LITMIR.BIZ

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table in the room. Champagne arrived automatically, just as the maître d’ had promised. “This is really sweet, Copper. I love you!”

      “I love you, too, David. Happy birthday.”

      If only that had been the end of the evening. When you start off with a bad concert, does it have to mean you’re stuck with a bad finale? At least David waited until after the chocolate soufflé.

      In fact, he waited until we got back to his place.

      “We’ve got to talk, Copper,” he said after we’d walked into his kitchen from the garage.

      My heart took a swan dive to the floor. Guys never say “We’ve got to talk” unless they’ve signed on with al-Qaeda, gotten indicted for income tax evasion, or they’re about to dump you.

      “Haven’t we been talking?” I said. “Isn’t this the part where we take off all our clothes?”

      “I mean it. Let’s go into the living room.”

      Getting cozy on David’s sofa held undeniable appeal, but first I needed to know just a little more about what was going to hit me.

      “Got something to drink?” I said, and we ended up sitting across from each other at the kitchen table over a couple of glasses of ruby port.

      “My mother’s weakness,” David said as he recorked the bottle and set it between us. “I never know when my parents might show up, so I always keep some on hand.”

      I took a sip. Not bad. I took another. I waited for the blade to fall.

      “Rebecca called today,” David said at last.

      Damn! I was expecting a Boy Scout hatchet, but this was a double-sided Paul Bunyan axe. Rebecca is David’s not-quite-ex-wife, the person who made me the one thing I have always scorned: an “other woman.”

      At least I am not a home wrecker. Rebecca had gone back to New York more than six months earlier, back when David was a coworker I barely knew. He swore their marriage had been dead for a year, and their divorce was “only a formality.” I shouldn’t have bought that line, but it just proves that love really does conquer all. I fell in love, and my so-called principles fell to the wayside.

      “We’ve been through this before,” I said. “I thought you only talked to her lawyer.”

      David was silent far too long.

      “Copper,” he said at last, “I love you.”

      Damn, again! I love “I love you,” but don’t expect me to be thrilled when it occurs in the sequence I just reported.

      “Remember when I went to visit my parents?”

      “Memorial Day.”

      David nodded as my stomach knotted.

      I didn’t like thinking back to the last week in May, and until now, I thought I’d never have to. David and I had one of our worst fights ever while I was driving him to the airport.

      “I’m going to be seeing Rebecca,” he said while we were stopped at a light on Eastern.

      My pulse quickened. “Why?”

      “She wants to talk. She thinks we can work things out better face to face. She might be right. The lawyers have created a lot of tension.”

      “You told me you were done talking to her. You swore.” We were rolling again, my hands gripping the wheel, my heart pounding.

      “Copper,” David said. “It’s no big deal. I’m only telling you because I don’t want secrets between us.”

       I don’t want Rebecca between us. She’s supposed to be ancient history. Only a technicality.

      “Where are you seeing her?”

      “Her new place in Scarsdale. She invited me for dinner.”

      Fortunately, we were stopped at another red light when he said that. I clutched the wheel and stared straight ahead as a candlelit dining room materialized in my mind’s eye. Along with music and wine and Rebecca, dressed to ensnare …

      “Don’t go,” I said.

      “Copper, I—”

       “I mean it. Don’t go.”

      He didn’t speak again until we were pulling up in front of the terminal.

      “I’m not sure whether I’ll go or not,” David said. “But it’s my decision.”

       A line in the sand.

      I stopped at the curb and shifted into park. Two could play that game.

      “If you go, we’re done.”

      That was the last thing I said to him. We didn’t kiss, and I didn’t reply when David thanked me for the ride. He waited, shrugged, turned, and walked into the terminal.

      And there began the longest weekend of my life. Pride, anger, and righteous indignation kept me from calling David, but I couldn’t help longing for his number to appear on my cell phone’s screen. The only thing that did appear was a text message Saturday night informing me that I didn’t need to pick him up at the airport on Monday. It was all I needed to know.

      We were done.

      And we might have stayed done if I hadn’t woken up Monday morning in a cold sweat. Dreaming about life without David was horrible enough. I couldn’t bear the thought of actually living without him. I grabbed my phone.

      “I’m sorry,” I said when he answered. “I never should have—”

      “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I never should have, either.”

      I picked him up at the airport later that day. By the time we got to his house in Green Valley, I’d forgiven him for seeing Rebecca, and he had forgiven me for trying to stop him.

      As though there had been no hiccup, life resumed.

      Until now.

      I watched as David took a huge swallow of ruby port. He took another, set his glass down, reached across the table, and took my hands in his.

      “Copper, I love you.”

      I didn’t say anything. If he was going to tell me he was calling off the divorce, I wasn’t going to help him.

      “Rebecca called today. She’s pregnant.”

      Chapter 2

      I wish I’d been born a billionaire heiress. David’s announcement combined with a bottomless bank account would have sent me scurrying to any available source for mind-altering drugs. I would have enhanced their effect by ensconcing myself in the most throbbingly deafening Strip nightclub, and if I was still ambulatory in the morning, I would have cleaned out all the high-end boutiques at the Caesars Forum Shops. Instead, I was stuck with making David drive me home. I stayed up all night twisting, turning, and watching infomercials for Magic Bras and old episodes of Cheaters.

      It was unfair. It was wrong. Worst of all, it required me to start a new life when the old one had been perfectly fine. Okay, I was dating a married man, but it’s not like we could never be seen in public together or he had to worry about lipstick on his collar. His wife had vanished, and David had erased her from his house. The only thing that still linked them was a freaking piece of paper I had never even seen.

      Unless, of course, he was about to become a father. That was what I couldn’t get my head around. There was also the image of what an impending baby meant logistically. My mind wandered unwillingly to a bedroom in Scarsdale. The details of my mental images did not include a turkey baster.

      David’s snugglefest in Rebecca’s boudoir had occurred three months before. When he came back to Las Vegas, there I was waiting for him with open arms and willing loins. He hadn’t said a word

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