Ripe: A Stepbrother Pregnancy Romance (13 page)

“Short term?” Robert spoke up. He seemed just as in the dark about this as his employees were. “So you’re saying that the department still might close, just not right now?”

“Not exactly,” the Chairman continued. Despite what appeared to be lukewarm news, Elise noticed that he seemed happy about whatever he had to say. “We have a marketing strategy in place that we expect to have a very positive affect on client growth. If everything works out as planned, this department could end up being one of Stone’s most successful yet. With that said, we are going to be training a large portion of you in case scouting, which will be headed up by our new CEO, Mr. Stone.”

Elise almost fell out of her chair when he addressed Jesse as the firms CEO. This was the
last
thing she needed right now. As she looked around the room, surveying the expressions of all her co-workers, she seemed to be the only one who wasn’t relieved by the news. Almost everyone else seemed to be under the impression that as long as they weren’t out of a job, they had nothing to worry about, but she wasn’t buying it.

Elise raised her hand to express her concerns. “What happens if we don’t want to be trained in case scouting? I mean…we have a choice, don’t we? Because some of us happen to like client care just fine.”

“Of course,” someone from the board spoke up. “We all realize that client care is an extremely vital aspect of the day-to-day operations here, not to mention one of Stone’s fine points. We’re not trying to downsize that. There will always be a need for customer service, just not in the capacity in which the department is currently operating.”

Elise noticed Jesse staring at her while her question was being answered. She looked back at him, and if looks could kill, he’d be a dead man walking.

As Elise made her way to her car after work, she noticed Jesse’s SUV parked a few spots away from her. Knowing he’d be coming out to get in it at any moment, she quickened her pace. Trying to walk faster ended up slowing her down, however. She dropped her keys, and when she bent down to pick them up, she caught a glimpse of the shadow of someone standing behind her. When she realized it was Jesse, she cursed under her breath and he took a step back.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What do you want?” Elise snapped, standing back up and regaining her composure.

“Just wanted to talk to you for a minute,” Jesse said, ignoring her hotheaded disposition. “I’m assuming you got the letter?”

“You mean the one from your lowlife attorney?” Elise said, turning to face him as she opened her car door. “And if you want to play dirty, then fine, we’ll play dirty. You seem to have forgotten that I have a cop for a father. You’re not getting anything from me, Jesse.”

Jesse seemed almost amused by Elise’s outburst. “You obviously didn’t read the letter.”

“Nope, and I have no intention on it.”

“Elise, we need to talk about this.”

“No.”

“That’s mature.”

“I don’t have time, and even if I did, I have nothing to say to you. Now if you wouldn’t mind moving, I have to go get our son.”

“
Our,
” Jesse said, reaching for her arm. “You said ‘our’, you do realize that, right?”

Elise stared at him like a fish out of water for a couple seconds before pulling away from him and getting in her car. When she arrived at Deanna’s, she reached into her purse, pulling out the letter from Jesse’s attorney and opening the envelope. Just as he’d alluded, it was an invitation for a meeting, not a court order.

Elise looked up to see Deanna walking Isaiah out. She got out of the car with the letter in hand, holding it up as she neared them.

“It’s getting serious, I guess.”

Deanna held up her hand to stop Elise and shook her head. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

“What?” Elise said, taken aback by her friend’s rudeness.

“Elise, I can’t help you,” Deanna said as she handed Isaiah off. “You know what you need to do, and you refuse to do it. I have nothing else to say on the matter.”

Instead of trying to make Deanna see her point, Elise quietly helped Isaiah into the car before getting in herself and driving away. He was pretty quiet for most of the evening, and when she went in later that night to tuck him in for bed, he was coughing and complaining about an upset stomach. Elise took his temperature and even though he didn’t have a fever just yet, she knew it would only be a matter of time.

After giving Isaiah a quick dose of medicine, Elise went to bed and distracted herself with a magazine when her cell phone vibrated beside her. It was Jesse, and she frowned when she took note of how late it was.

“Jesse?” Elise said, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Isaiah. “Do you know what time it is?”

There was a pause, and Elise knew Jesse was inspecting his cell phone for the time. “Sorry,” he said. “I really didn’t realize it was this late. But uh…do you have a minute?”

Elise wanted so badly to tell him no, but something kept her from doing so. “What’s going on?”

“That request I sent you for a meeting…it’s time sensitive. I was just wondering if you were planning on responding.”

Elise was silent as she tried to conjure up a response that wouldn’t piss Jesse off. She did, after all, have questions she needed answers to herself.

Jesse mistook Elise's silence for uncertainty.

"Elise, what are you so afraid of? I’m not going to do anything you wouldn’t approve of, I promise. It’s just a simple sit down. You can say what you have to say, and I can say what I have to say. You have nothing to lose here.”

“Nothing to lose?” Elise laughed. “Jesse, in no time at all, you’ve come in and turned my life upside down. You’re even at my job now, and now here you are trying to take Isaiah away—”

“For the last time!” Jesse interrupted. “I don’t want to take Isaiah away from you. I just want a relationship with him, and if you’d just stop being so fucking stubborn, you’d see that I’m willing to operate within the confines of whatever terms you come up with.”

Elise was silent. She told herself that it was useless to keep engaging Jesse in conversation, but something propelled her forward. “Any terms I come up with?”

“Yes,” Jesse confirmed. “Any, you know, as long as they’re within reason.”

“Fine,” Elise said. “I don’t want you to take him overnight.”

“Alright.”

“And no weekends either. That’s my time with him. I don’t want to lose that.”

“Okay, no weekends. Anything else?”

“No, there’s more. You can’t keep interfering with his scheduled routines. Like his time Deanna, for example.”

“You got it.”

“And one more thing,” Elise said. Her mind raced to come up with all the scenarios she wanted to protect Isaiah from. “I don’t want you bringing him around anyone I don’t know. Especially women. All it would do is confuse him.”

“Okay.”

“And I want a trial period to test this out,” Elise added for extra measure.

“A trial period?”

“Yes. I need some kind of reassurance that you’re not just going to saunter in and out of Isaiah’s life whenever you please.”

“Elise, come on,” Jesse said. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not going to do that before you believe me?”

“It doesn’t matter what you say. I’ve never known you to finish what you started, Jesse. I want a trial period.”

Jesse sighed in exasperation. “Fine,” he said after awhile. “How long?”

“Until Isaiah goes back to school in the fall. So…lets say the rest of the summer. You can visit with him for a few hours one night a week. And it has to be here, at my apartment.”

“What?” Jesse exclaimed. “No way! Come on, Elise. That’s not fair and you know it. You get to see him everyday, and I only get one night out of the week?”

“Trust me, Jesse, you really don’t want to start a discussion with me about what’s fair and what’s not,” Elise warned. The line went quiet, and she thought she’d lost him until he quietly spoke up.

“Fine, you win, but when I make it through this trial period with flying colors,
which I will
, the rules change.”

Elise smirked as she hung up the phone.

Just what the hell had she gotten herself into?

Chapter Twenty-One

Jesse ended up choosing Tuesday nights for his visits with Isaiah. Elise was relieved. That meant she could get the whole ordeal over with early in the week, and he wouldn’t be interfering with her weekends off.

“What are we going to do?” Isaiah asked his mother when she informed him that they would be having company over that evening.

“Well, here’s something,” Elise said. “What if we played one of the new games you got on your birthday? Maybe Chutes and Ladders. You like that one best right?”

“Oh yeah,” Isaiah said, grinning as he remembered. “Maybe he’ll watch me ride my scooter!”

Elise nodded. The scooter thing was still bugging her, especially since she’d lost the receipt to return the one she bought for him, but she tried her best not to show it. Figuring she’d make the most out of the time she’d have to herself when Jesse came, she set about on keeping Isaiah preoccupied until then. After turning on a show for him, she pulled out her bank statements and put them on the table, sifting through her stack of mail and pulling out her bills. She hated having to fork over her hard earned money on these sorts of expenses, but she had to make sure she stayed on top of them. There was no way she could afford the outlandish fees she’d wrack up if she paid them late.

Jesse showed up at seven on the dot. Elise had just finished giving Isaiah his dinner, which consisted of mac and cheese and barbeque chicken, and she was loading up the dishwasher when he knocked on the door.

Jesse smiled when she let him in.

“Isaiah!” Elise called out to her son. “You have company!”

Isaiah darted out from his bedroom and was standing before Jesse in a flash. His small arms were overflowing with books, toys, and even his favorite blanket. “Jesse!” he said, throwing everything to the ground to hug him. “I have a racecar bed. Wanna see?”

Jessed nodded and followed Isaiah back into his bedroom. Elise watched them disappear before sitting back down at the table to work on her bills. However, she was having a hard time concentrating on them as she strained to hear what was going on down the hall.

Jesse entered the kitchen about twenty minutes before his time with Isaiah was up, pulling Elise’s attention away from what she was working on.

“Do you have a second?”

Elise nodded, sliding off her reading glasses and quickly concealing her documents from his view. “Isaiah,” she told her son, who’d followed Jesse into the kitchen and was lingering behind him. “Go get ready for bed okay? It’s almost time.”

Isaiah hesitated for a moment. Elise had to give him a stern look before he finally cooperated, retreating into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Jesse took a seat and nervously tapped his fingers against the table. His anxiousness made Elise immediately nervous. She knew it meant he was going to say something she didn’t want to hear.

“What is it?” she pressed.

“It’s about that meeting,” Jesse continued, rubbing his neck. “The one that happened at work today.”

“Yeah.” Elise nodded for him to continue, silently cringing at the reminder that her job now involved him on a more personal level.