Suddenly, she bolted to the toilet and threw up the entirety of her burger and fries from lunch earlier. As she gagged over the toilet, she rocked back and forth on her heels. “Would this misery just end?” she groaned.
She reached into her overnight bag to locate her mouthwash to get the foul vomit taste out of her mouth. Her hand brushed over an unopened box of tampons. Unopened…wait, how long had it been since her last period? She counted the weeks on her fingers and gasped. No period, throwing up, no energy, weeks of unprotected sex with Evan – she was pregnant!
Jessica barely remembered to throw on a coat before she dashed outside. There was a Walgreens a little ways down the street. She ran the entire way there, driven by her sense of panic. Never before had she been pregnant, or even had a pregnancy scare.
“How could I have been so stupid?” she muttered as she ran her fingers over the different pregnancy tests. No difference between the different brands was apparent, so she grabbed four different ones and dumped them on the checkout counter. The unfazed cashier scanned them and Jessica’s hands shook as she attempted to focus long enough to count out the bills.
Back in the motel room, Jessica peed on the first two sticks and set them on the counter to wait. She found that she was too dehydrated to take the other two tests, so she bought a few bottles of water from the motel’s vending machine to chug. The man working the desk surveyed her with a devious smile and asked how she was doing. She just blatantly ignored him. Whether she stayed in Reno or moved along farther away, she wasn’t going to stay in this shady place.
By the time she made it back in her room, she realized that the tests were ready. But it took her a while to find the guts to peek at them. They lay on the bathroom counter next to the sink, innocent-looking pink plastic sticks of doom. Standing on her tiptoes, Jessica gradually leaned over the counter to see what the screens said.
Both sported two lines.
She was pregnant.
She desperately squatted over the other two tests. The water went right through her and she was able to saturate them. Then she hovered over them, her dread surmounting as the second line grew on both of them.
Pregnant!
Jessica flopped down on her bed to cry. All she wanted in this moment was the feeling of Evan’s fingers through her hair. His touch felt a lot like her mother’s. She didn’t want to endure what her own mother had, slaving away day after day, never making ends meet, sometimes skipping meals. Besides, she was a con artist. A pregnancy could offer her a wealth of scam options, but con artists didn’t get health insurance. How could she afford to deliver her baby? And besides, what kind of life would that be for her child growing up? It wasn’t like Jessica had the work history necessary to get any kind of good job. Her chances with Evan were clearly blown.
The only option was to tell him, Jessica realized. And while her stomach clenched at the thought of telling him the news, she wanted to tell him. She wanted to share this moment with him and see the look on his face. As much as she hated billionaire playboys, she knew that Evan was not that way. Maybe he was a smarmy liar and a con artist like she was, but he had a genuinely kind soul. That wasn’t an act. Or so she hoped. He would actually care, of that she was sure.
Then the fantasies filled her head. Fantasies of Evan pushing a small child on a swing, and taking the child out for ice cream. She imagined them sitting down to decadent, home-cooked meals in his lavish kitchen. Above all, she imagined that the child would resemble Evan, with his serious countenance and broad nose and smiling sterling silver eyes. He or she would have brown hair, and a cute face, and probably Jessica’s faint childhood freckles. What a cutie! And how she looked forward to holding her baby, their baby, and feeling it writhe around and hearing its little cries. More tears sprung down her cheeks, but they were tears of love and tenderness. Love for the baby and love for Evan. The fact it was Evan’s baby made this moment even sweeter.
“Stop and get a hold of herself,” she told herself. “How could I still be in love with him? He’s just another Gary. Conning me with his smiles and his gourmet cooking and his muscles. He’s sure good at playing the perfect man. But he’s just another liar. A good liar, too. I don’t ever want to see him again.”
Nevertheless, it was a long, sleepless night. Jessica oscillated between thoughts of Evan and thoughts of running off to some place like New York City and doing this alone. While she didn’t want to be alone, she also didn’t want to go back and put her trust in Evan after he completely broke it. Sure, she had been lying to him, but the way that he had led her on just sickened her.
In the morning, she woke up stiff and miserable. At least her morning sickness seemed to have abated, even though it was, ironically, morning. It was also now two days until Christmas. Jessica groaned as she thought about Christmas.
As a child, her mother always strove to make Christmas magical. She would take Jessica for drives through neighborhoods to see the lights and they would stand outside of lavish Christmas shows on the Strip. They always went to the Christmas tree lighting and had a little fake tree of their own. There were always stacks of presents under the tree. Jessica felt so bad about when she was ten and she pitched a fit because her gifts were not as flashy as the ones her classmates got. Her mom had cried for hours that night. With age, Jessica began to feel worse and worse each Christmas. She felt guilty for hating her cheap presents and how hard her mother would work approaching the holiday season. The year she was eighteen, she set up a little Christmas tree in her mother’s hospital room and they enjoyed a meager, watery Christmas feast of hospital cafeteria food. Her mother had been too weak to sing carols and had just laid in her bed, smiling at Jessica. There were no gifts that year; no money was available to either of them.
Since her mother had died, Jessica’s last good Christmas was last year, with Gary. They had just completed a huge scam and were rolling in money. Gary had made an effort to cater a splendid feast and even hauled a real Christmas tree into their room. Of course, they had had to take it down in five days since they moved rooms at least once a week, but the spirit was still nice. Jessica remembered perching cross-legged by the tree sipping buttered rum and opening the expensive pieces of jewelry, watches, and other fine things that Gary had bought her. It seemed like Christmas once again and she was so stunned when just a few months later, Gary took off with her money and the closest thing she had ever enjoyed to a father-daughter relationship.
No other Christmases had been very nice for Jessica. And now, here in this cold motel room in Reno about to take another bus rude to some undetermined location, she felt miserable. She didn’t want this Christmas. She wanted the holidays and the jingles playing in stores to go away. It all brought her tons of pain. And now she had a little one growing inside of her, so she couldn’t go get drunk, which was the only thing she felt like doing.
She couldn’t put her little one through the same pain she had gone through. She couldn’t subject her baby to a life of paltry Christmases, moving around, and sometimes having money and sometimes not even having enough pennies to buy ramen. And there was always the possibility getting caught and going to prison. Then her child would be foisted into foster care.
There was no choice. It was time to go back to Evan. The life Evan could give her child was so much better than anything she could provide herself. She hated the idea of that bat Linda being involved in her child’s life, but Evan had to be. Evan was a liar and a con man, but so was she. Maybe they were perfect for each other. At least perfect enough to raise a child.
She grabbed her few bags and ran to the bus station, hoping to catch the next bus to Las Vegas. But the next bus did not run until 1:30. She had an entire morning to kill. So she slumped into a nearby diner with Wi-Fi. She had thrown out her phone and picked up a burner to see what was going on in the world. The idea of calling Evan right now over Wi-Fi killed her. But she decided this was the kind of news that you break in person.
The surly waitress brought her a cup of weak coffe
e. Is coffee okay for when you are pregnant? Jessica typed into the Google search bar. The Internet assured her that her morning coffee addiction was fine as long as she stuck to one cup. Then she looked up what to eat when you’re pregnant and decided that the only remotely healthy thing on the menu was the pancakes and eggs.
For hours, she slumped in her seat, reading about how to be a mother. She wished more than anything that her mother was there to show her what to do. To meet her little grandchild. Jessica was so overcome with thoughts and worries that she couldn’t think straight. All of this was just too much. The waitress kept glaring at her, so she would order something else like juice. She watched the buses pull in and out of the terminal as the minutes dragged by with irritating slowness.
Finally, 12:30 came. She tipped the waitress well, even though she was nearly at the end of her cash, and she ran over to the station to wait in the blistering cold. Her legs jumped. An old man sat next to her and asked her if she was all right.
“Fine,” she lied with a smile.
“Want a cigarette?” He pulled out a smashed and beaten pack.
Jessica vehemently shook her head. “I’m pregnant.” Saying the words aloud made it even more real for her.
“Wow!” the man said, sizing up her stomach, which still wasn’t betraying her condition. “That’s wonderful. Boy or girl?”
“I won’t know for a while,” she replied. Then she added, “I hope it’s a girl.”
The man started talking about his three daughters, all by different women, when Jessica’s bus pulled in. She ran away from him, barely remembering to tell him bye.
It was time to go to Vegas and begin a new chapter of her life as a mother with Evan Davis.
Chapter 17
Evan loved Christmas so much. But this one held no joy for him. Frankly, he was worried about Jessica as he attempted to focus on wrapping up the work he had left to do before closing the office for Christmas. It was so hard to pay attention; he didn’t care about work half as much as Jessica. Not having her in the office made everything feel empty and weird.
One of his developmental planners, Isaac, knocked on his door and shyly stepped in. This mousy man was obviously in love with Jessica, but also astute enough to recognize that Evan had laid claim to her. “Um, sir?” he asked.
“Yes?” Evan glanced up from his Mac, where he was trying so hard to pay more attention to the digits on his screen than his swirling snow globe of feelings.
“Um, what happened with Miss Allen?”
“We’re putting that project on hold,” Evan said through the lump in his throat.
“Well…” Isaac shifted uncomfortably. “So your mother alerted security to keep her out of the building and warned all of us to avoid her. May I ask what happened? Was she stealing or something?”
Evan ceased working and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyeballs to stop the migraine he felt starting. “She didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just a jealousy thing. My mom isn’t supposed to be in here either.” He reached into his pocket and tossed his mother’s key card onto the table. “Just so you know.”
Isaac stared. “May I ask what happened?”
“I am the CEO here, not my mother. You guys listen to me, not her. I want her out of the business,” Evan replied. The coldness in his tone surprised him. Usually he was such a warm guy.
Isaac was clearly surprised too. He gulped, then nodded. “Very well. Um, so I should scrap our project with Miss Allen or…?”
There was no point keeping up the pretense. “Yes, that project has ended. Please scrap all of it and get rid of the evidence, too.”
“Get rid of the evidence?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Just shred everything. We don’t need any of the blueprints or plans anymore.”
“Oh….okay.” Isaac hesitated for a moment before realizing that Evan was not going to provide any more information. Then he slunk away, clearly shaken.
The idea occurred to him and he promptly put in a call to security to inform them to keep his mother out and let Jessica in.
“Really, sir?” the head of security sounded stunned. “Are you sure about that?”
“I am the CEO, right?” Evan replied. Then he softened his tone. “I am dead serious. I want to restructure how this place is run. I am in charge, not my mother. She is a board member but she no longer has any clout in this company. She may not waltz in here anymore. I have her key card and I need you to deactivate it. She is not permitted in the offices except for board meetings, when she is allowed to come in as a guest.”
“All right, sir,” the head of security said hesitantly.
It didn’t take very long for word to get around the office about Linda’s banishment. Everyone kept stopping by Evan’s office, indirectly trying to fish information out of him. But he kept his mouth shut. “Please don’t let my mother in here. Don’t believe her if she says that she lost her card,” he told everyone bluntly. “Security has been informed, as well.”
Everyone stared at him as if he had lost his mind. Linda’s presence in the office was drilled into their minds as normalcy. Many of them respected her word over Evan’s. Those days were now over, though, and Evan felt both guilty and exhilarated as he hardened himself. This was his company. And until he could find a suitable predecessor, he would run the show. Nevertheless, in the back of his mind, he was already planning his exit. He would miss this place, primarily because of the years he had spent here and the co-workers he had become close with, but he was not a CEO at heart. It was time for him to do what he loved and turn this place over to someone more cut out for the position. It was time to leave the cold corporate atmosphere and find a new place in the public sector, helping those in need.
Maybe Jessica had been a total fraud. Maybe she had left his life. But she had made a lasting mark and he could not thank her enough. Even if he couldn’t be with her, or even talk to her again, he could at least live with her in his heart forever.
Still, he missed her warm, tight pussy. The feeling of her creamy skin as she held him. The scent of her perfume and her shampoo and her sweat when they made love. The sound of her voice and her panting and her moaning. He settled back in his seat and shut his eyes to allow the images of Jessica to fill his mind. It was a strange sort of fantasizing, more like a kaleidoscope of memories and unfulfilled plans.
At two o’clock, Evan couldn’t stand it anymore. He shut down the office and sent everyone home for the next week for the holidays. The generous holidays that he offered his employees on holiday seasons was one of the perks of working at Davis Enterprises, and one of the few things he had managed to keep going despite his mother’s insistence that he demand more of his workers. He continued to ensure that even his construction workers and couriers and other non-administrative employees all shared the same excellent benefits. That was one thing that his workers were not willing to give up; they were willing to disobey his mother and listen to him on that front. That was how he knew that none of them would mind the absence of his mother’s domineering and intimidating authority in the office.
Everyone cheered. But then they exchanged looks.
“Um, sir?” Isaac piped up.
“Yes?” Evan asked.
“Are we still having the Christmas party? You know, tonight at your mother’s?”
Evan had been so distracted that he had forgotten all about the annual Christmas party. Honestly he had no idea. “I suppose that if you want to go, you can. I won’t be there, though.”
“But you have to come,” Debbie, the secretary, pouted. Debbie had always had the biggest crush on him. “I have a present for you! And I didn’t bring it in today. I was saving it for tonight.”
“Yeah, me too,” others chimed in.
Someone showed him the fancy invitation that his mother had already sent out. She had hired catering and a decorator.
Evan groaned. “I suppose I’ll make a brief appearance,” he agreed, to everyone’s relief.
; Without much joy, Evan approached his mother’s palatial home. It was decked out in lights and he could tell there was a full house. Evan always made sure that even his most elementary workers were invited each year and his mother always complied without much resistance because it made her look good to her investors, who were also always invited.
The doorman eagerly greeted him with a gift bag and took his coat. He entered the living room, where everyone cheered at his arrival. Through the crowd, he noticed his mother glanced at him before rapidly looking away. Her ego was clearly punctured.
He accepted a glass of champagne and mingled. People kept telling him they had left him presents under the giant tree taking up a massive amount of space in his mother’s living room. Evan had also gotten presents for each of his workers, and had them delivered under the tree. He didn’t want to stay until midnight, when they usually opened presents. But what choice did he have? People seemed to be painfully aware of how he avoided his mother.
The doorbell rang and the doorman answered. He seemed to be arguing with someone about how she was not on the list. Then Evan heard Jessica’s voice. She was screaming his name.
He ran outside. The doorman attempted to intercept him for his protection but Evan shoved past him. There she was, her cheeks flushed with the cold and her eyes bright with tears. “Evan!” she cried.
Evan propelled down the steps and caught her in his arms. “Oh, Jessica,” he moaned. That was his first time using her real name without thinking about it and holding his tongue. It felt good to release the truth and break down the masks.
“Evan.” Jessica looked up at him with tears sprinkled down her cheeks. “I found out the most incredible news. And I don’t know if I should happy or sad, but it will change our lives.”
Evan opened his mouth to ask her what she had found out. But then his mother appeared in the doorway, her throws draped around her elbows. “I thought I had seen the last of you, but I guess you and your mother have a funny way of always haunting me,” she snarled.
Daddy Plus One: A Single Dad Secret Baby Billionaire Romance Page 10
