by Kelly, Hazel
B A B Y D A D D Y
W A N T E D
A NOT SO ACCIDENTAL PREGNANCY ROMANCE
Hazel Kelly
© 2020 Hazel Kelly
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, copied, or stored in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, events, brands, companies, and locations in this story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, organizations, and settings is purely coincidental.
Edited by Aquila Editing
Cover Artwork – © 2019 L.J. Anderson of Mayhem Cover Creations
TABLE OF CONTENTS
P R O L O G U E
O N E
T W O
T H R E E
F O U R
F I V E
S I X
S E V E N
E I G H T
N I N E
T E N
E L E V E N
T W E L V E
T H I R T E E N
F O U R T E E N
F I F T E E N
S I X T E E N
S E V E N T E E N
E I G H T E E N
N I N E T E E N
T W E N T Y
T W E N T Y O N E
T W E N T Y T W O
T W E N T Y T H R E E
T W E N T Y F O U R
T W E N T Y F I V E
T W E N T Y S I X
T W E N T Y S E V E N
T W E N T Y E I G H T
T W E N T Y N I N E
T H I R T Y
T H I R T Y O N E
T H I R T Y T W O
T H I R T Y T H R E E
T H I R T Y F O U R
T H I R T Y F I V E
T H I R T Y S I X
T H I R T Y S E V E N
T H I R T Y E I G H T
T H I R T Y N I N E
F O R T Y
F O R T Y O N E
F O R T Y T W O
F O R T Y T H R E E
F O R T Y F O U R
F O R T Y F I V E
F O R T Y S I X
F O R T Y S E V E N
F O R T Y E I G H T
F O R T Y N I N E
F I F T Y
F I F T Y O N E
F I F T Y T W O
E P I L O G U E
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
O T H E R S E R I E S
B Y H A Z E L K E L L Y
P R O L O G U E
I’ve always been an independent woman.
Never saw much appeal in the alternative.
Maybe it’s because I’m the oldest. Maybe it’s my genetic temperament. Or maybe the fact that my dad’s a complete dipshit had something to do with it.
Whatever the catalyst, I was determined to be a success in my own right from a young age.
Meanwhile, by my mid-twenties, all my female friends were looking for men they could place their trust in. Hitch their dreams to. Some of them got lucky. Those who didn’t got desperate.
But while they divided their time between playing the field and man-bashing girls’ nights, I busied myself with other matters. Like working my way up the corporate ladder, saving for a place of my own, and putting myself in a position where I’d never have to rely on anyone else.
Because when you rely too much on another person, one of two things is bound to happen. Either you get taken advantage of or that person tires of you.
And then you end up like my mother, buried under a mountain of debt that doesn’t even belong to you while your ex-husband shops for timeshares in Florida with his tart of a second wife, whose genius lies in the fact that she knows better than to ever trust him as much as you did.
The only silver lining was that we weren’t babies when he walked out. I wasn’t anyway. And when you spend your teenage years scraping melted cheese off diner tables to help your mom pay off your dad’s gambling debt, you can’t help but question whether a smooth-talking man is really the answer to your prayers.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bitter. Just practical.
Because if life has taught me anything, it’s that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
It’s not always easy, but whiners can never be winners, and only winners can ever be happy. That’s what I believe, anyway.
So when I get stuck, I don’t look around for someone who can help me. I look inwards. I dig deep. I Google it. And with every challenge I overcome, I fortify myself. With every new skill I collect, I become less vulnerable.
And that’s the real goal because I’ve seen firsthand what vulnerability does to people.
I’ve seen how it makes them feeble, how it makes them stupid. How it makes them love people they shouldn’t. And I don’t want anything to do with that.
I like feeling strong, feeling capable. Feeling in control.
But sometimes, in my private moments, I worry I’m deluding myself.
I worry I’ve made all the wrong choices and focused on all the wrong things. Because even though my mind hates feeling weak, I wonder if my knees might like it from time to time.
It’s too late for me, though.
After all, I’m far too sensible to believe in fairytales, especially the sort where an eligible bachelor who’s dying to start a family yesterday falls for a woman in her thirties whose obsession with Joni Mitchell and Mr. Clean borders on the absurd.
Besides, my heart is already crowded with the love I have for my high standards, standards I could never expect a hot-blooded male to meet.
O N E
- Maeve -
Christmas parties weren’t really my thing.
Not because I have anything against Christmas. I’m not a miserable grinch. It’s parties I find insufferable.
Maybe that’s because letting my hair down doesn’t come naturally to me. Then again, neither does getting shitfaced in front of the only people whose opinions of me actually count for something. And don't even get me started on the joys of small talk, of which there are none as far as I can tell.
How is it that we’ve created a society where no one is allowed to talk about the two most urgent and impactful issues in our collective lives: politics and religion.
God forbid anyone learns something over dinner besides how much your last vet bill was and how many steps you’ve taken this week. I honestly can’t bear it.
And as everyone knows, Christmas work parties are the most evil of all because every guest is torn between getting drunk enough to feel like they’re somewhere else and staying sober enough that they don’t do anything to make their attendance at the event in any way memorable.
It’s a charade, really. A joke. Except the punchline is painfully predictable and always involves someone low on the totem pole trying to climb someone significantly higher on it.
Naïvely, I hoped this year wouldn’t be so bad.
I should’ve known better.
I should’ve known that something terrible would happen if I dated a colleague. Hell, I did know. I just looked the other way because Kurt and I were so perfect for each other on paper.
He had inoffensive hobbies that I was interested to learn about, but not so interested I posed a competitive threat. Like chess and golf and World War II trivia. He was also from a family that seemed significantly less broken than mine, though my siblings and I turned out pretty well considering we were all fifty-percent dipshit.
Best of all, he wanted a family of his own, and we were on equal footing career wise. Well, we were until two months ago when I g
ot promoted to a position we were both gunning for, but he’d handled it admirably. He even had enough pride that he hadn’t inquired about how big my pay rise was.
All good signs.
And we’d made it a whole year. Granted, the first six months we were on and off as we tried to find our feet, like a cloud trying to form. But we had to be extra careful since we worked together. Still, I think I only had to use the word “discretion” twice: once when he made eyes at me during a meeting and once when he let his hand graze my ass in the Starbucks in our building.
Otherwise, he’d been a complete gentleman, and as hard as I tried to find them, he didn’t seem to have any obvious faults. Flaws, sure, but it’s not like I was perfect. I had days where I couldn’t find the strength to load the dishwasher or ran out of time to meal plan and had baked veggie strips for dinner.
The important thing was that he hadn’t exhibited any obvious dealbreakers, and as a result, I was starting to think maybe I could love him… In that arranged sort of way where rational people with mutually compatible long-term goals will themselves to over time.
But as I watched him flirt with the brunette caterer who barely looked old enough to attend senior prom, much less audition for the role of punchline at my consulting company’s holiday bash, my stomach sank.
I took a deep breath, reminding myself it had been a year. No way I was going to write off our relationship because of a tiny flirtation. Hell, maybe she started it, and he was only being polite. Or maybe he knew her from somewhere else. Yes, surely. That was the only way to explain the light in his eyes and the width of his smile.
The girl glanced down at the floor, her pink cheeks popping brightly against her white and black uniform.
Look away, Maeve. Look away and forget about this.
I wandered over to the nearest bar and asked for a Sprite.
“It’s open bar,” the tattooed bartender reminded me, the dark ink peeking out from under his crisp collar suggesting he’d probably rather be elsewhere, too.
“I know,” I said, offering him one of the last polite smiles from my quota. But Sprite was fine. Everyone would assume it was alcohol, anyway. Which was to say everyone would assume they were the kind of people I’d like to have a drink with. Except they weren’t. I never mixed business and pleasure.
Until Kurt.
He was talking to some of the IT guys now, who stood out for their facial hair and how uncomfortable they looked in suits. Then he turned and caught me looking at him, smiled, and excused himself.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, his green eyes smiling behind his black hipster-esque frames.
“More than I do at the dentist, but less than I do at home in my pajamas.”
“Your pajamas have nothing on that dress,” he said, his eyes falling down the red gown I found on Rent-the-Runway.
“Not even the unicorn print ones? I thought they were your favorite.”
His eyes narrowed. “I said they were out of this world. Not that they were my favorite.”
“You were talking to David for a while.” I scanned the room until I found our boss, who was waving a short tumbler in the air as he held court, his bird-sized wife looking on obediently.
He shrugged. “Just checking him off the list. Think I’ve almost managed to speak to everyone.”
"You want to head soon then?”
“Are you that miserable?”
“I’m not miserable,” I said, feeling defensive. “I’m just…I don’t know. Don’t you feel like you already spend every waking moment with these people?”
“I suppose.”
I could sense his disappointment that I wasn’t enjoying myself more and wished I had even an ounce of my brother’s talent for turning everyone I met into my new best friend. Unfortunately, I couldn’t let my guard down with people like that, especially people whose respect I needed to do my job. And now that I’d been promoted to senior manager, I was more stressed than ever. “I’m just tired,” I said, hoping Kurt wouldn’t hate me for being a party pooper. “Think I might head.”
“Really?” His dark brows furrowed before he checked his watch, his surprised reaction revealing it was later than he thought.
“You can stay,” I said, glancing past him at our increasingly glassy-eyed coworkers.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
My face fell with my shock. “Oh. Okay.” I tried to muster a soft smile, told myself I’d no right to be disappointed. There were still lots of people milling about, and it’s not like we’d talked about spending the night together, though Saturdays were usually the one night we weren’t too tired to—
“Come on,” he said, his hand finding my lower back and pointing me towards the door. “I’ll come with you to get your coat.”
“My hero,” I mumbled.
He pulled his hand away. “What?”
“I said don’t bother. Stay and enjoy yourself. I prefer an Irish exit anyway.”
His eyes searched mine. “You sure?”
Come home with me, I thought. Pick me. “Of course.”
“Text me when you get in?”
"Sure,” I said, forcing a smile for the one person I shouldn’t have to.
He gave my hand a squeeze and then backed away slowly, his soft eyes smiling like he didn’t see anything wrong with sending me home on my own.
But by the time I got in the cab, I was relieved. Because I knew how to be alone. Unfortunately, I was starting to suspect that was all I’d ever be with Kurt. Worse, I was starting to feel like that wasn’t enough, starting to feel like I wanted more.
Except I didn’t know what to do about it. And as I stared out the window at the twinkling lights decorating the tree-lined sidewalks, it was like the weight of all the saddest Christmas songs came down on my heart at once. And soon silent tears were dripping over my rosy cheeks.
It was stupid, really. I didn’t even know why I was crying.
All I knew was that I couldn’t stop.
T W O
- Finn -
I was mid crunch when I heard my brother’s voice on TV, and I lifted my eyes to the screen in time to see Max take his seat across from the female host of the show.
“Great to see you, Max,” she said, her warm smile reaching her eyes.
My brother relaxed into his chair, the ripped knees of his jeans striking me as a little too perfect, as if he bought them that way. He looked good otherwise, though. Healthy. And he gave off the impression that he enjoyed when people noticed.
“So, your new album,” she said, pulling it out of nowhere.
I cringed at the cover, which was a close shot of his face half covered by shadow, his blue eyes looking straight at the viewer and popping against the black background.
I resumed my workout.
“When does it come out?” the freshly powdered hostess asked.
“Next month.”
I scoffed. If he had any confidence in it, he should’ve released it before Christmas. Dumbass. I wondered if he was still with the same useless agent or if he’d swapped again. The latter might explain the mixed messaging, since he was in a cowboy hat on the front of his last record. I felt bad seeing him so lost musically, but based on his continued success, I was obviously alone in that opinion.
“And your tour starts the month after?”
He nodded and draped a hand over the back of his cushioned chair, showcasing a collection of leather bracelets he was too old to pull off. “That’s right. We’re kicking things off here in L.A. and we’ll finish up in New York next summer.”
“Sounds like you’re looking forward to it.”
“Of course,” he said. “Studio time is great and everything, but there’s nothing better than connecting with the fans.”
“Bullshit,” I mumbled. Truth was that touring was the only way musicians could make money these days thanks to music streaming sites.
“You just added a few extra dates as well
,” Blondie said, glancing at the card in her lap. “Three more in Florida and two more in Vegas.”
“And Chicago,” he said, looking at the camera. “I’m playing Chicago in April. The fifteenth through the seventeenth at the Allstate Arena.”
Otis lifted his head to bark at the screen before laying his scruffy chin back down on the cushions.
“He’s not coming to see you,” I said. “The guy gives you one piece of jerky six years ago and your loyalty’s still confused?”
Otis whimpered like I’d rained on his parade.
I ignored him and crawled to the front of my workout mat to do one last set of pushups. Not that I’d ever be caught dead in a shirt as tight as the one Max was wearing.
“You’re going to hate me for asking this,” the hostess said tentatively.
“I could never hate you, Sarah.”
“Suck up,” I said, lowering my chest to the floor before straightening my arms again.
“Inquiring minds are dying to know if your brother will be joining you on any of your tour dates.”
I dropped a knee and looked up at the screen, ignoring the sweat that poured from my temples.
Max’s brows drew close. “You didn’t strike me as the type to throw fuel on rumors.”
“What can I say?” she asked with a shrug. “The idea of a reunion is just too delicious.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘ridiculous,’” he said. “It’s a long time since my brother and I shared a stage.”
I watched him shift in his seat, looking uncomfortable for the first time since the interview started.
“So things are still rocky between the two of you?”
“Not at all,” he lied. “We’re great. He’s just busy with his own stuff.”
“Like what?” she asked. “I’m sure our viewers would love to know what he’s up to.”
My brother’s jaw clenched. “Last I heard he was training to climb Everest.”
Motherfucker.
“Think he’s going to run a few marathons first, get back in shape, and then go for it.”