A cut in his skin dripped red blood onto the black ink. He watched it drip for a long moment before there was a knock on his door and a servant entered with afternoon tea. Rashid stood and went into the nearby restroom in order to wash away the blood and tape up the cut. When he returned to his desk, the blood and ink had been wiped away. Cleaned up as if it had never happened.
He flexed his hand and felt the sting of the cut against his palm. You could sweep up messes, patch up wounds and try to forget they ever happened.
But Rashid knew the truth. The cut would heal, but there were things that never went away, no matter how deeply you buried them.
* * *
“Please stop crying, Annie.” Sheridan sat at her desk with her phone to her ear and her heart in her throat. Her sister was sobbing on the other end of the line at the news from the clinic. Sheridan was still too stunned to process it. “We’ll get through this. Somehow, we’ll get through. I am having a baby for you. I promise it will happen.”
Annie sobbed and wailed for twenty minutes while Sheridan tried to soothe her. Annie, the oldest by a year, was so fragile, and Sheridan felt her pain keenly. Sheridan had always been the strong one. She was still the strong one. Still the one looking out for her sister and wishing that she could give Annie some of her strength.
She felt so guilty every time Annie fell apart. It wasn’t her fault, and yet she couldn’t help but feel responsible. There’d only been enough money in their family for one daughter to go to college, and Sheridan had better grades. Annie had been shy and reclusive while Sheridan was outgoing. The choice had been evident to all of them, but it was yet another thing Sheridan felt guilty over. Maybe if their parents had tried harder to encourage Annie, to support her decisions, she would be stronger than she was. Instead, she let everyone else make her choices.
The one thing she wanted in this life was the one thing she couldn’t have. But Sheridan could give it to her. And she was determined to do just that, in spite of this latest wrinkle in the plan.
Eventually, Annie’s husband came home and took the phone away. Sheridan talked to Chris for a few minutes and then the line went dead.
She leaned back in her chair and blinked. Her eyes were gritty and swollen from the crying she’d been doing along with her sister. She snatched up a tissue from the holder on her desk and dabbed at her eyes.
How had this all gone wrong? It was supposed to be so easy. Annie couldn’t carry a baby to term, but Sheridan could. So she’d offered to have a baby for her sister, knowing that it would make Annie happy and fulfill her deepest desire. It would have also made their parents happy, if they were still alive, to know they’d have a grandchild on the way. They’d had Annie and Sheridan late in life, and they’d desperately wanted grandchildren. But Annie hadn’t been able to provide them, and Sheridan hadn’t been ready.
Now Sheridan wished she’d had this baby earlier so her parents could have held their grandchild before they died. Though the child wouldn’t be Annie’s biologically, it would still share her DNA. The Sloane DNA.
Sheridan had gone in for the insemination a week ago. They still didn’t know whether it had worked or not, but now that she knew it wasn’t Chris’s sperm, she fervently hoped it hadn’t.
She’d been given sperm from a different donor. A foreigner. The sperm bank would give them no other information beyond the physical facts. An Arab male, six-two, black hair, dark eyes, healthy.
Sheridan put her hand on her belly and drew in a deep breath. They couldn’t test for another week yet. Another week of Annie crying her eyes out. Another week until Sheridan knew if she was having an anonymous man’s baby or if they would try again with Chris’s sperm.
But what if she was pregnant this time? Then what?
There was a knock on her door, and her partner popped her head in. Sheridan swiped her eyes again and smiled as Kelly came inside the small office at the back of the space they rented for their business.
“Hey, you okay?”
Sheridan sniffed. “Not exactly.” She waved a hand. “I will be, but it’s just a lot to process.”
Kelly came over and took her hand, squeezed it before she sat in a chair nearby and leaned forward to look Sheridan in the eye. “Want to talk about it?”
Sheridan thought she didn’t, but then she spilled the news almost as if she couldn’t quite help herself. And it felt good to tell someone else. Someone who wouldn’t sob and fall apart and need more reassurance than Sheridan knew how to give. If her mother was still alive, she’d know what to say to Annie. But Sheridan so often didn’t.
Kelly didn’t interrupt, but her eyes grew bigger as the story unfolded. Then she sat back in the chair with her jaw hanging open.
“Wow. So you might be pregnant with another man’s baby. Poor Annie! She must be devastated.”
Sheridan’s heart throbbed. “She is. She’d pinned all her hopes on me having a baby for her and Chris. After so many disappointments, so many treatments and failed attempts of her own, she’s fragile right now....” Sheridan sucked in a breath. “This was just a bad time for it to happen.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. But maybe it won’t take, and then you can try again.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” The doctor had said that sometimes they had to repeat the process two or three times before it was successful. And while it seemed wrong on some level to hope for failure this time, it would also be the best outcome. Sheridan stood and straightened her skirt. “Well, don’t we have a party to cater? Mrs. Lands will be expecting her crab puffs and roast beef in a couple of hours.”
“It’s under control, Sheri. Why don’t you just go home and rest? You look like hell, you know.”
Sheridan laughed. “Gee, thanks.” But then she shook her head. “I’ll freshen up, but I’d really like to work. It’ll keep my mind occupied.”
Kelly looked doubtful. “All right. But if you find yourself crying in the soup, you have to go.”
* * *
The party was a success. The guests loved the food, the waitstaff did a superb job and once everything was under control, Sheridan went back to the office to work on the menus for the next party they were catering in a few days’ time. Kelly stayed behind to make sure there were no last-minute issues, but Sheridan knew her partner would come back to the office after it was over.
They were a great team. Had been since the first moment they’d met in school. Kelly was the cooking talent, and Sheridan was the architect behind the business. Literally the architect, Sheridan thought with a wry smile. She’d gone to the Savannah College of Art and Design for a degree in historical preservation architecture, but it was her talent at organizing parties that helped make Dixie Doin’s—they’d left the g off doing on purpose, which worked well in the South but not so much when visiting Yankees called it doynes—into the growing business it was today.
They’d rented a building with a large commercial kitchen, hired a staff and maintained a storefront where people could come in and browse through specialty items that included table linens, dishes, gourmet oils and salts and various teas and teapots.
Sheridan settled in her office to scroll through the requirements for the next event. She had no idea how much time had passed when she heard the buzzer for the shop door. She automatically glanced up at the screen where the camera feed showed different angles of the store. Tiffany, the teenager they’d hired for the summer, was nowhere to be seen. A man stood inside the shop, looking around the room as if he had no clue what he was doing there.
Probably his wife had sent him to buy something and he had no idea what it looked