Daunting, yes, but completely doable.
I kissed the top of Katana’s head, closing my eyes and trying to stop thinking about everything so I could fall asleep.
My future had been changed forever, and I could rest well knowing that I’d been brought up right and could handle all I’d just been given.
Chapter 14
Katana
After finally getting a good night’s sleep, I woke up feeling refreshed and better than I had in a very long time. I heard noise coming from the bathroom and knew Nixon had gotten up before me. When I sat up and stretched, I saw something hanging on the hook on the closet door, and saw a brand-new pair of black flats sitting at the bottom of a garment bag.
A smile curled my lips, realizing Nix had already had something sent up for me to wear since my clothes had been pretty much destroyed. He really knew how to take care of a girl. I had to count myself lucky that I’d gotten myself knocked up by him and not some low-life.
The bathroom door opened and steam poured out of it, shrouding a hulking figure. Nixon stood there with a towel wrapped around his waist as he used another one to dry his hair, rubbing his head. “Hey, pretty lady. Glad to see you up. Wanna go grab some breakfast?” He jerked his head toward the garment bag. “I got you something to wear.”
Climbing out of bed, I took the sheet with me to wrap around myself. The weight loss had me feeling self-conscious about my thin body. “I’ll get showered and dressed so we can head out.”
He stepped out of my way but reached out to me, grabbing the top of the sheet. “Why are you hiding behind that?”
Ducking my head, I mumbled, “I’m not hiding.”
He let the sheet go and took me by the chin. “You’re not happy with your weight, are you?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re well taken care of now. We’ll find a doctor in Los Angeles to help you feel better.” He kissed my forehead. “I’ve got you. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“I already feel a lot better,” I admitted, looking into his green eyes. “Your support means the world to me. I know this wasn’t planned …”
He put his finger to my lips. “Hush. I want you to know something. It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t planned. I’m over the moon about this baby, and I can’t thank you enough for making this all so easy.”
I couldn’t believe what I heard coming out of his mouth. He was over the moon? “You’re a surprising man, Nixon Slaughter. It’s been less than a day since you found out about this baby, and already you’re stepping up to the plate much faster than I’d ever thought possible.”
“Yeah, well, what’s done is done. Why fight it? Might as well enjoy this as much as a real couple would, right?” he asked, then walked away from me.
“That’s a great attitude to have,” I said as I went into the bathroom.
As great as his attitude was, what he’d said hit me harder than it should have. Maybe it was the hormones, I couldn’t tell, but I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and they fell down my cheeks.
We weren’t a couple. We were hardly more than strangers. And we had been pushed together by this pregnancy. How’d I ever gotten myself into such an awkward situation?
How would a child fare with parents who didn’t even love one another?
I stepped into the shower, letting the water wash my tears away. My hands trembled as I moved them over my flat stomach. There was something growing inside of me, a tiny human that would grow bigger and bigger with each passing day. And the father and I barely knew one another.
Trying my best to pull myself together, I tried to stop thinking such thoughts and concentrate on the fact that I had someone who’d be by my side through all of this. Granted, I had no real idea how helpful Nixon would prove to be, but what he’d said told me he’d be great. Having him would be a hell of a lot better than doing this all on my own.
A knock on the door jolted me out of my internal thoughts. “Hey, if you don’t feel up to going out, I can order room service. It’s all up to you.”
“If you want to order in then you can do that,” I called out, and then finished rinsing my hair.
He opened the door and stepped inside. “I want you to decide, Katana.”
“It doesn’t matter to me.” I moved back a bit, hoping the water hitting the clear glass shower door would distort my image somewhat. My hipbones jutted out, and I hated the way they looked.
“Pick,” he said, undeterred by my lack of an answer. “There’s a breakfast buffet going on in one of the cafés downstairs. Doesn’t that sound good?”
I could see he wasn’t going to make the decision so I made one. “Yeah, let’s do that. I’m getting out now.”
“K.” He walked back out, leaving the door wide open.
As I dried off, I thought about how nice Nix was. Things might really work out with us. Not that I expected him to fall in love with me or anything like that, but it would be nice to get along well with him. I might be living with the guy for the next eighteen years or so, and getting along would make that easier.
Wrapping the towel around myself, I went to grab the garment bag and saw him watching television. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good,” I said, taking the bag of clothes and heading back to the bathroom to get dressed. I found another very expensive dress in the bag and pulled on the dark blue knee-length dress. It zipped up the back, and I couldn’t seem to get it all the way up.
Doing the best I could, I headed out and asked him to zip me the rest of the way up. I slipped on the flats and we headed out. His hand on the small of my back felt nice. The way people looked at us as we came into the breakfast area had me smiling as they gave us polite nods and morning greetings.
It was very unlike the way people had looked at us when we’d come to the same place nearly a month ago. Now we were seen differently than we’d been before—something closer to a couple than a dirty one-night stand. And it made me feel even better.
A hostess told us to sit anywhere we liked after letting us know that the cost of the buffet would be added to the hotel room bill. The food was decadent, and everything looked and smelled terrific.
Nixon led me to a table near the window. “Like this? Or want to sit somewhere else?”
“This is fine, Nix.” I placed my purse on the chair, and we headed to the buffet.
He stood close to me as we filled our plates, pointing out healthy things like the fresh fruits and telling me they’d be great for the baby and me. A smile stayed on my face as he doted on me and our little unborn baby already.
When we sat down to eat, he reached across the table, taking my hand. “Thanks again for letting me know about this so early on. I doubt most women would be as nice as you are about this. Would you like me to set up a moving service to get your things to my place today?”
“Today?” I asked, just before I put a piece of delicious hickory smoked bacon into my mouth.
“Sure, why not today?” he asked and then cut his stack of pancakes, taking a bite.
“Well, I have to let my landlord know I’m moving. I have a lease. He might not let me out of it.” I took a drink of apple juice and waited to see what he thought about that.
“I’ll pay to get you out of the lease. Should we go see him today and get that taken care of?” he asked, putting his fork down and looking at me. “I want to take you home with me.”
Flattered, I had no idea what to say. There were things I had to take care of. Not a ton of things, but there were some. I had laundry I had to get done, and I’d need to pack my things. I’d have to get boxes to do that. “Nix, I’ll need about a week to get things done.”
“A week?” He looked stunned as he shook his head. “That’s too long. I want to get you to a doctor.”
“I don’t think this is an emergency,” I said with a laugh. “And I don’t think we’ll get an appointment that quickly anyway. A week’s not that long.”
My apartment was a complete wreck. Being sick—or pregnant, I guess—had left me too tired to do much of anything. In no way did I want him to see the mess the place had become. “Nix, can I be honest with you?”
“Please do,” he said then reached out and took my hand. “You can always be honest with me, Katana.”
“Great,” I sighed as I readied myself to come clean with him. “My place is a wreck right now. I don’t want you to see it. Since I’ve been so sick…”
He gave my hand a squeeze as he interrupted me. “Stop right there. If you think I’m going to judge you about the state of your apartment, you’re dead wrong. As a matter of fact, let me hire a maid service to get things cleaned up for you. Let me take care of you.” He shook his head before changing his mind about what he’d said. “No—scratch that. I am going to take care of you. I’m hiring a maid service to clean your place. I’m hiring movers to pack your things and bring them to Malibu. And I’m going to go with you to talk to your landlord to settle any money owed for breaking the lease. No discussion.”
I didn’t know what to think or say to all that. But then my mouth opened and out came the words I’d had no idea would come. “No, I’ll take care of those things myself, Nix. I’ll be at your place in a week. And I’ll take care of any money my landlord says I owe. Thank you, but I can do this part on my own.”
Now where did that come from?
Chapter 15
Nixon
I had to admit that Katana had stupefied me when she flat-out turned down my help. But it did let me know the woman was no gold digger, not that I’d truly suspected that anyways. It’d been a week since I’d left her to take care of things on her end, and I expected her to show up at any time. The movers had already brought her things to my place the day before, and everything had already been put away. She’d come home to find she had nothing to do. I hoped she’d be pleased about that.
Before I left her in Portland, I gave her a house key and wrote down the code to the security system for her, just in case I wasn’t home when she arrived for some reason. But I couldn’t wait for her to come home, so I took off early to be there.
When the front door opened around noon, I hopped up, feeling excited about our new beginning. “Hey!”
My face dropped, and I stopped right where I was as I saw it wasn’t Katana, but Shanna who’d come in. “Hey, yourself. What in the hell are you doing home so early on a workday?”
I hadn’t said one word about my news to anyone. And out of everyone in my life, I knew Shanna would be the one to think what I was doing was stupid.
Sitting back on the sofa, I said, “I’ve got something going on. And just what are you doing here? And why aren’t you at work?”
“It’s Friday. I always get off early on Friday’s. And I often come over here to lie out on your deck and chill from the weekly grind for a few hours.” She took the seat across from me. “You did give me your key, and you did tell me to come over anytime I wanted.”
I had done that. And now I kind of regretted doing so. How would Shanna take Katana, and vice versa?
Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on my thighs and steepled my fingers, trying to think of how I should tell Shanna my news. There really was no right way to tell her about this, so I just went for it. “Okay, you need to know something. Things are about to change. And I mean a whole hell of a lot.”
I saw her eyes move across the room to the brand-new rocking chair I’d bought for us for when the baby was here. She jerked her chin at it. “Why the new rocker, Grandpa?”
She’d left me a perfect opening, and I went for it. “I’m going to be a father, Shanna.”
Her blue eyes came back to me, and her jaw hung open. “No!”
I nodded and sat back. “The woman I told you about, the one who’d been on my mind so much …”
“The mindless whore?” she gasped.
“Hey!” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Shanna, you’ve been my best friend for a very long time, but I’m not about to let you talk that way about the mother of my child. She’s not what you think she is. She’s actually a freelance book cover designer, and a sweet woman. She’d thought we’d be fine, but she’d forgotten to take her birth control pills before we met that night at the club.”
“Sure she did,” Shanna said as she narrowed her eyes right back at me. “This whore might not be mindless after all. She might be very devious. Going to a club like that, filled with rich men—she knew exactly what she was doing. You’re a fool, Nixon. Lucky for you, I can take care of this gold digging bitch.”
“You won’t be taking care of a thing, Shanna. Katana isn’t at all what you think she is. She’d had a hell of a rough week and forgot to take the pills. I believe her.” I got up and paced, trying to calm myself down. She’d gotten me pretty damn mad, which didn’t happen very often, especially with her.
“Nixon, you need to face the facts. She used you to get her broke ass pregnant so she’d have a meal ticket she could use the rest of her pitiful life.” Shanna got up too and walked toward me, grabbing me by the shoulders to stop my pacing. “You’ll need to get a DNA test done once the kid’s born. If it is yours, you should get custody of it and leave her ass out in the cold. I’ll help you raise the kid, and you know your parents would drop everything to come help you too. Don’t let this tramp screw you any further than she already has.”
As I stood there looking into the eyes of this woman who I’d always trusted, I didn’t know what to think. What if she was right?
I didn’t know Katana Reeves at all. I knew so little about her, and yet I’d already made a huge commitment to her. Shanna might be right about everything. But what could I do now?
“She’ll be here today. I asked her to come live with me,” I blurted out.
Shanna let me go and turned around, slapping her forehead. “Shit! Are you fucking serious right now? Why in the hell would you do something that damn drastic, Nixon?”
“I want to do what’s right. Look, you really don’t know her. She’s not what you think. If she were a gold digger, then she’d have let me do all I wanted to do for her. She wouldn’t let me spend a dime to get her out here. She offered to pay half the bills here, which I said no to, of course.”
Shanna spun around with a terrible frown on her face. “Nixon, please tell me you can see through all of that. Sure, why not take on the little expenses of moving all her things and whatever else she had to do? In the end, she’ll be rich—because you’re being a fool.”
I just couldn’t see Katana being that type of person. “She’d never even been to that club before. She’s a foster kid with no family she knows of. I couldn’t leave her to fend for herself while carrying my baby. She’s been sick with the pregnancy …”
“Is that what she told you?” Shanna asked as her hands went to her narrow hips. “Because people can lie, you know.”
“She’s lost weight—at least a good ten pounds, and in a very short amount of time. She’s not lying. I want to be a part of this whole thing. I want to share this with her. Understand or not, it doesn’t matter. I’m moving her in with me, and we’re going to raise this child together.”
“Are you saying you’re going to marry her?” she asked, then blew her blonde bangs out of her eyes.
“I didn’t say that. We’re not in love. We’ve only been together twice. It would be insane to ask her to marry me, right?” I asked, as it kind of had been on my mind, the idea to make things real between us. The last week had me thinking about her even more than I had been before she’d told me her news. I kept picturing her beautiful face, hearing her delicate voice, and I missed her even more than I had in the first place.
“This entire thing is insane, so yes,” she answered. �
��Asking her to marry you would be such a giant mistake.”
I sat down and put my head in my hands. Shanna’s reaction was the exact reason I hadn’t told a soul about what I was doing with Katana. Without other people’s input, I’d made every decision quite easily. But now I was second guessing everything I’d decided.
“I miss her, Shanna. You know I already missed her before.” I decided to do some confessing to my best friend. Maybe I’d been wrong to hide so much from her. Maybe that was why she’d taken this firm position, because she didn’t understand everything. “When we got back from Texas, I had already decided I was getting back on the jet and going to Portland to find her. But she called me before I even started heading her way. When we met at my hotel, we couldn’t keep our hands off one another and ended up in bed before she could even tell me a thing.”
She looked stunned. “You hid that from me? Why?”
“I knew you would’ve tried to stop me.” I looked at her and hoped she could see how I really felt about Katana. “I didn’t want to take Bianca to the bar that night because I had Katana on my mind. I’ve had her on my mind since I left her that first day. I have no idea if she’ll ever fall in love with me, but I can tell you this—I’m on the fast track to falling in love with her. But I won’t push her about that. I don’t want her to feel she has to love me for me to be in the baby’s life.”
“Well, fuck, dude.” She shook her head.
And her words just about summed it all up.
Chapter 16
Katana
As I drove up the hill toward the address Nix had given me, my GPS told me the next house was my destination. Someone was coming out the front door, a tall, lithe, pretty blonde—and she didn’t look too happy as she got into her car and sped off in the opposite direction.
Pulling into the driveway she’d just left, I found a bit of jealousy piercing my heart. Maybe she’s just the maid.
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