The CEO's Baby

by Cleo Jones

  Nia stared up at Blake at a loss for words, and eventually he turned away from her and saw himself out. It was hardly the last she or Noah saw of him, however. The following day, Deidra sat down at her usual bench away from all the mothers at the park and was in the process of watching Noah start up a game of basketball when she noticed Blake approaching from the front gates. “Surprise, surprise,” she muttered, making a point of not looking him in the eye when he sat down beside her.

  “I swear he gets taller everyday,” Blake commented, taking a sip from the plastic cup of coffee in his hands.

  Deidra side-eyed him. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” she questioned. “Nia mentioned something to me about a mass layoff…sounds messy.”

  Blake clammed up then. “I’m not at liberty to talk about that. I’m sorry, but it’s confidential.”

  “And?” Deidra hedged. “Come on. It’s not like I work there. Besides…I’m going to find out anyway, and Nia is too. If it’s as bad as it seems, she’s going to be pissed at you for not giving her a heads up. Is that really what you want when you’re trying to get back in her good graces?”

  Blake sighed in exasperation. “I’m serious. My dad’s board members will slaughter me if I let even a single detail about their contingency plan slip.”

  “Whatever,” Deidra said, rolling her eyes. “In that case…you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions for me then, would you?”

  Blake hesitated. “As long as they have nothing to do with Kanadov…”

  Deidra shook her head and held up two fingers in solidarity.

  “Alright then,” Blake said. “Ask away.”

  “Why didn’t you ever come back for Nia at the end of that summer like you said you would?”

  Blake frowned and swallowed hard, appearing taken off guard by the question. “It’s like I told you,” he spoke up after awhile, studying his hands. “I was stupid, not to mention really fucking scared. I wanted to run away from my obligations, and my father was all too willing to help…”

  “Why?”

  A look of shame crossed over Blake’s face. “Because he’s a racist bigot, that’s why. When he found out I’d gotten Nia pregnant, he was livid, and not for the reasons most fathers would have been. All he saw was her race, and he swore he’d fire her from Kanadov if I so much as considered going back to her. After that I guess I just…I fucking lost it for a while. I got in with the wrong people, and I did a lot of shit I’m not proud of.”

  Deidra frowned. “Like?”

  Blake let out a heavy sigh and racked his fingers through his hair. “It’d be easier to give you a list of the things I didn’t do. I was a mess. My dad cut me off shortly after I moved in with him, and I dabbled in some shady business for a while in order to make ends meet. I had this idea that if I made a little money, that it wouldn’t have mattered if he fired Nia, because I’d have been able to support her myself. Of course…that didn’t happen. I got busted, and I ended up doing serious time up in Boyd.”

  “Wow.” Deidra stared at him in disbelief. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume Nia doesn’t know about any of this?”

  Blake shook his head. “I can’t bring myself to tell her.”

  “Why not?” Deidra questioned. “She’d probably be a whole lot more understanding if she knew, don’t you think?”

  Blake shook his head. “Nia’s a good woman. She’s not the type to settle down with a man with a record, much less allow him to form a relationship with her son.”

  “Noah’s your son too,” Deidra reminded him. “Besides, people aren’t defined by their pasts. It’s how they right their wrongs that matters the most, and you seemed to have done just that…”

  “I did,” Blake said. “I was locked up for eight years, and I was determined to make something out of myself when I finally got out. I had it easy though. My dad died a couple months back, and I guess he wasn’t too diligent in revising his will, because by some bizarre twist of fate I ended up inheriting Kanadov and all of his assets…”

  Deidra smiled. “Well if you ask me, it sounds like you got what was owed to you.”

  Blake shrugged. “Honestly…I hate that company and everything it represents. It had a large part in molding my dad into the bitter old asshole he was when he died. If it wasn’t for Nia, and all the complications with this damn oil spill, I’d have probably sold it by now…”

  Deidra fell silent as she contemplated everything Blake had just shared with her. From his story, she was able to gather that he’d learned the hard way what was really important in life. It was just a shame that he’d told her all of this and not Nia…

  Chapter ten

  Nia made her way to her car after work, but she stopped short when she noticed Blake’s SUV parked a few spots away from her. Knowing he’d be coming out at any moment, she quickened her pace, but trying to walk faster ended up slowing her down in the long run. She dropped her keys, and she caught sight of someone looming before her when she went to go pick them up.

  “Sorry,” Blake greeted. “I didn’t mean to scare you…”

  “That’s alright,” Nia mumbled, standing back up. “What’s up?”

  Blake hesitated and rubbed his neck. “I’m assuming you got my letter?”

  “You mean the one you had your lowlife attorney draw up?” Nia said, turning to face him as she opened her car door. “Yeah, I got it…”

  Blake seemed almost amused by Nia’s tone. “Okay, you obviously didn’t actually read the letter…”

  “Nope, and I have no intention on it.”

  “Nia, come on,” Blake pleaded. “We need to talk about how we’re going to proceed from here.”

  “No.”

  “That’s mature.”

  “I don’t care,” Nia shot back, setting her jaw. “Now if you wouldn’t mind moving, I have to go pick up our son.”

  “Our,” Blake repeated, reaching for her arm to stop her in midstride. “You do realize you said ‘our’, right?”

  Nia stared at Blake like a fish out of water for a couple seconds before pulling away from him and getting in her car. As soon as she arrived at Deidra’s, she pulled the letter from his attorney from her purse and gave it a slow read. Just as he’d alluded, it was an invitation for a meeting, not some intimidating court order.

  Nia looked up from the paperwork to find Deidra escorting Noah out of the house. She got out of the car with the letter in hand, holding it up as she neared them. “It’s getting serious.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” Deidra stated, holding up a hand to stop her. “You know what you need to do, and you refuse to do it. I have no other advice to give your stubborn butt on the matter.”

  Nia stared at her sister in disbelief for a few seconds before quietly helping Noah into the car and driving away. He was pretty quiet throughout the rest of the evening, but she discovered the reason when she went in later that night to tuck him in for bed and found him coughing and complaining of an upset stomach. She immediately went to go get a thermometer, and she discovered upon taking his temperature that he had a slight fever just as she’d anticipated.

  After giving Noah a quick dose of Theraflu, Nia went to bed and was in the process of distracting herself with a magazine when her cell phone vibrated beside her. It was Blake, and she frowned when she took note of how late it was. “Do you have any idea what time it is?” she hissed, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Noah.

  There was a pause, and Nia knew Blake was inspecting his phone for the time. “Sorry,” he said. “This won’t take long…do you have a minute?”

  Nia wanted so badly to tell him no, but something kept her from doing so. “What is it?”

  “I was just wondering if you were planning on responding to that request I sent you. It’s sort of time sensitive…”

  Nia was silent as she tried to come up with a response that wouldn’t lead them into an argument. Unfortunately for her, Blake mistook her silence for uncertainty.

  “What are y
ou so afraid of?” he questioned in a voice thick with desperation. “I’m not going to ask the judge for anything you wouldn’t approve of. It’s just a simple sit down. You have nothing to lose here.”

  “Nothing to lose?” Nia let out a humorless laugh. “Blake, in no time at all, you’ve come and turned my life upside down. You’re at my job, my sister seems to think you’re some kind of born again saint, and now here you are trying to take Noah away from me…”

  “No I’m not,” Blake interrupted. “That’s the last thing I’m trying to do here, Nia. You should know me better than that. I just want a relationship with him, and if you’d stop being so damn stubborn, you’d see that I’m willing to operate within the boundaries of whatever terms you come up with...”

  Nia fell silent as she considered his words. “Any terms?”

  “Yes,” Blake confirmed. “So long as they’re within reason.”

  “Fine,” Nia said. “I don’t want you taking him on overnights…”

  “Alright.”

  “And no weekends either,” Nia added. “That’s some of the only time I get with him. I don’t want to lose that.”

  “Okay, got it, no weekends,” Blake assured her. “Anything else?”

  “Oh no, there’s more,” Nia continued. “You can’t keep interfering with his scheduled routines. Like his time Deidra, for example.”

  “Right, understandable.”

  “And I don’t want you bringing him around anyone I haven’t met. Especially women. All that would do is confuse him.”

  “Got it.”

  “And one last thing,” Nia added just for extra measure. “I want a trial period to test all of this out.”

  “A trial period?”

  “Yes. I need some kind of reassurance that you’re not just going to zigzag in and out of Noah’s life whenever you please.”

  “Nia, come on,” Blake pleaded. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not going to do that before you believe me?”

  Nia sighed. “Cut me some slack. I’ve never known you to finish what you started. I want a trial period.”

  “Fine,” Blake sighed in acquiesce. “How long?”

  “Well, Noah goes back to school in the fall, so lets say the rest of the summer. You can visit with him for a few hours one night a week, and it has to happen at my place.”

  “What?” Blake exclaimed. “Nia…that’s not fair and you know it. You get to see him everyday, and I only get one lousy night out of the week?”

  “Trust me, you really don’t want to start a discussion with me on what’s fair and what’s not,” Nia warned. The line went quiet then, and she was sure she’d lost Blake until he quietly spoke up again.

  “Fine,” he agreed. “But when I make it through this trial period with flying colors, because I will, the rules change.”

  Nia smiled to herself. “Deal.”

  Chapter eleven

  Blake ended up choosing Tuesday nights for his visits with Noah, and Nia was relieved. That meant she could get the whole ordeal over with early in the week without it interfering with her weekends off.

  “What are we going to do?” Noah asked his mother when she informed him that he would be having company over later that evening.

  Nia stopped what she was doing to think it over. “I don’t know buddy. Maybe you could show him how to play that new basketball video game you got for your birthday.”

  Noah smiled at the suggestion. “Sure, so long as he’s okay with losing!”

  Nia smirked and made her way into the kitchen, figuring she’d make the most out of the time she’d have to herself before Blake came. After pouring herself a glass of wine, she pulled out her bank statements and set them down on the table beside a stack of bills. She hated having to fork over her hard earned money on these sorts of expenses, but then again, who didn’t?

  Blake showed up at seven o’clock on the dot. Nia had just finished feeding Noah dinner, and she was loading up the dishwasher when she heard a knock on the door. “Noah!” she called out to her son, making her way to answer it. “You have company!”

  Blake smiled when Nia let him in, turning his attention to his son when he darted out of his bedroom to greet him.

  “Blake!” Noah exclaimed in a giddy tone, throwing all the toys in his arms to the ground to hug him. “I got NBA 2K15. Wanna play?”

  Blake nodded and followed Noah back into his bedroom. Nia watched them disappear before sitting back down at the table to work on her bills, but she had a hard time concentrating on them as she strained to hear what was going on down the hall.

  Blake entered the kitchen about 20 minutes before his time with Noah was set to be up, pulling Nia’s attention away from what she was working on. “Do you have a second?” he questioned.

  Nia nodded, sliding off her reading glasses and quickly concealing her documents away from Blake’s view. “Noah, go get ready for bed!” she called out to her son. “It’s almost time!”

  Noah did as he was told, darting from his spot in front of the TV, and Blake took a seat across from Nia as soon as he was gone.

  “What is it?” Nia questioned, taking immediate notice of the anxious look on his face. She knew it meant he was going to say something she didn’t want to hear.

  “It’s about work,” Blake replied, rubbing his neck. It was obvious that he was trying to come up with the best way to frame whatever he was about to say next, but he ended up opting on the blunt approach instead. “Since we have a kid together, I think it’s a conflict of interest for us to be employed at the same place…”

  Nia scoffed. “What?”

  “Nia, come on,” Blake pleaded. “This wasn’t easy for me, trust me, but I’m the interim CEO. My father’s board isn’t going to be happy when they find out I have a son I didn’t tell them about, much less one with a fellow employee. They’ll think you’re the only reason I want to keep the public relations branch open, and then everyone will lose their jobs…”

  “So basically what you’re saying here is that I’m supposed to quit my job in order to save everyone else’s,” Nia surmised, shaking her head in disbelief. “Incredible…”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Blake objected, keeping his voice low so as not to alarm Noah. “I just think that if you’re really dead set on staying employed at Kanadov, that maybe we should keep quiet about me being Noah’s father…”

  Nia frowned at him. “What makes you think I had any intention on telling anyone to begin with?”

  “Well, good,” Blake muttered, studying his hands. He looked momentarily wounded by her tone, but he was quick to regain his composure. “We’re in agreement, then.”

  Nia nodded, and Blake studied her face for a moment before standing up to leave. “I’ll tell Noah you said goodnight,” she said as she made her way down the hall to check on him.

  Blake paused with his hand on the front doorknob. “Actually…would you mind if I told him myself?”

  Nia hesitated, turning to look him in the eye. Not seeing any point in protesting, she stepped aside and allowed him to walk past her, but he stopped short when he got to Noah’s door.

  No wonder it had become so quiet.

  Noah was curled up in his bed fast asleep, and he didn’t even stir when Nia went in to pull his blankets up over him. Blake signaled that he was leaving when she nodded, remaining by Noah’s bed for a few seconds longer to watch him sleep. It wasn’t until she heard her front door click shut that she finally emerged.