Chapter 21
Harlan
“ Y our friends were welcome to stay for dinner,” I tell Quinn as we sit down to eat the tagliatelle Bolognese that my staff has served for us in the dining room, with a Caprese salad and wine.
The two of us are alone, and she seems tense.
“I know,” she says. “Thank you. Carlisle told me so. But I thought we could eat alone.”
When I came downstairs after my shower, she’d insisted that she had work to finish before dinner. She was adamant about it, barely looking me in the eye as she rushed around the kitchen. Minutes later, her girlfriend Dani arrived, and they disappeared into the house somewhere. So I went to do some work in my office.
Soon after that, Carlisle informed me that Quinn’s girlfriend Nicole had also arrived, and that the girls were out by the pool.
I went to the family room and saw them through the windows, sitting on lounge chairs on the far side of the pool. I could see the furry little black body stretched out beneath Quinn’s lounge chair; taking a cat nap while the girls huddled together above, talking.
Their closeness made me uneasy. Because I was excluded from it.
Now, I watch Quinn picking at her food. I’m not sure what happened to the woman I came home to after work. She had such a sparkle in her eyes.
Now she just seems anxious.
I wonder if she and her friends were talking about me again.
And why.
“Don’t they ever work?” I ask her lightly.
“Sometimes.” She smiles a little, but it’s forced. “Dani is a fashion stylist. But she works mostly on social media these days, so her hours are generally flexible. Unless she’s working with some rich, demanding client.” She glances at me, like maybe that was rude. But I’m not offended. “Nicole works at night. Waitressing.”
Of course, I already know what her friends do for a living, and a whole lot else about them. I had my team run a security check on each of them after the first time I found them in my house.
Quinn doesn’t know that, though.
“And when they’re not working, they just hang around?”
She meets my eyes. “I told you before, they look out for me.”
“Do they have some reason to be worried about you?”
“What makes you think they’re worried?”
“I saw you talking, out by the pool.”
She’s silent for a moment, still picking at her food. Maybe considering what it means that I was watching them. “Does it bother you that they came over? I don’t have to have them over here.”
“It’s fine. If you wanted to see them. I’m just not accustomed to reporting to a team about my personal life. I don’t see a reason for it.”
“We’re girlfriends,” she says, as if that explains it. “We share. They care about me.”
“Then maybe they should respect your privacy.”
“Uh…” She looks uncertain. “That’s not really a thing for us.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“I think you and I have very different ideas of what ‘friend’ means.” She sips her water, then frowns. “Come to think of it, do you have anyone you talk to about personal things?”
“No.”
“But there must be someone you trust like that. A confidante of sorts?”
“Manus.”
“He’s your bodyguard, though.”
“Which means I trust him with my life. And he signed an NDA.”
She seems to be considering what this says about me.
“Harlan. Do you not have friends?”
I hesitate before answering. “If I didn’t, would you think less of me?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what to think. It never really occurred to me before that someone like you wouldn’t have friends.”
“Someone like me?”
“Successful. Smart. So handsome.”
I study her, and she avoids my eyes.
“I find friendships complicated, and messy,” I say. “That’s why I don’t have them. As you know, I like things clean.”
“Of course.” She bites her lip a little, glancing at me. “It has nothing to do with the fact that you hate everyone…”
“How could I possibly hate everyone,” I counter, “when you’re so cute and likable?”
Her cheeks turn pink. But she doesn’t look happy. “I’m cute?”
“Adorable. Why else would I tolerate your friends? I’m fairly certain not one of them is house-trained.”
She laughs out loud. “I would pay money to see you tell Dani that she’s not house-trained.”
“I promise, I won’t.”
“That’s probably for the best.”
I wait for her to eat something, but she’s barely touching her food.
“Is there something wrong?”
I can tell there is. I’ve never seen her this uneasy, just talking to me. Even when I was blackmailing her.
“I wasn’t going to mention this,” she says hesitantly. “Because it’s not really my business. But I looked up Geneviève. You know, Darla? There was nothing online about you and her. But there were pictures of her with your brother Jameson.”
Great. She just had to go looking.
This is another reason I don’t like people digging into my business. They never find anything that makes them happy.
“I guess that’s another reason you didn’t want to tell them about her, huh?”
“Guess so,” I say.
There’s an uncomfortable silence when she doesn’t respond.
“Are you upset?”
“I have no right to be upset,” she says. “It has nothing to do with me.”
That really doesn’t answer my question.
“I’m just feeling… stressed out,” she says.
“You work too hard. You should quit the waitressing job. You don’t need it now.”
She stares at me. She looks kind of alarmed. “Why would you say that?”
Because the more time I spend with her, the less I want her working that job.
But I can’t say that to her.
Instead, I tell her, “You can keep using my kitchen, and I can help in other ways, to take some pressure off. Maybe with an investment. And I can help you with transportation.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have to deliver your cakes around town, right? I didn’t see your car in the driveway when I got home. Did it break down again?”
She stares at me. “How do you know my car broke down?”
“You took it into the shop when I had you under surveillance. How often do you have problems with it?”
She takes a deep breath and doesn’t answer.
“You need a reliable vehicle, Quinn.”
“I’m aware of that. Obviously.”
“You must be making some kind of profit from your baking. And if you’re not, you should be. It might seem like a scary move, but it’ll be easier for you to grow your business if you give up waitressing and focus on it.”
“That’s not really for you to decide.”
“Right. What do I know about business?”
“Well, maybe if my grandfather left me a billion dollar empire, and I had four siblings to help me, I’d be business savvy too.”
I’m not sure how this is turning into an argument.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t fair. I’m a little on edge right now.”
“It probably was fair,” I admit. “But I was just trying to be supportive.”
She doesn’t look happy, and I’m confused.
I thought what she truly wanted was to focus on her bakery business. She said that was her dream. But she appears to be getting more stressed out over this conversation.
“I didn’t think you loved being a waitress, or having to work in your kitchen at home.”
“I don’t. I can’t do this, Harlan. I?—”
“Then why don’t you?—”
“I’m pregnant.”
She stares at me, with tenderness and fear and so many emotions in her eyes, it overwhelms me.
I struggle to absorb those words.
I don’t know what to say. And the look on her face tells me it’s taking me way too long to say anything.
There’s a bitter, sharp shard that’s suddenly stuck in my throat, making it difficult to swallow.
“Are you certain?” I force out.
“Well, I took a pregnancy test. Two, actually.” She draws a shaky breath, and her eyes shine with tears. “Honestly, I can’t be one-hundred percent sure that it’s yours and not Justin’s. But,” she adds quietly, “timing would seem to indicate that it’s yours.”
Something dark and ferocious stirs in me.
“You slept with Justin again?” My voice is low and rough as I struggle to keep calm. “While you were sleeping with me?”
“No. No. I had a period in-between him and you. But, I mean, you can still bleed when you’re pregnant. There’s a small chance. And he and I were, you know, kind of recent. I just want to be sure, before I tell you one-hundred percent.”
I set down my cutlery, too loudly. “I thought you were on the pill.”
“I am.”
“And if you’re bleeding while you’re pregnant, you need to see a doctor.”
“Of course. I will. I just found out, like half an hour ago.” She adds softly, “The blood was probably just my last period. Before I got pregnant.”
“Jesus, Quinn.” I swipe my hand over my face. Is this happening?
What the fuck is she even telling me?
“Should I not have told you until I know for sure?”
“Know what for sure?”
“That I’m actually pregnant and that it’s yours!”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and focus on breathing.
“Are you mad because I’m pregnant or because there could be something wrong, or because it could be his?”
“Are you pregnant or not?” I say as calmly as I can.
“According to two home pregnancy tests, yes. And according to logic and my calendar, if I am pregnant, it’s yours. But according to what is within the realm of actual possibility, I don’t fucking know!”
She’s getting really upset now. I don’t want that.
But I’m fucking reeling here.
“Look, I know that you trusted me to take my birth control properly,” she says. “And I know that I screwed up because I’ve been so busy lately, and maybe I haven’t taken it like clockwork, and I… I thought it would be okay…”
“You thought?”
“This isn’t all my fault. It takes two to make a…” She chokes out the word. “Baby.”
“I can’t take the pill for you , Quinn,” I growl.
“Do I need to remind you of all the unprotected sex we had?”
“I didn’t realize it was unprotected.”
“You didn’t wear a condom and we were both okay with that.”
“I wasn’t trying to get you pregnant,” I grit out.
“Well, I wasn’t trying to get pregnant! Believe me, the last thing I need in my life right now is a baby who needs me!”
“Then maybe you should’ve thought of that, before?—”
“Is that what you were thinking about? When you said all that stuff about putting your seed in me?”
I blink at her, stunned. “That was just play. Dirty talk.”
She gapes at me, appalled. “Oh, you like to play dirty?” She gets to her feet. “Is this dirty enough for you?” She dumps the salad all over the dining table and my dinner plate.
She’s shaking. Trembling with emotion.
I get to my feet, meaning to pull her into my arms, but I don’t. I just stand there while she trembles.
I can’t fucking do this.
Fatherhood?
No.
I’d fail miserably at being a good father, just like I failed at being a good son.
We stare at each other for a long moment. She’s breathing hard.
“I can’t be the first one in my family to have a child,” I tell her.
“That’s all you have to say? You don’t want to have a child before your sister or one of your brothers do?”
I barely hear her. My mind is in overdrive. “That’s what you were talking to your friends about, outside.”
“I was telling them I don’t want you to feel obligated. And I don’t need you putting any pressure on me, either.”
“You talked to them first? About this?”
“Of course I did. They’re my friends.” She takes a deep, shaky breath and says, “I can raise this child alone if I have to. Mom did it with me. We’ll be okay.”
I stare at her, really trying to hear what she’s saying.
She doesn’t have any feelings for me. That’s all I’m hearing right now.
If she did, wouldn’t she be asking me for my support? Instead of going to her friends first?
Wouldn’t she be wanting to do this together?
But of course she doesn’t want to do this together. Any woman can see I’m not father material.
Her friends probably told her so already.
She puts her face in her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made a mess on your table. I’ll clean it up. I’m just… an emotional disaster right now.”
“It’s okay. The staff will take care of it.”
She crumples into her chair.
I just feel numb.
I tell her the only thing I can think of that might make her feel better. “You’ll be a wonderful mother, Quinn.”
She starts to cry.
I’ve just come home from school.
I’m standing in the foyer of my family’s home. I’m alone. But I can hear sounds in the distance, coming from upstairs—a door closing. Then the muffled voices of my siblings. My mom.
More than I can hear them… I can feel their sorrow.
I’m supposed to be there, with them.
I climb the stairs to the second floor, and I hear a sound that I’ve never heard here before.
It’s the sound of a helicopter in the distance.
When I get to the top, I see the door to the room where the terrible thing is going to happen, and I know they’re waiting for me.
I walk toward it.
When I finally reach it, I start to open the door.
But before I can see what’s inside, I wake up in a panic, with the whump whump whump of helicopter blades in my head.