Not his baby: A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Rebecca Dupree

  Evan just shrugged nonchalantly. “Worth a shot. Oh, and speaking of Stephanie,” he paused, that heat in his blue eyes firing again. “I just called your friend, Sarah, and she said she was willing to keep an eye on Stephanie today again. And I just called in at work and took the day off.”

  “Oh?” I asked in a playful manner, “So what does that leave us to do?”

  He smirked at me, wagging his eyebrows suggestively. Oh Lord, was he thinking what I thought? An hour later ,I found us both on the couch, engrossed in the screen in front of us as we hammered away at the remote controls we each had clenched in our hands. I couldn’t express how awesome he was when he suggested we play Mario Kart, with a twist.

  “HA, I BEAT YOUR SORRY ASS!” I yelled in triumph as he groaned at the screen. Five games of Mario Kart and I was in the lead in each one. It didn’t help him that I constantly took all the bonuses. I also think he was more than a little distracted and I felt no guilt whatsoever at taking advantage of it.

  Evan glared at me good naturedly. “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but you’re cheating!”

  “Oh quit whining and take your pants off,” I said, smiling at him sweetly, my eyes glued to him now instead of the screen.

  We were playing strip Mario Kart, and the guy was finally down to his underwear. Gotta say, this was an amazing idea that we would certainly be doing again. If we ever made it through the first game. It seemed almost unfair that I had won all the games, but as he shed his pants I couldn’t regret it. Damn, Evan had a nice body. Broad shoulders and a well-muscled chest, six pack abs and hard thighs peeking from beneath his boxers. It was all too easy to remember exactly how good the still hidden parts looked too.

  “So embarrassing,” he muttered, throwing the pants into his other pile of clothes.

  “I don’t know, I’m liking the view.” I smirked, my gaze still glued to his impressive body and I could feel warmth spread through me at his look. Evan smiled, slow and sensual, and I swore that warmth burned a hundred degrees hotter just like that. I glanced down at a vibration, searching for the source and then looked to my phone when I realized I had a new message. I groaned at it: apparently the boss was having problems, some sort of emergency, and needed me.

  “I have to go,” I told him regretfully, more regretfully than he knew, as I snuck one final look at his nearly naked body.

  “Oh, come on,” he said, glancing down at his own nudity, and then back up at her with a grin on his lips. “You can’t leave now. Things were just getting interesting.”

  “Sorry, I wish I could stay, but my stupid boss needs some extra help.”

  “What is it with newspaper editors and hounding people’s asses?” he mumbled sourly as he moved to pull his pants back on.

  “You know a newspaper editor?” I asked, curious as I gathered my things, preparing to leave.

  Evan nodded solemnly as his expression twisted. “Yeah, my ex.”

  “Well I guess it runs in them,” I shrugged, before kissing him and walking out, “I’ll see if I can drop by tonight.”

  “Later.”

  Ugh, I did not want to go to work today. There was only one reason my boss called me before I had to work and it was because she had done something stupid and she wanted to make my life hell for it. Damn it, today had started out so good and now she had to ruin it.

  Oh well, at least I had last night’s somewhat foggy memories to help me through it. Despite that, I couldn’t help but think that today was going to be shitty.

  Once I got to my car, I pulled the door open to head to my lousy workplace when nausea once more had me grabbing for my stomach and running towards the nearest bush as I threw up again. Shit! It was probably a bug going around. I groaned at that. I had just lost my lunch and I was probably going to deal with losing it again later. Yep, today was about to be a shitty day.

  Chapter 8

  Regan

  I was right: today did turn out to be a really shitty day. We’d got the so called ‘emergency’ fixed, which was little more than a clerical error that anyone could have handled, but the woman had me running errands for her all day, making me bring her coffee, going to pick up the designs for the cover. Ugh, she was so frustrating. The entire day seemed to drag on endlessly, each hour ticking by so slowly that it was almost painful. Plus, I still had to go and pick out some groceries so I ended up arriving super late to Evan’s house: good thing he was still up.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived. I just wanted to make sure Stephanie was doing okay, but I was certainly unprepared for the minefield I stumbled on to. I had just put Stephanie to bed when I heard the voices. It was when I overheard what was being said when I understood just how shitty my day would be.

  “I can’t believe it! I just can’t fucking believe it!” I overheard what was my guess Melanie’s voice. I swear it sounded so familiar, but their words were what really had my attention.

  “Will you stop yelling? Stephanie is sleeping,” Evan hissed.

  “You’re fucking your babysitter. Why the fuck would you do that?” the woman shrieked, paying no mind to her sleeping daughter, or to Evan’s entreaties to stay quiet.

  “Uh, because I’m allowed. I like her and she likes me. It's what people do sometimes.”

  “I just can’t believe you would rather fuck with that skank!”

  “Do not call her a skank! You don’t even know her. You don’t know anything about her!” Evan’s voice was low and hard as he spoke and I gave a mental cheer.

  I had to admit, my heart fluttered when he defended me.

  “Of course she’s a skank,” Melanie scoffed, “what else would she be? She comes in here to take care of our little girl, only to get into your pants.”

  “Ok, first of all, yes, I hired her to take care of Stephanie, but I was the one who asked her out. Last I checked I have a right to ask someone else out if I feel like it, including my babysitter if she so wishes it.”

  “How could you do this? How could you do this to me? Did you do it on purpose?”

  “Oh my God, you are acting as if I did this for the sole purpose of affecting you. I promise you, you were the last thing on my mind.”

  “Didn’t you? You wanted me out of your life, so you got together with the first woman you saw.”

  “That is not what happened at all, Melanie. You have things so twisted around in your mind. You were the one who cheated on me, not the other way around. We were finished long before this, and it’s not my fault that you can’t admit it, because guess what, not everything I do is about you.”

  “Then why else would you tell me?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because despite everything, you’re still my ex-wife and you deserve to know.”

  “Or you did it to make me jealous?” Melanie spat out and I cringed at the venom in her voice.

  Evan paused for a long moment before answering, “What?”

  “You want me to be jealous and that’s why you told me, so that I would get worked up over it.”

  “Oh for the love of God,” Evan muttered impatiently, and I heard the sound of a chair being pulled out and imagined him falling into the seat, disgust on his face.

  “Look, there’s still time for us. I promise we can make us work.”

  “We are not making anything work, Melanie. God damn it, why can’t you understand that there is nothing between us anymore, and there never will be? I’m done with you! Can’t you understand that?”

  “No! It was me you married; it was me you chose to have a life with. You loved me.”

  “I married someone else; I married the illusion of a woman who never existed. If she did, she never would’ve left me. It was an illusion I loved and that illusion has faded.”

  His words surprised me, and no doubt they surprised the woman because she remained silent.

  “She’ll never be that woman. She will never love you the way I did. No one will ever care about you the way I did. You were just some sad, pathetic,
weak man before you met me!”

  “Alright that’s enough!” I yelled, stepping from around the corner. If she wanted to call me a skank she could, but she was not talking like that to my new boyfriend. “I don’t know what your problem is lady but I...”

  I was totally prepared to give her a grandiose speech in hopes of getting her to leave Evan alone forever, so that he wouldn’t have to deal with her again and hopefully make things better with Stephanie. Unfortunately, a second before I made my grand entrance, I realized why the woman’s voice sounded so familiar. When I came face to face with her, my blood ran cold as ice and I swear I blacked out for a second.

  It was my boss, Mrs. Hershaw.

  “Oh shit,” I muttered, my eyes and my boss’ opened wide in shock. “No. No way.”

  “What’s happening?” I heard Evan ask. “Regan?”

  “Um...” I gulped, struggling for air, struggling for any words to possibly explain just how messed up the situation had become.

  “You slept with her,” Melanie hissed, her rage-filled eyes making me want to just vanish into thin air.

  “Yes?” Evan said. He seemed unsure of what else to say, and he looked from me, to Melanie, and then back again. “…Do you two know each other?”

  I cleared my throat, trying to avoid Mrs. Hershaw’s glare. “Evan, this is Mrs. Hershaw, my boss.”

  “…Your boss?”

  I swear we were all so silent, you could drop a pin and it would echo through the house. I caught Evan looking between us, and Melanie just wouldn’t stop glaring at me. I couldn’t take it, this awkward silence was killing me!

  “So...” I began, but Melanie let out a banshee shriek of rage and stalked off, making me jump. Evan and I stayed there, our collective breath held, and when we heard the door shut, we finally let them out.

  Evan sighed, repeating the now obvious facts. “Your boss’ name is Hershaw, which just happens to be my ex-wife’s maiden name. You work at a newspaper, as does Melanie. How did I not figure it out?”

  “Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap! Oh crap!” I kept saying, holding my head and pacing.

  “Calm down,” Evan said, gesturing to the chair next to him, but I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t even stop pacing.

  “No! I will not calm down! This is a disaster! This is the end of my life as we know it!”

  “It’s fine, if you’re worried about losing your job, then don’t be. She can’t fire you for this. If she did you could totally sue.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh in his face; I swear I must’ve looked like a maniac to him. I kept on laughing, his eyes wide in surprise and confusion, and I patted his arm. Such an innocent man; he knew nothing about the minds of women. It was like he had lived in a bubble, far away from us.

  “Are you okay?” he finally asked, staring at me, but I just shook my head, trying to process what had just happened.

  “I’m fine!” I said, still smiling. “Why wouldn’t I be? I know she can’t fire me. If she could, it would actually be a blessing! If she could fire me, I wouldn’t complain! What she can do is make my life miserable for sleeping with her husband!”

  By that last sentence my false cheer went away.

  “Ex-husband,” he clarified.

  “Do you really think she’s aware of that difference?!”

  “Well, now that you mention it...”

  “Oh my God, she’s going to send me to the copy room. She’s going to make me print, copy, and scan things instead of writing them! And she’ll constantly ask me for her coffee! I’ll never see the screen of a computer! I’ll never make everyone see the truth, I’ll never help my friend edit the crossword puzzles section!”

  “Regan!” he yelled at me, grasping my shoulders. “Breathe. Just…breathe.”

  I nodded at that. I should probably do that. I took in some air and then let it out. In and out Regan. That’s it. Nice and easy.

  “Now, if you’re so concerned about how your job is going to go, why don’t you look for another one?”

  “I can’t do that. I have put a lot of time and work there, and in a few months I can apply for a promotion.”

  “Yeah, she’s not going to give you a promotion,” Evan said, with a look of commiseration. He was finally grasping just how drastically this would change things for me.

  “…New job it is.”

  “There we go,” he said before taking me in his arms, letting me rest against him. “Now why don’t we have a nice dinner and forget about all this?”

  “Ugh, I wish I could, but, I knew today was going to be horrible. I just knew it.” I let my head rest against his chest, letting the soothing, steady beat of his heart calm my own troubled thoughts.

  “Hey, it started out okay; you weren’t complaining in the morning,” Evan said with a small grin as he laid a sweet kiss on the top of my forehead.

  “That’s because my vagina was doing the thinking for me,” I shot back, and he chuckled silently.

  “True.”

  “But you’re right. Let’s just forget about this and...”

  I stopped talking when I felt something: my stomach clenching in a nauseous cramp.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I was unable to respond because I felt some bile coming to my mouth. I raised my hand as I quickly ran to the bathroom. Evan followed me and held my hair back again as I heaved violently over the toilet.

  “Ugh, I hate this,” I groaned, feeling horrible at first, but just as quickly as it came, the feeling passed.

  “Are you gonna be okay?” he asked, his expression concerned as he wiped my hair from my forehead.

  “Yeah, there’s a bug going around. It’s probably that,” I replied.

  “Okay, are you still up for dinner?”

  “Well, I just threw up what I had for lunch, so yes.” I was suddenly hungry, starving even.

  He chuckled as he handed me a towel and some water, both of which I took gladly. Once I felt better, we headed down to the kitchen where he started cooking. I have to hand it to the man: he knows how to make good food.

  Unfortunately seeing him there, after what just went down, made me slightly uncomfortable. It didn’t feel right for me: he had just had a huge argument with his ex and here he was, making me dinner.

  I tried to muddle through my own tangled thoughts, struggling to find the right words to say to him. “Evan, if you want to talk about what just happened...”

  “If it’s fine with you, I don’t,” he said quietly.

  “But...”

  “I don’t Regan, please.”

  He looked at me so helplessly that I just couldn’t say anything else. He seemed genuinely upset, so all I could do was smile and nod. He smiled back in gratitude and went back to cooking. But I couldn’t let it go, not only because I just found out Melanie was my boss, but because of the conversation she had with Evan. In the end, however, I sighed in resignation. I knew I shouldn’t have to bring it up if Evan didn’t want to.

  Chapter 9

  Evan

  I’m not normally one to lose my mind over something insignificant. I’m a lawyer for Christ’s sake. I’m paid to keep my cool at all times. So why was it that whenever Melanie was involved, I panicked? She knew just what to say to send me over the edge. Then again it wasn’t just Melanie, it was Regan too. I know she won’t tell me, giving me time to work through it for myself, but the whole thing about Melanie has been bothering her, and I, like an idiot, won’t deal with it.

  It had been about a week since I’d last heard from my ex-wife. To be honest, it was making me nervous, like the calm before a storm. But right now I couldn’t worry about her; I just had to talk to Regan.

  At the moment though, I was currently at home with Stephanie while Regan was working, so I would have to call her later. It was a good thing Stephanie hadn’t asked about her mother, seeming to come to terms with the situation a little better. And I know Regan had been a big part of that change. I just have to focus on something I can actua
lly do something about, so right now it was to find a babysitter, discuss things with Regan, and after that, discuss things with Stephanie.

  Shit, I really had a lot on my plate.

  For now, I just had to focus on one thing at a time. Easy, right? At least it would be if I didn’t have every single thing nagging in my brain.

  ~~~~~

  I had just finished preparing us dinner for today after having put Stephanie to sleep. I knew I had to talk to her soon, but it could wait: at least now she wasn’t getting into her fits of screaming. Plus, she seemed to be listening to me a little more, so that was good. I loved my daughter and if I could do something to ease her mind, then I would. Unfortunately what she wanted was for me to get back with her mother, which was just not going to happen. That was also something I had to clear up with Regan right now.

  Good thing she was available tonight: one talk less to worry about. One more thing I can cross off of my ever growing list of things to take care of.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” I said, once she had arrived, kissing her cheek with a smile, but then I frowned when I looked at her. She looked really tired, exhausted even, and had dark smudges under her eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh yes, I’m fines” she said, though I could tell her smile was forced.

  “It’s Melanie, isn’t it?” I asked. Of course it was her: she had been giving Regan nothing but problems lately.

  Right now, she looked like she was trying to voice her thoughts while holding back her anger. “She made me write an article and kept buzzing me every five minutes to see if I was finished with it.”

  “Oh.”

  Annoying, but not so bad.

  “And then she kept complaining about her coffee having too much sugar when she was the one pouring the sugar.”

  “Wow.”

  Still, she wasn’t being that irrational.

  “And then she kept asking me why I didn’t make sure the toilets were properly clean despite the fact that she knows that’s not my responsibility.”

  Nope, she was definitely being a bitch.