend with the woman who was a friend not lover...that was rare. No way he was going to let that slip away.
What did it say about him that a sexless evening with Megan ranked far higher than going to bed with a beautiful woman?
He didn’t really want an answer to that question. And as soon as he deplaned, collected their rental car and found the hotel, he texted Megan.
Here. Got an early flight. Meet you in the bar?
And grinned at the immediateness of her reply.
On my way.
“Is there something wrong with me?” Megan heard how pathetic the question sounded but didn’t care. Danny was the only one who’d heard it.
The number of rum and diets she’d had to drink—less than him, though—probably had something to do with her lack of remorse as well. At the moment she didn’t much care about that, either.
She and Danny had been drinking and philosophizing, sharing secrets, since their freshman year in college.
Almost a decade and a half ago. “I’m thirty-one, not married, with no prospects on the horizon,” she continued before he could answer. He was her friend. But he’d also tell her if there was something wrong with her, and she was in no state to hear about it. “Hell, I don’t even have a horizon,” she continued, looking down into her drink in case she might find one there. A horizon. Or a prospect.
Neither appeared.
She needed to call it a night. Get her sorry ass into bed and awake in the morning with her usual strength and positive attitude.
“It’s not you, Meg.” Danny’s serious, but also vulnerable, tone was the one that had drawn her to him in college. The one that she trusted most. The one that most people never heard.
That tone was why she’d first given the guy voted “most desirable hunk on campus” the time of day. Prior to him coming to her one night at a party, late, completely sober and asking her opinion, she’d steered as clear of him as campus, and both being part of Greek life, had allowed.
Over the course of their undergraduate career, the dark-haired, blue-eyed, gorgeous-bodied man had come to her for advice many times. It wasn’t just about the women who hung on him because of his abundantly good looks and popularity, but about life, about being the best person he could be, about ways to not hurt people, not run them over, in pursuit of his own goals.
She’d been his therapist. He’d opened up to her even before she’d actually attained her M.D. in psychiatry.
And in his own way, he’d been hers.
She could always count on Danny to be honest with her. Even when it hurt.
“What does that mean, it’s not me?” She didn’t want to know. She wanted to go to bed. Or have another drink and hang out with her best friend for a little bit longer, laughing. She wanted Danny to make her laugh again. Like they’d been doing most of the night. Remembering ridiculous stuff. Catching up with things that they hadn’t covered in their weekly phone conversations.
This was their only downtime, and they both knew it. Once the job started in the morning, they’d both be so focused...working in their off-hours. They were two peas in a pod, work-wise, which was why they got so many assignments together.
She should never have started this stupid conversation. “You want another?” she asked when she saw the waitress heading their way. Sloppy, maybe, but still a change of subject.
“If you do.” She nodded at him, he nodded at the waitress, and then he said, “You’re special, Meg. In the best way. The guy who finally gets you...he’s going to be one lucky dude. But he’s going to have to be special, too, to deserve you. To make you happy. Kurt was fine, nice enough, but he wasn’t special.”
With a grimace, she pushed aside the no longer cold liquid in her glass, waiting for the fresh drink on its way, and met his gaze. “That’s a nice way of saying I’m high maintenance,” she told him.
His scoff couldn’t be mistaken for anything but the honest sense of scorn that it was. “Yeah right,” he said. “You’re the lowest maintenance woman I’ve ever met. And that’s why it’s going to take a special guy to make you happy. You need someone who’s happy on his own when you’re off doing what you do, someone who needs to be himself and who is strengthened by you being yourself, and someone who, even if you’re not in each other’s pockets all the time, will always be faithful to you.”
Yep, there it was. The real rub. The thing she hadn’t let herself consciously acknowledge.
Of course, Danny would bring it up. He knew her better than she knew herself sometimes.
“So, you think it, too... Kurt was having a thing with her when he and I were living together. No way he’d be married so soon if he hadn’t been unfaithful to me.”
Infidelity was her bugaboo. The emotional trigger she couldn’t seem to disarm. And Danny knew why without her ever having to tell him. He’d been there the day their first year when her parents had shown up and told her they were divorcing. She, her mom and her dad been the three musketeers until her teen years, when everything had fallen apart. She hadn’t even known there’d been a problem. They put on the perfect face for her. She’d been sure it was her. Instead, her perfect parents, the loving couple who’d always been there for her, had been living a lie. Because one of them had been unfaithful to the other. They’d never told her which one.
She’d asked. Each of them separately. More than once.
And still didn’t know.
They’d both remarried, childless spouses, and she had a great relationship with both of them and both stepparents. Was loved and adored as the only child of both families.
And she still would rather be single forever than have a family implode because of infidelity.
“I thought Kurt would be the last man on earth who’d be unfaithful,” she said, looking for the waitress who should be arriving with her drink. She’d like a sip. Or three.
“Which is why you were with him, right?” The drinks arrived. The waitress placed Megan’s in front of her.
“Not completely!” She sipped. “I mean, yeah, I loved that about him, his integrity, his noninterest in any woman but me because I made him happy, I was enough for him, the way he liked to spend his free time at home, even before he knew me...”
“He was boring, Meg. And a bit lazy, too, if you ask me.”
She felt a smile coming up, but it died before it reached the surface. “He worked hard. Made a good living.”
“He’s got a brilliant mind and happened to be one of the best techies in the country,” Danny said, his singing of Kurt’s praises raising her ire for no fair reason. “It’s pretty clear he made good money. But he didn’t work hard. The man worked about six hours a day, from anything I ever heard, and then he fooled around and basically hung out. With his mind, he could have been solving internet crime issues, putting a stop to hacking, or at the very least, inventing new cool video games...”
Okay, that was better.
“He made more money than I do.” She had to give the token defense.
“And that’s what you judge a man by these days?”
Shocked, she stared at him.
“I loved him,” she defended but heard the weakness in her tone. She might be able to fool herself, but she couldn’t lie to Danny. She shook her head. “So, okay, maybe I didn’t. Not like he needed to be loved. But he could have come to me, talked to me about our relationship, before hooking up with someone else behind my back.”
“Completely agree with you on that one.” Taking a sip of the dark-colored liquid in his glass, Danny sat back, gorgeous in his thinly stripped white shirt, haphazardly unbuttoned at the neck, with the knot on his red tie loosened down past the second shirt button. The suit jacket he’d had on when she’d first seen him was slung over the back of the booth beside him.
“What?” he asked as she stared at him pensively.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. Yeah, Danny was gorgeous. Easily the best-looking guy she’d ever seen. And the least likely to ever be faithful to any woman.
Which made him unattractive to her in any kind of a sexual way.
“What?” he asked again, more forcefully, his lips tilted into that smile that got women to swoon on a regular basis. And Danny, being there, the gentleman willing to ease their pangs.
He never promised anything he didn’t deliver, though. From what she’d heard, he was as good in bed as he looked like he would be.
And he always made it clear, from the outset of any tryst, that he wasn’t open to anything more than an enjoyable time for however long it lasted.
“You,” she said out loud.
“What about me?”
Shaking her head, she swooned for a second, alcohol induced, she knew, sipped again anyway, and said, “I have no idea why we became friends.”
“Seriously?” He looked hurt.
Which hadn’t been her intention at all.
“More accurately, I don’t know why you chose to be friends with me.” As a woman who only wanted sex on a committed, monogamous basis, she’d been dumbfounded the first time he’d sought her out.
They’d been at a combined sorority-frat Christmas party. As a freshman pledge, he’d been designated driver and had taken the responsibility with complete seriousness. He’d been drinking soda all night. She’d been sober because she’d had a late-night flight to catch to her dad’s place in California, before heading to her mom’s in Florida for the actual holiday. At first when he’d started a conversation with her, she hadn’t even known he was speaking to her...
Danny’s blue gaze grabbed her. Held her attention. The intensity she read in his grown-up eyes startled her. “Truth?” he asked.
Almost as though mesmerized, she nodded. She couldn’t not. She’d always wondered...wasn’t ever sure she wanted to know. Had been afraid to find out.
And there they were...on some kind of precipice, like a new level to their friendship. She wasn’t afraid anymore.
“Because you were the only woman I knew on campus who found my thoughts more attractive than my body.”
Elation-like sensation rushed through her. And a wealth of love, too.
Relief in huge measure.
She’d expected to hear that he hadn’t meant to even talk to her that night, that he had just been being polite.
“I did,” she said, nodding, holding his gaze. “I still do.” Were they really going to do this? To talk about their relationship?
There hadn’t ever been words about it.
Before she could analyze the wisdom or healthiness in such a move, Megan opened her mouth again, inspired by alcohol, to say things she maybe had wanted to say before. To verbalize what she knew to see what he thought about it.
“You’re my soul mate, Danny. Like we were meant to be friends because we meet on some deeper level.” She gulped, literally from her glass, as soon as the words were out. Forcing herself to look at him, to assess the damage she’d just done, and then, when she saw the serious, but open expression on his face, tried to assess how drunk he was.
She failed on that one. And said, “I trust you as much as I trust my own thoughts.”
“Yeah, I trust you, too,” he told her, sounding as though he’d just tried on the idea, and liked how well it fit.
She wasn’t sure how many drinks he’d had before she arrived in the bar. Or how many he’d had since. He was a responsible drinker, as was she. Neither of them was slurring their words.
But she wasn’t feeling any pain, either.
Really? She was going to sit there at such a crucial moment and analyze her buzz?
“You know when you were little, before your parents decided they hated each other, and you’d look under the tree on Christmas morning, see all those presents, and the sparkly colored lights, that feeling you’d get in your stomach?”
He’d told her about the two Christmases he could remember as a kid, before his home had turned into World War III, the war to end all wars, except it hadn’t ever ended. His parents, who cared more about the lifestyle they could maintain together than living with someone they actually enjoyed, were still together.
“Yeah,” he said, not quite frowning, but looking a bit perplexed. “That was a great feeling.”
“Kind of like magic,” she agreed, remembering many, many more of those Christmases in her own youth. “Like the possibilities were endless, and every one of them good.”
“Yeah.” He cocked his head to the side in a way that she’d always secretly liked. It was warm. Human. And not at all a come-on. His smile was natural, too. “Exactly.”
“That’s how I feel when I know I’m going to see you,” she said. “Or when I see your name pop up on my caller ID. Or hear your voice pick up when I call you.”
She’d bared herself. Risking that he was as much of a soul mate as she’d thought.
Analyzing the buzz might have been a wiser idea.
She was going to lose him at some point. She’d always known that. Just stood to reason that someday some woman was going to be able to offer him friendship and sex at the same time. And when that happened, he wouldn’t need Megan as much.
More likely, the woman wouldn’t accept Megan as part of the package.
Funny, how Kurt hadn’t ever minded Danny in her life.
But maybe her ex-fiancé had never been in love with her, either...
“You want to dance?”
She blinked. Sat back. Stared at him.
There was some soft music. A small dance floor. Couples had been on and off it all night.
She and Danny weren’t a couple.
“Haven’t you ever opened a Christmas present and found something you didn’t expect, but ended up being glad you got?”
“Danny...” What the hell. Had she said too much? Ruined things between them?
“Relax, Latimer, just trying to be a good soul mate here. You’re in a funk because of the dancing and celebrating going on down south on some beach. You love to dance. Maybe even need to dance a little bit tonight, you know, work off some of that alcohol, and you aren’t a woman who’d risk a stranger’s arms. I’m fairly good at dancing. And safe.”
It wasn’t like they’d never danced before. To the contrary, he’d been her “date” at both of her parents’ weddings during college. Had spent the evenings making her laugh. And helping her feel less abandoned.
And she got what he was doing. In his own way, Danny had just told her that she was his Christmas magic, too. Ha. Who’d have guessed that Christmas in July really did happen?
