“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Kady sighed, as inside she was secretly thrilled, already picturing a little baby boy with her hair and Archer’s eyes, his dazzling smile and charisma, and her patience and strength. “I was really close to asking you anyway.”
“Changed your mind, huh?”
“The curiosity was really starting to get to me,” she admitted. “Besides, I saw the most adorable onesies the other day with Athena at the store.”
“Where is grandma today anyway?” the doctor wanted to know.
“She had to go deal with something in Milan for the week,” Kady explained. “I guess it’s some fashion show her company puts on over there once every four months or something. She tried to get me to go along, but I just didn’t want to do it in my condition, you know?”
“Well, I don’t blame you, and besides, with this new development the last thing you’ll want to do is go traveling,” he agreed, his voice once more strictly professional. “Keeping to a diet is hard enough as it is without adding in that kind of stress. You made an excellent choice, I think.”
“Well, Doctor, I don’t really want to take up too much of your time, so if you’ll just point me in the right direction I’ll speak with the dietitian and get all the details.”
“Great, and then you and I need to meet in about a month for your physical,” he said. “We’ll want to measure all that little guy’s arms and legs and whatnot and schedule him for a heart exam. Nothing to worry about, it’s standard procedure these days.”
About an hour later Kady went home armed with a bunch of needles, a bucket to put them in, and a large book of instructions where she was also meant to write in her sugar numbers so they could keep track of all the medicine she’d need to take to keep them down. She was not looking forward to taking her first shot along with her dinner, that was for sure.
“This royally sucks!” she told Daryl as she got into the car. “Now I can’t even comfort myself with chocolate.”
“Oh, why’s that?” he asked.
“They tested me for gestational diabetes and I have it,” she grumped. “That just figures when you consider everything else that’s happened to me this year.”
“Oh, you mean like when you met the man of your dreams who just happens to be richer than sin, or when you found out you were having his kid, or—“
“Okay, okay, so some good stuff is happening too,” she conceded with a laugh. “But I’m talking about the whole losing my apartment thanks to a drug addicted roommate who was supposedly my friend, and this whole mess with that Mia chick. You have to admit those are both pretty messed up.”
“Yeah, they are, but what I was trying to say is that you’re much better off to focus on the positives than the negatives,” Daryl pointed out, always one to offer fatherly advice, whether she asked for it or not. It was usually not. “Life’s always got both good and bad things going on, you just have to pick and choose which ones you want to care about.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” she agreed. “Oh, the doctor blurted out which sex this baby is, by the way.”
“Really?” Daryl asked, his interest written all over his face.
“Yeah, but I’m not telling anybody until I tell Archer first,” she said with firm resolve. “Especially not his mother. She’d be telling him all about it before I’d even hung up the phone.”
“Well, I’m not going to argue that point,” Daryl chuckled, and then his voice turned conspiratorial. “But you could tell me. You know I won’t rat you out.”
“Oh yeah?” Kady scoffed, chuckling as she remembered another occasion where he did just that. “Like when you didn’t tell Archer that you’d taken me to Manhattan and followed me to Central Park? Yeah, I can sure trust you, Daryl.”
“Come on, Kady, you know I did it for your own protection,” he grumbled. “It isn’t safe trying to sleep on a park bench in there, especially not for a sweet young girl like yourself. Besides, if I’d kept my mouth shut you wouldn’t be where you are today, would you?”
“While I cannot fault your logic in that, the fact remains you did tell Archer where I was,” she pointed out, having way too much fun teasing the older man.
“Well, yes, but I don’t remember promising not to do so,” he pointed out. “Also, like I said, you were in danger. I would never forgive myself if you got hurt somehow. So I’m not even going to apologize. You know I did the right thing.”
Sighing, finally giving into his demands and the genuine affection in his voice, Kady said, “Fine, he’s a boy. Are you happy now?”
“I am, actually,” he chuckled. “Too bad I won’t be there to see Archer’s face when you tell him you were right and he was wrong. That would be priceless.”
Chapter 34
“I just hope all this stabbing doesn’t leave any lasting scars,” Kady complained when she told Archer about her ordeal with her new medication over the phone that night. “This really sucks. Why do I have to get good news and the worst news ever all on the same day?”
“Oh, there was good news?” Archer asked, picking up on her unsaid words, and she could tell he was smirking by the sound of his voice.
“In a way, I guess,” she said, dragging the words out teasingly. “The doctor accidentally let it slip out that we’re having a boy. I know we agreed not to find out, even though you wanted me to, so it ought to make you happy that you at least have your answer, even if he’s not a girl.”
“Kady, I don’t mind at all that our baby is a boy,” Archer said, the joy in his voice reaching her even through the phone. “I was only teasing you.”
“Well that’s a relief,” she chuckled. “I was beginning to think you’d have a cow over it.”
“Don’t be silly, woman,” he scolded. “You should know by now that I love you no matter what happens. Which reminds me, you’re never going to believe this. I had a letter from the welfare office stating that Mia has named me as the father of her baby, but that since my accounts are frozen they won’t attempt to charge any support at this time. How the heck can they charge support without even proving the kid belongs to the man being named or not? That has to be totally illegal.”
“Hmm, are you sure it’s a real letter?” Kady scoffed. “Maybe she had it forged just to mess with you some more.”
“I wonder if she’d actually go that far,” Archer speculated, but Kady had no doubt. After the way Mia attacked her in the lobby of Dazzle, she wouldn’t put anything past that crazy woman.
“Based on what I’ve seen her and the rest of them do so far, I’d give that a big, fat yes,” she said. “For all we know, that other woman who hangs around with her might even work at the welfare office and she’s the one who sent the letter.”
“No doubt,” Archer agreed. “Well, they’re about to lock us all in for the night so I have to get off of here. Hey, babe, don’t sweat the needle thing so much. It’s all for a good cause, right?”
“Yeah, right,” Kady sighed. “I love you, daddy, and baby kick says he loves you too with some really big feet. Damn!”
“Wish I could feel,” Archer sighed, the regret and sadness in his voice had her sighing as well. “Love you guys too.”
Kady laid in the bed unable to go to sleep for the next couple of hours. She couldn’t get it out of her head that she needed to know who the third woman of the Mia trio was. And also, why would Mia be stupid enough to think she could prove that the baby she was pregnant with belonged to Archer? Didn’t she know that once they did blood testing it would be obvious that she had lied? The woman must really be crazy to try a stunt like that.
Idly curious, she wandered out into the hallway and headed for her computer room, which was the room Archer had originally given her as her own bedroom on the night they’d first met, but which she’d transformed into a more useful room since she and Archer had decided to share his bed each night instead.
She went to a criminal record site and typed in a description of the woman she was wondering about,
and the computer found too many people to count. Patiently, Kady thought of different ways to narrow the search down. Not surprisingly she found Cheryl’s name and photograph with counts of petty larceny and check fraud. Then she spotted the other one.
Kathy Dale wasn’t even an American citizen, but a white woman who had been born in Japan. Cheryl was adopted by the same parents as she had been when the girls were about five after their own parents had died in a head-on collision. Their last name had been Chong. They had one daughter of their own, and her name was Mia. She found all of this out with a great deal of searching outside of the criminal records, of course.
Next she checked to see the status of Cheryl’s citizenship. She had become an American citizen ten years ago when all three women had come here, just as Mia had done. It was only Kathy who had failed to do so, and even further digging supplied the reason. She had been arrested almost as soon as they’d arrived, but bailed out by Parker Chou, a fellow student at the university they had attended. She had been living as an international citizen ever since.
“They all know each other, and they were all at the same college,” Kady whispered as she rubbed at her temples. “Archer knew Parker back then. I wonder if he knew these three women as well.”
Try as she might, she couldn’t find any evidence to either prove or disprove any affiliation between Archer and the three women either during school or after graduation. However, since he knew Parker as a work colleague for several years, it was possible he’d interacted with one or more of them during that time. So, the real question was, what was really going on here? Did Archer know more than he was letting one? Had he really told her the truth at all?
Kady hated the fact that she was doubting Archer at all. He had taken her off the streets and given her a home. He had also opened his heart to her as well, and they were about to have a child together. But what if the things Mia had said the other day were somehow true? What if, right before he’d gone to jail, Archer had gotten her pregnant, and once he came out of jail he intended to be with the other woman instead of her? The unwilling thoughts tumbled through her head until she could finally get a hold of herself.
“Stop this!” she scolded herself. “There’s no way he had a chance to have sex with her. We were inseparable that whole week.”
And Kady desperately wanted to believe that Archer was innocent in all of this. That all of Mia’s disgusting lies were just that, blatantly made-up and desperate lies.
Still, there had to be something between Archer and Mia in order for her to become as obsessed with him as she was. Kady was still fairly new to the whole situation. She’d only known Archer for just shy of seven months. She didn’t have any clue about most of his past except the fact that both he and Daryl had proclaimed that he had been a playboy.
Maybe Mia was one of the women he’d slept around with sometime and she hadn’t gotten it into her head that they were through. It made more sense than any other theory she could think of. And Parker, her loving brother, had been mad about it all these years and finally decided to get his revenge. Yes, that must be what had happened.
Certain that she’d solved the mystery at last, Kady was finally able to drift into a restless sleep. Her dreams were populated with playboy parties and diabetic syringes that kept her mentally running away the rest of the night.
Chapter 35
The following day when Kady went to see Archer she found Mia just stepping out of the visiting room. Fury and dislike surged through her at the odd coincidence. Since she had been told that the woman would never be allowed to come to the facility at the same time she was there, this was very disconcerting. She stepped over to one of the guards and told him they had a restraining order between them and this was her day, but the unhelpful guard said that if she didn’t like it she could leave herself.
“I’m not going to miss visiting Archer just because somebody let that woman in here on my day with him,” Kady complained. “I’d like to speak to your supervisor right now.”
“He’s on vacation.”
“Yes, I can tell,” said Kady with a frown. “You would never treat me this way if he was standing right here watching you.”
“Well he’s not,” said the guard. “And this young woman has been telling me quite the earful about you. You shouldn’t even be here at all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kady growled, tired of everyone falling for Mia’s blatant lies. ‘Whatever she told you it’s an outright lie. If you don’t believe me you can ask Archer yourself.”
“Archer can’t have visits back to back, you know,” the guard said then. “Mia is already signed up, so you’ll have to wait an hour if you hope to see him at all.”
“Why is Mia signed up to visit Archer?” Kady gasped. “He doesn’t want to see her.”
“If he doesn’t want to see her, he could always refuse,” said the guard.
“Are you new around here?” Kady asked. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you here before.”
“Fairly new,” he said with a smirk.
“Excuse me,” said Kady as she stepped towards the desk.
“Where are you going?” he said, grabbing her arm. “I told you already, Miss Chong has already signed up to see Archer. You have no business up there.”
“You’d better let go of my arm, sir,” Kady told him. “You have no idea why I’m approaching that desk, so back off.”
His face turning red, the guard released her arm. Kady stepped to the window and said, “I’m here to see Parker Chou, please.”
Both Mia and the guard’s jaws dropped.
“Why you trying to see Parker?” Mia demanded hotly.
“You’ve deprived me of my visit with Archer, I may as well find something to do to pass the time,” Kady replied as she signed the slip of paper the woman behind the window gave her. She slipped her identification card back into her wallet and found herself a place to sit and wait.
“You got nothing to say to Parker,” Mia insisted, a sudden nervousness shining in her bitter gaze at Kady’s unexpected move.
“No more than you have to say to Archer, at any rate,” Kady smirked. “Unless of course you’d like to go back up there and tell the woman we’ve made a mistake.”
“Only you made a mistake, lady,” Mia smirked. “I never signed up to see Archer at all.”
“Then what’s up with that guy?”
“He was just supposed to get you to leave,” she said sullenly.
Kady returned to the window. “Could you cancel the visit with Parker and make it with Archer instead, by any chance?” she asked hopefully.
“Sorry, if you want to see Archer you’ll have to wait an hour to sign back in,” said the woman. “The computer updates every two minutes and the batch already went through.”
“Well, you could still cancel the visit with Parker though, right?”
“Yes, I’ll do that,” she said. “And before you ask, you’ll have to wait an hour before he can be seen despite her cancelling. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” Kady smirked. “I’ll be back in about an hour then.”
“You bitch!” Mia screamed angrily. The thin veneer of civility and sanity lost completely as her face twisted in expression of utter hatred.
“Careful, Mia, you’re not even supposed to come within five hundred feet of me,” Kady reminded her. “If I were you, I’d leave before the report I’m about to make gets filed. And don’t be too surprised if they come pick you up sometime in the near future for violation. Have a great day.”
Both Mia and her phony security guard turned and tried to head for the door, but found it blocked by the guy who was actually supposed to be there. Kady nodded to her old friend Ben, who had gotten a job there about two months ago, and he smiled back at her before turning very serious expressions on the two would-be visitors and guard. “What’s going on in here?”
“That woman there isn’t supposed to be anywhere near me, that’s what,
” said Kady as she pointed Mia out. “She was trying to get that guard to say she made an appointment with Archer and keep me out, but I knew better and stopped them. Thanks to her, I have to wait an hour before I can even see him. She’s violating a restraining order being anywhere near me. I’m about to go next door and report her.”
“Oh, don’t bother with that,” he said. “If you have the order, I can just have a couple officers come here and take her and her friend directly to jail.”
Smirking even more, Kady took the order out of her purse and showed it to him. Ben stepped over to one of the phones and presses a button. “I need a couple officers over here please.”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Mia demanded shrilly. “Why are you blocking the door?”
“Looks like it’s my turn today,” Kady told her, and she couldn’t help the surge of glee at finally getting the upper hand. She knew it was only a matter of time before Mia messed up, and tripped herself in her own tangled web of lies and deceit.
“Miss Ross, I’ll need you to wait till they get here to show them the order and let them know what just happened,” said Ben in official tones. “You probably could just have a seat. I’ll keep these two right here. It should only be a couple minutes.”
“Thank you, Ben,” Kady said, doing as he said.
Soon after, a pair of cops stepped in, cuffed the two, and took them away. Ben came and gave the order paperwork back to Kady. “They said there was no need to trouble you any further. You’ll be expected to appear at court at the time listed on this slip. You enjoy your visit now, okay?”
“I will,” Kady answered with a smile. Finally, she thought. Finally, a bit of payback of my own!
Chapter 36
Athena sent Archer’s lawyer and Robert with Kady to court two days later. She was dressed up importantly and she walked confidently into the room. All eyes and a few cameras were on her as she went. A murmur erupted throughout the courtroom as she stood before the judge until he said she could be seated.
Dazzle: The Billionaire's Secret Surrogate (Contemporary BWWM Romance) Page 14
