Chapter 5
Brunch was an idiotic concept, but a fine excuse to day drink.
The sun glistened across the water of the nearby pond as I sat at the small table beneath the covered porch. A gentle breeze made thin silver wind chimes sing above me. I checked the time on my phone—Olivia was ten minutes late.
I frowned and tapped the heel of my boot against the porch deck.
Olivia had always been obnoxiously early to every event in school—as if waiting outside the locked building before sunrise earned her bonus points—so either she had gotten lost on the way to brunch or she figured out that I knew she was lying.
I should have seen the con coming a mile away. She hadn’t seen me or spoken to me in ten years, but wanted to fuck me? Her IUD was probably just as fake as her pregnancy was, but I had been so wrapped up in my own plan for revenge that I fell right into her trap.
But if Olivia Adams thought she was dealing with the same eighteen-year-old boy who didn’t want to make waves to preserve the peace, she was in for a rude awakening.
The screen door to the restaurant creaked open and Olivia stumbled onto the porch. I held back a laugh at the pinch of her brows as soon as she laid eyes on the catfish pond.
After a bewildered blink, she tore her big brown eyes from the pond and found me at the lone table on the covered porch.
“Oh…” she breathed. “I didn’t expect to find you out here.”
What, didn’t expect that your mark would ask you to meet him at the Bait N’ Bites off the highway?
I figured my location choice would throw her off, but I didn’t think she would show up to brunch in an ankle-length velvet dress and silver heels.
My eyes dropped to her lower stomach for only a moment. I couldn’t tell if the swell beneath the twisting pattern embroidered into the purple velvet was an actual baby bump, but my mother raised me better than to study it for too long.
Olivia wobbled on her ridiculous silver shoes across the creaking deck and sat in the chair across from me. She tapped her pumpkin-colored fingernail on top of the laminated menu in front of her, sucked her lower lip between her teeth, and finally looked up.
“So, what made you choose this place?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I take all my important business out here. Can’t have someone overhearing us and then all of Elren knows about our situation before I can even get back to my truck.”
Olivia glanced at the old man fishing at the dilapidated deck over the pond. “What about him?”
“That’s just Uncle Joe, he can’t hear shit,” I answered. “I could shoot a hole through the porch roof and he wouldn’t even turn around.”
She looked back at Joe and her brows furrowed again. “That man is your uncle?”
“I never said that.”
The screen door smacked open and Olivia nearly jumped out of her skin.
Dad always said that only liars needed to be nervous…
“Here’s your mimosas, baby,” the waitress said as she plopped plastic cups of orange juice onto the gray laminate table.
“Thanks, Kathy,” I said.
“Um, could I have regular orange juice please?” Olivia asked.
Well, well. She was clever enough to pass the first test.
“Sure thing, hon,” Kathy responded. “Are y’all ready to order?”
I handed her my menu. “Get me Uncle Joe’s special.”
Kathy grimaced. “You want that much grease this early? I thought you were on a health kick.”
I glanced at Olivia, who kept her lips tightly pursed. If Olivia was telling the truth, she would be at the height of morning sickness by now. The smell of meat from a griddle that hadn’t been cleaned since cars still had built-in phones was sure to reveal a real pregnancy.
“Oh, you know I’m sore after that on-field massacre at the Thanksgiving game,” I said innocently. “I need some comfort food.”
“You and me both, sweetie,” Kathy replied. She turned to Olivia. “What about you, fancy shoes?”
Olivia’s eyes dropped to her menu. “Just the short stack of pancakes.”
Kathy took up Olivia’s menu and left us on the porch. The faint sizzle from the griddle inside told me that she was going to be occupied for the next fifteen minutes—plenty of time to expose a liar.
Olivia reached into her large black purse and pulled out an aluminum blister pack. She dumped a small white pill into her palm and then popped it into her mouth, probably thinking I wouldn’t notice.
I raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”
She swished her tongue in her mouth for a few seconds before answering. “Anti-nausea medicine. Dr. Copeland hooked me up after Thanksgiving dinner.”
Fuck. She really thought she was slick, didn’t she?
She blinked and tilted her head slightly. “You know, Dr. Copeland? Tyson’s dad? Owns the pharmacy?”
“I know who he is,” I responded.
I pushed the sleeves of my Lindsay University crewneck up to my elbows and then leaned on my forearms. “OK, cut the bullshit. How much do you want?”
She quirked a brow. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not playing your game, Adams. Do you want your fake-pregnancy extortion money paid in a lump sum now? Or do you want it in installments over the next eighteen years?”
Her mouth fell open. “You…you…complete jackass! I’m not lying!”
“You might be loath to remember, but I got an A in Calculus just like you.” I balanced the table knife on the blade’s edge and spun it once. “So I know your story doesn’t add up. Which was the lie, Adams? The pregnancy or the IUD?”
She slammed her palms on the table so hard that the knife fell from my hand. “I want nothing from you. In fact—”
She reached into her bag again and pulled out a wad of dark fabric.
“Here!” she snapped as she tossed the fabric at me.
I caught it before it could knock over the mimosas—my jacket, the one I had worn to the class reunion. I dusted off the shoulders and found a hot pink sticky note pasted to the edge of the sleeve. I peeled it off and examined the bubbly script written in black marker.
“Work until your name is on the building?” I read.
“Ignore that.” Olivia folded her arms and her cheeks flushed beneath her layers of makeup. “Your jacket has been in my backseat for weeks…it must have gotten tangled up with the boxes of stuff from my office.”
I folded the note in half and slipped it into the pocket of my jeans. Wait, she wouldn’t have boxes of office junk in her car unless…
A smile crept up my face. “They fired you, didn’t they?”
She tightened her arms across her chest. “My career is none of your concern.”
I shook my head. “Come on, Adams. Don’t play coy when I know what you taste like.”
Her cheeks burned red and she turned away, pretending the catfish pond was suddenly very interesting.
What was the sense in being embarrassed now? Besides, she had tasted damn good—gave me the same feeling as wearing flannel and eating a cinnamon roll after dinner.
But exposing her deceit would taste even sweeter.
“It was a sudden…parting of ways,” she finally admitted.
So that was the why behind the lie. She got pregnant from some random hookup, her horrible law firm fired her for it, and she was desperate for security.
If I thought prudish Olivia Adams begging me for more sex would be a satisfying revenge, watching her crawl back to me because she fucked up her life gave me a high better than anything I had ever tried in a club bathroom.
I just never imagined she would be this pathetic.
“But I thought you were a lawyer,” I said as I leaned back in my chair. “Can’t you just sue them since they fired you for being pregnant?”
She let out a slow, tense breath. “The firm didn’t know about my pregnancy. They told me I had too many client complaints over the last quarter, but—”
“Oh, I don’t believe that for a moment.” God, listening to her admit failure was too fucking good. “Who would ever complain about having Miss Perfect represent them?”
Her glare sharpened. “They were about to pay me a big bonus. I suspect they took advantage of the termination clause in my employment contract so they could keep the money.”
“You got fired because you achieved too much. Sure.”
Keep lying, Adams. A lawyer through and through.
Her lower lip trembled only once. “My bonus was $2.9 million, you asshole.”
A laugh burst out of me. “Now that I believe. Let me guess, they worked you like a dog for years, promised you a corner office if you followed orders, and as soon as you made your bag, they stole it all from you?”
Olivia held her glare as I laughed, her hard silence confirming my suspicion. I could always read her like a fucking book and she still thought she could deceive me?
I closed my eyes and held my fist against my lips to try to tame my laughter. “And you think I’m evil.”
She took in a stiff breath. “I don’t recall ever saying you were.”
The screen door smacked open again and Kathy set our plates in front of us. My stomach rumbled as I surveyed my oval plate piled high with sizzling bacon, glistening sausage, two fried eggs, and hash browns that were drowning in the grease from the meat.
I took a bite out of the bacon and sipped the mimosa—it was a screwdriver that Kathy called a mimosa, but it was delicious nonetheless.
“So,” I said after a swallow, “when is your next doctor’s appointment? I want to see my growing baby.”
Olivia paused mid-chew to look up at me. She let out a tense breath from her nose and swallowed. “I don’t have an appointment yet. I have to apply for government insurance and then find a provider who accepts it.”
I dug my fork into my egg. Absolute bullshit—she just didn’t want me going to her appointment and finding out the baby she’s carrying was conceived a month before our class reunion.
I took a bite and then pulled out my phone. “That won’t do. No baby of mine is going to be on government insurance.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I pointedly refused to answer. After a few moments of silence, she turned her attention back to her stack of pancakes. While she stuffed her face, I looked up the most reputable OB-GYNs in the city, read reviews, and most importantly, found out who had immediate availability.
My thumb tapped a pink button confirming the plan. “It’s done. You have your first appointment Tuesday at 10 a.m.”
Her brows flew to her hairline as she dropped her fork. “You can’t do that! I’m not on your insurance!”
I scoffed. “Insurance is a scam for poor people. I just put it on my credit card.”
Olivia’s face blanched. “I…I already told you that I don’t want your money.”
But she wasn’t exactly refusing it, now was she?
“If the baby really is mine, contributing to its medical care is the least I can do.” I slid my phone back in my pocket and flicked my eyes up to meet hers. “And if the baby isn’t mine…well, we can just call it a bit of holiday charity.”
She stiffened, breathless, with her garish orange nails digging into her velvet sleeves.
I glanced at her empty plate. “I don’t know what kind of man you think I am—but I’m not one to let a single mother go hungry.”
She launched from her chair and yanked up her purse. She furiously dug around in it while her whole face turned red.
I grabbed my mimosa. “What are you doing?”
She pulled out a black leather wallet. “Paying for my fucking food.”
“You can’t afford it,” I said before taking a sip.
She snapped her head toward me and I swore her eyeballs were about to pop right out of her skull. “You ass! If you think I can’t afford an eight dollar stack of pancakes—!”
I pointed at her plate. “That is not an eight dollar stack of pancakes. You have no idea how much the price of silence is in this town.”
She stared at me mouth agape, her chest heaving with her furious breath, while I simply took another drink.
“Fuck you,” she finally said before sliding the straps of her bag onto her shoulder.
I pulled my lips from my cup. “Isn’t that how we got here in the first place?”
She shook her head and stomped toward the door.
“I fucking hate you,” she mumbled. She pulled open the creaking screen door and shot me a glare. “You piece of SHIT!”
She slammed the screen door behind her so hard I thought it might pop off the hinges.
I raised my mimosa. “See you next Tuesday, sugar!”
I had never been more excited for a doctor’s appointment in my whole life. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Olivia’s face once she realized I caught her in a lie.