Chapter 5
Five
Harper
I exhale and roll my shoulders.
Because he’s out there.
Leo Richardson.
Mr. I Can’t Wait To See You Again—or rather, Mr. Just Kidding Fuck Right Off With You is back in my shop after giving me the best orgasms—yup, we cannot forget that it was orgasms plural—of my life.
But worse than all of that?
He’d given me hope. Hope for something different. Hope that he might be different.
Then had callously crushed that hope beneath one sneakered heel.
I rub my temples and take a deep breath.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t calm me like it normally does.
Mostly because it just makes me feel queasy.
Something that’s been happening a lot lately.
Something that’s been happening with such frequency that, heart pounding, I made a trip to the drug store down the street an hour ago and bought a pregnancy test.
Then went back and bought four more.
Four because when the first one showed two pink lines, I panicked.
And now I have five tests. Five positives. Five ways to say…
I’m pregnant.
This is a nightmare.
Because the only person I’ve slept with in the last two months…is standing out front wanting to hire me for an event.
For him and his girlfriend.
I’m going to puke.
Again.
But hiding in my kitchen, pretending to pull some food out of the oven is only delaying the inevitable.
I need to go back out there.
And I’m going to accept the job.
Because in this economy and with this much overhead and with a fucking baby on the way, I can’t afford not to.
I suck in another breath, and unfortunately, this draws the scents of my kitchen into my nose again and…
Suddenly I’m right back to queasy.
No.
More than queasy.
“Dammit,” I whisper, clamping a hand over my nose and mouth, trying desperately to block out the smell.
But the garlic and onion odor is even stronger on my fingers and I fling my hand away, slamming it into the metal table.
A cutting board clatters to the floor, scattering chopped hardboiled egg in all directions.
Egg salad.
Bile rises in the back of my throat and I gag, searching the space for any bit of relief.
Spotting a basket of oranges, I sprint over to them, banging my hip on the sharp edge of the table and sending more items dropping to the floor.
Fuck.
“Harper?” Leo calls, concern evident in his voice, the bastard.
“Just a second,” I call back, stifling another gag as I reach for a knife then hurriedly cut an orange in half and all but shove it up my nose.
Fresh citrus.
Thank God.
But that relief lasts for only a moment.
Because then I can smell the onion again, the garlic, the eggs.
Bile does more than burn the back of my throat, and I slam the orange down, sprint for the bathroom…and barely make it in time to lose my cookies in the toilet.
A-fucking-gain.
But I can’t stop retching.
“Shit,” I hear mid-puke, a hand settling lightly on my back for a moment before it lifts away and then the sink turns on as Leo murmurs, “Let me get you a cool paper…”
He trails off but I’m too busy losing my breakfast—and maybe last night’s dinner to immediately understand why.
Then I hear him say, “What the fuck?”
And I know, without a doubt, that I’m an idiot.
Because every single—positive—pregnancy test is sitting on the counter next to the sink.
“How the fuck could this happen?” he snaps, pacing across the kitchen and back again.
“You fucking tell me,” I snap in return. “You brought the condoms.”
“You’re not on birth control?”
A little late for that question now, isn’t it?
But I keep that snark to myself as I set aside the now-warm paper towel Leo had pressed to the back of my neck in the bathroom.
After the whole What the fuck? discussion.
He marches back over, snags it from me, scowl deepening as he carries it to the sink and runs water over it again.
Then he’s pressing it against my forehead, ordering, “Keep it there. You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” I mutter dryly. “And no, I’m not on birth control. I can’t take it.”
His brows come up, a silent question in his deep brown eyes.
“It makes me sick,” I explain.
“Not sicker than a baby, I bet.”
Probably not.
But, fuck, I can’t do this right now, can’t break this down, can’t think of what it means. Not with my stomach churning and my throat on fire and…ugh. I hate that Leo standing here in front of me just makes me wish that things were different.
Pathetic, I know.
And yet…there it is.
“Look—” I begin.
“Are you going to keep it?” he asks coolly.
Ice flows through me and I lift my chin. “Why do you care?”
I could have been off banging men left and right for all he knows.
It could be anyone’s baby currently playing interloper inside my womb.
Of course, it’s not. It’s—
“Because it’s mine.”
My teeth clench together so tightly a bolt of pain shoots through my jaw.
“Isn’t it?” he presses.
“Again, why do you care?”
“It’s mine,” he semi-repeats with a kind of ringing finality that gets my back up.
I toss the paper towel to the side then glare at him. “I think you made it pretty damned clear that you wanted to have nothing to do with me, so I’m going to remind you that you can’t possibly give a fuck about what’s happening inside my body.”
He opens his mouth, sighs, and closes it.
I keep going. “And furthermore, I could have spent the last couple of months taking up residence in Pound Town and sleeping with guys left and right! You have no idea if this baby even is yours!”
My chest heaves as he comes over, his footsteps clicks on the floor. Then he lifts the paper towel from the table, gently sets it on the back of my neck. “You’re not the type to sleep around, Harp, and the timing makes sense. Yes, I used a condom, but they’re not foolproof.”
He’s right—on all accounts—and I hate it.
“It’s—”
“Mine.”
I sigh, but there’s no point in continuing like this. I’m not going to outright lie.
“It’s yours,” I say, my shoulders slumping as exhaustion pushes my anger to the side. “I haven’t slept with anyone since our night and before then…” I shrug, not willing to tell him exactly how long it had been before that. No need to add to my pathetic-ness. “It’s yours,” I say again.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“So, I think that brings us back to my other question.”
I lift my brows.
“Are you going to keep it?”
I stare into his deep brown eyes, try to discern what he’s thinking.
Hope that I’ll say no and this will all go away?
Despair that I’ll say yes and now that he’s with someone else it’s going to complicate things?
Fear tinged with the tiniest bit of excitement like what I’m feeling?
I open my mouth…
Then clamp my palm over it and sprint for the bathroom.