EMBER - Part Three (The EMBER Series, #3) (3 page)

"Marry me, Bridget," he whispers the words as his hand clutches mine. "I love you. I'll love our son forever. Marry me before you have the baby so we can be a family."

I
'm not one of those women who have sat for hours endlessly imagining the moment when the man I loved would drop to one knee and propose to me. I've never actually given it any thought. Marriage is something I definitely want but right now, the fact that Dane asked me to be his wife is only trumpeted by the reality that he told me he loved me and that he believes I'm having his baby. I'm not sure how I ran this conversation so far off the rails that he thinks I'm pregnant too but that ends now.

"I'm not having a baby." I pull on his hands trying to get him back to his feet. "I was talking about Maisy's baby."

He almost falls onto his jean covered ass as he scurries to his feet. "What? What did you just say?"

I repeat it all because I'm not sure which part of the truth he didn't catch the first time around. "I'm not pregnant, Dane. I know that Maisy is. I know she's having your son."

"You're not having our baby?"

I don't look up. I can hear the raw emotion in his voice. I don't know how he jumped to that as a foregone conclusion considering the fact that his ex-girlfriend is already pregnant. "I was talking about Maisy. I found out last night that she's pregnant."

"Wait." His voice is breathless. "Who told you she's pregnant?"

It's not an outright admission, but it's not a denial either.

"No one," I begin before I stop to adjust the hem of my sweater. "I met her weeks ago. Judging by how pregnant she was then, she may have already had the baby by now."

He exhales slowly. "You've never met Maisy. There's no way you've ever met her."

I fidget on my feet. "I met her the day before I met you. I mean I saw her. We never formally introduced ourselves."

His arms cross over his chest. "What? Are you talking about the day before I saw you at the restaurant? That was the day before my birthday."

It may be a stall tactic or it could be that he's genuinely looking for confirmation of the exact moment I laid eyes on his pregnant almost fiancé. "I saw the two of you at the museum that day. It was the MOMA. I was there drawing people. I drew her, but you already know that."

"Slow down." His hands dart into the air between us. "You're not making any sense. You didn't draw Maisy. It couldn't have been her. I can't remember the last time I was at the MOMA and Maisy hates art."

He's the one not making any sense. He'd held that pencil portrait in his hands when he'd been on my bed the first time I showed my work to him. I'd watched in silence as he'd studied that drawing in particular. It had struck a chord deep within me when I drew it and since his were the first eyes, besides mine, that saw it, I wanted to gauge his reaction. I'll never forget how his lips curled at the sides as his eyes slid over the paper. He'd lowered his head slightly as his gaze took in each fine line of the portrait.

"You saw the drawing," I begin as I motion down the hallway towards the closed door of the spare bedroom. "I showed it to you."

His eyes follow the path of my hand. "You didn't show it to me. I haven't seen it. Was it at the gallery?"

I tug on the small pendant that's hanging from a thin silver chain around my neck. "I didn't take it to the gallery. It's here.  You saw it right after we met. It was on that night when you asked to see my drawings in my old apartment."

He scrubs his left hand over his forehead. "No. There wasn't a drawing of Maisy there."

I've only ever assumed that Dane is honest with me. Before yesterday I may have questioned the legal merit of Maisy's refusal to leave his house, but I'd never actually believed that he was consciously withholding the truth from me. Maybe that means I'm naïve and unaware or perhaps it just means that I wanted whatever we had to continue into my future so I chose to ignore the obvious signs that he wasn't being completely transparent.

I motion for him to follow me down the hallway. I don't look back as I take each step quickly until I reach the door of the spare bedroom. I push it open with a quick twist of my hand on the doorknob. I turn towards the easel where the pencil portrait is sitting near the window. "It's there. That's Maisy."

His eyes scan my face before he turns his attention towards the drawing. He takes a step in that direction and as he stops, his hands drop to his sides. I watch from behind him as his head tilts slightly to the left, before it moves to the right. "Are you talking about that drawing right there? Is it the drawing of the woman with the long dark hair? The woman in the wheelchair?"

I nod before I realize that he can't see the motion. "Yes. That's Maisy."

He pivots on his heel until he's facing me directly again. His brow softens as he looks down at me. "That's not Maisy. I don't know who told you that was her, but they're wrong."

"V
anessa saw the drawing." I gesture towards it with a dip of my chin. "She told me it was Maisy."

He cranes his neck around so he can look directly at the pencil portrait again. "I have seen this. You showed it to me weeks ago."

"Why didn't you tell me then that it was Maisy?"

He turns back to eye me warily before he moves closer to the easel. His hands dart out to grab the paper, cradling it carefully. "I remember looking at this. You showed me other drawings that night. There was one of a woman outside a flower shop."

There might have been. I can't recall exactly what each portrait looked like. The only clear memory I have of that night is the expression on his face when he was looking at my work. He was entranced and when he'd told me that he thought it was gallery quality, it hadn't mattered that he was a fireman who appreciated art from the vantage point of a frequent visitor to the city's museums. At that time, his words meant more to me than any that even the most educated art critic would have shared.

My chest expands on a deep breath. "You looked at that portrait of Maisy back then and you didn't tell me it was her. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't tell you because it's not her." He holds the paper in the air so it catches the early afternoon light that is streaming in from the window. "This isn't Maisy."

"Vanessa was sure it was Maisy."

"She's never even met Maisy." He shakes his head so slightly that the motion is almost unnoticeable. "I never introduced Maisy to her. My mother knows Maisy. My brother does too, but that's it."

His brother?
  The casual mention of a sibling I've never heard of only reiterates the reality that I know little about his life. I've never met any of his family beyond Garrett. I wouldn't know Dane's brother, or his mother, if I struck up a conversation with them on the subway. They're strangers to me, just as Maisy was until I saw her at the museum.

"Your mother was at the hospital with Maisy a few weeks ago." I try not to let all of the self-righteous indignation I'm feeling seep into the words. "Vanessa met her then. She saw them there together again two days ago. Vanessa said you were there too."

His jaw tightens. "My mother was with Maisy at the hospital? You're sure?"

I'm not sure of anything other than the fact that I feel as though I've fallen off a ledge into a bottomless pit of confusion. I don't know who to believe but I do know that Vanessa has never led me astray. She may view Zoe as her closest friend, but we've forged a bond the past few months that feels solid and secure. I doubt she'd willfully deceive me about the portrait. She saw Maisy in the woman's face in the drawing. Apparently, Dane doesn’t see the same familiarity.

I tap my shoe against the floor. "I'm sure. That's what Vanessa told me."

His brow furrows for no more than a few seconds before he drops his gaze back down to the pencil portrait. He studies it intently as he mumbles something under his breath about the color of her hair and its length. "Did this woman have a mole under her eye?"

"A what?"

His fingers brush across the left side of his face. "Did the woman in the portrait have a mole under her left eye? A small mole? Was it there?"

I pull my hand to my lips as I lean forward to peer at the drawing. I hadn't included that detail. I had noticed it almost immediately but as I stood next to her and finished the drawing, I hadn't added the mole. Once I got home from the museum, I finessed the fine lines and then I'd slipped the paper into the cardboard box with the dozens of others I'd completed. I meant to add the mole, but I'd forgotten.

His words are less a question than a confirmation. He wouldn't know about the mole unless he knew it was there, adding to the beauty of her face. "Yes."

"She's pregnant?" he asks calmly. "You thought Maisy was pregnant because this woman is?"

I dip my chin towards the paper. "That woman told me she was having a son. She was there with a man. I just saw his back. He kissed her belly."

He swallows hard as he pulls in a deep, stuttered breath. "Was she happy? Did they look happy?"

"I didn't see his face," I begin cautiously. "I thought...I thought last night it was you there with her."

"It wasn't me." He eyes me carefully. "Did they look happy, Bridget?"

I nod slowly. "She was really happy."

His hand leaps to his chin as his gaze falls once again to the portrait. "She deserves to be happy. She deserves it all."

"Who?" I ask tentatively.

"Cleo," he says softly. "This has to be Cleo."

"I don't understand." I reach for the edge of the portrait. "Who is Cleo?"

"She's Maisy's sister." He slides the paper into my hands. "I've been looking for her for months."

I
stare down at the screen of my smartphone. I saw the resemblance between Maisy Trimble and her sister, Cleo, the moment Dane handed my phone back to me. He'd insisted on finding a picture of Maisy through an Internet search. It was a corporate headshot posted on the website of the financial firm she works at. I scan the details of her face before my gaze stops on her name. Mae Trimble. It's no wonder that Zoe and I couldn’t find her.

"Her name is Mae?" I don't look up from the screen as I ask the question.

"She always hated that name." Dane's long index finger taps the edge of my phone. "Both sisters were named after their grandmothers. Cleo loves her name. Maisy has learned to like hers but she asked me to call her Maisy when we first met, so I did."

I study her face as I listen to the man she once loved telling me about her. It feels invasive and intimate in a way that I can't fully comprehend. I've never met her, yet now that I know that I spent a few brief moments with her sister, I feel a connection to her. Maybe that's defined within my relationship with Dane or maybe it's more about the fact that I no longer feel threatened by Maisy.

"We look nothing alike," I comment. "She looks completely different than me."

He chuckles softly. "Why would you look alike?"

"She's beautiful." I slide my fingers over the screen of the phone to enlarge the picture. "Her hair is brown. Her eyes are too. Most men have a type."

"You're beautiful, Bridget." He tugs on the edge of the phone. "I think you're the most beautiful woman in the world."

They may be words meant to placate me since I've just seen an image of his ex-girlfriend for the first time. I don't need that reassurance though. I've spent the night and most of this morning believing that Cleo was Maisy.

Cleo's smile is captivating. Her face is gorgeous and the glow that radiated from her may have been partially related to her pregnancy, but I have little doubt that it's always a part of her. She's everything that a woman could strive to be and when I thought she was Maisy, I didn't feel threatened. I only felt an obscure sense of gratitude to the universe that Dane had walked into my life. 

"You said that you've been looking for her." I motion towards the portrait with my hand. Dane had set it back on the easel after he took my smartphone from me to find a picture of Maisy so I could compare it to her sister.

"I have been," he says quietly. "We had a disagreement."

"A disagreement?" I ask even though I'm not sure I have a right to know anything about Dane's relationship with Maisy's sister. I'm still basking in the relief I feel knowing that he's not having a baby with his ex-girlfriend.

His gaze roams over my face. "Maisy and Cleo had a disagreement. I was pulled into it. We lost touch after that."

In an age of smartphones, social media and email, it's hard to imagine anyone losing touch. There has to be more to it than Dane's letting on but I'm too exhausted and feeling too protective of myself to push. "I'm sorry to hear that. It seems as though Cleo was important to you."

"Cleo was like a big sister to me." He rubs his left bicep with his right hand. "She looked a lot different when I knew her. Her hair was shorter and blonde. She looks happy in that portrait."

"She was very happy."

He rakes his hand through his hair. "I'm glad. I miss her."

I don't respond because I'm unsure of what I could offer that would provide him any comfort at all. I have questions about what transpired between us just before he realized I drew Cleo.  He dropped to his knee and proposed to me under the weight of what he thought was a shared child between the two of us. He professed his love for me and now in the shadow of all of that, his mind is focused on that delicate, yet strong, woman I met in the museum. It's a woman who is a part of his past, a direct connection to his last love and someone he obviously cares for deeply.

I may have gotten out of this with my relationship with Dane still intact but something tells me that now that he's gotten a glimpse into Cleo's future, he's not going to rest until he finds her.

***

"I
know that you have a lot of questions." His lips flutter against mine. "I want to answer those."

I nod as I reach up to grab hold of the front of his blue dress shirt. "I need you to answer those, Dane."

His mouth finds mine again but this time the kiss is deeper, lush and fueled by more than a need to quiet my lingering doubts. "I wish I could stay and make love to you. I need to be inside of you."