S is for Secret Baby

by Annie J. Rose

  “I had a choice, though,” Rian continued. “I could either let you know about the baby, forcing you to make some very tough choices, or I could keep her a secret.” She paused. “We were only together for that one night, so I didn’t have any idea if you’d even want to know. I didn’t know if you wanted to have kids or what you pictured for your life. Meanwhile, I just kept thinking about how much having a baby could change my life and my career. I was willing to go through with that, but I didn’t know if you would be.”

  She shook her head. “The last thing I wanted was for you to think that you had some obligation to me. I think I knew even then that you were a good guy, that you would have found a way to make things work. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to move to New York, though, or like you had to take care of us.”

  “Wasn’t that my choice to make, though?” I asked quietly. “By not telling me about it, you didn’t let me decide what I wanted to do.”

  To be honest, I didn’t know what I would have done in that situation. It would have been confusing, that was for sure. Here Rian had disappeared on me after our one night together, and right about the time that I’d started to move on with my life and tried to forget about her, she would have called me back to let me know that I was going to be a father.

  Would I have moved to New York? How different would my life have been if I had? I liked where I was at now, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. At the same time, I was always going to regret the fact that I didn’t get to know my daughter, or even learn of her existence, until she was seven years old.

  “We can’t change that now, I guess,” I said slowly.

  “We can’t,” Rian agreed. She stared down at her hands. “I think part of it was just, it was better to assume things than to tell you and risk the fallout. I didn’t want to deal with your rejection. Of me, or of Ronny.”

  I stared at her for a moment, then reached out and lightly stroked her cheek. She looked over at me in surprise. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t like your reasons for not telling me,” I said sternly. “That said, I can understand them.”

  I really could, too. We had both been so young back then, and she was right—she couldn’t have known what my plans for the future were. In fact, she probably thought that keeping me from the responsibility of having Ronny was some sort of consolation prize in return for her taking the internship I’d wanted. She had left me open to the opportunity of other job possibilities that I wouldn’t have had if I had been intent on becoming a family man.

  I had worked long hours back when I first started with the company, which was how George originally got to notice me. I wouldn’t have been able to do all of that if I had had a daughter to come home to every evening.

  “Are you going to fire me now?” Rian asked, her eyes full of worry. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you the truth, and I know it makes things complicated, but if you fire me, I might have to move again and I don’t want to do that to Ronny. She’s just starting to make friends here and get all settled in.”

  I shook my head. “Of course I’m not going to fire you,” I said. “I wish you had told me about her, but I’m not an asshole. Besides, I don’t want you to have to move. I want to get to know my daughter.”

  Rian’s eyes widened. She slowly nodded. “Maybe you could come over for dinner sometime?” she suggested shyly. “You know, once Ronny is out of the hospital?”

  I wanted a lot more than just dinner. It was going to take a lot of time to make up for seven years of not knowing that my daughter existed. But for now, I would take what I could get. I was just glad that Rian seemed receptive to the idea of me spending time with Ronny. “That sounds great,” I said to Rian. “If it’s too much trouble, though, don’t worry about cooking. We can just order something, or I’ll bring something over. Whatever works.”

  I didn’t want her to stress too much. She had a lot on her plate as it was. Then again, apparently she’d been juggling being a mom against furthering her career for all these years since college. Suddenly, her resume—which had already looked pretty damn impressive—looked even more incredible.

  Rian frowned. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work or something?” she said.

  I groaned. “Aren’t you?” I joked half-heartedly. “I couldn’t go in there without knowing where we stood and making sure that you, both of you were okay.”

  Rian smiled sweetly, laying her hand lightly over mine, where it rested on her leg. “We’re okay,” she said quietly. “We’re all going to be okay.”

  I felt a warmth flicker inside of me, but I didn’t examine it too closely right then. We were going to be okay, but things at the moment were still a little shaky between us. It was going to take some time to build up trust and all of that. Still, it was a start.

  “I guess I’d better get back,” I sighed.

  “Thanks for coming by,” Rian said. “I’ll let you know when Ronny is discharged, and when I can get back to work again.”

  “Sure,” I said, leaning in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek. I didn’t dare for anything more right now. The timing wasn’t right. It did feel like things were going to be okay, though. Somehow.

  I headed back to work in much better spirits than I had woken up with. I knew I probably had a pile of work a mile high waiting for me, but I felt like I could take on the world right then.

  Beth narrowed her eyes at me as I walked in. “Where have you been?” she asked. “Devin called yesterday and asked if you had made it back all right. What’s going on?”

  “Just a little medical thing, nothing for you to worry about,” I said to her. “I’ve been with Rian at the hospital. Everything is going to be all right now, though.” As I walked past her to my office, I noted that she didn’t look particularly thrilled by my answer.

  Whatever, though. I had a feeling that Beth was jealous of Rian. Maybe she had a crush on me, or maybe it was some sort of power thing between the women. I didn’t know, but I didn’t particularly care for it. That said, I knew that addressing it would likely only make things worse. Besides, I had enough on my plate at the moment without dealing with schoolgirl fits of jealousy.

  I headed into my office and shut the door, trying to focus on the things I had to do. As expected, there was quite a lot of it. Hell, even my emails were going to take me a lifetime to sort through.

  Or maybe it only felt that way because I still couldn’t stop thinking about Rian and Ronny. I was glad that things were all out in the open now and that we seemed to be on the same page, but it was definitely going to take a while to work up my trust for Rian again.

  Especially with comments about how if I fired her, she was going to move. Surely she couldn’t just make decisions like that without consulting me. I started to wonder again about what my rights were. Maybe I should find a lawyer and talk to them about it? How messy would that make things in the business sense?

  What about telling George and HR? Should I do that now? Should I talk to Rian about that first?

  Earlier, at the coffee shop and at the hospital, things had seemed so simple. Like we had resolved all of the most difficult things. Rian was willing to let me get to know our daughter, and we were going to keep working together professionally. Now, though, it seemed like there were a dozen loose threads. Pull any one of them and this whole thing would unravel.

  Was this how parenthood was supposed to feel? Or did things only feel this way because Rian wasn’t letting me in? The fact that she had kept Ronny a secret from me for so long still didn’t sit right, even if I was trying my best to move on.

  I had no idea what the future held. As much as I wanted to focus on my work, I found myself researching lawyers. I stopped short of contacting them for now, but just in case, I wanted to have a backup plan. I wasn’t going to let my daughter disappear out of my life again. That just wasn’t going to happen.

  Chapter 20

  Rian

  On the one hand, it felt good to be home from the hospital. Going to slee
p in my own bed felt like a miracle, and the food was exponentially better, too. Besides, the lights in the hospital had made my eyes hurt after a while, or maybe that was from all the crying.

  Having Ronny home with me meant that the doctors had agreed to discharge her, which meant that she was going to be okay. If they had had any further worries about her, they would have kept her there under observation. She may have broken her arm, but she was going to be all right.

  On the other hand, having her home from the hospital had made me hyper aware of all the dangers she faced on a daily basis. I had never been the kind of mom who kept the place 100 percent baby-proofed as their kid grew up, and when we moved into our place in Nebraska, I hadn’t been too careful about things figuring that Ronny was old enough to be careful not to slip on the kitchen floor and things like that.

  Now, I wanted to go through and pad everything, lock each cabinet and drawer, put down non-slip mats, the whole nine yards. I was terrified she was going to injure herself again, and worse next time. What if it had been her head instead of her arm?

  I knew that was no way to raise a child, however. I didn’t want Ronny to grow up scared for her life of everything. Still, it was hard to pull back when my mothering instincts were screaming at me to protect her from the world at large.

  As much as I hated to admit it, Wes was another thing I wanted to protect her from. She had already asked me about him a couple of times since she’d met him in the hospital. Was she already bonding with him, even though she didn’t know that he was her father? If so, what would come of it?

  I knew that Wes thought that he wanted to get to know her. What I wasn’t sure he understood, though, was that parenting was a full-time thing. You couldn’t just be a father when it was convenient.

  I wondered if he realized how hard it was to balance parenthood with a career. How many sleepless nights I’d had over the years where I stayed up working on a costume or a school project or something else for Ronny, only to have to go in to work the next day and act as bright and cheerful and alert as ever.

  Not that I wanted to martyr myself. I knew Wes. I knew that he could put in the work. It was what had made him such great competition through college. I just wasn’t sure that he realized what he was signing himself up for, and I wasn’t sure that this was what he really wanted. He had been perfectly happy in his life before Ronny had come along. Once he got to know her, there would be no backing out.

  Because if he got to know her and then decided he didn’t want to stick around, Ronny was going to be hurt, and that was something I couldn’t abide by.

  I was trying not to think too hard about the fact that it wasn’t just Ronny I was trying to protect. If he left Ronny, if he didn’t want to be a part of her life, then he wouldn’t be a part of my life either. It was the same thing I’d been trying to protect myself against years ago: that fear of rejection. It was one of the reasons why I hadn’t told him about Ronny.

  It wasn’t fair to him. Especially not since he seemed to actually want this. At the same time, though, I was afraid to trust him, to open up to him. Meanwhile, I was the one who probably shouldn’t be trusted, since after all, I had lied to him for a very long time. It was all so confusing.

  With Ronny home from the hospital, I knew that meant I had to get back to work. She would be fine at school; I knew that the teachers would look out for her, and she had never had anything bad happen to her there before. Besides, it would be selfish to try to keep her home for a few extra days just to look out for her. She needed to go back to school; she was already going to be far enough behind. Thank God it was still early enough in the year that she would be able to make up for what she had missed.

  In any case, Ronny was a ball of energy now that she was no longer cooped up at the hospital. I didn’t want to say that she drove me crazy that first day we were back at the house, but I definitely deserved the glass of wine I poured for myself that night.

  It would be good for her to be back in school, even if it was hard watching her catch the bus the next morning. With her back in school, though, I had to face Wes again.

  I had been thinking over that conversation we’d had at the coffee shop, almost nonstop. I was glad we had gotten some of those things out in the open, but at the same time, I still felt unsure about everything. I knew that work wasn’t the place to have a subsequent conversation about it, but I also wasn’t sure I could get through a normal workday without at least mentioning some of the things that were on my mind.

  Fortunately, everyone still assumed that Wes and I were working on the product line we’d just had the investment pitch for. It was hard to believe that that had only happened earlier this week.

  I shut the door carefully behind me as I went to Wes’s office, ignoring the daggers that Beth glared at me as I did so. There was a part of me that was curious about that. Had Wes had a prior work relationship? Was that the reason he’d been so quick to say that this had to stay strictly professional between us and that what had happened was a mistake?

  I couldn’t see Beth as being his type, though. No, she probably just wanted him and couldn’t have him. Too bad for you, I thought, even though I knew it was childish. The thing was, I still wanted Wes. I was nervous and unsure, but I knew he was a great guy and that I would be lucky to have him. Things were just complicated.

  “How’s Ronny?” Wes asked immediately when I came in. “Where’s Ronny? You didn’t have to leave her and come back to work so quickly, you know. I would have given you the rest of the week off.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at him. Something told me he had been almost as worried as I had been over the past couple days. That made me feel a little better about letting him into our lives. Still, there was definitely a conversation there to be had.

  “She’s at school,” I explained. “She was ready to go back.” I rolled my eyes and added dryly, “More than ready, in fact. She can’t wait to show off her cast to everyone.”

  Wes laughed. “I guess I probably missed my chance to draw something on there, then?” he joked.

  I paused and then cleared my throat. “No, uh. She actually drew a square on there and said she was saving that spot for you.” It made my heart jump into my throat to hear her say that. God, I was so worried that he was going to hurt her.

  “You don’t sound too happy about that,” Wes said carefully, accurately guessing at my emotions. How did he know me so well?

  I sighed. “Look, you’re a great guy, but I just need to make sure you understand all of this,” I said, dropping into a seat across from him and pressing my fingertips against my eyelids. For the thousandth time that week, I felt exhaustion creep over me. “Ronny’s never had a father before, so she didn’t know what she was missing. If something happens now, though, if you decide that you don’t want to be part of her life, she’s going to be devastated.”

  Wes narrowed his eyes at me. “What makes you think I’m going to decide I don’t want to be part of her life?” he asked, and I could hear the anger barely concealed there in his tone. I was glad he wasn’t yelling at me, but at the same time, I felt just as small as he continued. “Have you forgotten that you were the one who left after college? That you’re the one who didn’t even say goodbye? I’m not you, Rian. It’s not fair for you to act like I’m going to disappear when you’re the one who keeps doing that.”

  I swallowed hard, knowing he had a point. Still: “She’s already getting attached to you,” I said quietly. “I know it’s not fair to you, but I can’t help but want to protect her, at least until you know what you’re getting yourself in for. Can we just not tell her that you’re her father, at least for now? Just let her get to know you as a friend first, and then later we can tell her.”

  Wes scowled at me, and for a moment, I thought he was going to tell me no way. But finally, he shook his head. “Fine,” he said, his tone a bit frosty but otherwise civil. “I don’t like it, but fine, if that’s what you need. I do want to get to know her, though
. I want to spend time with her. If you don’t let me, I’m sorry, but I will have to get lawyers involved in this.”

  My head snapped up, and I stared at him, mouth agape. I had never even considered that he might get lawyers involved. It felt so distrusting of him. Then again, what reason did he have to trust me? I had given him no reason to.

  I nodded slowly. “That’s… fair,” I said. Fairer than I wanted to admit. “I did say you could come over for dinner. Why don’t you come over tonight?”

  Wes nodded. “That sounds like a good plan,” he said. “Now, shall we get to work? There’s a few things we need to go over. Devin and the board have a couple changes they’d like to make to the product line.”

  It was surprisingly easy to put aside all the personal drama and focus on work with Wes. Maybe it was the fact that we had finally cleared the air a little. Still, as we continued to work together, I could feel myself noticing more and more about how attractive he still was. By the time I headed home at the end of the day, I was turned on and tired, and somehow I had to pull it together for dinner that night.

  When he arrived, things were still a mess. Ronny was running all over the place like a demon, still excited to be out of the hospital. She was equally excited because all her friends had signed her cast and her teacher had given her chocolate as a get-well present. The house was a mess, and dinner wasn’t ready yet. Ronny was bouncing around the kitchen singing at the top of her lungs, so loudly that I didn’t even hear the doorbell ring and didn’t turn around when she shrieked in excitement.

  She launched herself at Wes, who managed to catch her and somehow not jostle her flailing cast in the process.

  He twirled her around and then set her carefully back down, giving her an exaggerated bow that had her in stitches. “Hey, you,” Wes said, smiling warmly at her. “Looks like you’re feeling a little better than the last time I saw you?”