Friends With Benefits

by Jenna Bennett

  Owen nodded and toasted her with the bottle. For a second, she had a sense of déjà vu—Fake Gil Norris toasting her with his Fosters all those months ago—and then it was gone. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I won’t.” He smiled, and she looked at him for just a second longer than necessary before she turned and followed Alana across the floor to the door to the back room.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “YOU’LL NEVER GUESS who’s here,” Alana whispered the second they were out of sight, around the corner from the kitchen.

  “Who?”

  “Look over in the corner,” Alana said. “Table three.”

  Kaylee stuck her head around the corner and squinted through the dark and the smoke. Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God. Is that...?”

  “Sure is. He’s been back once or twice, hitting on me and Melody.”

  Kaylee turned to her. “You haven’t gone home with him, have you?”

  “After what you told us?” Alana scoffed. “Of course not.”

  Good. Bad enough what Fake Gil had done to her, but at least he wouldn’t be doing the same thing to her friends.

  “He asked for you once,” Alana volunteered. “Seemed relieved when we told him you weren’t working here anymore.”

  No doubt. Kaylee put an instinctive and protective hand on her stomach. “You didn’t tell him about the baby, did you?”

  Alana shook her head. “We figured that was up to you. If you don’t want him to know, I don’t blame you.”

  “I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anything to do with him ever again.” She looked around. “Can you put those wings in a to-go bag? I’ll tell Owen the smoke is making me nauseous and that we have to leave.”

  Alana nodded. “Melody is over there right now. Hopefully she and her double D’s will keep the jackass busy for long enough that he won’t notice you.”

  Hopefully.

  “Thanks, Alana.” Kaylee gave her friend an impulsive hug, and bumped her stomach against Alana’s tight midriff. “Sorry.”

  Alana shook her head, waving it away. “I like your husband. If I were going to marry for money, he’s who I would pick, too.”

  “I think I’ve fallen in love with him,” Kaylee confessed.

  “I think you have, too,” Alana agreed. “Hang on to him, Kaylee. He’s a good guy. And he’s crazy about you. He didn’t even look at me.” She sounded half incredulous and half impressed.

  Kaylee smothered a laugh. “Give me a call. Let’s have lunch or coffee one day. Somewhere that isn’t here.”

  Alana nodded. “I’ll grab your wings and meet you outside. Go get your husband and get out of here.”

  No problem. Kaylee wended her way back to the table and Owen with her heart beating in her throat. She didn’t look toward the corner where Fake Gil Norris sat—above anything, she didn’t want him to notice her—but she felt as if she could sense his eyes on her. But maybe it was just Owen’s eyes, as he watched her coming with a smile on his face. Until she came close enough for him to see her expression.

  He was on his feet before she reached the table. “Something wrong?”

  “I don’t feel good,” Kaylee said. No lie, that. “I’d like to leave.”

  “Of course.” He didn’t hesitate, just grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it before snagging her coat and helping her get it on. “What about the wings?”

  “Alana is going to meet us outside. Just... leave some money on the table.”

  Owen shrugged and pulled out his wallet. The bills he left tucked under his half-finished Corona were more than enough to cover the drinks, the wings, and the tip. “Come on.”

  He put his hand on her back to guide her toward the door. Kaylee kept her head down and let her hair fall over her face on the way across the room. It wasn’t until they were at the front door, ready to duck outside, that she allowed herself to look back. And wished she hadn’t when, across the crowded room, Fake Gil’s eyes caught hers for a second before he looked at Owen and then back at her. He grinned and lifted his can of Fosters. Kaylee averted her eyes and ducked out through the door.

  SHE WAS SILENT the whole way home, and Owen kept shooting her worried looks out of the corner of his eyes. When they made it back to the condo, with the whole car smelling of buffalo chicken, he turned to her. “Did something happen, sweetheart?”

  Kaylee wondered what he’d say if she told him the truth: that the jackass she’d slept with, who’d knocked her up and left her to cope on her own because he was too small a man to ever call her again, had been at Peckers, and she hadn’t wanted the two of them to come face to face.

  But she couldn’t. “I think it was the smoke. I don’t feel good.”

  He nodded, and she immediately felt horrible about lying to him. And because of it, her eyes filled with tears. And when he saw it, he became even sweeter. “I’m so sorry, Kaylee. Stay there, OK? I’ll carry you inside.”

  He was out of the car before she could tell him that she didn’t need carrying, that she was perfectly fine to move under her own steam. And when he lifted her and gently carried her inside, it felt too good to be in his arms, to be loved and protected and cared for, to protest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder and held on.

  He carried her all the way upstairs and put her in the big king sized bed. And then he helped her out of her coat and off with her boots and stuffed a couple of pillows behind her back and stood back and looked at her, his expression worried. “What else can I do?”

  “Nothing,” Kaylee said, because there wasn’t anything anyone could do. She was fine, apart from wishing desperately that she’d never fallen for Fake Gil’s line of slimy sweet-talk.

  “Can you eat? I have some fine-smelling chicken wings in the car.” He smiled.

  “I don’t think so,” Kaylee said, as her stomach objected strenuously to the idea. The baby was gyrating, perhaps upset by her state of mind. Could babies in utero sense their mother’s feelings, or was that just ridiculous? “You go eat them while they’re hot, OK? I’ll just lie here a bit and see if I feel better.”

  “I can come up and keep you company,” Owen offered.

  Please don’t. “I think the smell would just make it worse. I’m sorry. Maybe there’s something on TV you can watch, or something.”

  “Maybe.” But he still hesitated. “I’ll be back up to check on you, OK?”

  “OK,” Kaylee said, and waited for him to walk across the carpet and out the door. He pulled it halfway shut behind him, maybe afraid the sound or smell from downstairs would bother her. Kaylee waited until his footsteps had faded into the kitchen on the bottom level of the townhouse before she closed her eyes and tried to calm the baby and the waves of stress and nausea having control of her body.

  IT WAS THE first time in a long time they didn’t have sex before going to sleep. When he came upstairs later, she pretended to be sleeping, her back to him, and all he did was drop a kiss on her shoulder before going to sleep himself. Part of her wanted him to put his arms around her, so she’d feel safe and loved, but the other part was glad when he didn’t, because it would have made her feel horrible.

  By the time she woke up, he was gone. He’d left a note on her bedside saying he hoped she was feeling better and that he’d call.

  The knock on the door came around eleven o’clock. It came on the door of the condo beside theirs first, the one where Kaylee used to live, so she didn’t think anything of it. Two minutes later, when someone knocked on her current door, she figured it must be someone hawking vacuum cleaners, or maybe someone from the homeowners association letting them know about an assessment for a new roof or repaving the parking lot or something like that.

  She was not at all prepared to open the door and come face to face with Fake Gil Norris.

  “Morning, gorgeous!”

  He greeted her with open arms and a big, flashy smile.

  “Gil.” She took a step back to avoid the embrace, and immediately w
ished she hadn’t when he took it as an invitation to come in. Into her and Owen’s home. The last place she wanted him to be. She closed the door behind him, since it was better than leaving him in plain sight, but not before she had scanned the parking lot to make sure no one had seen him. “What do you want?”

  And she knew Gil wasn’t his name, but she had thought of him that way for months now, and she had to call him something. Other than the jackass who’d knocked her up and left her.

  “Is that a way to talk to the father of your baby?” Fake Gil asked.

  Kaylee wanted to tell him he wasn’t her baby’s father—that she had a husband now, and the baby was his—but the certainty in his voice and her hesitation made it impossible. She folded her arms across her stomach, protectively. “How did you know?”

  “That stupid blonde at Peckers,” Fake Gil said with an indulgent chuckle. “The one with the big rack. She let it slip.”

  Melody. Of course. Alana was too smart, but Melody was sweet and simple. She probably hadn’t meant to say anything, but once Fake Gil had noticed Kaylee—and noticed her stomach, since it was fairly obvious by now—it wouldn’t have been hard to get the rest of the story out of Melody.

  While she’d been thinking, Fake Gil had been looking around, poking his head into the living room and dining room, peering up the stairs. Kaylee thought back to the first few times she’d been inside Owen’s home—her home—before she began living here, and tried to see it through Fake Gil’s eyes.

  It looked like money. Not excessive amounts of money, but good taste and enough wealth to indulge it. Owen didn’t live with second-hand furniture or hand-me-downs the way Kaylee had done.

  Fake Gil’s next statement confirmed it. “Damn, Kaylee. Looks like you haven’t done too badly for yourself.”

  Kaylee shrugged, since she didn’t trust herself to speak. She wanted to scream at him, tell him to get the hell out of her home, the home Owen had shared with her out of concern and because he was a good guy. Fake Gil had no right to be here, and his presence made her feel like the air reeked.

  “Course, I’m not surprised.” He grinned, as if it were a compliment.

  “What do you mean?” Kaylee said, waiting for him to say something awful about her being a gold-digger. Apparently every Norris in town shared that opinion of her, even the fake ones.

  Fake Gil didn’t say what she expected, however. “I saw your husband. How’d you manage that?”

  “Manage what?”

  “Getting Owen Taylor to marry you,” Fake Gil said, as if it were obvious. “I figured he’d probably noticed you, but marriage? Damn, Kaylee!”

  “He lived here,” Kaylee said, her lips stiff, “when I lived next door. We were friends. Had dinner once or twice.”

  Fake Gil grinned. “No kidding? And when you found out you had a bun in the oven, you convinced him to marry you? Way to go.” He looked like he was thinking of giving her a high five, but he must have thought better of it.

  Since there was nothing to say to that, Kaylee didn’t try. “What are you doing here?” she asked instead.

  He held up both hands in a classic posture of surrender. “Oh, don’t worry. Looks like you’ve got a good thing going here. I’m not here to mess it up for you.”

  He wasn’t? Good. Not that she thought she could trust his word on that.

  And then something struck her. “How do you know Owen?” It wasn’t like Owen and this man would travel in the same circles, after all. He’d worn his expensive suit well the first time she’d met him, but he’d lacked the casual comfort that Owen had with his own quality clothes and surroundings, like he were born to them. She hadn’t realized that at the time, but now, after a few months with Owen, she saw it.

  Fake Gil grinned. “Worked with him for a while.”

  “Really? You worked at Norris?”

  The emphasis she put on the word “you” probably wasn’t very flattering, but Fake Gil either didn’t notice or wasn’t surprised. He shrugged.

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “Saw you last night,” Fake Gil said. “Thought we should have a talk.”

  “About?”

  He smiled. “You. Me. Our baby. Your husband.”

  “What about him?” Her lips were stiff, and she felt like she were going to throw up.

  “Well,” Fake Gil said, dragging the word out, “you’re sitting pretty right now.”

  “So?”

  “So...” He grinned. “I was thinking it might be worth something to you if your husband didn’t find out that the baby you told him was his, isn’t his after all.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  BLACKMAIL?

  “How do you know I didn’t tell him it wasn’t his?” Kaylee demanded. She hoped the sentence had come out the way she’d wanted it to, but she wasn’t sure. She felt numb, and her brain wasn’t functioning quite right. She was being blackmailed? Really?

  “You’re not stupid,” Fake Gil said. “And Owen Taylor isn’t, either. If he thought there was a chance the baby wasn’t his, he wouldn’t marry you.”

  “Why not?”

  “With money like that, ain’t like he’s gonna take any chances with it, is it?” He said it like it was obvious, like she should know what he was talking about. “His family wouldn’t let him, for one thing. That isn’t a family just anybody can get into, you know. Not even by saying they’re pregnant.”

  What family?

  “I don’t understand,” Kaylee said, loath to admit it, but not feeling like she had a choice. He knew something she didn’t, and until she figured it out, she wouldn’t have any idea what he wanted or how to get around it.

  He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s what I want to know. What family?”

  And what money? She’d realized that Owen was doing just fine financially, but she hadn’t noticed that he had money “like that,” which sounded like he had a whole lot. He’d said nothing to her about any fortune.

  Of course, she hadn’t asked. They hadn’t really talked about it. He’d assured her he could afford to support her, that she didn’t need to try to find another job, that it would probably be almost impossible anyway, being pregnant, and she’d taken him at his word.

  Fake Gil looked as if he suspected her of pulling his leg. “Are you serious?”

  Of course she was serious.

  After a moment, he started chuckling. “You married the guy, and you don’t know who he is?”

  “Of course I know who he is.” Kaylee said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. “He’s Owen Taylor.”

  And he was kind, and loving, and funny, and generous, and great in bed. He was her husband, the man she loved. The man she’d come to think might love her just a little in return.

  And he was someone she trusted. Owen would never do anything to hurt her. If there was something about himself he hadn’t revealed, it was because he had a good reason.

  Although if he’d lied, when he knew how she felt about liars...

  “He’s heir to Norris Industries,” Fake Gil said, and for a second, Kaylee felt the world tilt. She had to reach out a hand and brace herself on the console table, where she’d braced herself two weeks ago, when Owen had rocked her world in a different way.

  “What?” Her voice sounded far away and tinny, like a bumble bee in a matchbox.

  Fake Gil nodded. “Yeah. Grandson to the old man. His daughter’s kid.”

  “But...” She’d met Gilbert Norris and Virginia at the Christmas party. She had spoken to them. No one had said anything about being family. They’d been friendly to Owen—at the time she’d thought that they’d seemed to think a lot of him, for just being an employee—but he hadn’t said, “Kaylee, this is my grandfather and my mother.”

  Why?

  Then again, it sure would explain some of the more pointed questions Virginia had asked, if she were making sure Kaylee was worthy of her son.

  “Trust me,” Fake Gil said,
a hint of bitterness in his voice, “that’s who he is. Everyone at Norris knows it.”

  Right. And that would explain the woman Mina’s strange look the night of the party too, when Kaylee had told her she was married to Owen Taylor. Mina must have wondered how Kaylee could imagine that she wouldn’t know who Owen was.

  It explained so much, including that middle name. Of course Owen’s middle name was Norris, if he was Gil Norris’s grandson. It made perfect sense.

  The one thing that didn’t make sense was why Owen hadn’t told her. He’d lied. Why?

  “Didn’t you read the prenup?” Fake Gil asked, and Kaylee did her best to pull herself together.

  “What prenup?”

  “He didn’t make you sign a prenup? Shit.” He shook his head. “You could take him for half of everything!”

  She supposed she could, but why would she want to? She’d rather have Owen and none of his money—or just enough to live on—than half the money and no Owen. Worse, an Owen who hated her.

  Fake Gil was watching her with an expression in his eyes she didn’t like. If she had to put a word to it, she’d call it crafty. Calculating. “I have an idea,” he said.

  Of course he did.

  “If you divorce Owen, and make sure you get a nice settlement—it doesn’t have to be half, since you seem to have a problem with that—we’ll have plenty of money to get married and set up a household of our own. Just a tenth of Owen Taylor’s money would be enough to support me for the rest of my life.”

  Sure. And from the way he talked, she could probably expect to be on her own once he got his hands on it. This was a common property state. Because they were married, she could take half of everything Owen owned in a divorce. And if she did, and married Fake Gil, he could divorce her in short order and take half of everything she owned. Including her settlement from Owen.

  However, the point was moot. Completely and utterly moot.

  “Why would I divorce Owen?” And why would Fake Gil think she’d want to set up a household with him if she did?