Could she do that to her child?
Her feet were moving before she was even aware that the light had changed. It wasn’t wise to be distracted while walking along a New York City sidewalk, but lately she found herself all too often caught up in her own thoughts and oblivious to her surroundings.
She approached Oliver’s building, his card clutched in her hand, and stopped ten feet from the entrance. Frozen with indecision, she stared at the door through which she’d passed with Oliver six weeks earlier and dreaded the conversation to come. He surely wouldn’t welcome the news she brought. He’d be upset. Angry. How could he not be? She was about to change his life and not for the better.
Lifting her phone, she dialed Oliver’s number from memory. As the phone rang, her courage began to fail her. Her thumb started to move across the screen toward the end call button when someone picked up.
“Oliver Lowell’s phone.”
Sammi was so startled by the feminine voice that she hung up. Confused fragments of thought tumbled around in her brain for several seconds until she lifted Oliver’s business card and compared the numbers. Only when she’d confirmed that she’d dialed correctly did she recall how the woman had answered the phone.
Her phone came to life with Oliver’s number. Cursing, she stared at the screen, wondering what to do.
“Hello?”
“We got disconnected,” said the woman who’d answered the moment before. “Are you looking for Oliver?”
Uneasiness slid through her at the question. “Actually, I came by to see him.”
“You came by?” The woman pounced on this bit of information. “Are you here now?”
Hearing the woman’s urgency, Sammi realized she’d made a huge mistake. She’d assumed the lack of publicity surrounding Oliver’s private life meant he had no girlfriend. But here was a woman with Oliver’s phone, so obviously he was already in a relationship. Heat flared in Sammi’s cheeks as she remembered how she’d blatantly offered herself to him. The power she’d enjoyed in that moment had faded by the following morning.
“I’m sorry,” Sammi murmured. “I have to go.”
“Wait.”
Ignoring the woman’s command, Sammi hung up the phone. It instantly lit up with Oliver’s number again. Sammi stared at the screen for a long moment, letting the call roll to voice mail. She’d really screwed up.
Despite the voice in her head warning her to leave, Sammi lingered in front of Oliver’s building. The need to tell Oliver that she was pregnant hadn’t vanished just because he was involved with someone. Sammi had a hole in her life where her own father belonged. She’d never understood why her mother kept his identity from her. How could Sammi live with herself if she did that to her own child? Decision made, she squared her shoulders and lifted her phone.
“Excuse me.” The familiar voice jolted Sammi out of her thoughts. A woman had pushed through the entrance to Oliver’s building and was advancing on her. “Are you the one looking for Oliver?”
“Um. Well.” Cupping a protective hand over her lower abdomen, Sammi backed away from the woman’s aggressive approach. “That is...”
“Are you Suzi?” The woman showed every intention of getting answers out of her.
“I’m Sammi.” She took another step back, retreating from the woman’s determined expression and focused pursuit. This was so much worse than she’d imagined. She extended Oliver’s business card. “We met a few weeks ago. He gave me this.”
“Sammi?” The woman frowned. “Not Suzi? But you’re a model, right?”
“Yes.”
“Watch out!” The shout came from behind her and to her right, followed by honking.
Movement caught in her peripheral vision. Something bright red was coming at her fast. So many things registered at once. The horror on the doorman’s face. The screech of brakes. And then something was hitting her left side with enough impact to send her flying. Pain exploded in her wrist and shoulder as she landed hard on the sidewalk. Lights flashed in her head, and then all went dark.
Three
In the week since the news had come out that his father was alive and being extradited from the Caribbean, Oliver had taken to leaving his smartphone behind while he roamed Manhattan in search of inspiration. The barrage of calls and texts from his mother and brothers regarding the legal matters surrounding Vernon Lowell left no room for Oliver to think about anything else. Only when he stepped away from the electronic device could he control his focus and direct his attention where he wanted it to go. Unfortunately, the outings rarely lasted longer than a couple of hours.
Putting away his camera, Oliver raised his hand and hailed a taxi. Giving the driver the address of his SoHo loft, Oliver settled back and opened the floodgates to the myriad of his responsibilities awaiting him. Besides the family crisis that dominated his to-do list, he had a business to run and clients that expected results. The strong desire to chuck it all and find his own tropical island to hole up on brought his father to the forefront of his mind. He hated acknowledging this common ground between them, but the similarities were too obvious to ignore.
In rehab, he’d confronted that his drug habit had been all about running away from his problems and learned that only when he faced his demons could he take control of his actions and turn his life around. The stronger he’d become, the more he’d regretted his youthful choices, recognizing if he’d pursued his passion for photography from the beginning instead of trying to please his father by pursuing a business degree at Harvard, he might not have fallen into addiction. Those dark, hopeless years, followed by the harrowing fight to get sober, left him with invisible but painful scars. Yet he couldn’t deny that the struggle had not only made him stronger but also allowed him to appreciate his successes.
“Looks like there’s something
