by Nicole Casey
“Please come in, Mr. Bryant,” Jeffery intoned without preamble. He recognized me through the camera. The butler had been with my family since my mom was alive and I had always liked him. I had invited the old man to come and work on my island after my dad died but he refused. I had no idea if he did it out of some old world British loyalty thing or because he genuinely liked working for Madeline although I found that impossible to believe. She was insufferable.
I pulled the burgundy car up the half-mile entrance, the sun splaying its rays over the delicately landscaped lawns on either side and to the south of the property, I could see the sparkle of the water beyond the plantation style-house.
There were three cars already in the drive and I felt my back tense slightly. They hadn’t mentioned company.
Not that I expected anything but the unexpected from the Sinclairs.
They are full of surprises…among other things.
Jeffery appeared at the door even before I exited my car and he hurried toward me. For a shocking second, I thought he looked terrified, his green eyes encircled in dark shadows and lines etched into his weathered face which hadn’t been there before. As I was going to ask if he was all right, his eyes brightened and there was suddenly no trace of the scared man I’d seen before.
“Welcome, Mr. Bryant.”
“You know, Jeffery, you used to change my diapers,” I commented dryly. “I’m still good if you call me Julian.”
It was a conversation we’d had at least one hundred thousand times in the past but the man was far too cultured to do any such thing. The elderly man opened his mouth to respond but his words were swallowed by another.
“Jeffery knows his place, Julian,” a cold voice said before emerging from the dark shadows of foyer. “He would never cross the line, would you, Jeffery.”
“If only we could all claim the same, Maddy,” I replied tightly. “How are you?”
I stared at her with mild disgust, wondering if she ever truly looked at herself in the mirror before showing her face to the world. She was the poster child for cosmetic surgery gone wrong. A set of duck lips emanated from a chin much too small to sustain her and her fair cheeks were rouged bright pink, presumably to hide the scars of the numerous lifts she’d undergone over the years.
She flowed toward me in a dressing gown that some starlet from the fifties would wear but I casually stepped out of her impending embrace. The idea of touching her repelled me in ways I couldn’t explain. Ever since I was a child, being near Maddy and her overpowering perfume made me gag.
It’s funny what you pick up as a child, like your sixth sense has been unblemished by bias and manipulation. You just know when someone isn’t right.
Maddy was that someone to me.
My dad thought it was because I was worried she was trying to replace my mom but there was no competition there. They were two very different people.
It wasn’t just that Maddy was physically unappealing. It was the blackness of her heart which struck me the most.
“Oh,” Madeline sighed in answer to my question. “I’ve been much better but you would know that if you came around more often. You don’t even answer your emails, Julian. It’s like you don’t care.”
I had prepared myself for her pseudo guilt-trip. After twenty years, it was the same thing every time he was forced to see her.
“Well you know, Maddy, the company isn’t going to run itself. Or do you know that?”
I stared at her inquisitively. Maybe she really thought the company ran itself like a machine. Who knew if anything at all was happening behind those sooty eyes, so akin to her daughter’s.
Her eyes narrowed and her mouth puckered into a pout which was truly a hideous expression given the duck lips. I had to look away.
“Of course you’re busy,” she spat back. “We all are.”
I bit back the pressing question of what it was exactly that she did. As far as I knew, she invested in plastic surgery and personal trainers. Hell, even her wretched daughter ran charity events on behalf of Bryant Land Holdings but I suspected that Eloise did that solely so she could keep a pinky toe in the door of the company.
“Your sister and friends wait for you in the parlor.”
The parlor. She really does want people to believe that she’s from another century.
“Sounds swell,” I couldn’t resist saying. I followed her inside, Jeffery on my heels and I turned back to cast him another look. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was trying to communicate something to me but what it was, I couldn’t decipher.
Inside the main floor living room, Eloise stood by the bar, caught up in some long-winded story and two others stood nearby, hanging on her every word. When her eyes fell on him, she abruptly stopped talking and grinned warmly, her sooty eyes glowing in a way which made me uncomfortable.
“Ah, here’s the man of the hour,” she cooed. “Come in, Julian.”
“Gee, thanks,” I offered sarcastically, trying to swallow my annoyance at being invited into my own father’s house. “I’ll see if I can find my way around.”
Eloise skillfully sidestepped my caustic comment and turned to her friends.
“Genevieve Brulle, this is my brother, Julian Bryant. Julian, Genevieve.”
I should have known.
Of course.
I had been so consumed with everything going on, I had forgotten about Genevieve. I don’t know why I didn’t clue in sooner. There was ulterior motive number one.
It was going to be a short dinner.
The redhead turned and beamed at me with luminous green eyes, extending a pale hand.
“Your photos online don’t do you justice,” she demurred. I stared at her fingers and glanced at their companion who stood off to the side quietly.
“You really can take the girl out of the trailer park,” I commented harshly, ignoring Genevieve’s palm. “But you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl. Your etiquette still suffers, my ghetto relations.”
I strode toward the silent girl who gaped at me in surprise.
“Julian Bryant,” I introduced. “Eloise’s step-brother.”
I didn’t need to turn around to know I was being glowered at by not just Eloise but by my blind date. I didn’t care. Being blindsided was not something I appreciated and I intended to show Eloise that I couldn’t be handled no matter how hard she tried.
4
Kennedy
I bolted awake sometime in the middle of the night. I wasn’t sure the exact time but I was seized by a nausea so strong, it was reminiscent of my one and only encounter with tequila when I was sixteen.
I barely made it to the bathroom and as I retched, my head began to pound.
Uh, I’m sick, I thought miserably. There is nothing in the world a lower-class person wants to realize less than that they are sick. We can’t afford it. We don’t have the luxury of using sick days as we’re dispensable. For every one of me, there are ten more waiting for my job. Sick is not an option.
I can’t be sick. I won’t be.
I vomited twice more before I felt the sensation passing but the dizziness remained and my body was hot and achy.
What did I have to take for a flu?
I dug through the medicine cabinet in the dark, moving things around. I was opening the store in the morning. If I popped something and went back to bed, I might be okay when I woke up.
But only if I had something to take.
I found a bottle of Tylenol which had expired and some rubbing alcohol. I highly doubted that was going to kill whatever bug was in my system.
I made my way back to the single mattress which I called a bed and lay on my back, concentrating on my breathing. Sometimes it helped to alleviate nausea but even as I lay there, I realized that I wasn’t feeling nearly as bad as I had when I woke.
The time on my alarm read 3:23 a.m. I needed to be up at 5 to open the store for 6. It almost defeated the purpose of going back to bed for an hour but what else was I going to
do? An hour and a half wasn’t enough time to binge watch anything good on Netflix.
I didn’t move. Instead, I lay there with my eyes closed and listened to the sound of my heart thumping in my ears.
Deep breaths, I coached myself. In and out. Deep breathing.
I smirked to myself, realizing how much I must sound like a Lamaze instructor. Just as quickly as the smirk appeared, it froze and faded completely.
That’s a weird thought to have, I told myself tersely. Lamaze instructor. I could have thought yoga instructor instead.
But I knew where it had come from.
I was three weeks late.
You’re not pregnant, I scolded myself as a combination of hot and cold washed through me, fighting to humiliate and shock me simultaneously. You have to have sex to get pregnant and you’re a born-again virgin. You haven’t had sex since you and Tom and that was over a year ago.
As if I’d spoken the magic words, it came flooding back to me in a torrent.
I was on my knees, his nakedness flaunting itself boldly in front of my face without shame. I wanted to taste him so badly but I was seeing double. God, I was drunk. Was he as drunk as me? Or was he drunk at all?
I hadn’t been paying attention to anything but the curve of his lips, the timbre of his voice and the way his eyes bored into mine. Suddenly, all I could think was how much I wanted that huge, swollen cock inside me, filling every inch of my core.
Even as I thought it, I felt a drip out from my panties and make its way down my thigh. I grabbed him and slid him fully into my mouth. Into my throat I felt him, my cheeks closing around to suction him tightly and I choked on him slightly.
He let out a low groan, gently forcing my head forward until his sack touched my chin.
It was becoming difficult to breathe but I felt him growing harder, bigger and fuller inside my mouth.
“Ah fuck, Kitten!” he moaned. “You’re going to make me blow.”
The words excited me and suddenly I was bobbing against him, willing him to cum for me but without warning, I was pushed backward and pinned to the ground mercilessly. His cock jabbed at my upper thigh and his own juices were already dripping for me.
Two palms found the backs of my knees and I was spread apart, my eyes fixed on his. Our gazes locked, the thrust of his engorged unit so close, just a thin layer of lace between us.
To my shock, he plunged forward, his fingers gripping my legs so tightly, I was sure there would be bruises. I heard the rip of my underwear as the head of his cock fought its way toward my slick middle. I’d never had anyone do that before!
He was huge and I was throbbing, pulsating against him. I didn’t think he would fit but slowly, deeply, he made it happen and I screamed with pleasure when the entire ten inches filled me into my abdomen.
I clenched around him, feeling him rise further and my fingers dug into the muscled blades of his shoulders.
Again I cried out but now he was not being soft but hard and primitive, jabbing into me as if he could wait no longer. It took four slides before my own climax mounted and I spilled onto him in a gush of warmth, tears rolling down my cheeks but my release was met with his.
In hot spurts of lava, his seed filled me, overflowing and joining in mine in a mess of sweat and fluid.
My eyes flew open and I sat up, sweat touching my forehead. I didn’t have to double check. I could smell my own wetness through the boxers I had gone to bed in. I was aroused and confused.
Had he really been real?
For weeks I had convinced myself that none of it was real, that I had wasted my expense paid trip to Vegas on binge-drinking and being pathetic and that I had concocted the sexy dark-haired stranger as a way to alleviate that guilt.
But if I was pregnant, there was only one possibility as to who the father could be—the mystery man from Vegas.
I threw my legs over the side of the mattress and scrounged around for my work uniform. I was going in early.
God, I needed to do laundry. How did it all pile up so fast?
There were benefits to working in a box store. Not a lot but once in a blue moon, it came in handy that everything I could be found within the walls of Sav-A-Bunch.
Things like flu medicine.
And pregnancy tests.
I got dressed without turning on the lights. I didn’t even bother to check my reflection in the mirror because my looks were the least of my concern at that moment.
Slamming out of the apartment, I bolted down the stairs as fast as my legs would take me. Another bout of dizziness threatened me at the bottom of the stairs and I had to remind myself to take it easy.
Either I was sick or carrying a kid. In both cases, I would need to watch it with overextending myself.
I paused to catch my breath and when I was confident that the vertigo had passed, I continued into the parking lot where my second-hand Ford Fusion sat inconspicuously.
There was no traffic at that hour and aside from the usual suspects loitering around selling something unsavory on the corners, I was virtually alone on the streets.
I made my way to work in ten minutes and with trembling hands, I let myself inside.
The cleaning staff had already deactivated the alarm and one guy still lingered near the employee entrance as if wanting to get every last second on his punch card.
He looked at me shamefully when I appeared and I’m sure my expression told the same story.
We both had something to hide which made us allies.
I gave him a brief, sheepish grin.
“Morning,” I offered.
“Hola,” he replied and we both parted ways from there.
Some of the lights were on but I didn’t need a stage light to guide my way to the pharmacy section of the store. I’d been an employee there for five years. I knew my way to every section in the dark and blindfolded.
I grabbed the first box I saw, not bothering to check its price or accuracy. There were two tests in the box and surely two tests couldn’t be wrong.
I’d pay for it later when the registers opened and no one would notice a charge like that at 4 o’clock in the morning.
In seconds I was in the bathroom, huddled in a stall and of course I had stage fright. It took me several minutes of talking nicely to my bladder to instigate any movement and finally, I managed to do what I had to do.
Waiting was the worst part. Two minutes felt like two hours. I kept expecting Christine to burst through the bathroom door and yell, “I know what you’re doing in there, Kennedy! Everyone knows!”
In my mind’s eye, she pinned a scarlet letter on me or walked me through the store naked, chanting, “Shame!” while customers threw produce at me.
But the guilty mind always thinks things like that…I guess. I’ve never been one to have a twisted conscience.
What do you even have to feel guilty about? You did nothing wrong…except get drunk and forget who you slept with. It happens on Maury every damn day!
My pep talks weren’t helping and I wondered who I could call on to walk me through this but there was no one. No family, no friends. No one but Belle who would likely just tell the entire store and hassle me until I told her the entire sordid story.
I clung to the fact that I still felt feverish. That had to be a sign that I just had the flu, didn’t it? Morning sickness didn’t come with fever, did it? I had no idea. Outside of biology and health classes, I knew very little about pregnancy.
In my twenty-five years on earth, I’d never had a pregnancy scare. Of course, I’d only ever been with three men—well, four if Vegas guy was not a figment of my imagination.
I’d never considered myself an overly sexual person and it had probably led to the demise of my relationships. If I had the choice between watching a movie or having sex, I would have always picked the movie.
Although the way you acted in Vegas was highly sexual, wouldn’t you say?
Was it the booze? The atmosphere? The guy?
Probably a combi
nation of the three. I thought about how the mere idea of that man sent shocks of warmth through me. I’d never felt that way about any of my exes. With them, sex had been a chore, something I did to keep the relationship going. I’d certainly never instigated it the way I had with Vegas guy.
I realized I’d been lost in thought for a while and I dare to look down at the plastic stick in my hand.
Two lines.
I was pregnant.
But I was Kennedy Christensen. I wasn’t going to take the word of one piece of plastic made in China. No, I needed two pieces of plastic made in China for confirmation. Shit, I might even need four pieces of plastic made in China. Or maybe I just wasn’t ever going to accept it.
I didn’t know why I even bothered. I knew in my heart what it was going to say but I was nothing if not thorough.
The second test told the same story as the first.
I sank back against the cold tile wall and tried to evaluate what I’d just learned.
It defied logic that me of all people would find herself in such a position.
I was boring, poor, methodical.
You can’t be that methodical, I thought, sitting straight, my face paling as the severity of the situation came crashing down around my head. I don’t even know my baby daddy’s first name. Isn’t that kinda the first rule of being organized? Know who the players are?
That time, I was expecting the vomit when it came.
5
Julian
Eloise was not happy with me and that put a spring in my step. I knew there would likely be repercussions to pissing her off but for the time, it felt good to put her in her place.
It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to Eloise trying to interfere with my life. She’d always done it since the day we met. She’d been seven and I was ten when our parents married, shocking the hell out of me. Eloise had taken it in stride. Her mother had only just divorced Raffi Sinclair a month earlier and it seemed like my father had been the next in her sights even before the ink was dry.