26. Miles
26
MILES
“ W here the hell have you been?” Diego asked as he strode into my office.
“Out,” was all I said. He didn’t need to know my personal business.
“No, seriously, where have you been? You told Sarah you were going to be gone for a couple of days, and then you disappeared for almost an entire week.”
“I wanted to confirm a few things about Brookdale.”
“There’s nothing to confirm,” he said. “It’s a small town. They’re organizing to resist any kind of a buyout option we present to them. How was your presence up there for a full week going to change any of that?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t exactly going to tell him anything about Lydia, and if I could change her mind, then I suspected everyone in Brookdale would follow her lead. But that was the story I was trying to tell myself.
I was up there because Lydia was up there. And I stayed up there because she was going to have my baby.
Crap.
I was going to be a father.
“Hey, Diego,” I started. “Your brother went through a whole paternity suit thing, didn’t he?”
“Oh, man, he did. That was a wild ride. Some chick he hooked up with found out what his bank balance was, turned around, and showed up on his doorstep, claiming she was pregnant and that he was the baby daddy. So he took her in, and thinking since she was already pregnant, she couldn’t get pregnant again, he went and did the deed unprotected. That’s when she really got pregnant.”
“How would he know that? How did he find out?”
“Cheaters and liars always get caught in the end,” Diego said. “He said it was during some deposition or something over custody. He wanted a paternity test. She didn’t. He told her he wanted assurances that the child was his, and how would he know that she was telling the truth? And she made some offhand comment about when she actually got pregnant. He figured it out.”
“What did he end up doing?”
He ran his hand through his hair and sat in one of the low chairs in the conversation area of my office.
“Bro moved her into an apartment, said he would only take care of her until the baby was born and the paternity test proved he was or wasn’t the father. After that, if the kid was his, he’d sue her for full custody and she wouldn’t get a penny of his money. He set it all up through a lawyer, since it was a form of entrapment. Baby trap. She thought he was going to do right by her and marry her and give her a life of luxury. And instead, what did he do? He sued her for custody.”
“He’s got full custody, right? What happened to the mother?” I asked.
Diego shrugged. “Since he’s the full custodial parent, he doesn’t have to pay her a dime of child support.”
“Her plan didn’t quite go the way she thought it was going to,” I said.
“Hell no, it gets worse. She’s had a string of kids. Every single one of them’s got a different baby daddy. Pretty sure she’s pulled the same trick that she did on my brother on every single last one of them. The last guy married her. Every now and then, she hits my brother up for money. He sends her on her way. And she never sees her own kid. It’s kind of fucked up, if you ask me.”
“How did he get that paternity test?” I asked.
“Why? Did you get yourself into a little situation there, bud?” Diego asked.
“No, but if I were to, I guess I would need to figure out what my resources were.”
“Yeah, sure,” Diego said under his breath. He obviously didn’t believe me.
I still wasn’t going to admit I was in a situation to him.
“Unfortunately, you can’t do a DNA test on the baby until it’s born, in which case you do cheek swabs. If you need it through an authenticating agency for litigation purposes, it’s more complicated. There’s a chain of custody of samples, and it’s not a cheap process. But if you’re idly curious, you can buy paternity tests at the drugstore.”
“And you know that how?” I asked.
“Cause I see them when I’m buying stuff at the drugstore. But you probably don’t do your own shopping, so you wouldn’t know that.”
“Interesting,” I said. “You’re right, I don’t do my own shopping.”
“Look, since you’ve been gone, Harris and I have been looking at some other real estate options. We know you’ve got your heart set on Brookdale for some reason, but we’re not seeing the numbers coming in the way we need to.”
“Harris hasn’t seduced his grandmotherly lady in the county records office?”
Diego laughed. “He’s not about to either. If you’ve been up there, then you know that their Historical Society has been making some really serious claims. Which means, if they get some of those properties declared onto a national registry, then there’s no way we can go in and tear them down. It’s an uphill battle that I’m pretty sure we’ve already lost.”
“You’re giving up too easily,” I said.
“Giving up too easily, or making the smart financial decision? Our investors are relying on us to put money in their pockets.”
“Don’t lecture me on what our investors are expecting,” I said. “I’m well aware that they give us their money expecting us to make them more.”
“Then maybe you need to take another hard look at the quarterly statements, because the longer we wait on Brookdale, the more money we lose.”
“Fine. If you really think Brookdale isn’t worth the effort, where else? What are your ideas?” I asked.
I personally wasn’t ready to let go of Brookdale, but maybe my involvement with Lydia was clouding proper judgment. I knew this whole father business was muddling my head.
“There are other little towns right in the same area, and some of these so-called towns are barely more than a crossroads with a post office. So, buying up the land shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“We want there to be more than just a crossroads and a post office,” I said. “We want there to be a reason for them to go to that location.”
“The mountains, hiking, skiing, it’s all right there. That’s the reason the resort becomes the destination,” Diego said.
“I think it would be better if there were a little additional impetus to get people into the area,” I said. “Come up with a prospectus, and I’ll think about it.”
“You hired me because I’m smart.”
“Then make good suggestions,” I snarled.
“My suggestion is that we cut our losses with Brookdale.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said as I waved him out of my office.
I couldn’t think about Brookdale because I was too busy thinking about Lydia. I was eager to get back to her, but after what Diego had said, it had me thinking about paternity issues. She was already sneaking around behind my back, running Historical Society meetings. Who was to say she wasn’t trying to entrap me by having gotten pregnant?
The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t help but wonder if she had seemed entirely too happy to see me. She hadn’t been mad. She hadn’t been worried. She was really happy.
Was that because she knew she had me in her grasp at that point? Was this pregnancy of hers really just a way to secure a man into wanting to help her?
She needed a lot of help. Every time I was there, she had me working on the inn and I thought it had been my idea. She was a smart woman. Was she smart enough to manipulate me this way?
When I was with her, I couldn’t think straight. I only wanted to be near her, make her happy. And every time I returned to the city, it was as if a fog had cleared from my brain. I was out of Lydia’s control, able to think logically and clearly.
“Sarah,” I called out into the speakerphone on my desk.
“Yes?” my admin replied.
“Put a call through to Wilson and Priest, my lawyer.”
“I’ll ring them through when I have them on the line,” she said before disconnecting.
I paced around my office as I waited for the call. I ended up staring out at the view of the city.
On a clear day, the glass towers only reflected other glass towers. There were not acres of trees turning fiery reds, oranges, and yellows for miles off into the distance. What the hell was I doing? Missing Brookdale? Missing Lydia?
The phone rang.
“I’ve got Briggs Priest on the phone for you,” Sarah said through the speakerphone.
I hit the button to connect the call.
“Briggs,” I said.
“Nice to hear from you, Miles. How can I help you today?”
“I have a not quite hypothetical question for you.”
“Sounds intriguing. What is this not quite hypothetical situation you have going on?” he asked
“It would seem that I may or may not have gotten a woman Upstate pregnant.”
“Ah,” said Briggs. “I see how it’s not exactly hypothetical, but based on the outcome, it could be.”
“Exactly. How can I be certain that it’s mine? Do I really have to wait until the child is born to determine paternity?”
“You have two choices,” Bring started. “You either trust her word, or you wait until the baby’s born and have a paternity test done.”
“And my responsibility?”
“That is between you and the mother. If she is demanding prenatal assistance, we can help you work out an agreement that if paternity proves you are not the father, she is responsible for all financial contributions you’ve made.”
“And if she’s not asking for prenatal assistance?” I asked.
“You’ll definitely want paternity established for child support. Let me draft something up for you.”
“Yes, I’d appreciate that,” I said.