"Angela," Melanie called as the redhead moved toward the exit, "could you help me with something?"

Angela eyed the door but didn't make a break for it. She followed Melanie down the corridor. Together they stepped into the kitchen.

"Bon voyage!" Ruth shouted, throwing confetti.

"Arrivederci!" Vivi yelled, though she wasn't sure why. A small sheet cake with a picture of a cruise ship surrounded by waves sat on the table. A bouquet of balloons-some with a bridal theme and some proclaiming Bon Voyage! were tied to the back of one of the chairs. Three brightly wrapped gifts sat next to it.

"This is your bridal shower and going-away party," Melanie, said leading Angela to a place at the table. Vivi slid a gla.s.s of wine in front of her. Ruth threw the last handful of confetti.

Angela contemplated them from her seat. "This is really sweet of you," she said. "I get the wedding part, but I don't really understand the bon voyage theme. Who's leaving?" She studied the three of them, her gaze focusing on Vivi.

"Nope. Sorry. That's privileged information at the moment." Vivien smiled. "In the meantime, drink this." She placed the gla.s.s of wine in Angela's hand while Ruth cut three slices of cake. Melanie pa.s.sed Angela the first present.

"That one's from me," Vivi said. "And I expect you to wear it next week."

Slowly Angela unwrapped the oblong box. Parting the tissue paper, she lifted out the emerald green belly-dance outfit. The top was a green velvet push-up bra shot through with gold thread and encrusted with gold coins. Angela gave it a jangle.

The harem pants were chiffon with a green velvet yolk encrusted with gold coins.

"Wow. I hardly know what to say." Angela smiled.

Vivi turned to Melanie. "Don't you think it's completely her?"

"Completely." Melanie laughed. "I hope you got one for yourself."

"Here," Ruth said, pushing the other package toward Angela. "This one's from Melanie and me."

Angela pulled off the paper but not before taking a hefty sip of wine. The box yielded clothing, but with a lot less glitter and a whole lot more cla.s.s.

"Oh, that's beautiful." Angela ran a hand over the cream silk blouse and matching shantung pants. She held the blouse up in front of her. "It's almost the same color cream as my wedding dress." Her smile slipped.

"It's a perfect shade with your hair and your eyes," said Melanie.

Angela looked inside the collar. "But it's only an eight."

Melanie looked at her closely. "Which may be too big."

Angela shook her head in denial. "No, I can't . . ."

Melanie put a finger to Angela's lips to shush her. "This is where the bon voyage part starts."

Vivi refilled Angela's gla.s.s and tilted it up to her lips.

"We're sending Fangie on a cruise," Melanie said.

"Permanently," added Ruth.

"It's time to kiss Fat Angie's a.s.s good-bye!"

THE NEXT AFTERNOON Vivien stopped off at the grocery store to pick up ground beef and frozen French fries. She wasn't a particularly great cook and she didn't attempt anything fancier than the burgers and fries she planned for tonight, but the look on Melanie's face when she got home after a day of work and running the kids and found food on the table had proven pretty inspirational.

As she pushed the rapidly filling cart, Vivien thought about last night's bridal shower/bon voyage party and hoped Fangie's departure would prove more than symbolic.

While they all agreed that Angela needed to be rid of Fangie, they didn't all agree about whether Angela should show the picture to James. Melanie had argued in favor of total honesty and insisted that James would not only understand but admire the change she'd wrought in her life. Ruth had come out in favor of the past staying in the past, since, she reasoned, James had fallen in love with the woman Angela was now and it didn't make sense to muddy the waters. It was like telling a potential husband about all the men you'd dated before you met him. Not much was accomplished, but damage could be done.

Vivi sighed as she wheeled the cart toward the checkout lines. Although she'd felt it too hypocritical to say so, she hoped Angela would tell James her secret. She wished she could do the same.

In line, Vivi perused magazine headlines. Next to the National Enquirer, with its headline about a minor celebrity who claimed to have been abducted and then returned by aliens and the Enquirer's oversized photo of Brad and Angelina and their brood, was a fresh stack of the Weekly Encounter, which carried her recent rant about SAT prep and the parental obsession with their children's scores. The woman in front of her was blatantly reading Scarlett Leigh's column, most likely with no intention of buying. Her lips were pressed together in a tight, unhappy line.

"This Scarlett Leigh is an absolute idiot," she said.

Vivien arranged a look of interest on her face but kept her mouth closed.

The woman nodded toward Vivien's stomach. "Just wait until your child is ready to graduate from high school. It'll probably feel even more like brain surgery by then than it does now. Obviously this Scarlett Leigh doesn't know squat about raising kids or getting them into college."

Vivien smiled in a way that she hoped could be taken for agreement. An aisle over another woman chimed in.

"How can they let some woman who has no idea what she's talking about say whatever she feels like? Where are Scarlett Leigh's child-rearing credentials? I bet she's a d.a.m.ned man who knows as much as my d.a.m.ned ex-husband!"

The woman in front of Vivi had paid and was waiting for the last bags to be put in her cart. "Well, I'd like to see that Scarlett person have to tell her child he didn't get into any of what were supposed to be his *safety' schools," she huffed. "I suppose she thinks we should just let them get whatever they get even if they never have a high enough score to leave home!"

There was a group shudder followed by a short, heavy silence.

Vivien shrank as far as an eight-and-a-half-months-pregnant woman could. Vivien felt even worse than she had when she was writing her apparently incendiary columns and more than a little afraid of what might happen if Scarlett's true ident.i.ty were ever revealed. She left the store as quickly as her swollen ankles and aching feet would take her, threw the grocery bags into the back of the SUV, and ditched the cart.

She was heaving herself up into the SUV when her cell phone rang. Caller ID said Matt Glazer. Tired of ducking him, she answered.

"Well, h.e.l.lo at last," he said. "What finally made you pick up?"

"Just trying to clean up some loose ends," she said, ignoring the whine in his voice.

"That's all I am, a loose end?"

Not even, she thought. "I a.s.sume you had a reason for calling?"

"Well, yes," he admitted. "I thought we might work together on something."

It appeared Matt Glazer was not only whiny and presumptuous, but delusional. She told herself not to get worked up. Which would have been easier if the man weren't such a complete and utter moron.

"Did you come up with that idea before or after the Christmas Day hatchet job you did on me?"

"Oh, that," he said as if he hadn't, in fact, told all of Atlanta that she was pregnant, long in the tooth, and unmarried. "I just hated not to use the information. You know how that is. Once you dig it up you can't exactly put it back."

This was true as she knew all too well, but as she had that first time they'd run into each other, she resented his putting them on the same level. "I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop digging and leave me alone," Vivien said. "We knew each other a little bit a long time ago. I don't think that gives you the right to print whatever you want to about me."

There was a pause during which she a.s.sumed he realized that meant "no."

"Well, actually, Vivi, my job does give me that right. As long as what I print is true."

His familiarity had her staring out the car window, gritting her teeth. The chances of getting through the conversation without losing it completely were shrinking at an alarming rate.

"I know about the investigation you're conducting into your brother-in-law's death and I want in," he said.

She grasped the steering wheel and gritted her teeth harder. Matt Glazer was b.u.mbling around in things he didn't understand. h.e.l.l, what she'd been doing didn't even qualify as an investigation, though she didn't intend to discuss that with him.

"Look," she said, trying to tamp down her rising temper. "There is no investigation into J.J.'s death, no deep dark secrets to search out. And we don't need to be at odds with each other. Let's just call it a day, Matt. Okay?"

She waited, alone in the car, hoping he'd just pick up his marbles and go home.

"Oh, there's an investigation all right," he said, blowing that hope right out of the water. "I know you requested the GBI file. And I don't really need your permission to conduct an investigation of my own." His tone had turned insolent; waving a white flag had made her look vulnerable.

"Matt," she said, still trying to control the anger that was now pounding in her temple and beating a nasty tattoo in her ears. "I'm asking you to back off. I have no intention of or interest in collaborating on anything. Not that there's anything to collaborate on."

"I know you've been talking to people," he said as if she hadn't spoken. He actually seemed to think that if he just explained things in the right way, she'd go along with him. "Well, I've been talking to people, too. About you. And what you've been up to since you came back to Atlanta. If we're not working together, I'm going to feel compelled to use what I know. After all, I have an important column to fill."

"You are way out of line," she said, deciding that self-control was sorely overrated. She'd been the soul of reasonableness and look where it had gotten her. "And if you think you can blackmail me into anything, you are even stupider than I thought."

She pictured his look of surprise. Did he actually think he could threaten her and she'd cave? If she'd had a story, she sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't be wasting it on a gossip column in a local paper.

"So that's it?" he said and his own voice had a bite to it. "You still think you're too good to write something with me."

Was she really sitting in a supermarket parking lot listening to this c.r.a.p? Not a moment longer she wasn't.

"I am way too good to collaborate with you, Matt, and everyone but you knows it. Your idea of collaborating is trying to horn in on someone else's story, threatening them to try to get a piece of their work. That is not remotely professional, Matt. And neither are you."

There was sputtering on the other end of the line, but she was beyond caring. "In fact, if I were you-and I plan to start thanking G.o.d on a regular basis that I'm not-I'd be embarra.s.sed. But I don't think you're smart enough for that."

"You're going to be sorry you turned me down," he said. "And even sorrier that you've talked to me this way. I'm a colleague. A fellow journalist." He was working himself into a bit of a huff, but he had a ways to go to catch up with her. Testosterone was no match for pregnancy hormones.

"Matt, at the moment I'm sorry about more things than you can imagine. But I promise you you're not one of them. You write a gossip column!" Vivien was shouting now and it felt really, really good. "And you're about as close to being a real journalist as a grain of sand is to being the Sahara desert.

She hung up without waiting for an answer and laid her forehead against the steering wheel for a few long moments while she attempted to regain her composure. That last little tirade had been a mistake, she knew, but at the moment she was unable to regret it.

Her stomach rumbled and she realized how late it was. Still reliving the whole conversation with Matt Glazer, she drove home quickly. The sight of a rental car in Melanie's driveway took her by surprise.

Instead of pressing the garage door opener, Vivien pulled up beside the rental car so that she could peer inside. When she saw who was there, she parked and raced, or rather waddled quickly, around to the driver's side of the rental car and waited for Marty Phelps to get out.

She stopped short as she registered the serious expression on her former cameraman's long, hawk-nosed face; the blood made a loud whooshing noise in her brain. The military sent a formal bearer of bad news; did the network send a cameraman?

"Tell me nothing's happened to Stone," she said as he stood to face her. Her voice was thick with fear.

"Nothing's happened to Stone," he said. "Nothing he can't deal with anyway."

"Oh, G.o.d!" Vivien said. "You gave me such a scare." She was so relieved that she threw herself into his arms, stomach first. The expression on his face turned from serious to shocked as her bulging belly cannoned into him.

His gaze dropped to her midsection. "You're pregnant." It was a statement, but one he was clearly just trying out.

"Never could pull anything over on you," she said, stepping back. Her stomach filled the s.p.a.ce between them and then some.

"So this is what you've been doing down here," he finally said. "Reproducing." As if she were an amoeba or some other single-celled organism that had achieved this all by herself.

Not sure what to say, she led him to the SUV and popped open the back. "Here, help me with the groceries," she said as she walked around and leaned into the front seat to open the garage door. "Melanie and the kids won't be home until later. I'll explain while I cook dinner."

He took the bulk of the bags, leaving her to close up the car and lead him into the house through the garage.

"You cook," he said, sounding dazed. "You're ready to spit out a kid and you make dinner. I feel like I'm in one of those early episodes of The Twilight Zone. Last thing I remember you were getting shot in the b.u.t.t. Now you're like a . . . Stepford wife. Have they made you register as a Republican yet?" The most important part seemed to sink in. "How did you get so pregnant?"

"I'm pretty sure it happened in the usual way," she said as she poured him a c.o.ke and a gla.s.s of juice for herself and got him settled at the counter.

He blushed and his Adam's apple, always Marty's most reliable barometer, bobbed in his throat as she unpacked and put away the groceries. The hamburger got mixed with egg and bread crumbs and barbecue sauce like Melanie had taught her and formed into hamburger patties.

"Whose is it?"

She looked up at him, surprised. "Well, it's Stone's. Of course."

He remained silent for a long moment. "Then how come Stone doesn't know about it?" he asked. Vivi looked away, unable to meet the accusation in his eyes.

"The guy's been going crazy trying to figure out what's going on with you. Then he loses one of his oldest friends to those crazy terrorist a.s.sholes. The last time he talked to you, you were in tears, which is not at all like you. Don't you think you might have mentioned that you were having his baby?"

All of the reasons she'd come up with for not telling Stone felt like so much BS when seen from Marty's perspective. "It's not like I wasn't ever going to tell him," she said and was embarra.s.sed by her apologetic tone. "At first I just didn't want to make him feel obligated. And then I didn't want to worry or distract him. And then. . . .oh, h.e.l.l, Marty. I finally figured I'd just tell him when the time felt right."

"When?" he asked. "When the kid was heading off for college? When Stone got back and asked you, *What's new?' "

His last comment hit a little bit too close to the truth for Vivi. She felt her jaw set and her chin go up. Unfortunately, it was quivering.

"Awww, man," Marty groaned. "Please tell me you're not going to cry."

She shook her head emphatically from side to side in an attempt to rea.s.sure him. But that just forced the first hot, salty teardrops out of the corners of her eyes. They stared at each other in horror as a whole slew of them slid in a torrent down her cheeks. Just like Angela, she thought. Here she was boohooing because she couldn't tell the man she loved the truth.

Later, after dinner with Melanie and the kids, Vivien walked Marty to the door. They hesitated in the foyer; the most important part of their conversation, at least from Vivi's point of view, had not yet taken place.

"You can't tell Stone about the baby." Vivien looked straight into Marty's eyes, wanting him to not just hear, but see, how important this was to her.

"Viv, the guy's worried sick. He practically begged me to come here. I can't just . . ."

"Yes," she said. "You can."

Marty slumped against the front door, not yet ready to admit defeat.

"Marty," she said. "Telling him now would only worry him more. It would not be a kindness, just a complication."

"But he deserves to know. He . . ."

"He does," she agreed solemnly. "And I promise you he will. Just not now. Let him get through the rest of this a.s.signment and back in one piece and I'll introduce him to his child the minute he steps off the plane."

"But what if something happens to him? What if . . ." He began, voicing all those fears that whispered in her ear during the night.

"Nothing's going to happen to him." She held on relentlessly to Marty's gaze, willing him to accept what she was saying even as she prayed that this was the truth and not just wishful thinking. "Not to Stone."