by Naomi West
“No one,” I said. “Just some guy.”
“Just some guy?” asked Melanie.
“He wouldn’t happen to have been ‘just some guy’ in a leather jacket with tattoos up and down his arm, would he?”
Goddammit. Cat was out of the bag.
“Details, girl,” said Patricia. “And now.”
I sighed and told them everything.
“And did you talk to him again?” asked Melanie.
“No. He wrote his number on my hand but I passed out almost as soon as Marcus left. And when I woke up, the number had gotten all smeared. I took it as, like, a sign from the universe that I should just it all be a one-night thing.”
“Probably for the best,” said Melanie. “But … not if you’re … you know.”
“Okay, look, let’s just drop the whole thing. I made a stupid mistake and I hooked up with a guy who looks like he should be in prison or something. Can we just go to the beach? I want to relax and not get made fun of.”
“Fine, fine,” said Patricia. “Just giving you shit, like a good friend does.”
I didn’t think it was funny. The girls finished up their coffee drinks and we headed over in my car to the beach. Once there, I tried to relax and get some sun, to let the stresses of the last month melt away.
But I couldn’t.
Not only did the idea of being pregnant make me want to scream, now I was thinking about Tiger. I’d done my best to put him out of my head, and for the last week I’d mostly been able to. But now that he’d gotten brought up again he was all I could think about. In my mind, I went back to that night in Vegas, that night when we’d fucked in the elevator like a couple of wild animals.
I started to get turned on right then and there at the beach, a tightness forming down below as I remember how he had me bent over, how he’d pounded me hard again and again until he came …
Came inside me. Without a condom. Oh, shit.
Panic formed in my gut. I had been too drunk to think about it at the time, but I’d totally forgotten to make sure that he pulled out. But he hadn’t, and I hadn’t been on birth control. I realized with horror that the little crack about being pregnant might very well not be a joke.
Once we were done at the beach, I dropped the girls back off at their cars and tore down the road to the nearest convenience store. Once I bought the pregnancy test, I drove home so fast that I was certain that I was going to be pulled over.
“Okay,” I said out loud, reading the instructions on the box. “Just pee on it? Easy enough.”
I did what the box said and then waited. The wait was probably the longest twenty minutes of my life. My stomach tied into a knot that just got tighter and tighter by the second.
Finally, the time was up. My phone blared out an alarm and I rushed back to the bathroom where the rest was waiting for me. I snatched it up from the counter and locked my eyes onto the display.
Two bars. Two bars meant pregnant.
It had started out as a joke, but now it was all too real. I was pregnant with the baby of a man I barely knew.
My life had just taken a turn for the totally insane. And little did I know, things were about to get even worse.
Chapter 12
Nikki
I spent the rest of the afternoon pacing around the house and trying to process the news that I was pregnant with Tiger’s baby. It felt like I was in some kind of a bad dream; part of me was hoping that I’d wake up in my bed, a wave of relief washing over me as I realized the news was just some sick conjuring of my sleeping mind.
But it wasn’t. I pinched myself over and over again, like I was in some kind of cartoon or TV show.
Pregnant. The word bounced around in my mind, turning into one of those strange words that lost its meaning the more you repeated it. I’d thought my fling with Tiger was just that—a stupid, one-off thing that I could leave back in Sin City. Sure, the sex had been amazing, and part of me wished that I’d put Tiger’s number into my phone when I’d had the chance, but I’d been ready to set all of that behind me when I came back to LA.
But standing there in the kitchen, the pregnancy test in my hand, I knew that I’d have no such luck.
And that was when my phone rang, the jarring sound nearly causing me to leap out of my skin. I rushed over to the counter, picked it up, and took a look at the screen. “Naylor Holdings”—it was my dad. Or, more likely, one of his secretaries.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Nikki,” spoke the cool, professional voice on the other end. “This is April from your father’s office.”
“Um, hi,” I said, trying to hide the fact that I was freaking out.
“Your father’s in a meeting right now, but he asked that I give you a call and tell you that he’d like you to come down to the office as soon as possible.”
This was weird. Normally, Dad liked to keep me as far away from his work as possible. He’d told me that it was because he preferred to have a “clear delineation,” as he put it, between his work and home life. But sometimes I wondered if it was because he just didn’t want me bothering him. I’d learned my lesson a couple of years back when he’d scolded me for swinging by the office unannounced with some takeout for lunch. His stern reproach had made it clear that it wasn’t welcome.
“He wants me to come by the office? Did he say why?”
“He didn’t. He just said that it was very important and that you cancel whatever plans you might have for the evening and come by as soon you can.”
That caused my blood to run cold. I started to wonder if there were security cameras in the house or something that had allowed him to see that I’d just taken a pregnancy test. My eyes darted around the corners of the kitchen before I realized that I was being majorly paranoid.
“Oh,” I said. “I guess tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Great. I’ll let him know when he’s out of this meeting.”
And that was that. The line went dead, and I was left wondering just what the hell was so important that Dad wanted me to come to his office in the middle of the workday. Between that and what I’d just learned about me being freaking pregnant, I wanted to scream right then and there.
But I knew that wouldn’t do me any good. Whatever Dad wanted, I needed to find out sooner or later. After all, it could be nothing. So, I hopped into my convertible and started off towards the office. Dad’s place was downtown, which was a little bit of a drive from our home in Venice Beach. I spent the majority of the trip going back and forth, wondering what this was all about, my mind coming up with the most awful scenarios possible.
Did he know about Tiger? No, there was no way. I’d only told a couple of my friends, and there was not a chance in hell that they’d tell Dad about any of that. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?
After a time, I arrived at the sleek, twenty-story office building where Dad’s offices were located. The building was all stainless steel and glass and about as imposing as the man who worked in the biggest office on the top floor—that man being my father.
I parked and took the elevator up to the top, breathing in slowly and deeply in an effort to calm myself down. The doors slid open, revealing the bustling offices of Naylor Holdings. Well-dressed professionals zipped here and there, none of them even paying me the slightest bit of attention.
“Can I help you, miss?” came a voice from behind me.
I turned and was face to face with a petite blonde in a smart outfit. She regarded me skeptically from behind large-framed glasses. I glanced down and realized that I was dressed in jeans and a fitted T-shirt, the outfit finished off with a pair of white Chuck Taylors. I couldn’t have looked more out of place if I wanted to.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “I’m Nikki Naylor. Dennis Naylor’s—”
She didn’t even let me finish. As soon as the girl realized who I was, her demeanor changed on a dime, going from skeptical to accommodating.
“Hi, Nikki!” she said. “I’m April—w
e talked on the phone.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I, um, came as soon as I could.”
“Appreciate it,” she said, gesturing towards the main office floor and leading me along. “Your dad’s still in the meeting, but he told me that if you showed up to just wait for him in his office. He’s nearly done, so you won’t be waiting for very long.”
“Do you know what any of this is about?” I asked as the two of us turned down a long hallway, a massive set of double doors at the far end.
“You know as well as we do that your father doesn’t let us in on any of the details about his personal business,” she said as we continued on. “You’re going to have to wait until you’re face to face with the man himself.”
We soon reached the tall double doors. April opened them up and gestured for me to enter. My dad’s office was a cold, stark space of modern furniture and décor. A huge room, it was sparsely appointed; only a large black desk and a small chair set on the other end furnished the area, and with a pair of seats that faced his desk. A few pieces of abstract art hung on the walls, and a few tall bookshelves lined the walls.
April shut the door behind me, and I was all alone. I paced the office, my eyes drifting to the windows and out onto the sweeping view of LA. Tension boiled in my stomach; I had no idea what my father wanted, and waiting around like this wasn’t making things any easier. After a time, I plopped into his tall-backed black leather desk chair and waited.
After a time, the office door opened, and my father entered.
“Nikki,” he said, his voice stern. “Out of my chair.”
My father was an imposing man, to say the least. Dressed in one of his usual dark, well-tailored suits, he cut a stern profile as he stood in front of the desk. His hair was a striking silver and slicked back behind his ears. His eyes were green and hawk-like and set below eyebrows that seemed to be permanently in skeptical furrows, his nose was long and slim, and his well-formed mouth was pressed into a hard line. Tall, broad-shouldered, and serious, he’d always been something of a larger-than-life figure to me.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, hopping out of the chair and bounding to the other side of the desk.
I threw my arms around him.
“Good to see you, Daddy,” I said.
But he kept his arms at his side and let out a grunt in response. I knew right then that something was seriously wrong. Dad might’ve been a hardass, but he could always spare at least a little affection for me.
“Sit down,” he said.
I did as he asked. My heart thudded in my chest and I felt a bead of nervous sweat dart erratically down my back.
Dad looked away for a brief moment, as if choosing his words very, very carefully.
“You know,” he said. “I had major reservations about letting you run off to Las Vegas with your friends. I’ve been to that city enough times to know that nothing good happens there, and my first instinct was to tell you that having your birthday there was out of the question.”
I didn’t like where this was going. Not one bit.
“Is this about me losing the credit card?” I asked. “I told you, it was stolen. And I canceled it as soon as I could.”
He held up his hand, making it clear that he didn’t want another word out of me. I zipped up quick.
“But I figured that I could trust my little girl. After all, you’ve been excelling in school, and compared to some of the other bullshit that the kids of associates of mine have been getting up to, you’ve been a saint.”
“So,” he went on, “I decided to let you go—to trust that you could be unaccompanied in a city like that and make the right decisions. When you came back in one piece, I was relieved. It seemed that you’d lived up to my expectations.”
I took in a deep breath, knowing he was about to get to the heart of the matter. Sure enough, he reached under his desk and pressed a button that I couldn’t see. A large panel on the wall to my left opened up, revealing the coal-black rectangle of a large, flat-panel TV. My dad removed a remote control from one of the drawers of his desk and turned the thing on. And what was on the screen shook me to my core.
It was security footage—security footage taken in an elevator in Vegas.
I glanced over at Dad, watching as his normally impassive face tightened. Turning back to the screen, I watched as the elevator doors opened and in stepped two figures.
It was me and Tiger.
I wanted to die right then and there. My dad let the footage play, and I watched as Tiger and I set on each other, kissing passionately and preparing to do what we were about to do next. I opened my mouth to beg my dad to turn the recording off, but he beat me to it. The screen froze with Tiger and me with our lips locked, his hands preparing to reach down under my dress.
“Needless to say,” Dad said. “I didn’t watch what happens after this. But a note enclosed with the tape made it abundantly clear what took place next.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to crawl out of my skin; I’d never been more mortified in my life.
“I can’t even put into words how disappointed I am in you,” he said. “I thought I raised you right; I thought I raised you to make good choices. And I thought I raised to you stay away from men like that.”
He stabbed his finger into the air towards the TV.
“Who is that?” he asked. “Some thug from the bad part of town? Is that all you’re looking for, some criminal thug covered in tattoos? What kind of girl goes for a man like that?”
No words came to mind in my defense. My attraction to Tiger was so primal that I couldn’t even begin to figure out how to logically justify it.
“I’m … sorry,” I said, my voice meek.
But then the question popped into my head of just how my father had come upon this footage.
That turned out to be the next topic.
“This ended up in my inbox this morning, the email from an untraceable address. Told me that I need to pay … a huge sum of money or this footage is going on the internet.”
Holy shit. The bottom seemed to drop out from under me.
“What … what are you going to do?”
Dad turned his chair and looked away.
“I haven’t even begun to think about that. I’ve been spending the morning trying to figure out just how a girl like you would even consider associating with a piece of trash like that.”
“He’s not a—”
Tight rage formed on Dad’s face, making it clear I’d better not finish that sentence if I knew what was good for me.
“If you even start with some ‘you don’t know him like I do’ bullshit, so help me God …”
He let his words trail off, the implication of what he might say more frightening than any actual threat.
“So … what are you going to do?” I asked.
Dad took a deep breath and folded his hands on his lap.
“I haven’t decided. I’m going to go to Vegas to meet with Angus Goldman, Marcus’ father, and figure out just who might’ve gotten into his hotel security footage. And you’re going to be coming with me. Because make no mistake—until this situation is resolved, you’re not a free woman. You’re not even to go down the block for a damned iced latte without my permission. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Good.”
Then he took in a slow breath and spoke again.
“I can’t put into words just how disappointing this all is,” he said. “And how disappointed I am with you. But I’m going to get this taken care of. And when I do, the fact that you can’t be trusted to make responsible decisions is going to weigh heavily on just how much I continue to support you in the future. Now go straight home and wait for me to come back. We’re leaving for Vegas in the morning.”
And that was that. He gestured for me to leave, and I got up and hurried out of the office.
The trip back to my car and back home was a blur. I couldn’t believe what had happened; I couldn’t believe the news. The image
on the screen of me and Tiger locked in a deep kiss was stuck in my mind; I couldn’t shake it.
The worst part? Through it all, the only thing I wanted was for Tiger to be at my side, to tell me everything was going to be okay.
I knew things were going to get much worse before they got any better.
Chapter 13
Tiger
“Where you thinkin’ first, boss?”
“Wherever the night takes us.”
Some of the boys and I were out on the Strip, and I was ready for a hell of an evening out. The neon lights of the city were all around us, and the guys and I all had a nice buzz going on from the pre-gaming we had done at the club.