Divorced With His Heir In My Belly

She didn't gasp. She didn't freeze. She didn't do any of the things a person did when they'd been caught doing something unforgivable. She just looked at me, and slowly, the laughter in her expression reshaped itself into something else entirely. Something I had never seen on her face before, even though I'd known this face for ten years."Oh, darling." She surveyed the candles, the petals, the two crystal glasses. Her voice was honeyed and amused. "Someone set the mood for us, baby." She turned to Tyler, pressing her fingers against his chest. "Isn't it perfect?"*Baby.*The word went through me like a blade.My legs were shaking. My mouth opened but nothing came out because there was no sentence in any language I spoke that fit what was happening in front of me."What—" My voice was barely mine. "What is this? What is going on?"Lucy walked across the room without hesitation and reached for the light switch on the wall beside the dresser. The romance died instantly, everything harsh

"Refill." The bartender didn't turn around. He was wiping down the counter at the other end of the bar, ginger beard, arms like a man who had never lost an argument in his life, moving with the unhurried energy of someone who had heard everything and was impressed by none of it. "Hey." I knocked my empty bottle against the counter. "I said refill." He turned. Looked at the bottle. Looked at the four others lined up beside it. Looked at me with the specific expression of a man doing arithmetic he didn't like the answer to. "No," he said. "Excuse me?" "You've got five bottles sitting there you haven't paid for. Plus three from last night." He set down his cloth. "I'm not running a charity." "I'm going to pay." I sat up as straight as the bar stool allowed, which wasn't very. "I just need a small extension." "How small?" I opened my mouth. Closed it. He pointed at the door. "I'm not ready to leave." "You're not ready, but you're going," he said, and turned back to

I was not listening. I knew I wasn't listening, and I suspected Agatha knew it too, but she was a patient woman and the salmon in front of me was the single greatest thing that had happened to me in six weeks, so we had reached a silent understanding. She talked. While I ate. The restaurant was the kind of place that had no prices on the menu, Agatha had walked me through the doors in my dirty clothes without a word, ordered half the menu without consulting me, and watched with careful, unreadable eyes as I ravished my plate like a woman who had been on the wrong side of an empty refrigerator for longer than she intended to admit. "So let me make sure I understand you," I said, tearing off another piece of bread because the bread was also exceptional and I had stopped being embarrassed about it somewhere around my third roll. I looked up at her. "Aunt Maggie left me a large estate and a vineyard." "That's correct." "My great-aunt Maggie." I said it again slowly. "Who I hav