One Secret Night, One Secret Baby. Charlene Sands

get better so you can make it on Friday.”

      â€œOkay, I think you’re right.”

      â€œSleep. It’s the best thing for you.”

      â€œThanks, and, Brooke, no way am I missing this weekend.”

      â€œI’ll come over later and bring you some soup.”

      â€œUgh, no. Just the thought of food right now turns my stomach.”

      â€œAll right. I’ll call you later.”

      When the call ended, Emma turned her head into her pillow, closed her eyes and slept the entire day. She woke up bathed in a stream of dim light coming from the night-light on the opposite wall. She blinked herself awake. Outside, darkness had descended, but she was safe, protected. Since the night of the blackout, she kept night-lights on day and night in her apartment to keep from ever being alone in total darkness. She also now had an entire bedroom shelf devoted to pillar candles, scented and unscented. It didn’t matter, as long as they did the trick. She took them with her when she traveled, too, just in case, and had also started carrying a mini flashlight in her purse. Not that she couldn’t use her cell phone—someone had turned her onto a flashlight app, which came in handy—but cell phone batteries died on occasion and she couldn’t chance it.

      A look at her cell phone now revealed that it was seven twenty-five. Wow, she’d slept for nine hours. Funny, but she didn’t feel rested at all. Or hungry. Just the thought of food made her queasy all over again.

      Brooke called and they spoke for half an hour, going over the final details of the golf event, the dinner, dancing, silent auction and raffle. At two thousand dollars a head and with an expected one hundred fifty guests in attendance, there were lots of fine points to check on.

      â€œI’ll see you tomorrow, Brooke,” Emma said, feeling optimistic as she hung up the phone. Her stomach had eased back to normal and she figured she’d been through the worst of it.

      By the morning of the next day, she knew that she’d figured wrong. She emptied her stomach twice before it settled down. She managed to go into the office, but once Brooke took a look at her pasty face, she ordered her back to bed. Emma didn’t have the strength to argue.

      By Thursday morning, nothing had changed. She spent the morning in the bathroom next to her new best friend. Suspicions were running rampant in her head. What if she didn’t have the flu? What if there was something else wrong with her? Something permanent? Something rest and hot soup wouldn’t cure?

      Eyes wide-open now, she fought the invading rumblings in her belly, quickly dressed and dashed to the local drugstore. Once she got back home, she peed on a stick at three different intervals of the day, only to get the same result each time. Opening her laptop, she keyed it up and researched a subject she thought would be years down the road for her.

      She was as sure now as she would ever be; she had all the symptoms.

      She was pregnant.

      And Dylan McKay was her blackout baby’s father.

Three

      â€œYou’re trying to hide a smile, Brooke. You don’t fool me.”

      â€œI’m not trying to fool you, Emma. I think it’s kinda cool that you and my brother...”

      â€œNo, it wasn’t like that, really.” Oh, boy.

      Having Brooke stop everything at the office and come over right away might have been a mistake. But this was big and she couldn’t hide her pregnancy from her best friend. Especially not when Brooke had a stake in this, too; she was Dylan’s sister after all. Emma needed her right now. She had no one else to turn to and time was running out. She had morning sickness, big-time. Immediate decisions had to be made and she’d have to deal with Dylan at some point.

      â€œWe’re not romantically involved,” she said to Brooke.

      Her friend sat on the sofa next to her, her mouth twitching, the smile she couldn’t conceal spreading wider across her face. This was no laughing matter. Obviously, Brooke thought differently.

      She’d given Brooke the bare facts about what had happened that night between her and Dylan, explaining how she’d panicked when all the lights had gone out in that nightclub. The entire city had gone dark from what she could tell and she hadn’t been in any shape to drive home. At least she got that part right. No drunk driving for her.

      But instead of Brooke coming to pick her up as she’d hoped, Dylan had come to her rescue, as any good guy would. Emma tried to make clear to Brooke that she’d been the one to initiate the lovemaking. Emma remembered that much; she’d begged him to stay with her. She had no recollection of exactly how it all went down, those hours fuzzy in her head, but it was all on her. She’d been scared out of her wits and inebriated. And Dylan was there. She’d lived out her fantasy with him that night, but she didn’t tell Brooke that. Some things were better left unsaid.

      â€œBrooke, I’ll say it again, and this is hard to admit, but I probably climbed all over him that night. I swear, he didn’t take advantage of me.” The worst would be that Brooke would hold anything about that night against Dylan.

      Brooke covered her ears. “Emma, pleeeze! No details. I can’t think of Dylan that way.” And then she lowered her hands. “But it’s sweet that you’re trying to protect him. You don’t want me to think badly of my brother. I get that, Em. And I don’t. No one’s to blame.”

      â€œOkay, no details.” Not that she could remember any. “Dylan doesn’t know any of this happened.”

      â€œAre you sure of that?”

      â€œI’m sure. I’d know it, if he remembered. I’d see something in his eyes. And he’s never mentioned my phone call that night, or the fact that he came to pick me up from the nightclub. When he came to my apartment the day we went to the children’s hospital, he didn’t seem to recognize anything as familiar. I’m certain that night was erased from his memory.”

      â€œI think so, too. Just making sure there were no signs.”

      â€œNope, not a one.”

      Brooke nodded and then gazed warmly into Emma’s eyes for several ticks of a minute. “You’re going to be the mother of my niece or nephew,” she said as softly as Emma had ever heard her speak. The tone was rich and thick as honey. “And my brother is going to be a father.”

      The way Brooke put it was sort of beautiful. Emma could get lost in all the wonder of motherhood, of nurturing a new life and having a man like Dylan father her child. But the wonder didn’t come close to erasing the plain facts. That she and Dylan didn’t plan this child. That he didn’t even have a clue what was happening, yet his life was about to change forever.

      â€œOh, Brooke. I’m just wrapping my head around it. The baby part has me feeling...I don’t know, protective already and scared.” Emma shivered. “Very scared.”

      â€œYou’ll be fine. You have me. And Dylan. He’d never turn his back on you.”

      â€œGosh, it’s all so new. Part of me feels guilty not telling him about that night. It might’ve triggered some of his memories.”

      â€œYou’ll have to tell him now, Em. He has a right to know.”

      It was inevitable that she tell Dylan. But she wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Gosh, he’d been like a big brother to her and now nothing between them would ever be the same.

      â€œI