“Wow. I just never imagined… Wow.”
“And don’t look now, but here comes Flynn Godfrey and Hayden Roth, wanting to meet the woman of the moment.”
“Don’t let me faint.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Grant released her to shake hands with two of Hollywood’s most successful men. If there’d been a dream team to work with on Steph’s story, the Quantum team was it. “Flynn, Hayden, meet my wife, Stephanie Logan McCarthy.”
“Is it okay if I hug you?” Hayden asked. “I feel like I’ve known you much longer than one minute.”
“Of course,” Steph said, hugging the handsome Oscar-winning director.
“Your story moved and amazed us all,” Hayden said. “It was an honor to bring it to life on-screen. Thank you for trusting us with it.”
“Grant said you’re the best, and from what I hear, he was right.”
“We are the best,” Flynn said with a grin, “but your story blew us away from the first time we read the script.”
“That was all him,” Stephanie said, gesturing to her husband.
“No, babe,” Grant said, “it was all you. There’s no denying who’s the heart and soul of this story.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Hayden said. “I’m sorry we weren’t able to convince Charlie to come. I’d love to meet him, too.”
“He’s very happy at home on Gansett Island with his new wife,” Stephanie said. “They’re having a housewarming party Saturday night at their new home. The last thing he wants to do is revisit that time in his life, even though he was supportive of Grant writing the script.”
“We’re so happy he’s found a satisfying new life,” Flynn said.
“No one deserves it more,” Stephanie said. “What he did for me, what he gave up…” She shook her head. “Grant and Dan don’t want to hear that they’re the heroes of the story, but without them, we’d never have gotten him out of prison.”
“I think I speak for Grant when I say that helping to get justice for you and Charlie was one of the most satisfying things we ever did,” Dan said when he joined them.
“I completely agree,” Grant said. “Setting you two free and then telling the world what you did is a distant second to getting you to fall in love with me on my list of life achievements.”
“That was the easiest thing I ever did,” Stephanie said.
Chapter 5
“What a night,” Kara said to Dan as he drove them home hours later. “It’s so nice to see Stephanie getting such praise for how she refused to give up on Charlie. And Grant for writing such a beautiful script.”
“I know. I hope he’s ready to add another Oscar to his shelf.”
“That’d be so deserved.” Kara yawned for the hundredth time since they’d left the party thirty minutes ago. “I’m going to sleep for a week when we get back to Gansett.”
“You can’t sleep for a week in August.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” She had about four weeks remaining until her summer season running the launch service in North Harbor came to an end and she could relax until the spring.
“What’s up with you being so crazy tired all the time?”
“That’s what happens when I try to keep up with you.”
“Seriously, Kara. You’re freaking me out with all the sleeping. That’s not like you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it possible, you know, that you might be… well, pregnant?”
Kara laughed at that. “As you well know, it’s more than possible.”
“Do you think you are?”
“Could be. It would explain a few things.”
“What other things besides being tired?”
“My boobs hurt, my pants feel snug, and I’m hungry all the time.”
“Kara! When were you going to tell me you’re pregnant?”
“As soon as I confirmed it.”
Dan glanced in the rearview mirror before sliding across three lanes on the 5 and taking the next exit.
“What’re you doing?”
“Finding a pharmacy to get a test.”
“We can figure it out when we get home to Gansett.”
“We’re figuring it out right now.” He drove faster than he should have through a commercial area and took a hard right turn into a pharmacy parking lot. “Lock the doors when I get out.”
“Yes, dear.” Kara watched him go, sinfully sexy in the tuxedo he’d worn to the premiere, eating up the sidewalk with his always-impatient stride, which was even more so now that he was on a mission to find out if she was pregnant. She giggled to herself, imagining her famous husband buying a pregnancy test. It’d probably be all over the news that she was pregnant before they knew themselves.
He returned ten minutes later carrying a big bag that he passed to her when he got in the car.
Kara looked inside and burst out laughing when she saw he’d bought no fewer than twenty tests. “We only need one.”
“I want to be sure.”
“I don’t have enough pee for twenty tests.”
“What do you need pee for?”
Kara lost it laughing again. “You have to pee on the stick to take the test.”
“Jesus.”
“How can you be thirty-eight and not know how a pregnancy test works?”
“Because I’ve never come close to being a father, until now.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. I might just be anemic or something.”
“My hopes are up,” he said as he drove toward the beach where he owned a house a half mile from Grant’s.
“You’re driving too fast.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Slow down, or I’ll withhold my pee.”
“That’s gross, Kara.”
“Slow down, Dan.”
He downshifted the two-seater BMW he kept at the house in LA but didn’t slow down all that much.
“I was thinking that we should name our first child Dylan,” Kara said, “whether we have a boy or a girl. What do you think?”
He glanced over at her. “That’d be perfect,” he said gruffly. “Thank you for honoring my brother that way.”
“I wish I’d known him.”
“I do, too. He would’ve loved you, but not as much as I do. It’s still amazing to me…”
“What is?”
“How everything is so much better since you found me and saved me from myself.”
Kara laughed at how he described their meeting. “Is that what I did?”
“You have no idea.”
“You did the same for me. After my sister stole my boyfriend and then married him, I thought I’d never want to take another chance, and then there you were in your pink Oxford shirt and your ridiculous loafers, making a complete ass of yourself on a daily basis trying to get my attention.”
“Um, hello, I was being totally serious, and you just insulted me.”
“Did you or did you not make a complete ass of yourself trying to get my attention?”