by Sylvia Fox
“This is about as far from a joke as I can get.” He doesn’t make a move to turn to face me, keeping his back to me as if it’s a bridge I cannot cross. “Please leave immediately, Becca. I don’t want to discuss this any further.”
My entire body goes cold. What seemed like a sick joke only seconds before crushes down on top of me like an avalanche of pure dread. He wants me gone. Not only as his assistant but as his. The world tips underneath my feet. Not only have I lost my job but I’ve lost the only man I’ve ever cared for, right when I thought I finally had him once and for all.
“Why?” I whisper, blinking back the tears. “Just tell me why.”
“I said I don’t want to discuss it any further. Goodbye, Becca.”
When I return to my crappy apartment that Adrian Michaels hates so much, I don’t hesitate for a single moment, knowing exactly what I need to do. My life in Manhattan is over. Adrian was right. This isn’t a place to raise two young girls, and it’s time for me to let go of my city-living dreams. Time for me to pack up and move back home, at least for now, until I find somewhere better and permanent for me and the girls.
Carrie raises her eyebrows as she watches me storm around the apartment, tossing random belongings into the open suitcase in the middle of the living room floor. The girls are sleeping, thank goodness. I don’t want them to see their mother in such a state of despair.
“You sure you want to do this?” Carrie asks, placing a soft hand on my arm to pause me in my tornado of packing. “Maybe you could take some time, think things over. No need to rush into anything.”
I pause my pacing but her words do little to calm me down. “Of course there’s a need to rush things. I don’t have a job anymore, Carrie.”
“You didn’t have a job two weeks ago either, but you weren’t throwing all your shit into suitcases to get out of here.”
Even though I know she means well, I don’t want to hear it. All I want to do is get out of this place as fast as I can. I don’t think I can look at it anymore without Adrian’s words echoing in my ears, without hearing his judgment on who I am as a mother, without hearing him tell me to get out of his office without even the slightest of explanations.
It all hurts far too much for me to handle.
And he’s right. I need to get the girls out of this dump we call home.
They deserve a better life.
Hell, they deserve a better mother, but they’re stuck with me.
“I had my dignity then,” I say as a tear leaks out of my eye. “And I had a whole, unbruised heart. Right now, all that feels torn to shreds.”
“Because he’s an asshole who never deserved you.” Carrie narrows her eyes. “I swear, if I could get my hands on him, I’d beat him to a bloody pulp.”
Despite myself, I laugh. More at the image of Carrie fighting a man three times her size than anything else. In a sad voice, I say, “At least someone’s on my side.”
“Damn straight,” she says. “Which means you can’t leave me here all alone.”
“Carrie,” I say, moving to her side and placing my hands on her shoulders. “I love you, you know that, but I need to go home. I need to get away from here. The father of my beautiful children just told me to fuck myself, basically, right when I was two seconds away from telling him the truth. It just hurts too much, okay? It’s time for me to move on and make a better life somewhere else.”
Carrie gives me a sad smile and nods. She knows it’s what needs to happen just as much as I do. It’s just too bad it all had to end this way. What I would give for it to be the other way around, for Adrian Michaels to be in his children’s lives—and mine.
12
Adrian
The week goes by, and another assistant takes Becca’s place outside my office door but not in my heart. My work calls to me, the company desperately needing my attention, but it’s all I can do not to imagine Becca’s lips, her thighs, her sweet gorgeous smile. After several days of regretting her absence with every beat of my heart, I have to admit to myself that I might have been a little rash in firing her the way I did.
So those two girls are hers. So she didn’t share that information. Yes, she should have told me about them, but maybe the right time just hadn’t come up. It doesn’t escape my memory that I’d been a bit of an ass about the woman standing on the apartment doorstep, the one I thought was their mother. I can see why she might have been put off from sharing.
And maybe, just maybe, the father isn’t in her life anymore. Instead of assuming the worst, I should have just been a fucking man and asked.
Which is how I find myself pointing my limo driver toward Chinatown after work. I hope she’s home. I thought about calling first but figure this kind of situation requires a grand gesture, complete with flowers and a box of dark chocolate.
The driver slides to a stop outside her sagging building, and I quickly make my way up the stairs. There are only three buzzers on the door, but I know which one is hers. It was on her employee file after all. After several moments pass, I turn to go, reluctant to leave but there’s no reason to stand here like an idiot if she’s not at home. I’ll just have to try again. And again and again until we finally come face to face.
I’m not going to give up until I’ve seen her again.
The door cracks open, and a woman peers out who is very much not my Becca. It’s the woman I saw on the front steps that day. The one I thought was the mother. She frowns, opening the door wider.
“Hi, I’m Adrian. I’m looking for—”
“Becca’s not here,” she says before I can finish the sentence. “You’re Adrian, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I ah…suppose she mentioned me to you,” I say. In all the people I’ve met during my life and over the course of building my own business, it’s the rare one who can make me feel even the slightest hint of unease. But this woman makes me feel as if I’m underneath a microscope, and that she very much does not like what she sees.
“The understatement of the century.” She shakes her head and begins to close the door, but I put my foot in the doorframe to stop her. The wood crashes into my expensive leather shoe, but I don’t care. Becca is far more important to me than anything money can buy.
“Wait,” I say. “Can you tell me when she’s going to be back?”
“She’s not going to be back, and she’s gone from the city,” she says slowly, as if I’m an alien who doesn’t understand human words. “She moved out. On Monday, after she came home broken-hearted and jobless.”
A sharp stab of guilt goes through my gut along with a sense of sudden panic. She’s gone. She left. No longer in Manhattan, and it’s all my fucking fault. I knew I’d acted rashly. I just didn’t think it had come to this. If only I’d kept my emotions under tighter control, none of this would have happened.
“Where did she go?” I ask.
Carrie cocks her head and looks at me as if she’s considering whether or not to share the information. Something in her eyes tells me I’m not going to find out. She clearly doesn’t approve of how I handled the situation, and I can’t say I’m surprised. She and Becca are close. Of course she’d do anything to protect her from a guy who broke her heart.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” she says, leaning against the doorframe and crossing her arms over her chest. “A few days ago, I was consoling my best friend because of you. If I tell you where she is, are you going to go screw her up all over again?”
“Of course not,” I say, holding up the flowers and chocolates. “As you can see, I came to apologize.”
She raises her eyebrows, clearly not impressed by my offerings. “You think some cheesy flowers and chocolates are going to make up for how you tossed her out on her ass without an explanation? I don’t think so, Adrian. You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Okay. I can see this was a mistake.” I hesitate, but in the end, I turn to go. I still have Becca’s phone number, and surely she hasn’t gone and changed that. I
f I want to get in touch with her, I’ll have to do it by phone, even though it’s not how I wanted things to go. Because I’m clearly not going to get anything out of this woman.
“Wait,” she says. “One more question and maybe I’ll tell you where she is.”
I pivot on my feet, facing her. “Ask me anything.”
“Why did you do it?” she asks. “Fire her like that? The way I hear it, you guys were five seconds away from declaring your undying love for each other, and then all of a sudden, you went ice cold. Is that usually how you conduct your business or did you have a reason for it?”
“Becca didn’t tell me she had children,” I say. “I felt lied to. And I couldn’t help but wonder what else she was hiding. The father, for example. A man in her life who isn’t me.”
Carrie’s eyes widen, and she drops back her head to laugh. I’m so caught off guard by her reaction that I almost stumble backward down the stairs. What the hell is funny about that? Serves me right for opening up about my feelings, because all it’s leading to is me getting fucking laughed at. I’m so done with this entire exchange.
“I’m sorry,” she says when she sees me turn to go. “I shouldn’t laugh. But the irony of the whole situation is almost unbelievable.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask, frustration building inside me. “Tell me now, because my patience for this is really wearing thin.”
Her laughter stills, and her lips press into a line. “Oh, Adrian Michaels. You poor thing. It isn’t my place to tell you, but I think it’s time you know.”
Something about her words causes my heart to throb painfully in my chest. It feels as if my world is about to flip onto its side, to be changed forever from this moment. But despite the fear and dread, I don’t want her to stop. I want to hear this. I need to hear this. Whatever she’s about to say, I can already feel it in my gut. The ages of the girls, Becca’s reaction to my words, and the family members she has to take care of. It’s all adding up very quickly.
“She doesn’t have another man in her life, Adrian,” Carrie whispers. “Those two girls? They’re yours.”
13
Becca
Home is where the heart is. Isn’t that what they say? Unfortunately for me, half of my heart is here in my parents’ house while the other half lives in Manhattan, still wishing and dreaming of the man I’ve always wanted. It was hard packing up and leaving it all behind, but I knew it was for the best. We now live on a suburban little street with white picket fences and clear skies above.
The girls seem happy, but they never seemed unhappy before.
As for me, I work as a waitress now, smiling as big as I can smile to earn as many tips as I can.
One day soon, I hope we can move into our own place, but we’re a long way off from that right now.
I grab my apron and head out the door to another shift at work. Mom and Dad watch the girls while I’m away, something they both seem to love. On paper, things seem better than they’ve ever been, but that’s not how I feel deep down in my heart. There’s a hole I can’t seem to ignore, especially not when I’m laying in my childhood bed late at night. In those quietest of moments, I can’t help but cry and wonder how my life got so twisted inside out.
When I crack open the door, I stop short when I spot a limo idling in the driveway. I tighten my grip around the apron and fight every urge to run away. Just because it’s a limo doesn’t mean it’s Adrian. It could be anyone else in the entire world. Well, anyone who can afford a limo anyway. Someone probably got lost, turned around. On their way to…
The door cracks open, and Adrian’s tall and commanding form rises out from the dark, sleek car. His suit jacket billows in the wind, and his gaze locks hard onto my face. Something dark and serious flickers across his features. He buttons his suit jacket, slams the door, and takes long strides to move toward me.
“Adrian,” I squeak out. This is the last thing I expected to happen on my way into work this morning, that’s for sure. “What are you doing here?”
He stops before me, snatching my apron out of my hands and tossing it onto the ground before I realize what’s happening. “You won’t be needing that anymore. No more working at a fucking diner.”
Confusion is quickly replaced with anger. Who the hell is he to order me around like this? Showing up out of nowhere and just expecting me to listen to his commands? Yeah, I don’t think so. Maybe he could do that before, but he sure can’t do that now, not after he was the one who got rid of me.
“You fired me. Remember?” I say, lifting my chin to look straight into his eyes. “You have no say in where I do or do not work.”
“And I’m sorry I didn’t handle things better. I shouldn’t have let you go like that.” He doesn’t budge an inch, stepping on the apron when I go to reach for it. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you won’t be working in a diner. You have children to worry about, for fuck’s sake.”
I freeze, a cold dread ripping through my veins. “You know the girls are mine.”
“I not only know the girls are yours, Becca,” he says, his eyelids fluttering shut. “But I know they’re also mine.”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
As much as I’d wanted to tell him before, this really wasn’t how I wanted him to find out. From someone else. But from who?
“How?” I can’t help but ask, though there are a million other things I should be saying right now. “Who told you?”
“Does it matter?” he asks.
“No, not really,” I say, shaking my head. “I just…I’m sorry, Adrian. Trust me when I say I wanted to tell you. I really did. But one thing kept happening after another, and there never was a right time. It’s not something I could just blurt out, you know?”
He nods, his eyes drifting to the door behind me. “I’m not angry, Becca. Just sad. Sad I haven’t been here. Sad I never knew. Sad you felt you couldn’t tell me. I should have fucking asked for your number back in Vegas and all of this would have gone so very, very differently.”
“So, you…you would have wanted to know?” I ask, a spark of hoping going through my heart. He came out here, to see me in Jersey, knowing that the girls are his. Which must mean…he doesn’t want to run away from them, from us. Quite the opposite actually. It’s almost too good to be true.
“Fucking hell, Becca. Of course I would have wanted to know.” He grasps my hands in his, heating me up from my toes all the way up to the top of my head. “I wish I’d known from day one.”
“The other day at work.” I shake my head. “You talked like you don’t want children. Like they’re the last thing in the world you’d want in your life.”
He shakes his head, laughing. “I was just saying that in hopes I wouldn’t scare you off. You came back into my world like a whirlwind, and I wanted nothing more than to sweep you off your feet and keep you in my life for as long as you’d have me. But I thought saying all that would run you off. Hell, we’ve only spent a matter of days together. I figured you weren’t ready for talk like that.”
My heart beats wildly, all the hope and fear inside me bursting to get out. This is everything I’ve wanted to hear. Everything I could have hoped for. Instead of turning away from us, he’s right here in front of me, in Jersey, saying he wants the girls in his life just as much as I’ve always wanted.
“You mean that,” I whisper. “You want the girls in your life.”
“Becca, please.” He drops his forehead to mine, and our faces meet. “I want them in my life. Need them in my life. But not only them, I want you. Please, let’s put my idiocy behind us. Forget I was a dumbass man and take me back. And most importantly, please let me meet my daughters. There’s nothing I want more in my life than this.”
He kisses me, long and hard and deep. My daughters will have their father in their lives. Finally, after all this time. But not only that, I’ll have him, too. For the first time in my life, things are looking up. And the best is yet to come.
>
Epilogue
“I’m home, girls!” Adrian’s deep and soothing voice rings out when he swings through the penthouse door. The house always feels fuller when he’s home, more complete, more like all the pieces of a perfectly-formed puzzle are in place.
I drop my law textbook onto the kitchen counter where I’ve been perched for the past three hours. Adrian insisted that I go back to finish off my studies so that I can pursue a career if that’s still what I want to do after all this time has passed.
I smile as I rub my protruding belly. While I can’t wait to get into the courtroom one day, that’s going to have to wait just a little bit longer. There’s another set of twins on the way. Only two more months, and our family will almost double in size.
I absolutely can’t wait.
The twins leap into his arms, showering him with a million sloppy kisses. Any worry I’d had about them getting along went right out the window the second he laid eyes on them. I’ve never seen that kind of love on a man’s face before, pure and unbridled devotion to his two daughters.
“And guess who I brought with me.” He smiles and opens the door wider. “Uncle Christopher, Auntie Lily, and Nina and Alison.”
The twins have become fast friends with Christopher’s adopted children, so much so that they’re here several times a week and they’ve become de facto family, in heart even though not in blood. There’s always a squad of children running around Adrian’s swanky penthouse, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
As the guests settle in and the children start to play, I look around me and smile. Somehow, my life has turned around in ways I never dreamed. I have my beautiful girls, plus two more on the way, and I have the most amazing man I’ve ever met. Not to mention the ring on my finger. In two more weeks, we’ll be husband and wife.
The father of my children is marrying me.