Chapter 164 You just have to say the word

Chapter 164 You just have to say the word

They made it to the gynecologist's office with a few minutes to spare, which Leonard considered a personal victory given the morning they'd had.

He held the door open, and Lucinda walked through ahead of him, one hand resting lightly on her bump the way she'd started doing without even realizing it.

It was an unconscious habit that had developed somewhere over the last few weeks.

The waiting area was calm. Soft lighting, a few comfortable chairs, the kind of quiet that medical offices try to create on purpose. Lucinda was reaching into her bag for her insurance card when the inner office door opened.

She looked up.

The woman who stepped out first stopped walking the second she saw Lucinda's face. Her whole body went still, like someone had pressed pause on her.

"Suzy."

Suzy's mouth opened. Nothing came out at first.

Leonard's eyes moved past her to the man stepping out of the office right behind her, and something in his expression changed completely. Not alarm exactly.

More like the specific kind of surprise you get when you see something that genuinely doesn't fit the picture you've built in your head over years of knowing someone.

"Jackson."

Jackson Taylor registered Leonard and Lucinda at the same moment, and unlike Suzy, he recovered quickly.

His arm went around Suzy's waist with an ease that suggested it had already become a habit, protective, unhurried, completely natural for a man who, as far as Leonard had known up until about thirty seconds ago, had never in his adult life stood that close to a woman voluntarily.

Jackson Taylor was many things. He was sharp, reliable, the kind of business partner who showed up prepared and left with results.

He was also a man who had been to every company event, every dinner, every industry gathering for years without ever bringing anyone, without ever mentioning anyone, without ever giving the smallest hint that there was anyone to mention. People had stopped asking a long time ago.

And yet here he was. Hand on the small of a woman's back, walking out of a gynecologist's office, looking entirely too comfortable for someone who had apparently wandered in here by accident.

"Leonard." Jackson's mouth moved into something that wasn't quite a smile but was close to one, the look of a man who knows he has some explaining to do and has already decided to lean into it.

His eyes moved to Lucinda, taking in her face, then the now-visible bump she was carrying, and something genuinely warm moved across his expression. "So this is your wife. I've been wondering. You always had the ring on but I never once—" He stopped, reconsidered, started again.

"She's stunning, by the way. I don't understand why you kept her to yourself all this time."

"That's personal," Leonard said, his arm finding Lucinda's waist the same way Jackson's had found Suzy's, mirroring the instinct without even thinking about it.

His eyes cut back to Suzy, who was studying the floor like it contained information she urgently needed. Then back to Jackson. The math wasn't complicated. Gynecologist's office. Suzy. Jackson's hand on her waist.

"Tell me it's not what I'm thinking."

"It's a good story actually," Jackson said, which was not a denial.

Suzy drew in a breath to speak and Jackson glanced at her briefly, not unkind, just quick, and took over without missing a beat. "We ran into each other at a grocery store about a month ago. She was carrying too much, something spilled, landed on me. She insisted on fixing it."

He smiled like the memory was right before him. "One thing led to another, and I ended up in her bed. I left my number when I left, just in case she ever needed anything."

Lucinda's eyebrow moved upward.

"She called," Jackson continued, entirely unbothered by the eyebrow. "To let me know about the pregnancy. I brought her here today to confirm it properly." He said it the way someone states a business decision, clean, without any drama. "It's confirmed. So now I handle it the right way."

"When you say handle it the right way," Leonard said slowly, "you mean—"

"Marriage." Jackson said it like it was the only logical conclusion to any sentence that had started the way this one did. "I'm not raising a child out of wedlock. We haven't sat down to talk through the details yet but that's the direction."

He looked mildly irritated at having to clarify it. "I wasn't planning to tell you first. Just how it happened."

Leonard looked at him for a moment. Then, "good thing you did. Because my wife is her employer. And her friend outside of work. Suzy is her responsibility."

Jackson took that in without blinking. His eyes moved to Lucinda properly this time, reassessing. "Fair enough." He paused for a moment. "Actually, where does your wife work? You wore a ring for years and I never heard a name, never saw a photo, nothing. I genuinely assumed it was complicated."

The words landed on Leonard in a specific way.

He felt them settle. Felt the truth of them, not as an accusation, because Jackson wasn't making one, but as a plain statement of fact that had no business being a plain statement of fact. His wife. Years. Not a name. Not a photo. Nothing.

He stood up a little straighter.

"You're right," he said. There was something resolved in his voice, like a decision being confirmed rather than made. "I should have announced her properly a long time ago. That's on me." He looked at Jackson directly. "And for what it's worth, she's my boss. In every sense of the word."

Jackson stared at him.

Then he looked at Lucinda.

Then back at Leonard.

"You're serious."

"He is," Suzy said from beside him, quickly and with complete certainty, because she had seen enough of Lucinda and Leonard together to have no doubts about it whatsoever.

Jackson looked at Suzy for a moment with the expression of a man recalibrating his understanding of several things at once. "Coming from you I'll take it as fact." He straightened up, tucking Suzy a little closer to his side. "Now if you'll both excuse us, we have a few things to sort through."

They started to move past, and Lucinda reached out and caught Suzy's hand.

Not grabbing, just a light touch, the kind that means wait.

Lucinda looked at Jackson pleasantly. "Do you mind if I steal her for two minutes?"

Jackson looked at Suzy. Checking, actually checking, which was not nothing.

Suzy gave a small nod before his arm loosened. "Two minutes. We have somewhere to be."

Lucinda steered Suzy gently toward the corner of the waiting room, putting a little distance between them and the two men. She turned to face her and looked at her properly, the way you look at someone when you're trying to read past the surface.

Suzy's color was high. She hadn't looked up properly since they walked out of that office.

"Suzy." Lucinda's voice was quiet and completely serious. "Is what he said true? All of it?" She held her gaze. "Because if you are in some kind of trouble, don't have to manage this alone. You know that. You just have to say the word."