My Secret Irish Baby: A Second-Chance, Secret Baby Contemporary Romance (Irish Kiss Book 7)

by Sienna Blake

  And that seemed better than drowning in some of the last few words Abbi said to me before leaving: I don't want Zara to know what it feels like to be abandoned. Especially not by the ones she loves.

  With a weariness and resignation, I pushed myself up from the floor and crossed the short distance to my desk. I sank into my office chair and stared at the still ringing phone. Then I pulled my chair in, straightened my back and shoulders, raised my chin, fixed my unblinking eyes straight ahead of me at the closed door, and answered the phone.

  "This is Michael."

  * * *

  Well, it worked.

  It worked like a goddamn charm. From the moment Abbi left my office, I refocused on my work with a zeal and determination like never before. I worked almost nonstop for the next several weeks, not even bothering to return to my penthouse to sleep. Instead, I caught an hour here or an hour there with my head resting on my folded arms atop my desk. I never let myself sleep for longer than that because if I did, she would find me in my dreams.

  A new assistant was assigned to me. I didn't even bother learning her name. She brought me refills of bitter black coffee that I chugged and meals that I picked at half-heartedly while reading through emails before tossing the food into the trash.

  At first Harry Princeton and my superiors back in Dublin were thrilled with the turnaround in my work production. But soon I was the one hounding them for falling behind, for slowing me down, for not moving faster, faster, faster. I became more short-tempered than ever before. People at the office hushed as I stalked down the hall, scurrying away and pretending to be hard at work when I passed. In conference meetings they kept their heads tucked to their chests, eyes fixed on their binders, afraid to even meet my gaze.

  I can't really say that I blame them. The few times when I bothered to assess myself in the mirror of the men's bathroom, I almost frightened myself. The lack of sleep had balled its fists and given me two dark purple black eyes. Red streaks erupted from my green irises like demonic bolts of lightning. Shaving I'd deemed to be a waste of time, so my stubble gave me the appearance of a madman. The caffeine I used to keep awake made my hands shake, and I lashed out at anyone who dared to notice.

  I was a terror in the office and with every passing minute I feared my racing heart might give out, but I got shit done. And even better—I was too busy, or too out of my mind, to give any thought to Abbi. I was an addict on a bender and fuck, did it feel good.

  I was out of control at the wheel, tyres screeching, engine whining, hood smoking. I was careening toward a cliff, but it didn't fucking matter, because I was alone. Alone. Alone.

  I was in my office, my fingers shaking so terribly that I could barely hold the rolled-up dollar bill I'd been using to snort cocaine when caffeine was no longer enough. I inhaled the white powder, dragged my fingers through my hair as I felt its electrifying effect, and pushed the button on my phone to call my assistant.

  "I don't have the day’s schedule," I growled irritably.

  "Um, there's nothing for today," the girl said, her voice frightened.

  "What the fuck do you mean there's nothing for today?"

  I heard the girl shifting uncomfortably in her chair outside my office. "We're done, sir," she said. "We're all finished."

  I glared at the phone, fingers drumming uncontrollably on the edge of my desk.

  "What do you mean we're finished? We still have two weeks of work scheduled."

  A panic was starting to mix with the cocaine and it was making my irregular heartbeat quicken.

  "Well, sir, with all the work you've been doing we finished far ahead of schedule. Mr Princeton wants me to tell you that he's very pleased. He's holding a party in your honour tonight at the Brown Palace Hotel."

  "No," I said, shaking my head in anger as the unwanted memory of my night with Abbi there flashed painfully in my mind like a bright sun when you're hungover. "No, no, there must be something left."

  "It's all done, sir," the girl said, thinking she was making me happy. "Congratulations."

  My wild, darting eyes searched my desk for something to do. All the papers were cleaned away. I scrolled through my email. No one needed my immediate attention. I leafed through my calendar and it was empty. I'd gone through my stash of blissfully numbing booze too quickly, like any foolish alcoholic. The remedy to keep my mind off of Abbi was now gone.

  But I needed more. I needed more, now. My work here in Denver was done, but I knew where I could find more. I knew where I could find an endless supply, enough soul-sucking work to last me a lifetime.

  "Sir?" the girl was saying on the line. "Sir, are you still there?"

  "Book me a ticket to Dublin," I barked, already emptying my drawers into my briefcase.

  "Sir?"

  "First flight out this afternoon."

  I zipped up my briefcase. Anything I left behind that I needed they could ship to me. I had to go.

  "But Mr O'Sullivan, there's the party tonight for you at the Brown Pal—"

  The girl jumped when I flung open the door to my office.

  "First flight out this afternoon," I told her as I stalked past. "I don't care how much it costs. Email me the details."

  I marched past the other executive offices, past the cubicles, past Harry Princeton who called after me in confusion. I got on the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby.

  I wasn't going to any goddamn party.

  Abbi

  I'd never known exhaustion quite like this.

  I blinked blearily at the clock on the dashboard of my car and had to squint at the green glow to stop the numbers from blurring and swaying. It was 10:15 at night and I'd just left my second job at the convenience store where I pulled a double shift. My eyelids were heavy as if weights had been tied to them. I rolled down the window so the blast of cool, early autumn air would keep me from nodding off at the wheel.

  Ever since leaving Michael several weeks ago I'd been burning the fuse at both ends to make ends meet. I was always working one of my three jobs, one as a minimum wage waitress at the local Pizza Hut, one as a front desk clerk for a rundown dental office I was fairly sure was just a front for drug trafficking, and the one at the convenience store where I mostly yelled at kids trying to steal Cheetos and tried my best to stay awake. Most days I worked fourteen to sixteen hours to make what I did in an eight-hour day at Levi, Levi, & Burke.

  I'd seen little of Zara since quitting my job and I told myself it was simply because I had to work longer and harder to keep us afloat now. It was just the way it was, the way it had to be. It wasn't my choice to take the midnight to 8 a.m. shift at the convenience store; it was usually all they could give me. By the time I arrived home Zara had already gone to school with Sandra, who drove her. Then it was off to the dentist till five and straight to the Pizza Hut or the convenience store again. I didn't want to work till after Zara had already gone off to bed, but I just had to, I told myself. I just had to.

  But even as much as I tried to convince myself that I was just doing what had to be done, a part of me couldn't help being just a little bit relieved. It was an excuse to dodge Zara's questions she posed with those wide, confused green eyes whenever she caught me. I didn't know how to explain why Michael wasn't in our lives anymore. I didn't want to explain.

  I wanted to earn money to support my daughter and run myself so ragged that I couldn't even think of him if I wanted. I was getting pretty darn close. In the few hours I could catch here and there to slip into bed, I rarely slept. I would just stare blankly up at the dark ceiling and wait for the alarm to go off. Then I'd get dressed, do my best to cover the puffy bags beneath my eyes, force myself to eat, and hurry off when I heard Zara stirring in her bedroom.

  I pulled into the apartment complex just after 10:30 p.m. and rested my forehead against the steering wheel after turning off the engine. This was the kind of exhaustion where your bones hurt. The kind of exhaustion where the world spins and you're not even sure which way it's spinning.
This was the kind of exhaustion where you don't even realise you've closed your eyes till your head falls forward and you jerk awake.

  My body was at its limit and yet my heart seemed to show no signs of wearing out. Each time I forgot to forget and Michael sneaked into my head, the pain was as fresh and sharp and vivid as the moment I found that note in that motel room. My whole body was fuzzy with lack of sleep, but not my heart. My heart could still feel everything, goddamn everything.

  With a tired, sad, self-pitying moan, I pulled myself out of my car and dragged myself up the stairs to my apartment. I fumbled with my keys, most of my coordination long gone. I thought maybe tonight would be the night I finally got some sleep. I surely couldn't go on not sleeping forever.

  Feeling almost drunk from exhaustion, it took me a few seconds more than it should have to realise that the apartment was not dark like it should have been. A light from the kitchen stretched across the messy living room floor where I'd flung dirty clothes I'd lost the will to drag to the laundry room to clean. With a slight frown of confusion I set down my purse and tiptoed past the couch.

  "Zara," I said in surprise when I found my daughter sitting at the table in the kitchen. "Zara, what are you doing? It's way past your bedtime."

  I moved to close her books and shoo her quickly off to bed, but she placed her hand flat over her notebook so I couldn't move it.

  "I was just finishing up some homework I hadn't done," she said while turning her head to look up at me.

  In embarrassment, I untucked a strand of hair to block my face from her and pretended to busy myself with the stack of dishes from countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and boxed mac and cheeses we'd been surviving on over the past few weeks. I didn't want Zara to see me like this: tired bags and greasy hair and eyes jittery from my frazzled nerves. I was barely holding on, but I wanted, needed, Zara to keep thinking that everything was fine. I needed to be strong for her, or at least strong enough to make her believe that.

  "You're finishing homework?" I asked over the water from the faucet.

  I glanced quickly over my shoulder and Zara nodded while biting her bottom lip. "Emhmm."

  I knew right away that this was a lie. Zara never put off homework. Usually, I had to fight for just a kiss and a hello before she dove excitedly into her books and papers and assignments. I was certain that all her homework had been finished for hours. My brain was slow and groggy, but it was steadily piecing things together. This all meant that Zara's lie was just a pretext to stay up late until I got home, which meant…

  "Zara, baby, I need you to go to bed," I said, my voice tight with fear. "You can finish whatever it is in the morning."

  I scrubbed at a sticky yellow-orange stain so roughly, I thought I might break the plate in half. I waited for the sound of Zara's chair pushing away from the table and heard none. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to keep control of my emotions, which felt more like trying to keep control of a bucking bull.

  "Z, honey, did you hear me?" I said.

  My frayed edges were coming undone and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I raked at the plate with the scrubber even after the stain was gone. The muscles along my arm were tensed and I could see the whites of my knuckles.

  "Zara, go to bed," I repeated.

  It was a plea, a beg, a prayer. It was a last-ditch falling on my knees for pity, just a little bit of pity.

  "Mom, where's Michael?"

  The plate snapped in two and I flung the pieces down and turned around, not caring that soap suds streamed down my arms. I'd been fragile and brittle and breakable just like that plate, and it was only a matter of time before I snapped in two as well. My chest was rising and falling like tsunami waves and I stood as little chance of stopping my racing heart as those violent walls of water.

  "Michael is gone, Zara," I said, my anger and frustration pouring out as easily as the water from the faucet that still ran. "He left. He left you and he left me."

  Zara stared up at me with wide, frightened eyes. If I had had even an hour or two of sleep over the last few days, I might have been able to see the harm I was inflicting and stop. But I was too far gone. And my own pain felt like the only pain in the world.

  "That is what he does, okay? He leaves," I continued, breath ragged and out of control as my heart rate spiked. "He doesn't want to see us, Zara. He hasn't called, he hasn't anything. He's gone."

  I'd always tried to hide my emotions from my daughter in order to protect her and give her a sense that everything was alright. But I'd destroyed all that in as little time as it took to throw this grenade between us.

  "I tried to warn you," I shouted, my voice cracking. "I told you we were better off with just the two of us. That we were fine by ourselves. That we were all we needed. I tried to tell you what would happen, what would happen when you trust someone else, what would happen when you let someone else in, what would happen when you were weak. I tried to…"

  I watched Zara's fingers tremble at the edge of her spiral notebook, and whatever else I had to say dropped from my lips unspoken. I was doing exactly what I never wanted to do to her: make her feel alone.

  I took a step toward her and said softly, "Zara, I—"

  Zara gathered her things in her thin arms and hurried off to her room without another word. I heard her bedroom door click shut and I sagged down in front of the kitchen sink.

  "Fuck," I muttered, dragging my fingers through my hair. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

  This was my fault, letting Zara get mixed up in the middle of Michael and me. In trying to make it right, I'd just managed to make it ten times worse. After catching my breath and giving Zara a few minutes alone, I went to her bedroom and knocked quietly before entering. I crossed the bedroom to where Zara sat at her little desk with her little lamp and sat at the edge of her bed.

  "I'm sorry, baby," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."

  Zara's pencil made little scratching noises as it moved across the page.

  "I was tired and I never should have yelled at you and I'm sorry."

  Zara kept on writing.

  I laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Z, baby?"

  When she finally turned to me, I almost wished she hadn't. Gone were the green eyes sparkling with excitement, wide to the world and all its wonders. Any light Michael had sparked within her was back behind a wall. Zara looked at me and smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes.

  "I finished my homework," she said, as if nothing at all had just happened. "I think I better get to bed for school tomorrow."

  Zara pushed back her chair without another word. She walked past me without another glance and crawled into bed. Before I could say anything further, she was beneath the cover and reaching out to switch off her night light. I was plunged into a still, deep darkness there at the edge of her bed.

  The creak of the mattress as I stood was the only goodnight I received from Zara's room. I shuffled tiredly down the hall to my room and flopped onto the bed without bothering to take off my makeup or change out of my clothes; I'd be up in a few hours anyway.

  But as I lay there, staring like always at the ceiling, I found I couldn't stay still. I rolled out of bed and rifled through the bottom drawer of my dresser to find the camera from our trip. Cross-legged in the dark, I clicked through to the picture of us from the Four Corners.

  A sob caught in my throat when I almost didn't recognise myself. The woman in the picture was open, like an endless field beneath a wide blue sky. I felt like a closed-off cave, cold and dark and enclosed. The woman in the picture had a presence, large and bright and loud. I couldn't have felt more small, dim and quiet as a mouse. The woman in the picture looked happy.

  I was not happy.

  After Michael left again I'd convinced myself that safe was more important than happy, protected was more important than joyful, secluded was more important than exposed. I thought I'd been right—right for me, right for Zara.

  But I wasn't the only one I hardly recognised in t
he picture. Zara was different, too.

  I cried for the first time in weeks. I cried because I couldn't stop it, because it was overwhelming, because I was hurt and confused and afraid I was being a terrible mother. And I didn't know what to do.

  Zara was closed off because I was closed off. But I didn't know how to open up, to share with her, to bare my scared and freshly bleeding heart. I wasn't sure I was brave enough.

  And the one man who made me feel brave enough was never coming back.

  Michael

  My flight was in two hours and I was drinking at the bar with the intention of getting so hammered that by the time I got on the plane I'd pass out into sweet oblivion till I arrived home in Dublin.

  Then I'd pop a handful of aspirins on the cab ride over to the office in the city, have Caroline brew up a pot of dark coffee, and escape into a whole new mountain of work.

  An announcement came over the speakers, and I tapped my fingers on the bar top to order another scotch and water. The bartender eyed my still half-filled drink. I rolled my eyes before tipping it back and draining the burning liquid down my throat.

  "Afraid of flying," the bartender said as he hesitantly slid me another drink on a cocktail napkin.

  "No," I grumbled irritably, "afraid of nosy bartenders not minding their own fucking business."

  Needless to say, I was already three rounds in.

  The bartender shot me a nasty glance. "I have the right not to serve you, you know?"

  I sighed and dragged my wallet out of the back pocket of my slacks. I peeled out three hundred-dollar bills and wiggled them in the air for the guy to see.

  "What was that?"

  To his credit the bartender managed to wait a second or two before snatching the bills from between my fingers.

  "Don't have to be an asshole about it," he muttered under his breath as he went to serve another customer, leaving me with my medicine.

  I ran my finger along the top of the glass and tried to figure out how many I would need to pass out right when the plane took off. Really it was a tricky situation, requiring a lot of tough, focused, all-consuming brain power. If I drank too little I would be literally strapped into a chair with nothing but my regrets for as long as it took for the economy passengers to board, for the flight attendants to win Tetris with a family of six's baggage and close the doors and give a twenty-five minute theatre performance about plane safety and remind that one asshole that the bathrooms were locked until after take-off, for the pilot to say something unintelligible over the crackly announcement system and taxi into an endless line of planes that for some unknown reason get priority over ours and after what would feel like hours, take off and get to cruising altitude and, barring any inclement weather that would push things back even further, give the okay for the flight attendants to get up and start serving alcoholic beverages. That sounded like a nightmare, but the alternative was no prettier. If I drank too much and instead passed out on the bar top instead of on the plane, I'd miss my flight and be stuck on the ground with nothing to do but think about how terribly I fucked up the one thing that ever made me feel anything.