AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN FICTION: BWWM ROMANCE: Billionaire Baby Daddy (Billionaire Secret Baby Pregnancy Romance) (Multicultural & Interracial Romance Short Stories)

by Carmella Jones

  Karissa guided her Mercedes into the ranch yard of Charlie Sammons place, parking it in front of the house, opening the door and stepping out, scanning the numerous buildings in the hope of seeing someone to address, rather than simply snooping around the place until she found Buck. She knew that Buck was staying there, but she didn’t know much beyond that.

  She understood, in a way, the reason that there was such a profound awkwardness between the two of them, but she simply couldn’t put off speaking to him any longer, especially because of the newest development in her life. As she was considering going up to the front door of the house, a voice called out to her from the direction of the barn. As she turned toward it, she saw Charlie strolling toward her.

  “Miss McCall,” he said, extending his hand toward her.

  Karissa accepted his hand. “I don’t mean to just barge right in.”

  “It’s alright,” Charlie smiled. “I’m going to assume that you’re here to see Buck.”

  She matched his smile, nodded, and then turned serious as she whispered. “How is he?”

  “I ain’t gonna lie to you, Miss McCall,” Charlie responded with an equally serious expression spreading across his face. “He ain’t good.”

  “I didn’t suppose that he would be,” she muttered.

  “Well, maybe you can pull him out of it.” Charlie shook his head. “Lord knows that I’ve tried. A lot of people have tried. He just sits in there with a bottle. Once in a while, after dark, he’ll come out and sit on the porch to drink, but that’s about it. He drove to the liquor store a few times to resupply. My wife has taken food out to him pretty regular. Sometimes he eats it and sometimes she brings it back untouched. Most of us have just gone to leavin’ him be and hopin’ that he’ll snap out of it.”

  Karissa didn’t know how to respond to what Charlie had just told her. If he was treating people that he’d known since birth the way that he was, what chance did she have of bringing him out of his funk? Especially, since the reason for his burden had been because of her failure in the courtroom. She had to talk to him. Had needed to talk to him for several days, but she hadn’t been able to summon the courage to make the trip out to Charlie’s ranch to see him until that morning. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Being as you drove all the way out here, you might as well give it a shot.”

  It was hollow encouragement, but it was enough. What she needed to talk to Buck about was important and Charlie was right. She’d made the trip, so she might as well see it through to the end. “I’ll give it a shot,” she whispered.

  “He’s right there, in the bunkhouse,” Charlie waved toward a small, log cabin with a board porch extending across the front of it about a hundred feet away.

  Karissa closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, Charlie was already striding back toward the barn and leaving her to the task at hand. That first step in the direction toward the bunkhouse didn’t come easy, neither did several the several dozen more that it took to close the gap. The hardest ones, however, were the ones that she took to place her foot up onto the porch and make her way across it to the door. By that point, she had worked to block out all other thoughts and feelings and focused all of her attention on tending to the reason that she’d driven out to the ranch to see him. She turned the knob on the door and pushed it open.

  Karissa lingered in the doorway a moment as the foul smell of booze mixed with sweat assailed her. The odor was so powerful that she had to fight down the bile rising in her throat. Bottles, clothes, dirty dishes, boxes, wrappers and any other item that one could possibly imagine being there, was strewn in every direction. The mess spoke volumes of what had happened to Buck Kaufman. It took some moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room, when they did, she made out the lifeless form of what she had once known to be a proud and confident man. She forced his name out of her throat. “Buck?”

  Only half aware of his surroundings, Buck had heard a car drive into the ranch yard, heard voices in conversation and even heard the footsteps approaching. It wasn’t until he heard his name being whispered inside the doorway that any of it began to register fully. He looked toward the voice and saw the shapely form of Karissa in silhouette inside its frame. He was trying to work out if he was fantasizing or if she was real, when she spoke again.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  “Ah, Karissa,” he moaned. “What is there left to be said between the two of us?”

  “A great deal, actually,” she responded. His words and actions spurred her on. She decided to put the reason for her visit right out in the open and have it done with. “I’m pregnant.”

  V.

  Karissa’s words brought reality rushing into Buck’s foggy mind like the bursting of a dam. He sat up on the bunk and stared at her, unsure of how to respond. When he finally did, it was the only words that would form on his lips. “You’re pregnant?”

  “Yes,” she answered simply.

  Buck closed his eyes and shook his head in an attempt to clear away the effects of several weeks of drunkenness. With reality rushing in upon him rapidly, he was forced to try to regain some semblance of rationality. He looked around the cabin, suddenly embarrassed by its condition. She shouldn’t have had to see him like that. His mouth was dry and he glanced toward a half empty bottle on the table. He licked his lips and tried to force the thought of picking it up out of his mind. He had to get out of there. He had to get her out of there.

  “Let’s go out on the porch,” he said, rising up from the cot and starting toward the door.

  Karissa backed out of the doorway and waited for him to cross the small room. She had watched his foggy mind clear within the space of a minute. He hadn’t questioned whether or not he was the father. He had too much respect for her to even suggest anything different. The embarrassment in his eyes had registered next, as did his glance toward the bottle on the table. In that moment, she saw the first steps of his spirit returning to his empty shell.

  Buck hadn’t spent much time in the sun since he’d buried himself inside the bunkhouse. Its bright rays had burned him as they contradicted the darkness that lingered around him. Stepping out onto the porch was a force of will, the likes of which he hadn’t seen in several weeks. He motioned her toward one of the two chairs on the porch and then lowered himself into the other, squinting against the light.

  “How have you been?” he asked, trying to put a bold face on things. No doubt, she had moved on with her work and her life while he had been working at trying to erase and destroy his own.

  “How have I been?” What the hell kind of a response was that? She had just announced that she was pregnant and he wanted to know how she had been. “You heard what I said, right?”

  “Yeah, I did,” he responded. He knew that he’d gotten under her skin with his question. It had more or less slipped out. Maybe he ought to have asked another one, but his mind was still working on catching up. The truth of the matter was that he really wanted to know how she’d been. It was obvious how he’d been. He motioned with a thumb over his shoulder toward the door of the bunkhouse. “You can see what I’ve been doing. I hope you’ve been doing better than that.”

  Karissa realized that he was sorting through things and that, in reality, his concern, in that moment, was for her. Though the question was a little bit too direct, it was a sign that Buck Kaufman was, once again, trying to be his old self. “Things could have been better for me too.”

  Buck’s mind was beginning to catch up to the conversation. He wasn’t sure how she wanted him to proceed from that point forward, but he knew that he had to step up to the plate. He struggled with how to tell her that. “I, uh, I… I’ll take responsibility and do right by you.” The words came out hollow and he knew they weren’t the right ones, but they were the only ones that he could put together in that moment.

  “I guess I don’t know what I was expecting you to say,�
�� she replied. “But that wasn’t it.”

  “Jesus, Karissa,” he began, and then softened his tone. “I’ve spent the last several weeks staring down the neck of a bottle while I tried to kill the ache of losing the ranch. There aren’t a lot of things in my future or even my present that are very clear to me right now.”

  She knew he was speaking the truth. Maybe she had expected too much from the meeting. Over the past several weeks, she had sorted through her feelings about him and about the two of them. She had realized that, though they came from entirely different worlds and she was just beginning to understand his, she had grown to love him. The release of her pent up passion on the leather sofa of her office had been an enormous surprise to her, though, throughout the following weeks she had begun to see that it was inevitable.

  Though things had become strange between them, she had understood that he was going to need some space and time to get over the enormous loss that he’d suffered. In reality, she too needed some time to work on her own guilt for being a part of that loss. Her hope had been that once they’d both settled things for themselves, they’d come back together again. She had been tossed into her own brand of confusion when she’d discovered that she was pregnant. It hadn’t come at a very good time for either of them.

  She decided to make an attempt at doing what she’d seen him do so many times. Maybe it would loosen things up between them. “Hell of a time for me to be getting’ pregnant, huh?” she ventured. She knew that she’d said the right thing when she saw the corner of his upper lip twitch into a grin.

  “I don’t suppose there’s ever a good time.”

  She decided to answer his question. “I’ve been okay; neither good nor bad. I guess I’ve just forced myself to keep going, but I haven’t really been happy. Is that what you’re asking?”

  “After a fashion, I suppose.” He looked up at her for a long moment without speaking. The emptiness that had been in his eyes was slowly filling up with life again. Being in the light wasn’t hurting as bad as it did before and being in her presence had provided some sort of healing power to him. The man who had crawled inside the bottle was coming back out and trying to stand up again. “You look a hell of a lot better than I do.”

  He looked down at his filthy, sweat-stained t-shirt and jeans. He was suddenly aware of his own stench as well. As long as he was looking and smelling the way he was, he really couldn’t expect himself to really make the turn around. He was ashamed of himself. His failures had been a heavy load to bear, but to have collapsed under their weight the way he had was suddenly a hundred times worse to him. He couldn’t stand to continue sitting with her as long as he was in that condition.

  “Can I as a favor?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she responded, wondering what he could possibly want her to do for him.

  “Can I ask you to get the hell out of here and let me clean up? This is embarrassing.”

  Realizing how she would feel if their roles were reversed, she stood. “Jesus, Buck, I’m sorry. Maybe I should have called first.”

  “No, you did the right thing,” he replied. “Just, let me get myself together and then I’ll come join you for dinner later.”

  She took a step toward him to give him a hug, but he stepped back, refusing her. “Not right now.”

  Disappointed, but fully understanding, she turned away and took several steps. She heard the screen door on the porch close behind her. She stopped and turned back. “Buck, I’ve fallen in love with you.” With that said, not waiting for a response, she hurried to her car.

  VI.

  Her words as she was leaving him out at Charlie’s place had struck him deeply. He’d never imagined that she’d felt that way about him. He’d felt similar stirrings of his own, but he’d denied allowing himself to feel them given his circumstances and the way that he had reacted to his loss. Cleaned up and in a better frame of mind, they had met for dinner, picking up casual conversation in almost the same place that they had left it before the court ruling and the weeks of hell that had followed.

  The week that followed found the two of them recovering their relationship, though it was done more in her world than in his. There were no horses, no wide open spaces and no gentle breezes to set the tone, but they discovered that those things were no longer necessary. Without the divorce lingering over their heads, they felt liberated from the trappings that had surrounded them before. When Karissa invited him back to her place, it was a signal that they had finally come full circle and were beginning to see a future together for the two of them.

  Buck hadn’t forgotten the words that he’d heard come from her mouth and pass through the screen door of the bunkhouse, neither had he forgotten the response of his leaping heart and quickening pulse. He’d buried every feeling he’d had in the bottle of a whiskey bottle and, until that moment hadn’t allowed them to surface again. When Karissa set aside their glasses and took his hand to lead him toward her bedroom, he pulled back against her.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, watching his eyes for some signal of what was going on in his mind.

  “You said something to me when you were out at Charlie’s place a week or so ago,” he replied.

  Karissa could remember the entire conversation, but there was only one thing that she had said that had really stuck out in her mind since that day. Was it the same thing? She waited silently for him to tell her.

  “You pulled me up out of the hole that I’d dug for myself. Hell, had you not come along, I might have ended up dead. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the moment that I saw you standing in that doorway and heard your voice…” He paused for a moment. “I knew that I was in love with you too. With my mind clear, I know that I still am.”

  “Cowboy,” she grinned, pulling even harder on his hand as she tugged him along behind her. “I already knew that. If you don’t get me back in that bedroom and get rid of these clothes so that we can make love right this instant, then I’m the one who is going to wind up dead.”

  The passion that had come upon them on the leather sofa had returned and they had already started to shed items of clothing on their way to her bedroom. Once they arrived in the room, shucking the remaining clothes was a matter of desperation and they tended to it as quickly as they could, but then the pace slowed as he stepped toward her gazing deep into her eyes.

  Where they had rushed in blind passion before, Buck took his time to examine her body and caress her smooth skin. It appeared to Karissa that he was memorizing every inch of her and drinking it all in for some later time. Little did she know that he’d endured fantasies of seeing her before him in that way and had kicked himself for not having taken his time before. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

  The feel of him caressing her was only intensified by the way his eyes would meet hers and sparkle with hints of his delight as he explored and enjoyed certain areas of her flesh. When his mouth and lips tenderly came to her, she felt her knees begin to weaken and was afraid that she might collapse. She took several steps backward and pulled him down onto the bed.

  Though he might have taken her in that very moment, he continued to linger, kissing, caressing and exploring her body, just like he had been doing before. It was torturously slow. She was aching with desire to feel him inside of her, yet his delicious touch was sending so many electrically charged tingles throughout her body that she couldn’t bear stopping him.

  The ache inside of her continued to build, especially when his mouth found the smooth mound between her thighs and then began to work its magic on the erect bud that was throbbing with desire below it. Her ache grew at the mercy of his mouth until an explosion of pleasure that radiated throughout her body forced a growl of pleasure out of her throat.

  Encouraged by her climax, Buck moved up between her thighs, moving as slowly and tenderly as he had before, but Karissa was having none of that. Reaching between her thighs, she grasped his rigid erection and guided it inside of her, gasping at the fee
ling of fullness that it provided.

  He began with long, slow strokes that allowed her to feel every inch of him, but soon increased the pace and the strength of them until the two of them were rushing toward a climax together. It would be the first of many that they enjoyed that night. Between them, they continued to caress each other and kiss while gazing into each other’s eyes until the light of dawn began to spill in through a slit in the curtains.

  “I guess you know that I don’t have a lot to take care of you and the baby,” he confessed as they were, once again, trying to catch their breath. “It isn’t much of a start, but like I told you before, I’ll do my be…”

  “Shhh,” she said, pressing a finger to his lips. “I had some money and made a substantial investment earlier this week.”

  “You don’t mean?” He sat up and stared at her with an astonished look on his face. It seemed to be too good to be true.

  “I do mean,” she laughed. “But I think I’d rather call it Karissa’s Spread.”

  “You can call it any damned thing you want,” he replied before pressing his lips against hers.

  *****

  THE END

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  Blood of the Queen

  In the more glamorous tomes of history, empires seem to always collapse because of one fatal and grand strike at the heart of it all. However, in Aurora's experience, she saw more empires fall thanks to steady decline and slow deterioration. The general peasantry seemed not to notice the declining state of the Romanian empire at this stage. To the nobles and the aristocrats, the decline was all too clear.