The office manager’s face was pale, and she had her legs propped up on a stack of cushions. She wore a chic turquoise A-line dress, the first actual maternity dress Drue had seen her in, but she’d kicked off her spike-heeled Manolo Blahniks.

“Are you all right?” Drue asked.

“Not sure,” Wendy said, her voice shaky. “I’ve started spotting.”

Drue sank down onto the floor beside the sofa. “What do you want me to do? Should I call Dad? Or an ambulance?”

“No! Don’t call anybody. Your dad is in court, and I don’t want him to freak out. And I sure as hell don’t want an ambulance. I called my obstetrician’s office. The nurse says a little spotting isn’t anything to be concerned about.”

“What’s a little?” Drue asked now, feeling slightly freaked out herself. Until her mother’s illness, she’d never really been around sick people. She’d felt so helpless during Sherri’s swift decline, powerless to stop the relentless advance of the cancer. She swallowed back a sudden spasm of anxiety-triggered nausea.

“It’s just … spots,” Wendy said. “The point is, the nurse says I probably need to go home and get some rest. Brice drove us to work this morning, so…”

“I’ll take you home,” Drue said quickly. “Can you walk?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. I’m not dying.” Wendy swung her feet onto the floor and slipped on her shoes and grabbed her Louis Vuitton tote.

“Let’s go,” she told Drue. “And not a word about this to the rest of the staff.”

As they passed through the reception area, Wendy paused beside the reception desk, waiting while Marianne completed a phone call.

“Drue and I are going out to lunch, and then doing some shopping,” she said. “Her phone line will be off-line for the rest of the day. Tell any of my callers that I’ll be back in the office in the morning, but do not forward any calls to me, unless it’s life and death.”

Marianne looked astounded. “You’re going to lunch, together?”

“Girl time,” Drue said lightly, tucking her arm through Wendy’s.

On the twenty-minute drive out to Brice and Wendy’s house at the beach, Drue kept surreptitiously glancing at her passenger.

“Would you quit it?” Wendy said finally. “I told you. I’m fine. I just saw my doctor. I’m not hemorrhaging and I’m not going to have the baby in the front seat of your car.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Drue said. “I wouldn’t want to mar OJ’s pristine upholstery or anything.”

Wendy looked around the car with obvious distaste, taking in the discarded water bottles and fast-food wrappers on the floor, and the cracked and peeling vinyl dashboard and seats.

“How old is this car anyway?”

“Not all that old,” Drue said. “How do you feel?”