The Pregnancy Test (NY Girlfriends #1)(9)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Mandy rolled her eyes, glad her mother couldn’t see her. "Mother, I’m not staying in a hut. It’s a resort, catering to Americans and Canadians."

"Just as bad. Think of all those French-Canadians in thongs, dear."

Now she did laugh, tossing her blow-dryer into her bag. "There’s nothing wrong with wearing a thong. It means they’re comfortable with their bodies. It’s probably very liberating. Maybe we should try it – I’ll get Daddy a thong for Christmas, and he can wear it to the lake."

Mandy knew she shouldn’t tease her very proper mother like that, but she was feeling so much better, she was almost giddy. It was as though the minute her pregnancy hit the sixteen-week mark, the curtain on her fatigue had lifted. And her stomach had popped up like a waffle in the toaster. She rubbed her waist, the Capri pants she was wearing digging into her flesh.

"Mandy, you’ve lost your mind."

"Possibly. Do you think I should go topless on the beach? I finally have a chest worthy of baring." Not that she would, ever in a million years, but shocking her mother brought a sick sort of glee.

"On a business trip! Good God, you really have gone off the deep end. It’s the result of being left pregnant and alone by that old man you were dating. You never should have gone out with a man so much older than you. They’re all having their midlife crises in their forties… it doesn’t surprise me he didn’t want a thing to do with real responsibility."

The conversation was no longer amusing.

But before she could tell her mother to take a long walk off a short pier, she followed up with a slur on Mandy’s toy shop.

"At least you finally have a real job. I know you’ve always enjoyed your hobbies, dear, but now is time to settle down and do what’s best."

What made her feel the lousiest was that she really couldn’t argue with her mother. The shop had never felt like a hobby, but after diddling around with it for three years, it hadn’t turned a profit, and she couldn’t say that she had ever really aggressively sought its success. It bad been a hobby.

"I still wish you’d come home and let your father and I help you out."

About as appealing a prospect as self-mutilation with a rusty knife. Thanks, she’d pass.

"I’m fine, Mother. And while I miss you both" – when she got in the wine and was feeling nostalgic, but otherwise never – "I need to stand on my own two feet."

Her mother sniffed. "Well, I’m proud of you for working so hard. But I can’t help but worry."

"You don’t need to worry."

"Promise me you won’t eat anything while you’re there."

She was supposed to go five days without eating?

Mandy clamped her lips shut so she wouldn’t giggle. "All right, I won’t eat anything."

"Where are you staying? I should know how to reach you."

Against her better judgment, Mandy lifted the folder off her nightstand and recited the hotel contact information. If her mother showed up in the Caribbean when she was on a trip with her boss, Mandy would disown her.

If parents could disown their mortifying children, surely she could do the same.

"And be careful your boss doesn’t try anything funny with you. Businessmen view these kind of resorts as sexual buffets."

What her mother knew about businessmen and their sexual habits was a mystery to Mandy.

"Sexual buffets? Have you been watching those news programs again?"

But at any rate, Mandy wasn’t the one who had to worry.

It was Damien Sharpton. Because Mandy’s dreams had intensified, if that were possible, and the thought of a sexual buffet, with Damien as the main course, had her body tingling and her breath racing.

And if she had her way, that buffet would be all you can eat.

Damien had his suitcase in the corner of his office and was clearing out the last of his e-mails before he caught a cab to LaGuardia when Rob Turner stuck his head in the open door.

"Hey, Damien, what’s up?"

"I’m just about to head out. What can I do for you?"

Damien stood up, hitting the button to shut down his laptop. He was much more eager to take this trip than he ever would have thought when he won the thing.

The last two years he’d taken these incentive trips and spent the whole time wishing he were back in New York. But this time, it was different. He wanted to go.

And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why.

"So you’re really taking your assistant with you on this trip?" Rob came into the room and sat down in the leather chair in front of Damien’s desk, like he planned to stay awhile.

"Yes. Why?" Damien was suspicious of the casual tone Rob had employed. He leaned on his desk and crossed his arms, alert to any antagonism.

Rob shrugged. He was one of those guys who always had a grin, a charming compliment, an easy-going confidence. He looked comfortable in an expensive suit or a T-shirt to go jogging in and could switch from beer to wine and back again depending on the crowd.

"This is a prize trip. Most guys take their wives or their girlfriends, or if neither of those are available, their brother or something. No one ever takes their secretary, unless she falls in the girlfriend category."

"She doesn’t." Damien’s answer sounded sharp even to him and he felt a hot rush of angry embarrassment. It did look odd that he was taking Mandy, and he knew it. But he hadn’t been able to resist the impulse to spend time with her, assure himself that she didn’t think he was the boss from hell.

It had never bothered him before, what anyone thought. Yet it did now, with Mandy. But he would toss his laptop into the East River before he would ever admit that. "You know me. I can’t stand being out of touch. We’re going to get a jump on some of next month’s projects."

"You really mean that. You’re not sheet diving with your secretary." Rob looked at him in total disbelief.

"I really mean that." He didn’t sheet dive with anyone, not anymore. And Rob was probably the only one who knew that, since he was the only person who had known Damien from before, when he’d lived in Chicago with Jessica.

But that wasn’t to say that part of Damien hadn’t been much more, well, alert, since Mandy Keeling had been hired. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he wanted to have sex with her, but he was attracted to her.

That alone was something of a miracle given that he had thought himself incapable of any emotional or physical interest in another human being.