There were a lot of things Evie Rossi could have confessed right then in Bella’s. She could have told me she had a regrettable tattoo on her lower back from a drunken spring break. She could have admitted she was planning to audition for a game show. Hell, she could have told me she had a three-way last night. None of it would have shocked me like the words that just came out of her mouth.

“Did you say pregnant?”

“Mmhmm.” Her lips pouted. When did they get so pillowy and lush? Fuck. “On my own.” She wagged a finger. “Without a husband. I don’t need anyone to have a baby. I can do it without a ring on this finger. I don’t need what Frannie has. I can have a family on my own.”

“That’s the big project? Not a movie you’re trying to produce? Or going back to school to be a theater teacher? You want to have a baby?”

She nodded. “I’m tired of waiting. And I’m going to turn thirty, Jer. Thirty.”

“We’ve established how old we are. Same age here.”

“So, you know my clock is ticking. And there’s no one here. And I’m tired of hearing my mom tell my sister how disappointed she is I’m not married. Oh, Evelyn,” she mimicked, “Why don’t you just date Stan from the Farmers Market?”

“Stan Sedgwick from the debate team?”

“Fuck. You really do remember everyone. Yes, that Stan. I don’t want to date him. Or marry him. Or have kids with him.” She pounded her fist on the table, inhaling deeply. “Do you know he has a creepy mustache?”

I shook my head. “Had no idea.”

“Oh yeah. Like mugshot creepy. So I’m going to have a baby. On my own. I can do the entire thing by myself. And my parents will finally have a complete family and stop harassing me every damn day about dying before they see their grandchildren. There’s always a cloud over my head that I’ve failed them as a daughter.”

She was fired up. “Doesn’t seem reasonable to me. But I have to ask. How are you going to accomplish this with no prospects in town?”

She sighed. “Listen to this. I calculated the entire time table. Because really, if I met someone now. Let’s say hypothetically someone moved to Newton Hills tomorrow—that’s a long shot, but we’ll pretend. And we dated and maybe in a year we’d be engaged.”

I tried to follow along through the wine haze. “Yeah. You’re engaged next year. Got it.”

“By then I’m thirty-one. And we’d have to be married a year or more before we even started trying. Because there’s that whole buy a house, move in together, figure out how to live together thing. So now I’m looking at maybe thirty-three.”

“Ok?” I was confused as hell. What in the fuck was she talking about? Suddenly she was thirty-three?

“Wait until I’m thirty-three? Three more years from now? No way. And that’s the absolute best case scenario. No. I’m not waiting around for some guy to fall into my lap. No. I want a baby now.”

She sounded resolute on her decision. “All right, you have a plan then?”

“I do, but I might have run into some hiccups.”

I poured the last of the wine into both of our glasses. “Go on, tell me about it. I’m dying to hear this part.” Her story had taken a turn. A big fucking detour from where she started.

“Money.” She took a big sip. “I’m doing in vitro, but you have no idea how expensive it is. I can’t afford another appointment until I pay what I owe the fertility clinic.” She slouched in the booth. “I don’t know when I can try again. I’m back to the beginning. I’m still not any closer to being pregnant and every second I sit here I keep getting closer to thirty.”

“You’re right, I don’t have any idea. It’s not something I’ve looked into.” I studied her. “What kind of money are you talking?”

“But of course, money’s no object for you, right? You could pay for a hundred treatments. A thousand treatments. And I’m too in debt to afford one.” She threw her hands in the air. “All I want is one baby. Just one.” Her eyes landed on me. “That’s not asking the universe for much, is it? My own baby?”

“It doesn’t sound like it to me.”

“My sister has three. I want one.”

My hands pushed into the tabletop and I slid around to Evie’s side of the booth. I put an arm around her. She nuzzled into the open space next to my chest.

“I sound crazy, don’t I? Hysterical and hormonal. I’m drunk with Jeremy Hartwell and all I can talk about is in vitro that’s too expensive. I just told you my biggest secret. No one else knows. Why did I tell you that?”

My fingers dug into her shoulder, pulling her closer to me. “Probably because we’re drunk.”

“Probably.”

“Evie?”

“Hmm?” She snuggled against my chest as if she belonged there.

“I have something even crazier to tell you.”

She sighed. “Are you trying to top my sob story?”

“I think I can.” I tried to stroke her hair, but her ponytail holder snapped and it fell around her shoulders. She didn’t seem to care. It felt like silk between my fingers.

“Now I remember.” Her hand tucked against my waist. She wrapped herself around me like a cat.

“Remember what?”

“That was your thing. You were always so competitive in high school.”

“Competitive?” I huffed. “I was a teenage boy. All teenage boys are competitive.”

“But you still are.”

I wrapped her hair around my hand, using it as leverage to lift her face toward mine.

“I fucking swear to you, this time I’m not being competitive.”

She nodded. “All right.” She chewed on her lip. “Then what is it?”

I could smell the wine on her breath and a sweet scent of citrus in her hair. Holding her against my chest made my cock twitch. Something I was fucking certain shouldn’t be happening right now. We were two old friends sharing shitty family sob stories.

“I told you the attorney read my father’s will today.”

“Yes, and it went horribly wrong.” There was innocence in her eyes, mixed with something wildly alluring.

“Depends whose side you’re on.”

“Well, I’m on yours, of course.” Her smile was cute.

I traced the side of her jaw. “See, what the attorney told me today is that I’m supposed to inherit almost all of my father’s assets. More than half a billion dollars—if I want it.”

She gasped. “Jer, that’s incredible.” I don’t know when she decided to shorten my name, but it seemed like it was something she had always done. As if we were closer than we actually were.

I shook my head. “There’s a catch.”

“You have to work for the company and be a stuffy CEO the rest of your life?”

“Oh no. That would have been kind of my father. Generous by his standards. I think I might have been able to stomach that.”

“Then what? What do you have to do to gain your inheritance? What could possibly be so bad?”

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Evie had laced that Italian wine with truth serum. I wasn’t going to tell anyone what my parents had done. I swore I’d never repeat how they planned to trap me in the family business and ensnare me with a bloodline that would always tie us together. It was humiliating. Forcing me to live a life I didn’t want.

I looked into her big brown eyes. Soft, trusting eyes. And I spilled my fucking guts.

“I have to get married. And I have to get my new wife pregnant. And then. Only then. Do I get half a billion dollars.”