LITMIR.BIZ

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again. An effective nonanswer, which he let go for now. She was—the fetus was—his responsibility for another eight months. He’d get his answer eventually.

      “I have a guest bedroom. You can sleep there for now.”

      She closed her eyes, the light pink of her eye shadow sparkling in the lamplight, and exhaled. The wool of her sweater must be stiffer than it looked, because even though she went boneless with relief, she didn’t sink into the back of the couch. “Thank you.”

      “Have you eaten dinner?”

      “I’m fine.”

      He took that as a no and didn’t ask how long it had been since she’d eaten. The worry lines at the corners of her eyes said it had been too long. “What do you like?”

      “I’m fine,” she said again, as though hoping if she said it enough times he would believe her. Or maybe she hoped to believe it herself.

      Karl stood and walked over to the small table in his entryway. He riffled through the menus in the drawer until he found the one he was looking for, then he handed it to Vivian. “Pick out what you want.”

      She looked up at him, one thin black eyebrow raised. “Chinese?”

      He ignored the uncomfortable reference. “They have the fastest delivery.”

      “Buddha’s vegetable delight. Brown rice, please.”

      “Soup? Egg rolls?”

      Her stomach growled, betraying the casual look on her face and making a lie of her insistence of being “fine.” How long had those ten dollars been all she had to her name? Had she had no savings? All things he could learn tomorrow, after she’d eaten and had a good night’s sleep. He called in her order and his, adding enough extra food to give them leftovers for days. He didn’t know if she could cook, and he sure as hell didn’t. If not for takeout, the baby might starve.

      “Let’s get your bags put in the guest room.”

      * * *

      FOR ALL ITS personality, the guest room might have been in a hotel. There was less glass and more wood than in the living room, but that was because the single piece of furniture in the room was a large, wooden platform bed with a built-in nightstand. The bedspread wasn’t white or black, so Karl must at least know color existed, but the geometric pattern and primary colors didn’t invite Vivian to snuggle. Still no curtains. What did this man have against curtains?

      “There’s a dresser in the closet.”

      “Thank you.” Thank you for acknowledging I might be here longer than just tonight. “Is there something I can put Xìnyùn’s cage on?”

      “Who?”

      “The parrot’s name is Xìnyùn. It means luck in Chinese.”

      He eyed the cage sitting on the floor. Xìnyùn eyed him back nervously. “Are you sure it doesn’t mean bad luck?”

      She picked the cage up off the floor and opened the closet doors to find the dresser to set the cage on. Parakeets didn’t like humans to loom over them and Karl loomed as naturally as most people breathed.

      “Double,” Xìnyùn whistled in approval.

      She was pregnant, unemployed and homeless. Her father had fallen off the face of the planet and taken her life savings with him. Xìnyùn, at least, was happy to be off the floor. “At this point, I’m not sure of anything.”

      He nodded, left the room for a moment and returned with a small table. “Here’s a table for the bird.” He had his hand on the doorknob, about to leave the room, when he turned back to face her, his eyes in shadow and his expression unreadable. “How did you get to Chicago?”

      “I drove.” As her gas gauge edged toward empty and the ten dollars felt lighter and lighter in her pocket, she’d turned the dial on her radio until she found a country music station and Carrie Underwood singing “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” She hadn’t run out of gas, even if she had coasted into Chicago on wishes and a prayer.

      “Where’s your car?”

      She described where it was parked.

      “Give me your keys and I’ll move it into the garage. I’ll leave money for dinner with the doorman and bring it up when I return.” Without so much as a goodbye, he closed the door, leaving her alone with the skyline.

      Inviting or not, all she wanted to do was curl up on the bed and sleep until the nightmare of her life was over and she woke up single, employed and not pregnant. Impossibilities. Time didn’t travel backward.

      She picked up one suitcase and hefted it over to the closet, which—except for the dresser and some hangers—was completely empty. Karl didn’t accumulate crap. Or, if he did, he didn’t store it in the closet of his guest bedroom. The room gave her nothing to judge her husband by, other than that his decorating sense was as cold as his hands and as lacking in expression as his face.

      No, she was being unfair. She opened a small drawer and shoved underwear in. He’d invited her—a near stranger, no matter that the marriage certificate said otherwise—to stay in his home. He was moving her car and buying her dinner. And the morning she’d woken up naked in a hotel room with him calling her Vivian Milek and asking her if she was a prostitute, he’d handed her a cup of coffee and gotten her a robe.

      Maybe he wasn’t as unfeeling as his language and his composure made him seem.

      She tossed some hangers on the bed and unpacked the rest of her clothes. When she was finished, she turned back to the other suitcase on the floor. Even if she’d wanted to unpack her mementoes, there wasn’t a flat surface in the room to hold them. She shoved the last suitcase, without bothering to open it, into the closet and shut the door on her past.

      Too melodramatic, Vivian. You just don’t want it to look like you’re moving in.

      CHAPTER TWO

      KARL RETURNED TO the apartment later than he’d planned. Her little convertible had been easy enough to find. It’d been parked exactly where she’d said it would be and the Nevada plates gave away that it was hers. So had the pile of fast food containers on the floor of the passenger side. The blankets and pillows in the backseat had been a surprise. As had the empty gas tank. He’d thrown the trash away when he’d filled up her tank. The blankets and pillows he’d left in the backseat, though he’d left them folded rather than in a heap.

      Riding up the elevator with bags of Chinese food and a growing sense of unease, he prepared to face his wife.

      Vivian had set the table he never used with the place mats, white cotton napkins and flatware he also never used. Jessica, his ex-wife, had bought them. She hadn’t taken them with her when they’d divorced. Neither had she taken the apartment nor the BMW. All were status symbols he was certain she’d considered more important than their marriage, but not important enough to possess after the divorce was final. An indication, he’d felt when he’d signed the divorce papers, of the low regard in which she had held their marriage.

      Time allowed him to be more generous with his reflections. Marriage to him hadn’t given Jessica anything she’d really wanted, so why keep the trappings? Leaving the flatware, china and linens in the apartment with her ex-husband, she was free to start fresh.

      He wondered if Vivian had been married before. Did she have an apartment, friends or a book club? Why had she estranged herself from her life to drive halfway across the country in search of an unknown husband? After setting the bags of food on the counter, he looked around the room for her. He could learn the answers to his questions later. Eventually, people always told him the information he wanted.

      Just as he determined that the living room was empty, he noticed Vivian leaning against the rail on his terrace, looking north over the skyline of Chicago. With the room lit up against the dark night sky, Karl could only make out contours of her slim body. When he turned off the

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