Jilted (5 page)

Skylar shook with nerves. She hadn’t seen Ashley since their wedding day and she wasn’t sure how she’d react when she saw him again. The last two months of her life had been hellish thanks to him, but finding out that she was pregnant had been a blow she hadn’t expected. A couple weeks before the wedding was the last time they’d been intimate so she was absolutely certain that was when they had conceived. She was on birth control so she wasn’t sure how that could have happened, but according to the doctor, nothing was one hundred percent. But just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. Three times worse.

“I don’t understand how this happened?” Skylar whispered as they wheeled her bed to the x-ray unit for an ultrasound. Her mother had sat with her while she tried to reconcile with this news. How would she support a child without a father and no current job? She was sure she could wait tables again, but that wasn’t nearly enough. Besides, she still had to pass the bar before looking for a well-paying position.

As the ultrasound technician stepped into the room, she explained the process which Skylar vaguely listened to. Everything seemed so surreal at the moment and besides being sick, she had this to deal with.

Priscilla raised her gown to assist the technician, exposing her stomach. Her belly had never been flat so it looked the same to Skylar. She found it hard to believe there was a child inside of her. She winched when the technician squirted a warm gel on her belly. Skylar then watched the monitor as the tech placed a probe on her stomach.

“Hmm, congratulations! This is exciting!” The technician exclaimed.

“I’m sure you do these all the time,” Skylar said still staring at the screen, not sure what she was looking at.

“I do, but it’s not every day I see multiples.”

“Multiples?” Priscilla and Skylar spoke at the same time.

The technician frowned. “Well, you’ll get the final word from the doctor, but take a look here.” She pointed to a spot on the screen that looked like a circle with a dot in the center. “That’s one embryotic sac right there. Baby A. and then over here is another sac but looks like….”

“What?” Skylar asked not sure if she could bear any more surprises.

“Well, it looks like this sac over here has two inside of it. Baby B and C.”

Skylar passed out from shock.

Triplets. The only thing that could make her life worse at the moment was having a piano fall out of the sky and landing on top of her. It just seemed like the hits kept coming. Her first instinct was to abort the embryos but later when the doctor came into the room to confirm that she was indeed expecting triplets, he’d hooked her up to a heartbeat monitor. When she heard their steady heartbeats she knew she couldn’t do it. They were a part of her.

Had it not been up to her, Skylar would have completely kept Ashley out of the equation and not tell him about the children, but it was her mother who had made her see reason. And it made sense. Skylar had grown up without a father as he’d been incarcerated for most of her life, so what kind of person would she be if she deprived her kids of an opportunity to form a relationship with their father?

It was why as soon as she had recuperated enough to move about; she’d desperately tried to get in touch with him. So when he didn’t answer her texts and calls, she visited his apartment only to be turned away and threatened with the police. Skylar had even swallowed her pride and gone to his mother’s home in hopes of maybe convincing the other woman to let her at least talk to Ashley. Skylar had hoped that if Katherine Hollingsworth didn’t do it for her, she’d do it for her grandchildren, but she didn’t even get the chance to tell Mrs. Hollingsworth about the baby before she was unceremoniously kicked off the property, which is why she was at Ashley’s office today.

It was her last hope. Considering how hard it was to get in contact with him, she was surprised that he finally agreed to see her. Though she was still broken inside over what he’d done and still didn’t have the answers, her focus had shifted to their unborn children. If they weren’t meant to be together then so be it, but he couldn’t deny their babies.

The security guard who’d rode up the elevator with Skylar eyed her warily. She’d seen him many times before when she was once welcome here. He’d been much more cordial then. It was a bit humiliating to show up to this building and be recognized and pitied. When the elevator door opened, she came face to face with none other than Katherine Hollingsworth.

The older woman sneered and crinkled her nose in obvious disgust. “How dare you show up at my son’s office as if you have the right? He doesn’t want you so stop trying.”

Ashley’s mother had never exactly been friendly toward her, and Skylar had a pretty good idea why, but this open hostility was the last thing she needed. Not today. “What I have to say to Ashley is between me and him. So if you can excuse me.” Skylar tried to bypass the woman but was blocked.

“No, you are not excused. Who do you think you are? He doesn’t want you. In fact, Ashley has moved on to someone who is infinitely more appropriate than you. He even took her to Dubai and from my understanding things got very intimate.”

Pain shot through her core at the taunt. She already knew he’d gone to Dubai, but she didn’t know he’d taken another woman with him. Skylar was tempted to turn around and get back on the elevator but she realized she had more than herself to think about. “I’m sure you took great pleasure in telling me that but it doesn’t matter.” She sidestepped the other woman and would have kept going but Katherine grabbed her shoulder, digging her nails in. “Don’t you dare walk away from me,
girl
. I’m not done with you.”

Fed up, Skylar whirled around. “Don’t touch me! I get it! You don’t like me and I’m sure you celebrated when Ashley dumped me, but what you’re not going to do is talk down to me and degrade me like I’m beneath you.” Skylar being short in stature had to look up at the other woman, but she stood toe to toe with her fists clenched.

She didn’t realize she’d been yelling until a few associates came out into the hallway and among them was Ashley.

Her heart skipped a beat. Seeing him right now made her heart break all over again. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Ashley,” she whispered.

He stared at her, his expression unreadable.

“She attacked me!” Katherine exclaimed, with her hand over her chest as if she was having a case of the vapors.

Was this real life? Skylar turned to see the older woman and stared at her in horror. “I didn’t touch you!”

“Skylar!” Ashley roared as he stalked toward her. He caught her by the arm and dragged her toward his office.

She was too stunned to react until he slammed the door behind them. Before she could get a word out however, Ashley went on the attack.

“Are you out of your fucking mind? What they hell is wrong with you coming to my place of business like some goddamn psycho and then assaulting my mother on top of it?”

His harsh words galvanized her into speech. “I didn’t lay a hand on that woman. And I wouldn’t have shown up here had you returned my calls. I’ve tried to go to your apartment but you had security kick me out.”

“Then what makes you think you’d be welcome here? We’re finished and frankly I thought you would have the good sense to stay away.”

“I don’t want to be here as much as you don’t want me here but I thought it would only be fair to tell you my news in person.”

He glared at her, nostrils flaring. “There’s absolutely nothing you have to say that I would be interested in. And just so we’re clear, I want you to leave this office and vacate my life for good. I don’t want you to contact me by fax, text, email, or snail mail. Don’t fucking show up at my home and don’t come near my family or I will be forced to take legal action. You haven’t passed the bar yet, have you? I suggest you focus on that and pray that you find a decent job because if you ever pull this bullshit again, I will make sure you won’t even get a job being a janitor in a legal aid building. Now get the fuck out of my office!” He screamed.

With each angry word that spewed from his lips, a little bit of her died on the inside. This was the man she had intended to spend the rest of her life with. That he could look at her with so much contempt in his eyes and treat her as if she were a speck of dust on the bottom of his Italian leather shoes, hurt just as much as when he’d humiliated her at the altar. As tempted as she was to walk away, she had to fight for the babies she carried. “I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

He froze. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m pregnant with tr—”

“Liar! Are you fucking serious?”

“It’s true! I have the ultrasound in my purse.” She frantically tugged on the zipper of her pocketbook.

“Save it. I’m fucking tired of your lies. Weren’t you the one who told me you were on birth control, and had been since you were a teenager because of an irregular cycle? But here you are, pregnant out of the blue. And by some off chance that you are pregnant, I doubt it’s mine. You’ve been fucking around behind my back since we’ve been together. Who knows how many men you’ve spread your legs for?” he sneered.

Unable to take any more of his verbal abuse she closed the gap between the two of them and slammed her open palm against his cheek. She put as much strength as she could muster in that slap. “You are the only one I’ve been with and you know that.”

Ashley’s left cheek was now fire engine red. He glared at her. Before she realized what he was about to do, he turned around and strode over to his desk. He opened the drawer and pulled out a large manila envelope and dumped its contents on the desk. “Care to repeat how faithful you’ve been?”

She frowned. “What are those?”

“Have a look.”

Skylar moved closer to the desk and what she saw made her gasp. In the photos were her and some man in bed. She was stark naked and her arms were entangled with this mystery man’s. She dropped the pictures, disgusted. The woman in the picture was her, but they there was no way they were real. She would have certainly remembered something like this. Besides, Ashley had been her first and only lover. “These have to be doctored. I’ve never met that man in my life.”

“Lying to the end.” The suspicious sheen of tears glistened in his eyes momentarily but Skylar was certain she had imagined it because Ashley Hollingsworth didn’t have a heart.

“I don’t know where you got these pictures but if this is your excuse for doing what you did to me, then so be it. Just know one thing, one day you will regret this.” Tears streamed down her face. It took every grain of the little pride she had left to not throw herself at his feet and demand that he be the man she’d fallen in love with. But seeing him as he was now, there was simply no getting through to him. His family had won and the Ashley she thought she knew no longer existed.

“The only thing I regret is getting involved with a lying whore like you. Now you have approximately three minutes to leave these premises before I call the police. And if you ever approach any of my family members again, I will make you wish you were never born. Now get the fuck out of my sight!”

Skylar turned away from him with a sob, hurrying out of his office. For as long as she lived she’d never forget this moment. The moment when a piano had fallen out of the sky and landed on top of her.

Chapter Four

Five Years Later…

“Mommy, Finn hit me!” Tristan yelled from down the hall.

“He took my soldier!” Finn called back.

“Boys! You should be getting ready for school, not fighting,” Skylar called as she styled her daughter’s hair into a neat French braid. Harper’s hair was so long, curly and thick that it was quite a task, but it was a labor of love and the little girl seemed to appreciate Skylar’s daily efforts.

Once she tied the ribbon at the end of her daughter’s braid, she stepped back and admired her handy work. “What do you think?”

Harper grinned in the mirror. “It’s pretty, Mommy.”

Skylar stared at her daughter and, probably for the millionth time, she was in awe that she could produce such a perfect creature. Many people said that Harper was her Mini-Me. She had Skylar’s sherry brown eyes and heart-shaped face. She bent down and dropped a kiss on top of the child’s head. “Glad you like it. Now hurry up and brush your teeth so you can come eat breakfast.”

“Okay.”

Skylar went down the hallway to her children’s room to see her sons having tug-of-war over a toy figurine.

“Give it back!” Finn growled at his brother.

“I had it first. You didn’t want it until I picked it up,” Tristan countered.

Skylar placed her hand on her hip upon finding her boys fighting. “How about you give it to me and you two get ready like I asked? You’re not wearing socks and you have yet to brush your teeth. Come on boys, we go through this every day. You know Mommy has to get you to school at a certain time and we’ve been late a lot lately. Now hand over the toy soldier.”

Both boys hung their heads. “Sorry, Mommy,” they said in unison. They often spoke in tandem. While Harper was her double, this identical duo was all their father. From their straight dark brown hair, pale skin and dark green eyes, all she saw when she looked at them was Ashley. Sometimes it was still painful when she thought about his treatment of her and that he wasn’t in his children’s lives, but it wasn’t the kids’ fault and if nothing else good came from that relationship, she had her babies and she wouldn’t change a thing about them.

“It’s okay, but hurry up, okay? The last time we were late you guys missed show and tell and you didn’t like that very much, did you?”

The boys shook their heads simultaneously.

“Okay. I’m going to go downstairs and get breakfast ready. No more fighting, okay?”

“No more fighting,” Finn.

Tristan only nodded.

Skylar headed downstairs to the kitchen to find Harper at the table stuffing her face with pancakes. Izzy stood by the stove, pouring more mixture into the skillet.