ARROGANT PLAYBOY (10 page)

BECKHAM

“You shouldn’t have gone.” Dr.
Brentwood chides me with his signature lulling voice from his end of the phone.
“Hopping on a plane, flying across the country, and sitting by her side as
she
delivered
her
baby was the worst thing you could’ve done. You’ve undone
almost a year’s worth of work for all of us.”

“Missing the birth of my child
isn’t something I could live with.” It sounds weird.
My child
. I still don’t know. She’s got a full head of dark hair,
like both of us, and her mother’s dark eyes. I tried not to get choked up as I
held her for the first time last night, and I couldn’t help stroking her cheek
as she nursed her mother’s breast. On the off chance she is my kid, I don’t
want to have missed those early moments.

“Do you truly believe she’s
yours?” Dr. Brentwood has the patience of a saint. Usually. But not today. I
hear him sigh through the receiver. Nine months ago, we thought we’d put this
issue to bed. She was seeking help. The restraining order was filed.

“Did I think this would
happen?” I ask. “No. I’ve had a vasectomy. We always used condoms. But she
works at the fertility clinic where ten vials of my…
product
were cryogenically frozen.”

“They have very strict chain-of-custody
protocols. It’s one of the top fertility clinics in the nation,” he says.

“Right. And Eva’s the lab
manager,” I say. “Everything’s coded with numbers to protect patient
confidentiality and prevent mix ups. Guess who has access to all that
information? Guess who’s in charge of semen prepping when patients come in for
procedures?”

Dr. Brentwood is silenced by my
theory.

Eighteen months ago, I decided
to have a vasectomy.

I thought I was doing the
responsible thing.

I went the cryogenic route on
the extremely slim chance I might change my mind someday. That’s when I met
Eva. Bumped into her in the hall, right before I was about to deposit my tenth
and final batch. I’d never seen anyone so exotic and mysterious before. Long
neck, high cheekbones, naughty gleam in her eye, and an accent that slayed.

One dinner turned into drinks,
and within weeks we were hooking up on a regular basis until I had to end it
months later. She was getting attached. Dirty talk turned to pillow talk, which
escalated into Eva allowing herself to fall in love which wasn’t part of the
agreement.

I jumped that sinking ship while
she rearranged deck chairs.

Eva capsized as soon as she
realized I wasn’t coming back.

“I’m waiting on a call back
from my attorney. I spoke with him last night. He’s going to get in contact
with the clinic.” I run my fingers through my hair. It’s product-free for the
first time in a long time. I barely had the motivation to take a shower this
morning having stayed most of the night at the hospital staring at that
innocent little girl and searching for a sign that she was mine. “The clinic
will probably come back and say all ten vials are accounted for. If Eva
switched numbers or swapped out a vial of my specimen with someone else’s,
there won’t be anyway to tell without unfreezing the samples. That’ll destroy
them.”

Fuck.

“You’ll have to do DNA
testing,” Dr. Brentwood said. “Which could take weeks. Possibly months.”

“What do I do?” I slink back in
my chair, glancing at the time. It’s half past eight. Odessa should be rolling
in here any moment. “Do I pretend she’s not mine? Pretend that didn’t just
happen? Ignore Eva? What if she threatens the baby?”

“She won’t,” he says. “If she
believes that baby is yours, or if indeed that baby is yours, she won’t do
anything.”

“You and I both know we can’t
guarantee that. Eva’s unpredictable. Unstable.”

“Exactly.” He clears his
throat. “Which is why you should’ve called me first before going to the
hospital.”

“Forgive me for not thinking
clearly.” My fist clenches the handle of my desk phone, resisting the urge to
slam it. He’s not helping. I need answers. I need directives. There’s no
protocol on what to do in a situation like this. Surely someone somewhere has
had their ex-fuck-buddy-turned-stalker impregnate themselves with their
cryogenically frozen sperm?

I laugh because this situation
is as absurd as it is real.

“Can you go to the hospital,
Dr. Brentwood? Talk some sense into her? Try to get some answers?”

“I can’t go unless I’m called
for a consult,” he says. “The only reason we’re speaking right now is because
of the signed release in her file. That expires in two months by the way.”

“Great.” I grit my teeth. “So
what do I do now? She’s discharging in a couple days. She’s going to need help
getting home, getting around. Caring for the baby. Her friend goes back to
Baltimore tonight. She’s all alone.”

I have to ensure the baby gets
the care she needs. She didn’t ask to be born into this. I’ve never been so
protective of anything before, but seeing her helpless face cradled in the arms
of a mother who is clearly mentally unstable brings out the bear I never knew
resided in me.

“Can I hire someone? A nanny?”
I ask.

“No,” Dr. Brentwood says without
pause. “Again, Beckham, we do
not
want to send the wrong message. You cannot allow her to manipulate you this
way. You cannot give in to her demands.”

“It’s not about Eva right now.
It’s about the baby.” I don’t know what to call her. Eva asked me to name her,
flat out refusing to offer any suggestions. It’s another one of her attempts to
manipulate me, to forge a bond between the baby and me. The child needs a name,
but I need to prove a point to Eva.

I need to talk to someone else
about this. Not Dr. Brentwood. He doesn’t understand. I understand he can’t
legally tell anyone what to do. Should anything go awry, he could be held
liable, and psychiatric patients of the Eva Delgado variety can be particularly
unpredictable.

Xavier’s not exactly level-headed
these days, and Dane will just lecture me.

A knock at my door ushers in
Odessa, two cups of coffee in her hands.

“I’ll call you back,” I say to
Dr. Brentwood.

“Beckham, whatever you do, do
not engage with Eva,” I hear him say before I hang up.

“Figured you could use one of
these.” Odessa places a cup on my desk, her gaze scanning the bags hanging
under my eyes. “Long night?”

“Very.” I take the Styrofoam
cup. “Thank you.”

She takes a seat across from
me, her tablet tucked neatly under her arm.

“Shit. The website,” I say.
“Sorry. I completely forgot.”

“It’s fine, Beckham.” There’s
something softer about her today, like she’s going easy on me. “You’re going
through some stuff. I understand.”

I almost wish she’d fling a jab
at me. Make an underhanded remark. Anything to make my life feel like it did
twenty-four hours ago.

Fuck, life was simple then.

“Everything go well?” She
crosses her legs and sits straight. “It was a girl, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“The friend. She told me. I
didn’t want to be the one to tell you,” she says. “Not my place.”

“Fair enough.”

“Have any pictures?” Odessa
asks. I suppose her question is only natural.

I take out my phone. “I don’t
know.”

“You don’t know?” She laughs,
leaning closer.

I honestly don’t recall. I
spent most of last night in a daze. Thumbing through my photo album, I come
across a picture I must’ve snapped toward the end of the night, just before
going home. The memory of taking it escapes me but there it is.

I hand my phone to Odessa who
smiles at the photo of the sleeping baby in Eva’s arms.

“She’s beautiful,” Odessa says.
“Like her mother.”

My lips part, the truth
lingering on the tip of my tongue.

She hands the phone back, and I
go to tuck it away but it starts to ring. My attorney’s name flashes on the
screen.

“I have to take this,” I say.
Odessa rises, hurrying out of the room. “Roger, what do we know?”

ODESSA

The second I shut Beckham’s
office door, I hear him mutter something about a DNA test.

Seriously?

Some woman he obviously had
sexual relations with in the past just had a baby and his biggest priority is
doing a DNA test? The fact that he flew back to New York the second he got the
news leads me to believe he feels the baby is his, so I’m struggling to find
sympathy for his little predicament.

Serves him right.

And he should be
there
. At the hospital. Not sitting at
his desk making phone calls.

That poor woman.

I felt sorry for him yesterday
on the plane. He didn’t say more than a handful of words, and he sat there
staring ahead with his legs crossed and his ankle bouncing for damn near five
hours.

The coffee was a peace
offering. For whatever reason, I felt sorry for him, which in retrospect was a
huge mistake.

When I return to my office, I
check my phone for the millionth time. Jeremiah still hasn’t called me back.
It’s not like him. Break or no break, he’s not the type to ever ignore someone.

Especially not me.

I fire off an email to Dane and
Beckham with a link to the preliminary website and ask for feedback. After
that, I return a call to the Charity Falls Register to confirm the interview
date and time. Yanking out a fresh legal pad, I jot down some key statistics
and points I want Beckham to hone in on during his interview.

An hour of immersing myself in
work leads me right back to where I started: worrying about Jeremiah.

Dragging in a defeated breath,
I check his blog. The interface hasn’t changed. We did a good enough job with
it, that the show’s branding has been coordinated around it. I click on the
latest blog post: a recipe for sweet potato pie tied in with some pie crust
sponsorship. He didn’t write it. Those aren’t his words. Some intern must’ve
put that together for him.

I’d be lying if I said
picturing him swarmed with college interns and industry executives all day
didn’t hollow out my heart.

Scrolling through pictures on
my phone of better days, I stop when I get to the one of me sitting on his lap
last Christmas at my parents’ house in Minneapolis. We wore matching cable knit
sweaters and Jeremiah donned a Santa hat my nephew had given him the previous
year.

The Jer and Sam in that picture
are content. Carefree. Living for the moment. Excited for the future. Our
relationship was easy and effortless. We used to be so happy.

“I’m heading out for a bit.”

Startled, I glance up and see
Beckham in my doorway.

“Going to the hospital?” I ask.

“Absolutely not.” His face
scrunches as if my question insults him.

Maybe it’s residual resentment
still coursing my veins and mixing with the flood of nostalgia and insecurity,
but I feel the words rising in my throat before I have a chance to stop them.

“That’s shitty, don’t you
think?” I can’t believe I just said that. A fresh batch of sharp opinions form
fresh in my mind, snapping to the surface before I have a chance to stop them.
“Shouldn’t you be with your family right now?”

Beckham’s usually relaxed
composure tightens, starting with his mouth and followed by his jaw, trailing
down his shoulders until it gets to his clenched fists.

“Please tell me you’re going to
man up and take responsibility,” I say. I regret the words the second they come
out, but I’m powerless. All my fears, apprehensions, and anger swirl together
and cloud my better judgment. “Maybe the universe is trying to tell you it’s
time to stop screwing around and settle down. Have to grow up sooner or later.”

Beckham’s eyes darken. “You.
Know. Nothing.”

Shit.

In an instant, he’s gone. And
now I feel like the world’s biggest asshole. Running after him, I grab his arm
by the time he’s halfway down the hall. He stops, jerking his elbow from my
grasp, and turns to me.

“I’m sorry.” My palm covers my heart.
“I mean it. I shouldn’t have said those things, Beckham. I…”

He studies my face, staring
down his nose and breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat again. My
mother once told me tacking on a bunch of excuses to an apology does nothing but
dilute it. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”

I feel the need to apologize
twenty-five additional times, slathering him in apologies until he assures me
it’s okay.

There’s no acceptance in his
stern gaze, only a bitterness that chills me.

“I don’t know your situation,”
I add. “I shouldn’t judge.”

“No, Odessa. You shouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I heard you the first three
times.”

“If there’s anything you need…”
I sound pathetic. I know that. He’s probably wondering what the hell is wrong
with me. I’m starting to wonder the same.

“I need you to stop groveling,”
he says. “I don’t like this version of you.”

Me
neither.

He steps toward me, and I amble
backwards until I hit a nearby wall. I shut my eyes, breathing in his clean
scent. It transports me to that night when I was just a girl in a bar and he
was just a guy with every promise of wicked intentions.

“Today, of all days…” Beckham
leaves his thought unfinished, his face twisted.

“I know,” I say, my eyes
protesting and apologizing all at once. “You’re going through some stuff. I’ll
leave you alone.”

“No, Odessa. I want you to
treat me the way you did before.” His hand cups my jaw. “Don’t bring me coffee
and act like we’re best friends all of a sudden because you feel sorry for me.
And fuck, don’t you
ever
accuse me of
being a shitty person because I’ve been nothing but honest with every woman
I’ve ever taken home.”

His thumb traces my lower lip,
leaving a trail of tingles. I offer an understanding nod, scared to breathe
another word.

“I want everything to go back
to how it was a couple days ago,” he sighs.

“I don’t understand.”

A couple days ago we did
nothing but bicker, and my intentional thorniness was like emotional pepper
spray between us.

“You want me to be rude to
you?” I ask.

His hand leaves my jaw,
trailing down my arm.

“Two days ago, my biggest
problem was figuring out how to convince you not to hate me. Two days ago, my
main priority was seeing how long it would take for me to fuck that hard-to-get
pussy of yours again because not having the upper hand with you is the most
infuriating thing I’ve ever experienced.” His eyes roll before he looks to the
side. “Until yesterday.”

My mouth falls, my head and
heart trying to reconcile the squall of emotions coursing through me.

“Fuck, Odessa. Life was easy
then.” Anger abandons his expression, though pain wasted no time replacing it.
His tongue glides across his bottom lip. “You threw up barricade after
barricade, and I spent my time plotting ways to break them down so I could have
you one more time.”

I
knew it.

“I had no intentions of
sleeping with you again,” I say, keeping my voice low in case Julie hears us.

“But I had every intention getting
exactly what I wanted from you,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind my
ear.

His thumb grazes my cheek,
sending pinpricks down my spine. My chest rises and falls.
When did I lose my breath?
A tingling sensation washes over my
palms as they rest flat against the wall behind me. The ache in my hands urges
me to grab onto something, preferably him, but I’m safely frozen in place.

“Unfortunately.” He frowns.
“I’ve got a mess to clean up, and I’m quite certain by the time I’m done,
you’ll be back with that jackass.”

A sliver of me doesn’t want him
to give up that easily. The rest of me scolds that sliver for entertaining such
an inappropriate thought.

“It was fun while it lasted,
huh?” My voice breaks, but my gaze holds steady, locked in his.

Beckham pulls away, and I
exhale. “For the record, you didn’t stand a chance.”

He flashes a smirk. The Beckham
I first met is still alive and well in there somewhere, hidden behind the fact
that life as he knows it has just come to a screeching halt.

“Likewise.” The corner of my
mouth pulls. My eyes trace the perfect shape of his mouth, sending heat to my
lips. I wonder if it’s possible to miss a kiss you never knew you wanted.

Beckham’s everything I never
wanted and nothing I need. He should be with his new family, and I should to
try to fix things with Jeremiah.

It’s just the way it has to be.