Chapter Nine
Willa
The bathroom was almost done.
Every time I thought of that fact, I felt as queasy as I had during my first trimester.
I was someone who always prided myself on being independent, someone who enjoyed her solitude, who didn’t need anyone else for company, who wasn’t bothered by a quiet house.
I guess I’d gotten accustomed to his presence. The noises in the bathroom. The conversations we shared. Sometimes, it was just about bathroom fixtures or mirrors. Other times, we’d share coffee or a meal and talk about his childhood, mine, about Tuna, or what his house was like.
I liked it.
The domestic rhythm.
The comfort of another person in my home.
And, yes, fine, the nearness of a man.
Every weeknight when he would show up, his fluffy dog in tow. I would leash Tuna up and take him on a walk, sometimes sit by and watch him swim laps in the pool. Then I would order ‘too much food’ and invite Owen to share it with me.
He came on the weekends too, spending long spans of time working while my occasional guests cooed over his dog. And I fielded the comments my cousins or aunts made about the hot guy upstairs.
The hot guy that had started to do more than make my conscious world just a little more pleasant. Because now he was in my dreams. Though, in that quiet, private place, he wasn’t just fixing my bathroom and having dinner with me. Oh, no.
He was grabbing me, yanking me into the bathroom, and pinning me to the wall as he kissed, touched, squeezed, licked, and slid inside me.
He was pulling me into the bedroom, pressing me into the mattress, and coming over me.
He was grabbing me on the couch, pulling me over his lap, and telling me to ride him. Which I did. Happily. Greedily, even.
Honestly, a part of me was almost relieved to feel desire again. I’d been afraid that I might never feel comfortable or safe enough with a man to have that again.
Was it appropriate to be having steamy dreams about my handyman? Probably not. But it felt, I don’t know, healthy. Normal. Validating.
In a weird way, fantasizing about Owen gave me an identity back that wasn’t, well, ‘single mom.’
I felt less like a sleep-deprived, diaper-changing, milk machine and more like, well, a woman again.
It made me shower more often. Occasionally do my hair or my makeup. Make sure I wasn’t always in pajamas.
It was nice.
Maybe that was part of why I was so reluctant to admit how much I liked having Owen around.
He didn’t know me very well as the woman I’d been before Adelaide. He hadn’t met me in a boardroom with my hair perfectly styled and my calendar packed down to the minute. He mostly knew me as the woman who sometimes answered the door in pajamas with spit-up on her shoulder.
And somehow, I didn’t feel like I needed to impress him.
I could be tired around Owen. Frazzled. Barefoot. Burping a baby while he talked to me about bathroom tile.
He looked at me as the woman I was. Not the one I used to be.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
And it was probably important if I was going to be going back to work eventually.
I’d already not only needed to handle Dave, but also work on two other clients when they refused to work with anyone else.
I’d resented it in the moment. I was entitled to my time off with my baby without work stress.
But a part of me had enjoyed it, maybe even craved it.
Something to think about other than sleep schedules and preschools (yes, this early, if you wanted to get into one of the good ones), and when it would be okay to slow down and cut out nursing.
The list of baby things to obsess about was endless.
It was nice to have other things to think about again. Even just here and there.
Though I was actively trying in my waking hours not to think about Owen in any kind of sexual or romantic way. Sleep was out of my control. But I could consciously refuse to think about him when I was awake.
“I feel like she is bigger each time I visit. Even when it’s only a few days,” Gracie said, jiggling a fussy Adelaide in the living room.
“I only notice it when I look at pictures,” I admitted. “Days are impossibly long. But the time is also somehow flying. It’s like postpartum has its own sense of time. I don’t know how to explain it. But I guess you’ll find out eventually. You know, Adelaide would love a cousin to grow up with.”
“Adelaide has a hundred cousins to grow up with already. We’ll get there. It’s definitely in our plans. But things are still new. We want to enjoy just us for a bit.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely the way it should go.”
“Shoot. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Stop. Stop. I didn’t take it the wrong way.
I just agree. Time building a solid foundation is the smart way to go about this.
I wouldn’t trade my time with Adelaide for anything, but I imagine it would have been a lot easier with a loving partner to pick up some of the slack.
So do what you’re doing. Cultivate that. Then babies.”
“You could let us all help more.”
“I know,” I agreed. “But things are good now. She actually slept for four and a half hours last night. All together. I feel like a new person. And it’s only going to keep getting better. Barring no regression. Sorry. I have to get this,” I said when I saw my boss’s name on my phone screen.
Another client who just wouldn’t work with anyone else, I imagined.
But no.
It was worse.
Much worse.
“We talked about this, Nick,” I said, pacing the kitchen, my hand running through my hair, likely making it greasier by the moment.
Because what the hell?
How could he spring something like this on me so quickly after having a baby? I couldn’t be seen at some fancy event. In a tight dress.
“We talked about you not being at work.” Also known as maternity leave. “We did not discuss you leaving us high and dry at mandatory after-hours work events.”
It had honestly just skipped my mind. With everything else I’d been worried about, I’d forgotten to be worried about the stupid annual client appreciation gala.
“It is a work-adjacent event,” I insisted.
“Imagine how bad it would reflect on you and the company for your clients to look for you and not see you. Not think you appreciate them and their business.”
He was making a case to have an excuse to write me up. To start compiling a file that would allow him eventually to fire me without repercussions.
I had to go.
“Fine,” I said, sighing.
“And bring your significant other,” Nick said, hanging up before I could object.
“Dammit.”
I slammed the phone down on the counter hard enough to make Gracie jolt, then press Adelaide to her shoulder and make her way toward me.
“What’s going on? Did something happen?”
“My boss is making me attend that stupid gala.”
“Oh,” Gracie said, frowning. “That sucks. If you’re worried about the baby, Perish and I can watch her.”
“I’m worried about squeezing into a dress. And having an issue with leaking through it. And needing to find somewhere to pump, since these things go on forever. And, oh, God, having a date. I have to bring a date. Because I made the mistake of letting work think I’m actually with someone.”
“Oh,” Gracie said, wincing. “Yeah, that’s a pickle, huh? Well, okay. Let’s go through this.” She jiggled a fussy Adelaide. “Your body is amazing. I think you’re being too critical. Really, you don’t look much different. Aside from the boobs. Which are fantastic, by the way.”
She probably wasn’t wrong. Any changes I did see in my body were things that only someone who saw me naked would be able to see: stretch marks and squishy bits.
Fully dressed, maybe even with some compression on, I probably wouldn’t look any different.
“And as for the milk, you have a manual pump. I know it takes longer, but you won’t have to worry about the sound, if that’s a concern.”
It was.
There weren’t many places to pump at the event.
A couch in the small lounge that led into the ladies’ room.
That was it. No privacy and also… no plug.
But if we were in hour four or five and my boobs were starting to feel like concrete, I had to have an option for relief.
Even an imperfect one like a manual pump.
“I guess,” I agreed. “But the biggest issue persists.”
The worst part was that I’d created this problem myself.
I’d spent months carefully constructing the fiction of a happy relationship because I was afraid of what people at work would think if they knew the truth. And now the lie had grown legs and walked directly into an invitation to a black-tie event.
I couldn’t exactly show up alone and announce that my imaginary significant other was out of town on business, not without rousing suspicion.
And I couldn’t tell my boss the truth.
Not when I’d spent so much time convincing him that I had a partner. Not when I already suspected he was looking for reasons to question my commitment to my job.
I needed a man.
A convincing man.
A man who could stand beside me for an entire evening without making it obvious that we barely knew each other.
“Well, I mean, does it?” Gracie asked. “It’s not like there is any shortage of men in our extended family.”
“I’m not taking a cousin of mine to an event.”
“Okay. But there are guys in our circle who aren’t family.”
“Sure, but do you really think slapping a suit on them would make them work?”
“They are pretty rough-around-the-edges, huh? Well, we could see about—” There was a creak on the steps, making Gracie’s face light up. But before I could beg her not to, she was turning toward my handyman. “Owen!”
“Gracie!” I hissed.
“Heya, Gracie,” Owen said, brows pinching at her enthusiasm, since he’d already greeted her.
“Willa here has a bit of a problem.”
“I don’t. I can take…” I racked my brain for literally anyone in my family who I could convincingly act like was my spouse. But I came up blank.
“What kind of problem?” Owen asked.
“Willa is being forced to attend this awful formal work event and she needs someone to pretend to be her significant other. I’m sure you can see what I’m getting at here.”
“Are you asking me to escort her?” he asked, glancing over to where I was standing, arms crossed, face on fire.
“Well, we have a lot of family. But that’s, you know, family. I don’t think anyone would buy any chemistry there.”
“Yeah, can’t imagine that would work,” Owen said, that lazy, charming smile of his spreading across his face.
My belly tightened.
Heat and need pooled.
“So, would you be free?”
Oh, God.
This was excruciating.
I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
“You don’t have to—”
“Sure. Is this a tux-type event?”
My brain stopped functioning for a second.
Owen. In a tuxedo.
Owen standing beside me in a room full of people who knew me as the polished, successful financial advisor who had her life together.
Owen meeting my coworkers.
Owen putting a hand on my waist while I introduced him as my partner.
Owen possibly pulling me close and moving me around the dance floor.
That last one made me choke a bit.
Because I knew it would just be pretend. A performance. A favor. Nothing more. And yet my body apparently hadn’t received that memo.
I could already imagine the feel of his strong hand at my back. His mouth close to my ear while he murmured something only I could hear.
The inevitable questions about how we’d met and how long we’d been together. The need to stand close enough that no one questioned the relationship.
It was going to be torture.
And, if I were being completely honest with myself, there was a tiny, shamefully excited part of me that was already looking forward to it.
Which was exactly why this was a terrible idea.
But it seemed like the wheels were already in motion. And I wasn’t sure there was a brake to pull.
Gracie looked to me.
“Yeah. It’s black tie.”
“I know of a place to rent if you—” Gracie started.
“That’s not necessary. I have a tux.”
He did?
Sure, in my circles, a lot of men did have tuxes because black-tie events were relatively common. But normal men didn’t own a tux. I would wager that ninety percent of the men in my family didn’t have one.
“Great then! See? It’s all settled,” Gracie declared. “No need to stress out about it.”
Oh, there were plenty of things to stress about still: my dress, the pumping, being around my boss and coworkers who would be scrutinizing everything I did or said, and, yeah, the whole explaining to Owen about fibbing to work about my ‘spouse,’ and, possibly, the whole story about Adelaide’s biological father.
“Really, I don’t want you to feel put on the spot,” I said as I mentally crafted some story to feed my boss and coworkers about why my ‘significant other’ wasn’t at the gala.
“I don’t. I wouldn’t agree to go if I had some kind of objection to it. Don’t stress out about it. I’m happy to escort you.”
“See? Nothing to freak out about. Everyone’s happy. I think my sweet niece needs a diaper change,” Gracie said, lying through her teeth. Adelaide had just been changed. She just wanted to leave us alone to talk.
Owen moved all the way down the stairs so she could go up, but neither of us spoke until we heard her up in the nursery.
“You still look tense. If she put you on the spot and you don’t want me to take you, that’s fine. You can just tell me that.”
“No! No, that’s not it. I just don’t like that she kind of conned you into it.”
“She didn’t. A gala might not be my usual speed, but it doesn’t sound like the torture event you seem to be making it out to be.”
“No, you’re right. I’ve gone to this every year. The food and music and alcohol are all top-tier. The people can be… a little stuffy, but it’s not too bad.”
“So, we will get dressed up, eat some good food, endure some conversations about who has the biggest yacht, then head out.”
“You’re making it sound a lot more doable.”
“It is doable.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “Thank you, Owen. Really. I can’t tell you how much I app—”
“Stop. It’s no big deal. But I do have a big deal to discuss with you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“The vanities have to come out. I hate saying that. But when I pulled off the baseboards to do the flooring, I noticed some wetness on the wall.”
“Oh, great.”
“Yeah, not what we wanted to realize at this stage. But it’s better that I noticed before the job was done and you started to get mold growing in the walls.”
“You’re right. That would be a lot worse. Obviously, you need to do whatever you need to. If it’s possible to hold onto the mirrors, that’d be great. But anything else can go.”
I would never admit it, but as we discussed the changed completion timeline, all I could think of was that I was glad to know I could count on having Owen around for a few more weeks.