“Gilly, please, you sound so bitter. We were both young, and I wanted to explore the world. Anyway, it’s good to see you. I’m sure you’ll think the same of me eventually. I’d love to reconnect.” She stepped closer and ran one perfectly manicured finger over my chest. “We had a lot of fun. I really missed you. A lot.”
She had the audacity to run her fingers down to the edge of the waistband on my track pants. I caught her hand and stepped out of her grasp. She let go and smiled.
“See you soon Gilly,” she cooed and walked away.
Goddamn… women. What was wrong with my life? From one to the next, they were all driving me crazy.
Abby, who wanted a baby, and Giselle, who clearly wanted me.
She wouldn’t get me though. No way in hell. I was a different man now. Completely different to the guy she left behind.
The woman was trouble, the kind to stay far away from. We’d had fun indeed, but not the kind of fun I was looking to have with her ever again.
While I knew she wasn’t the type to take no for an answer, she’d have to take a backseat in my mind.
Whatever plan Giselle had up her sleeve could wait because I had to think of every way I could to stop Abby from making some crazy mistake.
Chapter 3
Abby
* * *
It had been such a lovely night so far, and Jeff was amazing.
I would give him a ten in the looks department. And eight on personality, humor, and being able to carry a conversation.
It was nearly two hours into our date, and I was trying to find the right time and right way to bring up the subject of having a family. Right now, I had a list of a hundred guys I thought suited me, and he was the first test drive. It would have been nice if he worked out and I didn’t have to go through the others. It would fall dangerously into the dating territory, and I didn’t want to do that.
I planned to give birth next spring. I was hoping to avoid the intense heat of the summer and also get in some bikini time this summer before I got too big. Besides, it would be nice to have a spring baby. Any time between April or the first week of May. Easter time when everything was lush and new.
“It’s cool how they advertise too, very subliminal.” Jeff smirked, bringing out the dimples in his left cheek.
We were talking about Apple products. He was a software developer and very into his work. He’d worked with Apple for a while, which I thought was truly impressive.
“I know. You see the advert and don’t even have to see anything else before you want whatever it is they’re selling,” I answered.
He laughed, and a lock of his blond hair fell over his eye.
There was that natural pause again where it was time to either continue the conversation or change it.
We’d eaten and had a glass of wine each. I didn’t want any more to drink because I was already nervous enough as it was.
How did anyone ask a guy they’d just met if they’d have a baby with you? This all sounded perfectly fine inside my head. Outside it may be completely different. I didn’t want to sound crazy, like Gilly had called me.
“So, Jeff.” There. That was a start.
“Yes, Abby…” He grinned.
He was really cute and the kind of guy I could see myself getting to like. There was just no chemistry. No chemistry even though I knew he was attracted to me and I was definitely attracted to him.
No chemistry though, and that was something I liked to have.
“Your profile… On Tinder, your profile listed you as wanting a family.” I drew in a steady breath so that I could focus. I wished I’d made some sort of list of questions to ask. It would have helped me now.
He nodded. “Yes. I listed that. You did too. I figure it helps narrow down the search a little. I want someone who’s serious in something long term.”
Oh…
I stifled a groan. “Long term? So, um, you wouldn’t want to be with someone for the family aspect alone? Like, just having a baby?” Oh God, I said it.
He narrowed his gaze and looked me over. “What? Just have a baby and not really be in a relationship?”
“Yes, it could be a good idea.”
The spark in his expression faded. “Really? How so? It doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. What, just get together and have a baby?”
My lips parted, and I didn’t know how to answer because I could see that he was clearly deflated and didn’t believe in the benefits of my idea.
“Yes.”
“Why wouldn’t you just go to a damn sperm bank, then?” He gave me a pointed stare.
Oh God, Gilly had said the same thing.
“Not if you want to do it the old-fashioned way,” I intoned.
He frowned and bit the inside of his lip. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes, I would like that,” I confessed.
“Abby, I’m gonna be honest with you. Not a lot of people are going to think that’s a good idea. It sounds crazy insane to me, and the fact that you bring that up on our first date is not exactly cool. Saying you want a family means something more than just creating a baby. You give the wrong impression if all you want is the baby.” He nodded.
“It works for some people.”
He shook his head. “Well, since I don’t know anyone like that, I think I’m going to call it a night. I’ll pay the bill on the way out.”
He got up before I could respond and practically fled, leaving me staring after him with my mouth open.
Sure, I understood that he was pissed off because I’d given him the wrong impression, but did he have to be so abrupt with me?
Crazy insane… that was what he’d said.
Was it really that bad?
Why couldn’t I see anything wrong with it?
I went home hoping to lick my wounds in private, but Mia was there. Mia was never home. I had three sisters. I’d lived in this house with Taylor and Mia over the course of eight years while our other sister, Vanessa, lived on her own.
Taylor had moved in after she came back from studying at Yale, and now she was leaving us for good. She already had, even though some of her stuff was still here.
She and Dylan had bought a nice beach house in Malibu, and I would say she moved out six months ago.
She would have been the one I’d expect to find at home on a regular weeknight like this.
Mia and I were the sisters who were always out.
Mia was sitting on the sofa eating a whole tub of ice cream while she watched The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Clearly, something had happened because that tub of ice cream had been bought for sharing. Not to consume by one’s self.
“You’re back early,” she stated as I lowered myself to sit in the loveseat.
“And you’re eating ice cream. The whole tub, Mia? That was a Ben and Jerry’s family special.” So, it could feed a family of four easily. “What happened to you?”
She shook her head at me. “I hate athletes. The whole lot of them. Why would I suddenly think it was a good idea to go for a jock? I hated them in high school and college. What made me think they would be any different now?”
God, this sounded bad. Having Taylor here helped in situations like this. She was a year younger than me and what I called the sister with heart. Mia was twenty-six, and Vanessa twenty-four. We always kind of thought, though, that the one- and two-year age differences were nothing. I actually thought it did make a difference because even I knew that a jock was a jock at any age.
I loved Gilly to no end, but look how he’d behaved with me earlier. No tact, no care, and just a plain asshole.
“Mia, what happened?” I thought I’d simply ask the question again.
“Eric Declan. He’s an asshole.”
“Oh God. Mia, that guy is a dog and a half. What drew you to him?” I winced.
“I don’t know. I just thought we sparked. We talked and connected, and then we… connected.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Then what?”
“He left straight after. I never even got my clothes back on before he left me. That was last week, and I could have gotten over it, but I saw him at work today flirting with Samantha Port.”
I frowned. “Really?” The woman was … well, she was odd. She was a bitch of a different kind. Not to us because Dad owned the company, but she went out of her way to seduce married men. It was just married men. Like she had a thing for them.
“Yes, he saw me and shamelessly flirted with her, and they left together.”
I blinked several times. Mia didn’t usually get this worked up over a guy. “Mia, do you like him? You sound really upset.”
“I’ll get over it. I’m just pissed off. He seemed nice. I was stupid and allowed him to fool me. I’ll be fine. It was just unpleasant. What about you? What happened to you? You seemed excited about your date, and he was cute.”
I leaned back in my chair and rested my head against the soft leather. I wasn’t certain if I could handle having one more person tell me how crazy my idea was, but she was my sister. Maybe she would understand. Maybe she would get me.
“It’s a really long story, but the essence of it is this.” I straightened and pulled my knees in, hugging them to my chest. “I want to have a baby.”
Her mouth dropped and her eyes snapped wide open. “What, Abby? Jesus. Really? An actual baby, as in lots-of-sex-without-any-kind-of-protection baby?” She laughed.
“Yeah. I went off the pill a week ago. I had one of those mini pills, so if you missed a day, you could get pregnant. Going off them was the first step for me, and it felt right. It felt like my body was ready for this.”
“You’re actually serious?” She set the ice cream down on the coffee table and brought her hands up to her cheeks. “Oh, Abby, have you been dating with that in mind? Having a baby?”
“Today was the first date, and I didn’t exactly want to date. Mia, I don’t mind not having a man present. If he wants to be part of my life and our child’s, that’s fine, but I’m only looking for a good guy I can have a baby with, and the understanding would be that we have this child but aren’t actually together. Does that sound crazy?”
She sighed and her shoulders slumped. “It… doesn’t necessarily sound crazy. It doesn’t, but it tends to sound that way because what you’re talking about is the end stage of a failed relationship, where all you share is a child. You’re saying that’s what you want?”
“I’m not looking at it like that. It’s not that at all. I guess I’m just very liberal and have this open way of thinking that a lot of people don’t get.”
“I get you. I really do, and I can see where you’re coming from. I just don’t want you to… give up on having a real relationship. Abby, we couldn’t ask for better examples than Mom and Dad. They’ve shown us what true love is. I may be the party girl who’s out every night, but I want that. I want what they have. Will I find someone? Probably not, but I might. I don’t want you to jump the gun thinking this is the only way for you to have a family. You may as well go to a sperm bank.”
Sperm bank. She was the third person to say that today. “I don’t want that.”
“You want the old fashioned traditional?” She smiled.
I nodded. “I want that part to be real. I can be liberal to some extent, but I want that part to be real even if I’m not in a real relationship.”
“Abby… it’s going to be hard to find someone like that, and personally, if it were me, I’d want someone who knows me and who I know. You can’t just pick a random person to do something like this with. It has to be someone you trust, even if it’s not real. For God’s sake, you’ll be having sex with this guy without protection. You can’t just pick someone off the road to do it with and say, ‘Goodbye, thanks for the baby’ after.” She sighed. “If it were me, I’d want someone I knew would look after me when I’m pregnant, and for damn sure he’d want to have some say in our child’s life.”
As if in answer to her, my phone buzzed in my purse. I picked it up, reached for my phone, and saw I had a message from Gilly. On the preview it said:
Still mad at me? I’m just looking after you the way I always have.
I looked from the phone to Mia and sucked in a sharp breath as an idea popped into my head.
Yes, Gilly had always looked after me. Always. And he was everything Mia had just described and then some. Also, I loved him. I actually loved him.
I loved him, I knew him, and he was a guy I trusted with my life.
He was also a man who was very capable of making a baby.
Would my best friend consider making a baby with me?
Chapter 4
Gilly
* * *
As I looked at Abby sitting across the table from me, her eyes wide with expectancy and her hands brought together, I stared at her.
I stared at her and tried to process the question she was asking me.
Yesterday was bad and had shocked me. I actually didn’t think this girl could shock me any more than what she’d shared with me yesterday.
Like with most things about Abby, however, I was very quickly proven wrong.
Today…
Today, at five minutes past one, Pacific Time, I was very quickly proven wrong. We sat in the same diner, same seat too. It could have been the same day, like one of those recurring nightmares. Or like an episode of The Twilight Zone, or shit.
It could have been any of those things because today, my best friend asked me if I would be the father of her child.
That… was what she’d asked me.
Me.
Now she was looking at me and waiting for an answer.
“Gilly, say something…” she said, and her shoulders slumped. “Gilly…” She breathed in, looking me over with a tentative expression on her face.
“What, Abby? What do you really want me to say?” I leaned forward and glowered at her. “Abby, you want us to have sex. Us.”
“No, it wouldn’t be like that.”
“Okay, so when I get home, I’ll jerk off in a bag and give you that.”
She frowned. “Why the hell would you say that to me?”
“Because you haven’t actually thought about this. Have you stopped to think that us having sex could change our relationship? It tends to be the sort of thing that does.”
“Gilly, I think of it as a mere technicality. It’s just a route to how you get something. The benefits outweigh the cost.” She actually smiled and nodded like she was talking about… well I didn’t know what.
Fucking hell …I couldn’t think of anything to compare her actions and words to. The whole thing was just ridiculous.
“Technicality? And benefits…” I stared at her in disbelief. “Abby, you haven’t even asked me what I want.”
“Because I’m asking you to do me a favor. You know me, and I trust you.”
“Abby, this is crazy. You’re asking me to have a child with you and just hand over the care of the baby to you because you want a baby.”
“You could see it if you want. I never said you couldn’t. In fact, that would be perfect. It would be ours.”
“We just wouldn’t be in a relationship?” I held her gaze.
She shook her head, and I didn’t know what came over me, but something snapped.
When I continued to stare, she pressed her blood-red lips together.
Blood-red lips, and smoky eye makeup that made her bright blue eyes look striking against that silver hair. I looked at her, and for the umpteenth time thought she was beautiful.
People always ripped into me about my relationship with her. Always. I’d admired Tristan for so long that I said I was just like him. My girl was my best friend. The thing was, I didn’t think he was as obsessive and protective as I was.
I also didn’t think he’d had the thoughts I had either. On occasion, I had to admit I got lost in her beauty.
In the whole time that Abby and I had been friends, there were two distinct moments when someone had said something that
made me wonder if I could consider us being more. This moment right here and now was one of those times.
Something snapped inside me as I actually considered me doing this craziness for her.
We’d have sex, lots of sex—the mere technicality, the route to getting what she wanted. Then she’d get pregnant with my baby and we’d have this child, but we wouldn’t be in a relationship.
I actually considered it maybe because in the fucking back of my mind I could admit that I did wonder what it would be like to be with her that way. It could have been the same part of my mind that thought it was a good idea to get her name tattooed on my chest.
I’d never been able to say no to her. That was probably why she was here making this request of me.
I couldn’t say no to her on a normal basis. Today though would be the first because that thing that snapped inside me told me I couldn’t just have sex with her and have it mean nothing emotionally.
I wouldn’t be able to brush it under the rug and have this baby with her.
I stood up and she glared at me.
“No,” I told her. There, the words had come out of my mouth. “No.” I said it again, and the weight pulled on my heart because she looked hurt and disappointed.
I left before she could say anything more, or before I felt worse.
I was supposed to be heading to the stadium for training, but I went home instead. I went home and spent the day thinking.
I was thinking about the first time I thought of being more than friends with Abby.
It was over ten years ago and very significant because she’d almost died.
I was eighteen. My family went on vacation to Italy and while I was there, I got a phone call letting me know Abby had collapsed in the park and was rushed to hospital. I flew straight back.
It was her appendix. The little tummy ache she’d complained of prior to me leaving and told me it must have been her indulgence on candy floss turned out to be a full-blown appendicitis.
Pregnancy Scandal: Bad Boy Bachelors of Orange County BK 2 Page 3
