Enticing Daphne

by Jessica Prince

  “Everything what? Because by what you’re saying, I think you’re still pretty fucking clueless.”

  “He told me about that evil bitch and how she’s blackmailing him. He told me he came to you for help and you sent him away. How could you! Did you even take my feelings into consideration?” Mom let out a sarcastic snort. “Or course you didn’t. Because you’re selfish and don’t care about anyone but yourself!”

  My jaw dropped to the floor in bewilderment and disgust. “Are you… are you fucking kidding me?” I shouted. “Selfish? You’re calling me selfish? That’s unbelievable! I’ve spent my entire life putting your feelings over mine!”

  “He’s leaving me, Caleb! This is my marriage. My life.”

  “Your life?” I asked on an incredulous whisper. “That’s funny, considering most mothers would consider their own child their life. But I don’t know why I’m surprised that you’d blame me.” I took a step back, reaching up to rub the back of my neck. “You know what? I’m not doing this. I’m done. I finally have a chance at something good in my life, something that makes me happy. And I left her in the middle of the fucking night to come here. Never again. I’m done trying to take care of you.”

  I turned and walked out of the house. The euphoria from only hours earlier had shriveled and died a miserable death.

  Daphne

  When Caleb left my room to turn off all my lights and lock up for the night, I’d taken the time to wipe at my damp eyes. He didn’t want kids. He hadn’t even thought he’d make a good father. My heart had crumbled to dust in my chest at hearing that. I thought we were finally starting something real, something worth keeping, but with that bombshell I knew I would lose him as soon as he found out.

  It hurt in a way I never thought possible, and that hole in my chest expanded, blacking out everything inside me. As I lay wrapped in his arms, I had been convinced that sleep was going to be impossible, but my little bean wasn’t having it. It amazed me how something so small could drain so much out of a person, but I somehow managed to conk out in just a handful of minutes, my sleep plagued with horrible dreams, each ending in Caleb disappearing in front of my very eyes.

  I woke up with a start hours later when my front door banged from downstairs. I shot up, unable to see a thing through the darkness blanketing my room. “Caleb,” I whispered, reaching across the bed. “Caleb, wake up.”

  My hand hit nothing but cold sheets.

  I looked in the direction of my bathroom, hoping to see a light beneath the door, but as my eyes adjusted to the blackness, terror turned my blood to ice at the realization that I was alone.

  And that someone was in my house.

  A loud crash came from downstairs, but I was too scared to think about what had just been broken.

  My limbs shook with fear as I silently climbed from the bed, shuffling across the floor as quietly as possible. I reached my bedroom door, feeling along the wall for the tennis racket I kept propped up so it looked like I at least attempted some form of exercise. I held it over my head like it was a baseball bat while silently wishing it was a baseball bat. That would have hurt a potential robber so much worse than a stupid tennis racket.

  A glass shattered from the vicinity of my kitchen, and I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep my yelp silent. “Omigod, omigod, omigod,” I whispered to myself as I slowly crept down the hallway, berating myself for not having my phone. Of course the one time I really needed it I couldn’t remember where the hell I’d left it.

  It was all Caleb’s fault. If he hadn’t been sucking on that sensitive part of my neck that made all rational thought fly out of my head, I would have remembered to take it up to my room. And maybe if he hadn’t snuck out on me in the middle of the freaking night I wouldn’t be dealing with an intruder all on my own!

  I took the stairs two at a time, mindful of the creaky one in the middle of the staircase. Rounding the landing, I noticed the light from my refrigerator illuminating my kitchen. What kind of robber raided the fridge first—or at all?

  The good thing about renovating your own house was that you knew every single piece of wood, every floorboard, by heart. I knew exactly where to step in order not to make a single sound.

  The intruder’s back was to me as he sucked down my orange juice right out of the carton. The bastard. Knowing it was now or never, I gripped the handle of the tennis racket as tightly as I could, ready to throw all my momentum into the first swing. With a battle cry that would have put any warrior to shame, I attacked.

  “YOU SON OF A BITCH! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” Whack! “You picked the wrong woman to rob, asshole!” Whack! “I’m a goddamn ninja!” Whack!

  “Ow! Ow! Son of a—Daphne! What the hell are you doing? Stop hitting me!”

  “Caleb?” I squeaked, stopping midswing.

  He stood from his cowering position, dropping the arms he was holding protectively over his head. I moved to the light switch and flicked it on, bathing the room in brightness. “Jesus Christ, Daphne.” He rubbed at his head where I’d used it as my own personal tennis ball. “Did you seriously think an intruder would go for the refrigerator first?”

  I propped my hands on my hips, complete with tennis racket and all. “I didn’t know that the hell to think,” I spit accusingly. “All I knew was that I woke up in the middle of the night to my front door banging closed and someone ransacking my kitchen. And you were nowhere to be found! I thought you bailed on me. I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting the robber before he got me.”

  Caleb looked down at the floor guiltily. “Fuck, I’m sorry, sweetheart.” When he lifted his head, I noticed the racket had nicked his forehead.

  “Shit. You’re bleeding.” I started for him, and he quickly raised his hands to stop me.

  “No. Baby, wait. There’s—”

  “Ouch! Motherfucker!” I started bouncing on one foot, burning pain slicing through the other.

  “Glass,” he finished. “Fuck. Hold on. Just stay right there.”

  I hobbled in place the best I could as he stepped over the shattered glass scattered around my kitchen floor. He lifted me in his arms and deposited me behind on the center island, raising my right foot that had a piece of jagged glass wedged in it. “Shit, it’s pretty deep. You have a first aid kit anywhere?”

  “Uh, no. But I think I have some Band-Aids and rubbing alcohol under the sink in my bathroom.”

  “Okay, just wait here. I’m going to grab that, then clean up this mess. Be right back.” He placed a lingering kiss on my forehead before bolting from the kitchen up the stairs.

  I rubbed at my belly, wondering when I’d finally begin to show. I was only about six weeks along, so other than the insane nausea, there really was no way to tell. How had I gotten myself into such a mess? I was the woman who didn’t believe in fairy tales. Life had kicked me when I was down, destroying the hopeful, optimistic girl I’d once been. I told myself I was never going to give my heart to another man, but there I was, in love with America’s ultimate playboy. And to make matters worse, I’d gotten myself knocked up in the process of falling for a man who had no desire to ever have children.

  “You okay? Is your stomach still bothering you?”

  My head shot up, my hand falling from my stomach at the sound of Caleb’s voice. “Oh, uh, no. I mean, I’m fine. Just….” Crap. “My foot really hurts,” I said, hoping to divert his attention away from the fact that I’d suspiciously been caressing my little bean.

  Thankfully it worked. “All right. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Placing the rubbing alcohol and a box of bandages beside me on the counter, he sat on my stool, spreading his legs so mine fit between them. Then he pulled my injured foot up and started inspecting it. “I’m really sorry about this,” he said in a hushed tone as he went about removing the shards of glass from the bottom of my foot.

  “What happened?” I watched his expression closely as he worked, serious lines marring his forehead as he gently poked and prodded. “I woke up and you were g
one.”

  Caleb blew out a breath in frustration as he wet a paper towel with the rubbing alcohol. “I was going to tell you. I didn’t want to wake you up when you were sleeping so peacefully, but I got a call from my mom. She was in a bad way, so I left to go make sure she was okay.”

  I winced, hissing between my teeth at the sting from the alcohol. He quickly pulled the napkin away and blew across the cut soothingly. God, it was too much when he was being so sweet like this. I’d never really been taken care of by another person before. Experiencing Caleb’s tender side made me want to cry all over again.

  “Is she all right?”

  The skin tightened around his eyes and mouth, unhappiness tarnishing his handsome face. “She’s fine. But we got into a fight, so I left.”

  Ripping the box of Band-Aids open, he pulled one out and started peeling it from its wrapper.

  “So you came back here?”

  He offered me a brief look before averting his gaze to my foot. “Only place I wanted to be,” he answered quietly, slowly covering the cut. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was trying not to wake you up, so I kept the lights off. That’s how I dropped the glass. I couldn’t see shit and ran into the counter.”

  I couldn’t help but giggle. “I heard more than one crash,” I said with mock seriousness. “What else did you break while trying to be stealthy?”

  Caleb flinched, giving me an apologetic look. “That blue glass vase you had on the sideboard.”

  A sharp gasp passed my lips. “My Waterford?” I looked over at where my pretty vase once sat. Now it lay shattered into a million pieces on my floor. “That cost over three hundred bucks!”

  “You spent more than three hundred dollars on a vase?” he asked like I’d just lost my mind.

  I snorted indelicately. “Hell no. I got it at a yard sale for five bucks. People didn’t have a clue what they had on their hands. Suckers.”

  His deep chuckle resonated through me, warming from the inside out. “Well then I don’t feel so bad.” He finished tending to my injury, then did something that made me shiver in all the good places: he pressed a sweet kiss to my foot before lowering it. “There. All better. Why don’t you head back up to bed? I’m just going to clean all this up really quick.”

  “You don’t have—”

  “I want to,” he interrupted. “I had a shit night, and taking care of you makes me feel a little better. Just let me do this, okay?”

  “O-okay,” I whispered, unsure if I’d be able to walk now that his words had turned my bones into jelly.

  I needed him to stop being so damn nice or there’d be no way of ever putting my broken heart back together when he eventually found out the truth and I lost him for good.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Daphne

  “What do you mean you still haven’t told him?”

  I squeezed another slice of lemon into my water, giving it a good stir before taking a sip. By a happy coincidence, I’d discovered that citrus helped ease my stomach a little over a month ago. Lemon water had been a lifesaver. I was finally able to keep food down, and bonus, brushing my teeth no longer gagged me anymore.

  I looked at Fiona from across the table, feeling like a thousand different kinds of shit. “I know. I’m a terrible person. But I am going to tell him. I swear.” I just didn’t know when. It had been a little more than two months since I’d gone all Venus Williams on Caleb’s ass, and I still hadn’t gotten the guts to tell him the truth.

  “When?” Fiona demanded to know.

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  Her face grew stern. “Daphne—”

  “Soon, okay?” I interrupted. “It’s just been going so well between us lately. And I know that’s all going to go away when he finally finds out.”

  She reached across the table, grabbing my hand and giving it a squeeze. “You don’t know that.”

  I gave her a droll look. “He all but said it himself,” I replied, reminding her of what he’d said the night of the Mexican restaurant.

  “But finding out the truth could change his mind. A person can’t really know how they’ll handle a situation until they’re actually in it.”

  I lifted a bite of salad to my mouth and chomped down. “You’re right,” I finally relented once I’d swallowed down my food.

  “So you’re going to tell him?” she asked, visibly brightening in her seat.

  Narrowing my eyes across the table, I answered, “Yes. I’m going to tell him. He’s still in New York for work, but I’ll tell him the truth when he gets back.”

  “This is going to be good, babe. You’ll see. You’ve been so stressed, keeping this from everyone this whole time. It can’t be good for you. And it really can’t be good for the baby.”

  Looking back down at my lunch, I shifted the pieces of lettuce around on my plate. “I know. And I hope you’re right.”

  She cut into her grilled chicken, a self-satisfied look on her face. “I am. And the good thing is you can at least use that whole thing about wanting to be out of the first trimester as an excuse for keeping it from Lola and Soph. They’ll totally buy that.”

  “As long as you don’t spill the beans that you’ve known this whole time.” I pointed my fork at her in warning.

  “Scout’s honor,” she said, holding up three fingers. “I’ll pretend to be just as shocked as they are.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, and the two of us went back to our lunch without further talk of my impending discussion with Caleb.

  As I walked along the crowded sidewalks back to Hart Tower, I thought about the past two months with Caleb and how amazing they’d been. With the exception of his most recent business trip, he’d spent practically every night with me, coming over as soon as he got off work. He’d been living out of an overnight bag for so long that I’d finally shifted some of my things around to make room in a drawer and my closet for his stuff. There was a toothbrush for him next to mine on my bathroom sink, and a pair of his tennis shoes by my front door for easy access when he went for a morning run, something I discovered he did every single morning, rain or shine. It was just one of a million tiny little things I’d discovered about Caleb McMannus that I hadn’t known before. The dude was serious about his fitness, leaving me in bed alone most mornings to get in a routine before starting his day.

  I appreciated all his work as the woman who got to use his impeccable body on a daily basis, but if he ever tried to force me up to join him, I might just have to kill him.

  It wasn’t until he’d had to go to New York to the Bandwidth location there that I got to experience firsthand how much I would miss him when he was gone. I really hoped Fiona was right, because this already sucked enough. There was no way I’d be able to hack it if he left me for good when he found out about the baby.

  My phone vibrated in my purse, and I smiled as I pulled it out and spotted the name.

  Caleb: Missing you like fucking crazy, sweetheart.

  That made me all kinds of melty inside.

  Me: Aw, that’s so sweet.

  Caleb: Pretty sure my dick’s gonna get a blister if I have to jack off for one more freaking day.

  I burst into laughter in the middle of the street.

  Me: And then you go and ruin it. Perv.

  He responded immediately.

  Caleb: You love my perverted side.

  Sighing at how right he was, I messaged back.

  Me: I hate to admit when you’re right. So when are you getting back to Seattle?

  Caleb: Just a few more days, baby. Miss me already?

  I grinned at my screen as I typed.

  Me: Not you. Just your perverted side.

  He replied, calling me a tease, to which I responded with an emoji of an eggplant and a set of kissy lips before stuffing my phone back into my purse. I’d just cleared the revolving doors into the lobby of Hart Tower when I heard a man’s voice.

  All the breath left my lungs when I spotted the person who’d just said my name.
“Shit. Stefan? What are you doing here?”

  He closed the five feet between us, stopping way too close for comfort. “I need to talk to you. Please, Ducky.”

  Not wanting to risk being seen by Lola or Sophia with my ex-fiancé, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the alcove behind the elevators. “God, do you have any clue how badly I want to punch you when you call me that?”

  His face pinched with hurt. “You used to love it when I called you that.”

  “No,” I hissed. “I used to love you, so I tolerated the stupid-as-hell nickname because it made you happy. Now that I don’t give a shit about your happiness, I can tell you the truth.” I leaned in closer. “I hate that name. Despise it. Along with a million other things about you.”

  I could have sworn he was about to cry. “Don’t say that, Daph. I still love you. I want you back. Please, just give me another chance.”

  Batting his hand away as he reached for me, I took a step back. “You’re delusional,” I hissed. “How many ways do I have to spell it out for you? Do I need to play you a Taylor Swift song to get it through your head?” I don’t know what possessed me, maybe it was my bean controlling my body from the inside, but I opened my mouth and spit out, “I wouldn’t take you back ever, but especially not now that I’m pregnant with another man’s child.”

  What. The. Fuck! Did I just say that out loud?

  “You’re….” His face paled to a worrisome shade of gray, and his eyes darted down to my left hand as if searching for an engagement ring. “Are you marrying the guy?”

  I fisted my hand and moved it behind my back as insecurity washed over me. “It’s… complicated.” Jeez! Talk about uncontrollable word vomit! “It’s also none of your damn business.”

  “But Daphne, don’t you see?” Stefan looked positively manic as he moved on me again. “If he doesn’t want you, we can raise this baby together. This is perfect! This little baby can be what finally brings us back together. And I’d never hold it against you that it isn’t mine.”