ARROGANT PLAYBOY (9 page)

ODESSA

“You going to silence that or
what?” Dane groans from across the conference table, his eyes fixed on
Beckham’s glowing phone. It’s been chiming and buzzing almost nonstop for the
last three hours.

“Never,” Beckham says. “If
Peterson calls, I don’t want to miss it.”

“Who’s been calling all
morning? Can’t you block their number?” I interject, though it’s not my place.
Can’t help but feel comfortable around these two. Despite hardly knowing them,
they’re easy to be around. Hardly intimidating once you get past Dane’s
tungsten-strength front and Beckham’s relaxed arrogance.

“I don’t block anyone’s
number,” Beckham says.

“Maybe you should stop giving it
out so much.” Dane slams his pen down, flipping to a new page in his legal pad.
“Ever think of that?”

“Don’t go there, Dane.” Beckham
sits up, silencing the fresh call that comes in.

“May I?” I place my hand out,
palm up. “It’s a woman, right?”

The men exchange looks, and
Beckham carefully slides his phone my way.

“Beckham King’s phone,” I
answer, injecting friendliness into my tone. “How may I help you?”

There’s hesitation from the
other end though I can hear someone breathing.

“Hello?” My voice lilts. “Are
you still there?”

“Who is this?” The woman on the
other end finally speaks.

“This is Mr. King’s personal
assistant. I handle his social calendar and other engagements.”

“I want to talk to him.” She
sounds like a child stomping their foot at a toy store. “I don’t want to go
through someone. This is ridiculous. Put him on the phone.”

“Unfortunately he’s preoccupied
at the moment,” I say. “I’m happy to take a message.”

“Put. Him. On. The. Phone.” Her
voice falls an octave, but it doesn’t intimidate me.

“And your name?” I ask sweetly.
It’s an old trick from when I used to answer phones at a doctor’s office. Patients
would call and make demands, and the second you lead them to believe they’re
about to get their way you ask their name. Half of them would hang up and never
call back. The other half would pretend they didn’t just have a conniption fit
over the phone and offer their name without hesitation.

“Listen, you’re going to put
him on the phone.” The woman’s words are sharp but weightless.

She’s still not getting
through.

“I’m terribly sorry,” I say. “I
just can’t do that. Are you a personal friend of Mr. King?”

“You could say we have a
connection.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

She sighs.

I peer across the table. The
guys are watching me like I’m about to perform some kind of Voodoo ritual. I
point a finger up and excuse myself, dashing from the conference room and
finding a quiet hallway.

“Listen,” I say to the woman
when I’m alone. The things I’m about to say are hurtful but only half-true. Beckham
doesn’t need to hear them. “He’s not that great. He’s just good at making
people think he’s great. He’s like a desert mirage, you know? He looks like
something we want, but it’s all an illusion.”

She’s quiet.

“You still there?” I ask.

A sigh comes through her end.
“Yes.”

“Calling him repeatedly is a
huge waste of your time, and honestly, you’re not doing yourself any favors by
acting like some crazy ex-girlfriend,” I lay the words as gently as possible,
though it’s difficult to be sympathetic when someone’s behaving like a lunatic.
“Am I making sense?”

“Give him a message for me,
will you?” Her voice is surprisingly pert all of a sudden. “Tell him to go fuck
himself. And I hope his fucking cock falls off. Oh, and my friend is about to give
birth to his baby.”

“Y-your friend?”

“Yeah,” she snips. “I’m not
stupid enough to sleep with that fuckwad but she was. She’s being induced tonight
at New York General. It’s a girl. Tell him congratu-fucking-lations.”

My heart falls, sinking to the
deepest part of me. “D-does he know?”

“Hell if I know. She won’t tell
us a damn thing, just that the baby is his.”

“I’m sure if he knew, he’d be
there.”

Beckham might be a lot of
things, but I can’t imagine him being a deadbeat father.

“He probably doesn’t know. I’ll
talk to him,” I say.

“Yeah, you do that. And tell
him to man up or I’ll personally see to it he’s paying out the ass for child
support for the next eighteen years.”

My heart races at the thought
of dropping this bomb on him. Here I thought I was saving another broken heart
Beckham left in his path of manwhoring destruction.

“What’s your friend’s name?” I
ask.

“Eva Delgado,” she says. “And
if he wants to talk to her from now on, he’ll go through me.”

“I’ll relay the message right
away.” My fingers quake, weighted by the kind of news I never expected to
deliver.

My legs wobble as I amble back
to the conference room. The walk back feels longer than the one that carried me
to that quiet hall. Beckham and Dane observe with amused smirks as I shut the
door quietly and hand Beckham his phone.

“How’d it go?” Beckham asks.

A long breath drags across my
lips as I sink down into my chair. My bottom lip falls, and my gaze drifts
between theirs.

“Congratulations,” I say.

“What the hell are you talking
about, Odessa?” Beckham laughs.

“You’re going to be a father.”
I search his eyes for a hint of something that tells me he had no idea.

BECKHAM

It’s impossible.

But at the same time it isn’t.

Nothing rattles me, but I’m
shaking like a leaf and Odessa hasn’t stopped staring at me since this morning.
She’s unusually quiet, and I’m particularly grateful. This situation is none of
her business, and I’m not about to shell out the complicated details.

The plane grounds at JFK, and I
unbuckle my seatbelt before we come to a stop. I’ve got to get the hell out of
here, call my attorney, call Dr. Brentwood and rush to the hospital.

If this kid is in fact mine, I
refuse to miss its birth. I’ll deal with Eva the first chance I get.

Two cabs wait for us at the
tarmac, and I watch Odessa pull away in one as I climb inside mine. I pull up
the number from this morning, the one belonging to Eva’s friend, and call her
back.

“Where is she? Which room?” I
ask the second she answers.

“Is this Beckham?”

“Yes. Where can I find Eva?”

“Room 8174,” she says.
“Pitocin’s been dripping a couple hours. Contractions are starting. Doctor
thinks she’ll be here soon, so get your sorry ass down here.”

“She?”

“Yep. It’s a girl.” I’ve never
felt so much hatred in someone’s voice. Apparently she doesn’t know Eva as well
as I do.

“On my way.” I end the call,
tapping the driver on the shoulder and handing him an extra twenty to step on
it. Spinning through my contacts, I find my attorney’s cell and give him a
call. His voicemail picks up on the first ring. He’s probably in Tahiti or some
shit like that. I scan through my contacts once more, dialing Dr. Brentwood’s
office and telling his secretary that an emergency has come up.

***

“Beckham?” Eva’s covered in a
pale pink gown and a thin, flannel hospital blanket. Wires run from a monitor
around her exposed belly, connecting to a machine spitting out paper with zigzagged
lines. She offers a delirious smile when she sees me. Eva radiates, a healthy
flush on her tan cheeks. “You came.”

Her delicate Argentinian accent
used to make my knees weak and my cock hard. Ever since things went south and
our foray into fuck buddy territory ended with a restraining order, I can’t so
much as think about Argentina without breaking into a cold sweat.

A woman sits in a chair in the
corner, shooting daggers my way. Her arms are folded and she huffs before
looking away. I’m assuming it’s her friend.

“I knew you’d come. I haven’t
seen you in so long.” Her eyes close softly, the machine beeping. “I’ve missed
you so much, baby. Have you missed me?”

Words catch in my throat,
stopped by a heavy dose of apprehension. Dr. Brentwood told me not to engage
her, not to feed her obsession. But if she is the mother of my child, if she’s
hours from giving birth to my daughter, I can’t be an asshole.

Another time. Another place.
Not here.

Eva winces, smiling though
she’s clearly in pain. “I’m going all natural. It’s better for the baby that way.
And I want to feel it all, Beckham. I want to remember it all. This moment.
Bringing
our
baby into the world.”

She’s crazy.

But I already knew that.

“Have you spoken to Dr.
Brentwood lately?” It might not be an ideal time to ask, but I have to know if
he’s aware of her current…
condition
.

“Can we not talk about him,
please?” She blows a slow, heavy breath. “Oh, these are picking up. Nikki, can
you go get someone please? I think I need to be checked again.”

Her friend rises slowly, her
dark gaze firing at me still, and treads out of the room. A moment later she
returns with a nurse, who takes a seat on the edge of Eva’s bed and places a
gloved hand under the sheet.

“You’re at a six, Eva. That’s
great. We’re making progress. I’ll check again in a bit. Hit the call button if
you need anything, okay?” The nurse pads away.

“I didn’t know you were
pregnant.” I take a seat in a chair and pull it up to her bedside.

“You stopped returning my
calls,” she sighs. “I tried sending letters. Those came back each time. You
blocked my emails. Julie would never patch me through. And then the restraining
order came.”

“Eva, you were stalking me. I
had to do something. You’re lucky I didn’t have you arrested.”

 
She ignores me. “I tried, baby. I tried
to tell you.”

Eva reaches for my hand. I
don’t want to take it. I don’t want to send her the wrong sign. But her face is
pinched, her eyes watering. She’s in physical pain. I hesitate before offering
my hand, and she clenches it tight.

“We can finally be together
again,
mi amor
. We can be a family. I
love you so much.”

An alarm chimes behind us,
sending Eva’s friend upright in her chair. I glance at the elaborate machine
set up behind me, squinting at a flashing number on the lower left side of a
computer monitor.

“What is it?” Eva’s expression
is washed in panic, tears forming in the corners of her dark eyes. “Baby,
what’s wrong? What does it say?”

Two nurses run in, shouting
orders for us to clear the space. They lower Eva’s bed, and one of them mumbles
something about the baby’s heart rate dropping too low with each contraction.

“Can’t you try giving her
oxygen?” Nikki’s hands fly to her hips, her demeanor unnervingly calm. “That’s
what we did with my fourth.”

Another nurse hurries in
carrying a set of blue scrubs. “Are you Daddy?”

Fuck. I don’t fucking know.

I take them from her, following
her to a changing area. She tells me I have exactly one-hundred twenty seconds
to change or I won’t be able to go into the operating room with Eva.

When I woke up this morning, my
biggest problem was the morning wood that wouldn’t go away unless I thought of
Odessa again. My second biggest problem was choosing which tie to wear to the
office.

Nothing about this moment feels
real, but here I am, rushing out of a changing room tying a scrub cap and
chasing after a nurse so that I might not miss the birth of a baby girl who may
or may not be mine.

They point me to a little stool
at the head of the operating table. Eva’s arms are strapped down.

“Hold my hand,
mi amor
,” Eva smiles. Her dark hair is
covered and a blue sheet hides everything lower than her chest. I take the hand
of a woman whom I currently have a restraining order against, and swallow the
lump that forms in my throat the second I hear the cries of a newborn baby.

ODESSA

“I’m glad you’re back early.”
Carly plops down on my sofa, mindlessly flipping through the pages of one of
Jeremiah’s old cooking magazines. “So your boss had a baby?”

“He’s not technically my boss.
And I don’t know. He didn’t want to talk about it. I’m not sure he even knew
what was going on.” I collapse next to her, pulling a throw over my feet and
curling into the overstuffed cushions behind me. “It was so weird, Carly. It
all happened so fast. I guess if you want to scare the hell out of a playboy
you tell him he’s going to be a father.”

“Serves him right.” She
chuckles. “You talk to Jeremiah lately?”

“We texted a little this
morning.”

Carly sits up, reaching for one
of my old bridal magazines. “Oh, yeah? What’d he say?”

“You told him I was in Utah
with a guy,” I say.

“Was it a secret?”

“No.” I swat her arm. “You
didn’t tell him it was for work. I think he thought it was a romantic thing. He
was acting kind of jealous, asking a ton of questions about Beckham.”

“Interesting.” Carly’s
shoulders fall and she nibbles on a fingernail between her front teeth.

“I don’t know if you were
intentionally trying to make him jealous,” I say. Carly is a mastermind at
relationship manipulation. I could see her thinking she was doing me a favor.
“I don’t want him thinking I’m running off with other guys when I’m doing all I
can to prove that I still want to marry him.”

“Right.” Carly’s hands fall in
her lap. It’s not like her to be this mum.

“Have you talked to him lately?
Has he said anything about me? About the wedding?”

My fingers cross. My toes too.
If Jeremiah’s opening up to anyone, it’s her.

“I mean, we talk sometimes, but
he’s so busy shooting the show,” she says. “We don’t really talk about the engagement.
I figure that’s between the two of you. And besides, if he did confide in me,
you know I couldn’t repeat it. Just like anything that you say to me stays
between us.”

“I appreciate that,” I say. “As
much as I’m dying to know what he’s thinking. I told you he came over last Friday,
right?”

Her brows meet. “No. You
didn’t. Last Friday, you said?”

“Yeah, he showed up here.
Cooked me dinner. Stayed the night.”

“Stayed the night?”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “Is that
shocking or something?”

Her head cocks to the side, and
she grabs a second magazine, flipping to the middle. I’m not convinced that
she’s reading the words on the page.

“Carly.” My stomach drops. “You
know something about him, don’t you?”

She nods no, curling a magazine
page between her fingers and concentrating on an ad for engagement rings.

“Is there someone else? Oh.
God. You have to tell me.” I sit forward, my hand grasping her arm. “I don’t
want to sit around like some clueless idiot if he’s stringing me along.”

It’s all starting to make
sense. All along, I was convinced
I
was
the problem, when maybe someone else came into the picture when I wasn’t paying
attention. I’ve been so focused on planning the wedding. Maybe something got
past me?

“He’s testing the waters, isn’t
he?” I ask. “Seeing what else is out there before he settles down with me. And,
God, I’m waiting around like a moron.”

“I don’t know what the hell
he’s doing, to be honest,” Carly sighs. “He’s lost his damn mind. He should be
with you. You guys belong together.”

“I mean, he’s allowed to screw
other women. He’s technically single. I just need to know if I’m being strung
along.” I don’t hear her. My mind is going a million miles a minute.

I pull out my phone, hands
shaking.

“What are you doing, Sam?” she
asks.

“Calling him.” I’m sunk. Carly
can deny it all she wants, but I feel it in my bones. I need to hear his voice.
Ask him to come over.

And then I’ll ask the hard
questions. If he’s lying, I’ll know.

Carly grabs my phone from my
hand and ends the call after two and a half rings. “Don’t do it. Don’t go
there. You’ll scare him away.”

“Fighting for us will scare him
away?” I can’t believe she just did that. “Or demanding the truth?”

“You know how he is,” she says.

“I’m calling him again.”

Carly hides her head in her
hands, turning away. “Bad idea, Sam. I wouldn’t do it.”

My gut aches. It’s not like
Carly not to fight harder for us. She’s been our biggest cheerleader for the
last six years.

My corner feels empty without
her in it.

The call goes to voicemail, and
for a second it seems the whole universe is conspiring against me.

“Jeremiah, call me back. It’s
important. We have to talk.”