A Billionaire and a Baby

It wasn’t that she was unaccustomed to that look of vague recognition on a person’s face. Sometimes Sherry was successfully “placed,” but as time went on, not so often. There was a time, at the height of her previous career, where that was a regular occurrence. She couldn’t say that she really minded. Then.

These days, however, people were just as apt to rudely stare at her swollen belly as they were at her face, that being the reason why her former career was a thing of the past. It was her unscheduled pregnancy that had gotten her dismissed from her anchor job and brought her to this junction in her life. Not in so many words, of course. Television studios and the people who ran them had an almost pathological fear of being sued because of some PC transgression on their parts. So when she had begun to show and told Ryan Matthews of her pregnancy, the executive producer of the nightly news had conveniently found a way to slip her into something less visible than the five o’clock news anchor position.

Within a day of her notifying Matthews that her waistline was going to be expanding, he had given her place to newcomer Lisa Willows and transformed her into senior copy editor, whimsically calling the move a lateral one. When she’d confronted him with his transparent motives, he’d lamely told her that demographics, even in this day and age, wouldn’t have supported her “flaunting her free lifestyle.” People, he’d said, still found unmarried pregnant women offensive and weren’t about to welcome them into their living rooms night after night.

Matthews’s words, even after five months, still rang in her ears. The fact that Sherry delivered the news behind a desk that was more than equal to hiding her increasing bulk from the general public, and that she’d never had a so-called free lifestyle—the pregnancy having arisen from her one and only liaison, a man who took no responsibility other than giving her the name of an abortion clinic—carried no weight with Matthews. With his spine the consistency of overcooked spaghetti, Matthews bent in the general direction of the greatest pressure. In this case it was the studio heads.

“If they can shoot around pregnant actresses on sitcoms to hide their conditions, why not me?” Sherry had insisted, but even then she knew it was no use. Matthews’s mind had been made up for him. She was politely and firmly offered her new position or the door.

She took the door.

Her first inclination to “sue the pants off the bastard” faded, even as her friends and family rallied around her, echoing the sentiment. The last thing Sherry wanted was to draw negative attention to the baby she was carrying. She’d come to the conclusion that the less attention, the better.

In mulling over her options, she’d decided to take her circumstance as a sign that she should return to her first love: the written word. This meant following in her father’s footsteps. Connor Campbell had been a well-respected, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist before his retirement. It was because of him that she had gone into the news business in the first place.

Determination had always been her hallmark. So, after allowing herself an afternoon to grieve over her late, lamented career, Sherry moved full steam ahead, firing all torpedoes. She went to Owen Carmichael, her father’s best friend and her godfather and asked for a job. Having started out with her father in the days before electric typewriters, Owen Carmichael was now the editor in chief of the Bedford World News.

Owen had been glad to hire her. Of course, she’d thought that he’d start her out with something a little more meaty than lighter-than-air fluff.

That was where her mind was right now, on the latest puff piece she was facing, not the assistant who stared at her with intense blue eyes and a puzzled frown on her face.

Sherry didn’t feel like going into her previous life, or the reasons for the change. She felt too irritable for anything beyond a polite dismissal. Also the woman had the look about her that said she lived to gossip.

“I get that a lot,” she told the other woman cavalierly. “I’ve got one of those faces people think they’ve seen before.”

The assistant looked unconvinced. “But—” And then the woman paused, thinking. Suddenly, her whole face lit up as if a ray of inspiration had descended on her. “Say ‘Hello, from the L.A. Basin.”’

That was her catchphrase, certainly nothing profound, but different enough to be remembered upon daily repetition. And she had been nightly anchor for four years before Matthews has ushered her out the door.

Sherry shook her head, her light-auburn hair swaying like a velvety wave about her oval face. “Sorry, I have to get upstairs to see Owen. Posthaste.” She made it sound as if Owen was sending for her rather than the other way around. She was preparing to beard the lion in his den. Glancing at the dormant copy machine, Sherry pointed at it. “I think it needs feeding.”

With that she hurried off, aware that the woman was still staring after her.

Hurrying these days was no small accomplishment for Sherry. She felt as if she was carrying around a lead weight strapped to her midsection. A lead weight that felt as if it was in constant flux.

On her way to the elevators, she tried not to wince as she felt another kick land against her ribs. At this rate she was going to need internal reconstructive surgery once her little squatter moved out.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she muttered to her stomach. She’d dragged herself into the office this morning because she’d been up half the night. Little whosit-whatsit was apparently learning the rumba. Either that or the baby had found a way to smuggle a motorcycle in there and had entertained itself through the wee hours of the night by constantly revving it up.

She’d been in no mood for what she found on her desk when she’d arrived. This week’s assignment was even worse than last week’s and she’d been convinced that that was the pits.

Breezing past Rhonda, her godfather’s secretary, a woman whose curves detracted from the fact that she had a razor-sharp mind and practically ran the department in Owen’s absence, Sherry walked straight into the managing editor’s office.

“Owen,” Sherry announced with more drama than she’d intended, “we have to talk. Please,” she tagged on. As a further afterthought, she closed the door behind her.

Owen Carmichael barely glanced up from his computer. Mind-numbing statistics and figures were spread across the screen, bearing testimony to various polls conducted by the paper’s PR department. He was scanning the figures while on his feet, his hands planted on the desk, his body leaning forward at an uncomfortable angle. It was an idiosyncrasy of his. He claimed he thought better in this position.

Of average height and far-less-than-average weight, he wore a shirt that was almost the same light color as his pants. With his semibald head, Owen gave the impression of an oversize Q-tip that someone had been nervously plucking at.

He glanced in his goddaughter’s direction with almost no recognition. His mind was clearly somewhere other than in the room.

“Not now, Sherry.”

She’d known the man as long as she’d known her own parents and was just as at ease with him as with them. Others might cower when he took on that low tone, but Sherry wasn’t among them.

“Yes, now.” She plunked the assignment on his desk, feeling that it spoke for itself. “It’s not that I’m not grateful for the job, Owen,” she began.

He raised his eyes to her face before lowering them back to the screen. “Then do it.”

All right, maybe the assignment wasn’t speaking, maybe it was whispering. She moved the sheet closer to him on the desk until the edge of the page touched one of his spread-out fingers. “Just what the hell is this?”

He spared it a glance. The title jumped out at him. “An assignment.”

“No,” Sherry corrected slowly, her voice deceptively low. “It’s a fluff piece.” By now she’d thought she would have graduated out of that classification, moved on to something with teeth, or muscle or an iota of substance. Her voice rose an octave as frustration invaded it. “It’s less than fluff. If I wasn’t holding it down, it would float away in the breeze, it’s that lightweight.”

Owen sighed, looking up from the computer in earnest now. “There’re no breezes in the office—other than the ones generated by overenergetic junior journalists flapping their lips. Aren’t women in your condition supposed to be tired all the time, Sherry? Why aren’t you tired?”

He didn’t know the half of it, but she felt this need to prove herself, to lay the groundwork for a stellar career. Her parents had raised her not to do anything by half measures.

Loving Drew fell under that category. Had she not leaped in with both feet, she would have realized that he wasn’t the type to stick around once the going got the slightest bit difficult.

“I am tired,” she told Owen, doing her best not to sound it. “Tired of standing on the sidelines, tired of doing pieces people line their birdcages with.”

One painfully thin shoulder rose and fell with careless regard. “Then write them snappier and they’ll read them before lining the birdcage.”

She wasn’t in the mood for his humor. “Owen, I’m a serious journalist.”

“And I’m a serious managing editor.” He temporarily abandoned his search and looked at her. “Right now there’s no place I can put you but in this department. The first opening that comes up for an investigative reporter, I promise you’ll have first crack at it. But right now, Sherry, I need you to be a good scout and—”

She didn’t want to hear it. Sherry splayed her hands on his desk, carefully avoiding the almost stereotypically grungy coffee mug filled with cold black liquid. “Owen, please. Something to sink my teeth into, that’s all I ask. Something more challenging than searching for a new angle on the latest local school’s annual jog-a-thon and/or bake sale.” Sherry leaned over the desk, her blue eyes pleading with his. “Please.”

“So, you think you’re up to a challenge?”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she cried with enthusiasm. “An exposé, something undercover. I’m perfect for it.” Straightening, she waved both hands over her far-from-hidden bulk. “Who’d suspect a pregnant woman?”

“All right, you want a challenge, you got a challenge.”

Opening up the side desk drawer that the people who worked with him laughingly referred to as no-man’s-land, Owen took out a canary-yellow file folder and handed it to her.

Sherry took the folder from him, noting that it felt as if it hardly weighed anything. Opening it, she discovered that there was a reason for that. It was empty.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” She raised a brow, waiting.

“Fill it,” he told her mildly.

Pregnancy had all but eradicated her normally ample supply of patience. It was difficult to keep emotion out of her voice. “With what?”

“With a story on St. John Adair.”