ARROGANT PLAYBOY (13 page)

ODESSA

“I emailed you the itinerary
for our Vermont trip. I had Julie book us on a commercial flight.” They’re the
first words I’ve spoken to him since Friday, when he took me against the wall
of my office and then chided me for going there with him.

Like
I had a choice.

Something came over me that
day. Maybe it was seeing this powerful playboy in a weak moment, sensing ripe vulnerability,
and craving a closeness more than words could say.

“
Commercial
?” He peers across his desk at me, an eyebrow cocked.

Good. He’s going to pretend
like it didn’t happen too.

“I thought it might look bad if
we flew in to their tiny little airport in a twenty-three million dollar private
jet.” I fold my arms, suddenly defensive of my decision. “The last thing we
want to do is fly into their quaint little town like a bunch of flashy
high-rollers.”

He rises, slipping his hands
casually into his pockets and chiding me with his signature smirk. “Well,
Odessa, since you took the time to research the cost of the company’s private
jet, you surely took the time to research the fuel-efficiency of a Cessna
Citation X?”

“It doesn’t matter. The
residents of Charity Falls will see it as Mr. Monopoly Moneybags rolling into
town and forget the rest.”

“Flying commercial is actually
more cost prohibitive, especially for our purposes. My jet can get to Vermont
in under an hour. The hourly cost to operate our Cessna is actually half the
cost of two commercial airfares,” he says. “On top of all that, we’re going to
lose a full day of work traveling commercial. I wish you’d have consulted with
me before making arrangements. And really, Julie should’ve known better.”

Julie tried to warn me that
Beckham wouldn’t like this arrangement. I refused to listen, assuming he only
flew private because he was a spoiled asshole.

“Jeez.” I tuck my hair behind
my ears and swallow my pride. “I get it, Beckham. I’m sorry. I was focused on
the PR aspect of this trip. Forgive me.”

My plea for forgiveness favors
the sarcastic side.

“Have a good weekend?” I change
the subject the second I sense the dark heat in his heavy stare. He’s looking
at me the same way he did last Friday, seconds before his lips claimed mine and
I gave them willingly in a state of unchartered desperate confusion.

“Are we really doing this?” He
moves toward me, steady and daunting, igniting a quick swirl in my belly too
rowdy to ignore.

“Doing what?” I bat my lashes.
Playing dumb has never been my strong suit.

“Pretending like everything’s
back to normal between us.” He’s before me now, running his hand along the side
of my face before taking a strand of hair between his fingers. He lets it fall
over my shoulder, his head cocked sideways.

I swallow the hardness in my
throat. “We both know nothing about us was normal. We left normal back at the
bar, before I sucked down a lemon drop martini and three tequila shots and came
home with you.”

“You can blame the alcohol all
you want, but you knew damn well you picked the only man there who could give
you what you needed,” he growls. “Pretty sure I proved on Friday that I’ve
still got what you need, Odessa…”

He’s right. I can’t deny any of
it. But I have what he needs too. “Don’t pretend for a second you didn’t come
storming into my office like some virile–”

“Odessa,” he interrupts. “I
have no issue admitting that fucking you last Friday was one of the highlights
of my week. All things considered.”

I can’t shake the mutual
feeling. I tried all weekend.

“That why you told me I
shouldn’t have let you fuck me?” For the better part of three days, I tried to
simultaneously decode his comment and not let it bother me.

I failed miserably at both.

Beckham’s mouth twitches, his
right dimple flashing. “Because I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my hands off
you in Vermont. Several days together, just us? Hotel. Private jet. Could get
reckless, don’t you think?”

My shoulders tense as I glance
up at him. My eyes snap from his sharp gaze to the window behind him.

“Jeremiah’s back.” My
confession dissolves the charge in the air.

Beckham steps away, his hands
rising to protest. He swallows, his lips straightening. “Well then.”

“We’re not…back
together
.” The overwhelming urge to
clarify that fact consumes me for reasons unknown. “Not
engaged
. Not…”

“You don’t need to explain,
Odessa.” He cuts me off, raking his palm along his five o’clock shadow. I’ve
yet to see him with one, and I’m shocked it took me this long to notice it.
Can’t blame him after the past few days.

“Jeremiah and me.” I continue
anyway. “We have issues. There are a lot of cracks in our relationship.
Hairline fractures really.”

I neglect to tell him the
“hairline fractures” have taken shape in the form of recently-unveiled doubts.
My
doubts. And not because of Beckham.
God, I’m not in love with him just because he fucked me tirelessly on a Friday
afternoon.

It’s just that I forgot I could
feel that way; so electric. So all-consumed. So alive.

Beckham says nothing.

“I don’t know why I’m telling
you all this.” My cheeks burn.

He returns to his desk, taking
his seat. The distance between us grows. I feel it.
 
“Because like it or not, we’re friends
now.”

I force a smile that doesn’t
want to be there and ignore the shattering sound my resolve makes as it falls
apart. “Yeah. I guess we kind of are.”

BECKHAM

An unfamiliar number calls my
cell after lunch on Tuesday. Something feels off today, and going two days
without a peep from Eva was too good to be true.

I answer just before it goes to
voicemail. “Beckham King.”

“Hi, Beckham, it’s Elizabeth
from Smyth Nanny Brokerage.” She speaks with the sweet natured patience of a
preschool teacher though I hardly hear her over the cackling and shrieking of a
woman in the background and the shrill cries of a newborn.

My heart pounds against my
chest. “What’s going on?”

“I was given strict
instructions to contact you first, in the case of any non-life threatening
emergencies.” An apology resides in her tone, but I wish she’d cut the niceties
and get on with it. “Anyway, I think you need to come to Ms. Delgado’s apartment.
Immediately if possible.”

“Eva put you up to this?”

“No, no,” she says. I can hear
Eva yelling in the background, something in Spanish. “Ms. Delgado hasn’t slept
in days. She’s ransacked her cupboards and torn the house upside down. She
keeps asking for her pills – the blue ones. And she talks so fast I can
hardly understand her. There’s this sort of feverish look in her eyes. She’s
shaky. This morning I caught her having a conversation with someone who wasn’t
there. She kept saying ‘baby’ over and over, but she wasn’t talking about the
baby.”

I knew Eva had issues with
anxiety and dependencies on men, but I’ve never known her to have clinically
psychotic episodes.

“I’m not a mental health
professional, Mr. King,” she says, “but I’ve seen this once before with a past
client. I think it may be postpartum psychosis. It happens. It’s rare, but this
is what it looks like.”

My face pinches. I hate that I
have to ask this question. “And you’re positive she’s not faking any of this?”

“I’m positive.” Elizabeth’s
voice is louder now and so are the baby’s cries. I can imagine her scooping the
baby into her arms, protecting her from a psychotic Eva. I should be there. I
should be the one protecting her, even if she’s not mine. “She won’t hold the
baby either, sir. She won’t nurse and she refuses to pump. If she’s not pacing
in front of the window, she’s checking the peephole over and over. It’s like
she’s paranoid or she’s waiting for someone.”

“I’m on my way.” I end the call
and dash downstairs, hailing the first cab and booking it to Clinton Street.

***

I hear the baby’s cries the
second I reach Eva’s floor. Taking long strides toward the end of the hall, I
pound on her door. Five stiff strikes.

The door flies open. An older
woman with gray hair swept back into a bun bounces the crying baby in her arms.

“Beckham?”

“Yes.” I show myself in. The
place is a mess. Pillows are strewn about the living room. Scattered laundry
covers the floor. The kitchen is spotless save for a few washed-and-dried baby bottles.
I doubt Eva’s eaten much of anything since coming home. “Where is she?”

Elizabeth points toward Eva’s
room. I take a deep breath and head back, where I find her face down in her
bed, her hair knotted and tangled.

“Eva.” My presence springs her
to life. She rolls to her back, her eyes adjusting as she watches me in her
doorway. Her lips curl up at the corners.

She scrambles out of bed as
best she can, a painful wince smeared across her face. She’s unable to get to
me fast enough.

“Slow down,” I say. “You need
to take it easy. You’re supposed to be resting, lying down. You had surgery,
Eva. Remember?”

She smells of unwashed hair and
stale clothes, and her hands frantically grasp for every inch of my body.

Eva’s lips press into my neck
over and over. Between kisses she mumbles, “
Mi
amor, mi amor
…”

I glance behind, sensing
Elizabeth. Sure enough, she’s watching everything from a careful distance, the
baby securely in her arms.

Eva is gone. Mentally. Her lips
are moving, nonsensical gibberish filling the room. She speaks a mix of Spanish
and English, none of it coherent and all of it flavored in frenzied desperation.

“Elizabeth.” I keep my voice
low and calm. “I need you to look up the number for Dr. Evan Brentwood. Call
his office. Tell them it’s an emergency. Give them her name. Can you do that?”

She nods, dashing down the hall
with the baby in her arm and her phone in her hand.

“Eva, you need help.” I take
her by the wrists and carefully lead her to the foot of her bed. She stares up
at me, her dark eyes fading. I’m not sure she even sees me anymore. Her spindly
body swims in her oversized clothes, preventing her from looking like someone
who gave birth days ago.

For a brief moment, my heart
sinks when I look at her. I wish she had a better life raft than me. Even if I
wanted to be her rock, it would only set her back. She needs help, and she
needs to learn to stand on her own without resorting to desperate and
illegal
manipulative practices.

I stare at the woman who was
once dynamite in bed; the one who made me reconsider my non-fuck buddy policy
and make a one-time exception.

And then I hear the baby crying
again, the wails slightly muffled by the hushed sound of Elizabeth speaking
into her phone. The crying stops, and the apartment is quiet for a second. Eva
is still as a statue, staring ahead at her dresser and all the half-pulled
drawers with clothes dripping over them.

“He’s on his way,” Elizabeth
says from the doorway. There’s a tiny bottle in the baby’s mouth, and she’s
sucking vigorously, crying out every so often. The nanny offers a timid shrug.
“She doesn’t like the formula. She’ll get used to it though.”

“What did she name the baby?” I
ask.

Elizabeth shrugs. “She refuses
to tell me.”

“She
refuses
to tell you?”

“She claims her name is
just…Baby.”

I push a burst of air through
my lips. Knowing Eva, she wrote
Baby
on the birth certificate as a final act of defiance when the nurses told her I
wouldn’t be coming back to sign anything.

Sitting with Eva until Dr.
Brentwood arrives feels like an eternity, but I won’t leave her side. I don’t
want her hurting herself or anyone else. She’s rocking, and I slip my arm
around her to keep her from falling off the bed. I’m the only thing she has
right now, or at least until I get a chance to call her friend from Baltimore again.

Thirty minutes later, her
doctor shows up. I brace myself for a chiding that never comes. He rushes to
her side immediately, asking questions of Elizabeth and finally myself.

“We have to commit her,” he
says. “An emergency commitment requires no judicial hearings. I can call the
mobile crisis team and have them here within the next hour. She’ll go back to
New York General, and we can do a full evaluation there.”

Eva turns to me slowly, her
eyes pleading as if she’s grasping what’s going on. She shakes her head, softly
at first and then forcefully.

“I don’t want to be away from
you. I can’t be away from you,
mi amor
.
They’re going to take me away. Stay with me. I need you. I can’t live without
you…” Eva grabs my shirt collar and cries into my chest, her body shuddering
with each sob. “Don’t let them take me.”

Elizabeth and Dr. Brentwood
exchange looks, but my concern falls with the baby. It’s as if Eva has
forgotten all about her. My gut tells me all along,
Baby
was some kind of gimmick or tool or prop, something Eva could
use to get what she wanted, which was ultimately me.

I rise, leaving Eva’s side, and
take the baby from Elizabeth, tucking her in my arm like a swaddled football.
There’s not a fatherly bone in my body, but out of the four of us here, I’m the
best chance she’s got.

Baby
is
warm, and she nuzzles her face against my chest as if my arms are the most
comfortable place in her new little world.

“Where’s she going to go?” I
ask Dr. Brentwood. “If Eva is committed, who takes the baby?”

He draws in a sip of a breath,
his hands resting calmly in his lap. “Well, Beckham, Child Services will take
her into custody if there’s no other legal guardian. Did you sign the birth
certificate?”

“Of course not.”

“So she’ll be temporarily
placed in a foster home until Eva is able to care for her.”

“How long will that be?”

“We have no way to know that.”
He pushes his glasses up, his shoulders falling slightly. He’s annoyed with me
for being involved, but I don’t give a fuck.

“Where will she be? Are there
foster homes in the city?”

“You won’t know where she’s
placed,” he says. “Unless you’re a legal guardian. And even then, you’d have to
get special permission to visit.”

I glance down at the tiny
little girl sleeping peacefully in my arms. For a second, I see a part of me in
her. My heart squeezes. The idea of handing her over physically pains me.

“I’ll take her.” I clear my
throat, standing tall. “She can live with me. Eva listed me on the birth
certificate. I’m the assumed father.”

“Beckham.” Dr. Brentwood tilts
his head, placing his hand in the air to protest.

“I know you’re going to say
it’s a bad idea,” I speak before he has a chance. “But I can’t ship her off
like some puppy nobody wanted.”

There’s a knock at the door.
Elizabeth jumps and scurries down the hall.

“You’ll need to contact a
family law attorney,” Dr. Brentwood says. “They’ll have to arrange an emergency
custody hearing, and you’ll have to explain to the judge why she’s better off
in your care than in foster care.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll do
whatever I have to do.”

Elizabeth returns with a small
team of Crisis Team workers wearing matching white polo shirts with blue
hospital logos on them.

“Eva, my name is Monique.” One
of the workers takes the spot next to Eva where I sat earlier. “You’re going to
come with us, and we’re going to help you get better so you can take care of
that little one, all right?”

Monique smiles. Eva’s mouth
twists into a panicked frown. She scans the room for me, and the second she
stands, Monique and Dr. Brentwood take her by the arms and lead her out the
door.

The incessant wailing that
ensues wakes sleeping
Baby
and
Elizabeth rushes to my side to assist.

“It’s okay.” I bounce her
gently, shushing to try and drown out her mother’s shrieks. “I’ve got you now.”

Baby
quiets
after a few minutes, and Eva’s screaming has disappeared. I’d look out the
window, but I don’t need the image of her being strapped into a stretcher
burned into my memory.

“Mr. King?” A woman in a khaki
trench coat with bags under her sleepless eyes steps into the room. She wears
the grayed look of a woman with a thankless job. “I’m with Child and Family
Services.”

The way I see it, I have two
options.

Dive headfirst.

Or run.