style="font-size:15px;"> “Yeah.”
“Good God, woman! What the hell did you do that for?”
“I want a family, Joe!” Her brows rose with her voice, giving her an air of desperation. Panic. He had no idea what to do.
“But—”
She shook her head. “Don’t ‘but’ me right now, okay? This isn’t up for debate. It’s a done deal.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“How could you?” Elise got up and left the room so quickly, he was pretty sure she wasn’t coming back. And wished there were a door that would allow him to quietly slip away without having to pass through the inner domain of her home. He wished she had a best friend he could call to take over where he was grossly inadequate.
“Here.” She was back. With a shot of bourbon mixed with water.
Joe accepted the gift without a word. Took a long sip. And stared at ice cubes floating in amber-colored liquid.
Sitting down on the other end of the couch, Elise leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and turned her head toward him. “How many guys have I dated more than once in the last five years?”
“Two that I know of.”
“Then you know of all of them.”
He was treading on uncharted ground. He’d been confiding in her about his love life for most of the time he’d known her. All he knew of hers was what they’d just covered.
“You’re a strikingly beautiful woman, Elise.” Surely she knew that. “You could have any man you wanted.”
Still she watched him. “I didn’t think you ever noticed I’m a woman.”
The glass started to slide through Joe’s sweaty fingers. He got a better grip.
“I noticed. But you made it plain from the beginning that you valued our friendship and wanted it to stay that way.”
“I did. I do.”
“I respected that.”
Staring at her clasped hands, she was silent for a long moment. “I have a little story to tell you.”
He waited.
“One I should’ve told you years ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, frowning as she peered over at him again. “My reasons seem silly now, and yet to me they make perfect sense.”
He had no idea what any of this had to do with her newly disclosed pregnancy, but knowing Elise, he was certain he was going to find out. What surprised him was how badly everything about this evening threatened him. He was generally a flexible guy. Took change on the cuff. Accepted other people and their choices, whether like his or not, without much difficulty. He’d grown up in a family with seven kids, and someone was always doing something he didn’t like. To survive, he’d learned the wisdom of withholding judgment.
“You mentioned my looks just now, as though my being beautiful was just part of who I am.”
“Isn’t it?” Joe asked her. She used to intrigue and frustrate him with her insights. He hadn’t realized she’d stopped sharing them until this moment when he realized that one was on its way. He sat back, waiting.
He’d missed them.
“No. My looks aren’t me at all.”
“We all have outer packaging,” he countered. A philosophical debate he could do. And even if he couldn’t, he was willing to try—anything to delay the moment they’d have to get back to the problem at hand. “It’s a part of you, just like your gender. And your sense of humor. It shapes many of life’s experiences and has no bearing on others.”
“Exactly, it’s a package. One we’re born with. It gives us a sense of self from our earliest moments.”
She didn’t usually agree so quickly. “Right.”
“It combines with our memories, our loved ones, to provide the rock upon which our lives are built. No matter what happens to us, we can go back to that rock and find solid ground.”
“Uh-huh.”
Joe watched her through narrowed eyes. There was a catch here. He could feel it coming.
“And that’s why I didn’t tell you my little story before now,” Elise said. “I didn’t want you to know I don’t have that rock. You treated me like I was normal, and normal was something I hadn’t felt in far too many years.”
“Too many years,” Joe repeated. “You sound as if you were forty when I met you.” He wondered if pregnancy had already gotten to her emotions. One second she was Elise, and the next she wasn’t making any sense at all. “You weren’t even eighteen.”
“And you treated me like it. You wouldn’t have if I’d told you what I’d already endured before I got to my freshman year at the University of Michigan.”
The room was warm. Joe chugged the last of his drink.
“I’m not the woman you see, Joe.”
He didn’t believe her.
CHAPTER TWO
ELISE WATCHED THE EMOTIONS flit across the face of her dear friend and partner. Joe had always been so easy to read. He didn’t have anything to hide.
His open honesty made him a great salesman.
And a horrible poker player.
He didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
But he had to hear it.
Maybe as badly as she now needed to quit hiding from the truth.
“This face you find strikingly beautiful…” The words caught in her throat. She’d loved hearing Joe describe her that way, but she needed to bury her head and cry at the same time. It wasn’t her he was admiring.
It wasn’t ever her.
“It’s not me, Joe. It’s a piece of art—the award-winning work of a very talented craftsman.”
Dr. Thomas Fuller hadn’t told her about the public acknowledgment of his work—or the pictures of her face that had been passed around. She’d seen a magazine open to an article in his office one day.
And had rushed to his private bathroom to throw up.
“I don’t understand,” Joe said.
“You know B&R’s start-up money came from a life insurance policy my father purchased before he died.” When it came right down to it, even after all the years of counseling,
