Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Mason
S o far, the decision to move to Barrington to start Canton Enterprises had been a fantastic idea. Barrington’s economy was thriving, I was right in my feeling that being closer to the capital would help relations with the government, and with Barrington University nearby, the pool of engineers and software developers was rich with young talent.
Barrington was great. It was everything I’d hoped to find when I left Port Lucia behind. Although a lot of what I’d left behind was still giving me a headache.
That was exactly why I was on the phone with Colin just minutes after arriving in the office and being introduced to most of the staff, save the ones who were out to lunch.
“You’re certain Colin’s lawsuit isn’t going to affect my business while it’s still active in the courts?” I asked Alex over the phone as I checked over my new office on the nineteenth floor of the Berkeley Building in downtown Barrington. “I’ve got enough irons in the fire right now to make this launch a success, and I don’t want him interfering with that.”
“I’ve got the best people working on it,” Alex replied. “Everyone is confident Colin is shouting into the wind right now.”
“He needs to spend more time figuring out what he’s going to do next and less time trying to stop me from what I’m doing,” I grumbled, half to myself, as I opened and closed the drawers of my fantastic new desk.
I loved my new office and everything in it. The office manager Rachel had hired, an omega by the name of Hayden Kipling, had done a fantastic job of kitting out the entire office. I particularly liked the throne-like chair Kipling had chosen for me. It was comfortable and imposing.
I couldn’t wait to meet Kipling. He’d just left for lunch when I’d arrived at the new headquarters for Canton Enterprises for the first time. His desk was right outside the door to my office, but I hadn’t seen any photographs of him, or his family—Rachel had let me know when she hired him that he was expecting and would be taking maternity leave for part of the summer—on his desk or anywhere.
I had noticed a slight, sugary scent that had pinged in my brain and threatened to make me hard as I’d walked past Kipling’s desk and into my office. The scent filled me with hot memories of the best weekend of my life, but I didn’t think much else of it. Billy had smelled like soda. Hayden Kipling must have had a soda earlier. He could have still had a cup or open container in his cube now that I didn’t see.
I thought nothing of it and forgot entirely once I’d called Alex for an update.
“There is one thing you might need to be a little concerned about,” Alex went on, forcing me back from my drifting thoughts.
“Oh yeah?”
“Victory Holdings.”
My blood ran cold. I’d found out more about Victory Holdings and what it actually was once Colin and I had gone our separate ways and I’d started the process of relocating everything to Barrington. I couldn’t prove that they were mafia, but they were definitely nasty. The entire holding company was highly secretive. It was a family business, run by an aging alpha, his beta daughter, and an alpha nephew. As far as I’d been able to figure out, it was an umbrella company that had its fingers in a lot of pots. Some of those pots seemed okay, like the company that developed amusement parks. Others were impossible to trace. Victory Holdings had more shell corporations and trusts masking its activities than most people had hairs on their heads.
The whole thing was incredibly fishy. I was glad I’d dodged their bullet.
And then I’d had word that Colin might now be employed by them. I couldn’t prove it, since Colin refused to speak to me and the small bit of checking into the possible relationship proved inconclusive, but it was enough to have me nervous.
“What about Victory Holdings?” I asked Alex.
“They’ve been buying up smaller tech development companies in your same field,” Alex said. “Not only that, it looks like they might try to go after the same government contracts I know you want.”
“I figured out a while ago that Victory would be one of Canton Enterprises’ main competitors,” I told Alex.
“They have a lot more money available to them than you have available to you,” Alex told me.
I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. “I’ll worry about that when I have a few spare seconds. Right now, my primary concern is getting Canton Enterprises ticking along like the well-oiled machine I know it can be.”
“Understood,” Alex said, sounding happier. “If anyone can do it, I know you can.”
We said our goodbyes, then I hung up and leaned back in my chair. It was nice that Alex had faith in me. I was glad that we still had things to talk about and reasons to be friends. I certainly didn’t need him to be my second for any fantasies recently.
A day or so after Billy had left, after I put out the fires Colin had created for me, all of which needed my undivided attention for almost a week, I’d gone back onto the Dark Fantasies Club app. It had dawned on me that I could message Billy there and tell him I wanted to see him again, somehow.
But Billy’s profile had been deleted. I’d been so disappointed by that, not to mention losing all interest in tawdry hook-ups with anonymous omegas, that I deleted my app, too.
Colin was still causing a lot of trouble for me back then, and as much as I wanted to give Billy a call, I started to worry that he wouldn’t want to see me. I didn’t want to be a creepy alpha pestering an omega he’d spent one weekend with, so I didn’t call him.
Then things had gotten messier with Colin and I’d found it necessary to get a new cell phone and change numbers. Somehow, Billy’s contact had ended up deleted from my phone.
I hadn’t had time to deal with that while shutting one company down, preparing to battle potential lawsuits, and setting up a new company on the other side of the country. And moving, which would have been distracting enough on its own. But I had hope that just being in Barrington would help the Universe bring me and Billy back together again.
I just hadn’t expect it to happen as quickly or as shockingly as it did.
After my phone call with Alex, I’d gotten out of my chair to take my too-hot suit jacket off. Then I’d turned to reach for one of the binders on the bookshelf, curious what sort of information was being stored in that old-fashioned way.
The next thing I knew, Rachel’s voice sounded from the doorway, saying, “Mr. Canton, I’d like to introduce you to our office manager, Hayden Kipling.”
I smiled, glad to finally meet the man, and turned away from the bookshelf.
“It’s a pleasure to meet the man who’s done such a good job of?—”
A giant dinosaur could have attacked and toppled the office building and I wouldn’t have been more shocked. There he was, looking just as alarmed as I felt, glowing with health, dark eyes wide, smelling like fizz…round with child.
“Sorry, I was in the middle of something that really needs to get done,” Rachel said. “I’ll just leave the two of you to make further introductions.”
I barely heard her. I was too busy trying to smash the pieces of my brain back together.
“You’re here,” Billy gasped, putting a hand to his belly.
That felt like an admission of some sort. Not that I needed things spelled out for me.
I swallowed, dragged his eyes up to meet Billy’s. “You’re pregnant.”
You could have cut the awkwardness in the room with a gummy worm, let alone a knife.
“Um, yeah. Funny thing, that,” Billy said, resting both hands on his huge bump.
I shook myself. “Your name’s not Billy.”
“And yours isn’t Ace,” Billy—er, Kipling? Hayden? What the fuck was I supposed to call him?
“It’s Mason, actually,” I said, still too stunned to know if it was a good or a bad idea to blurt things out. “My friends call me Mace.”
“And your play partners call you Ace.”
I couldn’t tell if Billy—Kipling—Hayden was making a joke or if he just didn’t have the first clue what to do in this situation either.
Another painfully awkward beat or two passed.
“Oh. I guess you can call me Hayden,” he said. Then the verbal flood started. “Although maybe you should call me Mr. Kipling? You’re my boss, after all. Holy fuck, you’re my boss. You’re Mason Canton. You own this entire company and you’re my boss. You’re also the alpha who knocked me up. Oh, shit! I shouldn’t say that out loud in the office, should I.”
I’d started for the door after the first sentence, when I could see the panic fill Hayden’s eyes. “Hayden” would take some getting used to. I just hoped that I’d shut the door before he got to the part about me getting him pregnant and that no one outside of the office had been listening in.
You could never count on that in an office environment, though. This was definitely the sort of thing that would spread through the place like wildfire.
“Shit,” Hayden blurted again, rocking back a little. “I hope no one heard. This is so weird. This is very, very weird. What are we going to do? How are we supposed to work together under these circumstances. Shit! I need this job. I can’t lose my job when I’m about to have a baby.”
“Slow down, slow down, slow down,” I said, moving to stand in front of him. I even grabbed his arms to physically steady him.
It was probably the wrong thing to do. The second we touched, it felt like electricity skittered across my skin, all of it centering in my balls.
I let go just as fast as I’d grabbed him and took a step back. “Sorry,” I said. “That was inappropriate.”
“For a boss, yeah,” Hayden said, a wide-eyed expression of utter disbelief stretching his face. “Holy fuck, you’re my boss .”
The situation had spun badly out of control. I should have stopped that from happening.
“Okay,” I said, drawing in a deep breath through my nose. “Let’s just be calm and sort out what happened here.”
“What happened here is that we had two and a half days of kinky-ass sex, I went into heat unexpectedly, we had a hell of a breeding orgasm, and you put a baby in me, that’s what happened,” Hayden said, still too loud and too stunned for my liking.
I told myself not to ask it, not to think it, not to question it.
I blurted out, “Are you sure it’s mine?” anyhow.
Hayden’s reaction was everything I deserved.
“What the hell do you mean, is it yours ?” he shouted, probably definitely loud enough to be heard in the rest of the office. I hoped the door and walls were sound-proof. “I don’t know if you remember this, but you were the only alpha who fucked me when I was in heat,” Hayden went on, his sarcasm thick. “Did you think I snuck out while you were sleeping to have some rando on the street bang me through a wave?”
“No, no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” I said, wincing and raising my hands, almost pleadingly. “That was stupid and callous.”
“You’re damned right it was,” Hayden said.
Of all things, that made me grin. Hayden was definitely Billy. He was as big as a house and his chest had filled out and softened, his face had a roundness to it as well, but he was still the same snappy, fizzy, irreverent omega he’d been when he’d been bound to my play bed, dripping slick and begging to be fucked.
I cleared my throat, since that image wasn’t helping me to concentrate on what was an incredibly serious situation.
“So,” I said. I hesitated. The next stupid question that came to my mind was “Why didn’t you tell me?” I didn’t ask it, though. I didn’t really have a right to ask it, for one, because Hayden had no obligation to tell me anything.
My inner alpha rejected that notion so hard I nearly grunted out a breath. Mine. My omega. My baby.
Shut up, I growled back silently. Now is not the time.
“So, you’re not going to lose your job,” I continued, hoping I would figure out what the fuck I was doing as I went along.
“Thank God,” Hayden said, sagging a little.
I realized then that he was a very pregnant omega who had been on his feet for who knew how long.
“Do you want to sit down?” I asked, twisting a little to point at the chairs in front of my desk.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Hayden said, then practically spilled himself into one of the chairs.
I sat in the other chair on that side of my desk instead of putting the barrier of my desk between us and sitting on my throne.
That sparked another thought.
“You ordered all this furniture, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yep,” Hayden said, squirming to get comfortable. “Mr. Canton—fuck, that’s you. Anyhow, you gave me a huge budget, so I kind of went to town a little.”
“You certainly did.”
In fact, from the reports Rachel had been sending me for the past couple of months, as she’d gone ahead to set things up in Barrington while I’d finished up in Port Lucia, Hayden was not only a fantastic office manager, he knew where to find great deals on everything from office furniture to pens.
I tried to recall anything I’d learned about Hayden’s job experience, or anything about him at all, from when he was hired, but I came up blank.
“Why are you working here?” I asked.
I immediately felt stupid again. This was up there in terms of being the most awkward situation of my life.
“Better this than squirting out your baby on the street somewhere,” he said, then laughed.
I didn’t think it was funny.
Hayden stopped laughing.
“Okay, I’m here because I needed a job,” he said more seriously. “I’d figured out I was pregnant by the time my flight landed back in Barrington after that weekend. A whole bucket of pregnancy tests and a doctor’s appointment a week later confirmed it.”
I nodded, making a mental note to pay all of Hayden and the baby’s, my baby’s, medical expenses. I’d pay for all their expenses, no matter what they were.
“I told my parents,” Hayden went on, “and they immediately kicked me out.”
Rage roiled through me. Kill. Fight. Punish , my inner alpha roared.
I made an annoyed face at myself.
“Well, my older brother, Simon, says they didn’t kick me out, they were just launching me into my own life,” Hayden said, as if he thought I was angry with him or annoyed with his parents. “They’re still supportive, and Papa in particular is looking forward to being a grandpapa.”
“But you ended up on your own without a job,” I said.
“I had a job at first. The one that sent me to Port Lucia for the conference,” he said.
“And?”
“And they fired me about three months ago,” Hayden said. “Simon thinks it was wrongful termination because I was pregnant, and he’s probably right, but I didn’t really want to work there anymore anyhow.”
I wasn’t so sure of that. The tension in Hayden’s face told a different story, one that was sad and humiliating.
“But then you applied here, and Rachel hired you,” I said, the rest of the story clicking into place.
“Correct, boss.”
We both blanched a little when he called me that.
“Rachel is quality people,” Hayden went on clumsily, like he was trying to cover for both of our awkwardness. “I’m really grateful to her.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I spoke over him. I drew in a breath and sat straighter, like an alpha who was about to have a family to take care of should.
“What we’re going to do?” Hayden asked, blinking.
I nodded, mostly to myself, as my course of action became clear.
“I’m going to take care of everything,” I said definitively. “Your medical bills, your living arrangements, the baby’s future, clothing, diapers, food. Everything.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Hayden said, frowning.
“Yes, I do,” I said. I nodded to his stomach. “This is my fault and my responsibility. I put a baby in you, now I need to take care of it.”
“Take care of it?” Hayden’s brow shot up.
“You can continue working here if that’s what you want, but I have more than enough money if you want to stay home and be a papa. I’m living in temporary housing right now, but I’ve already started looking for a permanent house. I’ll tell the real estate agent to look for something near good schools, something suitable for children?—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Hayden stopped me.
He grabbed the arms of the chair and wrestled himself forward. For a second, he looked like he was going to stand, then changed his mind because it was too much.
“I can take care of myself,” he said, irritation pinching his face, one hand on his belly. “I have a lovely apartment, thank you very much, a family that supports me, even if they drive be nuts, and I have a job.”
He stared hard at me as he said that.
“I understand,” I said. “But you have to at least allow me?—”
“I don’t have to do anything,” he said, pushing himself to stand this time. “I was prepared to go through this pregnancy, through the rest of my life, not even knowing who you really are or where you really were. And yes, that weekend was incredible and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for eight months. Yes, I tried to find you again and failed. But I don’t need you to come in here, barking orders like an alpha, like the same kind of alpha who fired me from my last job for being pregnant and single, or like my Dad for telling me I was a disappointment, when I was doing just fine on my own.”
Ouch. I didn’t know words could sting like that. Especially when all I’d been trying to do was the right thing. I’d impregnated an omega, I should take care of said omega. That’s what I’d always been taught. That’s what I believed was right.
It had never occurred to me that the omega might have other ideas.
“What would you like me to do?” I asked in a low, slightly helpless voice.
Some of the steam went out of Hayden’s expression. “I don’t know,” he said with a tired shrug, rubbing his belly. “I’ve never been knocked up by my boss who kidnapped me and tied me to a bed with magnets to fuck me through heat before.”
My mouth twitched, but it didn’t quite turn into a smile.
“Don’t fire me. How about we start there,” Hayden went on.
“Alright.” I nodded. “You’re not fired.”
“Good,” he said.
Then we were silent. Pitifully, painfully silent.
“I tried to find you, too,” I said after nearly a full minute, breaking the silence.
Hayden’s brow went up, and emotion filled his eyes.
“You deleted your profile from the app,” I explained. “And then everything started to move really fast with my old business and starting this new one.”
“You don’t design sex toys,” Hayden said, his mouth curving and a twinkle glinting in his eyes.
I smiled fully. “No, I don’t.”
“I still think you should,” he said quietly.
“I’m not sure the military has much use for sex toys.”
“Um, yeah, they do,” Hayden said, laughing.
His laugh. I’d forgotten how much I loved his laugh.
“Please let me help you somehow,” I said, looking up at him from where I sat while he stood.
His expression iced over again. “I won’t accept any help if it comes from nothing more than a sense of obligation,” he said. “I’m not that mistake you made that needs fixing. I won’t take charity, and I won’t be belittled because I was careless and got pregnant by a stranger.”
“I’m not a stranger, I’m your boss.”
It was probably the wrong thing to say. Hayden gaped at me for a moment, then shook his head.
I felt chastised by that gesture, even though my alpha still thought I had every right to take charge of the situation.
“You’re not fired,” I repeated, hoping I could salvage things. “The company is still brand new, and we’ve got a lot of work to do in a short period. I’ve got potential contracts lined up that need working out, and I’ve just found out that we have some deeply serious competition.”
“So, what you’re saying is get back to work,” Hayden said.
I nodded. “I think, given the circumstances, that’s the best we can do.”
I stood at last. The urge to pull Hayden into my arms was almost irresistible.
“It would probably be a good idea not to let the entire office know that I’m, uh….” I nodded to his belly.
“Oh, hell no,” Hayden said, eyes wide again. “I’m not letting anyone know. I just hope no one heard me snort it out earlier.”
“I don’t think they did.”
I hoped they hadn’t. I really wanted to keep this between me and Hayden until we figured all of the larger implications out.
“Okay, then,” Hayden said, stepping to the door and reaching for the handle. He pulled the door open, and with a smile said, “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Canton.”
He stepped out of the office, leaving the door open behind him.
I leaned heavily against my desk and rubbed my face with both hands. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with already. Despite everything Hayden had said about being independent, I had the intrinsic feeling that the biggest challenge and responsibility, and hopefully the biggest joy, of my life had just come thumping down on my shoulders.