Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Hazel Parker

  I call up Scott. He seems not at all put out by the fact that I’d practically just spoken with him.

  “I’ve decided what I want to do,” I tell him. “It isn’t much, but it feels honest and like I won’t be crossing any lines with Steph.”

  I sketch out my plans for him. I expect him to tell me I’m crazy. He doesn’t.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he says. “I only ask because I don’t think it’s a hundred percent necessary. I think you could get done what you want to do without…investing yourself like that.”

  “Maybe, but I want to do this right.”

  “You’re going to have to go to some pretty extreme lengths to avoid the press on this,” Scott points out. “They would eat this story up with a spoon!”

  “That’s where you come in,” I say. “I need to do this somewhere where nobody knows the name Trent Stone. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll throw on a fake mustache if need be.”

  “I wouldn’t be so flippant about that. You may end up doing just that, my man.”

  “Whatever it takes,” I tell him. “Just get it set up.”

  “You got it. I’ll call you when I’ve got it all taken care of.”

  I hang up and look back out the window again. We emerge from the clouds, and I can see the eastern U.S. coastline sprawling out below us.

  Almost home.

  Almost time to get to work.

  Chapter 27 - Steph

  I hang up the phone and let my shoulders sag. The cheap wooden crate, which Daniel so courteously appropriated from the alleyway outside, creaks under me. It’s a poor place to sit, but as of right now, it’s the best seat in the house.

  Check that—it’s the only seat in the house.

  “That your fella?” Daniel asks from the other side of the room. He had just as courteously given me some privacy for the call by going to re-inspect the kitchen. His examinations couldn’t have been very interesting. Everything was just as burned as it had been the last time he had looked it over.

  I smile a little at this. “I don’t know if he’s my fella, but yes, it was him.”

  “He coming down to check out the damage?”

  I shake my head. “He’s over the Atlantic at the moment.”

  “Busy guy.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Daniel puts his hands on his hips and looks around dejectedly. “Steph, I don’t think there’s a whole lot we can do here. Maybe sweep up the ash, but that’s about it.”

  “I know. I just wanted to come in and see it for myself.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.”

  I nod. He’s right. I’d put my heart and soul into this place for years, and now it looked and smelled like the inside of a barbeque grill. My sense of loss was enormous, dwarfed only by the prospect of rebuilding. That was when the real uphill climb was going to start.

  I stand, picking up the crate. It looks so forlorn and clean among all the dirty char that I can’t just leave it behind.

  “We’re going to be okay, Daniel,” I say.

  “We are?” he asks, then says quickly, “Of course we are.” He looks around the fire-blasted room again. “A little drywall, a little paint…it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

  “Actually,” I say, “it’s going to be better than ever.”

  He stares at me for a long moment, then grins. “I guess you just can’t keep a good chef down, huh?”

  “Damn right. The crew comes in to start working the day after tomorrow. I have a bet going that they’ll make some pretty swift progress.”

  “Oh, so now you’re betting, as well. This has been a real breakout season for you, Steph.”

  I throw my arm around his shoulders, a task since he’s taller than me, and begin walking him towards the blackened opening that had formerly been the front doors. Our shoes crunch in the litter of grit and burned wood on the floor.

  “Better than ever,” I say again. “You wait and see.”

  “If what you say is true, I won’t be waiting very long, either.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  It’s hard to say which was more difficult, not falling apart completely when I first heard Trent’s voice this afternoon or turning down his offer to help. I was so glad to hear from him that I almost felt like crying, although I may be able to lay that one down at the feet of hormones. No, I decide, it’s because I was glad to hear from him.

  I also knew that if he could duplicate his torched kitchen, he could without much more effort do the same for my entire restaurant. It would be like Daniel had flippantly supposed, like it had never even happened.

  But I won’t ask him to do that. As hard as our words had been several weeks back, there had been a large kernel of truth in them. I had come this far on my own, and I had done it by believing in myself. I had to keep believing in myself, and that meant standing on my own two feet, pregnancy and all.

  That last raised an entirely different specter of doubt in my mind. Obviously, I have to tell Trent about the baby. He has the right to know. But how will he take the news?

  We’ve not talked about children. We’ve not talked about much of the future at all, we’ve been so busy living in the present. I’ve heard stories about guys freaking out when presented with the idea of impending fatherhood and heading for the hills.

  I don’t think that’s how Trent will react, but his exact feelings will be impossible to gauge until I tell him.

  So why didn’t I tell him when he had called just a few minutes ago? Especially since I know he won’t be back in town for several more days?

  Because you don’t just drop a bombshell like that on someone over the phone, I reason. If that means waiting a bit longer before I tell Trent he’s going to be a father, then so be it.

  I’m curious as to what could be keeping him from simply coming straight back, though. He didn’t make it sound like an emergency or a world-shifting business deal. So what could it be?

  Whatever it is, I hope it’s over with soon. I’m dying to tell him my news.

  I also realize that that’s not all I want to tell him.

  They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in this instance, I was pretty fond of him to begin with. More than that. Against all odds and circumstances, I can admit to myself that I have fallen in love with him.

  That’s something else I don’t want to tell him over the phone.

  The question is, which do I tell him first?

  The days pass. I would say they dragged, but they’re so crammed with activity that they blow by like a strong wind. In between making a general nuisance of myself at the reconstruction site, I somehow manage to keep up with the head chef duties at my other two restaurants. My house plants, which had been tentatively revived by my growing maternal instincts—i.e., I watered them more or less daily—now succumb once again to neglect.

  I still haven’t told my staff about my “little passenger.” Trent is going to be the first person I actively tell. Tira has been sworn to secrecy, at which she is lousy. She insists on regularly bringing over tiny outfits to my apartment.

  “You don’t even know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl yet,” I say as she holds up a miniature dress and a little suit. The dress is pretty, but the suit would make a baby look like a diminutive secret agent.

  “I can always return all this stuff when I do find out,” she declares, waving an arm at the growing pile of baby clothes on the armchair in my living room. “When will I find out?”

  “Relax,” I tell her. “You’ve still got a while to wait. The ultrasound won’t give out that kind of information until at least fourteen weeks.”

  She pouts.

  I laugh. “You’ll have plenty of other vicarious experiences to have through me in the meantime, T…mood swings, crankiness, backaches, all sorts of grand aspects of pregnancy.”

  “I guess,” she concedes. “Are you glowing? I think you may be glowing.”
r />   “You flatter me. I think it’s just perspiration. It’s really warm in here.”

  She jumps up and twiddles the thermostat.

  “You need anything else?” she asks.

  “Nope.”

  “All right,” she says, disappointed and sitting back down again. She waits for a few beats, then asks, almost casually, “So, have you been talking with Trent? With any regularity, I mean?”

  “Every day.”

  It’s true. He calls me every evening, and sometimes in the mornings as well. So far, he’s refrained from calling during the day, as he says he knows what a blender of activity I’m undoubtedly caught up in. He does text me, though, also regularly.

  “And he’s still being closed-mouthed about what he’s doing right now?”

  I shrug. “He won’t budge on that topic. Says it’s a secret.”

  “A billionaire’s secret,” Tira muses. “That is a rare gem indeed.” She thinks a moment, then her face lights up. “Maybe he’s having a house built for you!”

  “Why would he do that? It’s my business that went up in smoke, not my apartment.”

  She pouts some more. “Sometimes you are no fun at all, Steph. Would it kill you to join me in a little flight of fancy every now and then?”

  “Okay, okay…maybe you’re right. Maybe he’s having a three-story mansion hand-carved for me out of some expensive European wood.”

  “Now you’re just trying to annoy me,” Tira says, but she’s smiling good-naturedly. “You really have no idea what he’s up to, do you?”

  “Not the foggiest,” I tell her.

  “Well, whatever it is,” she says, “I have no doubt about one thing.”

  “Oh? And what might that be?”

  “That it’ll be romantic.” She returns her attention to the little outfits. “Now, which do you prefer, the dress or the suit?”

  A week into construction and things are proceeding at a breakneck speed. It’s almost like a sped-up time-lapse film, watching the floor regenerate and the walls being reframed. The crew of workers on the job is enormous, easily two dozen of them all hammering and sawing away.

  It’s so crowded that I feel very conscious that I’m in the way. After a couple of days, I stop going into the place, partly so that I’m not a further obstruction, and partly because I don’t want to be accidentally walled up by a hasty carpenter.

  I communicate with the job’s foreman daily through multiple texts. He’s exceedingly patient with me, even going so far as to send me photos to keep me updated on how things are rolling along.

  The photos are a sweet thought, but I have to lay eyes on the place for myself at least once a day. As a compromise with Kevin, the foreman, I only come in after five, after everyone has packed up and gone home for the day.

  One early evening, I make my way down to the restaurant site and catch Kevin just as he is getting into his truck to leave.

  “Hi, Kevin,” I greet him. “It’s me again.”

  “Hi, Ms. White,” he replies, not at all irritated by my presence, for which I’m glad. “Come down to take a peek at progress?”

  “If that’s okay.”

  He waves a hand expansively. “Hey, it’s your building. You can come whenever you want, look as long as you like, far as I’m concerned.”

  “Thanks, Kevin. Your crew all gone?”

  He gets a funny look, but he chuckles just the same. “All except the night crew,” he comments.

  “Night crew?” I ask, confused. I didn’t think you had any guys who were willing to work nights.”

  He chuckles again. “It’s a small crew. One guy. He comes in every day at the end of the day, and I do mean every day, even Saturdays and Sundays. Stays on after all the other guys have gone home. Works until one, two, three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Is he here now?” I want to know.

  “Sure. He’s in the back. You want me to go in with you?”

  “No, that’s okay, Kevin; I know you’re ready to get out of here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yep,” he says, waving out his window at me. “Tomorrow.”

  The floor has finished being replaced, so I’m able to walk along with no trouble.

  In the kitchen area, there’s a lone figure hammering a wall stud into place. Even from a distance, I can recognize him.

  “Hi,” I say to Trent.

  He jumps a little, then straightens, dropping his hammer into the loop of his tool belt.

  “Hi,” he says back.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, stopping a few feet away from him.

  He touches his hammer. “Uh, nailing, mostly. Although I do some sawing from time to time.”

  “Really?”

  He holds up his hands, palms out. “Got the splinters to prove it.”

  “Is this what you had to do before you could see me again?” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Had to learn my way around the tools first. I took what I guess you’d call a crash course. Did some work for Habitat for Humanity for about a week, earning my wings, and then I came here. Kevin’s a friend of a friend of a friend. He agreed to take me on.” He pauses. “I didn’t buy my way onto the site, Steph. Don’t think that. Kevin’s the boss here. If he doesn’t like what I’m doing, he makes me tear it out and do it over again.”

  “Have you—” I’m having a hard time speaking around the lump that’s formed in my throat. “Have you had to do that very often?”

  Trent grins a little. “The first couple of days, I tore down more than I built, but I’ve been getting better.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve been doing this and I had no idea,” I say, incredulous.

  “That’s the reason I work nights,” he replies. “Well, that and so no one can see how I fumble my way along.”

  I look around. “And how late do you think you’ll be working tonight?”

  He shrugs. “Nobody around to run me off; I can stay as long as I like.”

  “Kind of like being your own boss, then.”

  “Kind of.”

  “Can the boss knock off early, then?”

  “I think that could be arranged.”

  “Good. Come by my place when you do. We’ve got things to talk about.”

  He nods, looking serious but not grave.

  “Yes,” he says, “I think we do.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Okay.” As I turn to go, he adds, “Steph?”

  I stop. “Yes?”

  “You’re the best thing I’ve seen in a long time,” he says.

  “Come by soon,” I prompt and make my way out of the building.

  Chapter 28 - Trent

  It had been a chore not so much to get a construction job, but to get one so obscure as to keep the media from getting wind of it. I had definitely wanted to keep these activities to myself, especially once I started working on actual houses. The press, as they say, would have had a field day with that one.

  I had been coming in for weeks now, working the dead hours of the night. I probably could have worked during the day. Nobody cared who I was, outside of the curiosity about who in his right mind would work through the night when nobody else was around. I wasn’t Trent Stone, I was just Trent, or, to a lot of the other workers, “the night guy.”

  Not that I had given up being Trent Stone, though. I still went into the office each morning, determined not to neglect my own business. The routine had quickly gone from taxing to grueling. I would go home earlier than I would have otherwise, which never failed to raise my secretaries’ eyebrows, and actually took a power nap before donning my jeans and work shirt and heading for the construction site.

  I had been a little surprised to find that I liked the work. Not that I had thought I wouldn’t, just that I wouldn’t be any good at it, thanks to a lifetime of inexperience.

  It had come to me relatively quickly, though, and by the time I had called Kevin to ask him for a job, I had felt like I could hold my own.
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br />   I hammer in another set of nails into the wall stud I’m setting into place and smile to myself.

  I’d been so intent on not mashing my fingers with the hammer or hitting myself in the head with a board that Steph had slipped right up on me. It had been jarring, looking up and seeing her there. She had looked even better than I remembered. I didn’t count the glimpse I’d gotten of her on television during my hurried trans-Atlantic flight a couple of weeks back. Seeing someone live and in person always trumps an image on a screen.

  There had been something different about her, although I had been hard-pressed to say what. Something in her face, or maybe the way she looked at me, told me that something was up. She had seemed happy, so whatever it was probably wasn’t bad, or at least I hoped it wasn’t. She’d been through enough bad times lately without any fresh misfortune to befall her.

  Then she had left, telling me to come see her soon. The faint pang of loss I felt when she walked out was mitigated by the fact that I knew exactly where she would be later.

  I figure I’ve given her enough of a head start. Besides, for me anyway, waiting is done. It’s time to see what comes next.

  I pack up the tools that are mine and tidy up the ones that belong to Kevin. I am indeed punching out very early tonight, and I want the place to be in good order for when he comes in tomorrow morning.

  Tomorrow morning, I muse as I roll up an air compressor hose. It’s been more than a few days since I put together the words “tomorrow” and “morning.” Rather, it had been a case of at one or two in the morning thinking of upcoming appointments and responsibilities as “later on today.”

  I had been pleased that Steph wasn’t angry with me for being around and not telling her. It had been the only way I could think of to directly help her without overstepping my bounds again. The look on her face had told me that it had been the right decision. Wasn’t that worth a series of evenings of lost sleep?

  Yes, indeed.

  Curtis always picks me up when I finish with my “night shift,” as there are no cabs out in the wee hours of the morning. I have hopes that I can flag one down, as it’s not too terribly late at this point, but there don’t seem to be any out and about. I’m going to have to walk it.