Heart: BWWM Secret Baby Romance

by Kara Jones

  After making Richard a dinner of barbecued chicken and steamed broccoli, I sought out Gaston. He was in his office (he had his own, apparently) making lists of household items to be picked up.

  He didn't wave me in or even acknowledge my presence, so I crept in bashfully.

  "Gaston," I asked.

  He looked up. "What is it?"

  "This is going to sound really stupid..." And it was. How does one even phrase a question like that? "Is this house like... haunted?"

  Gaston furrowed his brow and turned his attention back to his writing. "I will not entertain your childish fantasies."

  Now, there were many things that I could put up with. Because of my sunny demeanor, people often mistook me for being stupid. I didn't even hate that. I found it easier to be treated as a fool than as the intellectual I knew that I was, as people's expectations were much lower; therefore, more easily surpassed. It just made it a bit easier to breathe, in general. But, I didn't like being talked down to so dismissively. It was just downright rude.

  "Gaston," I said, more sternly; I stood a little straighter too. "I heard noises last night. I just wanted to know what they were and if they were normal."

  The older man sighed and placed his pen down on the desk, rubbing his forehead in his hands.

  "I expect that your ‘normal’ is of a far different variety than my ‘normal’, and that neither of our ‘normals’ slot in with the status quo," he said. "At present, don't worry yourself with what you may or may not have heard. You're here to work, not to make fanciful suggestions of paranormal disturbances."

  If that was meant to be a helpful answer, then I would eat my own hat… if I had one. Still, I didn't push it any further. Anyone willing to be as cryptic as that was also not willing to put up with lines of questioning like the ones our conversation would surely descend into.

  In short, I decided to do as he said. Why worry about the poltergeist in the basement that may or may not have been normal house noises? I had cooking to do and ridiculous amounts of money to earn.

  I was nevertheless bitter with the old man, so I left his office without saying goodbye. Call me petty if you'd like.

  Richard

  Gaston told me that Mina had been asking about the noises from the basement. She thought it was a ghost. I laughed when I heard.

  Whatever she thought though, she didn't press any further nor did she try to get into the basement and have a look around for herself. I kept a close eye on her for her first week, but had no indication that she had the slightest interest in the sounds she heard on a near nightly basis.

  I was grateful for that.

  After the first week, she began to bring her meals into the dining room at the same time as mine. Though I barely spoke, she peppered me with little facts and tidbits about her life. She never went into much detail, but that was fine. I didn't particularly care to hear about every subtle evolution she had made over the years.

  Sometimes, she would just talk about what she'd read in the news, and weigh in on current events. I was more talkative during those times.

  I enjoyed her company, though outwardly, I'm sure it didn't appear so. When she was around, I felt much calmer. After her first week, I experienced a night where I was not brought to heel by my anger. I had a peaceful sleep that night — my first in years.

  In her second week, the cooking began to improve. At first, I thought she had accidentally not burned or undercooked something, but I walked past her one day with her laptop perched on her knee, watching cooking videos like a hawk. It made me smile.

  When she saw me looking, she had quickly slammed her laptop shut, spouting out, "I like to check out the competition." It was charming that she still thought that I thought she had no prior experience with cooking.

  On the third week, I went into the living room to relax a bit after reviewing the latest press release from my company; well, my former company. I had been forced to cede power to the board of directors a few months before, and technically, now I was only a figurehead. It was humiliating.

  I took a lot of relaxation breaks.

  Tented on one side of the couch was a little blue notebook. I'd seen her writing in it several times and had always been curious what secrets she hid within its cover. I was a polite gentleman though, so I hesitated to pick it up. Nevertheless, I was also a bit of an asshole.

  The pages were silky against my fingers. It was a beautiful book with a leather cover and clear, white pages. She clearly valued it.

  Inside was the beginnings of what I thought was a story. Other pages had scribbling of plot ideas and character features. There were some rough sketches of places and people, and occasionally, she would write a few lines that had clearly been stuck in her head. It was nothing short of impressive. I'd had no idea that that kind of creative mind had been lurking beneath what was clearly a facade of sunshine and grace. Some of the pieces she had written were quite sad, others were less so.

  One thing I knew for certain, Mina was clearly an excellent writer.

  I asked her about it at dinner. "You've never mentioned that you're a writer."

  She nearly spat out her ravioli. That would have been a shame, too because they were delicious and, I suspected, handmade.

  "How did you know that?" she asked.

  "I found your notebook in the living room," I supplied.

  She frowned at me. "You mean you were snooping."

  "Whatever term you'd prefer," I said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  I watched as her expression took a pained turn. "My mom's a writer," she said. "Any time people hear that I like to write too, they instantly compare me to her. I hate it."

  I forked another piece of pasta into my mouth. A little bit less salt would have been preferable, but she had certainly expanded her skill-set. "I don't know who your mother is," I said.

  She grimaced. "You more or less do."

  It struck me. "The woman you said you were a personal chef for," I said slowly. "Was your mother?"

  She shrugged. "Her cooking wasn't very good," she explained. "That left me in charge of meals sometimes."

  I gave her a flat look. "Your cooking isn't very good."

  Mina turned bright red. I wasn't sure why. Surely, she had known that I wasn't fooled. Nevertheless, I found it to be quite a good look for her; nervous, flushed, biting her plump lower lip. I pictured that that was what she might look like if I were to seduce her. I smiled in response to that thought.

  "I really needed the job," she explained meekly. She looked down at her plate.

  I forked another bite of ravioli into my mouth. "You're full of surprises, Mina," I said. "But, finding out that you lied on your application is not one of them."

  She began to laugh then. At first, it was a nervous chuckle, but it swelled in volume until she was giggling uncontrollably.

  "This whole time," she said, "I thought that maybe you didn't have taste buds or something. I didn't understand why you kept me on."

  It wasn't my style to give unnecessary compliments, but I felt the urge to assure this girl of her place in my home. If she felt unwanted, she might leave, and I'd had three good nights of sleep in a row this week.

  "Enthusiasm was the primary factor," I suggested. "And, for the most part, you make satisfactory company."

  Those made her rollick with laughter again.

  "Can I put that on my resume in the future, Mr. Turner?" she asked between breaths; "Enthusiastic and satisfactory company?"

  Mina

  I'd settled into a real routine at Richard's house. Now that I had figured out the basics of cooking, I'd really begun to enjoy it too. He didn't exactly warm up, but he was less curt with me when we talked.

  I felt a lot better, as well, after learning that he knew about my failed cooking pedigree. It was a weight off of my shoulders.

  Somehow, as the days grew shorter, we became closer. He would never admit it, but he found reasons to be around me sometimes. He'd come and watch me cook, saying that h
e wanted to make sure I was performing the act myself and hadn't outsourced my duties. He would spend time in the living room as I wrote, saying that he found the sound of the keystrokes relaxing. He'd also use that as a reason to chastise me if I stopped.

  I think he was, in his own way, encouraging me to write. He'd never explicitly said that he liked what I wrote, but he told me that he thought it was stupid that I didn't write because of my mother, and was always available to read over a scene for me and give feedback. My first novel began to take shape. When I combined that with my newfound love of cooking, I actually felt like I had a purpose. For the first time in my life, I felt fulfilled.

  I was getting a lot of good sleep, too.

  Casper was around a lot when I first got there, but I heard less and less of him over time. On those odd occasions when I did hear bangs in the middle of the night, I'd usually mutter something like, "Go to sleep, Casper," and roll over in bed.

  It wasn't a bad life.

  There was only one teensy-weensy little problem; just a slight one.

  I think I fell in love with my boss.

  I couldn't help it. He was emotionally unavailable, occasionally rude (as my cooking skill grew, so did his criticisms), and gave no indication that he saw me as anything other than his personal chef and occasional entertainment. He was both skilled and determined at avoiding personal questions, so all I knew was that he used to be the head of an investment firm and now he wasn’t.

  Still, in those moments when he’d sit close to me on the couch and listen to me type or when he’d compliment something I’d made or even just when I caught his eye from across the room and he smiled at me, I had hope... stupid, idiotic, childish hope.

  A man like Richard Turner — smart, handsome, wealthy, and successful — would never fall for a girl like me. Don't think I lacked in self-esteem. No, I was just a realist. I knew I was pretty, and I knew that I could be rather charming, and I'd stolen a few hearts in my day, but he seemed so otherworldly, and the thought of him ever loving me back? Way too good to be true. It was exactly the kind of thing I might write about.

  In other words, it would never happen.

  *****

  Casper hadn't made an appearance in over a week. Well, I supposed he never really made an appearance in the traditional sense, did he? Anyway, he hadn't made his presence known in over a week. We had probably been nearing the two-week threshold.

  That's why it surprised me so much that one night, around one A.M., I heard him while I was getting a glass of water downstairs. He was being much quieter than usual, and it almost sounded like he was on the same floor as me.

  That was new. And, while I'd been happy to let Richard have his secrets while Casper was below my feet, my curiosity got the best of me. Casper, on the main floor? That was something I couldn't miss.

  I crept along the hallway toward the dull thumping noises, not wanting to scare him. I felt a small sense of glee, thinking about how I would sneak up on my friendly ghost and finally see him up close…. or her... or it.

  I hadn't talked to anyone outside of the mansion for a long time. Admittedly, I had probably gone a little crazy. Why else would I be creeping along a corridor toward what should have been alarming noises in the middle of the night, wearing a smile the size of Texas?

  The thumping had stopped, but I was nearly at its source. Apparently, Casper was in the living room. I turned the corner quietly, wondering whether I should say hello or just wave when I stopped dead in my tracks.

  It wasn't Casper.

  Well, since I didn't know what Casper looked like, I couldn't say for certain that it wasn't, but if I'd had to place a wager on the identity of the man pointing a gun at me from the living room, I'd probably say he was an intruder of some sort. From the duffel bags at his feet, I would have also surmised that he was a burglar.

  "Don't make a sound," he hissed.

  His face was covered by a black ski mask; very cliché. Still, I was terrified… too terrified to move… too terrified to make a peep.

  He stalked toward me, and my feet longed to propel me back, but they didn't. I felt like an idiot... like I lost all sense of everything when faced with danger. And only a moment ago, I'd been walking toward what I thought was a ghost, and actually excited.

  I was a fool.

  The burglar touched the cool barrel of the gun to my forehead. "Open the safe."

  I looked over and saw that he'd moved one of the paintings on the wall to reveal a hidden safe; also, very cliché… still, too terrified to move.

  "I — I," I stammered. "I don't know how."

  He pushed the gun in harder. "Do you know what a silencer is?" he snarled.

  I managed to nod my head. My heart pounded in my chest, and I could feel bile beginning to rise up my throat.

  "Good. If you don't tell me how to get into the safe, I'm going to use this gun to blow your brains out. Nobody will hear, and you'll die alone."

  That was overkill. If I was going to die, whether anybody heard it or not was really arbitrary.

  Still, I didn't know. I told him that, and he instructed me to lie on the floor. I didn't like the sound of that one bit.

  "Why?" I asked shakily.

  "So I don't have to catch your body when it falls."

  I knew better than to just do as he asked. If he was going to kill me anyway, then I might as well try to protect myself, right? This was something I tried to tell to my limbs. I screamed it internally. I painted it on the insides of my eyelids.

  I lie down on the floor.

  I hated myself for it; I really did. I felt useless. But, my fear-laden body wouldn't cooperate with my brain. I think I must have been in shock.

  The burglar lined up the end of his gun with my forehead. I saw that indeed, there was a silencer attached to the end of it. At least he had come prepared.

  A great roar ripped through the living room. At first, I thought the burglar had pulled the trigger, and that maybe I was just hearing the bullet going through my brain, but it turned out that he'd never had the chance.

  A great, black blur slammed into my attacker from the side, knocking him clear out of my view. I sat up quickly, my limbs suddenly free to move of their own volition. Something more interesting than my forthcoming demise had appeared and it knocked all the fear straight out of my head.

  The black blur that had tackled the burglar was bellowing as it squeezed the vile man in its gigantic hands. Hands? I narrowed my eyes to try to see my hands clearly.

  If I wasn't mistaken, the thing that had just saved my life was a giant gorilla. Maybe it was a normal sized gorilla. I'd never seen a gorilla in my life, so I wasn't really sure what sizes they came in — but this thing was massive. It stood at least six feet tall. It even hunched over as it was crushing the life out of the burglar.

  “Casper?” I asked breathlessly.

  The beast did not turn my way.

  The man might have tried to scream, but there was no air in his lungs to do so; I knew that much just by looking at him. Eventhough he'd been about to kill me, I turned away, not wanting to see the life leave his eyes.

  A low snuffling and a dull thump caused me to turn back and look. The body of the burglar was nowhere in sight, which caused me to believe that it was most likely shoved behind the couch. The gorilla stood staring at me with deep, soulful eyes; almost human eyes.

  “Hey Casper,” I said gently.

  What else could have been making the sounds I’d heard in the basement? A giant gorilla certainly fit the bill.

  He barred his teeth at me, long and sharp. It might have been a sign of aggression, but it looked more like a smile.

  In an instant, he began to shrink away. Fur sank back into his skin, which in turn began to lighten. His limbs pulled in closer to his body, and his face slowly flattened. It was like the gorilla was being retracted into the skin of its human host. I could see that there was a human forming because his torso was the first to normalize; and what a torso. A broad, tanne
d, muscular chest stole my attention for the rest of the transformation. By the time I thought to look up at his face, he was fully human again.

  And… fully my boss.

  Richard

  She didn’t move. The look on her face was one of both shock and awe, but thankfully, devoid of fear. I don’t know what I would have done if she had run from me then.

  I walked toward her, ignoring the voice in my head that told me she would never accept me for who I was. It was my grandfather’s voice and I knew it was wrong. Mina would be the last person to turn from me.

  Still, as I stood before her, I felt a lingering sense of shame. She had seen me now, as so few people ever had. She saw the secret behind the man, the beast behind the suit. She might not turn from me, but what might she think of me now?

  “Thank you,” she said, making steady eye contact. She was obviously trying to avoid looking at my naked body, though I could tell she wanted to.

  “Did he hurt you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I just got here.”

  An uncomfortable silence hung between us. I could tell she wanted to ask questions, but she knew how normally unresponsive I was to them.

  I decided to give her a little peace. “It’s a recessive gene,” I explained. “It’s hard to control sometimes.”

  “Was one of your parents, also…?” she asked. She was searching for words in her head. She didn’t know how to least offend me.

  “They died when I was young,” I said. “I first shifted at puberty. Afterward, I sought out my grandparents to get answers. Luckily, my grandfather was still alive and was able to explain what was happening to me.”

  She nodded her head in understanding. “Okay,” she said. “Cool.” She cocked her head to the side. “So, the noises from the basement?”

  I grimaced. “It’s been harder to control over the years. On nights when I feel the change coming on, I get Gaston to chain me up down there.”

  Her expression grew very sad. “I’m so sorry, Richard,” she said.

  It was the first time she had called me anything other than Mr. Turner, and it threw me. Her concern, coupled with her apparent lack of fear, was not one of the reactions I had prepared for when I’d imagined what would happen if she found out.