Having Jay's Baby (Having His Baby #2) (11 page)

BOOK: Having Jay's Baby (Having His Baby #2)
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“I can’t,” she said suddenly. “Not now, anyway.”

“Can’t what?”

“Move,” she said, pushing her coffee cup away and sitting back, off on her own tangent. “I have an assignment in D.C. next week. I’ll find a place when I get back.”

My brows lifted, making her smile.

“I’m busy, that’s all. I just haven’t had time. It’s kind of you to offer, though.”

I simmered at this, even if I kept my own smile even.
Kind
? The purse strings had to be tight; why was she refusing my support? She’d been starting proceedings against the surfer to claim support, so she had to know Nina had every right to my money. Why was she keeping me at bay?

I stopped testing the mental bruise and changed tack. “What kind of assignment?”

Her eyes flickered across my features. “For work,” she said lightly.

“I guessed it wasn’t for the girl scouts, Stella.”

She bit back a smile but not before her eyes warmed. “I’m doing a piece on the Internet bill,” she told me reluctantly. “It’s part of the re-election campaign. There’s a company down in D.C. called Vanguard that they’re using as a case study for the bill, so I’m spending a week down there with them.”

“You do know Fitzsimmons & Jones are lobbying that bill, right?” I said.

Her brow inverted; she paused and absorbed the news.

“What kind of investigative journalism are they doing at the Tribune these days?” I asked with a subtle eye-roll. “Are you only listening to gossip about our stock options?”

Her expression settled. “There have to be ten lobby groups working on this bill, Jay,” she said dryly. “I haven’t started looking into them all yet. I wasn’t to know you were involved.”

“Well, Fitzsimmons & Jones selected Vanguard, the company you’re doing the piece on,” I said, silently miffed at her disregard.

She sighed.

“What are you doing with Nina?”

“She’ll be fine.” There was an off-sound to her causal tone. “She’ll have plenty of food, and I’ll leave her with my phone number in case she needs anything.”

I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even find the comment remotely amusing. Damn her for trivialising my concern. “I have a right to know who’s taking care of her,” I said.

She watched me for a long time. I could see emotions shifting behind her eyes, much the same way as I presumed they must be shifting behind mine. “I’m taking her with me,” she said finally.

“I guessed that. What are you going to do when you’re at Vanguard?”

This question seemed to spark the tinder inside of her again. “I haven’t decided yet. I’ll find a solution.”

Did I want Nina staying with me in New York while Stella was away? The notion of taking care of an infant child was faintly terrifying, even if I could hire an army of nannies. “When are you leaving?”

“Friday.” Her tone was flatly acquiescent.

Our gazes meshed in a wary bog.

“I’ll be in D.C. next week anyway,” I said. Or rather, I decided. I breathed out carefully before turning back to her. “They’re doing some work on the apartment here, so I may as well look into things in DC if you and Nina are there.”

She shifted in her seat, frowning.

“You can stay with me,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I blinked. “Why not?”

“Because I already have a hotel booked.” She shifted in her seat for about the millionth time.

I searched the air for reasoning behind her argument. “So
unbook
it,” he said.

“I can’t,” she said. “The paper booked it. It’s too late to be juggling things around like this.”

Impatience snapped. “What is this really about?”

“Why do I have to keep reminding you that you’re married?” she shot back. “I’m not particularly comfortable staying in your house when you haven’t even told your wife about Nina.”

“Look, Stella, in case you hadn’t noticed,” I said, gravitas straining in my voice, “my marriage isn’t exactly solid. I admit the divorce proceedings are on hold right now, but that’s temporary. I have every intention of resuming things when the time is right.”

Her brows lifted; frustration ate at me. I couldn’t have the situation with Elizabeth encroaching on my management of this situation. “Whether or not I’m married, I still have rights,” I said. “There are two ways we can agree on those, and one of them involves lawyers and a hell of a lot more stress.” I glared at her. “I’m trying to take this at a pace you’re comfortable with, Stella. I have a housekeeper on staff at the D.C. house, and I can get an au pair for the week. It’s an opportunity for us to discuss things.”

“I’m sure you could probably buy the moon for us, too, and hang it,” she said, clearly unimpressed, “but that’s not what I’m objecting to.” Her lips tightened; she looked like she was striving for control. After a tense moment, she exhaled heavily. “All right.” She bit the words off. “Okay.”

It was enough to take my anger off the boil, and only barely in time, too.

Finally.

I forced a smile, gritting my teeth. “I have to get back to the office. I’ll have someone send you the details this afternoon.”

“I’ll review them and let you know if they suit me,” she said with a pointed tone before I could leave. “Thanks for the coffee.”

When I turned to look at her, she was already walking away. My blood was still pounding as I headed towards the counter to pay.

#

Fueller was waiting for me in the lobby of my apartment block when I finally arrived home later that night. Suit rumpled, hair badly needing a trim, the sight of him never failed to bring a smile to my face. “Glad you could make it, buddy,” I said, giving him a brief hug.

“Wouldn’t have missed this,” he said.

“Did you go up?”

“No, I thought I’d wait for you. Not sure I want to be in the place alone.” He gave a dramatic shudder. I led the way towards the elevators and he eyed me with amusement as we got in. “Must’ve been a hell of a scene here this morning. I don’t mind telling you, there’s only one person on this planet who scares me more than your father, and that’s your wife.”

I laughed aloud.

“They were all set to tag-team you by the sounds of it, before the bugs showed up.”

“I haven’t even told you the half of it,” I said. We got out on my floor and I let us into the quiet apartment. “You want a drink?”

“Sure. A beer if you’ve got one.” He followed me down to the kitchen.

“They want me to testify.” I opened the well-stocked fridge, taking out two beers from the neat row prepared by the elusive housekeeping staff. Passing one to Fueller, I twisted the top off the other and took a grateful swig.

We considered each other for a minute, until he asked, “What have they got on you?”

“Asset stripping,” I said. “Insider trading.”

“Could you beat it?”

I shrugged. “I’ve got the truth on my side. I’ll have to speak to my lawyer to know if that’ll make any fucking difference in the real world.”

He exhaled. “I’ll get you some names, kid. I know a few people who can work a case like that.” He frowned. “Unless you plan to testify?”

I shook my head, smiling as I took another drink. “Anyway, we shouldn’t get into too many details,” I said, nodding in the vague vicinity of the ceiling.

We strolled around the house, checking behind curtains, under vases and lamps, behind paintings and under tabletops. We found a camera in the hallway facing the door. There was a camera in the bedroom, too, causing me to utter a few choice swear words into the lens. Sick motherfuckers; not that they’d have caught a lot of activity on tape ... maybe in a hotel room across town, but not here.

“So, how did things go after the charity gig?” Fueller asked me, his voice muffled from where he was searching under the bed. “Did you work something out with that woman?”

I leaned against the heater. “Kind of. We’re still talking.”

“About what?”

Good question
. “The details,” I said, unwilling to relinquish all optimism. “She’s staying with me at the D.C. house next week. Her and the—my daughter. Nina.”

Fueller’s head popped out from under the bed. “Nina, huh?” He grinned. “Cute. She looks like you, so I hear. Those stellar Fitzsimmons genes.”

I lifted my brows.

“Are you serious, you and the mother?”

“No,” I said, adding, “Well, we’re parents, so yeah—it’s pretty serious. But we’re not in that kind of relationship.”

“Not sure if that whole friends-with-benefits thing works with a baby in the picture,” he said, easing up. He frowned. “This is odd.”

“What is?” I approached him, peering at the small device in his hand.

He compared it with the device lying on the bed. “These are different. If I had put money on it, I’d say they weren’t installed by the same people.”

I rubbed a hand across my aching eyes. “What does that mean?”

“Well, they’re not set up on the same frequency,” he explained. He nodded up at the camera. “The camera in the hallway’s probably FBI, but this one...” He shook his head. “All the devices in here except that one on the phone are pretty new. Top of the range. The feds can’t afford this shit. And you couldn’t route the signals from these, and the other ones, on the same frequency, so it’s likely there’s feeding to at least two different locations.”

The silence took on a faintly sinister edge as we considered the implications of this.

“Didn’t you say the apartment was empty anyway?” he asked.

“Yeah. Elizabeth was supposed to be here … it’s a long story. I only moved back in recently.”

“Any chance she knew, that’s why she moved out?”

I stopped. Suspicion sat uncomfortably on my shoulders. “No,” I said finally. “She’s the one who found the damn things. She looked as shocked as I was.”

“What was your dad’s reaction?”

“The same.”

Fueller sat down on the bed and shook his head as he considered the small devices. When he looked up, there was an element of regret in his eyes. “I don’t know what to tell you, kid,” he said. “If you want my advice: don’t trust anyone from now on. Not even your own mother.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

Stella

 

The garden at Jay’s townhouse in D.C. was long and neat. It was bordered on each side by other neat gardens. The only disruption since Nina and I had come into the garden had been a half-hour display of hissing and fighting; frantic balls of fur darted into the bushes, leaves erupting in dramatic spurts, as the neighbourhood cats fought for territory. Nina was entranced. She sat on my knee laughing heartily at their antics.

She nodded off under the parasol after a while. I lay back and stared at the heavens through my sunglasses. The sun was exceptionally round and simple in a clear blue sky. The clarity of summer … it’d been a lonely winter and a tumultuous spring. The trauma of Nina’s birth, then losing the house—and now all of this with Aaron and Jay. Of course, putting Jay in the same basket together with Aaron was unfair, but I could only carry so many baskets.

Jay was inside somewhere, working. I peered at the impassive brick facade of the house with shuttered eyes. Could he see us from a window? My stomach folded in on itself. This morning, in the arrivals lounge, when I’d first seen him … I blew out a breath. I’d nearly walked into a wall.

I was biased, but to me, under normal circumstances, he was an easy ten. Standing a few inches taller than the crowd milling around, he’d been charmingly unaware of the general curiosity and interest surrounding him. He hadn’t, however, been aware of anyone else except me, and for some reason that had thrown me into a tailspin.

This didn’t feel like sexual attraction. Not the kind of obvious sexual attraction I’d always felt for him. I felt like I was tottering over the edge of a precipice. My stomach cramped just at the mere thought of him. I felt nauseous and anxious and worried about seeing him again, and worried about not seeing him again.

A crush?

Why was this happening now? He was married.
He was married
. If that wasn’t enough, the last couple of times we’d seen each other hadn’t exactly been touching moments.

His expression had been tepid as he’d approached us in the arrivals lounge. Then he’d astonished me by lifting Nina from her pram and holding her before him. A ray of heavenly light had appeared out of nowhere and bathed both of them in an ethereal glow.
Okay, okay
... I knew that wasn’t possible, but damned if I hadn’t seen it anyway.

He’d been relaxed on the journey home. I, however, had spent a half hour trying not to stare at the way his hair brushed against the nape of his neck. The straight line of his back. His capable hands at the wheel, and trying not to remember them slipping under my panties ... I sat up abruptly at the mere recollection of that. The careful consideration in his eyes as he checked on Nina in the rear view mirror. Staring at the hesitant dimples at each side of his firm mouth before realising he’d actually been speaking to me.

He’d even tried to feed Nina some puree over lunch, and made an endearing mess of things. An endearing mess! When was a mess ever anything other than a goddamn mess? In addition to which, Nina was, and obviously had been for some time even if I’d been blind to it, a mini Jay. Now that I knew, I couldn’t help but catalogue every gesture and expression. It was like a new game—the Nina and Jay Game! It was the most fascination show I’d ever seen and I wanted to sit down and watch it forever.

“Everything okay?”

I flinched, making Nina howl as she woke up with a start. 

Jay was standing to my side. Continuing with this morning’s general theme, he was reflecting the sun with benevolent grace, and being Nina’s father with extraordinary ease. I sat up, trying not to see these things, trying to pull myself together as he made his way towards us. Hands in his pockets, his eyes narrowed against the sun, he watched Nina for a second. The breeze played with the sunburned edges of his hair.

“Sorry,” he said, his smile rueful as he allowed my daughter’s chubby, outstretched hand to clasp at his fingers. “I woke her.”

I shook my head in wordless forgiveness.

“Is she tired from the journey?” he asked.

“I guess,” I said, my voice straining with effort as I lifted her. I gave her the plastic teething ring, and she clasped it like a koala on a tree. “She was a little uneasy on the plane.”

He nodded as though this were a problem he had to learn how to fix. “What time does she go to bed at night?”

“Around seven.”

He shifted the fabric at the knee of his suit pants – static prickling in the air – and took a seat on the lounger across from us in the shade. Nina reached out her hand to him again. His fingers were gentle on hers, both of them tentative. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or frowning as he watched her.

Letting his hand drop, he turned to me. “Did you speak to the surfer?”

A reluctant smile gripped me. “I sent him a text. I figured it was appropriate.”

Jay surprised me by laughing. After a few moments he frowned at me again. “Did he reply?”

I shook my head. A pang gripped my chest, preventing me from sharing in the humour properly, but I thrust it aside. What was done was done; I was here to move on from that.

“It must be a big change,” Jay said, falling serious. “I know Nina’s too little to know any difference, but it must be an adjustment for you.”

The considerate words surprised me. It was a base response but I was suspicious for a moment, nervous about being drawn into the topic again. “I’ve dealt with it.” I exhaled firmly. “I genuinely didn’t believe she was yours.”

“Neither of us did,” he said gruffly. “Not really.”

“How are you dealing with it?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet,” he said. While my heart did a little tap dance in my chest at his offbeat smile, he added, “I’ll be honest: I don’t know a lot about babies.” He looked back at Nina with a circumspect expression.

There was a muffled ring from the kitchen; my phone. It would be Monica, checking in. “Neither did I six months ago. Here,” I said, handing Nina’s sturdy body over to him. “No time like the present to remedy that. I have to take this call.”

He took her. He was still holding her at arm’s length as I went inside. Nina was drooling at him, like a madwoman, with an absorbed frown exactly mirroring his.  

The phone stopped ringing before I reached it. Glad for the respite, I paused for a moment inside the threshold to get my errant thoughts in order. I looked around the elegant townhouse, the furniture gleaming from generations of dusting. Generations that Nina now belonged to. The life I’d been imagining for her over the last six months or so was gradually disintegrating and becoming something else entirely.

I thought honestly about what he’d asked. It was a big change, knowing that Jay was Nina’s father. I was still shocked. The fact of it was one thing—the implications another thing entirely. Above it all, I still couldn’t quite grasp the notion that Jay may well be permanently in our lives. I had no idea who he really was. On some level I knew this odd sensation of puppy love was part of that. Like I was meeting him all over again for the first time, he was mysterious and intimidating. Only this time I didn’t have the luxury of holding him at arm’s length – not emotionally, at any rate.

Nonetheless, I had to keep that distance. On some level, I suppose I’d always known that it would be easy to write Aaron off. He was as reliable as shifting sands. On that same level, Jay, I’d always held at arm’s length because he was exactly the opposite. Assured; confident; capable; he was not the kind of man who did anything in half measures. He was the type of man you could easily depend on, and eventually start to need.

That was good news for Nina. I couldn’t ask for anything more for her. I wouldn’t permit anything less. If Jay was truly invested in his daughter, he wouldn’t permit anything less, either.

The notion sparked a flurry of anxiety in my stomach for a reason I couldn’t quite isolate.

#

“It’s a nightmare,” Elizabeth Fitzsimmons said.

The next morning, after a restless night during which Nina had woken several times, I descended the stairs in a fog of ill-will. I just wanted coffee. Nina had been fed, bathed, washed, played with, and now I wanted coffee. I did not want to deal with Elizabeth Fitzsimmons, and yet the woman was sitting slap bang in the middle of Jay’s kitchen. I recognised her immediately from the night at the fashion show. Only this time, instead of looking down on me with haughty confusion, she was seated at the island in the kitchen, looking up at Jay. 

What the hell is she doing here?

Then she sobbed, or rather, panted. I froze on the last step, holding my breath. I instinctively gathered Nina closer to my neck. When she spoke, Elizabeth’s voice carried a thread of what sounded like genuine fear. It snaked through me.

“... an absolute waking nightmare,” she was saying. “I knew he could go to jail, I just never really believed it would happen. Things like this don’t happen to us,” she said, and removed her hands from her face for a moment to beseech Jay. “We’re the Bensons. My great grandfather was Hoover’s best friend. How could they turn on us like this?”

My eyes fled to where Jay was standing by the sink. He was leaning back against it, arms folded across his chest. Dressed in sweats, he looked like he’d been out running. His expression was inscrutable. Both he and Elizabeth were oblivious to my presence at the foot of the stairs in the dark hallway.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, helplessly.

My chest contracted in sharp alarm at his cutting frown. The usually unfathomable depths of his eyes were liquid with emotion. It looked raw. I took a step back, an intruder on a private moment between a man and woman. Their history palpated between them, heavy in the quiet morning air.

Jay inhaled. “He can appeal,” he said. “I’m sure his lawyers have already started the appeal process.”

“But he has to stay in jail while they do,” she said, breathless now as sobs threatened to return. She shook her head and covered her face with her hands again. Yellow hair scattered across her shoulders, her voice muffled as she said, “I can’t stand it … the thought of him alone in that awful place. He must be terrified, Jay. I can’t stand it!”

He moved quickly and pulled her into his embrace. She remained seated, but her arms snapped around his waist like a frightened animal seeking safety. She was still speaking but the wailing had stopped; I couldn’t hear her muffled words over the soothing noises Jay was making. I took another step back into the safety of the shadows in the den.

It had to be her father, Harry Benson ... had they finally charged him?
Damn it, why hadn’t I charged my phone last night? I needed to check the news.

Nina shifted her head quickly, perhaps reacting to the outbreak of anxiety coursing through me. Realising she was on the verge of making some noise, I darted up a couple of stairs and out of sight. This was not the time to introduce Elizabeth Benson to my daughter.

The introduction was not yet to happen. Instead, Nina and I endured close on to an hour of wailing; it settled for ten minutes or so after we’d returned to the sanctity of our bedroom, before building back up to epic proportions. There was an argument—heated and scathing on Elizabeth’s part—which I completely missed because Nina got upset by proxy and cried through most of it. I paced the bedroom like a caged animal. For the first time in my life I started to understand what it meant for ears to bleed. Considering I’d recently emerged from the first six months of child-rearing, that was no mean feat. I had to congratulate Elizabeth on her stamina.

I’d just about reached screaming point myself when the door opened and Jay slipped in.

He was pale, a white line drawn around his tense lips. “Are you okay?” he asked. He surprised me by approaching and touching Nina’s head. Some of the tension eased from his face.

I resisted the urge to snap her away, reminding myself that he was her father. “What’s going on?” My tone was singed with frustration.

He exhaled. His eyes rested on me, assessing. “My ex-wife is here.”

“She seems upset.”

“She is.”

She’s also not your ex yet.

My brow lifted. Rocking Nina, I waited for him to continue, not trusting myself to speak. His bones seemed unusually prominent. I had no idea how he reacted to tension. He seemed calm.

“Her father was sentenced to a hundred and fifty years in jail yesterday,” he said, finally.

My jaw slackened. Jay paced away from me. He peered out of the window and turned back. His expression had hardened into an opaque mask.

“That’s more than they were predicting,” I said. My heart was slamming against my chest. “What the hell did he do to deserve a sentence like that? I thought it was just a Ponzi scheme.”

“Securities fraud,” he said with a sigh, “wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering ... if there’s something illegal you can do with money, he did it.” He approached us again and smoothed a big, gentle hand across Nina’s cheek. “Is she okay?”

I looked at Nina. She’d stopped crying almost the second Jay had walked into the room. I absorbed this realisation, frowning. She might be pleased to see him, but I was still seething for some reason I couldn’t quite isolate. I knew my reaction was inappropriate given the situation. It wasn’t just caffeine withdrawal, either; I’d developed an emotional twitch somewhere deep inside that might erupt any second.

BOOK: Having Jay's Baby (Having His Baby #2)
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