Conquer Your Love (29 page)

Dessert.
In that instant my
mind transported me back in time to our love making, and I felt my cheeks
heating up from the memory of him kissing me so deeply I forgot the world
around me. I couldn’t wait for more of that.

After a quick shower, I put on clean clothes and then checked in on
Sylvie. She was asleep, her long legs tangled in the sheet.

I sat down on the bed not so gingerly and pulled the sheet aside the way
she always did when she woke me up.

“Hey,” I said. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

Groaning, she squinted and pulled the sheet out of my hand and over her
head.

“Give me five minutes? I’m so tired.”

“Sure. I’ll be in the kitchen.” I tickled her feet and she screamed,
pulling away.

“Go away, Brooke.”

Laughing, I left because Sylvie had a short temper and it was only a
matter of time before she threw a pillow at me.

I opened the back door to let in fresh air, and brewed a pot of coffee.
Sitting outside on the porch overlooking the woods, I sighed with pleasure as
my mind began to rewind last night’s firsts: first sex in the kitchen, first
time meeting a friend of Jett’s, our first dinner with friends. I almost
squealed with delight at the realization that our relationship was developing
beyond our bedroom. But what made my heart melt, and not because of the warm
morning sun, was the fact that Jett had introduced me as ‘his girl.’ That was
the most important milestone to date.

Half an hour later, just as I was about to get my second coffee fix for
the day, Sylvie made her grand entrance, her usually perfect hair a big tousled
mess.

“What?” She glared at my suppressed smile.

“Looks like you had a roll in the hay with Kenny.”

“Rolling’s not the only thing we did.” She pointed to an empty wine
bottle on the kitchen counter. “We helped ourselves from your future wine
cellar and drank the whole thing in the pool.”

My brows shot up. “At four a.m.?”

“I’m an early bird.” She sat down at the kitchen table and hugged her
naked knees to her chest. I pushed my mug of coffee into her hands the way she
had done many times.

“Sounds like you had fun,” I said.

“We did, right before your guy demanded that Kenny accompany him to god
knows where and I went to bed.” She took a big gulp out of my coffee and sighed
with pleasure. “So what do you think of him?”

“Who? Kenny?”

She nodded.

Hesitating, I considered my words. She had never asked me about my
opinion before. The sudden interest unnerved me, not least because I didn’t
know Kenny and had no idea what Sylvie wanted to hear. Jett had introduced
Kenny as a computer expert and one of his oldest friends from ‘earlier days’,
so I could only guess they went through a lot together. Jett had turned his
life around. Maybe Kenny did the same. At this point, I didn’t want to come
across as judgmental or overly enthusiastic, but I didn’t want to see Sylvie
hurt either.

“He’s hot.” I met her eager gaze and realized she was hanging on my
every word. Damn. “I think that even though he looks like a bad boy, it doesn’t
necessarily mean he’d ever let you down.”

“Really?” Her blue eyes sparkled with delight, as though I had just
confirmed her own thoughts.

I nodded and decided to change the subject. “Do you know where the guys
are?”

“They didn’t say.” She tied her long blond hair at the nape of her neck
and took another sip of coffee.

“It was a long night for you, huh?” I laughed at her expression as she
lifted a hand to high-five me. Her eyes were a rich shade of baby
blue—the kind of eyes that fooled you into thinking she was innocent,
when in reality all she wanted was having fun.

“Want more coffee?” I asked.

“I’d rather have breakfast. I’m starving.”

I opened a cupboard and retrieved a box of cereals when my cellphone
rang. I checked the caller ID, remembering Jett’s instructions not to respond
to any calls—not even from Alessandro’s lawyer.

“It’s Clarkson!” I said to Sylvie. We watched the phone ring a few times
and then it stopped and a text appeared announcing that I had a voice message.
I pressed the phone to my ear and listened.

 
“Good morning, Brooke. It’s
Ken Clarkson. I hope I’m not intruding. I’m sorry to inform you that Mr.
Lucazzone
suffered from a stroke last night. He’s in a coma
and the doctors cannot confirm that he’ll make it. As your attorney, I will
keep you up to date. Thank you, and if there is anything you need, please let
me know.”

His voice was polite but straightforward, almost unaffected. It was hard
to believe that he was relaying bad news.

“What did he want?” Sylvie filled two bowls with cereals, poured milk on
top, and then placed one in front of me. I watched the cocoa rings dye the milk
a chocolaty color.

“Alessandro had a stroke and the doctors don’t know whether he’ll ever
wake up.”

“I’m sorry, Brooke.” She wrapped her arms around me and held me tight.

I took a deep breath, forcing my mind to stay rational. I wasn’t
attached to Alessandro, but I couldn’t shake off the sadness at hearing he
might not make it. Even though we weren’t related by blood, he was a family
member after all. Until we had concrete proof of his actions and intentions, I
didn’t want to see him as a bad person.

“I hope he’ll be okay,” I said.

We ate in silence and cleaned our bowls when Sylvie said, “I feel sick,”
and bolted out the door. I followed her into the bathroom and gathered her long
hair at the nape of her neck as she emptied the contents of her stomach in the
toilet.

“Are you okay?” I asked, stroking her back. She nodded. Frowning, I helped
her up and re-arranged her clothes.

“I’m fine,” she said weakly.

“Maybe the wine was too old.” I had never seen her sick before and it
was the most plausible explanation. Either that, or the hot weather and lack of
sleep were catching up with her.

She held her hands under the cold-water faucet and moistened her face.
“Actually this was the third time. I was sick the last two days.”

I passed her a towel. “Why didn’t you tell me before? You need to see a
doctor.”

“I don’t think I need to.” She met my gaze. “My period’s eight days
late.”

“You think you’re—” I couldn’t even finish
that
word.

“Yeah, I think I’m pregnant.” She sat down on the cold bathroom tiles
and pressed her back against the wall, her face buried in her palms. A
pregnancy was one of her worst nightmares. The few times we talked about
marriage and children, she had been adamant she never wanted any of those,
which is why she always insisted on protection.

I squatted down in front of her, and grabbed her hands. “Are you sure?”

“No. Obviously, I’m not.”

“Let’s get a pregnancy test.”

“What, now?”

“Yeah, now.” I pulled her to her feet and squeezed my arm around her
waist in case her nausea returned. Even though Jett instructed me to stay in,
my best friend’s peace of mind was a priority. “We get the test. No shopping.
No other delays. And no telling Jett we were gone.”

She smiled. “Sure.”

***

On the way to Bellagio, I held Sylvie’s hands to comfort her.

“As long as we haven’t seen the test results, there’s no need to worry,”
I whispered. “It could be stomach flu or food poisoning.”

“My period’s always on time,” she whispered back, ignoring my plausible
explanations.

“Aren’t you on the birth control pill?” I asked. We both were. She
nodded. “Then you’re okay. Trust me.” I could only hope I wasn’t overly
positive, but the chance of a pregnancy was so minimal, I didn’t see the sense
in reinforcing her worries. “You cannot possibly fall pregnant within a few
hours.”

She looked up. “Actually, this isn’t the first time Kenny and I did it.”

“When?”

“
Uhm
…” She buried her face in her hands again,
hiding from me.

“Sylvie?”

“I’m sorry, Brooke. It was the day when you went on a date with Jett.”

Was that the time he showed me his boat? “The day you said you went to
Bellagio instead of Milan?”

She nodded.

“You didn’t.” I gasped. “You lied to me!”

“So did you!”

I couldn’t deny that.

“Geez, Sylvie. You could have been abducted.” My head was spinning from
all the horrendous things that could’ve happened to her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you were hurting
and I wanted the focus to be on you. It just didn’t seem fair that I had found
someone I liked while your heart was broken.”

“It’s okay.” I squeezed her hand reassuringly. “You said you were sick
several times in the last three days. Technically, Kenny couldn’t be the
father.”

“Who then?” She peered at me, confused—and then realization dawned
on her. “Shit. I hope I’m not knocked up by that asshole.”

With asshole, she was referring to her ex, a married man, who first
tricked her into believing he was single and then that he wanted a relationship
with her. Just like Jett, Ryan happened to be her boss, with the only
difference that he fired Sylvie when his wife found out about the affair.

“Let’s just hope
it’s
food poisoning,” I
whispered.

Traveling to Bellagio
to get a home
pregnancy test was a bad idea. Not only did Sylvie end up buying three, she
also managed to convince me she needed a whole lot of other stuff. As soon as
we reached the main street, she dragged me from shop to shop and she ended up
with a new pair of shoes, a light summer dress, and a bottle of après sun
lotion for me, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t really need…that much. On the
bright side, she didn’t dawdle trying on clothes because she looked amazing in
anything she wore. Miraculously, the whole shopping spree took her only around
half an hour.

It was shortly after noon when the taxi driver stopped in front of the
house. I was about to unlock the front door when my cellphone rang again. I
fished it out of my handbag and checked the caller ID. It was Jett.

“Where are you?” he barked down the line. My heart skipped a beat.

“Stop worrying. I’m fine,” I said. It was the truth. We were still
living and breathing. Basically, nobody got hurt so he didn’t need to know my
little secret.

He let out a long breath. “Good. We’re on our way back and should be
there in twenty minutes.”

He hung up and I relayed the message to Sylvie.

“We need to hurry,” she said.

I followed her to the bathroom and sat down on the floor, realizing she
was going to use the pregnancy test.

“I can’t read the instructions. They’re in Italian. But we should be
fine anyway. You see this stuff on TV all the time.” She tore one of the foils
to remove the test stick and held it up to me. “What do I do now? Stick it into
a glass of urine or what?”

How would I know?

It wasn’t like I had ever needed one of those.

“I think you need to turn the test stick so that the purple side of the
handle is facing you. And then you hold the other side into your stream of
urine.”

“Okay. Turn around.”

I focused hard not to listen to the gushing sound. Barely a minute
later, she tapped my shoulder. “You can turn around now.”

“Finished already?” I sat up and regarded the stick in her hand.

“Yeah. What’s next?”

“I don’t know. I’d say put the cap back on and then put it on the
table.”

“For how long?”

“A few minutes, I guess.” I thought back to all the TV advertisements I
had ever seen and not paid attention to when I should have. The knowledge would
have come in handy.

Sylvie turned on the water faucet and washed her hands. I stroked her
back. “You’ll be okay. Even if you’re pregnant, it’s not the end of the world.”

“I know,” she whispered, staring at herself in the mirror. “But I’m not
ready to be a mom. I don’t want to be a single mother raising a kid.”

We stood in silence as the seconds ticked by.

“I can’t look. Can you look for me?” Sylvie said eventually.

“Sure.” I lifted the pregnancy test and held it up to examine the pink
colored band in the small window.

Sylvie peered over my shoulders. “Am I pregnant?”

“I don’t know. I think two bands stand for a positive result, so I’d say
no.”

She let out a whoop of joy, her smile dying on her lips almost
instantly. “What do you mean ‘I think?’
”