Eclipse of the Heart - By Carly Carson Page 0,67

discomfit Logan.

"No," she said. "We're friends, but nothing more."

"Good." Logan smiled. "The public offering is scheduled for next Friday. I'd like you to attend the dinner I'm having Friday night to celebrate." He paused, gave her his half-smile, and then said, "Strictly business."

"Sure," she said. "I'd like that." Why didn't she feel happier that he'd accepted her terms?

Her worries were misplaced.

Because, on Friday morning, everything blew up.

Chapter 24

Amanda took Friday off from work to see her doctor for some testing. She had to figure out what was causing her exhaustion and overall poor health. She was sitting in the waiting room, paging through a copy of Yankee magazine, when her phone rang.

She hoped it was Logan, but it turned out to be Josh.

"Hey," she said, "did everything go well?"

"You haven't heard?" Josh sounded stunned. "I'm only calling to tell you the dinner is off."

"The dinner? Oh, you mean tonight." A flicker of curiosity lit up a remote area of her brain, but was blown out when a scrawny nurse with a booming voice called out her name.

"I have to go, Josh. I'll talk to you later." Amanda shut off her phone and dropped it in her purse. A niggle of worry about her health wiped out Josh's announcement.

But nothing could have prepared her for the shocking news she got from her doctor. Like other overworked doctors these days, he was curt, speaking the bare minimum so he could move on to the next patient. Before she could absorb the news, the appointment had ended and she was stumbling out, blind to everything. Somehow, she got herself into the elevator, and through the lobby without having any idea how she reached the outdoors.

She began walking, following some instinct that told her to go home. She walked and walked, oblivious to passers-by who crowded her or bumped her. She stopped when the crowd stopped, walked when they walked, and so she made it home without walking blindly into the street and being run over by a car.

As she climbed the stairs, each step required a bigger effort than the one before. Adrenaline had carried her this far, but her momentum was fading. When she reached her apartment, she'd have nothing to do but face her momentously altered future.

As soon as the doctor had raised the possibility, she'd known the truth. She'd denied it to herself. She'd refused the test. But she knew.

She threw herself onto the bed in her shade-darkened bedroom, and lay there, trying not to think, giving herself one day to pretend that this wasn't happening.

When Saturday morning dawned, she knew she had to start her new life. She plodded to the drugstore, came home with a white paper bag and shut herself in the bathroom.

Then, with trembling hands, she called Rosie.

Rosie was at her door thirty minutes later.

"What happened?" Rosie launched herself across the room to wrap Amanda in a big bear hug. "Tell me this is all a practical joke."

"I don't know how it happened," Amanda wailed.

Rosie pulled back to look her in the face. "Amanda, you are sleeping with him."

"Barely! And we always use birth control!"

"I'm going to let the 'barely' comment just slide on by." Rosie waved a hand as if to speed it on its way. "But tell me, do you know of a birth control method that's one hundred percent effective?"

"Those effectiveness numbers are distorted by people who don't use their birth control correctly."

Rosie shrugged, but her eyes were kind as she stepped back. "Look, it doesn't matter how it happened, right? The question is, what are you going to do now?"

"I don't know!" Amanda clasped her hands together over her belly. "I can't be pregnant!"

"Well," Rosie said, "that's one approach."

She placed a bag from Dean and Deluca on the coffee table and opened it to pull out a tin of their Jasmine Pearl tea. "I grabbed some treats I had on hand."

Amanda covered her face with her hands. "I know I'm being stupid, but it's such an unbelievable shock. How can I tell my mother?"

"She'll understand. Things happen."

"She already has so many worries about my sister. I can't add to them."

"You can't hide a pregnancy for long. Unless—" Rosie stopped taking stuff out of the bag to glance at Amanda. "Are you thinking of abortion?"

"No! Absolutely not." The words burst out of Amanda, but she knew they were true as soon as she said them. The thought of abortion might have tiptoed around the edges of her mind, but when spoken aloud, she