Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  She’d once had another piercing beside the abandoned brow he knew about and the nipple he’d always suspected, she still had a faint pin mark at her belly button. He put his hands up and she took both, used them to steady herself as she rubbed over him, drag her softness, soon wetness, up and down his length; teasing his crown with her entrance only to resume her rhythm, getting slicker, moving faster with it. He could come like this, but he didn’t want to. She was so close, a sweat sheen building on her skin, her head thrown back; he was surprised when she took him inside, folding over him to search for kisses he eagerly gave, holding himself still only long enough for their tongues to simulate what their bodies wanted before he hitched her knees higher, took her ass in his hands and flexed into her, making them both groan. He did it again, again, pulling her close and fucking her from beneath.

  She came with her teeth in his shoulder and he let go, finding her lips to kiss them through the last of the tremors, holding her face in his hands and beginning to hate himself for wanting her again.

  With the exception of her, “More,” they’d not spoken in hours. He was reluctant to break that quiet, because everything he wanted to say was half-formed and muddled. He felt like the other man, the cheater, not quite fucked out of pity but compromised all the same.

  He’d wanted this without knowing it for too long to be given it and know what it meant. He’d hidden his desire in friendship and checked his lust till it became who he was with Sarina. A lie. With her clasped against him, breathing softened, almost asleep, it was easy to see why she’d rejected him. If he’d brought them to this before, they might’ve had a chance.

  Now he saw things as they might have been. Knew that every time she’d tucked under his arm, rested her head on his shoulder, held his hand or fallen asleep in his arms, stopped seeing other men, she’d been inviting him to take more, and now there was no possible way to get past the strain they’d put on their friendship. This was the drop-off point, the finished product, the last stop on a train to nowhere, because she’d tired of waiting for him, taken another exit, left him behind.

  Not that she was the moral authority in this. Tonight she’d come to him willingly and given herself completely. He was good enough to fuck, but not to marry; not, after everything, good enough to father her child, to be her family.

  There was the remorse, the anger, a dose of shame. It twisted in his gut.

  Now he understood. Now they were done. Not when he’d been momentarily distracted by Shush, not when Sarina had stopped telling him what mattered to her, not when she’d hired a hooker, or decided to have a baby alone, not when she’d chosen a donor from a catalogue, not when she’d stood in the street and told him his proposal wasn’t enough.

  Now, when she lay sated and soft in his arms after wrecking his peace forever. Now.

  He pulled out and eased from under her, sat on the edge of the bed, head spinning. She put her hand to his back, owning him with that movement. He could drop back beside her and sleep, wait a few more hours for the cement of separation to set.

  She held out her hand.

  He couldn’t stay. “You know I aced the company medical.”

  She nodded, dazed and sleepy. She would tell him about the insemination, make it that much easier to quit this. “Us, together, that was amazing.”

  Turns out whatever she said that wasn’t a proposal to stay for the rest of his life was enough to make him go.

  “Dev?”

  He didn’t have words fit for saying, didn’t have enough control of himself to dress without fumbling. In the kitchen he collected his keys and satchel and when he got to the door she was behind him in her scruffy toweling robe. Her hair was a nest of knots, her eyes were big and wide, her face pale, red kiss welts on her neck. He knew all that without turning.

  “We have to talk. I shouldn’t have—”

  He didn’t want to hear what she shouldn’t have done. The list was too long. Shouldn’t have been there for him to trip over. Shouldn’t have been an admired professional, or a best friend, or the person who made his life make most sense. Shouldn’t have tolerated his indecision, his utter faithlessness. Shouldn’t have let him kiss her, take her, wreck his life over her.

  “I’ll talk to Arik. I’ll broaden his role. It won’t be enough to keep him, but he’ll know we tried.”

  He didn’t wait for her response and he didn’t look at her again, not even when she asked what happened to Gita, because she was really asking what happened to him.

  When he got home, he was surprised to see Ana. “You’re back.” She sat curled on his couch, a pot of tea on the low table in front of her.

  “You’re late. You look trashed. Mom was cool, Dad was awful, wouldn’t look at me. They were fighting over me. It’s better if I’m not there.”

  “It is late,” he felt detached from his senses, “what are you doing awake?”

  She stretched her arm out and opened her hand. The three blood test envelopes. “Connor basically socialed me nonstop. I do love him. I don’t know if I love him in a forever ever after way, but I love him now and he loves me. I can’t wait any longer to know.”

  He sat beside her. “You wanted to do this when the four of you were together.”

  “And then I got hit on the head with a cricket ball, publically humiliated my parents, made them snarl at each other like tigers, worked out I really am in love with a man who’s probably not the father of my kid. That’s my life, how about you?”

  Asked my best friend to marry me, got rejected, watched my pregnant little sister collapse, learned my parents had an arranged marriage, smashed up my own car, going to lose my right-hand man at work, and had the best fucking sex of my life with a woman I’ve loved forever who’s pregnant to another man.

  “Open them, Ana.”

  She put her feet to the floor and squared her shoulders. She looked at the envelopes. “It doesn’t matter who the father is. I want this baby and I want Connor, and I have to believe it will all work out.” She put the envelopes on the table face down between them. “You do it.”

  He picked up the first one and turned it over. It had Alex’s name handwritten on it. “You’re sure.”

  “There are lots of things I’m not sure about, this doesn’t need to be one of them.”

  “When did you get to be so smart, baby sister?”

  “Sometime after uninhibited drug sex and before that cricket ball knocked me out.”

  He slipped his thumb under the seal and broke the envelope, a single sheet inside, computer printout he scanned. “It’s not Alex.”

  Ana buried her face in her knees. “Oh my God. Hurry.”

  “You know I only have to open one of these.” He flipped them both over. Gavin and Connor. “Which one do you want me to open?”

  She picked up Connor’s envelope. “We do one each at the same time.”

  He picked up Gavin’s. They broke the seals together, and then he stopped to watch her face and when her lips trembled he made a grab for her, his own heart already dragging around in his chest, bumped hard on his rib cage. “I got you. It’s going to be okay.”

  Ana sobbed in his arms and he rocked her gently, at a loss to know how to help her. He liked Gavin, he was idealistic and intelligent and he clearly cared for Ana. He was open and friendly, less volatile than Alex, easier to get to know than Connor.

  “Gavin is an attractive guy.”

  Ana pulled away, blinking at him with red eyes, a wet face and a surprised expression.

  “I don’t mean I’m attracted to him.”

  Which sounded defensive, but it was nearly 2 a.m., and he was flattened and he’d been thinking about Reid’s attractiveness scale in the decision matrix for Sarina’s donor. “Attractive people have it easier, that’s all. Gavin is well built and he has a symmetrical face. He has a lot of hair.” The hair comment was lame, but he really needed sleep.

  Ana still looked puzzled, but she sat away and wiped her face.

  “Gavin’s gene
s, yours, chances are the next Patel will be an attractive little rug rat.”

  Ana gave a half-laugh, half-snort. “That’s awful. Shallow much.”

  “With you on that.”

  She nodded, still collecting herself.

  “Want me to sit with you a while?”

  Another nod.

  He backed into the couch and made a place for Ana, who curled her legs up and nuzzled into his side. After a few minutes she said, “You reek of sex, who were you with?”

  He groaned and scrubbed at his face, grit under his eyes and sand in his throat.

  “Please tell me it wasn’t Shush.”

  “Not Shush.”

  She elbowed him.

  “Sarina.”

  She sat away, eyes wide. “Oh my God. What happened to her pregnancy thing?”

  What happened was she’d had an insemination and there was a twenty percent chance she was pregnant to a donor but she’d taken him into her bed and her body all the same.

  He held it together to say, “First time didn’t take,” and because this was Ana whose own life was sidelined, he said, “She’s waiting to see about the second time.”

  “You had sex with Sarina and she might be pregnant with a donor baby.”

  He tipped his head back on the couch and blinked at the ceiling. “I am never making a snide comment about you and chemical orgies again.” He rubbed his eyes. “Please don’t tell Rani.”

  She barreled back into his arms. “Oh, Dev, what a mess we are.”

  Mess didn’t near cover it.

  He put Ana to bed and lay in his own, listening to her sob. Tempted to do the same. It was the only useful response to having screwed up the most important relationship in his life. He couldn’t have gone deeper to lose more. And what he and Sarina had done tonight only scraped the surface of what they might have been. He rubbed a finger over the back of his other hand. Tiny semi-circular cuts from her nails, but the real scars were hidden, great slashing gouges he might bleed out from.

  He didn’t understand enough about fertility periods and didn’t know how to ask. If she didn’t already believe she was pregnant, would Sarina have let them have unprotected sex twice if there was any risk he might impregnate her? That’s something they should’ve talked about.

  When Ana finally sobbed herself into unconsciousness, Dev willed himself to sleep. In the morning, Ana would go meet Alex, Connor and Gavin and break her news, and he’d find a way to drag himself through the day without the memory of Sarina’s mouth at his ear, her breath filling him with promises her body granted, sensations and wonders he’d never be able to get enough of, and would never have again.

  First thing in the morning Ana would know if Connor really did love her despite the baby not being his and he’d tell Sarina he needed a time-out, because he finally understood the difference between loving her and being in love with her and it was too late to prove it.

  It never quite rolled that way. Arik was waiting for him, stalked him from the building entrance to his office. There could only be one reason.

  “Let’s get coffee,” Dev said, dumping his bag on his desk.

  “Could we make it lunch? Your fave, Jade Palace, my treat.”

  He sighed, but Arik was a bundle of jitters and since Dev was his problem anyway, well, that and Arik not earning twice his salary at Plus, lunch it was. He got dragged into resolving a couple of urgent issues, and it was almost lunchtime before he went looking for Sarina.

  She was in a training room, no spaghetti this time, intern orientation. He stood outside the room and watched her. She had her hair scrunched up at the back of her head, held with a pin through a wire butterfly. Her clothing was soft and flowing, and she wore an elaborate blue turquoise necklace. He scanned her arms for the matching cuff. He’d bought it for her after seeing the necklace, knowing it was a near match. Did it mean something she was wearing it today?

  That was the moment she turned her head and smiled. He saw her say his name and twenty industry hopefuls turned to wave at him. He executed a little bow and got a room full of smiles. He also got Sarina’s hand flattened on the glass. He put his own hand up to meet hers and for just a few seconds it was only the two of them; the woman he was in love with and the man who didn’t know how to express that in any other way than he’d been doing since he tripped over her, until last night when it all changed.

  And then he remembered the blue clinic logo and the date on the receipt and the way she’d rejected him, used him.

  Sarina turned away first, going back to her classroom, closing him out just as surely as she’d done with her decision to go it alone and inseminate again.

  Arik drove to Jade Palace and since Dev hated everything about the car he’d hired, that was a bonus. Gita was safely garaged until he contacted a specialist repairer to work on her. It was time to buy a more regular car, he’d need that for Ana and the baby. She’d sent a text, simply. “I’m okay.” But he’d see that for himself tonight.

  As Arik pulled into the lot, Dev said, “I should tell you Sarina spoke to me about you last night. I’m sorry I’ve been off my A-game lately.”

  Arik turned the ignition off. “I should never have said that to her. It was a cheap shot, Dev. We all have our off days. It’s just that I’m struggling with the decision. I don’t want to go, but the money is insane.”

  Dev opened the car door and Arik said, “About lunch. There’s something I should tell you.”

  “You forgot your wallet?”

  Arik grimaced. “I invited some people who want to meet you.”

  The people turned out to be Mark Minty and Donovan Lo. Mark was the chairman of a large venture cap fund, Dev had met him once before, and Donovan Lo was the CEO of the business that was raiding Plus, the one willing to double Arik’s salary.

  In a private, curtained-off room of the restaurant, the same one Dev had hosted Tavish’s birthday dinner in, Arik did the introductions and Dev tried not to seethe with annoyance. He didn’t like being shanghaied and he wasn’t in the mood for being wooed, but that was what was about to happen.

  “This was sneaky, but hey,” said Mark with a calculated shrug. “Wasn’t sure how else to get your attention and we have a proposition for you.”

  “If you’re talking about a job, I’m not on the market. In case you weren’t aware, I’m a founder of Plus.” It wasn’t a boast, the industry got excited about Reid and Owen, Sarina had her own fan club, but Dev was the least exciting of the four of them, possibly more famous outside the South Asian American community for Gita than anything else.

  “Oh we’re very aware, hence this lunch between friends,” Mark said. A lunch he’d pre-ordered and was being delivered in fragrant clouds of steam.

  Dev looked at Donovan Lo. Mid-twenties at a guess, another whizz-kid genius, not an acquaintance, let alone a friend.

  “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time, Dev,” Donovan said. “I’m an admirer, and without beating around the bush, I want you to come and work with us.”

  Dev tried to contain a flush of heat to his face, but failed. “I’m flattered, but why would I do that?”

  “Because you’ve been in the shadows cast by your partners for too long. Time to claim the spotlight.”

  Not what he’d expected to hear. “Does that mean you’re not going to double my salary and incentives?”

  “It means we understand what makes you tick, and while the money is important, of course it is, you get turned on by the work. But with Reid now heading innovation, you’re squeezed out again. We want you to come run innovation with us.”

  No one touched the food. He looked at Mark. They’d done their homework. “And who are you exactly?” Mark’s fund had investments in a lot of businesses. All of them profitable, all of them tech darlings.

  Donovan answered. “We’re Alternate Inc., we make brains, basically. Brains that other companies can buy to make things like self-drive cars and intelligent enquiry systems, sentient assembly lines, auto
matic pet-feeders, that kind of thing.”

  He had an image of how Reid would pepper this guy with questions until Donovan slipped under the table from the weight of them and how amusing that would be. But run his own AI lab, that was a discussion he owed it to himself to have.

  “We heard you made a robot recently out of Lego,” Donovan said.

  A waiter put Sarina’s favorite wontons in front of him. “That was a side project. A robot playing drums is a long way from a self-driving vehicle.”

  “But imagine what you could make, you and Arik and anyone else from your team you want to bring with you, if you could devote your time and energy to it. No more side projects, it would be your full-time work.”

  Mark cut in. “We know what your share of Plus is worth, Dev, and we’re prepared to pay, but we also understand what’s important to you and it’s not the money. You’d have complete freedom to use our core assets to develop any opportunity you saw fit.”

  Mark took out his tablet and wrote a figure on it, handed the tablet to Dev. “That’s the number we were thinking you’re worth.”

  There were a lot of zeroes, headed by a healthy double figure.

  “And you’d be a director of course, but you’d report to Donovan.”

  His own AI lab, money that outpaced what he earned from Plus. A chance to step up professionally. The only downside was reporting to a guy only a few years older than Ana who had the superior air of a person who suspected he was the smartest man in the room. At least with Reid, Dev had history. He knew where the skeletons were buried. And Reid was generally the smartest man in the room. Donovan Lo was an unknown.

  But still, it was genuinely head-swelling.

  He handed the tablet back to Mark. He was supposed to use it to write down another higher figure and they’d haggle back and forth until an agreement was made, before they brought their lawyers in to make it watertight.

  Mark frowned. Donovan shot his major investor nervous glances. They’d done their research, but they didn’t know his heart. Arik looked miserable. He’d stuck his neck out and Dev was about to chop it off.