by Ali Parker
Sliding the picture over his desk, I picked it up. While I didn’t actually want to know what any of Jared’s previous conquests looked like, I was going to have to see this one eventually. Because he could be the father of her child.
My eyes dropped to the photograph I was holding, and surprisingly it wasn’t jealousy that flared up in me at the sight of the undoubtedly beautiful woman I was staring at, but recognition.
I knew her from somewhere. I just couldn’t quite place her.
21
Jared
A week.
A fucking week. That was how long it had been since I’d woken up to a severely pissed-off Gerry telling me I was being accused, of all things, of being a father. It was ridiculous.
And yet, it had taken the whole week for us to get this far.
Alicia sat on my left around a conference table in one of the big conference rooms on the top floor of Gerry’s office building.
The sun was so bright, I had to shield my eyes as I looked out the window, but Gerry, sitting to my right, noticed and hit a button that automatically lowered the blinds.
Good old Ted, our lawyer, was seated on Gerry’s other side with his younger associate next to him. Across the table from my team was Madison and her lawyer. I’d forgotten the man’s name right after I was told who he was.
True to his word, Gerry had demanded a blood test from Madison, and we were waiting on a courier to deliver the results. In the meantime, Madison’s lawyer had taken it upon himself to deliver a big speech.
“If you want to settle this matter, I suggest that you start making proposals right now.” The man wheezed. He was completely bald, and it didn’t look like it was by choice. His skin was pale and covered by a thin layer of sweat. He looked a bit sick, but that didn’t put a stop to his theatrics. “My client is willing to consider a deal while we wait, but once those test results come in, I’ve advised her against taking any settlement offer that might be forthcoming. This is the time to accept the gift that she is graciously allowing in providing you with the opportunity to settle. If you don’t accept it now, there will be no settlement. We will bleed you dry, Mr. Larsen.”
“You used me, Jared,” Madison interjected tearfully. “You used me like I meant nothing to you, and then you threw me away like a dirty dish rag. You wouldn’t even talk to me, but I’m still willing to give you one last chance to make this right.”
I prided myself on having made it this far into this whole process without my temper flaring up, at least not outwardly, but this was too much. She was flat-out lying about what happened between us, and she fucking knew it.
“Are you insane? Or are you suffering from amnesia or some kind of mental disorder? I didn’t use you, Madison. I was completely upfront with you from the get go. You knew exactly what you were getting into. In fact, I distinctly remember you bringing up my reputation before I said a goddamn thing. Then, you show up at my house without being invited, and you practically begged me to fuck you again. You’re an obsessed groupie. Don’t pretend you ever meant anything to me. And don’t fucking pretend you didn’t know it.”
Frustrated rage was rolling off me in waves, and Alicia put her hand quickly to the side of my thigh, squeezing me lightly. Telling me to calm down.
Glancing at her, I tried to accept the small amount of comfort she was offering me by that light touch.
Then I realized that more than being appreciative and grateful for her being by my side and trying to comfort me, she was one of the big reasons I was so wound up about these lies. I was worried about what she thought of me, about what would happen with us because of them.
I couldn’t remember the last time I gave a flying fuck about what anyone thought of me, but I was genuinely worried now. What did all of this look like to her?
Madison couldn’t be … pregnant. I swallowed past a bitter taste in my mouth just from thinking the word. Condoms failed all the time. I knew that. But I was careful, so she couldn’t be … that word.
If she was, though, what would Alicia say, think? Would she put my sorry ass behind her or stick by me? Fuck. This was all so new to me. And it was getting to me—all of it. My leg started bouncing against Alicia’s, and again her small hand was there, her palm pushing down on my thigh.
She’s here. She’s not leaving. Yet.
Fuck.
Either way, I would find out today. And tomorrow, I was going on tour. By tomorrow night, I would be standing onstage in front of thousands of fans for the first full concert on the Imperial Inspection Tour and know whether I was becoming a father or not.
If I was, it could throw a motherfucking wrench the size of a continent into the plan. I had no idea what Madison would want from me other than a shit ton of money, I was assuming.
My leg started bouncing again. Where the fuck was this courier?
Madison sniffed indignantly at my insult and launched into another one of her delusional rants. “We made a baby together, Jared. How could you possibly say that I’m nothing more than an obsessed groupie, and that I never was? I’m the—”
“Okay, everyone shut up.” Alicia surprised me by chiming in, her voice cool and authoritative.
A quick look around the table told me that everyone else was as surprised as I was, no one more so than Madison, who seemed to want nothing more than to scratch Alicia’s eyes out with those red claws of hers. I shuddered at the vague memory of those nails scratching at my back.
“Do you know that fraud is a criminal offense, Madison?” she continued, opening the bright yellow folder she’d had in front of her since I’d walked in. She’d been working nearly around the clock this week, and I’d hardly seen her at all. I didn’t know what she had in the folder, but if she were a cat, I would’ve been checking the cream. And the canary.
“What are you talking about?” Madison asked irritably.
Alicia smiled sweetly, and I knew that whatever was about to come was going to be good. “Oh, sorry. I meant to ask whether you knew that fraud was a criminal offense, Jenny?”
Madison’s cheeks, pink from her feigned indignation, drained of all color, and her jaw became slightly unhinged. Her lawyer looked at her, clearly confused, but he didn’t interrupt.
“You see, gentlemen. Miss Green here’s first name isn’t Madison. It’s Jenny. She looked so familiar to me when I first saw her, but I have to give it to you, Jenny, you have evolved quite a bit since then. The dark hair was a nice touch.” Alicia’s tone was dripping with honey, but the undercurrent was as lethal as a recently sharpened switchblade or a loaded gun pressed to your temple.
The entire room seemed to stop breathing while they waited for Alicia to land whatever plane she was in the process of guiding home. “It all went away nice and quietly, but it made enough of a splash in my line of work that I found out about it. This isn’t your first claim of having been impregnated by someone rich and famous, is it Jenny?”
Madison didn’t answer her. Her ice blue eyes were wide, and she suddenly resembled a deer caught in the headlights. My girl wasn’t done with her yet, though.
“The answer, for those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, is no. She is, in fact, the same woman who falsely accused a basketball star, who shall remain nameless for the sake of his reputation, of having impregnated her a few years ago. She tried the same tactics as she’s trying with Jared, and she failed spectacularly. Much like she will now.”
Slumping back in my chair, I watched as Alicia started pushing papers toward Madison and her lawyer from her yellow folder. The lawyer seemed as caught unaware as the rest of us.
She lied to you too, buddy.
I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t hold back loud, rumbling laughter as relief swept through me.
I’d walked around all week with this feeling of dread that Madison was about to suck everything that was good and happy about my life away from me. I dreaded that this story was going to tank the album, and that I was going to be the next male celebrity who got dragged ov
er the coals for being a womanizing bastard who refused to take care of his child.
All those feelings that had been pent-up since my phone rang that morning rolled out of me into one endless stream of barely controllable laughter.
Madison’s furious glare returned to Alicia, but evidently, she wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. “Just because you know about my background doesn’t mean that this isn’t Jared’s baby growing inside me.”
Gerry’s phone buzzed at that exact moment, and he excused himself, doing up the button on his jacket as he rose. “Excuse me. The courier is here. I’ll be right back.”
He strode from the room with a confident gait, and the tension was palpable as we waited for him to come back, which happened not a minute later. Holding up the sealed envelope once he got back to the table, he tore it open and read the results.
My heart was pounding, but his expression was unreadable as he handed to Ted, who wore an equally undecipherable expression as he handed the results to Madison’s lawyer.
It was Madison’s paunchy, nameless lawyer who finally filled the class in on what the potentially life-changing piece of paper said. He cleared his throat once. Then again.
Refusing to meet Madison’s eyes, he spread the paper out on the table and began to read. “It says that not only does the baby not belong to Mr. Larsen, but that you are not even pregnant, Miss Green.”
Madison turned on the water works and immediately started sputtering. “That’s not possible. I missed my period, and my breasts have been so tender.”
She buried her face in her hands, grabbed her purse slung around the conference room chair, and rushed out of the room without another word.
I gulped air into my lungs, desperate for oxygen that didn’t feel like it was reaching my brain. My vision blurred. I blinked hard. Once. Twice. Again. But no one contradicted what Madison’s lawyer said. She’s not pregnant.
I was on my feet before I knew it, throwing my fist up and then bringing my elbow back to my side in a swift punch. “Fuck, yeah. I told you it wasn’t true.”
Ted started gathering his papers and placing them in his briefcase. Then, he stood and turned to me. “You are well within your rights to sue Miss Green for slander, among other things, if that’s what you would like to do, Jared.”
“No,” I replied. “Thanks for the advice, Ted. But doing that would be a waste of time and energy. I’m just happy to be putting this thing to bed.”
Madison’s lawyer looked relieved, while Ted nodded and snapped his briefcase shut. “Good bye then, Jared. Miss Diamond.” Ted nodded to us and left the room. His associate and Madison’s lawyer scrambled out after him.
Gerry chuckled, rose to his feet and stuck out his hand to shake mine. “You were right. Congratulations, Jared. I didn’t doubt you for a second, but let’s never talk about this again. My heart won’t be able to take it.”
“Never another word.” I grasped his hand. “Thanks, Gerry.”
His pale blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled a relieved smile. “Now get your ass home and your bags packed. It’s time to shine, Larsen. Go make me proud. Get out of here.”
Lifting my fingers to my forehead in a salute, I snapped them back down and matched his grin, relief lifting the weight that’d been on my shoulders all week. “We’re gonna do our best. Good luck with the treatment, man. Keep us in the loop.”
Gerry made a circular motion with his index finger. “You’ll be the first to know.”
“Good.” Preparing for tour while knowing Gerry wasn’t coming with us had been weird, to say the least. At least he’d been around all week dealing with the Madison shit storm with me, but it still felt wrong he wasn’t involved in any of the tour arrangements. “We’re gonna miss you out there.”
He clutched my shoulder, moving his head from side to side. “Nah. You won’t even notice I’m not there. Have fun. Just not, you know, not too much fun.”
Alicia laughed at my side, moving in to give Gerry a quick hug. “I’ll keep them out of trouble. You just focus on getting better. We’re going to need you here when you get back.”
“Then, here is where I’ll be,” Gerry assured her. He was putting up a good front, but I could see this sucked as much for him as it did for us.
But we all had to do what had to be done. With that in mind, I placed my palm on the small of Alicia’s back and walked her to the door. We both turned to wave at Gerry, standing behind the seat he’d vacated with both hands on its backrest. “See you around.”
“See you around,” I called out as Alicia preceded me out the door. Gerry had asked us to meet him at the office for the meeting, but now we both had to get the final packing done before we left home for the next few months.
I was pretty much packed, and Alicia, being the organized person she was, had been packed and ready to leave for days so she could pay attention to finalizing the last details and working managing Madison’s lies instead of worrying about what she was going to wear when we got there—her words.
Walking into the humid parking garage with Alicia, I slung my arm over her shoulders. “You still coming over later?”
“If I don’t get arrested for murdering an assistant first,” she joked. Maybe. She’d been having some trouble getting a response out of one of the venue coordinators, and I knew she was frustrated as hell. Along with all the added work caused by the rumors of Madison’s pregnancy, my poor girl’d had a hell of a week.
Sighing, she shrugged out of my hold. “But yeah, I’ll probably be at your place around six. Hopefully.”
“If you’re not, I’ll swing by the police station and bail you out.” Hooking my arm around her waist, I jerked her closer to me and kissed the top of her head. “See you at six.”
Alicia smiled and took off in her little red Audi, loud music blaring from her radio as she raced out of the garage. I spent the rest of the afternoon going through my pre-tour motions, which meant I made sure everything was set at home and then lay out in the sun at the pool listening to my old favorite get-psyched songs and thinking about the one other thing I still had to do.
My head was all over the place all afternoon, but by the time six rolled around and Alicia arrived, I knew there were a couple of things I needed to say to her before we left on tour. Especially after the way she stuck by me, dug her heels in and fought for me.
I buzzed her in, trying to convince my damn heartbeat to slow down. None of what I was about to say was normal for me. Damn, I felt like a teenager.
Alicia was oblivious to my crisis of confidence, throwing her purse down on my couch before turning, hands on her hips as she raved about the incompetence of some of the people she’d dealt with since leaving the office this morning.
“And then,” her eyes flashed in irritation, knuckles whitening as her fingers tightened on her navy pencil skirt, “he told me having double the number of people at the meet-and-greet wouldn’t be a problem. Can you believe his audacity? You’ll be there all damn night with that many people.”
“Asshole,” I muttered, but I didn’t give a shit about the meet-and-greet. I was listening to her, but it was really hard to focus on anything other than her standing in the middle of my living room looking the way she did.
She might not have realized it, but she’d come to a standstill right in the center of the spacious room. Soft light from the sunset outside made her loose hair almost glow where it fell past her shoulders. Lights were blinking on in the city below, making it look like she was on a postcard in front of the wide windows.
One heel clicked against the floor in her annoyance, eyes and stance fierce. She was fucking beautiful and brilliant.
Yanking me from my thoughts, she snapped, “Are you even listening?”
I closed the distance between us, winding my hands into her hair, my mouth crashing down on hers. Kissing her so hard, my lips stung, I was breathless when I released her. “I was listening, but I couldn’t stop thinking about doing that.”
Daz
ed, she blinked up at me, heat sparking in her sapphire eyes. “What was that for?”
“For believing me enough to stand by me this week.”
She frowned. “Jared, I—”
I gently brought a finger to her lips. “I’m not stupid. I know you must’ve wondered, but you stuck around anyway. That means something to me. A lot, actually.”
“I was just—”
“Doing your job,” I finished for her, a smile tugging at my lips. “Thing is, I don’t believe that anymore. The stuff you do for me goes way beyond the line of duty.”
Her eyes flitted from mine. “Maybe.”
“Hey.” I lifted her chin and held it between my fingers so she would look at me. I needed her looking at me when I said this. “It’s okay. What I feel for you, it …”
A strangled sigh escaped as I searched for the right words. Fuck. Why was it so much easier to write or sing than it was to talk? “This week was torture for me. I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done if Madison was pregnant with my baby. And not because of the kid. It would’ve been hard, but I would’ve learned to live with it.”
“Why then?” she whispered, tentative for the first time since I’d met her.
“Because of you.” Trailing my fingers across the soft skin of her cheek, I marveled at the way she leaned into my touch. She was precious to me, this girl. Everything she did and said and was, it was everything I never knew I needed in my life. She was everything. “Because it would've ruined things between us, and I couldn’t live with that.”
“Why?”
Christ. She was killing me with that question. Inching so close to her, I could feel her heart pounding almost as fast as mine was, I said the words I never in a hundred years saw myself saying to a woman. “Because I love you, Alicia Diamond. Somehow, some way, I broke all my own fuckin’ rules, and I fell in love with you. And I think, unless you’re the hardest, most dedicated worker of all time, that you love me too.”
Stunned silence followed my life-changing declaration. If I thought the word “why” was killing me before, I was wrong. The silence that was what was really killing me. Her eyebrows jumped to her hair, and her eyes popped wide open.
