by Claire Pike
“Honey, you’re pregnant,” Rosie said.
Abby shook her head. “No. No, come on, we’re buying another one.”
Rosie laughed at her, but Abby didn’t think it was funny at all. She headed back out to the living room, grabbed her keys and her purse, and practically ran outside. Rosie caught up to her in the parking lot.
“You drive,” Abby said. “My hands are shaking.”
“Settle down,” Rosie said, unlocking the car and getting in. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Not a big deal!” Abby got in and slammed the car door shut. “Sure, it’s not a big deal for you. I just turned into the poster child for my mother’s old evangelical homeschool community. They’re going to send my picture to all the kids in town. ‘Look, kids, here’s the slut that got knocked up and ruined her life. Jesus doesn’t want you to be like her!’”
Rosie laughed, shaking her head.
“You laugh now,” Abby said, tapping her fingers nervously against the car door. “I’m dead serious. My mother never stopped nagging me about my half-sister and telling me how bad she messed up.”
“Your mom has no room to talk,” Rosie said. “Wasn’t she sleeping with your dad while he was still married to his first wife?”
“Hypocrisy is a Christian virtue,” Abby said.
They were at the drug store a few minutes later. Abby headed back down the “Family Planning” aisle, eyeing the condoms and wishing she’d thought about them two months ago. It had only been a one-night stand. The odds of her getting pregnant her first time had to be worse than the odds of winning the lottery. But had she won the lottery? No. She’d gotten knocked up by a man who was getting married to another woman. And now, a couple of months later, she was starting to face the consequences of that night.
“They don’t really say which one is best,” Abby said, scanning the selection of pregnancy tests. There were too many to choose from.
“I can Google them,” Rosie said, pulling out her phone.
“Fuck it.” Abby grabbed three different brands. Better safe than sorry.
“Hello, girls,” the lady behind the register said when they walked up to the counter. “Back again?”
“Yeah.” Abby dropped the pregnancy tests on the counter, along with a jumbo sized bottle of iced tea, not meeting the woman’s eye.
The cashier gave her a sympathetic look, but she didn’t say anything as she rang up the tests. She could probably tell how nervous Abby was, between the way she was bouncing up and down on her toes and drumming her fingers on the counter. But what did you say to someone in a situation like that? If the woman tried to congratulate her or something, Abby probably would have screamed at her.
Abby chugged the iced tea in the car on the way back. As soon as they got back to the apartment, she headed into the bathroom. She ended up being in there for ten minutes with a shy bladder, but eventually she managed to do all three tests. Within a couple of minutes, all of them showed the same results as the first one.
Abby sat on the edge of the tub, wrapping her hands around her belly. She couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem real. But there didn’t seem to be any denying it.
Rosie knocked at the door. “Honey? You decent?”
“Yeah.” Abby sat there, hanging her head. It felt like her whole world was collapsing around her.
Rosie came in and looked at the tests. She let out a long sigh. “Well. What now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are you going to do?” Rosie asked. “Are you keeping it?”
Abby pressed her hands against her stomach. She couldn’t bear the thought of getting an abortion. She was pro-choice (something she and her mother vehemently disagreed on), but it was one thing to support someone else’s choice to have an abortion. It was another thing entirely to consider it for herself.
“I’m going to keep it,” Abby said. She didn’t see how she could do anything else. The idea of raising a child at such a young age was terrifying. Especially if she’d be doing it all by herself. But she had always known she’d want kids someday. She’d expected to wait until after college, and after she was married. But it looked like it wasn’t going to work out that way.
“What about the father?” Rosie leaned against the sink, crossing her arms. “Mr. Big Time Hotel Owner? What are you gonna do about him?”
Abby chewed on her lower lip. She wasn’t sure what to do about Merek. She had quit the hotel and found another job, one that, thankfully, paid her well enough that she’d been able to quit her fast food job as well. She was still struggling with her bills, but the new job gave her good hours, decent benefits, and even the opportunity for advancement. It was a brand new hotel and the staff was mostly inexperienced. While she only had about a year and a half of experience from working at the Armstrong Resort Hotel, it was enough that her new boss was already talking about putting her into a supervisor position. Though she was pretty sure he was mostly doing it because he wanted to get into her pants.
Maybe, she thought, she could give in to her new boss’ advances and then claim he was the one who had gotten her pregnant. It would be easier and less humiliating than the alternative. When the baby came seven months later, she could just claim it was premature. Men never knew any better.
Abby sighed. She knew she had to do the right thing. “I’ll have to call him,” she said. “He deserves to know that he’s going to be a father.”
“The cheating bastard doesn’t deserve anything,” Rosie said. “But hey, he’s rich. Even if he doesn’t want anything to do with you, you can take him to court for child support. Get a DNA test to prove paternity.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Abby stared at the wall. She didn’t want to think about all this. But she was stuck in this situation now. There was no way around it.
A few days passed before she managed to work up the courage to make the phone call. She kept getting on the scale every day, trying to see if she had put on any weight yet. Her belly didn’t really look any bigger. But she supposed it would be another month or two before she started showing.
When she finally worked past her anxieties enough to make the call, she realized she had no idea how to get ahold of Merek. She didn’t have his phone number, and it wasn’t like she could just call the front desk of the hotel and ask to talk to the owner. She went online to ArmstrongHotels.com, but all she could find there was a 1-800 number for the customer service department, and another number for travel agents and businesses that wanted to make reservations. She finally decided to just call the customer service number and hope she could find someone who could help her.
“Armstrong Resort customer satisfaction, this is Diane speaking, how may I help you?”
“Hi,” Abby said, taking a deep breath. She leaned back on her couch, trying to figure out how to word this. “Umm, this is going to sound kind of crazy. But I need to get in touch with Merek Armstrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Diane said, “but we can’t give out contact numbers for employees and staff, including the owner.”
“I know, but this is a unique situation. See…” She closed her eyes, wincing. “I’m pregnant, and he’s the father.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know it sounds weird. But I had a one-night stand with the hotel owner, and I’m pregnant, and I don’t have any way of contacting him.”
“Ooookay,” Diane said. “Umm, I’m not really sure how I can help you here. Our office is really only equipped to handle customer service questions.”
“I know. But don’t you have a supervisor or something? Someone I can talk to?”
“Umm…one moment, please.”
Abby was put on hold. A few minutes later she was transferred to a supervisor, who gave her the same excuses the first person had. She claimed that there was no way to put her in touch with the owner and said the customer service department didn’t even have a direct phone number for Merek. Abby pleaded with the supervisor for almost fifteen minutes, before being
transferred again, this time to someone in the company’s HR department. Then, after being transferred to that person’s supervisor, she was finally told that the only thing anyone could do would be to take down her name and number and see if they could get back to her with more information.
Abby finally hung up after more than an hour on the phone. She felt deflated and useless. She didn’t have much hope that the HR supervisor would actually get a message to Merek, but she didn’t know what else to do.
She lay down on the couch, wrapping her arms around her stomach. She was frightened about the future, and she knew she couldn’t take care of this baby on her own. She needed help. And the one person who should have been obligated to help her had probably forgotten all about her and would probably ignore her very existence.
She kept trying over the next few days, gradually working her way up through the company, talking to people in various departments. Quite a few of them simply hung up on her while the rest protested that there was nothing they could do. Eventually, she got ahold of someone who said they could transfer her to Merek’s secretary, and that it would be up to the secretary whether she could speak with Merek.
“That will be perfect,” Abby said. “Thank you.”
She sat on hold for another ten minutes before someone finally answered the phone. “Mr. Armstrong’s office, Tammy speaking.”
“Hi,” Abby said. “I need to talk to Mr. Armstrong.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Armstrong is unavailable at this time. May I ask what this is regarding?”
Abby took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I need to tell him I’m pregnant.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m pregnant,” Abby said. “And he’s the father.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then Tammy laughed.
“Umm, hello?” Abby asked.
“I’m sorry,” Tammy said, “but that simply isn’t possible.”
“Uhh, yeah it is,” Abby said. “Trust me, I know.”
“I’m sure you do, dear,” Tammy said. “But I can assure you, it’s quite impossible. Have a nice day.”
“Wait a minute—”
Tammy hung up the phone before Abby could get another word out.
Abby stared at the phone, fighting back tears. She hadn’t been sure what reaction she’d been expecting. But it certainly hadn’t been that.
She sat down on the couch and buried her face in her hands. Now that she was faced with the reality that Merek might never speak to her again, she had no idea what to do.
Chapter Four
Merek sat behind his desk, going over the paperwork for the upcoming land acquisition deal he was working on. The deal had been a mess for the last two months, but it was something he needed to sort out. His engagement to Caroline, for better or worse, was part of the deal. That made it all the more important to get things right.
He was sorting through the papers when he realized he was missing one of the reports on some of the land that was part of the deal, pieces of which stretched across sections of Vermont, Maine, and Quebec. All of the land was in areas that the Montgomery clan had been eyeing for years. In some cases, it included areas they’d tried to get declared as nationally preserved wilderness, though their efforts to have the areas federally protected had so far failed. A number of developers were looking to buy up the land for urbanization, and they had been fighting a legal battle to keep the land from falling under protected status.
When Merek had gotten involved, during negotiations between his clan and Caroline’s, he had offered a simple solution to the problem. The Montgomery clan was heavily involved in politics, from their highly renowned wildlife preservation society to the family member that was running for a senate position in the fall. But since their efforts on the political front were proving difficult, Merek had suggested a financial solution as an alternative. He had the wealth needed to simply buy up all the land, after which time he would transfer ownership of it to the Montgomery Wildlife Preservation Society. The Montgomery clan didn’t have the resources to buy up the land on their own, but they were eager to get their hands on it. Eager enough to include marriage to Caroline as part of the arrangement.
“Tammy,” Merek said, hitting the intercom buzzer to call his secretary. “Where are the surveyor reports from Quebec? They’re not with the rest of the files.”
When he didn’t get a response, Merek glanced out the office door. Tammy was sitting at her desk, and she appeared to be deep in conversation with someone over her Bluetooth headset. Merek grumbled under his breath and got up, stalking across the office. He had told her not to take any calls today.
“No, ma’am, I’m sorry,” Tammy said to whoever was on the other end. She gave Merek an apologetic look. “No, I’m afraid that’s not possible. He isn’t taking any calls at this time. No. No, I’m afraid not. Frankly, as I’ve told you before, I find that highly unlikely. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m going to have to let you go. Please stop wasting my time with these calls. Have a nice day.”
Tammy tapped her phone to end the call. Merek scowled at the phone. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Nothing you need to waste your time with,” Tammy said. “Just a girl trying to con you out of some money. This is the third time she’s called.”
Merek snorted. It never ended. Being rich meant he constantly had to deal with people wanting things from him, whether it be charitable donations, political contributions, or deals like this mess with the Montgomery clan. And that was aside from the things he dealt with from women.
He’d taken his fair share of lovers over the years. Most of the time, they were gold diggers hoping to snare him in order to marry into a life of luxury. When he had been much younger and more foolish, he had even fallen prey to a woman who had tried to con him into a paternity suit, claiming she was pregnant with his child and trying to take him to court for child support. A paternity test had eventually proved that he wasn’t the father, and the woman had lost the suit.
Of course, it was biologically impossible for Merek to impregnate a woman without…extenuating circumstances. But that was the sort of thing only his clan could truly understand, not something he could prove in court.
“Whoever it is,” Merek said, “if she calls again, tell her if she persists, we’ll press charges against her for harassment. I don’t have time to deal with that sort of garbage.” He had no idea who had called, but he was sure it was no one he wanted to talk to. There was only one woman he would have taken a call from, but it was impossible that she would ever call him. His night with Abigail still lingered in his memories, from the first moment he’d kissed her on the balcony to the way they’d made love in his penthouse suite. She had left before he even woke up, and when he checked with the housekeeping staff the next day, he had found out she’d quit. After running away from him like that, he knew he would never be likely to see her again. Besides which, she had never learned his full name. As far as she knew, he had been nothing more than a wealthy guest staying at the hotel.
He pushed Abigail from his mind. It was nothing but false hope to believe she would try to contact him. “The surveyor reports? They weren’t with the other files.”
Tammy dug through her filing cabinet and pulled out the reports Merek needed. He took them and headed back into the office with Tammy following along, checking his daily agenda on her tablet computer.
“You have lunch with your fiancée at 1:00,” Tammy said, scrolling down the screen and making notations with a stylus. “Then a meeting with Clan Montgomery at 2:30. I had to reschedule your 4:00, though, due to a conflict on the client’s end.”
“That’s fine,” Merek said, sitting behind his desk. He was tempted to have Tammy cancel the lunch, but he supposed he had to keep up appearances. Caroline was an attractive enough woman, to be sure, but she was as cold as an arctic fish. She’d shown him that when she stood him up the night of their engagement, and their relationship had remained strictly
business ever since. They didn’t go out on dates; they scheduled lunches. There were no intimate evenings together over candlelit dinners; instead, they made public appearances together and attended upper class social events. Their “relationship” was about as far from a romance as Merek could have imagined.
It was probably no wonder that his mind was filled with thoughts of the other woman he’d met that night. Unlike Caroline, Abigail had been soft and gentle. She had been eager to please and delightfully timid. He would have given almost anything to get another piece of that.
He was about to dive back into his work when something in his inbox caught his attention. When the mail had arrived that morning, the latest copy of Luxury Hotel Magazine had been delivered. Merek liked to keep an eye on the competition, noting any new trends in the industry that he might need to keep up with. It would never do to have another hotel chain outshine him. His family had built an empire out of hotels, real estate, and executive office rental, and they hadn’t succeeded so well by ignoring the competition.
He was flipping idly through the magazine, mostly wasting time because he was no longer in the mood to go over the land acquisition paperwork, when a picture on one of the pages caught his eye.
The picture showed the lobby of the brand new Baxter Luxury Resort and Spa that had opened within the last couple of months in Philadelphia. It was a trendy, independently owned boutique hotel, one of the types that tried to make a name for itself as a more intimate, personable place to stay, in contrast to the big hotel chains like Merek’s. It wasn’t the sort of place that Merek usually considered direct competition. His hotels didn’t typically double as spas and boutiques, as his businesses catered more to the upscale elite, not to trendy hipsters. Normally he wouldn’t have given the article a second glance.
Except that Abigail Sutton was in the picture.
He studied the photograph of the hotel lobby. It showed the hotel staff, all dressed in their trendy little uniforms that looked like they were trying to make a fashion statement instead of trying to look professional. The bellboys, instead of wearing suits or jackets, were dressed in stylish red shirts with gray vests. The chef looked like he was dressed for a hot date, rather than for a night in the kitchen. And the housekeeping staff, instead of wearing smocks or a traditional maid’s uniform, were dressed in smart gray skirts with black and red blouses. And on the far right side, at the end of the line of housekeepers posing for the shot, was Abigail.
