Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Forest
As sympathetic as I am to Autumn’s plight, I’m pretty pleased with myself as she hobbles around the office the next day, extra makeup applied to the hickies I left on her neck above the blouse she’s buttoned up to her throat.
That’s how good and hard I fucked her last night, making her orgasm over and over again, making up for the tong debacle.
It’s truly terrible, admitting to myself, how hot I found it playing with her pussy like that.
What other gadgets would she let me use on her?
I bet she’s willing to find out, my perfect, freaky, potentially pregnant little angel.
If she asks me to wear another blasted condom, I’ll hope for the same outcome, my cum stuffed deep inside the woman who dominates my mind.
“I’m going to wipe that grin right off your smug face when I slap you with eighteen years of child support,” Autumn says, glaring at me when she has to ease herself into her chair.
My heart seizes in my chest, and I find it hard to swallow. “So you would keep the baby—want to raise them—if you were pregnant?”
Autumn peers at me with an intensity that makes me sweat as I wait for her answer. Finally, she sighs and slumps. “Yeah.”
Keeping strict control of my overjoyed expression so she won’t see how greatly her words have affected me, I exit out of a client’s portfolio I’m currently working on and bring up my personal financial folder on my laptop.
As soon as Lindsay found out she was pregnant, she said that although she wanted to go through with the pregnancy, she wasn’t ready to be a mother, and she ended things between us.
She told me she would sign over her parental rights if I wanted to raise the baby on my own instead of giving them up for adoption.
It took me months to decide, but when I finally did, I opened a college savings account and a trust that would be handed over when Josephine graduated high school, and then turned twenty-one, respectively.
I’ve done the same with Sebastian and Benjamin, already feeding into their accounts with each paycheck.
Once Lindsay and her husband’s estate is out of probate, I’ll evenly divide all the proceeds into their accounts as well.
With all the irresponsible “mistakes” Autumn and I have made, it’d be a good idea to get the ball rolling on opening two more accounts.
“What is the start date of your last menstrual cycle?” I ask Autumn twenty minutes later as I click around on my computer.
Autumn squeaks into her phone, “So sorry, Mrs. Qureshi, I need to put you on hold for a few minutes.” She jams a button on the dock on her desk and drops the phone into its cradle. “Did you seriously just ask me that?”
“Yes. If you ovulated around the time we were in Georgia…” God, I hope so.
I really fucking hope so. I spin my laptop around to show her the shared calendar I have pulled up.
“Then you can take a pregnancy test as soon as tonight.” I mentally cross my fingers.
“Should I pick up a box on the way home?”
I shrink as Autumn openly gapes at me, those hypnotic eyes of hers growing wider as she silently counts the days on her fingers, then recounts them twice more. Finally, her lashes flutter when she says, “No, not yet.”
“But soon?” I ask, tensing my thighs, my cock swelling in my slacks at the thought.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Let me know when to get one,” I mumble, cracking my neck side to side, and I spin my laptop back around.
Autumn’s birthday party is tomorrow, so if we had to test tonight and it came back positive, it would be our first official mini-holiday together as a quasi-family of five and a half.
I don’t know how we’d be able to hide our reactions to the life-altering news until Autumn was ready to tell everyone about us.
Since it won’t get cold until January or February, we wouldn’t be able to keep the secret for long, unable to conceal her growing belly under big sweatshirts and coats without being miserable, sweating her sweet ass off.
The whole world would know my angel is pregnant with my child.
I sit back and shove my fingers through my hair as I imagine how Sherman would react to the news—fire me or murder me?
Fire and then murder me? One is as likely as the other.
I pull up my hefty life insurance policy to check that my house and kids would be taken care of in case Autumn does end up pregnant and Sherman buries me six feet under.
I do a double-take when I catch Autumn staring off in the distance with her shoulders hunched up near her ears. “Autumn? The phone?” I say with a nod toward the blinking light on her dock.
“Right,” Autumn says, snapping out of her stupor, her face pale when she lifts the phone. “So sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs. Qureshi.”
At the neighborhood pool pavilion, the whole family is decked out in their swimsuits and flip-flops instead of sweaters and scarves.
I can’t complain too much, despite how much I would prefer a chilly Fall season, since Josephine is having a blast jumping in and out of the water with her friends.
And best of all, my angel traipses around the large patio in her tiny yellow bikini.
The triangles hardly cover her breasts, which sway with every step. I can’t look away.
The crowd of friends, family, neighbors, and even quite a few coworkers who showed up for her birthday, is massive.
Given how popular the Fischers are within the community, I’m not surprised.
I do hate that several of the neighbors, and even Zayden from work, track Autumn’s every move, as I do, some even biting their fists, but I can’t exactly go around blinding them with Autumn’s can of bear spray.
All I’d earn is Autumn’s irritation, and I don’t need her to stress about a single dang thing since we have enough of that on our plates as it is.
I still need to get her answer about her menstrual cycle so I can narrow down the dates, but all she gives me is a sour look or teases me about wanting to know.
It’s infuriating and not at all unexpected.
We’ll see how well that works out for her when I get her alone tonight.
I can think of several ways to get the information I want out of her.
While chitchatting with Miranda, who’s watching her youngest grandchild, Clara, at one of the picnic tables positioned in a semicircle around the patio, Autumn finishes zipping up Benjamin’s new life-jacket.
She secures his sunhat on his head, then makes him giggle by tickling his cheek.
Sherman is right. She’d make a fantastic mother.
“You’re drooling,” Bailey says with a laugh from close by, sitting on the steps in the shallow end of the pool. Isaiah sits beside her with a lemonade in one hand and the other resting on his wife’s large baby bump.
That could be Autumn and me soon.
I snap my mouth closed, my cheeks burning while I hold onto Sebastian as he practices kicking his feet in the water, wearing a similar life jacket as Benjamin.
“Can’t help it. She looks like an angel,” James says, bouncing around in the water with one of his sons, Artie.
Forget my cheeks. My whole body ignites, tensing with mounting fury, when I cut my eyes at him. “Why the F-U-C-K are you looking at my angel?”
James startles, and then his expression turns murderous when he advances on me. “Your angel?”
“Yeah, mine,” I say, going toe to toe with him.
“I will kick your A-S-S six ways to Sunday if you’re looking at my angel, buddy.”
“I’d like to see you try, pal,” I say. We’re approximately the same height and weight, but I’m a few years younger. Though I’ve never been in a fight, I think I have at least a fifty-five percent chance of taking him down.
“Y’all are talking about two different women,” Isaiah says, redirecting our gazes to Autumn approaching the pool with her sister, each of them with a child on their hips.
Until Isaiah pointed her out, I hadn’t noticed Shayla and the small pink bikini she’s wearing. I begrudgingly admit to myself that Shayla does indeed look like an angel—all the sisters do, with their similar hair and eye colors—but Shayla and Bailey don’t hold a candle to my angel.
“Oh my god, you should see the looks on your faces,” Bailey says, laughing so hard that tears stream down her face, and she clutches her stomach when it bounces up and down. She looks ready to pop, though I’ve been told she still has a few months to go before her scheduled C-section.
“Wait, who did you think I was looking at?” James asks me, cocking his head to the side like a confused puppy.
“Autumn,” I answer, clearing my throat.
“Why would I be looking at her? Why are you looking at her?” James’s undivided attention instantly shifts to Shayla, though, before I can answer, as she and Autumn make their way down the steps. His expression transforms to reverential worship.
Wow. Is that how Bailey caught me looking at Autumn? It’s highly likely.
I ease away from the group, wholly embarrassed by the misunderstanding.
Autumn frowns when she sidles up beside me. “Does anyone have a hat Forest can borrow?” When I give her a questioning look, she says, “Your face is already burning. Did you forget to put on sunscreen?” She tsks and stares down the length of her nose at me. “I told you to let me do it.”