LITMIR.BIZ

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brightness was an unwanted distraction in the white-and-black interior.

      Every time someone came through the rotating doors, the February winds whistled and Xìnyùn responded with his own tune, dancing up and down the rainbow ladder in his cage. Not a single person who’d walked past had smiled at Xìnyùn’s antics. Her husband lived in a building as cold as his hands.

      She had called his office five times, but “he is in a meeting,” they said. “We will pass on the message,” they said. She didn’t tell them she was his wife. With divorce terms agreed upon, he probably hadn’t told his coworkers about his Vegas mistake. He’d probably figured—as she had—that their secret would keep until the divorce was finalized, and then it wouldn’t matter anymore. They’d be divorced and have moved on with their lives. But now she needed him, and she needed him to be her husband. Outing him to his coworkers seemed a poor way to gain his cooperation.

      What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

      She was supposed to have stayed in Vegas.

      The energy in the lobby flared when her husband walked through the door. He was the cold, stiff man she remembered from their morning after, and he didn’t seem to be any warmer with all of his clothes on—and not hungover. Maybe he didn’t notice the freezing temperatures outside. He wore a forest-green scarf wrapped around his neck and a tan wool coat as though they were for show, so the people around him wouldn’t wonder at his ability to walk through snow naked and not get frostbite. No hat covered his brown hair. His hazel eyes were more attractive when not bloodshot, but glasses didn’t soften the sharp planes of his face. She had assumed his face only looked hard when angry—but he didn’t have a reason to be angry. Yet.

      She needed Karl to be the man whose eyes had been mostly brown when he’d offered to buy her a drink, but had turned a lush green when she’d brushed her hand against his as she reached for that drink. The man who’d noticed her shiver and tucked her tightly against him as they walked out of the hotel, even though they had both known she wasn’t cold. The man who had made her laugh when she felt as if nothing in her life could ever be funny again.

      Perhaps that man had been an illusion and as fake as the Luxor pyramid, given flesh only by the carnival lights of Las Vegas. That she was even sitting here in the lobby of this apartment building was evidence that she wasn’t as immune to Las Vegas magic as she thought she’d been.

      The doorman scurried over to her husband, his arms out in supplication and face creased in apology. Tingles shot down her spine when Karl looked over at her. He showed no hurry as he walked across the lobby to her, his face as blank as she remembered.

      “You were the woman calling my office today,” he said in greeting.

      “Hello to you, too.” They hadn’t planned on seeing each other again, but there was no reason not to be civil. In theory, theirs was an amicable divorce. “Can we talk somewhere private?”

      His eyes took in the pile of suitcases and the birdcage sitting next to them. He didn’t nod or say a word, just picked up the birdcage and a suitcase and walked toward the elevator. Vivian scrambled to her feet, slung her purse over her shoulder, picked up two more suitcases and hurried to follow him, the heels of her boots clicking on the marble floor.

      On the elevator ride up to his apartment, Vivian opened her mouth a couple times to speak, but Karl silenced her with a raise of his eyebrow. “You wanted private. We can at least wait until we are in my apartment.”

      She closed her eyes and nodded. She’d waited for hours; another couple of minutes wasn’t going to kill her.

      In his apartment, she put down her suitcases in the entryway and followed him to the couch, taking the birdcage with her. Dark wood floors made his apartment more welcoming than the lobby, though his furniture looked to be just as uncomfortable. The only sign of softness amidst the leather, glass, steel and stone was a plush rug in the living room. He didn’t even have any curtains to soften the floor-to-ceiling windows. She sat on the couch. He sat in one of the armchairs and looked at her expectantly.

      If she was waiting for a greeting of some kind, apparently she would be disappointed.

      “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this,” she said, gesturing to the luggage near the door. “I didn’t feel I had any choice.”

      “Were the terms of our divorce not sufficient?” His elbows rested on the arms of the chair and he’d laced his fingers together in a bridge over the chest of his charcoal-gray suit. Anyone looking in on the scene through the windows would see Karl’s cocked head and casual pose and imagine they were discussing some local curiosity. Vivian imagined that he must have soon-to-be ex-wives drop in on him as a regular occurrence if he managed to remain so self-possessed about the whole thing.

      His absolute composure was the reason she’d answered “sure” when he’d gestured to the doors of the chapel, a half smile on his face, and asked, “Shall we?” She had wanted to be a part of his stability then; it was unfair of her to be irritated by it now. And what if she also wanted the passion they’d shared? Well, that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

      “Yes. I mean, no, they were fine. But I don’t want a divorce right now.”

      If she’d shocked him, his only reaction was to lean back in the chair and lift his left foot to rest on his knee. She was glad he hadn’t sat on the couch next to her. She felt crowded enough by him without having to make room for his knees and elbows—and his infinite placidity, which took up far more space than any single lack of reaction should.

      Xìnyùn said, “I fold.” At least the parrot showed a reaction.

      “I’m pregnant and I want to keep the baby.”

      * * *

      “HIT ME,” THE bird squeaked.

      Karl looked at the blue bird dirtying his coffee table and wondered what was more ridiculous, his one-night stand/wife telling him she was pregnant or the bird asking to be punched.

      If this was his punishment for indulging his emotions with liquor, he would pour every ounce of booze in the apartment down the toilet and shatter the wineglasses. Unfortunately, humoring his impulses was unlikely to allow time to flow backward until he walked into his apartment building and passed through the lobby up to his apartment without a wife—pregnant wife—in the way.

      “Are you sure you’re pregnant?” Three weeks ago—his birthday—he’d sat at a hotel bar and gulped down whiskey every time he remembered he was older than his father ever had been or would be, only without a wife or child. Now he had both, and he didn’t want either of them. “Are you sure it’s mine?”

      “Yes, I’m sure. About both questions. I don’t make a habit of sex with strangers.” A series of rapid blinks over her light brown eyes—barely a shade darker than her skin—were evidence of her nerves, but she didn’t shrink away from him. She was on a mission and determined to see it through.

      “I don’t know anything about you other than you did once have sex with a stranger.” And her maiden name was Yap. He’d learned that from the marriage certificate he’d found under some tiger lilies on a table in his hotel suite.

      “I wasn’t the only one in that room.”

      No, but he wished to God the man in the hotel room had been someone other than himself. His office was in the middle of a sole-source contract investigation; he didn’t have time for whatever she needed from him. “If the only thing you know about me is that I also did once have sex with a stranger, then I assure you, if you are pregnant with my child, I can change the terms of the divorce. You’ll get sufficient child support.”

      “No argument about my keeping the baby?”

      He swallowed his irritation. The night they’d stumbled around Las Vegas now seemed like a mirage, and if he concentrated on his memories, the images wavered before disappearing completely. The alcohol and the lights had made every smile the secret smile of a lover, and when she’d slipped her hand into his, he’d felt

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