Just Marry Me Already (BWWM Romance Book 1)

by Ayo Campbell

  She started feeling a bit better once she had a few bites inside her. Her stomach seemed to be distracted by the food. Her headache was a bit better.

  Thankfully, she took a hit of extremely strong coffee.

  That seemed to clear her mind enough to let through a little, niggling voice that had been trying to get her attention. She’d had too many other things to think about so far. But now, she listened.

  Condom! CONDOM! PROTECTION!!

  It wasn’t a little voice anymore. It was a pretty loud voice, screaming the words over and over again in her head.

  Frantic, she got her phone out and pulled up her calendar. She went through the dates.

  Right, she had last got her period…exactly two weeks ago.

  That meant that she was most probably ovulating. She couldn’t remember if they’d used a condom.

  They had definitely not used the condom she usually kept in her purse, just in case, even if she didn’t make a habit of one-night stands.

  But Aldous Banks seemed to, and she hadn’t heard of him being at the end of a paternity suit. Grasping at straws, she Googled ‘paternity suits Aldous Banks’ and found nothing.

  So he must be responsible and make a practice of using condoms, and having safe sex.

  Right?

  Now she was desperate for any ray of hope.

  Think back, Hallie, she ordered herself.

  But she could only see blurred images of naked bodies and sweaty sex. Admittedly, the sex had been pretty great, and if she could just be sure that they had definitely used a condom, she wouldn’t worry about it at all.

  She had gone off the pill when she broke up with her last boyfriend six months ago. She’d had an extremely long dry spell since then, which was why she had been susceptible to that man’s charms, she fumed.

  And now she couldn’t figure out if they had used a condom.

  She hadn’t seen a foil or wrapper or anything anywhere when she’d been looking for her clothes. On the other hand, she hadn’t checked the garbage. She hadn’t seen Aldous’s clothes lying around, either, and her clothes had been folded and waiting on the dresser. So somebody had come in and cleaned up.

  Boy, wasn’t that thought completely mortifying.

  Hallie shoved her plate to one side. She really wasn’t hungry anymore. She didn’t want to believe that there was even a possibility that she might have had unprotected sex with somebody she didn’t even know properly.

  She didn’t even know anything about him. She wasn’t ready to be pregnant.

  The sickness in her stomach had very little to do with her hangover now, and everything to do with a bone-deep dread that was beginning to fill her.

  She might get pregnant.

  She might get pregnant with Aldous Banks’s child.

  She pushed the thought away. There was absolutely no way a playboy like him could have avoided paternity suits, even false ones, if he weren’t careful about things like safe sex. He had sex often enough for protection to be habit. She was sure he must have used it.

  He must have, she insisted to herself.

  If only she could be quite certain about it.

  Maybe she should get the morning after pill, she mused. But she had heard a few horror stories of the side effects of those pills, and she didn’t want to pop one unless there was a solid reason for it.

  She felt a bit better as she Googled ‘Aldous Banks paternity allegations’ again and found nothing.

  She was just worrying for no reason. Everything would be fine.

  But she couldn’t quite wipe all the worry away.

  Chapter 4

  Hallie wished her profession didn’t require keeping track of the date.

  If she was an engineer or a doctor, she probably could get away with vague ‘It’s a Wednesday in the middle of the month’ kind of awareness of the date. But she was a caterer, with events scheduled meticulously, and dates and times were extremely important.

  As she walked to work rather morosely, she caught sight of a newspaper stand.

  For heaven’s sake, thought Hallie, irritated, weren’t newspapers just done now? What were they used for? Everybody read everything online. She glared sourly and a man bundled up in a coat, who was buying every financial paper he could see.

  “Download an app, idiot,” she muttered.

  Newspapers reminded her of the date, too. They all had the damn date on them. She couldn’t focus on anything because of the bloody date.

  It had been two and a half weeks since That Night.

  Hallie thought of it as ‘That Night’. She refused to think of Aldous Banks or the way they had ripped into each other and found ecstasy. She just thought of it as That Night.

  For the first week after That Night, Hallie had deliberately put it out of her mind and gone on with life. She had worked events, met clients, slipped into her duties as junior manager quite effortlessly, and got a really nice bonus that went towards the dream cottage fund.

  If she lived anywhere but Manhattan, she would probably have put it towards a really nice car. But cars were pointless since she planned to live in Manhattan until she found that dream cottage. Maybe she would find it somewhere in the suburbs.

  Of course, at the rate she was going, even with all her expenses trimmed to the bone, she would be about seventy before she could afford a deposit on a house in the suburbs.

  That was an unpleasant and unwelcome thought, and Hallie put it out of her mind.

  Unfortunately, another unpleasant and unwelcome thought intruded.

  It was the tenth. That Night had been on the 23rd. That meant that her period was definitely overdue.

  It was just the stress of all the added responsibilities of her new role, she told herself. When she made the high school swim team, the stress had knocked her cycle out of whack by two weeks. Of course, she hadn’t had unprotected sex before that, so she hadn’t worried.

  She probably hadn’t had unprotected sex, anyway. Hadn’t she managed to convince herself that there was really nothing to worry about? Aldous Banks didn’t go around fathering children everywhere. He was obviously good with using protection. So, logically, he probably had used protection.

  If only she could remember.

  She would never, ever drink a whiskey sour made by that man again.

  She would never have the opportunity to turn down a whiskey sour made by that man unless he hired them for another event.

  He hadn’t called. She hadn’t expected him to call. He’d been tipsy, she’d been tipsy, and they had found each other attractive. They had ended up with each other, despite the fact that she wasn’t his type at all.

  That was perfectly fair, she told herself. He was definitely not her type, either. Arrogant, superficial billionaires that treated people like disposable cutlery were not her type, and never would be.

  She was driving herself nuts with worry for absolutely no reason, she tried to reassure herself as she walked into their offices and went to take her coat and gloves off. It had gotten quite cold in the last few days.

  Besides, she told herself as she walked to her table, she wasn’t feeling queasy or anything similar. That was part of the requirement for being pregnant, wasn’t it? On the one hand, she had no cravings and she wasn’t queasy in the morning.

  On the other hand, she didn’t think you got morning sickness just a couple of weeks in.

  But on yet another hand if you had a third one or could borrow a friend’s, didn’t they measure from the last cycle, in which case, wouldn’t she be a month along now, and didn’t that mean she should get queasy?

  Stop it, she told herself. She was just a few days late. A few days late was no big deal. Weather was changing and she was coping with new responsibilities. It was just taking her body a while longer to get used to it than she expected.

  Tentatively, she rested her hand on her stomach and felt, experimentally. No, she definitely didn’t feel like there was anybody setting up residence in there. She was just making a mount
ain out of a molehill.

  “This soufflé is dying!”

  The dramatic declaration had Hallie slipping on an apron and heading to the kitchen. It had just fainted and was easily revived. She soon got swept up in the rest of her work. She hardly realized it was almost time for lunch when Valerie asked to talk to her for a few minutes.

  “Val, what’s up?”

  Hallie was cheerful again. She had managed to put the pregnancy scare out of her mind.

  “There’s a high tea, rush job, private residence, today. Think you can deal with it? I have the client’s number here. The client met you at Aldous Banks’s event, actually, and specifically asked for you.”

  Hallie glowed, but not, she told herself, in an expectant mother kind of way. It was good to be appreciated and know that she was building a solid reputation for herself.

  “Sure, I can do that. Did one of those fancy ladies decide to try their hand at cooking?”

  “Worse,” quipped Valerie, “because she tried it at baking and her oven seems to be fried, too. So you’ll have to do the baking here. Call the client and sort out a menu that looks like she might have managed it. She plans to pass it off as her own.”

  That made Hallie pout.

  “So no referrals from this one.”

  “No, but a decent bonus and, I’ll wager, and excellent tip from the client.”

  “Well, I’ll need Bridget to help if there’s a lot of prep, but that’s it. Bridget is nearly done, we can spare her.”

  “Your call, Hallie,” said Valerie, walking away.

  Hallie checked the name of the client and sighed.

  Great. It was Mango, which was an absolutely ridiculous name for a woman – maybe they meant Margo and their handwriting was terrible – and Mango was one of Aldous Banks’s former flames.

  Or current flame. How would she know?

  But the event was apparently a ladies’ high tea, with champagne, so she didn’t have to think about Aldous Bank.

  The prick who hadn’t called her, at all.

  Well, she had sneaked out early morning before leaving and not called him, either. She supposed she should understand why he hadn’t called her.

  But still.

  Put it aside, Hallie, she ordered herself, and she called the client. It was time to get to work.

  *****

  Five hours later, Hallie was beyond exhausted. Mango was quite the lemon, and she had been a nightmare. She had, however, come through with that tip of hers, so that was something. She and Bridget split it as usual and she went home.

  She was walking by the drug store when she decided, quickly, that she would go in and get a pregnancy test. She could just pee on it and see that she was worrying for no reason. That way, she reasoned, she could stop worrying about it and she could get on with her life.

  Constantly worrying about being pregnant was distracting and it was draining her. Two weeks ago, she could’ve handled Mango and her sour requests without batting an eyelid. Today, she had had to exercise much restraint to keep from beaning her with her dessert tray.

  “The crusts have not been trimmed satisfactorily. I wish I’d satisfactorily stuck them up where the sun don’t shine,” she muttered to herself as she walked to the aisle with the pregnancy tests.

  Bridget had noticed that something was a bit off. She had suggested going out. But Hallie had wanted to be alone.

  Bridget was a dear, and her closest friend at work. She did excellent work, made the events they did together a pleasure, and she knew Hallie. She knew when Hallie wasn’t herself. She also knew that Hallie would talk when she was ready, and not before. She had just given Hallie and extra hug as they said goodbye, and whispered that she would be there for her.

  That had nearly moved Hallie to tears. Overemotional, she thought, pregnant women were overemotional.

  She passed the diapers and her heart beat faster. She did not want to be pregnant. Sure, she wanted to have kids at some point, but not now. She wasn’t ready for it now. She didn’t have her cottage, and she couldn’t even afford to have more than yogurt for dinner if she wanted to keep saving for her cottage. At least she worked in catering and there was always food to take home.

  Defiantly, she picked up a large pack of tampons. There, that was proof that she definitely believed that she was going to have to use tampons. She was not pregnant.

  She was just doing this for peace of mind.

  She got one test, then decided to be really thorough and get three. They could be a bit inaccurate, especially early. She would probably need at least two negatives to really stop worrying.

  She felt her face heat as she paid for them. Did the girl at the register actually check her hand for a wedding ring? What century was she living in?

  Hallie got her bag and walked the rest of the way home in a huff.

  She lived in a loft, and she loved in.

  It wasn’t the best neighborhood, though there was quite a bit of gentrification going on. Honestly, Hallie thought it was losing its charm with every step of that.

  She walked up the stairs and opened her door. As usual, she felt a rush of relief when she did.

  Her calm space, she thought, as she walked straight to the kitchenette to put that day’s leftovers in the fridge.

  Hallie liked elements. She liked designing and decorating according to elements. She had gone with earth, water, air and fire elements through the loft. The kitchenette was air. She loved how she could manage a window box of herbs there. She liked cooking with those.

  Everything was a light green, with dashes of red to make them pop.

  Her living space was done in shades of blue with ruby red throw pillows and curtains of striped blue and red. Her bedroom was done in a pale pink that made her feel like a princess.

  It was tiny, but she loved it, and it was hers, for now. She had made it a home with her own touches. There was a rug in bleeding blues and greens that she had hooked herself. It had taken her ages and she had messed up here and there, but she was proud of it.

  She poured herself a glass of juice and sat down on her couch. She considered getting a book and reading. She rarely got home before seven. She should probably use it to do something silly, like eat ice cream and watch a silly movie.

  And she was stalling, she admitted to herself. She was stalling because she didn’t want to go into the bathroom and pee on that damn stick.

  She was being a coward.

  That made her get up and get the pee sticks. She was nobody’s coward. She would do it, and then life would go right back to normal.

  She took a book with her so that the five minute wait wouldn’t be a problem. She did it and set it aside, telling herself she would read, and not peek before the five minutes were up.

  She managed about one minute, her heart thumping, her breathing getting shallow, before she grabbed the stick and checked.

  Well, duh, she thought – there was nothing yet.

  She waited another two minutes, reading the same sentence over and over again, before she grabbed the stick again.

  There was no mistaking it. It said she was pregnant.

  “No no no no no,” said Hallie, putting it down by the sink and backing away from it as if it might explode.

  It must be faulty. That’s what it was. It must have something wrong with it. She couldn’t be pregnant.

  She didn’t want to try another test. Definitely not alone.

  A bit wild-eyed, she grabbed her phone and dialed Bridget’s phone.

  “Bridget?”

  “Hallie, what’s wrong?”

  Hallie could almost see Bridget’s blue eyes widening in concern, her chestnut hair standing up in spikes because she’s run her hand through it absent-mindedly.

  “Bridget, can you come over? I need you to come over. Please?”

  There was no hesitation from Bridget.

  “Of course, honey. You sit tight. I’ll be right there.”

  Hallie sat outside the bathroom until she heard her doorb
ell ring. Scrambling up, she ran to the door and opened it.

  “Hallie, what’s wrong?”

  Concern radiated off Bridget in waves.

  “I… Okay, I need to tell you something, first.”

  Bridget led Hallie over to the couch and sat down, holding her hands.

  “That night, after the party, I… Well, I went back to Aldous Banks’s place with him. I slept with him.”

  Bridget grinned.

  “Yeah, I figured, and I was pretty pissed off that you didn’t tell me the juicy details, Hal.”

  “I can’t remember if we used a condom.”

  “But aren’t you… No, you went off the pill.”

  “I did, and I’m about five days late!”

  The words came out as a wail.

  “Hallie, you know the change in weather, and all the stress – that Banks event was stress enough, but you’ve had so much to do now. You’ll probably get it in a few days.”

  But she could see the doubt in Bridget’s eyes.

  Bridget saw the misery in Hallie’s dark eyes and her face changed.

  “Did you get a test?”

  She nodded.

  “It said you’re pregnant.”

  Hallie sighed. And she nodded.

  “It might be a mistake. It happens, you know, those tests aren’t exactly infallible. I’ll go get another.”

  “I have two more,” said Hallie, her voice small.

  “Well then, pee on them.”

  “I have to drink something first.”

  Bridget cracked a smile, got up, and, at home in Hallie’s place, got her a bottle of juice from the fridge.

  “Well then, drink up!”

  Hallie did, downing two bottles of OJ.

  “Bridget…”

  Hallie had Bridget’s hand in a death grip.

  “I can’t be pregnant. I can’t. It’s not time. The plan is for me to meet somebody great, get married, live in that cottage by the sea, or river, or lake, or something, have a small catering business, and then get pregnant.”

  Bridget smiled.

  “Well, you know life doesn’t always work out according to plan,” she told Hallie.

  “Yes, but this is my life, and it has to go according to my plan!” wailed Hallie.

  “I know, honey. But we’ll handle it, no matter what. You’ve got friends. Not the least me,” reminded Bridget.