Pregnant by My Best Friend’s Mafia Dad

Chapter 1

Heidi

“He sent me a payment request for half the parking,” I tell Zinaida. “Four dollars and fifty cents.”

Across our little table, she lowers her coffee without drinking. Her lipstick has left a red crescent on the lid, and she looks more offended by my date than I managed to be while sitting through him. “Please tell me you declined.”

“I sent five. I’d hate to set back his retirement.”

Her laugh comes out so loudly that I start laughing too, although last night I stood in my kitchen looking at that request for a while before I could find it funny. I’d shaved my legs for him and put on the earrings I save for evenings when I expect someone to notice. He’d spent most of dinner explaining why women on dating apps had unrealistic expectations, then asked if I wanted to come over and watch him play a video game.

I’d even considered it for about half a second, trying to work out whether there was a version of the evening where he became interested in me. Remembering that hesitation makes me more embarrassed than the parking request.

Under the table, Zinaida nudges my sandal with hers. “You can do better.”

“I’d like to do better before I have to moisturize my entire body again.”

She reaches across to squeeze my hand. With her other hand she slides the little plate between us, offering me the remaining half of her cookie. I break off a piece and let the chocolate soften on my tongue while she watches me with an affection that makes complaining feel safe.

Morning light reaches across the café’s green tiles to our table by the window. Beyond the counter, trays of pastries crowd a glass case still misted from something brought out warm. Butter and toasted sugar make it difficult to remember that I’ve already eaten breakfast. There’s a raspberry Danish near the front that I’ve been trying to ignore since we sat down.

We found this place when we worked in the same office, back when we could extend a coffee run into a discussion neither of us wanted to have beside the company microwave. After four years of testing the same software and complaining about the same broken buttons, I knew Zinaida’s coffee order better than I knew the layout of my own kitchen.

Five months ago she went to work for her father. Now we have to put breakfast in our calendars, which I hate, although I love her for continuing to show up.

Today she’s wearing a cream silk blouse with the top two buttons open and a fine gold chain dipping beneath the collar. It would survive about six minutes in my possession. Her hair falls over one shoulder in a glossy sweep, and she keeps checking the phone beside her cup without pretending she’s waiting for a work message.

When it lights up again, she smiles before she even touches it.

“Oh, you’re disgusting,” I say. “Who’s he?”

Her thumb pauses over the screen. Then she turns the phone facedown and leans toward me, abandoning whatever restraint she arrived with. “His name is Jacob Dalton. He’s thirty-one, he actually makes plans, and he came over last night with the chocolates I mentioned once. Once, Heidi. I didn’t send him a link.”

I smile with her, even as a small, shameful ache spoils the sweetness of my cookie. I want someone to remember what I like. Hearing how easily it’s happening for her makes me feel ridiculous for having been pleased when last night’s man asked whether I wanted another glass of water.

Zinaida’s happiness is all over her face, though, and she pauses with a hopeful look that makes me reach for her hand. I want to be pleased for her without immediately thinking about what I’m missing. “Tell me more.”

“He listens. I can finish a sentence without him deciding what I meant.” Her smile softens as she turns her cup between her hands. “I told him I’m tired of having every decision treated like a family emergency. He understood. He said I should get to enjoy my own life.”

She looks lighter saying it. For years I’ve heard about the cars her father sends when she wants to take a cab and the questions when she comes home late. Working for him has given her a better salary and considerably more opportunity to be annoyed with him.

“Does your dad know?” I ask.

“God, no. He’d want to meet him immediately, and then he’d make it weird.” She peels a bit of paper from her cup. “I want to find out if I like someone before my father decides I shouldn’t.”

“That seems fair.” It does, sitting here with her. She’s twenty-five and has bought her own apartment, yet she sometimes has to explain a late dinner as if she missed curfew. I can understand wanting a few weeks of happiness without defending it.

Her phone vibrates against the table. With a sigh, she turns it over, and the face filling the screen stops me mid-chew.

He’s seated in a dark shirt with the collar open, one arm resting along the side of a chair. Silver runs through the hair at his temples, bright against the darker sweep above his forehead. The photographer has caught him looking slightly away from the camera, his mouth unsmiling, his attention apparently on someone he expects to answer him.

His clean-shaven cheek is turned toward the light, which catches the strong line of his nose. My attention lingers on his mouth. I’d have trouble listening to that mouth if he were saying something important.

Above the photograph, the caller’s name reads Dad, and I bite the inside of my cheek. For fuck’s sake, I’m staring at my best friend’s father.

Zinaida answers before I can say anything unfortunate. “Hi. Yes, I’ve seen the email.”

She holds the phone to her ear, taking the picture with it. I swallow the last of the cookie and reach for my latte, grateful for something to do with my mouth. The coffee has cooled, leaving a sweet film against my tongue. Across from me, my best friend is having a conversation about work with a man I’ve just stared at in a deeply inappropriate way.

“I’ll be there at ten,” she says. “You don’t need to send anyone. I have a car.”

While she listens, I straighten the paper napkin beneath my cup and try to remember whether she’s ever shown me a proper photograph of him. There have been distant figures behind birthday cakes, family pictures she’s scrolled past to find something else. Mostly, her father has existed as an irritated voice on a phone and the reason she sometimes leaves early.

She ends the call with a loving but exasperated goodbye.

“New picture?” I ask, putting every bit of effort into sounding mildly interested.

“For the company website. I put it on his contact because he hates having his photograph taken.” She checks the time. “He’s at the office around the corner today. Apparently that means I might need collecting.”

“Your family’s annoyingly photogenic.”

“Thank you. It’s been a terrible burden.” She slips her phone into her bag, entirely untroubled by the fact that I’m having to relearn how to behave. “Now tell me you’re deleting the parking man.”

I do it in front of her. She approves with a little pat on my wrist, then gathers her belongings while I regret my Danish decision. There’s no time to stand in the growing line. Nancy, my manager, expects me online shortly, and I’ve already stretched breakfast past the sensible limit.

Outside, the June warmth settles over my bare arms. Zinaida hugs me, her cheek briefly pressed to mine, and promises to tell me how her next evening with Jacob goes.

I head home to work with the scent of her perfume on my shoulder and her father’s photograph still irritatingly clear in my head.

By a quarter past four, I’ve spent most of the day reproducing an error that makes a shopping basket empty itself. My eyes hurt, the apartment is hot, and the raspberry Danish has acquired an importance it probably can’t live up to. I close my laptop and walk back to the café before I can talk myself into being sensible again.

With the breakfast crowd gone, the room feels wider. A few people sit near the back with their laptops, leaving the window tables empty. The pastry case has thinned out, but there are still two Danishes on the tray. I buy one to take home, accepting the paper bag with more gratitude than the purchase warrants.

When I turn toward the door, he’s standing at the end of the counter, looking down at his phone. His jacket is folded over one forearm, exposing the fit of a pale blue shirt across his shoulders. In the photograph he was handsome. Here he has height and breadth, a body that occupies the space beside the counter so completely that I stop with the pastry bag pressed to my middle.

The sleeves are rolled to his forearms. As he lowers the phone, the movement pulls the fabric over his upper arm, showing solid muscle beneath it. He wears a watch with a plain dark face, and his fingers are long against the edge of the phone.

He raises his eyes while I’m still looking. They’re gray, with fine lines beside them that deepen as his attention settles on me.

I start to smile because I recognize him, then remember that he has no reason to recognize me. His answering smile warms my face before I can look away.

“Hello,” he says.

His voice is deeper than I expect, clear across the short space between us. I can’t blame the photograph for failing to warn me about that. “Hi. I think I know you.”

He slips his phone into his pocket. “Have we met?”

“No. I’m a friend of...” The explanation falters as he comes closer, carrying his jacket loosely at his side. I have to tip my face up to keep looking at him. At this distance there’s a faint scent of cedar beneath the coffee in the room, and I become embarrassingly aware of the heat I’ve brought in from the street.

“A friend of mine?” he asks.

There’s a smile in his voice now. He waits, giving me every opportunity to produce an answer, while I stand there with my mouth open and a paper bag gradually crumpling under my fingers. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”

“Well, I’m Nikolai.” He offers his hand. “We can start there.”

I put my hand in his, grateful for an introduction I can get through without making a bigger fool of myself. His palm is warm, his grip firm, and I forget the explanation I was trying to give. One corner of his mouth lifts slightly higher than the other when he smiles. “Heidi Warren.”

“Heidi,” he repeats, letting go. “Were you leaving?”

“I was going home. I came back for this.” I lift the bag, relieved to have an explanation that doesn’t involve his daughter. “I talked myself out of it this morning, then thought about it all day.”

He looks at the bag. “You should’ve bought it this morning.”

“I’m coming to that conclusion.”

His quiet laugh eases my embarrassment, leaving a pleasure I want to prolong. I let myself enjoy talking to him without worrying about every word, even though Zinaida’s name would explain everything. I could mention her now. He might ask how she seems, and I’d tell him she’s happy without mentioning Jacob. We’d finish this in a perfectly reasonable way.

Instead I notice the open button at his throat and wonder what he’d look like across a dinner table.

“Do you have plans tonight?” he asks.

I glance at the café clock as if tonight might already have happened. “Tonight?”

“Have dinner with me. Seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up here.” He watches my face, the invitation given with an ease that makes my pulse quicken. “There’s an Italian restaurant I think you’d like.”

He’s asking me on a date, and the pleasure comes before the guilt. He already has a time and a restaurant in mind, and I can imagine simply turning up to enjoy myself, relieved of the effort of persuading someone to take me out. The way he’s looking at me makes it harder still to refuse.

Behind him, a cup clicks against the counter. The sound pulls my attention back to the room and the table where Zinaida sat this morning, smiling over Jacob’s message.

I want an evening I’m excited to get dressed for. I want to sit beside a man without wondering whether I’m asking too much by hoping he’ll pay attention. For once, I want to go home wishing the date had lasted longer. None of that changes who he is.

With one hand in his pocket, Nikolai waits for my answer. The decision is horribly clear. I can explain now and watch his expression change, or I can let him keep looking at me like this. “I’d like that,” I say.

His smile deepens. “Good. Let me have your number.” He brings out his phone, opens a new contact and hands it to me.

As I enter my name and number, I’m aware of him beside me, close without crowding. My fingers behave themselves on the screen. Apparently I’m capable of typing my way into trouble much more smoothly than speaking.

He sends me a message before putting his phone away. When it arrives, I take out mine to save his number, and there’s Zinaida’s conversation just below the new message.

“I’ll see you at seven, Heidi,” he says.

“Yes. Seven.” I manage a smile that feels far too pleased with itself. “I should go.”

Nikolai walks with me to the door and holds it open. When I pass him, his attention stays on my face, and the small courtesy feels intimate after what I’ve just agreed to. Outside, I take a breath that fills my lungs properly for the first time since I saw him.

The bag rustles in my hand as I start toward home. I have less than three hours to shower and get ready, and somewhere between the café and the corner I begin thinking about the black dress hanging at the back of my wardrobe.

Zinaida helped me choose it.