Scandalous Box Set

by Layla Valentine

  I shook my head. It was ridiculous. But I knew she wasn’t going to drop it until I showed her a negative test, so I sat there obediently and waited for her to return.

  She was back within half an hour with two different tests. She tossed a box at me and pointed to the bathroom with the same look on her face she’d used when I was a kid and didn’t want to brush my teeth. I shook my head with a smile, letting her know that I was just humoring her.

  All of that faded a few minutes later when two pink lines showed up in the little window.

  “Impossible.” I breathed out in exasperation. I left the test on the edge of the bathtub and hurried out to the kitchen, where I downed three glasses of water one after another.

  My mother watched me with a knowing smile.

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions,” I said firmly. “These things aren’t a hundred percent.”

  “Neither is birth control,” she said with a shrug.

  I narrowed my eyes at her, then paced the kitchen for twenty minutes. When the water had done its job, I took the second test from her and hurried back to the bathroom. Same result.

  Shaky and pale, I brought both tests out to the kitchen. I locked eyes with my mother and sat back down, placing the tests on a napkin on the table. I stared at them numbly for a few minutes.

  She sat down as well, barely glancing at them. She had already known.

  “How do you feel about this?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I…I don’t know.”

  She nodded. “I figured. Who’s the father?”

  My throat tightened, and so did my fists. Tears broke through my defenses, streaming down my face, turning the tests into little white and pink blurs on the table. I wrestled my voice under control with a great deal of effort.

  “David Harris,” I said, wiping the tears from my face.

  “Harris…why do I know that name?”

  I sobbed, burying my face in my hands in shame. She gasped slightly.

  “Your last client, wasn’t her name Harris?”

  I nodded, unable to speak for sobbing.

  “Grace. Grace, look at me. Did you sleep with her husband?”

  “I didn’t know,” I wailed. “I swear I didn’t know. He told me his name was Dan. I thought he was a decorator!”

  “Oh, sweetie.”

  She rubbed my shoulders, and I curled into her, sobbing into her shoulder. She rocked me like a baby, whispering soothing nonsense, for a long time. When I finally managed to wrestle myself back under control, I felt cold and empty and gray all through.

  “What am I going to do?” I wailed.

  “The first thing you’re going to do is tell him,” she said firmly.

  “Oh Mom, I can’t do that. It’s too terrible.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Are you going to keep the baby?”

  I thought about it for a long time, weighing the pros and cons, but I already knew the answer.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “There you go, then. He’s as much a party to this as you are. He’s a billionaire, isn’t he? Kids are expensive. You’re going to need the child support to get through that first couple of months, not to mention tuition. It comes up faster than you would believe, trust me.”

  “That just seems so classless,” I said. “I mean…his wife isn’t really invested in the relationship, but she is invested in the money. Even if he’s just married for show, if she caught wind of this, she could destroy him.”

  “That’s his problem to solve,” she said, patting my hand. “Listen, honey, you can’t do this alone. I’ll be there for you every step of the way, but I’m not going to be around forever.”

  “And he isn’t going to be around at all,” I said miserably. “He claims that he and his wife don’t love each other, but he refuses to end it, so there has to be something between them. Some reason he can’t just do the honest thing. I don’t know, maybe he deceived me more thoroughly than I thought. Maybe he’s just a sleazeball.”

  The characterization didn’t ring true to me, but I needed to cling to it at that moment or I would have called him right then and there.

  “Do you love him?”

  The question hurt my heart. I didn’t answer, but I didn’t need to. It was written all over my face.

  Mom furrowed her brow sympathetically, patting my hand.

  “I’m sorry, Grace. Do you think he loves you?”

  I shook my head. “Wouldn’t he have fought harder for us if he did? I mean, he just rolled over and accepted that he was going to be in a loveless marriage forever. If he loved me, if he even thought he could love me, why wouldn’t he have left her? I asked him and he wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Ah,” she sighed sadly. “Well. I still think you should tell him.”

  “The most I’ll get out of him is hush money. I’d rather work my fingers to the bone than accept that.”

  She smiled sadly at me and patted my hand again. “You’ve got too much damn integrity,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, whose fault is that?”

  She chuckled and pulled me into a hug. “I blame your father. He was a much better person than I am.”

  “You’re both wonderful,” I said, squeezing her around the waist. “Better than this kid’s parents by far.” I patted my belly.

  “Don’t go talking about my daughter like that,” she admonished gently. “Now, if you aren’t going to tell him, I suggest you let my house be for a while and get your butt back to paying work. Kids are expensive and so is pregnancy.”

  She kissed my forehead, and for a moment I felt safe, protected in her arms from heartache and a frightening future.

  “But I still think you should tell him,” she said.

  I made noises that sounded like promises, but I still wasn’t sure. As I drove home that evening, I decided that she was wrong. It wouldn’t do any good to tell him, I was sure of that. I played out all of his potential responses in my head and didn’t like any of them.

  What if he wanted me to have the baby in secret so he could adopt it away from me? He did say that he’d always wanted a family. What if he tried to take the baby? He had money enough to move mountains if he felt the need. He could sue for a paternity test and guardianship and everything with ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers, and I would be up there alone trying to defend my right to love my own child.

  I couldn’t even tell myself that Amelia wouldn’t let him do it. What if everything he ever told me was a lie and they were really a loving couple behind closed doors? My thoughts spun into darker and darker territory, but there was one constant: Whether by David’s hand or Amelia’s, if I told him anything right now, I would be destroyed.

  At the very least, I decided that this pregnancy needed plenty of time to set before I told anybody anything. I needed to keep it secret until I was completely sure of myself, until I knew everything I needed to know to protect myself and my baby from any and all potential reactions.

  I needed an action plan. I needed to cover all of my bases before I so much as dropped a hint about the situation to David, or to anyone.

  I didn’t even know where to begin with that. Instead, I threw myself headlong into work, counting on my subconscious to come up with something while I kept my conscious mind distracted.

  Chapter 17

  Grace

  March 4

  “The baby has a good, strong heartbeat. Oh, baby doesn’t like the ultrasound!”

  I had spent six weeks working at a frantic pace, taking on any and all project which came my way. The more difficult, the better. I had surprised an entire convent by offering my services at half price simply for the distraction and the utterly sexless atmosphere. I’d done the job in tandem with a colonial upgrade and then a hotel. I couldn’t seem to stop working, but it hadn’t been helping. My dreams were still full of David and my days were still spent consumed with worry.

  My doctor didn’t seem to notice my frazzled state. She was cheerfully focused on the ultraso
und screen, chasing my baby around with her wand. “Let’s see if I can get a better picture of the face…there we go. What a pretty baby! Do you want to know the sex?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “It’s a girl,” the doctor said happily. “Your daughter is due September 5th. Do you feel ready?”

  September 5th. Six months. Oh, God.

  No, I was very much not ready. If I maintained the breakneck pace I had been working at for the last six weeks, I would still only have enough saved for a month of maternity leave after the baby was born. But I nodded anyway and watched the monitor.

  She had his profile. That aristocratic nose, that high, flat brow. She was him all over. Guilt began to eat away at me, and tears slipped from my eyes before I even felt them coming.

  “Oh, here you go, Grace.” The doctor handed me some tissues. “Those hormones are killer, aren’t they? Are you feeling depressed? Sometimes women have a bad reaction to the influx of progesterone.”

  “Not generally,” I said, sniffling a little. “I guess it’s just seeing her up there. She’s kind of a surprise.”

  “Is she? I assumed you hadn’t maintained your implant because you were trying for a baby.”

  I blinked at her. “Hadn’t maintained it? I thought it was good for five years?”

  “Oh! No, dear. With the brand you were using it’s three years, four if you’re lucky.”

  “Oh,” I sighed. “I could have sworn…oh well. My mistake. A good mistake, though.” I looked up at the monitor again, trying to identify the feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was as though dread, fear, excitement, and joy had all melted together into a ball.

  “I’m glad you feel that way. And we have plenty of resources available for you if you need them. Reduced child care, rental assistance, WIC, food banks, whatever you might need. Here, let me get you the information.”

  She rifled through her drawer for a moment, then pulled a thick pamphlet out. I took it and tucked it in my purse, hoping that I would be able to get enough work in the next six months so that I wouldn’t have to worry about money too much when the baby came.

  Just as I was getting dressed and ready to go, though, my latest client canceled on me.

  “Fantastic,” I muttered. “That’s three thousand gone. Back to the hustle, I guess.”

  I clutched the images of my baby in my hand as I walked to my car, then sat and looked at them for a long time. I traced her profile, remembering how badly David had wanted a family. All of the paranoid thoughts which had tormented me the day I found out about her sounded silly and empty when I looked at her picture. I knew sincerity when I saw it, and he had been telling the truth about his intimacy—or lack thereof—with Amelia.

  He would never be able to have a family with Amelia. I would never be able to have him while Amelia still claimed his last name. The whole situation was frustrating and terrible and tangled. It wasn’t fair.

  A small voice in my mind whispered to me that I was only helping to keep it unfair. I was letting the wrongness of it all win when I had the power within me to make things right. Or at least set them in motion in the right direction.

  Maybe I’ve been selfish, I thought. Maybe I’ve been foolish. I’m depriving this kid of the security that would come of having a billionaire for a father. I’m depriving David of the opportunity to have the child that he wants, even if he can’t be there for her. I shook my head. It wasn’t really my choice to make, was it?

  “I’ll call him tonight,” I said out loud so as to cement the intention in my mind. “I’ll tell him everything.”

  In the meantime, I needed a plan. I was out of clients for the moment, and the end of my pregnancy was looming closer than ever. Six months was no time at all, not when projects could take weeks or months to complete. I was going to have to focus on the big ones, the ones that would pay well.

  The universe must have been listening in on my thoughts, for at that moment my phone rang, the caller ID reading “Amelia Hornsby-Harris.”

  Guilt shook my heart and terror made my hands tremble. What if he had told her?

  “Hello, this is Grace. How can I help you?”

  “Grace, darling! Amelia here. Thought I’d give you a bell because I’ve grown bored with my New York flat, and you did such a fabulous job on my house in London. Meet me and my husband tomorrow at the penthouse and we’ll discuss terms, how does that sound?”

  I wanted to decline, change my number, and disappear. The thought of seeing David again—or Amelia, for that matter—in my condition was almost too much to bear. But Amelia paid so well. I knew I couldn’t turn her down, not if I wanted to have even the smallest chance of having some savings in the bank once the baby was born.

  “All right,” I said, almost surprised at the words as they fell out of my mouth. “What time?”

  “How does one o’clock sound? I’ll give you the tour, and you can tell me what you think.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  We bid our farewells and ended the call. I sat in my car shaking from head to toe. Nausea washed over me in a great sickly wave. I couldn’t tell if it was morning sickness or anxiety.

  I spent most of the rest of the day alternating between getting sick and coming up with design pitches for the parts of Amelia’s apartment that I had already seen. I almost called to bail four times, until I finally posted my bank balance on the fridge beside the average hospital bill for having a baby in New York.

  When I saw the difference, it steeled my resolve. If I couldn’t even afford to give birth properly, how was I ever going to raise the baby? No, I couldn’t back out. I had to go there and face them both. There was no need to call David now. If I could just pull him aside for a few minutes while I was there, I could get all of the difficult things out of the way in a single afternoon.

  Even though I had made my decisions, I didn’t sleep well that night. I began to wonder if I would ever sleep well again.

  Chapter 18

  Grace

  The same doorman greeted me as I entered Amelia’s New York building. I didn’t expect him to recognize me, but I was surprised.

  “For the penthouse?” he asked.

  “Yes, for Mrs. Hornsby-Harris.”

  “Your name again, please?”

  “Grace Baker.”

  “She’s expecting you. Elevator’s to your left.”

  “Thank you.”

  He tipped his hat at me and smiled, which made me smile in spite of myself. Nice of her to give him the heads-up this time. It’s much less intimidating to be in a place like this when I know I’m expected.

  The elevator attendant was a boy of about sixteen, which was only mildly disappointing. I had been looking forward to continued familiarity.

  “Penthouse, please.”

  He pushed the button silently and folded his hands behind him. He didn’t look at me or speak.

  “Have you been working here long?” I asked.

  His face barely registered surprise. “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you like it?” I pressed on, anxious to keep my mind occupied.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay. That’s good.” I chewed on my lower lip, wishing I had never opened the conversation at all. Now I was twice as anxious, and awkward on top of it. I tugged on my shirt, wishing I had worn something a little looser. I only had the smallest bump, but my shape was definitely different today than it had been in December.

  The attendant was watching me from the corner of his eye. “Interview?” he asked.

  “Something like that. She wants me to redecorate her penthouse.”

  He chuckled but swallowed it quickly.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “I really shouldn’t say. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “Trust me, anything you have to say can’t be any worse than any of the things I can’t say.”

  The numbers were steadily clicking upward. He shifted his weight, considering.

  “Come on,” I said a
lmost desperately. “I could use a laugh to get rid of these nerves.”

  “Okay,” he said with a boyish grin. “There were tons of people here for a party a few days ago. On the way back down, a bunch of the women were talking about how dark and oppressive her place looked. Said they wouldn’t be coming back for the next one.”

  “Oh, gosh,” I said, gasping on a laugh. “Oh, if that got back to her, she wouldn’t waste any time calling me!”

  “And here you are,” he said slyly. “The penthouse, ma’am. Good luck!”

  “Thank you,” I said with a warm smile. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  He touched his cap cheekily and rode the elevator back down. After the doors closed I stood in the foyer for a long moment, just staring at the front door. Amelia would have heard the elevator even if the doorman hadn’t called up to let her know I was here. She would be wondering what was taking me so long to make myself known.

  The silent pressure from my baseless certainties made me move in spite of my anxiety and I rang the bell. There was no answer for a long time, and I frowned. I was just about to push the bell again when the door opened.

  “Grace, darling! So lovely to see you again. David’s running a bit behind, but isn’t he always? Come in, make yourself comfortable. Oh, you’ve brought notes. Wonderful!”

  Relief washed over me as I stepped into the penthouse. David wasn’t there, which meant I wouldn’t have to face him right away. Working with Amelia again made the situation far more complicated, and I couldn’t afford to lose her contract.

  I sat down, a bit nervously, on the couch. She sat across from me and gestured around.

  “This color scheme served its purpose well, but I believe it has fallen out of fashion. My dining room at the house did not receive nearly as many compliments as I had anticipated. I think my friends have grown tired of it.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” I said sympathetically. I was secretly baffled that the attendant’s hunch had been correct. “How would you like to update it?”