Cover

The Pregnancy Test

The Pregnancy Test

Erin McCarthy

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

For Meaghan and Connor,

my pride and my joy

The Pregnancy Test

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Prologue

“Oh, honey, su-gah, I see sweet things ahead for you.” “Really?” Mandy Keeling found there was something really fascinating about listening to the predictions of a cross-dressing psychic wearing designer shoes.

Especially since Beckwith Tripp had so far predicted a long life, an increase in personal assets, and sweet things for her. Of course, that could mean anything from receiving a cute greeting card to inheriting a candy shop from a previously unknown ancient aunt.

“But what do you mean?” Mandy knew it was blather, hogwash, coddle, but that didn’t stop her from leaning across the coffee table as Beckwith stroked her palm between his huge hands. There were worse ways to spend an utterly miserable February day in Greenwich Village with her three roommates.

In fact, it was highly entertaining.

“That’s not very specific,” Allison Parker said, skepticism dripping in her voice. “I could tell your fortune, Mandy, if all you’re looking for is vague assurances. Or better yet, I’ll run down to Hunan’s and buy you a bunch of fortune cookies.”

Beckwith, built like a professional wrestler, and wearing a vintage Chanel suit, shrugged a broad shoulder. “I’m like Ripley, honey. Believe it or not. Doesn’t matter to me.”

What was unbelievable was that he wore that outfit better than Mandy ever could. She always had something of an absentminded, windblown look and was a far cry from elegant, as her mother had told her often enough. Yet Beckwith looked like Jackie O on hormone therapy. “Can you give me more details, Beckwith?”

“I can be as specific as you want. You’re British, born and raised.”

Allison snorted. “Gee, what gave it away? Not the accent or anything.”

Jamie Peters, who believed in anything involving crystals, karma, or the supernatural, and who had brought Beckwith to their apartment, shushed Allison.

Mandy shifted on the floor, the seam of her jeans digging into her calf, and decided it didn’t really matter if Beckwith was a few billiard balls shy of a game. There was something exciting and amusing and hopeful in hearing about her future, however vague. At twenty-six, she had been confronted lately with the rather alarming feeling that she had frittered away her twenties, living off her parents’ money and coasting breezily through each day.

It was time for a change, she knew that, but up to this point she had been avoiding giving it any serious thought. Beckwith’s appearance was fortuitous, in that maybe his predictions could give her a push in the right direction.

Caroline Davidson’s eyebrows had shot up almost to her blond hair, pulled back in its usual tidy knot. “Where do you find these guys, Jamie?”

Jamie fingered her necklace, a silver Chinese character that meant happiness, and jutted her bottom lip out. “Come on, y’all, just give it a chance. He knows things, I’m telling you.” She patted Beckwith’s arm as if he was a cute toddler instead of a thirty-year-old hairy male in women’s clothing.

Beckwith didn’t look the least bit offended by Allison and Caroline’s cynicism. He gave Mandy a smile, his hand still making those same smooth, warm glides across her skin.

“Born and raised on the country estate, quite a bit of money, Daddy works in the big city, gone all the time, Mom has horses…and I see women, lots of women, talking, laughing, standing, passing teacups—and you, legs together, back straight, hands in lap.”

Mandy’s throat went dry, and goose bumps rose over her flesh where he was touching her. Beckwith stared at her, a faint smile playing about his mouth, shiny lip gloss hovering over five-o’clock shadow.

What he had said…it was her childhood, summed up in one sentence. Her father always in London, carrying on the Keeling tradition as head of the financial division of a world banking conglomerate. Mother alternating between raising her horses and hosting various charitable and social events. There were always women in their house, The Acres, soft, muted, proper, and Mandy expected to behave properly, sit quietly, or entertain Mother’s guests with her rather dubious piano talents.

“Yes, sweet things ahead for you. Your life will change, but in a good way. Selfless. Enriched. With a man who makes you just melt.”

Ben. Mandy wondered if Beckwith meant Ben, the man she’d been seeing for six months. She didn’t think of him as her boyfriend, because it seemed ridiculous to label a man in his forties that way, but that’s what he was. And she thought maybe he was going to ask her to marry him.

That would make her happy, wouldn’t it? Ben was kind, stable, albeit a little distracted sometimes. He was a fellow Englishman in New York. He was punctual. Respectful. Intelligent. She cared about him a great deal, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready to marry him, or if he could ever make her melt. Soften a little, maybe, but melting seemed a bit beyond Ben’s reach.

“Pastries.”

Mandy blinked. “What?” What did Ben have to do with pastries? When she thought of him, cream puffs and tarts did not come to mind. Ben was a biscuit.

Beckwith closed his eyes. “I see pastries. Baked goods. All lined up in front of you.” He shook his head and met her gaze. “Have you ever thought of opening a shop?”

“She already has a store,” Allison said, tucking her feet under her long legs as she sat on the butter-colored easy chair wedged in the corner of their minute living room.

“It’s true,” Mandy told Beckwith, feeling almost guilty. Here he’d been doing so well. “I run a children’s toy shop.” Opened with her parents’ money, and only now breaking even after three years.

“No bakery?” Beckwith bit his lip.

“No bakery. Though when I tossed around ideas for starting the business, I wanted a toy shop or a bakery. But I knew I would have to rely on hired help if I started a bakery. The toy shop didn’t require as much staff.”

But lately she had been bored with the shop, which catered to tourists and upscale customers who wanted higher quality offerings than what was mass marketed at Toys “R” Us. She had been daydreaming about starting something new. A tea shop really, not a bakery, but serving scones and biscuits and sandwiches along with all the dozens of varieties of tea.

If there was one thing she knew, it was high tea, done the proper way.

Maybe Beckwith was onto something. Maybe it was the right time to make a change, to stop being so complacent and to embrace something that she was passionate about.

“That’s odd, because I really see something sticky and sweet, sugary.” Beckwith adjusted the strap on his dress.

“Maybe it’s a fruitcake,” Allison suggested in an innocent tone that didn’t match the wicked gleam in her brown eyes.

“Allison!” Jamie looked horrified.

But Beckwith just blinked, solemnly and mysteriously, a self-proclaimed prophet in Prada shoes. “Wait until it’s your turn, Allison Agnes Parker, and we’ll see if you’re still laughing.”

Allison’s feet fell to the hardwood floor.

Jamie’s jaw quickly followed. “Your middle name is Agnes?”

“No.” Allison tossed back her dark hair. “It’s Elizabeth.”

“Sure, whatever.” Beckwith rolled his eyes and scratched his chin.

Mandy laughed and pulled her hand from his. “You’ve definitely given me something to think about, so thank you, Beckwith. I do believe Jamie is right. You have a gift for pointing people in the right direction.”

“I’ve never been wrong yet.” He peered at her intently from beneath mascara-laden eyelashes. “Trust me, Mandy. Pastries. It means something.”

Chapter 1

Mandy clutched her roiling stomach and pondered the irony of it all.

Beckwith Tripp had been right.

Only no bake shop for her. Beckwith’s pastries had in fact been buns. Or more specifically, a bun. In her oven.

God help her, she was pregnant.

“Are you okay?” Caroline asked as she strode through the lobby, heading to the offices of NY Computing. Mandy inched along behind her, wishing there was a wall she could clutch.

“I’m just lovely, really, other than the fact that I’m being sick every three minutes.”

Caroline stopped walking and spun around, her black pumps squeaking on the hard glossy floor. There wasn’t a wrinkle anywhere on her charcoal gray suit, and not a single hair dared escape the twist into which she had expertly maneuvered it. Her skin and makeup were flawless, a discreet winter tan giving her color.

“You’re not going to throw up during this interview, are you?”

“No, of course not.” At least she hoped and prayed she wouldn’t. “I was being sarcastic and bitter.”

Feelings that came quite easily to her now, since four weeks ago when that stick had turned pink and her whole life had been tossed upside down and around like a Tilt-a-Whirl. Before that moment, she had been blithely considering selling her shop and contemplating her feelings toward Ben. She had been wondering if perhaps it was time to stand on her own two feet separate from her parents and their pocketbooks and grow up just a little bit.

That had been four weeks ago.

Now she was going to be a mum.

Ben had gone bye-bye.

And growing up was no longer an option, but a necessity.

She’d sold the shop, receiving an offer much quicker than she had expected, and while her parents had assured her she could keep the capital gains when the closing went through next month, it was still absolutely necessary to get a nine-to-five job. With health insurance.

She wanted this baby badly, despite its unexpected timing. And she wanted to raise her child on her own two feet, without running to Daddy and Mother for help. She wanted her child to have a self-reliant and responsible mother, with a stable income.

“Good. No throwing up allowed. And save the bitter for later. Right now you need to project confidence and intelligence. Remember what I told you—Damien Sharpton is an impatient man, a total workaholic. He doesn’t tolerate weak women.”

Mandy remembered. She remembered every horrible thing that Caroline had said about the man, from the grimace she always gave when she brought up his name, to the fact that he had run through four assistants in the previous year.

“He made his last assistant cry almost every day for two weeks until she quit.”

“Nice guy.” Mandy concentrated on taking little tiny breaths and swallowing slowly. Her fingers quivered as the nausea rose up for one frantic moment, then settled back down again. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

“And don’t forget,” Caroline said as she reached forward and brushed something off the shoulder of Mandy’s black suit jacket, “you’re not pregnant.”

It was still so incredibly bizarre to think that she was, in fact, pregnant. She didn’t feel maternal, so it shouldn’t be that hard to fake. She felt as though she had a horrific case of the flu, but she couldn’t really fathom there was a baby growing inside her. She touched her stomach, brushing her hands over the button on her blouse.

She was thrilled. She was terrified.

She was going to be sick.

Mandy clamped her lips tightly shut and breathed through her nose.

“Mr. Sharpton won’t hire you if he thinks you’re pregnant. But if he hires you and we hide the pregnancy from him for a while, well, when the truth finally becomes obvious, he won’t be able to fire you because of discrimination. And he absolutely hates to think there was something his superior intelligence didn’t pick up on, so he’ll never, ever admit that he didn’t realize you were pregnant when he hired you.”

It sounded all rather complicated to Mandy at the moment, when she was fighting to stay vertical and not slide to the floor like a narcoleptic. She had never been so tired in her entire life. Vampire victims probably had more energy than she did.

“But won’t he be angry when he finds out?” And given how pleasant Mr. Sharpton sounded, Mandy didn’t think that would be a fun day in the office.

“We’ll just act like we told him you were back in the beginning. I told you, he’ll never admit he didn’t know.”

Caroline started walking toward the elevators, and Mandy followed, shuffling in her boots. She had heels in the bag on her shoulder to change into, unwilling to tromp through the slushy March snow in them. Somehow Caroline had managed to stay completely intact on the two-block walk from the subway, whereas Mandy felt rumpled and pimply and swollen. She felt like she was thirteen and facing her mother over the table.

How could you have wrinkled that blouse in the three minutes it takes to walk from your bedroom to the dining room?

“Thanks, Caroline, for getting me this interview. It couldn’t have been easy since I have no marketable skills to speak of.”

Caroline looked outraged. “Mandy! Check that defeatist attitude at the door. You have run your own business for three years. Everything Mr. Sharpton asks you can be answered in some way with that. You have computer experience; employee management experience; you’ve dealt with distributors and done your own marketing. You are overqualified for this job. Besides, I got you the first interview with HR, but you passed that round and got yourself the actual interview with Sharpton.”

Mandy managed a smile. Caroline, Allison, and Jamie had rallied around her, the true friends that they were, offering support and a shoulder to lean on. Allison and Jamie had staunchly assured her she could stay in their two-bedroom apartment after the baby was born, since Caroline, whom she shared one of the bedrooms with, was getting married in July and moving out.

And now Caroline was risking her reputation at NY Computing, where she was a marketing manager, by securing Mandy an appointment with HR, which had led to this interview with Demon Sharpton, her hopefully soon-to-be boss. The fact that he had been given that nickname by the executive assistants on his floor, based on the freaky little boy Damien from the classic horror movie The Omen, was unimportant. About as frightening as getting caught under a kicking horse, but unimportant. This was her future, and she could do this.

“You’re right, you’re absolutely right. I will project confidence, and I won’t run out screaming or burst into tears unless a jackal pops out from under his desk. Then I’m out of there.”

Caroline laughed as they stepped onto the elevator. “Remember, eighteenth floor. I’m getting off on twelve. HR has screwed up the amount they’re withdrawing on my taxes again.” She shook her head. “I can’t wait to see how long it will take for them to change my name after the wedding.”

“I’m so happy for you, Caroline. I can’t believe it’s only a few months until the wedding.”

“Sixteen weeks. Give or take a day.” Caroline grinned. “Brad and I are booking our honeymoon to Paris tomorrow.”

“Paris in the summer will be lovely. I haven’t been there since I was sixteen. I fell wildly in love with a Parisian. He was eighteen and played in clubs…he made music with office supplies. I thought it was very deep.”

She had always been attracted to the rather flighty types, the artists, the musicians, the modern day Einsteins. That’s why it had seemed like Ben was such a mature choice, such an improvement, a stable alternative to passion and poetry.

There certainly hadn’t been any passion when Ben had looked her straight in the eye, offered her a five thousand dollar cash compensation for their mutual mistake, and informed her not to call him ever again.

The elevator slid open on twelve, and Caroline and another man moved into the hall. “Don’t forget to change your shoes, and good luck!” Caroline gave her a smile and a wave before strolling off with a professional and confident walk.

Mandy glanced down at her thick sheepskin-lined boots peeking out from under her suit skirt. “Right-o. Change the shoes. I remembered that.”

No, she hadn’t. She couldn’t remember her head from her hind end these days. She dug her heels out of her bag as the elevator stopped on fourteen, and the remaining three passengers got off. For one exciting second, she thought she was actually going to get privacy to hop around one-footed tugging her boot off, but then a man got on the elevator, stopping the door from closing with his foot.

Damn.

He was good-looking.

With dark hair, expensively cut. Pricey, but conservative gray suit. Shiny shoes. The Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm and a cup of coffee in his hand.

The kind of man who worked with her father, who always made her feel a bit inadequate, dismissed. Like her father himself had.

This man wasn’t dismissing her—he wasn’t even acknowledging her existence. He glanced at the number panel and gave a firm push to the eighteenth floor, which was already lit.

As if her pushing it wasn’t good enough. Somehow his pushing it would get them there faster.

Pompous you-know-what.

Mandy dropped her bag to the floor and held on to the handrail. Lifting her leg, she tugged a boot off and let it tumble on top of the bag. Then she hooked her toes into her shoe and hopped a little as she tried to push the heel in. The motion made her stomach heave.

Of course, even wiggling her pinky finger made her stomach heave these days. Forget complicated maneuvers like crossing her eyes or touching her toes.

Or putting on heels in a moving elevator.

She lost her balance and hit the wall with her shoulder. “Damn.”

The man glanced her way, but didn’t turn far enough to actually see her. His leg tapped impatiently. He watched the buttons climb floors, glanced at his watch, patted his pocket, probably making sure his mobile phone was still intact.

She had one pump partially on and one winter boot, and it looked as though it was going to stay that way unless she got some assistance. Setting her foot back down, she tried to ram her heel in. Nothing happened, so she let go of the handrail, bent over, and used two hands to wedge her heel in the shoe. All the blood in her upper body flooded into her face in a hot, dizzy rush.

“Oh, no.” This was bad.

Shiny black shoes turned toward her.

She was afraid to move. If she did, it was highly likely her breakfast of tea and toast would come hurtling up onto her shoe, her bag, and the tired mauve carpet.

“Is something wrong?” He had a hard voice, clipped, reserved. There was reluctance in his question.

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Mandy wondered if she could hobble forward off the elevator, still bent over at the waist. She might have managed it if her bag wasn’t lying on the floor two feet away, and her footwear scattered left and right. Her wallet was in her bag, just out of reach.

“Well, get off the elevator then.”

He said it as if this was obvious, which it would be if she could move.

Even with her hair falling in her eyes, Mandy could see the black shoes and pant legs were in front of the door, holding it open.

“I can’t. If I stand still, I think I’m okay. If I move, I think I’ll…well, be sick.” It seemed inappropriate to say “puke my guts out” in front of this frosty businessman. Or in front of his feet anyway.

“You can’t just stand there all day,” he said, with a touch of disbelief.

Well, no shit, Sherlock.

The door tried to close, and he pushed it back open.

“I suppose I can’t.” Mandy raised herself a half inch. Her head swam, but her stomach only lurched. “I have an eight o’clock appointment—a job interview—and I’ve got this bad case of”—Morning sickness—“the flu.”

Nothing but silence came from shiny-shoe man.

Oh, my God, this was a nightmare brought to life. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t move. She was nauseous, she was mortified. She was stuck on a bloody elevator with her head around her ankles and her bum in the air.

She really didn’t think that was the confident side Caroline wanted her to be projecting.

Chapter 2

Damien Sharpton usually knew what to do in any given situation.

But he didn’t know what the hell to do about the woman bent completely over in the elevator, ass up, head down.

His first urge was to step out in the hallway and let the door close on her.

Despite what people said about him, however, he wasn’t quite that heartless.

He was impatient. Calculating. Aggressive. Consumed by his work and utterly devoid of a personal life.

He was okay with all of that. Yet regardless of the past three years, and everything he’d been through, he wasn’t inhumane.

So he hovered, holding the doors open, and wondered what exactly he was supposed to do now.

“Do you want me to call someone?” He reached for his cell phone, pleased that he’d thought to foist her off on someone else. Let one of the executive assistants deal with her, until her husband or boyfriend or friend came and retrieved her. Not his assistant, since he didn’t have one at present.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!