Melting Into You (Due South Book 2) (30 page)

“Ms. Murphy?”

She tucked her phone into her bag. “Ah, yes, George?”

George’s freckled nose crinkled. “Do we really have to have a math test now? Can’t we have it this afternoon?”

Kezia stood and ruffled his choppily cut red hair. “We have a times table test every Wednesday morning, George, you know this. Sometimes it’s better to get hard things over with first.”

Like dealing with her friends at lunch.

When Kezia hurried into Due South’s restaurant just after midday, Piper and Shaye chatted away in the co
rner, oblivious to the words
I’m having a crisis
tattooed on her brow.

“At last,” Shaye said as Kezia slid into the empty seat. “We’ve only got an hour.”

“We ordered your usual.” Piper poured her a glass of water from the carafe.

“Maybe I don’t feel like chicken today. Maybe I’d like something
different. Pasta for a change.”

Silence reigned as she dumped her purse on the floor and smoothed her dress over her thighs. The kind of silence she knew meant her two friends exchanged
what the heck
glances.

Shaye’s
eyebrows twitched together. “But you never order pasta. Hon, are you okay?”

“Yeah, what’s got you bent outta shape?” Piper leaned forward, hazel eyes slitting into interrogation mode.

Kezia’s hands coiled into fists. The restaurant’s turquoise-painted walls, pretty sea-life themed watercolors, and crackling flames in the open fireplace usually soothed her. Today? Not so much. Her stomach churned—nausea? Oh,
Gesù
!

She deliberately relaxed her fingers, pressing her palm to the tablecloth. “Nothing. It’s just been a busy morning. Sorry for the bitchiness.” Swirling the ice c
ubes in her glass she paused, then took a sip.

Piper crossed her giraffe-long
legs. “Time of the month, huh?”

The water Kezia swallowed got sucked into her lungs. She clapped a hand over her mouth, coughing har
d enough to make her eyes burn.

Shaye hitched her chair closer and offered a napkin. “Went down the wrong way?”

Kezia nodded.
Oh yeah
. A coughing fit disguised the tears streaming down her cheeks brilliantly. After she could finally breathe without choking, she dabbed the napkin to her eyes.

“Wow, embarrassing,” she croaked.

“Doesn’t explain why you’re still crying.” Piper’s flat stare bored into her.

“She’s not—” Shaye leaped to Kezia’s
defense, craned forward, examined her face, then said, “Wait. She totally is.”

Kezia touched a finger to her cheek.
Well, look at that—wet with tears.

“Hon?” Shaye patted her hand. “Did something ha
ppen with Ben? Did he upset you?”

If only it were as simple as Ben upsetting her. Like telling her
her
culo
looked fat in those jeans. Or she’d gone overboard with the basil in her baked Ziti. More tears leaked out. Dear Lord, she was making quite the spectacle. Hormones? Was that why she couldn’t stop crying? Her chest hitched.

Piper’s lips twisted into a snarl, and she leaned over to hiss, “I’ll kick his bloody ass! What-did-he-do?”

Shaking her head, Kezia scrunched the napkin in her fist and blinked rapidly. A local diner picking up a whiff of scandal was the last thing she needed. “He didn’t do anything—give me a second.”

“Breathe,
Kez.” Shaye shifted her chair to give Kezia space and refilled her water glass.

Huffing in and out of a blocked nose, Kezia straigh
tened her spine.
Breathe
. Hah! Breathing didn’t help loosen the iron fist squeezing her lungs. Her shoulders slumped again and she whispered, “I’m three days late.”

“Holy guacamole,” said Shaye.

“Fuck a duck,” said Piper.

“Ladies?”
Lani, their server, arrived at the table with a tray. “Everything okay, chef?” She placed a plate in front of Shaye.

“We’re fine, thanks.”

The younger woman turned her curious gaze on Kezia, so she adopted a bright smile—
just three girls doing lunch, nothing to see here.
“We’re wedding planning. Piper wants the bridesmaids to wear orange ruffles.”

“Uh-huh.”
Lani unloaded her tray and sauntered off, muttering, “Weddings? It’s your funeral, white girl.”

“Three days might not mean—you know.” Shaye left her flatware alone, drumming her fingers on the t
able top.

“I’m reliable.” Kezia prodded the lump of dead fowl on her plate with a fork.
Ugh
. Zero appetite. “Every twenty-eight days, sometimes twenty-seven or twenty-nine, but usually it’s like clockwork.”

“We’re women, sometimes our hormones and stuff get screwed up. Doesn’t mean you need to pick out knitting wool.” Piper sawed off a chunk of her steak. “Did you order one of those test kits online?”

“Yes. It should arrive in the mail tomorrow,” Kezia said.

“And Ben? Are you going to tell him?” Shaye asked.

“We’ve been extra careful since we came home from Queenstown.” She put down her fork and squeezed Shaye’s hand. “Piper’s right, it’s probably hormones. Plus, I’ve had some big life changes, and maybe the stress has affected me.”

“Falling in love shouldn’t be stressful.” Shaye picked up h
er flatware with a small frown.

Piper snorted, coughed, and thumped her breastbone with a fist. “On what world other than a Disney-animated one is that statement true?
Puh-lease.”

“Well, when I fall in love with the perfect guy, there won’t be any stress.” Shaye scooped up a forkful of rocket and beetroot salad and stuffed it defiantly into her mouth.

Piper rolled her eyes and sipped her water. “So. Who would’ve thought, you and our tall, dark, and cranky brother? In
lurv
.”

Kezia’s stomach barrel-rolled
. “Love hasn’t been mentioned.”

“Well, don’t expect a greeting card or status-update from him to announce it.” Shaye pointed her fork at Kezia. “Ben holds onto his emotions like a h
oarder holds onto his clutter.”

“He’s totally gone on you though, I can tell,” Piper said. “West agrees—says his mate’s single status days are numbered.”

“We’re not that serious.”

“
You’re
serious though, aren’t you hon?” Shaye said.

The kind of serious where she wouldn’t easily r
ecover. But hey, nobody needed to know how one-sided this thing with Ben really was. Kezia shook her head and tried a laugh, which squeaked out forced and half strangled.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. And until I can figure out where Ben fits in all of this and if we’d survive”—
she lowered her voice even further, since Mrs. T sat only two tables away—“a positive test result, there’s no point stirring up a hornets’ nest because I’m a few days late.”

“Fair enough,” said Piper.

Kezia closed her eyes for a moment. “I don’t want those girls hurt if things between Ben and me don’t work out.”

“But
Kez, why wouldn’t they work out?” Shaye said. “If you are—you know—Ben’s changed being with you and having Jade and Zoe around. I’m sure he’d be happy.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Kezia offered Shaye a weak smile, then met Piper’s sympathetic gaze across the t
able. “Well, we’d better get stuck into this amazing lunch before it goes cold.
Buon
appetito!
”

Kezia swallowed a mouthful of what tasted like chicken-flavored-sawdust and washe
d it down with a gulp of water.

Yes, anyone could see Ben had stepped up to the f
atherhood plate and knocked the ball out of the park. But his acceptance of Jade didn’t necessarily extend to him making room in his life for her and Zoe. Now the added complication of her being a two-for-one deal—the prospect of an unplanned pregnancy could sabotage even long-term relationships.

It didn’t matter that he
cared
about her. It didn’t matter that a little part of her heart thrilled to the thought of carrying his child. When a person cared about the other but wouldn’t ever experience the kind of bone-deep,
can’t live without you
, sickness and health, to death do us part,
true wuv
…

Well. True
wuv for her and Ben would remain an impossible dream.

Chapter 15

Repetitive burps sounded from his jeans pocket.

Ben wiped his hands on a dishtowel and dug out his cellphone. Jade had fiddled with his ringtone again. Brat. One of her favorite games—switch to the most annoying ringtone she could find.

A grin still twisted his lips when he answered. “Yep?”

“I’m at Erin’s.”

Ford
.

Brows drawing together, Ben glanced around his kitchen and sink full of dirty dishes. Looks like it’d be eggs on toast tonight. “You’re interrupting me to gloat about your coffee break?”

“The ferry’s in.” A fast huff of air on the other end of the line. “I saw Marci.”

Ben’s heart slammed into his throat and t
hrobbed there like a bad tooth.

“Wait a sec.” He walked to the doorway and poked his head through to the hall. Jade’s bedroom door r
emained closed and she was singing along to the tinny sounds of his iPod—another thing of his she’d commandeered. She was occupied making party bags for her birthday sleepover tomorrow.

He shut the hallway door and put the phone to his ear again. “You sure.”

“I know what your kid’s mother looks like, Harland—blonde hair, big boobs, and she’s dragging a suitcase.”

The panicked concern in his mate’s voice shot a
nother bolt of adrenalin into Ben.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Didn’t ask. Just giving you a head’s up—she’s headed your way.”

Ben swore, raking his hands through h
is hair. “Thanks, Ford. Later.”

He disconnected the phone and hurried into the kitchen to rinse some of dishes crowding his sink. God knew why she was here, but like hell would he look like a slob when she arrived.

Marci.
With a suitcase.

Damned if he knew what that meant, but the knock on his front door told him he’d soon find out.

He stalked down the hallway and yanked open the door. Marci stood on his deck in painted-on jeans and a low-cut red top. On Kezia, red glowed against her skin like a glass of expensive Pinot. On Marci, the bright color looked tacky and washed out—a cheap Rosé.

Her smile lost a few amps of brightness. “Oh. You were expecting me?”

“A mate spotted you on the wharf.”

“The guy with the dreadlocks? I saw him staring.” She cocked her hip, tapping the toe of some clumpy-heeled shoe that probably had a fancy name in chick-speak, but which he
didn’t give a rat’s ass about.

Give him
Kezzy in her rubber boots any day.

“Why are you here?” He didn’t open the door wider, even when she dragged her hot-pink suitcase closer to her side.

“That’s not very friendly.”

“We’re not friends, Marci.” He wanted to add more, but once again the brain-tongue connection refused to cooperate.

Friends don’t keep catastrophic secrets from each other. Friends don’t spring a kid on you and then abandon that kid.

“
Hmmph.” She tossed her hair over one shoulder. “It’s my baby’s ninth birthday tomorrow. I wanted to be here to help her celebrate.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re not going to try to keep me from her, are you?” Her mascara-gunked eyes narrowed.

“You left your baby.” The nuclear-reactor that was his temper crept into the red zone as he stepped out o
nto the porch. “You left her with a man you barely knew.”

Marci’s gaze cut to the left, and she backed up a step, her ass hitting the suitcase
’s handle. “You’re her father.”

The tremor in her voice stopped him dead. He wasn’t a bully about to bail her up in the corner.

“Mum?”

Jade in the hallway behind him.

Blood rushed in his head, dizzying him for a moment as he twisted around. A tiny part of him—yeah, right—a
big
part of him had hoped to send Marci away before Jade discovered she was here.

Sparky flew past Jade’s legs, a yapping brown and white blur. The dog stopped in the doorway and growled low in her throat. Clever girl. Ben scooped up the dog before she could attack Marci’s ankles, but by God, the
furball would get an extra biscuit in her bowl tonight.

“Baby!” Marci ducked around him into the house. Clattering down the hallway, she grabbed Jade, squas
hing his daughter’s little face into her boobs. “Oh, Mummy missed you so much, sweetiepie! She weally, weally did.”