Chapter 13 #3
“Oh. I didn’t even see. You know what, now that you mention it, I think they did mention that a nurse would be recording if everything went well. If they were needed, they would throw their phone down, and we wouldn’t get anything.”
“I see.”
“Yeah. Rita had to sign a consent form for it.”
“Okay.” He paused, somehow impatient to get her info.
“I’m still waiting on that information.” He wanted to send her money now.
He had no idea of how much it was going to be, but this was the one area where he could absolutely take care of Becky.
He didn’t know whether he would be any good with babies.
He had no idea what to do with them. But he did know he could pay for whatever she needed.
Anything. Anything at all. And it would ease his mind to do that.
“I don’t even know how much you need to send. Let me buy the stuff first.”
But her voice lacked the usual Becky forcefulness, and it made him pause.
Did she have the money to buy it? Because of the tone of her voice, he almost thought the answer to that was most likely a no.
Interesting. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but he knew that he was going to dig a little deeper into it.
Of course, he really didn’t have the right, except Rita had forced them to be together and they needed to get along and figure this out.
And maybe her financial situation was his business after all. Thanks to Rita.
“There’s the other one,” Becky said, and she didn’t seem to be able to contain the excitement in her voice.
Sure enough, another tiny, tiny baby lay in the doctor’s hands as he shifted it and then turned around and held it up so that they could see easily from the window.
“That’s Kevin,” Becky said, and he heard the tremor of excitement in her voice.
Or maybe that was a tremor of tears.
Because shortly after the surgeon turned around and they began to work on the baby, tying off the umbilical cord and doing whatever it was that they were doing, the curtain closed, and there was nothing to see.
“I guess we go back to the waiting room?” Rodney said, just as a nurse came out. The same one who had led them to the window to begin with.
“The waiting room is just down the hall on the left. You guys go there, and we’ll give you any updates.
Once the babies are washed and ready, we’ll tell you you can come back and hold them, okay?
” She lifted her brow but didn’t wait for them to respond.
She turned around and hurried right back inside the room.
“I guess that means we go and wait. Unless you have a better idea?”
Becky didn’t move, and he wasn’t sure if she thought she was going to stand there all day or what.
“No. I don’t.” She moved then, and they went to the waiting room.
There were two other men in the waiting room but no women.
He assumed that maybe they were men whose wives were being operated on in some other operating room?
He wasn’t quite sure how many C-sections were done at one time.
In fact, he really didn’t know much of anything about the hospital except it was supposed to be a good one.
It wasn’t in the city, but sometimes that was just as well.
Now, it was Becky and him, and maybe if the men left, he would have some privacy to apologize. He felt like that’s really where he needed to start. Even though Becky didn’t seem open to any of that. That was what was on his chest.
Except then he remembered the text from his lawyer. It was before eight AM, and it really probably was an emergency.
“Do you mind if I leave for just a moment? I’ll be right back,” he said as they walked over to the seats, and Becky sat down.
“No,” she said, waving her hand like she didn’t give a flip what he did.
That hurt, but he figured he deserved it. He deserved everything she could do to him and more.
Walking out, he pulled up the full text. Just as he feared, it was his lawyer telling him that a paternity suit had been filed against him. He needed to call for the details. And to work out a strategy as to how they were going to fight it.
His lawyer assumed that he was going to fight it.
Blowing out a breath, he looked behind him to make sure the door was closed, and then just to be extra safe, he walked down the hall.
He was going to tell Becky about this, but he didn’t want to do it first. He wanted them to be friends at least. It wasn’t that he was hiding things from her, he was just trying to…
smooth their relationship over before he had to do something that… could shatter it completely.
It really shouldn’t be that bad. If she didn’t even like him, didn’t even consider him a friend, far from thinking of him as any kind of romantic interest, then she probably wouldn’t care who he was having children with, except this happened six months after he stopped talking to her.
And he had known that there were at least three or four messages from her, begging him to talk to her, and letters that he had returned unopened.
She would assume that he was in this relationship and that was the reason why he wasn’t talking to her. Instead of just telling her that he found someone else. Which of course he hadn’t, but she wouldn’t know and wouldn’t understand.
He had pulled up his lawyer’s contact, and the phone rang. It was his lawyer’s cell phone, and he answered on the second ring.
“Rodney. You got my message?”
“I did. What’s going on?”
“Some woman named Stella Coker has filed a suit alleging that her three-and-a-half-year-old son was fathered by you, and she wants money.”
So, it wasn’t a baby. The kid was the right age. On the one hand, his heart hurt, because he might have a son who thought he was unwanted. Who thought he didn’t have a dad. Or who thought his dad was some deadbeat who went around making babies and then abandoning them.
Maybe all of that was true. But he hadn’t done it intentionally.
And he knew what the results of having sex were.
It wasn’t like he was na?ve about that. At the time, he’d assumed that because Stella was with so many other men, she took precautions.
He should have too. He’d thought about STDs after the fact, but it wasn’t like he had ever done anything like that before, and he didn’t have a stash of condoms.
He’d stopped before he became the kind of guy who did.
“Rodney. Why aren’t you telling me that this woman couldn’t possibly be the mother of your child?”
His lawyer knew he walked the straight and narrow. And he had probably been expecting an outright denial and anger at the idea that someone would be so bold.
“Because it could be true.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally his lawyer sighed, like he had to accept the inevitable. Or maybe like he was disappointed in Rodney. He couldn’t possibly be more disappointed in Rodney than he was in himself.
“She claims she has a DNA test and the baby is definitely yours.”
He wouldn’t know how she would have been able to match his DNA, because he hadn’t given her any. But he could understand why she would need one. He wasn’t the only man she had slept with in the months he’d been there. Far from it.
“How much is she asking for?”
His lawyer relayed what the terms were, and they were in the millions. Of course.
Probably Stella hadn’t realized that he was rich until just recently. She saw him as a meal ticket.
“Tell her I’ll pay, but I want full custody of the child. Everything. She signs off.”
Even as he said that, he felt bad. The child was probably attached to his mother, and that would upend his world.
He didn’t want to do that, but he also couldn’t imagine Stella as a loving, caring mother.
Just the fact that she was asking for millions told him that she was out for his money and not for the best interest of the child. Maybe he could be wrong.
“Am I allowed to get in touch with her?”
“No. Don’t talk to her at all.”
He pressed his lips together, not liking that answer but knowing that that was probably the way it needed to be.
“Do me a favor. Do some digging. Find out what she’s like. Is she a good mom? Does she take care of him? Is he attached to her? Or is someone else watching him all the time?”
“I’m already on it. I assumed you were going to be fighting this. But regardless, I’ll have that information and get it to you as soon as I get it.”
“All right. Thanks.”
He hung up. The call had put him into a black mood.
It was…not ideal. The poor child. Whether he was the father or not, he didn’t really care.
He was going to get custody of him, and he was going to take care of him to the best of his ability.
If he couldn’t get custody, he was going to figure out what the very best thing for the child was, and then he was going to hire his lawyer to go full throttle after that.
There was nothing that would stop him from doing the very best he could for that child.
What was the point in having money if he didn’t use it for good?