LITMIR.BIZ

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asked.

      “Hmmm…” He had to talk to Lucy this morning. Immediately. It wouldn’t wait—not after hearing her voice last night—not if he was going to keep his sanity. The rest of his work, he could either shuffle or make-happen around a few hours with Gretchen. He’d done it in the past. “I need to have a half hour with Lucy at the lab. Alone. A real serious meeting.”

      “Oh. Okay.” Her face fell five feet. “I understand.”

      He could tell she did. He could tell she’d had to understand too damn many things, too damn many times, for a twelve-year-old. “How about this for a plan? We can walk over together. You can hang with Reiko or Fritz or Fred. Or just wander around. In fact, you could help make sure I get that time alone with Lucy. We’ll get our meeting over a whole lot faster if we aren’t interrupted by anyone.”

      “I could do that! I’ll make sure nobody interrupts you!”

      “And then we’ll do the day. I still have some work, but you can hang. Have to go over to the plant—but you’ll love that anyway. And I’ll finish what I have to and then we’ll split, okay? You bring your fiddle?”

      “Uncle Nick! I play the flute, you know that!”

      “Yeah, I know. And you’re so good I was thinking maybe you could play for me a little later, huh?”

      “You don’t really want me to.”

      Damn kid never thought anyone wanted to be with her. “Yeah, I do. Give me a second to pick something up from the house…and then we’ll walk to the labs with the dogs, okay?”

      “Yeah, that’d be great.”

      Okay. So walking with a twelve-year-old kid wasn’t exactly a great way to get his psyche prepared for the talk with Lucy. But he usually had a gift for multitasking. Hell, he’d just traveled from Paris to Berne and back, did some moving and shaking to get the construction on the new greenhouses started, contacted security people, initiated a new contract with their Berne people—and that was just the last two days. Surely he could handle a reasonable discussion with a twenty-eight-year-old woman?

      “So Uncle Nick…then Uncle Nick…and after that, we like…”

      Gretchen, God love her, treated him like a hero. Sometimes, like this morning, it made him feel lower than pond scum. He adored her. He’d adopt her if there was ever a need. But he wasn’t the kind of hero she wanted him to be. If the world were the right kind of place, she’d have a dad who’d earned that kind of respect, and a ton of other role models who could do a better job than him.

      But right now she was chattering nonstop, at least until they reached the doors to the lab. She quieted instantly, doing her shy thing. The dogs, by contrast, howled as if someone were killing them because of being left outside.

      The place was as deserted as a carnival in the rain, no sign of life in any of the offices. All the noise and action emanated from the communal lab, where the whole staff clustered, bustling around some fresh chocolate tests. Reiko and Fred and Fritz called out welcoming hellos to both him and Gretchen. So did Lucy.

      But he saw what she tried to pull off. She took one look, startled when she saw him, beamed out a cheerful hello and dove for the side door.

      He caught up with her midflight, with what he hoped was an unobtrusive hand plucking her shirt-tail. “We’ll be in Lucy’s office for a few minutes, everyone. You okay, Gretchen?”

      “Sure,” she said, which was what Gretchen always said, but in this case, Reiko was already inviting her to try the new chocolate. The kid’d be okay.

      Lucy would probably be okay, too.

      Whether he was going to be okay was the real question. Because one look at her face and he knew this was going to go bad. Very bad. Maybe very, very bad.

      As soon as they were out of sight, she said, “I know, I know, we didn’t finish our Bliss project discussion the other day—”

      “No, we didn’t. And we need to get that done damn quick. But that’s not all we have to discuss right now.”

      “What?” At the door to her office, she moved in first, quickly, as if allergic to being that close to him. He’d felt the startled tremor streak her spine when he’d touched the back of her shirt. And now she didn’t hide behind the desk, but she moved as far as the windowsill, where she could lean, arms under her chest, chin up…as if she were braced for a blow.

      He latched the door and leaned there, giving her some space, but for damn sure blocking the exit. “So,” he said gently, “you’re pregnant.”

      “Huh?” She shook her head as if disbelieving such an incomprehensible ridiculous statement.

      Aw, hell. Politicians lied better than she did. Nick felt as if a lead ball—with spikes—had just dropped in his stomach. Yeah, he’d guessed the truth from her voice last night. From everything. Until that instant, though, he thought there was still a chance of some other answer. Fear of disaster didn’t always mean a disaster was going to happen. Only he saw those hazel eyes shifting from his like a thief in a bank.

      He wiped a hand over his face, wishing he could wash himself into a state of invisibility. “You’re pregnant,” he said again. “By me.” For a second there, he wasn’t dead positive if he was saying it aloud for her sake or his.

      “For Pete’s sake. I’m going to sue that doctor. I realize it was your doc, but all the same, he can’t just tell someone else a patient’s confidential medical infor—”

      “Luce—” He had to interrupt her. “No one told me. I just added it up. Your sudden throwing up, the timing, your swearing there was absolutely nothing wrong. Only you’ve never even taken a sick day, much less mentioned ever having an upset stomach to anyone. So…I looked at a calendar. The night you called me about the successful experiment—”

      “That night doesn’t have to mean anything. For all you know, I sleep with zillions of guys. Regularly.”

      He didn’t say, when cows fly. But straight arrows like Lucy just didn’t tumble for strangers. Or on a whim. Hell, her greenhouse floor was clean enough to eat from; she was that persnickety. “Look. You don’t have to make up stories. We’re in this fix together—”

      “You’re not in any fix, Nick. I am. This was totally my fault. You never came on to me. Never invited anything. Nothing would ever have happened if I hadn’t…” She swirled her hands.

      “Is that supposed to mean you didn’t intend to tell me?” When she didn’t give him the correct answer for that question, he said, very very quietly, “You just agreed to take on a mountain of extra work—to become an integral part of a chocolate project that could throw the cacao market on its ear and shake up the whole chocolate industry. Yet you didn’t figure you needed to mention that you had a major health issue like a pregnancy on your plate?”

      “Well. No.”

      Okay. He didn’t have a temper, he’d told himself a hundred times. And if he did, there were very few people who could push it. But Lucy headed the list. Ramifications of this pregnancy—her pregnancy, their pregnancy—kept popping in his brain like mini-explosions. What to do. How. Where. When. But first, he obviously had to deal with that sick, panicked expression on Lucy’s face.

      “Luce…listen to me. We can work out whatever you want to work out. We can make happen whatever you want to happen.” He heaved out a wary sigh. “Although you know my grandfather will only have one solution.”

      “No one has to know it’s yours. And that includes Orson,” she promised him.

      “That’s no solution.”

      “I’ll get a mountain of pressure from family, too. Everyone will have an opinion about what I should do and try to railroad me into doing it.”

      “Caving into pressure from any side is no solution, either.”

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