Read Online That New York Minute by Abby Gaines - Free Book Online

getting a real job.” Garrett feigned casualness.
    She groaned under her breath and rubbed her eyes again. Her makeup was smudged; she looked haggard. She stuck out a hand. “Help me up?” Then, before he could refuse, she dropped her hand again. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”
    Standing proved a strangely awkward process. She rolled onto all fours then pushed herself off the thick carpet designed to cushion the tread of noisy neighbors.
    When she was finally upright, the floor seemed to shift beneath Garrett, forcing him to put a hand to the wall.
    “You’ve been overdoing the pizza,” he said, eyeing Stephanie’s enormous, round belly.
    “The baby’s due in June.” She planted her fists on her hips, as if defying him to disapprove. The movement thrust her belly out even farther. “I’m seven months along. We would have told you sooner, except we haven’t seen you since Christmas—” he’d spent the holiday with them only because his brother had been home on leave from his naval posting “—and we didn’t know I was pregnant then.”
    “And Dad was meant to tell me about this last week.”
    “Among other things.” She bent at the knees to scoop up her little backpack. “Do we have to do this in the hallway?”
    “Where’s Dad?” Garrett glanced around.
    Stephanie slung the pack over one shoulder. “I left him.”
    Once again, Garrett’s world tipped on its axis. “You mean, left him out in the car, right?” But he hadn’t seen a Hummer parked in the street.
    “I mean, left our marriage.” She plucked the key from his suddenly nerveless fingers. “Let’s go inside.”
    In the condo, Garrett used the time spent disarming the burglar alarm and turning on lights to try to get his head around this bizarre new development. Nope, he couldn’t do it. “Does Lucas know about the baby?”
    “Of course.” Stephanie set her pack down next to the sofa and sat. “I wrote to him a few months back.”
    Garrett wondered what his brother had made of the news. He’d tried to convince Lucas that Stephanie was the enemy, back when their dad had married her, but Lucas had been twelve years old and he’d wanted a mother. He hadn’t seen the wrongness of their dad marrying again so quickly after Mom died, without consulting them, without listening to Garrett’s protests. The wrongness of Dwight expecting them to welcome Stephanie and her clumsy attempts at stepmotherhood.
    “Aren’t you too old to be doing this?” He waved at her stomach without looking. “Is it IVF?” He couldn’t imagine his dad submitting to the invasive process.
    “I just turned forty-five—it’s within the bounds of possibility.” She cupped her hands over her stomach protectively. “Though it was certainly unexpected. Your father and I tried for a long time to have a baby. When this happened…the symptoms…I thought I was menopausal.”
    Too much information.
    Garrett headed to the kitchen area. “Coffee?” he said over his shoulder.
    “Do you have decaf?”
    “No.”
    She sighed. “Okay, but make it a weak one. You’re supposed to cut back on caffeine in pregnancy—though since it took me four months to figure out I was pregnant that didn’t quite happen.”
    Away from that telltale stomach, Garrett pulled his thoughts into order. Okay, Stephanie was pregnant, a little fact that everyone except Garrett had known. Due in June. At which point he would have a half brother or sister.
    “Is it a boy or a girl?” he called.
    “I don’t know.” Stephanie spoke from the other side of the island, making him jump. “I want it to be a surprise—your father wanted to know but it turns out the mother’s wishes prevail in this sort of thing.”
    She sounded almost amused. Probably hadn’t been too many times her wishes had prevailed since she’d married Admiral Dwight Calder. Wait a minute…
    “Did you say you left my father?” How he could have lost sight of that detail?
    “That’s right.” She eyed the