by Lena Skye
He shrugged and his cheeks flushed somewhere between pink and red. “Yeah… I guess… I guess I do. I mean, we have this responsibility together, and we’ve got to start sometime, so now is good… isn’t it?”
Naomi felt a bubble of happiness rising up in her. It was finally beginning to happen. He wanted to be with her; out in public with her, in private with her, at the baby doctor’s office with her… everywhere that she wanted him to be with her. It was finally happening.
She brightened and smiled at him. “All right. I’ll meet you at the office and we can go from there.”
He gave her a nod, and they left in their cars. A short while later, she met him at her office and he drove her to a nearby baby boutique. He parked the car in the private garage and took her hand, helping her out of it.
“We’re really lucky. I called ahead and told them that we needed a private shopping appointment, so they cleared the store for us. There won’t be anyone else in there but us. Won’t that be nice?” He grinned as he walked to the back door of the store with her.
She felt her heart skip a beat and she felt a little cold as they entered the store. His words ricocheted off the walls of her mind. ‘There won’t be anyone else in there but us…’ She understood then that he was still trying to keep them behind closed doors, but at the same time, they were out together in public, shopping for things for the baby.
She told herself to put her fears and worries to rest, and to focus on the day with him. They were out of his house, and it was the second public place that they had been to that day, so it was already improving for her, and she was determined to focus on that.
They were in the store for two hours, and in that time frame, he had purchased a crib, two car seats, a bassinet, two strollers, a layette, a rocking chair, a bookcase, lamps, bedding, curtains, wall and room décor, toys, a wagon, a toy box, infant clothing, a baby bath with accessories, a mobile, a walker, a highchair, a bouncer, no end of baby items from teething rings to baby fingernail clippers, and a teddy bear.
Naomi stared at him as the clerk rung it all up and smiled lightly at him as she asked for an obscene amount of money. He handed her his card and asked her to have it all delivered to his house. After he gave her the address, he looked back at Naomi and smiled happily, and Naomi shook her head at him.
“Do you think you got enough?” she asked coolly, meaning for her question to be sarcastic.
He gave his head an adamant shake. “Oh not at all. No… absolutely not. We’re just getting started. We’ve got so much more to get! You have to decorate the nursery! There wasn’t a nursery when you started on the house. Now we need to redo one of the guest bedrooms. I was thinking the green one right next to my room; it’s close but not too close. Right? Don’t you think?” he asked in a giddy voice.
She just laughed at him and shook her head, and as they walked out of the store, he took her hand in his and kissed the back of it. “I’m happy about this. I want you to know that. I am really happy about this.”
Naomi felt a lot more happiness moving through her too, and it was a nice change for her. She had been so stressed out and upset for so many weeks up to that point and hadn’t even realized it. The difference between the low that she had been feeling, and the happy high that she was experiencing with Scott just then, were incomparable, and it made her joy all that much sweeter.
He took her back to his house with him to drop off a few of the things that they had taken with them, including the little teddy bear, and he walked with her into the green guest room that she had just finished, and which he was talking about turning into a nursery.
He turned in a circle in the middle of the room, looking around it. “What do you think? Do you think this will be a good nursery? Should we put the crib in that corner by the window, or over here by the door? Maybe not the window. What if it gets too hot or too cold? What if there’s a draft in the window? What if—”
She laughed at him and cut him off, laying her finger softly against his lips. “The crib can go by the door. It’s probably the best place for it.” She shook her head and laughed at him. “This is such a change from where you were with this before… it’s so… different.” She smiled, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He let out a long slow breath. “Well… I hadn’t really… comprehended it before. I mean… we heard the heartbeat today. It’s just… more real to me now,” he admitted, wishing it had felt that way the whole time, and pushing away the feeling of guilt that gripped him when he admitted to himself that he hadn’t felt that way the whole time.
“Oh, it’s real all right.” She chuckled. “I like this change in you. It’s sweet.” She smiled and drew herself up against him. Tipping her face up to his, she kissed him softly, and he closed his arms around her and kissed her in return, deeply.
“I like this change in me, too…” he mumbled as his lips moved over hers. The fires of need began to burn in them both and he subtly closed his hands around her hips, moving his fingers and gathering her sundress upward slowly until he could touch her skin. He curved his hands over her fleshy backside, sliding his fingers beneath the back of her panties and she gasped and a soft moan escaped her.
“What do you think you’re up to?” she asked him in a whisper in between kisses.
“I think I’m going to pull these panties off and make love to you right here and now…” he replied with a hint of a smile on his hungry lips.
She gasped at his forwardness, and didn’t stop him from doing exactly what he said he was going to do. Losing herself in the passion of the moment with him, she went with him to his bedroom as he pulled her along the hallway, carefully peeling off her clothes as they made their way slowly.
By the time they got to his bed, they were both nude. He laid down and she moved above him, running her tongue over his chest and stomach, biting gently at his flesh and making him gasp as she brought her mouth to his hardened groin.
Moving her fingers over him deftly, she began to stroke him, teasing the tip of him with her tongue and teeth, sliding the width of her tongue down the full length of him before taking him into her mouth fully, and sucking at him hard as he lost all of his breath and grasped the pillow beside him, clenching it in his iron grip.
She tasted him; sucking and taunting him until he nearly came in her mouth, before she pushed herself up and straddled him, lowering her body down onto his and taking him into the depths of her, squeezing him, moving against him as they began their love wrestling. They moved in unison, their bodies rocking against one another until the burning pleasure of their passion ignited into a bonfire that set them both ablaze with ecstasy, and they came together, long and hard, before they both collapsed back into his bed.
She had not felt so happy or contented with him as she did in that moment, and she was glad to tell him so. “This… this is all I have wanted from you. It’s all I ever wanted. You and me together as a couple; loving each other, being here and being out together… and you’re finally okay with it. We’re finally a real couple, and that means the world to me.” She sighed blissfully, and he pulled back and looked at her with a serious and grim expression.
“Naomi… I know we went shopping today, and we were at the doctor’s office, but we aren’t a couple,” he said quietly.
She stared at him. “What?” she asked in total disbelief.
“I mean… I want to be there for you, and be there for the baby always, but… we can’t go public with this.” He shook her head a little, searching her eyes, hoping that she would finally get it.
“What are you talking about? It’s already public! Everyone knows about this… about us! Everyone knows! It’s in the papers and magazines… it’s everywhere! It’s not a secret anymore!” She frowned at him and a cold ball of regret began to turn in her stomach.
“I know that… I do, but what I don’t know is if we can be a real couple in the public. Right now it’s just perception. There aren’t any photos of us together in public, there isn
’t any video of us, there isn’t any real proof of us out there in public as a couple; there’s just the article that hit the Times. That’s it. So all the rest of it is speculation. For all the rest of the world knows, I am still with Jennifer as a celebrity couple, and my sponsors and her sponsors love that. It means a lot of money for us both, and that’s huge.
I make three times as much money from my sponsors as I do from my football contract. It’s the biggest part of my income. I told you; it’s my career. I can’t take anything to chance with that. I can’t risk losing it. I don’t know how the sponsors are going to feel about me having a pregnant girlfriend who isn’t a celebrity, and especially on top of the news of Cora being pregnant too… and the fling with her… it’s just bad press.
I have to rise above that, and I don’t know if I can with you as a girlfriend. We have to move carefully. We have to think about these things and see what’s going to happen. I can’t take any chances,” he pleaded with her, hoping that she would see things his way.
Naomi could not believe what she was hearing him say, and she could not believe that she had fallen for it all over again with him. It seemed like everything that he said to her always wound up in the same place; like a cycle that could not be broken.
She pushed herself up from the bed and silently gathered her clothes.
“Naomi… I do want to be with you, and I want to be with the baby… but I just have to be careful; that’s all. I have to—o” he began, but she cut him off.
“I know,” she said, turning and looking at him with a stone cold gaze. “You have to put your career first.”
She turned then and walked out of the room, out of the house, and began walking down the road. She stopped partway and sat on bench in a park not far from Scott’s home. She wondered how she let herself be so gullible as to be pulled in by him again, just as she had so many other times. She had felt the change in him. She had seen his excitement about the baby.
She had been at the doctor’s office with him, and in public, at least partly, and both in the same day. It had been huge. It had been one of the biggest changes that had ever happened between them. She had believed it, until he had started up with his talk about work again, and then she knew. She and their baby were never going to be more important to him than his precious career.
She called a cab and had it take her to her office where her car was. She didn’t go inside. She got into her car and drove to the beach where she liked to go. She sat in the sand as she had before, but there were no tears. There was only a stony silence as she sat there and watched the waves rolling in, one after another, in rhythmic consistency. Always the same, and always different.
There would have to be a decision made. There would have to be a cutoff, she decided. There had to a point when she didn’t bow to his requests any longer; when she didn’t let her love and passion for him overtake her and leave her in such a despondent position; a pathetic position, wondering if she would ever really matter to him, or if she was just there to play the mouse to his cat game, while he toyed with her and teased her.
As Naomi thought about all the times it had happened, she finally made up her mind. She was done with him. He could be a father to their baby if he wanted to be, but he wasn’t going to be a partner of hers at all; not ever. She told herself that if he let their child down the same way that he let her down, then he wouldn’t be part of their child’s life, either. That would be easy enough to change. They weren’t a priority for him, and she doubted that they ever would be.
The knowledge of it broke her heart right in two. Determined to make things work for herself, her business, and her baby, Naomi told herself that she really was done with Scott. She had far too much on the line to let him tear it down, or tear her down. She was going to have to tell him that they really were through.
She left the beach feeling somber but better, because she knew that there was nothing more ahead of her with him. No more uncertainty. It was done. She drove herself home and slept that night more soundly than she had in a long while. It was a restful peace, and when she woke up the next day, she felt like was ready to take on whatever might come her way. She felt prepared to be a single mother, and she knew that no matter what happened, she would be all right.
As she drove to work, she noticed a tan colored car that seemed to be behind her a few cars back, and it had been near her home and had seemingly followed her at every turn, always winding up a few cars behind her where it had been. At first she thought that it was a coincidence, but then she had gotten far enough from her home that she realized that it could not possibly be a coincidence.
In a maneuver to see if he was really following her, she changed direction at the last minute and instead of heading in to the office, she began to drive toward Jennifer Jones’ house. The tan car followed her.
Naomi called the police and told them where she was and what was happening, and they sent a squad car to follow the tan car behind her. She was relieved when fifteen minutes later, and almost at Jennifer’s house, the tan car was pulled over. She pulled over as well, and another officer came to sit with her while the first officer questioned the driver, just down the hill from her.
After a moderate discussion, the officer with her checked in on his radio, and came back to her.
“Ma’am, the man driving the car behind you is a reporter for the Times,” the officer told her.
She was livid. “So that’s how he’s been getting all of those stories on me! Officer, he’s been following me for days! He’s publishing all kinds of things about me in the paper, and he’s basically stalking me and stalking Scott Thompson, just so he can try to get all of the latest stories on us!”
The officer blinked and looked at her in surprise then. “Oh yeah! I know you! You’re the one who’s having Scott Thompson’s baby… right? Is that you?” he asked curiously.
Naomi sighed and nodded. “Yes, that’s me, and the reporter who is writing all of that trash is following me around! Can’t you arrest him or something?” she pleaded.
He looked at her sympathetically. “Well, he hasn’t done anything illegal right now, but I’ll check with the other officer. I’ll see what we can do.”
He went back to his radio and a few minutes later, he returned to Naomi. “Okay, so I have some good news for you. He’s got some outstanding tickets, so there’s a warrant out for his arrest for those. We’re going to take him in on those charges, but as soon as he pays them, he can go.
So, he’s only going to be downtown for part of the day. We’re going to take our time on it though, so you’ll have a little break. The other thing is that we don’t take too kindly to paparazzi, so if you want to get a restraining order you can, then if he breaks that, you can press charges against him. Either way, it ought to work, at least long enough to get you out of the papers.”
Naomi smiled and nodded gratefully. “Thank you, Officer. I really appreciate your help.”
He shook her hand. “No problem, and hey! Good luck with the baby and with Scott. I don’t think he should be with Jennifer Jones anyway; I think he should be with you, and so do a bunch of the guys down at the station. We’re pulling for you!”
She smiled at him again and didn’t bother to tell him that Scott had destroyed his chances of being with her, and that it was all over between them, except for him being able to see his child. He let her go and she drove to work, agitated and relieved at the same time.
When she walked in the door of the firm, she was surprised to see Eva sitting there on the sofa waiting for her. She almost rushed to her, thankful to see her best friend on such a taxing morning. Eva hugged her tight and then let her go, looking into her eyes steadily.
“Have you seen the papers?” she asked anxiously.
Naomi shook her head. “No, I haven’t… why? What did that jerk print now?” she asked as irritation began to swell in her once again.
Eva picked the newspaper up from the table and handed it to Naomi. “Here. Read it fo
r yourself. I’ll get you some tea.”
Naomi sat down on the sofa and began to read while Eva went to the refreshment table and made two teas for them. Her eyes scanned down the printed page, and she took in every word of the article that she found, reading it in disbelief.
“What an absolute…” she began, and Malaika hung her phone up and turned in her chair to look at Naomi.
“Good morning. I didn’t get a chance to read that yet; we’ve been too busy in here. What does it say? I’ve been so interested to know, and Eva’s been here for an hour waiting for you,” Malaika told her in her honey soft voice.
Naomi rolled her eyes. “Well, I’d have been here an hour ago if I wasn’t on a wild goose chase.”
Malaika and Eva both frowned. “What do you mean a wild goose chase?” Malaika asked worriedly.
“Oh, I noticed that the reporter who has been publishing the stories on me and on Scott, was following me today. Well, at first I didn’t know that it was him, I just saw a car following me, and I decided to give whoever it was a good chase, and on the way I called the police station and told them that I was being followed.
They sent two squad cars with two officers, and one of them pulled the jerk over while the other one sat with me. Turns out that it was this reporter,” she smacked the newspaper in annoyance, “and I have to get a restraining order on him to stop him from following me all over kingdom come.” Naomi turned her attention to the article.
“Let’s see… so I guess it was helpful to him that he put out the mention about offering money for leads on finding Scott’s other woman, because the woman came forward herself. It seems that she’s not too impressed with me, and she thinks I’m a phony who is trying to pin Scott down to keep him because he’s a celebrity. She gave an exclusive interview here. She talks like a psycho… my god. How could he have ever slept with her? I don’t understand that. Not even as drunk as he says that he was… if he was.” She read on.
