by Amanda Faye
HIS
Forbidden Fruit Series, #3
Amanda Faye
Copyright@ 2020 Amanda Faye
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover Design by: Megan Parker-Squiers @ EmCat Designs
Editing by: S. Murra
Printed in the United States of America
I’d like to dedicate this book, to ‘She Used to Be Mine,’ written by Sara Bareilles, as sung by Jeremy Jordan. She Used to Be Mine
If you haven’t heard the song before, or haven’t heard this version, I beg you to take four minutes out of your life and listen to it now. Then, you’ll spend another four, listening to it again.
I know it’s strange to dedicate a book to a song.
I know.
Once you watch it though, you’ll understand.
To Thomas, Sade, Sabrina, Kathy, Amber. Thank you all. Without you, this wouldn’t be possible.
Chapter One
Suzanna
"I am. I'm the father. The baby's mine."
Silence. Blessed peace follows the unexpected statement from my brother's best friend. The earth herself pauses in her rotation while my collective family holds their breath, waiting for the information to process.
Then pandemonium breaks loose.
I should be involved in the arguments taking place. After all, it's the paternity of my unborn child they're discussing. I can't, though. I'm too busy rewinding the last four months of my life to see if I've possibly slept with Matthew and not realized it.
No. I don't think I did.
I observe the room, doing as I've done since I was a child. Taking in the madness from the safety of the outside.
My brother, Alex, who knows damn well, this child is not Matt's, wears a calculating expression on his face. His eyes quickly flicker between Matthew and me, formulating and discarding plans of attack in rapid succession. Alex is a politician, born and bred. It's what he's been trained to do since birth. Analyze a situation and find the best possible outcome.
My younger brother Tyler is with his wife in the corner, conversing in rapid but quiet tones. I can't understand what they're saying, but the tone is clear enough. As Alex's campaign manager for the House of Representatives, it'll be his job to sell this to the public. This, as in my ill-begotten pregnancy.
Matt is nose to nose with my father. I try to focus on what they're saying, but words have become fuzzy in my ears. I pull a trick of serenity from the lockbox in my head. I close my eyes, picturing a big blue space of nothingness. It's not just blue. Shades are ranging from the deepest night to the brightest sunrise. I count backward from ten, allowing the numbers to fill the space in my mind. Willing my body to calmness. I make it to three before the numbers shatter. Cracks in my psyche are breaking it into pieces.
A wave of nausea flows over me, and I reach behind me, feeling for the chair I know is there. When I'm sure of my placement, I let my knees go weak, and limply slide into the seat.
My hands rest on my knees while my head dangles over my legs. I let the oxygen saturate my blood cells, inhaling through my nose, and exhaling through my mouth. This, too, shall pass. Difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations. A hundred different platitudes drift in and out of my brain, each of them less helpful than the last.
How did I get into this situation?
I know the mechanics. Girl meets boy. Girl kisses boy. Girl, lets boy ride bareback because she's on the pill, forgetting that she finished a round of antibiotics a week before, and her birth control probably isn't working yet. The girl tries to call the boy only to find out he gave her a fake number.
It's an all too familiar story. Frankly, half of my social worker cases started a similar way.
What I'm trying to figure out is how did I get here? What steps took me to the place where my secret crush, my unrequited desire, the boy I've been clandestinely in love with since the third grade is currently telling anyone who will listen that I am carrying his child?
You may wonder why this sort of announcement is causing such a ruckus. It's the twenty-first century, after all. Women have babies out of wedlock more than they have them in it.
Well, that may be true. But not in my family. I'm Suzanna Belle. Yes, that Suzanna Belle. The second child and only daughter of The Blueridge Belles. Our obscure corner of the mountains has produced two presidents, three senators, a vice president, and too many random political offices to count.
If you're not a politician, then you're a politician's wife. Or campaign manager. Or maybe you run a non-profit that your closest politician uses as camera bait. Still, the point stands.
All except for me. Instead of going into an approved profession designed to help my brother, I shamed the family legacy by becoming a social worker.
Isn't social work a public service you ask? Why, yes, it is. Thank you. But, it's not one easily used to gain voter turnout. I can't have a camera following me at work waiting for the perfect photo op.
My mother's voice floats into my ears, and when I hear her huff, "This is just like the Palins all over again,"
I almost eke out a laugh.
Almost.
Only my mother would equate me, a college-educated independent woman, with the likeness of an unmarried teenager.
I can feel motion beside me and open my eyes to see the feet of my brother. I don't flinch away when I feel his hand land lightly on my back. I'm okay with physical affection, but not when I'm having a moment, as my family calls it. Funny, how I only seem to have these moments when I'm around them. When I lean into his touch, he starts to rub firm circles into my spine, easing some of the tension building there.
"You don't have any control over what she does, David."
I peek up from my hiding spot when I hear Matthew lash out at my father. Matthew moved to our town when he was ten years old. He and my brother have been fast friends ever since. I spend as little time with my family as possible, whereas Matthew still comes to dinner once a week. He's more of a part of the family than I am.
That's one of the reasons Alex and I waited to announce my pregnancy during our annual fourth of July in the Hamptons. Because we knew Matthew would be here. He comes with us every summer.
That, and we hoped that with a non-family member present, our parents’ reactions might be tempered—at least a little bit. We were wrong.
Still, though, that doesn't explain why Matthew decided to declare he was the father. I understand that he was trying to lessen the pressure on me. I even appreciate the gesture. But he's got to know that as soon as they realize it's not his, and of course, they are going to, it'll just be that much worse. Then, not only will I have disgraced myself by getting pregnant, but I'll have pulled Matthew into my shame by lying for me.
I zone back out, letting my thoughts wander where they will. It's odd, seeing Matthew so worked up. He's a pediatrician. He has two modes: happy and adorable. Not this raging hulk of a man I see before me. Nobody talks to Daddy like that.
No one.
My father is a Marine and a two-time vice president. The third youngest vice ever elected. Yet, I've never seen him this worked up. If I thought it was because he cared about me, I might feel gratification to see such a fire lit underneath him in my defense.
Another flood of sickness crashes into me, and I must make some move, some sound of distress. Suddenly Alex drops to his heels next to me, pushing my hair out of my face.
"Matt," he
barks, and the air pressure changes immediately. Matthew's like a hurricane. The eye of the storm. He's striding towards me, shoving my father out of his way.
Matt lowers to one knee in front of me, taking my head into both of his hands. It's the closest we've been since my senior prom. Maybe the closest we've ever been. His face is mere inches from mine.
I feel weak at his touch. Palpitations burst through my chest, and I try to convince myself it's from the morning sickness. At seven o'clock at night. In the second trimester.
"Susie Q?" Matt questions breathlessly, and another piece of my wall crumbles around me. He's the only person who's ever called me that. My parents thought nicknames were below our class, whatever that means.
But always, always, I've been his Susie Q.
Without taking his thumb off my cheek, he pushes two fingers into my neck's pulse point. His head moves imperceptibly as if he's listening for something the rest of us can't hear. Satisfied with whatever he's heard, he whispers, "What's wrong princess, tell me what hurts?"
I'm sure he says that to all the girls. Literally. Every girl in our county, under the age of thirteen, has probably had those exact words whispered in her ear. I can't stop the shudder that runs through me at his tone, though.
Deep, possessive. Almost sensual.
I make the mistake of looking him in the eye. Blue, but like the abyss in my mind, they flex and blur, depending on his mood. His mind must be twisted as my own because his eyes can't seem to settle on a color. There's a storm of emotion billowing behind them.
At this distance, I notice things I only get to glance at in passing—the way his three-day-old stubble covers his chin but naturally fades away from his lips. The widow's peak, bleeding into an otherwise full head of light brown hair. The piercings in his ear that I know he won't let close. Even though it's uncouth for a pediatrician to wear earrings—his words, not mine.
He's the classic, clean-cut All American Boy, with a body that's all man.
I feel more than I see a crowd form around us and break eye contact with Matthew to look over his shoulder. Everyone has formed a half-circle around me, and the two men kneeling at my feet. My father and mother. Alex's wife, Julie, who happens to be my favorite person on the planet. Tyler and his wife, Michelle. Uncle Charlie and his partner Tom. Tom gives me an encouraging wink. His arrival to the family rivaled even this hoopla.
My heart kicks up again, the pressure of this many people crowding around me elevating my tension levels. My stomach heaves, and I close my eyes, counting in my breaths as I go.
A vast blue blankness. Tranquility washes over me. The numbers hover in my mind. Ten, nine, eight—
"So, son, before I call your parents, tell me; are you going to do the right thing here and marry my daughter?"
My father's drawl is sharp, a sure indicator of his distress. Matthew doesn't even hesitate.
"Yes, sir, if she'll have me."
Before I have a chance to react, my stomach lurches for a final time, and I'm bending over the side of the chair, vomiting spectacularly into my mother's potted chestnut tree.
Chapter Two
Matthew
One hour before
"Thanks for coming, man."
I pull my head away from my phone and smile when Alex hands me the tumbler of scotch. This is supposed to be a typical family dinner, albeit in the Hamptons, but my internal combustion pressure has been rising since about noon yesterday. In other words, since we boarded the private jet in Georgia.
"Of course. I come every summer."
His look says that's not what he meant, but he doesn't say anything else.
We clink our glasses together and watch as various relatives flitter in and out of the space. The Belle summer home is large and airy, a monument to American architecture, built back in the 1890s. We're in the parlor or reading room, or whatever space you call where you hang out when you're waiting to go in to dinner. Because that's the type of family they are. They still go in to dinner. It's not that bad if you've grown up with it.
Which, for all intents and purposes, I have.
My parents left the hustle and bustle of New York before I was a teenager, to let my siblings and me grow up in a more grounded reality. You can't get much more down to earth than the backwoods of the Georgia mountains.
Not that the Belle clan is a shining example of reality. Not at all. If they had a firmer grip of what it meant to be a modern family, Alex and Susie wouldn't have had to call a town hall with reinforcements to announce that she's pregnant.
Pregnant. I've known my baby girl is all woman for quite some time.
Trust me.
The twitching in my jeans has made it painfully evident that she isn't the shy little duckling I knew in our childhood. But thinking of her as a mother, with a baby of her own? It did something to me, plain and simple.
I've thought of little else since she told me.
"What's the plan of attack," I ask my friend, turning my back to the other conversations. I make sure to keep Susie in my peripheral vision. She's a glorious sight, in a yellow sundress with her blond hair tumbling loosely around her shoulders. I can see the pregnancy hormones running through her. Her cheeks are flushed, her hips and breasts more pronounced. Her eyes are green and sparkling in the sunlight filtering in through the windows.
She's fourteen weeks already, and if her family didn't treat her as if she was part of the furniture, they'd all be able to tell.
Always a soft woman, today she's blooming under the light trickling in through the curtains. She's also a nervous wreck. Not that anyone besides Alex and me would pick up on it.
Her family has spent a lifetime ignoring her. When it became evident that Susie wasn't going to march to anyone's drum but her own, her family quickly dismissed her, but what they saw as a weakness, I understood as strength. A character trait that is sorely missing in her tribe. Not that her brothers aren't good men. They are, both of them. Alex—he's the greatest man I know. Just, for the most part, he falls into line. It never occurred to him to be anything other than what they expected him to be.
"Suzanna says she's got it handled. We're just here on an emergency basis. I thought it would be easier on her, knowing that she has friends in her corner."
I bring the tumbler to my lips again, but barely register as the exquisite liquid burns its way down my throat. The whole thing makes me so mad. She shouldn't need a support team for something as simple as telling her parents about her baby. It should be a cause for celebration, not a reason to strategize. As much as I love and admire this family, I'll never understand how they treat each other—the way they treat her.
"What I don't understand is why she chose now, of all times, to tell them. Wouldn't it have been better one on one?"
Alex swallows the rest of his shot down in one go, walks the three feet to the decanters, and fills it higher than before. I decline the top off when offered, and he closes the distance between us again.
"That was my idea. I thought Pops would have a calmer reaction if they had an audience to play for."
"Ahh," is all I can think to reply. Unfortunately, he's probably right.
The far door opens and in walks their mother. She's a picture of loveliness, not a strand of hair out of place. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by how perfect Mrs. Belle looked, no matter the hour. Even at three a.m., telling us to shut the hell up, her hair was always tucked at the top of her neck. Her silk robe, perfectly tied at the waist. Now I wonder how exhausting that must be—the need to be picture perfect at any hour of the day. My mother, bless her, is a mess until at least her third cup of coffee.
Susie glances our direction and we both nod, giving her all the support we can lend her from across a crowded room. It's now, or never, her face seems to read. Alex opens his throat and swallows back the rest of his scotch. The action makes my nerves ratchet up yet another notch. He must be more concerned than he let on to show this much crack in his composure.
Mrs. Belle o
pens her mouth to speak, and I know exactly what she's going to say before her lips can form the words. Mrs. Williams tells me dinner is almost ready. We can head into the dining room now.
Any other time and the normality of it would bring a smile to my face. However, tonight, Mrs. Belle opens her mouth to speak, and Susie steps up next to her, effectively silencing her mother with a hand on her arm.
"Before we move on, I have an announcement I'd like to make."
Her voice is steady and sure. Not a tremble to be had. I'm so proud of her I could kiss her. Her eyes wander our direction again, and I shoot her the broadest smile I can manage. She's got this.
Undoubtedly thrown for a loop with her daughter's outspokenness, Mrs. Belle is a professional and swiftly hands Susie Q the floor, nevertheless.
"Of course, dear."
Mrs. Belle steps to the side, the queen, passing the baton to her heir. As reluctant as the heir must be.
Susanna is shaking. Tiny trembles wrack over her body. Still, her voice is steady when she speaks.
"Since we're all together, I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that I'm pregnant. Almost four months."
I watch as the realization hits members of the family. Her uncles react first, no surprise. Guarded looks at her parents, followed by hesitant smiles at her. She returns it on shaky legs. Tyler and Michelle keep their faces neutral. I'm not sure if they already knew.
When it works its way into her mother's brain, she gives a tiny gasp, bringing her fingers to cover her mouth. Her eyes shoot to her daughter's midriff, finally noticing the slight curve of her belly.
All that's left is her father. I can see the war taking place inside him. It's playing out plain as day over his body.
Mr. Belle is known for his cool and calm exterior. Now though, his face pales, then flushes with heat in rapid sequence. I almost step forward to check on him, fearing he may be having a stroke. His hands open and close at his side, his effort to gain control over his extremities blatant.