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  I agreed and told her I'd speak to her the next day. "But off to bed for me right now. This pregnancy really has me running on low all the time."

  It was certainly true, and I did really intend to head up to bed. But once I got in the elevator and began ascending to my floor, I started thinking about the way Desmond had looked so absolutely devastated after learning I was pregnant. And after a few moments, I hit the button for the ninetieth floor. I was going to pay him a visit.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I knew Desmond lived in the penthouse on the ninetieth floor, which was the only apartment up there, and I knew that because Emma had said so earlier that day while telling me various details about the building when we'd been shopping. Now I was really glad she had, because I was suddenly angry and determined to talk to Desmond.

  I wasn't exactly sure why I was angry; it was just kind of a jumble of different things, some of them rational, and some of them maybe not. I was angry at Desmond for just taking off the night we'd made love.

  I was angry at him for not later contacting me with an explanation. I was angry at him for seeming as if hearing that I was pregnant was the last possible thing on earth he'd ever wanted to hear. I was even angry at him for being so damned good-looking, even though I knew that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

  But for all my anger at him, I was angry at myself for finding him so irresistible the night we'd first met, which had made me act completely out of character. I was also angry at myself for not really even thinking twice about hopping into bed with him so quickly before we'd gotten to really know each other.

  However, on the flip side of my anger, I couldn't deny that deep down, in some way far back area of my brain, I had a tiny bit of understanding for the way Desmond had acted at dinner. I knew that news of my pregnancy had been an incredible shock, one he surely wished he hadn't received in public, over dinner with friends. If the shoe were on the other foot, and I received similar shocking news in a similar situation, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to act any differently.

  Though at the same time, part of me felt like he almost deserved the unpleasantness of being shocked in such a way. If he'd just left me his full name or phone number before he'd fled the scene of our night together, I would have been able to contact him and tell him the news about my pregnancy in a much gentler, private way.

  My brain was really a mixed-up jumble of thoughts and emotions now. All I knew was that my anger was making me feel compelled to find Desmond. What I was going to say, I had no idea. If I could manage to keep my uncharacteristically hot head cool, maybe I'd just listen to see what he had to say first. Maybe I'd just wait to see if he'd apologize for anything, or say anything to the effect that he wasn't as devastated by the news about the baby as he'd seemed.

  When I reached the ninetieth floor and exited the elevator, a short marble-floored hallway led me to a white door with gleaming brass knocker as well as a doorbell to the side; but I decided to bypass them both and just knock with my fist, although maybe the sound I made was a little more like banging.

  "Desmond, it's Madison! I'd like to talk to you!" When I got no response after several seconds, I tried again, giving the door a few hard thumps. "Please answer the door!"

  Again, several seconds went by, and I was only greeted with silence. Now wondering if maybe he'd went to one of the bars in the tower to continue his whiskey drinking, I leaned against the wall. I knew I wouldn't go on a search to find him, because for one thing, I wasn't even sure exactly where all the different bars were located, and for another thing, I at least had the courtesy of not wanting to embarrass him in public by possibly making some sort of scene, or even embarrass him by simply being seen seeking him out in a bar.

  Considering how much wine Brianna had drank, and considering that she seemed the gossipy type, I was sure it was all over the tower by now that I was pregnant with Desmond's child.

  Realizing that it might be possible that Desmond was indeed inside his penthouse but just not answering the door, I tried one more time, knocking hard enough to hurt my knuckles a bit.

  "Desmond, please open up if you're in there! I'd really like to talk to you!"

  I waited for a response, but again, heard nothing. Not sure if I should just give up and leave or what, I just leaned against the wall, thinking, and after several moments, my phone dinged with a text alert. I pulled it from the tiny, beaded red clutch I'd bought to go with my dress, and I saw that the text was from Emma, simply asking if I was okay.

  I texted back that I was, but that I was up at Desmond's after getting a sudden urge to talk to him. But he's not here, though, or at least he isn't answering his door.

  Soon I received a response. He and others have left the city. Eric got called away during dessert. Said Angel shifters spotted ten miles north.

  With my anger having cooled, I texted back thanking her and saying that now I was really going to bed.

  Despite how deflated I felt and how tired I was, I just tossed and turned all night, waking up several times thinking about how upset Desmond clearly was about my pregnancy. However, maddeningly, several other times, I awoke after dreaming about being in his arms for some reason. In one of the dreams, he'd been kissing me, plundering my mouth with his tongue. In the dream, I'd been moaning, running a hand along the hard ridges of his back.

  I cursed my subconscious for seeing fit to give me such an absurd dream. I never wanted to be back in bed with Desmond again. At least, that's what I told myself. However, the way I'd awoken from my sensual dream, a little breathless and sweaty, told a different story.

  The next day around noon, Emma dropped Jake off at the childcare center within the tower, and the two of us went out into the city. It was a glorious May day, warm and sunny, though this beautiful weather didn't exactly match my mood. In fact, the beautiful weather barely even registered.

  Sleep-deprived, slightly queasy, and unable to stop thinking about Desmond, I was kind of off in my own little world of unhappiness. Then, while crossing the street, the smell of exhaust fumes from a large delivery van that had just rumbled by made my stomach suddenly lurch.

  I told Emma that maybe I should just head back to the tower.

  "Those fumes just about made me lose my breakfast, and besides, I just don't feel like I'm going to be very good company today."

  We came to a stop on the sidewalk, and Emma shook her head at me.

  "Nope. Not letting you head back to the building. I think you need some time out and about, and that's what you're going to get. And as far as not being good company, that's fine. Friendship one-oh-one...friends hang out even when one of them is going through something tough and may not be be their usual self."

  "Well, thanks, but all these fumes are really going to make me gag."

  Another couple of trucks had rumbled by, along with a long string of cars.

  "Well, that's why we're going to just get the heck away from all the fumes and head to one of my favorite little parks just a block from here. It's actually a brand-new favorite, because it was just created this past March, over the site of one of the buildings that were destroyed a couple years ago. It's pretty much just a football field-sized patch of grass, potted flowers, and benches right now, with a few dozen newly-planted trees, but it's really nice.

  “It's called 'Serenity Park,' and I think it'll be the perfect place for us to spend some time today. So, now all you have to decide is what we should bring with us for lunch. Your options are only limited by the number of takeout places on this block, and that number is probably a hundred. And, just so you know, I'm kind of lobbying for Chinese, but I'm letting the pregnant lady make the pick. We can even get our lunches from different places if you want."

  Chinese actually sounded amazing to me. So amazing that my stomach growled right then, even as it still roiled with a touch of nausea at the same time.

  A short while later, Emma and I were at the park, sitting on a bench with our lunches in our laps. Watching a mixed-gender group of
about a half-dozen people tossing Frisbees to each other a good distance away, Emma and I ate in silence for a good little bit; but then she set her plastic fork in her Styrofoam container now half-full of fried rice and sweet-and-sour chicken.

  "So, in case you're still feeling like you want to talk to him, I wanted to let you know that Desmond, as I'm now calling him, not Commander Grant, should be back to the tower this evening. Eric called me this morning and said that they had a hell of a time last night locating the Angel dragons who were spotted to the north...had to chase them down, all over creation. And then once they did spot them, fight with them, and kill them, Desmond's eastern scouts reported another group.

  “So, off went Desmond and his elite team of Destroyers again. Now they're a hundred-some miles north, way into Wisconsin, doing some kind of surveillance operation on one of the largest Angel dragon encampments, the one where their leader, Darius Archer has been seen. I don't think they've even slept. I know Eric hasn't, because Desmond hasn't, and as Desmond's right-hand man, Eric follows his lead."

  The group of young men and women tossing the Frisbees suddenly erupted into wild whoops and cheers after one of them made an incredible catch, and Emma waited several seconds until all the noise had died down before continuing.

  "Anyway, Desmond will probably be back this evening, and I just wanted to let you know that. But...if you want my advice...I would wait to talk to him, if you still want to, until he's had a chance to sleep. I know Eric usually only communicates with grunts and growls after getting home from one of these long missions until he's gotten at least six good hours of shut-eye.

  “Also, if you give Desmond a day or two before approaching him, that might give him some time to think about things a bit before talking, and I have a feeling he might have a whole lot to think about."

  I sighed, watching the Frisbee-players happily leaping and tossing in the sunshine.

  "Yeah. That's for sure."

  I definitely saw her point about waiting to talk to him, and I agreed that I would. I then went on to tell her the full story about Desmond, from the night we'd met, to me finding out I was pregnant, to my anger at how devastated he'd looked the night before.

  "It wasn't like I expected him to jump up and down with joy about an unplanned, very unexpected pregnancy or anything, but I guess I just...I don't even know what. It just really hurt me that he looked as if he'd just heard the worst possible news in the world, and that hurt made me feel so angry with him. I'm still kind of angry, actually.

  “About last night, and also about the way he just left without saying goodbye the night we were together. I mean...not to go into too many details, but I'm pretty sure that our time together in my bed was pretty enjoyable for us both. And even before that...when we were at the old car show...I felt pretty sure that we were really connecting on some level. “He was the one who even insisted on treating me to something to eat, and it was his idea for us to dance.

  “Although I completely realize that many men can be quite charming when they're trying to get a woman into bed. That's another thing, though...I was really kind of the instigator of that. I was the one who suggested we go back to my apartment, and I was the one who asked for him to kiss me the moment we walked in the door.

  “And he was very, very receptive to that all, but...." Sighing, I paused for a moment or two. "I don't even know what. I need some answers...just need to talk to him and find out why he bolted, and if he's really as devastated about the pregnancy as he looked last night, or if he was just upset because he was so stunned. But you're right that I should wait until he's well-rested, and I will."

  "Good."

  Not wanting to dwell on Desmond any longer, because I knew I was kind of working myself up, I picked up my plastic fork and dug into my chicken lo mein again, telling Emma to tell me about her and Eric.

  "If you don't mind my asking, are the two of you really just friends, or it a little more than that?"

  Lowering a forkful of fried rice, Emma quickly shook her head.

  "Oh. No, we're really just good friends...have been for a few months. Sometimes he flirts with me a little and acts like maybe he wants us to be more than friends, and sometimes I think that maybe I want us to be more than friends, but...no. I don't even like to let myself start thinking in that direction."

  "Well, if Eric seems like he might be receptive, why not?"

  Gazing on her Styrofoam container, Emma began picking at the remainder of her food, separating the chicken from the rice.

  "Well...he may flirt with me a little, but I know deep down that Eric would probably never want me for any kind of a serious romantic relationship."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, just for starters, although Eric is great with Jake, I'm not sure if he'd be too keen on the idea of raising another man's child full-time, especially since he has no kids of his own yet; so I'd be the only one bringing a non-biological child of the other person into the relationship. Eric's also never been married, and I have, and I loved my husband deeply and always will, and Eric knows that.

  “And I know that might make some men very uncomfortable, or jealous in a strange way, like they're competing with a ghost or something."

  With her warm brown eyes holding a lot of pain, Emma paused to poke at her chicken some more, then finally set her fork down and closed the container.

  "Basically, Eric is an incredibly handsome dragon shifter who could have any woman he wants. He could easily find a woman with no child, and no deceased husband, and that's probably who he should find and who he really wants to find. Sometimes I even think Eric is only friends with me and checks in on me and Jake so often because he feels sorry for me being a widow and having a child with health problems."

  "I'm sure that's not true."

  Looking out at the Frisbee-players in the distance, Emma lifted her slender shoulders in a shrug.

  "I guess I just don't want to ruin our friendship to find out. Oh, and not to mention that with Eric being Desmond's top lieutenant, and kind of in the public eye, I'm sure he'd never want a complete failure of a Gifted as a long-term girlfriend or wife. Common sense just tells me that. Successful people want to be matched with other successful people."

  "But you are successful."

  "At what? I wasn't successful at college, then I wasn't successful at being a secretary, and now I'm definitely not successful at being a Gifted."

  "Well, I think you're pretty successful at being a wonderful mom to Jake."

  Emma cracked a smile. "Well, maybe. I hope I am. And, really, that's the most important thing to me...that I be a good mom."

  I smiled back. "Well, you're doing it. So, hold your head up high."

  Not a split-second after I said that, one of the Frisbee players yelled "Heads up!" Emma and I ducked just in time to have a wildly-thrown Frisbee sail right over our heads.

  Suppressing laughter, I turned my face to look at her.

  "Or keep your head down to avoid being knocked out by a Frisbee. Whatever."

  Later that day, we picked Jake up from the childcare center, where he'd been happily playing with several other babies his age, and took him to a kid's carnival at a different park several blocks away from the tower.

  There, he enjoyed his first pony ride with Emma slowly walking along with the old pony, holding Jake sidesaddle because of his non-bendable leg braces. Jake giggled and clapped and tangled his fingers in the pony's thick mane, and Emma smiled and laughed and periodically planted kisses on his chubby, dimpled cheeks.

  With my heart swelling, I watched the scene, thinking about how much joy I was going to experience with my own baby. No matter if Desmond ultimately wanted to share in that joy or not.

  Late that evening, I was standing out on my bedroom balcony with a mug of herbal tea, looking out onto the twinkling city lights below and the cloudy night sky above when I spotted a few dozen dark shapes moving across the clouds.

  At first absolutely perplexed and even a bit frightened, I w
atched the quickly-moving shapes for a few moments as they got a little closer. It was then that I saw that each shape had wings, a thick body, and a long tail. Dragons. One of them was several lengths ahead of everyone else, seeming to be leading them in, and I assumed this dragon was Desmond.

  With a flash of something like irritation but with an ache in my chest at the same time, I watched him until he disappeared above the tower, surely about to land somewhere and then go on up to his penthouse for some badly-needed sleep.

  After sleeping so poorly the night before, I myself was in need of some good sleep, but again, I just tossed and turned that night. It was around two in the morning before I finally managed a decently long stretch of slumber before waking up again around four after having some vague dream about Desmond.