Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
“Why not? It would be my pleasure. I feel helpless over here. It’s the least I can do.”
He looked away for a moment. “Feb, I can’t—”
“Non-negotiable.”
He sighed, his shoulders slumping in surrender. “Well, thank you. It means a lot that you’d want to do this for me.”
“You don’t have a lot of free days before he’s born. Go work on the cabin. Or start getting the apartment ready.”
He nodded silently, just staring at me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“This whole thing is surreal. I don’t know how to feel about anything. Sometimes I’m excited about getting to meet my son. And other times, I’m totally afraid. The one thing I’m absolutely sure of is that I miss you like crazy.”
My heart fluttered, though I tried to squelch the feeling. “I miss you, too.”
After we finished our call, I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping online for Brock. He’d insisted on giving me his credit card number and wouldn’t send the list until I promised to use it. I was pretty sure I’d ordered him all the main things he’d need, choosing what the Internet agreed were some of the best brands. I’d even added some things that weren’t on the list like baby spoons and silicone bibs. He wouldn’t need those right away, but it would be nice to not have to worry about buying them when he did.
And there was one other item I couldn’t resist throwing into the mix: little plaid footie pajamas that reminded me of one of Brock’s shirts.
***
At the end of the day, I was leaving the office when our public relations manager, Fallon, stopped me.
“Hey, Feb. Are you okay?”
“Sure,” I said as we walked down the hall together. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You left the meeting earlier very abruptly, and you’ve had your door shut all afternoon. Well, except when I stopped in to hand you a coffee.”
“I’m fine,” I assured her as we exited the revolving doors. “I just had some…personal stuff to take care of.”
She looked skeptical as we faced each other outside the building. “Okay, if you say so.”
I cocked my head. “You don’t believe me?”
Fallon looked around as if to make sure no one was near us and whispered, “I saw you looking at baby stuff when I barged into your office. You closed your computer window when you realized I was standing behind you with your coffee.” She lowered her voice further. “Are you pregnant?”
Oh Lord. She’d drawn the wrong conclusion. “No. Why would you jump right to that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“I’m not pregnant. I was shopping for a friend. It’s not my baby.”
As soon as those words exited my mouth—not my baby—I felt it in the pit of my stomach. Reality hit me all at once.
Brock’s having a baby.
Not my baby.
The finality of it all threatened to choke me.
She snapped me out of my thoughts. “What’s going on, February?”
Fallon was a friend. I could trust her. I needed to let some of this out, so we moved to sit on a stone ledge outside our building, where I explained everything that had happened with Brock.
Fallon offered a sympathetic smile. “I once dated a guy who was a single dad. His son wasn’t a newborn, but pretty young, like three or four.”
“And?”
Her expression dampened. “Mitchell was a solid boyfriend. Trustworthy and loyal. But he always had to put his kid before me. And that put a strain on things. If they have kids, you never come first. That’s just the way it is. Some people are okay with that. Me? Well, I’m a selfish person. I need to be number one. So needless to say, it didn’t work out.”
I swallowed. “At least you figured it out before you got too attached to the kid.”
She nodded. “Mitchell was amazing, though.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “My guy is amazing, too.”
My guy. But he wasn’t really anymore, was he?
***
Later that evening, I was attempting to relax at home when my phone lit up with a number that looked international.
Picking up, I squinted. “Hello?”
“February, bella. How are you?” came a strong Italian accent.
It was Giovanni Vitadinni, a potential investor I’d been wooing since I started to get the vibe that the bank might not be too keen on the loan I needed.
I feigned my best friendly voice. “Giovanni, it’s great to hear from you, although it must be pretty late there.”
“I’m an insomniac.”
“Ah.” I laughed. “Have you come to any decisions on what we last spoke about?”
“I’d like to discuss it further…but in person.”
My eyes widened. “Oh?”
“Come out to Milan next week. You can stay in my villa. My wife, Francesca, would love to meet you.”
Next week?
I couldn’t just drop everything and fly to Italy. Then again, Giovanni was someone I didn’t want to piss off right now. If he was inviting me out there, that meant he was considering becoming an investor at a time when I could really use his financial support…