“Well, folks, there you have it. I would like to see you again in one month, Miss Marshall. At that point, we should be able to catch a glimpse of your little one. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
“No, thank you,” Kaley said quietly.
“Very well. Take your time getting dressed, and stop by the desk on your way out for your next appointment. Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” Kaley repeated.
“Yes, thanks, Dr. Hooley,” I said, shaking his hand. “And again, I appreciate you seeing us on such short notice.”
“Any time,” the doctor said with a twinkle in his eye.
As the door closed behind him, I looked over at Kaley. Her face was buried in her hands and her shoulders shook, and for a moment, I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. A tear leaked out from between her fingers, clarifying the situation.
“Kaley, are you all right?” I asked, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
She looked up at me, her face completely miserable. In her eyes, I saw a reflection of my own inner turmoil; the insistent, overwhelming feelings contradicting everything we had agreed to at the outset. She dried her face and blew her nose, then pasted on a weak smile.
I held her hand, trying to make it easy for her. If she would only say the words, tell me that she felt the same way, then I could relieve myself of this heavy burden on my heart. I could tell her all of the crazy things I had been thinking and feeling, secure in the knowledge that she would accept them, and maybe even reciprocate them.
“I’m just so happy,” she said finally, crushing my hopes in five short syllables. “I’m going to be a mommy!”
“Yes,” I said, returning her smile as best I could. “Yes, you are. And my reputation will be restored. Looks like everything’s turning out exactly the way we wanted it to.”
A shadow crossed over her eyes, then, and I hated myself for not having the courage to ask about it. It felt invasive, somehow—as if I wasn’t worthy of her inner thoughts if I wasn’t willing to share my own. We worked well together on the surface, as partners. I began to come to grips with the idea that I might have to be satisfied with that alone.
“I’m happy, too,” I continued, stepping away from her to regain my composure. “We will need to make an announcement. Company-wide to begin with, I think. I’ll smooth it over with Chase.”
I turned away from her so she could dress in peace.
“We’ll wait the traditional three months, then throw a party. Let’s see, three months…that falls right around the Autumn Wrap Party. Perfect! Of course, we’ll be announcing our relationship as well as the baby, unless you would rather unveil the one before the other. It would put a lot of pressure on us to pretend in public, but it would give us some practice. What’s your opinion?”
“Let’s just do it all at once,” Kaley said tiredly. “Take me home, please. I feel sick.”
At least she would tell me that much.
One of these days, I vowed, she would tell me what she felt beneath the surface. Even if her feelings didn’t match mine exactly, they would give me a place to start from. As long as she kept silent, I was working in the dark, basing every decision upon the assumption that the business relationship was as far as her feelings for me went.
Maybe that was the truth; maybe it wasn’t; either way, I couldn’t make an intelligent decision unless I knew. Damn it all, I didn’t even know what she was crying for! Those hadn’t been tears of joy. I might not know women as well as I should, but I knew distress when I saw it, and she was clearly distressed. The only unanswerable, infuriating question was why?
Chapter 17
Kaley
Three weeks pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. I lay my head against the cool glass window of Jonathan’s car, fighting back tears. The one time we had sex out of pure elation and desire, the one time we weren’t even trying to conceive, I got pregnant.
It changed everything. This child was, now and forever, not a product of good business sense, but a child born of emotion. My overwhelming desire for Jonathan—not just his body but his mind, his heart, his everything—had culminated in a child. I would live the rest of my life looking into this baby’s face and seeing a reality I could never have.
I didn’t waste time with pleasantries when Jonathan pulled up outside my building; I simply bolted.
“I’m an idiot,” I sobbed as I collapsed against my door. “A complete idiot. God, what was I thinking? Build a family with a man made of ice. That was smart.”
Bitter tears coated my pillow as I curled up in bed. This whole day could crawl in a hole and die for all I cared. I swore to myself that I would have as little to do with him as possible over the next few months; seeing him was just too painful.
This life with him would always be a hairs breadth away from everything I had ever wanted, the cheap knock-off plastic facade of happily ever after. I simply couldn’t bear it, not now. Not until I had given myself time to secure my heart firmly behind steel doors, to be dormant until the day I held my child in my arms.
The week passed slowly until Thursday morning. As usual, I woke up early to chat with my mother. Unlike every other week, though, I was bowed over the toilet when the call came through. I called her back when I was finished, my voice hoarse and gritty.
“Kaley! Paidi Mou, are you sick?”
“Only in the morning,” I croaked.
“What do you…Oh! You’re pregnant?”
“I am,” I said miserably, wiping the sweat from my brow. “And it’s terrible.”
She chuckled warmly, mother to mother. “It will pass, my love. So, tell me, how did it happen? Did you take the rich man’s offer?”
“Yes,” I sighed. “God, Mom, I wish I hadn’t. He’s cold and unfeeling, just like they all said. And I…I’m a stupid, stupid idiot.”
“Oh, my dear,” she breathed. “You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted, my voice cracking. “And he hasn’t. I don’t think he can. I don’t know if he even knows how to love, and now I’ve gone and screwed everything up, bringing a kid into a household with a father who can’t love. Why did I do this?”
“To make your dreams come true,” she reminded me. “To have the love of a child, to give your love to a child. That’s what you always wanted, wasn’t it? To be a mother?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “But not like this.”
“However it comes, it comes,” she told me firmly. “There will always be men, Paidi. Men with passion, men with money…but there is only one you. And you have many interests, but only one passion.
“Embrace it. You hold that baby tight and give it every ounce of knowledge and care and love that you built for it, you bring it up to be the best it can be. In 18 years, maybe less, maybe more, you will have another chance at freedom and the love you want and deserve. I know it sounds like an eternity, my love…but it’s not so long.”
That brought me some comfort. I would be 27 by the time I gave birth, and only 45 by the time the child was 18. My own mother was proof that 50 wasn’t old, with her string of boyfriends and rapidly cycling interests. She still sang and danced and threw outrageous parties, and she had finally earned a spot on the big screen back home in Greece. Her life had only begun after she stopped actively engaging in motherhood. Maybe that was the way it was meant to be.
We talked for a while longer, and she promised to send me all of the good advice she had received when she was pregnant with me. Then, we said our goodbyes. I sighed, leaning my head against the bathroom cabinet.
“It’s not a life sentence,” I said out loud.
Bolstered by that, I managed to drag myself into the shower. I made it to work with thirty seconds to spare, but I didn’t bother to hurry. Mr. Dane wasn’t about to fire me, and I was in no mood to put myself through the ringer over nothing.
Chapter 18
Kaley
Over the next couple of months, I only really saw Jonathan during doctor’s appo
intments. It wasn’t an unfriendly situation, merely a matter of timing. The end of summer to the middle of fall was the busiest season for the company as it prepared for the holiday season, and he and I were both run ragged with work.
I was grateful for this. It meant less time spent obsessing over him and our non-relationship, and fewer awkward conversations spent with my words trying to work around the carnal memories flooding my brain. For some reason, my lust for him had only grown more intense, even as I intentionally cooled my emotions.
My mother informed me that the hormones were to blame—that my body was making a point of bonding with the father of my child, for better or worse. Fortunately, we weren’t cave dwellers, and modern life had a way of overwhelming even the most basic instincts with busy work and bright lights.
“You should join my gym,” Imogen said to me one day, with a pointed glance at my waist. “I could use a workout buddy.”
“While I would love to be your support system,” I said sarcastically, “I think I’ll pass.”
“Are you still depressed over that guy from forever ago? Look, I know I missed the mark with Brody and Aiden, but…”
“For me, maybe,” I said, poking the hickey on her neck.
“But,” she repeated, “I have a lot of other guy friends that I think you’d be interested in. How are you going to find anybody if you let yourself go? I could introduce you to my personal trainer; I think you’d really like him.”
She gave me an earnestly concerned look, and I flushed red. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t letting myself go, that this wasn’t fat—well, maybe a little of it was; my pregnancy cravings had been wild lately—but I couldn’t spill the beans before the announcement.
“Ask me again after the Autumn Wrap Party,” I begged her desperately. “I don’t even have time to breathe these days, let alone think about dating.”
“That’s fair,” she sighed, eying the pile of paperwork on her desk. “All right, after the party. But you have to promise to keep an open mind.”
“I will if you will,” I whispered, suddenly dreading the reveal.
“What?”
“I said I will. I promise. Now, shoo, I have work to do.”
Imogen stuck her tongue out at me and returned to her desk, where she moaned over every packet she drew from the pile for the next several hours. I did my best to focus on my work, but I found myself obsessively stretching my shirt over my swelling belly. It was getting increasingly difficult to disguise. The party and the announcement couldn’t come fast enough.
I could almost feel the collective sigh of relief the Friday of the party. The last new Christmas toys had hit production, the last holiday marketing campaign had wrapped, and the last frantic supplier had been dealt with. Santa would visit all the good little girls and boys this year, whether their parents could afford to bribe him or not.
To the company’s surprise, Jonathan had started a new philanthropic program, and was donating five million dollars’ worth of toys to children’s charities across the country. He had planned it quietly, but word had leaked somehow (I suspected he or his assistant had tipped the press themselves), and now his face was splashed across magazines and newspapers everywhere I went.
He still couldn’t make himself look warm in a photograph, no matter how many millions he gave away. Of course, that could have just been my own bitter perception talking.
The work day ended early, and virtually every employee of AllGood Inc. marched down the block in small clusters and pairs until they reached the Spot. The three-story club hosted this party every year, closing it to the public from four in the afternoon till two in the morning, catering to Jonathan’s every whim.
I walked with Imogen and two other women from our floor, letting their animated chatter wash over me as my stomach clenched with anxiety. This was it. After tonight, there was no turning back. We would be official in every way that mattered to the public eye, and I would be locked in a romantic void for 18 long years.
I didn’t ask myself if it was worth it. I had already asked that question a thousand times, and I still hadn’t come up with a good answer.
Once inside the club, I peeled away from the group to go find Jonathan. If we were going to do this, we were going to do it together, or so help me, I would…
I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. How do you threaten a man with unlimited resources and a steel heart?
I eventually found him on the third floor, toasting and laughing with the executives. I watched him from a distance for a few moments, busying myself with a tray of hors d’oeuvres, studying the way he moved among his peers. Cunning. Calculated. Every expression, every gesture, every casual movement of his body was perfectly choreographed.
He seemed like an entirely different person from the Jonathan I had come to know in the bedroom. That made sense, I decided. He wanted something different from me than he wanted from his peers. Who was I to say that his earth-quaking love making wasn’t just as calculated?
He met my eyes from across the room, then, and his expression changed from cool amusement to spontaneous delight for the briefest second. Just long enough to make my heart race with hope—a hope I squashed immediately.
“Glad you could make it, Miss Marshall,” he said smoothly as he left his cluster to greet me. “The executives were just expressing their surprise that you returned to your previous position after shooting the marketing campaign. They seem to be under the impression that you would make the perfect face for AllGood in the long term. What are your thoughts?”
Work. He’s talking about work. I could have slapped him.
“Well, as tempting as that sounds, I really do enjoy my work in product development. Besides, I may not be a very good model for much longer, considering…” I made a furtive gesture at my swollen belly, and he shook his head.
“On the contrary,” he said, loud enough for those around to hear. “I believe your condition would serve us well, especially if we were to move forward with Chase’s most recent idea.”
“I haven’t heard his idea,” I snapped, becoming increasingly frustrated at the direction our conversation was taking.
“Multi-functional toys for very small infants,” Jonathan explained. “Nursing pillows with tactile doodads, holographic stroller covers, that sort of thing. Toys to stimulate the mind from day one.” He smiled proudly, as if the idea had been his.
I glanced around to see if anyone had made the connection, but our conversation seemed to be wholly ignored.
“Those sound like great toys,” I said uncomfortably. “I might agree to participate.”
“It would be a great help to me if you would.”
Haven’t I helped you enough? I thought furiously.
I swallowed the words with a sip of sparkling water, but I could still feel the thought vibrating in the air between us. He seemed oblivious, as usual, and kept talking.
“I’ll make the announcement at seven,” he said. “Right in the middle there, between people being comfortably full and buzzed, but before the shenanigans begin. Meet me at that balcony at quarter to seven. In the meantime, go mingle! Have fun! This your last night as a publicly single woman.”
He winked at me and tipped his glass to mine before wandering back to his colleagues. Dissatisfied and anxious, I spent the next few hours wandering aimlessly from floor to floor. Imogen was busy stringing along three guys from IT without letting any of them see the others, playing her usual game.
I didn’t understand how or why she did what she did, but I could recognize skill when I saw it. Imogen had it in spades. I would have to ask her, one of these days, how she got so many men to fall desperately in love with her so quickly. Maybe I could use those skills on the one person in the world whose heart I craved.
At 6:45, I stepped into the elevator. Imogen slid in, giggling, just as the doors were closing, and through the gap I saw her three suitors staring after her with expressions ranging from bewilderment to rage.
&nb
sp; “Note to self,” she gasped, fanning her face. “Next party, keep them on different floors.”
“Or just stop playing with them altogether,” I suggested.
“What fun would that be?” she scoffed. “Breaking hearts is my one pleasure in this cold, cruel world. Don’t take that away from me.”
I rolled my eyes at her and grinned. As infuriatingly inconsiderate as Imogen could be, she certainly knew how to feel alive.
“So, where are you going? Better food upstairs?” she joked.
“I have to meet Mr. Dane,” I said, wiping my clammy palms on my skirt.
“Ugh, why?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “This party is supposed to be off the clock; you can sue him for that, you know.”
“Not for this,” I told her with a thin smile as the elevator slid to a stop. “You’ll find out why. Don’t have too much fun.”
“No such thing,” she countered, tossing her blond mane with a cheeky grin.
I shook my head and made my way through the energetic crowd to the balcony which overlooked the lower two stories. He was waiting there, drink in hand, cellphone to his ear. A knot rose in my stomach and I pushed it away, willing myself to just get through the next few minutes with grace and dignity.
He tucked the phone back into his pocket as I approached, and turned to smile at me.
“Stand over there, just behind the pillar,” he told me. “I’ll introduce you after I’ve begun the announcement.”
“All right,” I said, stepping aside and feeling a bit like a child.
A bright spotlight locked on Jonathan, outlining his sharp features in a way that made my belly warm with lust in spite of myself. An air horn sounded, and the bar slowly quieted.
“Good evening! I hope you’re all having a good time.”
A resounding cheer answered him, and he smiled and held up a hand. He was calculatedly charismatic, and it left me cold.
“As always, I want to congratulate you for pulling off the holiday season so spectacularly. AllGood Inc. is filled with good people, and each and every one of you is responsible for our success, so thank you.”
Baby, ASAP - A Billionaire Buys a Baby Romance (Babies for the Billionaire Book 3) Page 11