by Holly Rayner
My face registered shock for the second time. “Give you my baby?” I sputtered stupidly. “Why in God’s name would I do that?”
“It’s my child, too. You said that yourself.”
“When you accused me of manipulating you, I got the idea you didn’t believe that!” I shouted incredulously.
“Like I said, I lost my head before. I’ve had a few hours to calm down now. All I want is someone to love and be loved by; someone who can carry on my work and my name. Being pregnant is going to limit your options. If you keep the child, you’re going to end up struggling to maintain your lifestyle, and your career is going to flounder. Neither of you will have the opportunities you need to get what you deserve out of life.
“On the other hand, if you agree to do things my way, our child will have every advantage, and once you recover from the pregnancy, you’ll have millions to relaunch your career with. If anything you told me was actually true, you can’t risk the dream you fought for your whole life being snuffed out of existence.”
The man was playing hardball, deliberately targeting my weak points. And it was working. The entire reason I had come to see him was because, sooner or later, if I raised my child on my own, I was going to end up struggling financially. Was it fair to rob the kid of a life of good prospects just because his father had been an asshole to me? I could see in Kristos’ eyes that this wasn’t some whim; the kid would definitely be well taken care of. As for me, I couldn’t promise that with any certainty.
And then there was my career. The thing I had worked three jobs for. The thing that brought me across the damn country. It was all likely going to be torpedoed very soon. I did not want to surrender my baby, but the more I considered keeping it, the less realistic it seemed. I hated it, but I had to concede that accepting Kristos’ terms was my best option. In a low voice, I assented, and he took my information.
All at once, the stress of the pregnancy, the fighting, and my fragile new career hit me like a bullet. Somewhere in my chest, a dam broke open, and I began to cry like the world was going to end. My emotions were physically painful, gripping like death at my heart, lungs, and stomach. Kristos dropped what he was doing and rushed to my side, wrapping his arms around me without a word.
His embrace felt like my bed had that morning: warm and safe. His eyes, which before had been cold and untrusting, were suddenly full of deep compassion. I needed to feel the comfort he was giving me, needed the smothering pain to go away.
Unable to stop myself I pushed my lips against his, reveling in the tenderness and intimacy of the act. Concern flared into his eyes, but he responded at once, caressing my back and moving ever lower. A moment later, I had his shirt untucked, and my hands were exploring the taut muscles of his chest. His hands snaked their way into my panties and began gently massaging my ass.
In minutes, we were rolling together on the plush carpet next to Kristos’ desk, passionately exploring one another’s bodies. My pleasured cries had turned to loud, desperate moaning, and the air cooled the heat of the sweat that clung to us. I was certain everyone in the building knew what we were up to, but at that point, I couldn’t care less.
Only when we finally collapsed into each other’s arms did either of us give any serious thought to what had just happened. We lay there, exhausted and silent, for nearly ten minutes, before Kristos finally spoke up.
“We can’t let that happen again,” he said, as if he were trying to convince himself. Gathering my strength, I nodded in agreement.
Kristos pointed out his personal shower in the bathroom attached to his office, and I made use of it. By the time I came back into the office, he was standing by his desk as if nothing had happened. He handed me a sheaf of papers when he saw me.
“These are your new accounts, Ms. Johnson. Congratulations, you’re a millionaire. Remember our agreement. Absolutely no contact for the next several months.” He said all this in cold, professional tones that made me wonder where the hell the man I just slept with went. Only minutes ago he had been full of warmth and compassion, and now this guy was giving Jack Frost a run for his money.
I took the papers and quietly headed for my car, dimly aware that, on some level, I ought to have been celebrating.
I was rich. Ridiculously rich. I could have driven my car off a cliff, and bought an Aston Martin. I could have bought Mrs. Coleman’s building out from under her, and kicked her out of it. But I wasn’t in the mood. All I could think about was what my new fortune had cost me.
The ride back home was long and silent. The next day, I would have to leave Penny Lane. With very little explanation, and right in the middle of filming. The internet was going to go insane. Worse, Mr. Morris, who had picked me out of hundreds of applicants, and worked with me for months, would suddenly be stuck. He would have to replace me without notice. It was a poor repayment for his faith in me. On top of that, there was Ann to consider. What would her reaction be? I was repaying all of her kindnesses to me by hampering the show that it was her dream to return to the air.
I forced all those thoughts out of my mind, fighting to recapture the sated feeling my encounter with Kristos had given me.
“I’m going to have to do something,” I told myself. Something to try to fight off all the negativity.
My phone rang, and I saw it was my mother. “Oh hell no,” I exclaimed. One disaster at a time. I suddenly changed my mind about going home, and booked myself in at a nearby day spa.
ELEVEN
“You’re leaving us?” the voice on the line was asking, in tones of utter shock.
It had been two days since my encounter with Kristos, and Mr. Morris had been informed that the aforementioned billionaire had arranged for me to move to Beijing. There, I was going to appear in a series of shows meant to launch an offshoot of Kristos’ production company for the Asian market. Mr. Morris had been bitterly disappointed in me for my lack of loyalty and Ann Montgomery, Penny Lane herself, had apparently just heard the news.
“I’m afraid so, Ann.” I told her, selling the lie. “It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up. I’ve wanted to work internationally for most of my life.”
“Well I wish you all the best, Emma,” she said, trying to sound diplomatic. “It was my pleasure to work with you. I only wish you had brought this up earlier, before I earned the ire of Richard and the others. I’ve been holding up the production because I consider my colleagues part of my family. I didn’t want to work with a family member missing.”
“I really appreciate that, and I’m truly sorry. I only got the call two days ago.” I could almost hear the curt nod she gave when she was frustrated. There was not a drop of anger in her voice, but I knew she was seething.
“Well, it’s really no problem, Emma. These things happen. And, as they say, the show must go on. Richard told me he had hoped you’d have been more loyal to the production, but I reminded him that some people need to follow their heart. Good luck, Emma.”
She hung up, and I reflected that I had just been through the most vicious but polite conversation of my life, complete with my own throwaway line from Date Roulette. What was worse, I still had another call to make.
The conversation with Margaret wasn’t much better, and the internet was eager to throw shade on the entire affair. I eventually ended up avoiding it almost in its entirety.
I spent days holed up in my apartment. Whenever I went outside, I would bump into someone eager to ask me about what really happened on the set of Penny Lane. Most of the time, it was just people in the neighborhood, but increasingly, it was the press.
Eventually, I decided to put my newfound wealth to good use. I was supposed to be abroad, and that was where I planned to go. Not quite as far as China, but somewhere where I could relax, away from the public eye. I was just narrowing down my options, when a sharp knock came at my door.
I looked through the peephole, and recoiled in shock. My mother was standing there, looking worn and haggard. Her hair was stringy and unkempt. Her
eyes were hollow, and her face drawn. She was thinner than I ever remembered seeing her, and despite my animosity for her, I was worried.
I opened the door, and she tottered in like a woman twice her age. She wore a plain dress, gold earrings, and a crucifix around her neck. It all seemed to be weighing her down. I wanted to shout at her, to ask her what she was doing here, but she looked so frail. When she took my hand in hers, the skin felt like paper, and she winced aloud, though she tried to hide it.
“You don’t answer your phone,” she said, plopping down on the sofa.
I said nothing, still wary about her motivation for showing up like this.
“Nothing hurts more than being hated by your child. I came here to say something I didn’t say to you enough when you were younger. It was rough where we came from. People worked their whole lives; two, three jobs just to exist. That’s what I had to do, and it’s what your father had to do. I didn’t want for you to have to do it too. I didn’t want you ending up like this,” she said, suddenly coughing violently.
I sat beside her, partially supporting her slight frame. When I got close, I noticed a rash on her face I’d never seen there before.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“With me?” she replied dismissively. “Oh, tons of things. That’s not really important. What’s important is what’s wrong between us. One day, when you have children, I hope you never feel what happens to your heart when you wake up to find your daughter gone; what happens in your soul when you realize she’s going across the country with a man you’ve never met before. You might have been kidnapped, or worse.”
“If you’d have just taken me, I wouldn’t have had to do that!” I interjected.
“I know,” my mother replied simply. “But I wanted you to have something stable.”
“I had a damn scholarship!” I yelled.
“So did Bobby Vance.”
“Who?”
“Exactly. He was a few years above you in school. He got on television and was successful for a while, before someone else got everyone’s attention. Now he’s in bankruptcy court. And he wasn’t nearly as talented as you are. Entertainment is a fickle business, Emma; one small thing can ruin you.”
I stared at her for a second, wondering what was lurking beneath her words. “How would you know how talented I was?” I demanded. “You were never there to see anything I did.”
Shaking her head, she went into her purse, and fished out a sheaf of papers. When I looked at them, my mouth dropped open. There were handbills for the community plays I’d been in, old ticket stubs, and programs from my talent shows—every single one of them.
“I didn’t like what you wanted to do. I might never like it. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t proud of you. You got better and better every time I saw you, but talent doesn’t mean as much as it used to. I only ever wanted to protect you.”
“But I didn’t want to be protected,” I protested.
I glanced at my handiwork, gripped tightly in her fragile hand, and heard the slow, earnest tone in her voice. It wasn’t bullshit. She really had cared. She had had faith in me. But I was still angry at her for hiding it so long, and for trying to steer me from my dream.
“I’m your mother!” she replied firmly, and she pulled me into a hug. “Protecting you whether you like it or not, that’s my job. I love you, Emma, and I want you to know that.”
Something about that hug put a sort of fear into me that I had never felt before in my life. She was gripping me like doing so might keep her in this world a little longer, and I hugged her as tightly as I dared.
TWELVE
My mother stayed with me for close to two months. While it didn’t completely heal all of our old wounds, it did finally make us friends. By the time she left, I was genuinely sad to see her go. But something else was occupying my mind by that point: the baby was starting to make his presence known.
I was four months into the roller coaster adventure of pregnancy, and I could feel him moving about a lot now. I was starting to show, and my energy reserves were finally beginning to recover. I would wake up in the middle of the night with strange cravings for Chinese food, mostly sesame chicken and Hunan shrimp.
I had gone to a doctor a few days prior: Dr. Iwata, who already knew my secret. I went in covered up, under an assumed name, and she allowed me to hear my boy’s heartbeat for the first time. I cried quietly; it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. When I saw the first ultrasound, I felt the weight of everything come down on me. It was really happening. There was a little person growing inside me. With fingers and toes, and a cute little head.
It was close to midnight, but I was wide awake in my bed, staring at my copy of that ultrasound. I didn’t know if I could do it anymore. I didn’t know if I could give him up.
The next morning, I packed four suitcases into my car. As far as the world knew, today was the day I was finally heading to Beijing. I was supposed to have gone two months ago, but I told the press I was given a reprieve to look after my mother’s health. In all the time she had stayed with me, she hadn’t told me exactly what was wrong with her, but I had an idea. I just hoped I was wrong.
I jumped into my car and headed for the airport, where a chartered plane was waiting. Obviously, I wasn’t really going to China; I was headed for a compound Kristos owned in northern California. It was isolated, private, and reporters weren’t allowed anywhere near it. It was the perfect place to create the illusion that I was overseas.
In the air, I thought about what my mother had said. She was right about one thing: entertainment was a fickle business. One little role on a reality show had catapulted me to prominence, and one tiny sperm was threatening to force me into obscurity. I wouldn’t be able to act again until after the baby was born, and by then I might have lost all relevance.
Of course, I didn’t really need to keep acting. I didn’t really need to do anything. Thanks to Kristos, I had more wealth than most people earned in a lifetime. I could literally play Monopoly with real money at this point. But still, I wanted to act. I wanted to bring characters to life like that little girl in the vampire movie, but instead I was dodging cameras and sneaking off to my new home: a beautiful place smack dab in the middle of nowhere.
The plane landed on a strip of dirt surrounded by short, pale green, grasses, and, as planned, I was met by a driver who took me the rest of the way to the house, at least a mile away.
My new home looked like it could have been drawn by the Disney Company. The entire thing was surrounded by a wrought iron fence. Just inside was a wide, circular driveway with flowers and bushes lining its sides, and a neatly-trimmed island of grass in the middle. I found myself wondering how many staff members were on the premises. The house itself was huge, and looked like it had been modeled on an old English cottage. The windows were divided by small pillars, and the brick was capped with a decorative wooden frame, the color of a golden squash. The black roof was pitched, with a circular window in the center.
I went inside and set up in one of the rooms, which might have jumped right out of Better Homes and Gardens. I had always wanted a house like this, but these were not the circumstances I had imagined. Before long, my mind was consumed again. My mother. My baby. My career.
To clear my head, I took out my laptop and tried to write everything down, hoping that would make things clearer, and promising myself I would make a firm decision in the morning. I closed my eyes in front of the blank screen, trying to draw the words forth. Eventually, as daylight began to seep through the drapes, my fingers started to fly across the keyboard. Sentence after sentence, a story began to pour out of me, as if it had always been there waiting for me to find it.
By morning, my mind was made up clearly. It was the ultrasound that had done it; there was no way, absolutely no way that I would be able to give that little boy up when he came out. I had spent the night singing to him and reading him my story. And now I was about to call Kristos, contact rules be da
mned, and give up thirty million dollars.
By evening, I had called Kristos twelve times, and his secretary had invented twelve excuses for him. I was livid, but I wasn’t going to give up that easily; he would talk to me whether he liked it or not. The next day, I requested a meeting and discovered Kristos had conveniently filled up his schedule for the next five months. Then I started calling incessantly, until his secretary started screening my number. By the end of the week, I had done everything short of breaking into his office myself. Just as that thought entered my mind, my eyes fell on my half-finished story.
The beginnings of a plan were forming in my head, and I began to feel like the hero at the end of a movie. As I fleshed out my idea, I continued typing. It was going to be the foundation on which everything else depended. As I worked, my baby shifted and kicked, as if he were ready and willing to help out his mommy. That thought made me smile, and by month five of my pregnancy, everything on my end was ready to go.
