Forbidden Boss (Nikki and Rome's Story) (Manhattan Billionaires)

40. Nikki

Roseanne wasin Grenada until the beginning of March, so we set a meeting for the fourth of the month when she’d be in the city. I spent the first two months of the year getting my life in order. I had enough savings to pay off my debts, but I had to sell most of the designer clothes and accessories I’d acquired during my employment at Blakely in order to sustain me until I could get an income.

So for all the fun I’d had during those two months, I was left with none of the luxuries that had pushed me to sign the contract in the first place. It seemed fitting, but I did hate letting go of my Judith Leiber bow purse.

As the days turned to weeks, I found the courage to go to the doctor. I booked the scans and read the pamphlets. I lay in bed at night, overheated and unable to sleep, imagining a newborn baby at my breast, wondering how soft their skin would be, if they’d have any hair when they came out.

Rome’s visit had been awful, of course, but oddly, it had given me more strength. It was clear he wanted nothing to do with me, and all I could do in response was move on. I’d tell him about the baby eventually, I promised myself, but it was so early. No sense opening that can of worms until I knew for sure that everything would be okay.

It was a convenient excuse for my cowardice.

In the weeks leading up to my meeting with Roseanne, I kept busy, but I avoided my friends. My newfound strength was brittle, and I knew that one nail driven at just the right angle would shatter me. If I were to feel like a sad little wretch, watching them jet set off to Europe for shopping sprees without me, I’d lose my courage.

So I went through a couple months of self-imposed isolation. When I was feeling gracious toward myself, I called it nesting. My new apartment was my cocoon, and I the chrysalis undergoing a transformation.

But when the fourth of March came around, my transformation didn’t feel quite complete. I was just over twenty weeks into my pregnancy and my bump was beginning to show. I’d learned a few days ago that I was having a girl, and it was starting to feel real. I dressed in a tunic dress with comfortable shoes, taking extra time with my hair and makeup.

Roseanne met me at a cute café in Midtown. She sat in a tall, winged armchair like a queen, her loose pants draped artfully over her crossed legs, a mug steaming in her delicate grasp. When she looked up at me, the diamonds dangling from her ears twinkled in the coffee shop lights.

“Nikki!” she exclaimed, setting her cup down to stand. She hugged me tightly and planted a kiss on my cheek. “You look fabulous. I’ve paid for your drink already, so just dash up there and tell them what you want,” she said, nodding to the barista.

To her credit, though her gaze drifted down to my midsection, she didn’t ask any indelicate questions. I smiled at her and did as she said, ordering myself a peppermint tea before joining her at the table with my drink.

“How was your winter?” I asked, wrapping my hands around the hot mug.

“It was wonderful, but it’s good to be back in the city.”

I hummed in agreement. My heart was beating rapidly, all my carefully planned speeches fluttering out of my brain as the woman across from me read me like a book.

“You’re not going to work for me,” she guessed—correctly, “and you’re here to let me down easy.”

I let out a long breath that ended on a weak laugh. “No wonder Wilbur takes you along to all your social engagements.”

Roseanne laughed, then looked at me with such kindness that I nearly changed my mind.

But I’d had two months to think about this, and there was only one way forward. I liked Roseanne and Wilbur. I liked them a lot.

I couldn’t lie to them.

If I were to accept the job as Roseanne’s stylist, I’d have to come clean about my contract with Rome. And if I did that, I’d be breaking my NDA. Worse, though…

I’d be hurting Rome.

No matter what happened between us, our time together had been intense and full of so much joy that I was hardly able to contain it all. He was a complicated man who closed himself off when I wanted him to open.

But at the end of the day, I loved him. I loved him so much that thinking about him felt like a hundred daggers quivering in my chest. I loved him enough to give up my dream job, to sit here and politely turn down a future that would provide stability and growth for the price of hurting the man I loved. I couldn’t do it.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your offer, Roseanne,” I started, “but I have to refuse for personal reasons.”

“May I ask why?”

I took a deep breath. “Rome and I have gone our separate ways,” I admitted. “I think it’s best for my own sanity that I try to avoid the circles where he spends his time.”

“I didn’t take you for a coward.” Her gaze was sharp. She saw right through me.

I shrugged. “I guess you were wrong.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me, but I’m going to let it go for now. How’s the baby?”

I jerked back, and Roseanne laughed.

“Don’t look so shocked. I could tell when you came down to visit us before the holidays, darling. It’s more than obvious now.” She gave me a loaded look, and I leaned back in my chair, laughing.

“The baby is a gift,” I said simply. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

Roseanne smiled at me. We finished our drinks while we talked about fashion, and then she left me sitting there, feeling exhausted and wrung out.

I’d turned down the opportunity of a lifetime, and that was okay. The last opportunity of a lifetime had landed me pregnant and on my own, so I was happy to play it safe for a while.

“You!” a voice cut through the noise of my thoughts and drew my gaze to the café entrance. Penny stood there, red-haired and freckle-faced, a little boy on her hip, a furious expression on her face. “You’ve been avoiding us! I thought we talked about this when Layla was playing the ostrich with her head in the sand.” She stomped over to me and loomed over my table, as much as someone so short could. She pulled her phone out of her purse and, one-handed, tapped on it and put it to her ear. “Bonnie? I just found Nikki. Hurry up and get to the coffee shop, because I’m not letting her out of my sight, and I don’t know if she’s going to make a run for it.”

“There’s no need to be dramatic,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke—but there was a weight in my chest that I didn’t want to look at too closely.

Penny stood beside my chair, boxing me in, while her boy wriggled his way out of her grasp and crawled onto the seat across from me.

“Hello, Tim,” I said to him.

“Hi.” He pulled a toy car out of his pocket and started making engine noises, driving the car along the strip of pale beige that ran along the edge of the table.

“Where have you been?” Penny accused. “We stopped by your place and heard you’d moved! And you’ve barely been answering our texts.”

“Well…I’ve been in hibernation,” I admitted. “Some might say I’ve been nesting.” I ran my hand down the front of my loose tunic dress, letting the fabric trace the outline of my tiny bump.

Penny’s eyes grew huge. Her jaw dropped. She widened her stance like she’d bodily block me if I tried to make a run for it and got her phone out once more. “Bonnie! Hurry! There’s an emergency here!”

As if to underscore the point, little Timmy began making siren noises as he drove his toy car over and back along the table.

And I couldn’t help it. I began to laugh. It wasn’t really funny. This whole situation was tragic, really. All my girlfriends had gotten their happily-ever-afters, and I was looking at a life as a single mom. I still hadn’t told Rome about the baby. I was jobless, and I had about four months’ worth of cash to sustain me through however long it would take to find a job as a heavily pregnant lady.

In short, my life was in shambles.

But Penny was here, and Bonnie came in, her bump a little more obvious than mine on her thin frame, blond hair windblown and glossy. The two of them got on their phones and called reinforcements, namely Dani and Layla, our other two girlfriends.

They sat me down and I told them the whole sordid tale, NDA be damned. They laughed and cried and hugged me, and I realized I’d been wrong about these women.

They saw me. They loved me. I wasn’t a placeholder or a stepping stone to them. I wasn’t a vague, woman-shaped entity in their lives that they picked up and put down whenever it was convenient.

I was a friend. A friend who had hurt them by keeping myself apart.

But, oddly, I felt like I’d needed my months of isolation. I’d needed that time to remind myself that I mattered; otherwise, no matter how many times one of them wrapped me in a hug or held my hand or told me they’d help me through the next year, there was no way the old me would have believed them.

I would have thought they were telling me pretty lies, and I would have gone home to lock myself away on my own.

Now, as they rallied around me, I was ready to accept their support.

“You’ll need baby things,” Dani said. She had two of her own. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure that out for you. Won’t we?”

“Damn straight,” Penny said, and Tim looked up with wide eyes. Penny kissed his head and said, “I know I said a bad word. I’m allowed. You’re not.”

The mischievous glint in the little boy’s eyes told me he didn’t quite believe his mother. I laughed, knowing I had that to look forward to in a few years.

The future wasn’t quite as bleak as it had been an hour before. I was still jobless and broke, but I realized that I mattered to these women. And I mattered to myself.

The only thorn in my side was the little detail of telling Rome about the baby. Now that the first trimester had well and truly passed, my list of excuses was dwindling down to nothing. Roseanne had said it to me straight: I was acting like a coward.

It was time to face the man that had broken my heart and nearly broken me in the process. I just didn’t know if the newly transformed me would be strong enough to deal with the consequences of his reaction.