by Amy Brent
And so we purchased the place – I insisted on putting what little savings I had towards it, though I was under no illusions about the fact that Nate was the one really paying for it. I still wasn’t bringing in much in the way of income, but honestly I was so grateful that I had the choice to stay off my feet while I was pregnant. The thought of working while I was in this state – no, no way, no chance. I could barely stand up for more than a few minutes at a time as things went on longer and got more intense, and I certainly couldn’t have managed to be polite and kindly to customers on top of all of that.
But I hadn’t wanted to sit around on my ass all this time doing nothing at all, so I had finally, after much chiding from both him and my family, taken Nate up on the offer to go back to school and get my masters degree. I still couldn’t quite believe it was happening, but here I was, a stack of books on my bedside table as I studied for my new qualification in business management. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it once I had it but I knew it was going to be something amazing. Maybe starting a charity? Nate had made it clear that his enormous fortune was pretty much at my disposal, and with everything knew I was picking up through my studies I knew I was doing to be able to do something great with it. The degree course lasted a couple of years, which was perfect as it meant I could study from home and hang out with our newborn while I was still too attached to it to so much as leave the house without having it by my side.
I already knew I was going to be one of those mothers who could only talk about their kid in the first couple of years of it’s life – hell, being pregnant I was finding it to think about anything but the baby, the baby, the baby, with occasional brief pauses to complain about the fact that there were no decent public bathrooms in the immediate vicinity. I knew it drove my friends kind of insane, but they were all being so supportive of me and the choice that I’d made to go ahead and have this little thing. Patricia, especially, had been visiting every week, helping soothe the little freak-outs that still came around once in a while and making sure that I knew she was first in line if we needed a Godmother.
“I still can’t believe this is happening,” she had remarked after I took her on the tour of the new house. “It just…none of it feels real, you know?”
“Try being me,” I eased myself into a chair with a small grunt of relief. “It gets pretty real then.”
“No, but you know what I mean,” she waved her hand, pacing around the living room, checking the place out for the dozenth time since she arrived. “Only a year ago you were out pounding shots with me at the university bar, and now…”
“Yeah, now I’m pretty much an old married lady,” I shook my head. “You want me to tell you all about my matching crockery sets? Because I can get right in and around that if you want.”
“Yeah, I think I’m okay,” she held her hands up as though pleading for mercy. But then she smiled at me, a slow grin spreading across her face like something had just occurred to her.
“What is it?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at her pointedly. She shrugged.
“I’m just happy for you,” she shook her head. “And I can’t believe that my best friend is going to be married with a kid in just a few months.”
I rolled my eyes at her playfully. She had been winding be up about this shit ever since Nate and I had moved in together. She was certain that he was always on the brink of proposing to me, and no matter how many times I told her that I seriously didn’t give a shit whether or not he wanted to marry me, that I trusted that he was in this for the long haul anyway, she kept jibing me about it. I wondered if she knew something I didn’t; I knew that her and Nate had exchanged phone numbers, and had started to think that maybe he was leaning towards getting her help on buying me a ring or something. It would explain her constant teasing.
“Yeah, well, me neither, and it’s actually happening to me,” I shot back lightly. “And just so you know, when you have a baby, I’m going to spend the whole time demanding to know when you’re going to marry the daddy.”
“Oh, I’ll be married already,” she nodded seriously. “I’m not going to get knocked up by my boss out of wedlock.”
“You watch your mouth in my house, young lady,” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Or I might just get you kicked out of here.”
“Please, no,” She protested. “Tell me about your matching crockery sets. I’ll do anything.”
I grinned. I was so glad to have her in my life – I knew that this was a big change for me, for her, for both of us, but she had made it clear that she wasn’t going anywhere and I was so happy that she was going to be a part of my baby’s life.
And then, of course, there came the question of my father. I didn’t hear from him for a long time after we told him about the pregnancy, even when Mom came down to visit and helped me start picking out things for the nursery (we decided not to find out the gender of the kid so we couldn’t get anything that was specifically for a boy or a girl, which drove Mom up the wall, but she had the good sense to keep her moaning to a few snarky comments here and there). Nate didn’t hear from him either, and conducted most of the business that the two of them shared through third parties. I guessed the contract was already signed and he was already committed to it, and if there was one thing my father believed in it was following through on what you had committed to. It was almost a little funny, the almost petulant way that he stuck to what he had agreed to with Nate without ever once actually speaking to his face or talking about anything that was going on between Nate and me. I knew it must have been driving him straight up the damn wall, the constant reminder of what was going on between his daughter and a man he didn’t seem to approve of too strongly.
But Mom invited the two of us down to visit over the summer, while Nate was taking a little time off work and before I had to go back to college to start my course. I wasn’t sure if she actually told him that we were coming down to visit – judging by the look on his face when we walked through the door, I would wager not – but he was still a gentleman at heart and wasn’t going to be outright rude to guests in his home. He did his best to just ignore Nate and the pregnancy and everything that came with it, but he began to open up, slowly but surely, and before I knew it he was asking when I was due and where we were going to live and if he could buy us the cot or at least help put it together when it arrived. It was like he’d been holding himself back on all this stuff and it all came rushing out at once, as though this was what he’d wanted to share with us from the start. He was still a little suspicious of Nate, but that was always going to come with the territory of any guy I brought home to him, especially one with the history that we shared together.
Just like Mom had said, it took time, but he came around eventually. And it was his idea to come up to visit for Thanksgiving – though, that said, Nate and him had gone outside to take a look at something a good ten minutes ago and still hadn’t returned yet. What the heck were they up to out there? I thought about getting to my feet to go out and check, but I was far too exhausted and comfortable right now. The smell of the turkey cooking in the oven was wafting through the house, making it feel more like a home than it ever had before.
I let my head sink back into the seat and closed my eyes; I could have just fallen asleep here right now if I wanted. But before I could get too comfortable, the door opened once more and Dad and Nate stepped over the threshold, both of them with big-kid grins on their faces that made me smile just to see them. They were smattered with little white flecks and I sat up straight at once.
“Is it snowing?” I asked, as Nate made his way towards me; he leaned down and planted a kiss on my forehead, and nodded.
“Yep,” he announced happily.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen it snow in the city,” I remarked, and Nate helped me up to get me to a window so I could see the flurry of white swirling down from the sky above us. This couldn’t have been more perfect if I’d written it.
I turned to Nate to expr
ess my excitement, but found him with an odd expression on his face, one that I couldn’t really give a name too. I cocked my head at him, trying to figure out what was going through his mind right now. There was this half-smile, like he knew that something big was about to happen. That couldn’t just be about the snow, could it?
“What’s up with you…?” I asked, and then shot a look over at Dad, who had the exact same expression on his face. What had the two of them been up to out there? Did I really want to know? I was overwhelmed with curiosity now and Nate glanced over his shoulder at Dad and raised his eyebrows at him.
“You think I should…?”
“Put her out of her misery,” Dad waved his hand with a big-ass conspiratorial grin on his face.
“What the heck are you two going on about?” I demanded, and then Mom emerged from the kitchen and I found that she had that same look on her face as well. I needed to know what this was about. Though, now that they were all here, I had a feeling I might have been able to put my finger on it – the snow, those smiles, how long Dad and Nate had spent out there just the two of them…
But before I could give it any more thought, Nate turned to me. His expression was serious, and he reached out to take my hand; even now, after holding his hand more times than I could count, I still felt this little jolt of excitement when our skin connected again.
“Nia,” he began, and he slipped down to one knee in front of me. My jaw dropped. I had had my suspicions, but nothing could have prepared me for that moment. Blood racing through my veins, I stared down at him, waiting for him to continue.
“I love you more than anything in the world,” he went on, speaking slowly, like he was trying to remember everything that he’d had laid out in his head for this proposal. “And I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you, and raise our child together, and-”
He brought himself to a halt and shook his head, laughing.
“I promise I had this all planned out,” He assured me. “I just get a little distracted when you’ve got that look on your face.”
“Give her the ring!” Mom exclaimed, as though she couldn’t wait a moment longer, and I glanced over at her, wondering if she’d helped pick it out. She certainly seemed excited for me to see it. Nate reached into his pocket and produced a small velvet box; he popped it open and held it out to me. Inside, nestled amongst the fabric, there was this tiny but utterly beautiful diamond ring, that glimmered softly in the bright light of sun reflecting off the snow outside the window.
I stared down at the ring, at him, my brain racing to try and take all of it in. After everything we’d been through – from Matt cheating on me, to Nate dealing with his failed marriage, to this fling to this pregnancy to this love that sometimes felt so enormous that it was going to overwhelm me – after everything we’d been through, now we were here, in this perfect moment, surrounded by my family as the snow began to fall outside.
“Nia,” he began, his voice a little choked, as though the emotion had gotten to him too. “Will you marry me?”
“Of course I will,” I blurted out at once, and he got to his feet and slid the ring on to my finger. It fit perfectly, the diamond sparkling as I stared down at it and tried to make sense of what had just happened. I looked up into his eyes, slowly, and he leaned down to kiss me; just a soft kiss, a gentle one, enough to let me know that as soon as my parents were gone we would celebrate this in style. When he pulled back, the look on his face was everything; hope, happiness, love, promise for what the future would hold. I closed my eyes and leaned in to his chest, my bump nestled against him. If there was a more perfect moment in the world than this one, I had yet to find it.
*** The End***
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My Best Friend’s Brother
Chapter 1
Sarah
“Good afternoon, Dallas. Today, we have a very special guest here with us. Mason Baker, branded in the media as the second-coming of Steve Jobs, will be here with us today sharing his story, his success, and his secrets. Stick around because it’s going to be a doozy.”
“Sounds good to me,” my makeup artist said.
“You think so, Ang? I wasn’t sure if I should use his media persona in the opening or not,” I said.
“It’s what all the newspapers and magazines are saying about him. Can you believe his success? I think he made a deal with the devil,” she said and gave me a look.
“Have you seen his looks? I think he definitely made a deal with the devil.” I tried to hide the smirk playing at the edge of my mouth. Anyone with a pulse knew how fucking hot Mason was. Hell, he knew it too.
Angie and I giggled while she put on my makeup. In the three years I’d hosted my talk show in Dallas, she was the only veteran still here. ‘Does This Affect Dallas?’ was a show premise I had rolling around in the back of my mind for years before I finally pitched it to someone. All the talk shows nowadays were glorified gossip tables. I wanted something that would inform as well as entertain, a show that would dive into things that affected our beautiful city, breaking them down in entertaining ways to educate as well as distract.
And Mason Baker was just that.
“I can’t get over his dimples. I wanna poke my fingers in them,” Angie said.
“I could swim in those beautiful peridot eyes all day,” I said.
“And that thick, dark hair of his? Kill me in the face, please. I’d pay so much money to run my fingers through it.”
“His hair? I’d give anything to run my hands up those meaty arms of his. Did you see that picture of him in the media last week? Jogging around like he didn’t know the entire world was watching him?”
“Did you see the fucking video?” Angie asked. “The guy needs a damn jock strap.”
“There’s a video? Let me see.”
Angie put down the makeup and pulled her phone from her pocket. I watched the video and practically salivated, watching that cock swinging between his legs. The man was doing this on purpose. He had to be. No one made a hundred and fifty-seven million dollars in revenue their first year in business and didn’t understand he was being watched.
Then again, he wasn’t only known for his quickly-rising technology company.
“No wonder he’s a playboy,” I said, smirking. “That swinging cock could satisfy an entire block.”
“Then come back around for dessert,” Angie said, mumbling.
Out of all the interviews I’d done, I’d never been nervous. I had scored daily interviews with scandalous senators and had video interviews with some of the hottest names in Hollywood so they could talk about their charities. Anything that could educate Dallas and get them off their asses to help the world is what I focused on.
And Mason Baker’s product was no different.
His idea started with a social media campaign and the premise was simple, a device you could adhere to any surface to keep track of something. It came with an application you could put on your phone, tablet, or computer, and from there you could track up to thirty different devices. Thirty. You could stick it on the inside of your phone. You could wrap it around the keyring of your keys. It was pliable, bendable, waterproof, fireproof, and you couldn’t ruin it if you stepped on it.
The original campaign was set to raise two hundred thousand dollars, and it ended up raising almost four million fucking dollars.
All from donations.
The applications of this item were endless. You could put it on your car and track your car. You could put it on your children’s electronic toys and track where they were. Hell, you could put it on your fucking kid and track where they were.
The moment the product launched, it flew off the shelves, and it was Baker’s customer service setup that took the prize for that one. Complaints came flying in immediately from people who used it, and they used those complaints to tweak the
product further. An updated product hit the shelves while those who complained about problems got a free upgraded replacement, and the product went viral.
Eight months into their official launch, they were trying to figure out how to ship overseas, and from there the rest is history. One hundred and fifty-seven million in flat-out revenue for their first year, and they’d only begun to scratch the surface.
It was absolutely incredible, and it was something that most definitely affected Dallas.
But those piercing green eyes and that muscular body. It was almost disarming how sexy this man was. Angie was finishing up my makeup while everyone started bustling around me, and that’s when I heard someone say it in the distance.
I heard them whisper that Mason Baker was here.
I knew I was going to nail this interview. I always did. But never had I found anyone I’d interviewed this hot. I mean, I could feel my pussy heating up for crying out loud. That was beyond unprofessional, and it wasn’t a road I was willing to travel down again, not after I’d caught my ex-boyfriend making out with who was now my ex-host.
It really wasn’t a big deal. I’d gotten the bitch fired within five minutes of figuring it out. Then, I took to kindly blasting them on social media. I made it apparent that the show does not tolerate unprofessional behavior of any kind, especially when it hurts multiple people involved. I told my fans that I’d interviewed senators and mayors and governors caught in scandals where they’d cheated on their spouses, and I took those accusations seriously. I used the moment as a platform to take a stand against men who manipulated, abused, cheated, and otherwise dealt anything else less than full respect to women they claimed to love.