Chapter 10
Right up until he walked through the doors of The Sphere in South Beach, three nights later, Noah contemplated cancelling on the guys. He would have, if he didn’t hate the thought of being alone even more.
He detested not being able to get Leia’s words out of his head.
The worst thing was he didn’t believe her.
But the more he tried to unravel what she wasn’t saying, the crazier he got running circles around himself.
His world had descended into hell minutes after she’d walked out, starting with the realization that all she seemed to be doing since they’d landed in Miami was walk away from him.
His seriously grey mood had turned pitch-black this afternoon when Sam Ferranti had called to deliver the good news. Ashley could be charged and prospectively sent to jail for a long time.
Except for the minor issue of her carrying Noah’s first born and therefore remaining untouchable…
He’d snapped Maddie’s head off for interrupting him mid-thought.
He’d calmed down enough to apologize and send her home early.
Then he’d toyed with calling it a day. But the idea of locking himself away in the minimalistic, soulless suite upstairs had made his head throb.
So he’d called Hartford and arranged to meet him at the condos he’d shortlisted.
All three were top of the line, with enough space, privacy and security to suit his needs. But unable to settle on the one he wanted, he’d dismissed a puzzled Hartford, returned to his office and indulged in a stiff whiskey.
When Gabe’s reminder had popped up on his phone with an intuitive addendum that he wasn’t allowed to cancel, he’d growled and knocked back another stiff drink. Then endured a trip at the back of a cab with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him.
Fucking. Hell.
Walking into the bar, he immediately spotted Mike waving him over.
Damon had discovered The Sphere a couple of years ago by accident, when he’d stumbled into the place after a disastrous night with a blind date who’d turned out to be a call girl.
He’d literally jumped out of a moving limo to avoid the hooker and called Mike.
Mike had ribbed him mercilessly, then taken pity on him and rescued him from a back booth in The Sphere hours later.
That booth had become their personal drinking oasis ever since, reserved for their exclusive use come rain or shine.
Noah sprawled into the nearest seat, nodding thanks when their waitress set a chilled beer in front of him.
Gabe twirled his JD on rocks and eyed him. “You look like shit rolled up in garbage, my friend.”
Noah raised his bottle to him. “Thanks. You look fresh as a fucking daisy.”
Gabe cracked a haggard-faced smile and sipped his drink. Damon took a bite of the huge club sandwich in front of him, his glance swinging between them.
“I know you ladies like to play hard to get, but would you just fucking spit out what the hell is going on with you two already? It’s getting to the point where I think I’ll need a code breaker just to have a conversation with you.”
Gabe shrugged. “Sure, princess. Just so you don’t hurt your pretty little head, I’ll break it down for you.
My sex life is going to hell in a shit basket.
I haven’t fucked my girlfriend in three long excruciating weeks, and I’m pathetic enough to admit I don’t want to fuck anyone else but her.
Has she got me wrapped around her pinky like some spineless fool?
Fuck yes. Do I like it? Fuck no, I detest it enough to contemplate hopping back on a plane to Bora Bora and strangling the bitch.
I’ve given myself more hand jobs than a milkmaid in Texas, and I’m terrified one more jerking off will literally jerk my dick off.
So tonight, I intend to get triple shit-faced so I can forget I have a dick, or a girlfriend. Is that succinct enough for you?”
Damon had started choking halfway through Gabe’s diatribe and held out his hand in a “please stop” sign when Mike went to thump him on the back a tenth time.
Gabe downed his drink and held up his hand for another round. “Your turn,” he said to Noah.
He tried to find the right words to break the news. But two whiskeys and a quickly downed beer, not to mention the brainpower he’d wasted trying to decipher Leia’s words, had worn him down. He drained the dregs of his beer and slammed the bottle on the table.
“Ashley Maitland is pregnant. She claims the baby is mine.”
Silence.
Damon made a dogged effort to chew and swallow the food in his mouth without choking again. Mike stared at him as if he wasn’t sure whether to perform an exorcism or hunt down a Hazmat suit.
As for Gabriel… he just looked intensely disappointed. “All this time, you were claiming not to know why she was trying to reach you…” He shook his head. “And you were fucking her?” he condemned in a flat tone.
“What the hell?” Noah frowned.
“Wait a minute?—”
They both ignored Damon. “What did you just say to me?” Noah demanded from Gabe.
Gabe pointed an accusing finger at him. “You claimed you had no idea why she was in Miami. If you were stupid enough to fuck that psycho bitch, I’d have thought you’d be man enough to admit it.”
“You need to stop right now, before my fist says hello to that pretty boy jaw that Playboy photographer’s been wanting to memorialize for over a decade.”
The table lapsed into silence as their drinks were delivered. It didn’t stop his best friends from glaring their anger and confusion at him though. Seeing as they’d spent the better part of two years worrying that Ashley had fucked him up for all eternity, he couldn’t blame them.
He raked a hand through his hair and grabbed his second beer the moment it was placed before him. The waitress looked around the table, rolled her eyes and muttered, “I’m not even gonna ask,” and walked away.
Noah gulped down half his beer before he glared at Gabe. “If you’d have let me finish, I would’ve told you the psycho bitch didn’t conceive my child by conventional means, asshole.”
Gabe’s glass froze halfway to his mouth and his eyebrows hit his hairline.
Mike frowned. “Fuck, I’m beyond confused. ”
Damon just kept shaking his head.
Noah relayed the story of the sperm and egg harvesting two years ago. “I never hid the fact that I wanted a kid eventually. When she got ill, and the doctors thought it might affect her ability to have kids, we thought what the hell, might as well freeze mine too… just in case.”
“So she used your soldiers to knock herself up without telling you?” Damon’s face clenched in anger. “Jesus. Fuck.”
“You win the whole fucking world, my friend,” Mike muttered, his face frozen in shell-shock mode.
Gabriel’s mouth compressed into a white line, but his chest rose and fell in silent rage as his eyes met Noah’s. Seeing the clear apology in his friend’s gaze, Noah nodded his acceptance.
They clinked glasses and sucked down more booze.
“How far along is she?” Gabe asked, his tone calm but ice cold.
“She claims two months. DNA tests happened yesterday. I get the results tomorrow.”
Gabe nodded. “Lawyers involved? She can’t get away with this.”
“Ferranti’s on the case. He has a list as long as my arm to charge her with. But…” Noah stopped talking as a wave of helpless rage washed over him.
Gabe’s glass hit the table. He shook his head as a few more pennies fell into place. “But, if the kid’s yours, then you can’t really touch her, can you? At least not while she’s pregnant. Shit!”
“Yeah, I can sue the pants off the clinic and everyone else involved in this, but I can’t send Ashley to jail unless I want my first child to be born in prison. Fucking ironic, isn’t it?”
“Seriously. What. The. Fuck?” Damon’s ex had tried to trap him into early fatherhood a while back so he was taking the news badly. “What is wrong with these gold-digging whores?”
“We don’t have eternity, buddy, so ask a simpler question,” Mike suggested.
“Where is she now?” Gabe asked.
“She’s living in my condo. I moved out. No, I’m not going to explain. Next question.”
Damon rolled his shoulders and made a visible effort to get off the volatile subject of Ashley’s pregnancy. “How did the Indigo Lounge trip go?”
Noah’s jaw tightened. He remained quiet for so long, another deathly silence descended on the table. The waitress, Katie, if he remembered her name correctly, walked past and kissed her teeth in irritation.
“Hell, was it that bad?” Mike asked. “Because Sonja came across a clip on YouTube the other day. She swears it was you playing the guitar and some hot chick groupie-ing on you like she wanted to have your babies.” He paled immediately and then howled, probably from a kick under the table from one of the guys.
“Sorry, unfortunate choice of words. But seriously, I’d hate to think I spent 250k to send you on a shitty trip… ”
Noah knew they would blame themselves if he didn’t answer. “No, your girlfriend was right. That was me… us in Vienna. As for the trip, it was that good.” The residue of beer turned bitter in his mouth. “Until it wasn’t.”
Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Us? We need details, man.”
Noah gave them the lowdown without going into details as to why he’d had to cut the trip short. Again, his friends stared at him, dumbfounded, then at each other.
“What’s her name?” Damon asked eventually.
Noah swallowed. “Leia Michaels. ”
Mike’s eyes narrowed. “That name rings a bell. Why?” His fingers drummed on the table.
“She was in the news a while back. About five years ago,” Noah volunteered. It was no use keeping that a secret. They were resourceful enough to acquire the info in minutes.
Mike blinked rapidly, then his mouth dropped open. “Holy shit. The murder–suicide?”
A knife twisted in Noah’s gut. “Yeah.”
“So you cut your trip short because she needed to come back to Miami, and you came back with her?” Gabe asked, eyeing him in that incisive way that said his friend was reading between the lines.
“Yeah.”
“But?”
Noah shrugged. “But nothing. We met. We… got together. She… We went our separate ways.”
Mike shook his head. “Nah, from what I saw on that clip, she was seriously into you. And you looked like…” He stopped and cleared his throat.
“Like what?” Noah growled.
He shrugged. “You looked like you’d died and fucking gone to heaven.”
The memory of Leia in the parking lot last night flashed through his mind.
He gritted his teeth. “What’s your point?
Friday night, she went to sleep clinging to me like I was the last raft in her fucking tsunami.
Saturday morning, she changed her mind. Fuck if I’m going to lose any more sleep over that shit. ”
“Women aren’t that complicated?—”
“Says the guy who’s mainlining Jack D because he doesn’t know why he’s being dumped.”
“Shut the fuck up, Mike,” Gabe growled. “All I’m saying is there has to be a reason for her doing a one-eighty on you.” He stopped and cursed. “Ashley? The baby?”
Acid eroded his gut. “Yeah, she says she doesn’t want to be saddled with a kid.”
“And do you believe she means that?”
“What the hell does it matter?”
“Maybe nothing. But women—at least the ones who don’t set out to fuck with your head—use excuses to stop themselves from getting hurt.
Your girl might mean what she says about not wanting to be saddled.
Or there may be another reason why. I’ve spent four ball-strangling days learning to read between the fucking lines when it comes to women.
No reason why you shouldn’t endure that torture for the sake of getting that someone-just-killed-my-puppy look off your face. ”
Noah raised his beer in a mocking salute. “Crazy-good pep talk, buddy. Thanks.”
Gabriel slapped him on the shoulder and turned to rile Damon about his cowardice during the phone call to Noah the week before when he’d failed to mention Ashley was in Miami. Damon hunched his shoulders and cursed under his breath. The table erupted in laughter.
Noah was about to raise his beer and drain it when the ten-ton clanger dropped.
Groupie-ing on you like she wanted to have your babies …
“Jesus! Oh, fuck.” His head swam at the depths of his own stupidity.
His friends exchanged looks. Mike rubbed his jaw. “You okay there, buddy?”
Noah vaulted to his feet. “I need to go.” Grabbing his wallet, he dropped a stack on the table.
“Care to fill us in on what just happened?”
“No. I don’t.” He looked at Mike. “But thanks. ”
Mike frowned, then shrugged. “Gentlemen, I think he’s just found his personal woman-deciphering holy grail.”
Noah paced his suite after he left his sixth message, debating whether to storm that Palm Beach monstrosity of a mansion where Leia lived.
Two things stopped him. One, it was past midnight and he didn’t want to come across like a desperate stalking creep, even though he could probably talk his way round that.
Two, he was drunk enough to make good on the temptation to do bodily harm to Snyder should the other guy get in his way, a scenario that was highly likely to unfold if he attempted to reach Leia at—he peered at his watch—1. 23a.m.
Gritting his teeth, he pressed the button on his phone again.
“Dammit, Leia, you have your fucking phone back now. Use it and call me back. Making me wait to hear from you isn’t doing my disposition any good. And you sure as hell don’t want to keep doing it.” He stabbed the end button, then immediately redialed. Voicemail.
“Oh, and I know why you ended us. But I need you to have the balls to tell me to my face. After which, I’ll tie you to my bed and make you pay for the shit you’ve put us both through. Good fucking night.”