Page 87 of A Step You Shouldn't Take

Queasy? Mornings? Strange cravings? Uh-oh. “Tara, could you be pregnant?”

She sat down again, the dress poofing out around her. “No, that’s not it.”

“Are you sure?” I stood back and studied her. If anything, she’d lost weight everywhere but her stomach. “When did you last get a visit from Aunt Flo?”

“A couple of months ago, but I can’t have children, Kimberly.” She gave a loud sniffle, and the designer leapt forward with a tissue. “I was sick when I was a teenager. Cancer. The drugs they gave me… The doctors said I had ovarian failure, that I’d never get pregnant.”

I knelt to give her a hug, and she smeared mascara all over my pastel jacket. The dry cleaner was going to love me. Still, it made a change from the red wine somebody invariably spilled on me at every reception.

“I’m so sorry, Tara.”

“It’s okay. We’ve had a while to come to terms with it. Jacob says maybe we could look into adoption once we’re married, and at first, I hated the idea, but now… I think I might like that.”

Adoption. I’d considered the possibility too, but when I mentioned it to Alan, he’d slammed the idea of “bringing up somebody else’s kid” and questioned once again why I refused to have my own. Then after the divorce, I’d have been a single mother, and I was terrified of getting turned down. A psychiatrist would probably tell me that was why I stayed so busy at work—to compensate for what was missing at home.

My heart went out to Tara, but although I wished I could have sat with her all day, we still had a dress that didn’t fit and she was supposed to be walking down the aisle in less than a week. I grabbed my phone and consulted Google. Spontaneous reversal of ovarian failure was rare, but it happened, and I couldn’t come up with another explanation.

“I’ll be back in just a minute.”

There was a pharmacy across the street, and I grabbed the nearest pregnancy test off the shelf and ran to the register. What else could it be? Tara’s face looked positively gaunt, and that amount of water retention seemed extreme.

“Tara, I understand this is really awkward,” I said when I got back. She hadn’t moved, and neither had the dress designer. Three months she’d spent on that gown, and the poor woman was probably worried she’d get the blame for it not fitting. “But could you pee on the stick?”

Her incredulous expression told me what she thought of that idea, but luckily, she’d always been one of the easier brides to deal with. The designer held open the bathroom door while Tara squashed herself inside.

“Maybe we should have gotten her to take the dress off first,” she whispered.

“Probably. Will those seams go out any more?”

“Half an inch. An inch, max. Not two inches. We could try one of those body-shaper corsets?”

As long as Tara didn’t combine it with slimming shakes. No way was I going through that nightmare again.

“I guess. What other dresses do you have in stock? Just in case the corset doesn’t work.”

“Uh, let me check.” She began rummaging through the nearest rack. “How about—”

Tara’s shriek cut her off mid-sentence. Was that a good shriek or a bad shriek? Hard to tell.

“I’m pregnant!”

Relief at being right washed over me, quickly followed by a cold prickle of fear because the wedding plans would undoubtedly descend into chaos, and perhaps I harboured a tiny hint of jealousy too.

“That’s good, right?”

She ran out of the bathroom in her underwear and squashed the breath out of me. “I can’t believe it. We’re gonna have a baby! I gotta call Jacob.”

The designer breathed a sigh of relief and tucked a faux-fur cape around Tara’s shoulders.

“I’ll go and have a look for something with an empire line, shall I?”

***

Two days, Reed had been sharing my house, and already it felt lonely without him. He’d called earlier to say he was following one suspect to a squash club while Wyatt trailed another, which left me at loose ends in the evening.

Tara had been so thrilled about the baby that she’d settled for an off-the-rack dress with extra sparkles, the designer thought she could resell the other one, and I’d caught up on the rest of my work by seven but forgotten to eat lunch. Chicken chow mein was calling out to me, so I ordered that and enough food for Reed as well. If he was out late playing sports, cooking would be the last thing he wanted to do when he got home.

I needed to give him a key too, because when he returned at nine thirty, he had to knock. Sweaty Reed in shorts and a tight T-shirt. It was like having my own calendar model.

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