21. Stephanie
STEPHANIE
“The meeting with the marketing company is rescheduled for four o’clock, like you asked,” Stephanie’s assistant, Kaylie, said. “And Oliver Norcross called.”
The name hit Stephanie like acid. “Thank you, Kaylie,” she murmured.
The girl nodded. She was just out of college and an eager member of the SilkSoft team, but Stephanie was beginning to feel anxious about the possibility of over-reliance on her.
It was going to be difficult to manage the amount she allowed Kaylie to do for her now that her life was undergoing such a massive change.
She’d been to the doctor two days ago to confirm the pregnancy and to get the vitamins she’d need.
The whole thing had seemed to pass in a fog.
It was surreal that she was talking to a doctor about pregnancy when just a week previously she had been lying in Elijah’s arms. She had gained this new adventure, but… she had lost him.
It was impossible to think about that day.
The day she’d learned she was pregnant. The brief, blinding joy she had felt when he had learned the news and reacted happily.
And then the cold horror when he had looked at her email and she had known—she’d seen it the moment before it had happened—that everything was about to be ripped away.
I should have told him right from the start about the deal with Oliver. The moment I knew I was beginning to have real feelings—that was when I should have said something instead of letting myself off the hook about it the way I did.
But how could she regret having kept it to herself?
If she had, he would have ended things with her weeks ago.
They would never have grown close. If anything, his response had only demonstrated to her that she’d been right to keep the secret.
She had never had a real hope of coming clean and gaining his forgiveness.
I shouldn’t have accepted the deal with Oliver in the first place. That was where I went wrong.
That much was certainly true. But even that, she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret. After all, if she had never taken that deal, she would never have had the chance to get to know Elijah at all.
No matter how she thought about it, she kept coming to the same conclusion. There wasn’t anything she could have done differently. There was no point at which another choice had been possible, unless she was willing to accept never having Elijah in her life at all.
What a mess.
“Kaylie,” she said, “I want you to take messages from anyone who tries to reach me for the rest of the day, all right? I’m not going to be taking any calls.”
“No exceptions?” Kaylie asked.
Stephanie paused a moment. “If Elijah Norcross calls, you can put him through.”
“But not Oliver,” the girl checked.
“No,” Stephanie said firmly. “In fact, if he calls again, you can tell him we have no further business and I don’t need to speak to him. Let him know I won’t be calling him back.”
“I understand,” Kaylie said. The way she cocked her head to one side made Stephanie feel fairly sure that she didn’t actually understand at all, but one of the best things about Kaylie was that she understood her role.
She was wonderful at following instructions without any follow-up questions.
Now she walked out of Stephanie’s office and back to her desk.
Through the window, Stephanie watched as she sat down and began typing on her computer.
I’m going to have to tell her soon about this pregnancy.
The simple fact of the matter was that she couldn’t do this alone. She was the CEO of this company, a company at which she had very few people to help her. And her hopes of doing parenthood with Elijah were all but dashed.
She was going to be a single mother—a single mother trying to run a company on her own.
It was going to be horrible.
Her stomach clutched at the thought—how could she possibly think of it in those terms?
Of course it wasn’t going to be horrible.
She was still going to have a baby. To become a mother had been a lifelong dream, and now it was coming true.
The part of her that had discovered joy at that realization—before everything had fallen apart with Elijah—was still there.
She was still happy and eager about what lay ahead for her.
It was just that it was going to be so terribly hard.
Telling Kaylie about it—that would be a good first step toward coming up with a real plan. She would be relying heavily on her assistant once the baby came. She’d probably have to give her a raise.
The last thing I want is for Kaylie to be roped into doing childcare.
That isn’t a part of her job at all. But what am I going to do?
I’m going to have to bring the baby to work with me every day, because there won't be anywhere for me to leave him or her. I mean, I’m lucky that I can work from home so much of the time…
but I also have to travel sometimes. How on earth am I going to manage this?
She straightened her spine. It could be done. She knew it could. People had babies while working full time every day. She was hardly the first single mother in the world, and if other people could manage it, so could she.
Yes, it was heartbreaking that Elijah wasn’t going to be a part of this. But that didn’t mean Stephanie couldn’t handle what lay ahead. She could.
Of course she could.
She pulled up a browser on her computer and ran a search for local childcare. There had to be something that wasn’t too expensive, something for working parents who needed a little support. She wasn’t alone in that.
But the options that came up were all bad ones.
The first place she saw looked amazing, but she quickly discovered that it was a private pre-preschool academy, and that it would cost thousands of dollars a month to enroll.
She tried intentionally searching for cheaper places and found herself looking at pictures of a building with cinder block walls.
Were these really the only options? There had to be something else, someplace that was both affordable and pleasant. There just had to be…
If Elijah was still here, I wouldn’t have this problem. We would be a two-income household, a two-parent family. We probably wouldn’t even need childcare, but if we decided we did, we would be able to afford it with no problem.
For the first time since Elijah had discovered her emails and walked out on her, she felt a surge of anger.
What she had done had been wrong, but there was no excuse for punishing their child over it.
If he wanted to end their relationship… well, she didn’t like that, but he had every right to do it.
But the baby was different. He had a responsibility here.
This was his baby, and he was supposed to be a good father, not leave his child alone in the world.
Didn’t it matter to him that this baby was going to need to be provided for?
She thought about what he had said about his own childhood, about the pain of his father being distant. About how he had sworn that it wouldn’t be that way when he had a family of his own. He had been so determined to be there for his child, to give his child the things his father hadn’t given him.
But I guess that was only true up until the moment it got real. He liked the idea of being a father. He liked the image of a perfect family. But doing it would mean accepting that it comes with challenges and mess, and the moment he saw a hint of that, he ran the other way.
She nodded to herself, resigned. The truth was, it was good that she had realized this about him so early, even though the knowledge was hard.
It was good that she hadn’t gotten years into raising this child with him only to realize that he couldn’t handle it when things got tough.
Better to know now, right from day one, that she could only rely on herself.
There was a knock at the door. She looked up to see Kaylie outside the door, holding up her cell phone.
Stephanie’s heart raced. It was Elijah, she thought. It had to be. She had told Kaylie not to bother her if it was anybody else. Stephanie waved her in.
Already, she was pondering what she would say to Elijah. She would have to express why she was angry with him, of course. He needed to understand that. They couldn’t be together once the baby came if he didn’t realize that leaving when things got hard wasn’t going to be an option.
But also, she knew she had no moral high ground, no room to make him grovel. She would forgive him quickly, because she had been very much in the wrong too. She only hoped he was ready to forgive her.
Elijah? She mouthed at Kaylie, already holding out her hand to take the phone.
But Kaylie shook her head.
Stephanie’s stomach dropped.
Kaylie lowered the phone from her ear and covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s Oliver Norcross again,” she said, and Stephanie saw the agitation on her face. “He says he’s going to keep calling until he gets to talk to you. I don’t know what to do with him.”
“Ignore him,” Stephanie said firmly. “Don’t answer any more calls from that number.”
Kaylie looked nervous. “I know it’s my job to keep people away from you sometimes, but I really don’t think he’s going to go away.”
Stephanie sighed and held out a hand for the phone. Kaylie passed it to her, mouthing the words thank you.
She steeled herself and held it to her ear. “Oliver?”
“Stephanie. I need to talk with you.” His voice was brisk and businesslike. “When can you stop by my office?”
“Never.” There was no chance this situation was going to be improved by her spending time with Oliver Norcross. That was the one thing that had the potential to make matters worse. “You and I are finished, Oliver. I told you that. There’s no more reason for us ever to see or speak to one another.”
“Of course there is,” he countered. “Elijah knows about our agreement. Did you tell him?”
Her blood ran cold—she hadn’t realized he knew this. “Yes, I told him,” she said. “I was trying to be honest. I owed him that much, even if you didn’t feel like you did. I got tired of lying to him.”
“Well, you’ve left me in a world of trouble. I don’t even know what I can say to him—not that he’s taking my calls.”
“You’re going to have to figure it out on your own,” Stephanie said firmly. “Getting involved in your family’s affairs has meant nothing but trouble for me, and I’m not about to do it again. I only answered this call so I could tell you not to contact me ever again.”
“Stephanie, whatever is going on, you and I will be able to make the best of it,” Oliver insisted. “That’s the way things work in business.”
“Maybe,” Stephanie agreed. “But it isn’t the way I do business. Not anymore. Not ever again.”
She ended the call and handed the phone back to Kaylie with a small sense of triumph. At least she had done this right.