S is for Secret Baby

by Annie J. Rose

  I don’t think I realized how much I liked her until that night. Until we were sitting across from one another in that bar, and the light caught her just right as she laughed over a beer. She had stirred something inside of me, and sleeping together that night had only cemented the feeling that she was something truly special.

  Suddenly, I had to wonder if the whole reason I hadn’t had a serious relationship since college had something to do with her. Not that I’d been holding out hope and waiting for her to come back, but maybe there was a little part of me that still hadn’t gotten over her?

  It was yet another unsettling thought, and one I knew I had to forget about. I was her boss, and nothing could ever happen. It would ruin everything I had worked so hard for since college, and I wasn’t about to let it all go down the drain like that.

  “How are things going?” I asked lamely as I walked up to her.

  Rian shrugged, a cocky smile on her lips. “Well, you haven’t heard anything bad yet, have you?” she asked teasingly.

  I snorted and shook my head, leading her toward the door. “I’m not sure if that’s comforting,” I retorted. “The Rian I knew in college could lead a mutiny right under the professor’s nose, and he would never know about it.”

  She laughed, but there was something guarded in her gaze. “Yeah, well, I’m not the same person anymore,” she said, and there was a certain forcefulness to her tone.

  It made me wonder what she must be thinking about me. Could she already tell I would be more than happy to have a repeat of that one night we’d had? Was I that transparent? I tried to act casual.

  But as we sat down to lunch, I couldn’t deny how awkward things were between us. Rian seemed to be trying too hard to focus on strictly professional topics. It wasn’t just that she was acting like she had never met me before, but she was acting like neither one of us had a life outside of work. When I asked her what she thought of being back in Nebraska, she just gave me the clipped answer of “fine.”

  I pressed for more details, asking if she’d seen anyone from college, if she still knew people from around there. Her noncommittal shrug gave me nothing to go on, so I quickly ended that line of conversation there.

  Maybe it was for the best. If we didn’t talk about our lives outside of work, we would have no choice but to keep things strictly professional. In fact, it was probably the best way to approach things.

  Even if it did jar me a little. What had happened to the bubbly, vivacious girl I had known in college? I kept thinking about what she had said before about how she wasn’t the same person as she had been back then. That was fair enough, but something big must have happened to her. She wouldn’t have just turned into this person who was… honestly kind of boring.

  Still, I allowed her to steer the conversation back toward work and the things she had been working on with her last company.

  Didn’t that make things awkward, though—talking about that? The reason she had gotten a position there was that she had somehow beat me out for that internship. I was over feeling upset about the fact she had snagged my dream out from under me. After all, if I had taken that internship, my life would be very different at this point. I probably wouldn’t still be here in Nebraska, and at the end of the day, whatever I might have wanted when I was younger, I was happier here than I would have been in the big city.

  So no, it wasn’t that I was upset with her for bringing up the job because I still thought it should have gone to me. I was still upset that she hadn’t said anything to me, though. That she had just disappeared.

  “You know,” I suddenly heard myself saying, “I would have at least expected you to say goodbye before you left town.” Rian looked shocked, and then her face went through a complicated set of emotions. I refused to take back the words, though.

  She should have said goodbye. That was the thing that had been eating at me all of these years. And that was the thing that made me so unsure about having her at the company now. Could I really trust that she wasn’t the same person that she’d been back then? That she had changed, and that she was no longer likely to just disappear on me?

  I wasn’t sure. There was something she was hiding from me; I was more sure of that than ever before. There was a reason she was back here in Nebraska rather than back in New York with the life she had built for herself.

  Until I knew what that reason was, I wasn’t going to be able to trust her to stick around. As much as I hated to feel so negatively about this, that was the way things were.

  Chapter 4

  Rian

  I was doing all I could to enjoy the lunch. It was the first moment of alone time I’d had with Wes, basically, since that night back in college. I didn’t think he had been avoiding me around the office, but our paths had barely crossed since I had started there. I couldn’t help wanting to see more of him.

  Okay, so there had been a part of me that was a little nervous when I saw this lunch appointment on my calendar. I knew we needed to keep things strictly professional between the two of us. The last thing that I needed was to lose my job over a dalliance that had happened years ago.

  No, the last thing I needed was for him to find out he had a daughter. It was only going to confuse things if he found out about Ronny now. Although at the same time, I was starting to question my reasons for never telling him about her.

  It all had to do with the very thing that Wes had asked me about now. Why hadn’t I said goodbye to him when I was leaving?

  It was a question I had struggled to answer ever since I had left Nebraska, to be perfectly honest. Why had that one night meant so much to me? Was it just the fact he had rescued me? Or had something been building between us all that time without me even realizing it? Was it that easy for the respect I had for him as a businessman to translate into… something more?

  I had been afraid that if I told him that I was leaving—if I tried to say goodbye—I wouldn’t have had the strength to actually leave. It had taken everything I had to uproot myself from Nebraska and take off for New York City. I wasn’t stupid; I knew I was going to have a hard time fitting in there. It was a whole different mentality, a whole different style of living. One I wasn’t even remotely used to.

  As exhilarating as it had been to find out I had been accepted into such a prestigious internship, I had been pretty well terrified. Something about that night with Wes had only made me realize just how much I was leaving behind.

  What could I do, though? We had only had that one night together. It wasn’t like I could turn down the internship—put my whole life on hold—just to see where things might go with him. Not least of which because I was sure he wouldn’t have wanted me if I was the kind of person who would do that.

  Besides, I knew he had wanted that internship. It would have felt too much like I was rubbing his face in it to tell him I was leaving for New York to essentially live out his dream. He was the whole reason I had even applied for that internship. He had been the one yammering about it one day in one of our classes, and when I’d pointed out that there was no way someone from Nebraska was getting accepted for it, he had challenged me to apply.

  I hadn’t realized how much I wanted it until I started the application process, but I wouldn’t have started it if not for him. So no, I couldn’t tell him about it before I left, even if I knew he was bound to connect the dots once I was gone. After all, I hadn’t made any secret of it. It was right there in the school newspaper, in the list of all the graduating seniors and what they were up to after college.

  Rian James: Internship at Tadwick Design Co. NYC.

  I couldn’t tell him, now, that the reason I hadn’t told him I was leaving was that I knew he wanted that internship more than anything. It would sound too much like I was laughing at him for not getting it. And I definitely couldn’t tell him that the reason I hadn’t told him I was leaving was that I had been worried I was too attached to him after just one night together.

  I didn’t even know how he had felt ab
out me back then. After all, I had been the one to initiate the kiss. I had been the one to all but drag him upstairs with me. Maybe he didn’t care about me at all, and here I was, getting ready to give up an internship in New York just to see how things might go with him.

  No, I couldn’t do that. It would be ridiculous.

  There was a deeper question, too. Why hadn’t I called him once I was in New York? Well, that was just as messy. I had wanted to, but then I had found out about the pregnancy. How could I explain to someone on the other side of the country that I was pregnant? That it was an accident? That I hadn’t planned for this?

  It wasn’t like he and I could just see if we were compatible as co-parents of a child, either. Either I would have had to move back to Nebraska, or he would have had to move to New York, all on the chance that things might not work out between us. While I definitely wasn’t about to move back to Nebraska for him, I also felt selfish asking him to move to New York if he wanted any part of this child’s life.

  Besides, even before I met Ronny, I knew that there was no way I was sharing her with someone halfway across the country. I wasn’t going to put her on a plane and go weeks without seeing her while she spent time with her father. Maybe that was selfish, but I felt sick at the very thought of doing that.

  In any case, I wasn’t in any sort of place in my life for a relationship right then. I was totally focused on the internship, loving every minute of it. I was determined to get a job with Tadwick once the internship period was up. I knew that in order for me to have any chance of getting that job, though, I was going to need to keep quiet about the fact that I was pregnant, at least at the time.

  And if I was keeping it from the company, then there was no way I could tell Wes about it. I couldn’t risk him showing up there out of the blue. I didn’t know how I would explain that to everyone around me.

  There was a deeper fear there, too. Wes and I had gone head-to-head on everything in college, and I knew he had wanted that internship. What if he wanted it so much that when I told him I was pregnant, he outed me to the company and destroyed any chance I had at getting a permanent job there?

  When I thought back now, I felt kind of terrible for all the reasons I had left and all the reasons I hadn’t told him about Ronny. They just seemed so selfish. At the same time, I knew I had been scared and that I hadn’t been at my most rational. Still, how did I explain all of that to Wes now?

  Thankfully, before I had a chance to, the waiter came, interrupting our conversation. I knew that wasn’t the end of it all. I was going to have to keep my guard up around him if I didn’t want him to find out about Ronny.

  There was another thing: if I could go back and do it all over again, I might have made different decisions and decided to at least tell Wes about the pregnancy. Let him handle it however he wanted to. Having made the decisions I had, though, I knew that there was nothing to do but stick to them now.

  If he found out about Ronny, he would never trust me again, and it could cost me this job. I couldn’t have that. The stakes were too high. So our daughter needed to stay a secret.

  After the waiter left, I turned the conversation back to the company and the rumors of investment capital. “Are you actually drafting an investment firm?” I asked bluntly.

  Wes stared at me for a moment, and I could tell he was deciding how much he wanted to tell me. He definitely didn’t trust me, even without knowing about the secret I had kept from him all these years. That was dangerous, with him as my boss and me as one of the managers at the company. We needed to find some way to work together, or else I was going to have to leave. There was no other option.

  Which meant I had to find some way to earn his trust, or at least his grudging respect.

  Wes finally nodded. “Yes, that’s true,” he said, beginning to tell me about Devin McKay and his plan to partner with us on a new product line.

  As he spoke so nonchalantly about the project, I couldn’t help but feel my blood begin to boil. I was new at the company, but for something like this, as the innovations manager, I should be spearheading the project. Especially since it sounded like it was the kind of idea that had only really taken off in the time I had been with the company.

  If not spearheading it, though, I should have at least been brought on board and informed of what was happening. Devin McKay was known throughout the business world. He didn’t take partnerships lightly, and this could be huge for the company.

  From a personal standpoint, it was yet another blow to my ego. I got foisted out of my job in NYC, and now I wasn’t part of the biggest innovation that my new company was going to be part of, possibly ever…

  It’s just because you’re new, I tried to remind myself. I had to wonder, though, if things would have been handled the same way if George were still in charge rather than Wes. Or was he keeping me out of the McKay investment project out of spite? It was yet another uncharitable thought, but it made me realize that I didn’t trust Wes any more than he trusted me.

  I was the one with secrets, too. So maybe fair was fair.

  Still, if I wanted to keep this job, I needed to speak up now. If I let him keep me out of this project, it was going to set up a precedent that I didn’t particularly care for. As I opened my mouth to say something, though, my phone rang.

  I glanced down at it, mouth already starting to spew the apology to Wes. My blood ran cold as I saw that it was Ronny’s school calling me. Shit. As a mom, all sorts of horrific possibilities went through my brain in that instance. I had read all about what might happen if I uprooted her, all the things that could go wrong. She had seemed totally fine that morning. I had been keeping a close eye on her, watching for any changes in her personality that might suggest she was acting out.

  If I hadn’t seen anything of the kind, it either meant that I was a terrible mom and hadn’t noticed the signs or that something else had happened to her. What if she was hurt? What if she was sick? I had come a long way since the panicked wreck I’d been the first time she was ever sick, but I still felt so helpless and sorry whenever she was sick.

  I hated to say it, but if she was sick right now and it took me away from things at the job I had just started, it was only a matter of time before I accidentally said the wrong thing to Wes. That could cost me everything.

  “Sorry, I have to take this,” I said to Wes, already standing up and stepping away from the table. I would think of excuses later; for right now, I had to figure out what was going on with my baby girl.

  Thankfully, nothing was as bad as I had imagined it might be. Ronny had taken a tumble out on the playground, but there were no broken bones to contend with or anything like that. However, she had been crying inconsolably for her mother, and I felt my heartstrings tug. She had been so easy going since we had moved there, but I couldn’t help feeling like part of the reason she was so upset today was because she was in such a foreign environment, and that was all thanks to me uprooting her.

  I had to be there. Which meant I had to come up with some kind of excuse.

  I headed back into the restaurant and paused next to the table, summoning my nerves—and my best creative powers. “That was my property management company,” I finally said, hoping the excuse was believable. “There was a water leak at our complex, and they’re calling all of the tenants to come and assess the damage in our homes.”

  Wes looked worried as he got to his feet, tossing a handful of bills on the table to cover the lunch we had yet to receive. “That’s terrible,” he said, frowning. “Why don’t you let me drive you home since I drove us over here.”

  I shook my head. The last thing I needed was for him to know where I lived. Besides, I wanted to go straight to Ronny’s school to pick her up, not go all the way home and then out to her school. It would be quicker if he just brought me back to the office and let me take my own car. Not like I could tell him that, though.

  “I don’t know how long it’s going to take,” I said, continuing the lie. “And I�
��m sure you have things you need to do this afternoon?”

  Wes winced. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I have some meetings and things.”

  “Anything as interesting to product innovation as the Devin McKay one you had this morning?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  Wes stared at me for a moment and then winced. “Shit, Rian. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s fine,” I interrupted, because I didn’t have time to have that conversation now. Somewhere out there, my baby was crying for her mother to come and get her.

  Our baby.

  It wasn’t the time for that conversation either, though.

  Wes nodded and led me back to his car so we could go back to the office. “Sure,” he said, nodding. The car ride back was silent, and I wondered what he was thinking. Could he tell I was lying? This was one of the problems with not knowing him as well as I would have liked to: I just didn’t know if he knew me well enough to know I was lying.

  I couldn’t think about that, though. Instead, the minute we were back at the building, I got in my car and then raced off to the school to pick up Ronny. She wasn’t crying anymore by the time I got there, but her eyes were red and puffy and there were tear tracks on her cheeks.

  I knelt in front of where she was sitting in the nurse’s office, kissing her face repeatedly until she giggled. “Mama!” she shrieked, pushing me away.

  I laughed. “There’s my girl,” I said affectionately.

  Ronny’s face wrinkled in consternation. “Do you have to go back to work?” she asked unhappily.

  I thought back to the lie I had told Wes. I was torn between going back to work and taking care of my little girl. After all, I wanted to keep this job, but I had told him that it might take all day to resolve this. Besides, how often would something like this happen? I ought to just make sure that Ronny was okay now and then put in some extra time some other day.