Caroselli's Baby Chase (7 page)

“How’s the foot healing?” Carrie asked her.

“Slowly. The physical therapy is helping. My doctor assured me that I’ll be back on my feet before the shows next fall. It’s crazy how you can be walking down the sidewalk, minding your own business, then
pow,
out of nowhere everything changes.”

The
pow
in that scenario being the bike messenger who knocked her off the curb into the path of a moving taxi. She was lucky to be alive.

“And speaking of therapy,” Alice said, “I have an appointment in an hour, so I should let you go. But I want you to make me a promise. If you get even the slightest urge to jump Mr. Steamy Sex again, I want you to call me immediately so I can talk some sense into you. Anytime, day or night.”

“Okay.”

“You promise?”

She sighed.

“Carrie?”

“Okay, okay, I promise,” she said, hoping it wasn’t one of those promises that came back to bite her in the butt.

* * *

Two days later Carrie hopped in a cab to meet Nick’s wife, Terri, at the condo she hoped would be her new temporary home.

She was pleasantly surprised when the cab pulled up in front of a row of attached, newish-looking, charming brick homes with two-car garages. So far so good.

The homes were still decorated for the holidays. All but the one the driver stopped at. Which wasn’t so unusual considering no one was living there. Still, it looked so forlorn and neglected. But thankfully very well-maintained. At least on the outside.

She paid the driver, realizing that if she didn’t want to blow her entire earnings on cab fare, it might be more cost effective to lease a car while she was there. She didn’t exactly relish the thought of taking public transportation in the dead of winter either.

She climbed out of the cab and paused on the sidewalk to look up and down the street. All the residences were well-maintained, and a large group of children of various ages played in the snow several doors down, which led her to assume the neighborhood was family-oriented and safe.

She headed up the walk and as she stepped up onto the porch, the front door opened and a woman appeared to greet her.

“Hi. Caroline?”

“Carrie,” she said, shaking her hand.

“I’m Terri. Come on in.” Like her husband, Terri was tall and dark. She was also very attractive in an athletic, tomboyish way, and not at all the sort of woman she would have pictured Nick with. “Drop your coat anywhere and I’ll give you a tour.”

Carrie’s first impression, as she stepped inside and shrugged out of her coat, was
beige
. Beige walls, beige carpet, beige leather furniture. Even the lamps were beige. And the air smelled like pine cleaner.

“As you can see, I left almost everything here when I moved into Nick’s place,” she said. “It’s nothing fancy.”

Carrie draped her coat over the back of the sofa beside Terri’s and set her purse on top. “It’s nice.”

“According to Nick, to say I have the decorating sense of a brick is an insult to bricks.”

“I’m no decorating genius either. I paid someone to do my place in Los Angeles. This is simple. Elegant.”

“It’s boring,” Terri said. “And if you don’t like it, don’t be afraid to say so. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

She wasn’t looking for anything fancy. Just something functional and low-maintenance that wouldn’t break the bank. “So far so good.”

Terri looked surprised. “You want to see more?”

“Absolutely.” She could hate the rest of the condo and she would probably rent it anyway rather than hurt Terri’s feelings.

Carrie had a way of reading people, and her first impression of Terri was that she had a tough outer shell but was soft and vulnerable on the inside.

The master suite had slightly more color. A queen-size bed with a pale rose duvet, a chest of drawers in a warm honey pine and a roomy walk-in closet that led to a very clean—and yes, beige—en suite bathroom that smelled of bleach and glass cleaner. The only color was pale pink towels and a pink bath mat. The countertops and walls were bare.

“There are towels, sheets…everything you’ll need in the linen closet. I just changed the sheets on the bed and scrubbed the bathroom.” Terri smiled sheepishly. “I’m slightly fanatical about keeping things clean and tidy.”

“Linen closet?” Carrie asked, gesturing to a pair of louvered doors.

“Laundry.” She pulled the doors open to show Carrie a stacked washer and dryer.

“Nice.” She didn’t miss the days before she had money, when she had to haul her dirty laundry down three flights of stairs and either sit in a dingy little laundry room down below the building in the parking structure, or drive two miles to the nearest Laundromat.

The second bedroom was set up as an office, with a desk, bookcase, file cabinet and printer stand. Again, nothing fancy, but very functional, and the window overlooked a postage-stamp-sized backyard.

“This is perfect,” she told Terri.

“This room, you mean?”

“No, the whole place. It’s exactly what I need.”

“You really think so?”

“I do. Can I see the kitchen?”

“Of course. Right this way.”

The kitchen, which was—surprise—also on the pale side, was as clean and organized as the rest of the house, and separated by a wall from the living space. She preferred a more open concept, but how much time would she be spending there really?

“I don’t cook, so it’s not very impressive,” Terri said. “Just your basic pots and pans, dishes and utensils.”

“I don’t cook very often either,” Carrie told her. “I like to, but I never have the time. I typically work eighty-hour weeks.”

“I used to be like that, too, but my ob-gyn thinks all the stress is screwing with my cycle, and we’re trying to get pregnant. So, I cut my hours way back. Used to be, when you opened the freezer it was full of frozen dinners. Thank goodness for husbands who love to cook. Although I’ve gained about ten pounds since the wedding.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Less than two months.”

“Oh, so you’re still newlyweds.”

“Technically. But we’ve been best friends since we were nine years old. And I don’t want to be one of those moms in her fifties carting her kids to grade school, or pushing seventy when they graduate high school. For a process that’s supposed to be so natural, you would not believe how complicated it can be.”

It wasn’t something Carrie had ever thought about. She didn’t know much about pregnancy, or even babies. She just assumed that when you were ready, you had sex at the right time and
poof,
you got pregnant. That was the way it seemed to work for her college friends who had gotten married and started families. Hell, there were even a handful of girls in high school who seemed to have no problems getting themselves knocked up. A few of them multiple times.

“So what do you think of the condo?” Terri asked. “Again, I won’t be insulted if you don’t like it, or if you’d like to look at other places before making a decision.”

“I think,” Carrie said with a smile, “I’ll take it.”

Six

“Y
ou’re sure?” Terri asked.

Carrie laughed. “Yes, I’m very sure. Did you bring a lease agreement?”

“It’s in my coat. I’ll get it.”

They took a seat at the kitchen table and went over the paperwork. When it came to filling in the price of rent, Terri looked over at her. “So we’re talking rent plus utilities, including cable TV and internet.”

“Name your price,” Carrie told her, and she offered up a sum that seemed awfully low for all of that, especially in the heart of a major city. “Are you sure you don’t want more? I don’t expect any sort of special treatment. I want to pay what’s fair.”

“Nick and I talked about it. We’re not looking to make a profit, just cover expenses.”

“You’re positive?”

She nodded. “That’s the way things are done in the Caroselli family. They’re a very generous bunch. They suck people into the fold.”

“Is a personal check okay?”

“If it bounces, I’ll know where to find you,” Terri joked.

Carrie wrote the check out for three months’ worth of rent, tore it from the book and handed it to Terri, feeling guilty to be paying such a low sum.

“Are you sure you want to pay all three months up front?”

“It’s just easier for me that way. One less thing I have to worry about remembering.” She slid her checkbook back into her bag. “So when you said that the Carosellis
suck
people in, what exactly did you mean by that?”

She must have looked apprehensive because Terri chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing creepy or weird. Take me, for example. When I moved to Chicago, I was nine. I had just lost my parents and I was living with an aunt who wasn’t exactly thrilled to play Mommy to some bratty kid she had never met before. I guess you could say that I was a lost soul. Then I became friends with Nick, and I met his family, and it was like they adopted me. Nick likes to joke that if his mom had to choose between the two of us, she would pick me.”

“That’s really nice,” Carrie said. “Everyone should have family.”

“Do you have a big family?”

“I have a few cousins, and a couple of aunts and uncles spread out across the southwest, but I haven’t seen them in years. Mostly it’s just me and my mom.”

“You’re close?” she asked, and when Carrie didn’t answer right away, Terri said, “I’m sorry, it’s really none of my business. The Carosellis are also very nosy, and I guess it rubbed off on me.”

“It’s okay. It’s just that my relationship with my mom is a little…complicated. We don’t really see each other very often. I work a lot and she spends most of her time in a bottle.”

Terri nodded. “Ah, I see.”

“There’s a lot of resentment from my end, and apathy from hers. I have the typical characteristics of a child with an alcoholic parent.” She paused and said, “Was that too much information?”

“No, not at all. I didn’t even know there were typical characteristics. Which ones do you have, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m super-responsible and I take myself way too seriously. Your basic overachiever. When I’m trying to have fun, I feel as if I should be doing something more constructive. But due to a lack of self-esteem, I feel that nothing I do is good enough. I also have trust issues, so I have trouble forming intimate relationships. And telling you all of this is probably just some unconscious way of mine to push you away before I’m able to form any sort of friendship or bond.”

“Wow, that’s intense,” Terri said.

“Yeah, those psych courses I took in college were a real eye-opener. Up until then, under the circumstances, I figured I was fairly well-adjusted. Psychology was actually my major for a while, until it dawned on me that no one as screwed up as I was had any right to be counseling anyone else. That’s an enormous responsibility and there was no way I could trust myself to be completely impartial. So I switched my major to marketing. I’m still using what I learned about psychology, without the possibility of screwing with someone’s head.” She paused and said, “Well, not in a bad way at least. I just encourage them to buy stuff.”

“It seems as though you aren’t so screwed up that you didn’t realize you’re screwed up.” Terri frowned. “Does that make sense?”

“It does, actually.”

“Hey, do you have plans for tomorrow night?”

Her first thought was of Rob, which was wrong in so many ways. “Nope. I don’t really know anyone in the city.”

“Nick and I are having some friends over and I’d really like you to come.”

“Really? After everything I just told you?”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll fit right in.”

Carrie wasn’t quite sure how to take that, then decided it was probably meant as a compliment. “In that case, I’d love to.”

“It’s at seven,” she said, writing down the address. “Do you have a way to get there?”

“I can take a cab.”

“Or I could ask Rob to swing by and pick you up. It’s on his way.”

“Oh, I think it would be better if I took a cab.”

“If you’re worried about getting home safe, Rob isn’t much of a drinker. Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing him drunk.”

“The night I met him he drank a lot,” Carrie said, not even realizing what she was saying until the words left her mouth. Everyone was supposed to think their first meeting was in the conference room.

“Yeah, I heard,” Terri said.

She blinked. “You did?”

“Word of advice, if you don’t want me to know something, don’t tell Nick. We’re one of those couples who actually tell each other everything.”

“Good to know.” Carrie recalled the way she had announced to the entire table at the diner about her and Rob’s affair,
and
what happened in Rob’s office, meaning Terri probably knew about that, too.

Way to go, genius. What had Alice said about her impulsive tendencies? She really needed to think things through before she opened her mouth. She wondered how many others in the Caroselli family knew.

“Did he happen to tell anyone else?” she asked Terri.

“I doubt it. And I don’t think Tony would tell anyone either.”

She hoped not. She didn’t want people to get the impression she slept around, because nothing could be further from the truth.

“For the record, that’s not typical behavior for me,” she told Terri.

“And for what’s it worth, it’s not typical behavior for him either,” Terri said. “You must have made quite an impression on him. Personally, I think you two make an adorable couple.”

“Oh, but we aren’t. A couple, I mean. I make it a rule not to date people I work with. If I’d had even the slightest clue as to who he was when I met him in that bar—”

“Carrie, I understand. Believe me. Maybe it was just…fate.”

If it was, fate had played a very cruel trick on both of them. “We couldn’t be more wrong for each other. In more ways than I can even count.”

“Six months ago, if you had told me I would be married to Nick and trying to have a baby, I would have thought you were nuts. Yet here we are.”

“So what happened? What changed?”

“That is a very long story, and I promise to tell you about it when you come to the party tomorrow.”