Stone Rules (A Mitchell Sisters/Stone Brothers Novel)

by Samantha Christy

  “No,” Mason says. “That’s not what he’s saying. We’re just trying to look out for her. For them.”

  “Listen.” I look each of them in the eye so they know I mean what I’m about to tell them. “As far as I’m concerned, this kid is mine. That asshole is out of the picture. We don’t even know who he is. I don’t need a goddamn paternity test to make me a father. Chances are it’s mine anyway. I love her. I’ve already asked her to marry me. Twice. I’m not the one who has the issue with commitment here. I’m all in. And if any of you have a fucking problem with that, just tell me now.”

  Gavin raises his beer. “Okay then,” he says. “To baby Stone. May he or she have his mother’s gorgeous looks and his father’s can of whoop-ass.”

  “Here, here,” Griffin and Mason say, as we all raise our drinks.

  “You’re a private investigator, Ethan,” Griffin says. “How hard would it be to track this other guy down? I mean just so you know he’s not some kind of psycho.”

  I raise my eyebrows at him.

  “Ahhh,” he says. “Gotcha. You’re already on it.”

  I nod. “Yeah, but she doesn’t know. I don’t want to upset her unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Are you guys okay with that?”

  “Okay with you wanting to protect her?” Mason says. “Dude, this is fight club.”

  I tip my beer at the guys who have become my friends. The guys who would, like me, do anything for the woman they love.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  After Charlie’s examination, Dr. Chavis tells us, “It’s safe for you to start making plans now because at thirteen weeks, you’ve started your second trimester.”

  “Are you still sure of the due date and um,” —Charlie looks at me wearily— “the date of conception?”

  Dr. Chavis looks at her chart. “Well, since we didn’t do an ultrasound today, we have no new measurements by which to determine that. But nine-week ultrasounds are very accurate. I’m confident we have the dates correct. Do you have any reason to believe they wouldn’t be?”

  “No,” Charlie says. “I guess not.”

  “Do you have any more questions?” the doctor asks.

  “I have one,” Charlie says. “We never got to talk about this at my last appointment because I was . . . well, I was freaked out. But how did this even happen? I was on the pill. I always use condoms.” She gives me a look because she and I both know that’s not entirely true.

  “Well, Charlie,” she says. “As a doctor I’ve seen a lot of things. Things that can’t always be explained by science. And while I don’t really have an answer for you, I like to think that some things are just meant to be. Maybe this is just one of those things.”

  Charlie’s eyes snap to mine and she smiles. She smiles so big it warms my heart. “Meant to be,” she whispers so that only I can hear. Looking back at Dr. Chavis, she asks, “Are you two related?”

  “Pardon?” Dr. Chavis asks.

  “Oh, nothing,” Charlie says.

  “I do have one more question,” Charlie says, looking at me with sympathetic eyes. “I’ve read about these paternity tests you can do before the baby comes. Do you do those here?”

  The doctor looks slightly taken aback but recovers quickly. She looks at me. “Oh, so you aren’t the father? Or you think you might not be?”

  “I’m the father, alright,” I tell her. “Just maybe not in the biological sense.”

  She nods and pulls up a chair. “I see. Well, yes, Charlie, to answer your question, there are a few prenatal paternity tests we do here. The only definitive one relies on amniocentesis which can pose the risk of miscarriage. It’s not a big risk, but big enough that we don’t like to do it unless there might be some genetic reason to perform the test. The other test is a simple blood test. Blood from the mother and blood or saliva from the potential fathers. It’s accurate, but only so far as to be able to rule out a man as the father or to conclude that a man cannot be excluded from the possibility of being the father. There is always a chance both men could have the same result as far as not being able to exclude them as the father.”

  “We don’t want the test,” I tell the doctor. “We don’t need it,” I say to Charlie. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell them both. “If we don’t have the test, can I still be considered the baby’s legal father?”

  “If you’re married, and nobody is around to question the paternity, then, yes, you’ll be considered the legal father and your name will be on the birth certificate.”

  I turn to Charlie. “This is when I ask you to marry me again.”

  Charlie smiles.

  The doctor excuses herself, telling us to think about it and we can talk more at her appointment next month.

  “I’m serious, Charlie. Do you want me to get down on one knee? Shout it from the rooftops? Hire a skywriter? Because make no mistake about it, I want to marry you.”

  She gets up from the examination table. “Maybe,” she says to me.

  “You heard the doc. This is meant to be.”

  “You and your silly rules,” she says. “If it’s meant to be then waiting won’t change anything, right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Then how about we keep taking it slow, Ethan? These past weeks have been great. I love spending time with you. You have become another best friend to me. But I feel like I’m just getting my bearings straight here. I’m hormonal. I have a new emotion every five seconds. I’m not sure I can trust myself to make a life-long decision just yet.”

  I nod. How can I argue with that? “Then how about you just make an easy decision and let me take you on that date we never got to have?”

  She looks at her watch and then she smiles up at me. “I work until seven. Pick me up at eight?”

  A victorious grin threatens to split my face wide open. “I’ll be there.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “What’s it like?” Charlie asks me over dinner. “Watching a baby being born? I mean, if it’s not too hard for you to talk about.”

  “I’ll talk about anything with you, Charlie. But to answer your question, I don’t know. I wasn’t at Cat’s birth.”

  “Oh, right, because you weren’t married to her mom.”

  I shake my head, not overlooking the sadness on her face. “No, it wasn’t that. I was going to be there. I had every intention of being at the delivery. I’d even taken those Lamaze classes with Cara. But Cat was born two weeks early and I was in school taking a test. Our professors had warned us early on that if we were caught using our phones during a test, it was an automatic fail. So it became a habit for me to turn it off and put it in my backpack. I had back-to-back classes that day and just forgot to turn it back on. So it was hours until I remembered to look at it. By then I’d received a dozen calls and texts. I headed straight to the hospital, but I was too late. Cat was born about twenty minutes before I got there.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “No, it’s okay. I was seventeen. I’m not really sure I wanted to see all that stuff anyway, but I was trying to be supportive. And by the time I got there, Cat was all cleaned up. She was perfect.” I smile remembering the first time I held her. It was awkward. I’d never held a baby before. I was sure I was doing everything wrong; that I’d drop her or make her cry. But at the same time, it was one of life’s incredible moments; one I’d always remember.

  “You don’t have to be there, you know,” she says. “I’m not going to make you. I don’t really want to be there myself, but I kind of don’t have a choice in the matter.”

  I reach across the table and grab her hand. “I’m going to be there, Charlie. I promise you I won’t miss it. I’m not that squeamish seventeen-year-old boy anymore. This is the most important thing to me. I won’t let you down.”

  “Okay, but make sure you stand by my head.” Her body shivers like she’s thought of something disgusting. She motions to her lower half. “I don’t want you anywhere near there. After seeing something like that, you might never wan
t to touch me again.”

  I smile. I smile big. She wants me to touch her again.

  “What?” she asks, seeing the amused look on my face.

  “Do you not realize what you just said, Charlie?” I lean over the table and whisper to her. “You want me. Quit trying to deny it.”

  A blush works its way across her fair skin. She’s so damn beautiful. I love her creamy-white skin. Her freckles that go on for days. Her incredible red hair that frames her heart-shaped face in soft waves and falls down past her breasts.

  My pants tighten and I shift in my seat thinking about her breasts. They were nice before, but now—Christ, they’ve gotten bigger and are stretching the buttons of her blouse. I long to touch them. See them. They are the center of my schoolboy fantasies.

  “Excuse me.” We look up to see an older lady standing at our table, staring at Charlie. Good, I needed the distraction. “I’m sorry to bother you while you eat, dear, but I just had to stop by and tell you I was a big fan of your mother. I was crushed to hear of her passing and wanted to give you my condolences. She was an amazing actress.”

  This isn’t the first time this has happened. Charlie is the spitting image of her mom. She gets stopped all the time, especially on nights like tonight, when her hair is down. And tonight, much like every other time, Charlie’s eyes glaze over and she forces a smile before simply saying, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, dear. I hope you enjoy the rest of your meal,” the woman says before returning to her table.

  “You are getting better at that,” I tell Charlie.

  “I know,” she says, twisting the stem of her water glass. “It’s because I stopped listening to them.”

  “Stopped listening?”

  She lifts her chin at the lady across the room. “Every time someone does that, I tune them out. I think of a song in my head.”

  “Really? What song?”

  “Um, it was the song you played on your harmonica. The one you played for Cat. You were right, it is calming. And every time I get upset, I think of it.” A look of worry crosses her face. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay, Charlie. That’s all part of the process.”

  “What process?”

  “Healing,” I tell her.

  She smiles sadly. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be healed, Ethan.” She looks down and touches her barely-there belly. “But somehow I think this helps.”

  “Yeah. Kids have a way of doing that. Especially when they are meant to be.” I wink at her.

  Her sad smile turns happy. Her beautiful face radiates with hope. And suddenly, the future looks brighter than ever.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  It’s been three weeks since our official first date. Three weeks and nine dates. And each one has only gotten better.

  I stare at a picture of Charlie in the new frame next to my laptop. She once said I needed more stuff on my desk, so last week on one of our walks, when the sun was setting over the trees of Central Park, I snapped a picture on my phone. It’s true what they say about pregnancy. She was genuinely glowing and I’ve never seen her happier.

  She hasn’t mentioned the list in weeks. I know she hasn’t forgotten about it. And I worry that one day she’ll want to pick up where she left off. But I’m determined to keep that from happening. I’ve done more digging on the remaining eleven. I’m using every resource I have to keep tabs on them.

  It disgusts me to think of those dirt bags living their lives as free men. I’ve had more than a few thoughts of how I could use my connections to take care of them. I’ve mentioned the word prosecution to Charlie a couple of times. But she’s been through so much already. She wants to avoid what would be a lot of very public exposure considering who she is and who some of the men are. And she’s not naïve, she understands the chances of conviction after all these years are slim. I’m not sure I could take watching her testify in eleven trials; putting her through eleven nightmares all over again.

  There is a knock on my office door.

  “Yeah, come on in.”

  Melissa walks into my office and sits down. She doesn’t ever do that. I know she has information for me. “Tell me,” I say.

  “His name is Zachary Thompson. He’s twenty-five years old. Single and not looking for a relationship. Although he did proposition me for a one-night stand. He wasn’t very happy when I said no. He spent the rest of the night going from woman to woman until he found one who took the bait. He bought a lot of drinks for a lot of girls in the process. The guy is a certified asshole, Ethan.”

  “What makes you say that?” I ask. “I mean, other than the fact that he’s just there to get laid.”

  “Well, he’s a liar, for one. I was close enough to hear his conversations with several different women. He told each one a different story. That he was only in town for one night. Or that his grandmother just died and he’s trying to get over the loss. Or that he’s out celebrating getting hired as the youngest VP for some record company. One girl slapped him because she said he hit on her a few weeks ago and was too stupid to remember, and that he must have a lot of grandmothers.”

  “Sounds like a real winner,” I say, shaking my head.

  “He’s a scam artist, too,” she says. “Two times, with two different bartenders, when they handed him his change, he told them he gave them a twenty, when he’d only given them a ten. One of the bartenders called him on it. The other one fell for it.”

  “Wonderful,” I say sarcastically. “Pictures?”

  “Yeah, check your email, I sent them a few minutes ago. I did a little digging around online this morning and found him on Facebook. I sent you what I could piece together about employment, but if you run a background check, I’m sure you’ll get more.”

  “Thanks, Melissa. Great job.”

  “No problem,” she says, getting up to leave.

  I open her email and immediately pull up his picture. He’s built. Not like me, but he looks strong. Muscular. Black hair like Charlie said. Tanned skin, blue eyes. And even though I’m a guy, I can see why Charlie might have been attracted to him. It doesn’t seem to me like he’d need much of a story to get women to go home with him. As far as men go, he’s damn good looking. Fuck. My blood boils thinking of this asshole’s hands on her.

  I look over at the picture of Charlie. I want to be mad at her for hooking up with him. But I can’t. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for my sheer stupidity. I wouldn’t be staring at the man who touched the woman I love. The man who could potentially be the father of the child I want.

  I read over the information Melissa was able to extract from Facebook. His birthdate. His recent places of employment. Names of friends he’s tagged with the most. Places he checks in at often.

  I type what information I have into my source for background checks. I don’t have a social security number or an address though, so I might have to call in a favor to get this one.

  I pull up Zachary Thompson’s Facebook page. Like anyone with sub-par intelligence, he doesn’t have any privacy settings on it so I’m free to view all of his friends, all of his likes, all of his pictures. He posts a lot of pictures. Mostly selfies with beautiful women. Some while he’s kissing them. I hold my breath as I scroll down through the hundreds of posts until I find the specific Saturday he was with Charlie.

  I’m relieved to find there isn’t a picture of her.

  I know I’ll need to tell Charlie about what I’ve found. Eventually, when I know everything there is to know about him, I’ll tell her. But what she plans to do with that information scares the shit out of me. Every day since I put Melissa on task, I think that maybe I should have let it go. After all, we didn’t know anything about him. He would have merely been a blip on the radar. A bump in the road. But in my haste to protect her, have I done nothing but open Pandora’s Box?

  No. She loves me. I can see it in her eyes. Feel it in her kisses. She doesn’t trust men. She wouldn’t risk telling him and putti
ng her child in danger. I’m doing the right thing.

  I check the clock, adrenaline shooting through me when I remember what tonight is. Tonight I’m making dinner for Charlie. Tonight she will come over to my place for the first time. Tonight I hope to do more than kiss those beautiful lips—the only part of her body other than her hands that I’ve had the pleasure of touching since the night I held her in her sleep.

  I duck out early to hit the market. Being the boss allows that kind of schedule. When I tell Gretchen I’m leaving, she asks, “Are you sick? You never leave early.”

  I laugh. “No, I’m not sick. I just have something really important to do, that’s all.”

  “Oh, well if it’s that important, is there anything I can do to help you?” She flashes her teeth at me along with her cleavage.

  Not a workday goes by where I don’t get to see that cleavage. Not that I’m looking, but she just doesn’t give up. It’s hard for me not to feel a little bad for her, though. I can’t imagine what it would feel like if Charlie had shut me out completely. But Gretchen is so obvious about it. Leaving me notes here and there. Baiting me with hotel room keys. Fucking me with her bedroom eyes. I really should put an end to it once and for all.

  “Thanks, Gretchen. I’m good.” I turn to leave, but then think maybe I can kill two birds here. “Actually, can you call a florist and have a few dozen bouquets of flowers delivered to my penthouse please? Roses and whatever other flowers girls like.”

  “Your penthouse?” she asks, her mouth full of sour grapes.

  In the years that Gretchen and I, uh … helped each other out, I never took her to my place. Not once. I’ve never taken any woman there. Charlie will be the first. The only. And hopefully the last.

  “Yes. My penthouse. Better make it six dozen, I’m going all out on this one. Thanks Gretchen.” I turn and leave before I can see her reaction. I know I’ve hurt her. I know I probably should have ordered the flowers myself. But how many times do I have to tell her I’m not interested before she starts to believe that I’m really not interested?