Twenty
Zach muscled past his brother. Or tried anyway. Chase, despite his suit and community standing, pushed back.
He banded an arm around Zach, which might look like he was consoling his younger brother, but felt more like he was attempting to crush Zach’s ribs until they audibly snapped.
Through his teeth, Chase said, “Hold it together,” as he shut the door to the balcony behind them. “We’re outside having a brotherly chat.”
Chase released him and pulled his shoulders back and Zach mirrored his stance. Inside family and friends dashed concerned looks to the balcony and then in the direction Penelope had left.
“You have thirty seconds. I’m not going to stand out here when I should be going after her.”
“Stefanie went after her. Didn’t you see?” Chase replied calmly. Years of experience in the public eye had made him adept at handling a crisis situation with ease. “If Pen wanted to talk to you, she’d still be standing on this balcony. Everyone inside is waiting for an announcement. Granted, they got one, but it wasn’t the one they were expecting.”
Zach thrust his hand into his hair. Of course it hadn’t been what they were expecting. Pen’s reaction to his proposal hadn’t been what he was expecting.
“Your options,” Chase continued, “are to either leave and let the gossip begin. Or stay and offer a generic explanation.”
“Like what?”
“If it were me? I’d apologize with no more explanation than a ‘my fault.’” Chase demonstrated with his hands in surrender pose.
“My fault,” Zach growled. “My fault? It’s my fault for asking Penelope to marry me? For asking the woman carrying my baby to stay with me the rest of our lives?”
“Lower your voice.”
“You’re as bad as the rest of them, Chase. I don’t give a fuck about public opinion or what anyone in that room needs.”
“Yes, that’s clear.” Chase reprimanded in an irritatingly calm tone. “You only care about one person. You.”
That was it. He’d had it. Had it with trying to do the right thing and being crucified for it.
“You know what?” Zach shouldered by Chase and gripped the handle to the door. “Tell them whatever the hell you want.”
* * *
“Penelope! Wait.”
Pen paused on the sidewalk, surprised that Stefanie had followed her down. Stef had been clear upstairs that she didn’t appreciate being left in the dark.
“Where are you going?” the younger woman called as she clipped to a stop next to Pen.
“You were right in there. You deserved to know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t.”
“You should be. I’m mad at you and my idiot brother for keeping a secret this huge from me. I kept your pregnancy to myself! I could’ve kept this quiet, too.” Stefanie stepped closer, kindness in her eyes. “But no matter how mad I am, I’d still give you a ride home.”
Pen folded her arms over her middle, the reality of her situation settling in. She didn’t have a home...only the home she shared with Zach. “I don’t want to go home.”
Not tonight. Maybe never again. This was as good of a break as any. Her leaving had always been inevitable. From the first time she spotted Zach in Chicago, to the jazz club, to the morning he kissed her goodbye, some part of her knew that holding on to him would be like trying to hold on to the wind.
Maybe getting it over with would allow her to heal quickly.
She hoped.
“I won’t ask you to choose between me and your brother,” Pen told Stef, because she refused to be unfair.
“I’m not choosing.” Stefanie dug through her clutch. “I’m helping out a friend. If that makes Zach mad, so be it.”
Stefanie approached the valet with her ticket. “We’re in a hurry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the valet replied with a hat-tip. Then he ran—yes, ran—to get the car.
Sadly, not fast enough.
This time when Penelope heard her name, it was Zach. He slowed his jog when he was close, brow pinched and fists bunched.
“I’m taking her home with me,” Stefanie stated.
“No, you’re not.”
Stef turned on him. “Yes. I am.”
“Pen.” In his eyes, Penelope saw the plea. A dab of pain that hadn’t been there before. But she couldn’t open up again, not after what it took to get to this point.
“I have nothing more to discuss, Zach,” Pen announced sadly. “You offered me everything and nothing at the same time.”
His mouth froze open for a moment before clacking shut. Baring his teeth, he said, “I offered you everything I could.”
She swallowed past a thick throat as the valet pulled Stef’s car to the curb. Through a watery, sad smile, she nodded. “I know. And it’s not enough.”
* * *
Zach, arms folded, watched one of the movers walk the last of Penelope’s boxes downstairs before loading the box into a moving truck.
He wasn’t one for admitting defeat, but with Penelope standing in the hallway, notebook in hand as she checked off a list, it was clear they were over.
“What about the baby stuff?” the other mover asked, pointing to the room behind Zach.
Pen turned, her white summer dress rounded at the front, her heeled sandals reasonably high for a change.
“Yes,” Zach answered at the same time Penelope said, “No.”
Their gazes clashed, and in her pale blue eyes, he saw both challenge and loss. Or maybe he felt it.
“Take it,” he told her.
“You’ll need it,” she said with a head-shake.
“I can buy more.” He could replace every single thing in this house with a phone call, save one. The blonde across from him on the landing.
He’d tried contacting her for the past few days, but after the one night she slept at Stef’s, he hadn’t been able to reach her. Even Pen’s office had been dark when he stopped by.
Then, this morning she’d texted him to ask if he’d be home. Foolishly, he’d believed she was coming by to reconcile. Instead, she’d shown up driving ahead of a moving truck.
So this was it.
She’d made up her mind. She was leaving.
“I can buy more, too, Zach. I have time before she’s born. And anyway, I’m not sure how much of the furniture I can fit in my apartment.”
His chest tightened as his eyes dipped to Pen’s stomach. He was losing...everything. And it flat-out pissed him off.
“Are we going to talk about this?” he all but shouted. A mover leaned on the wall outside the bedroom door to watch. Oh, hell no. Zach curled his lip when he addressed him. “Get the hell out of my house.”
He went, ambling down the stairs, and bitching to his friend who stood on the porch. But both men stayed outside.
Zach turned back to Pen. “Well?”
“Well, what? There’s nothing to talk about.” She gestured with her notebook. “I’ve decided. Luckily, my landlady loves me and ushered me into the first available two-bedroom she had.”
“You had the space you needed here.” He widened his arms to encompass the massive house he now lived in alone.
“I never asked for this,” she replied. He wished she would’ve yelled. Her maintaining her composure made him wonder if she cared about him at all.
“There are arrangements to be made,” he growled, hating the loss of control, the feeling of spinning out of it. “Decisions about our daughter.”
“Yes.” She flipped to the back of the notebook, tore out a sheet of paper and handed it to him. “They’ve been made. Consider this a proposal. We can define the particulars later.”
Penelope the Planner had an answer for everything. He folded his arms rather than take the sheet of paper.
“Why are you doing this really?” he asked.
“Because.” She sighed. “As much as you claim to know what you want—” she tucked the paper back into her notebook “—you deserve better than an arranged marriage with a child as the prize.”
Her smile was sad when she finished with, “And so do I.”
Stepping close to him, she placed her hand on his chest, went up on her toes and placed a brief kiss on the corner of his mouth. Too brief. When he moved to hold her, she backed away.
“We’ll be okay,” she promised. Her eyes went to the baby’s room. “Keep the furniture. You’ll need it for when she visits.”
Pen walked downstairs, calling out to the movers, “We’re done here, guys. I’ll follow in my car.”
Zach’s screen door shut with a bang behind her as car and truck engines turned over and pulled out of the driveway. He lowered to the top step upstairs, elbows on his knees and listened to the quiet of the house.
There was defeat in the silence.
Zachary Ferguson didn’t do defeat.
He stood, in that instant deciding he’d do whatever it took to win Penelope back. To make her understand what she was walking away from. To make crystal clear that the best path for their future was a future with him in it.
He had a few billion in the bank.
Surely he could come up with something.