Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance by Hazel Parker (fun to read txt) 📗

not. I suppose the question you must ask yourself is, can things be allowed to continue as they are now?”

I say nothing.

“I hope I haven’t overstepped my bounds, sir,” Curtis says.

“Hardly. You haven’t said anything I haven’t thought to myself a thousand times.”

“Sometimes, it helps to hear someone else give voice to one’s thoughts so that they may be objectively observed.”

“I believe you’re right. Thank you, Curtis.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

I hang up and am slightly surprised to find the Scotch bottle almost empty. I call down to the front desk and request another. They assure me that it will be no trouble at all to locate and will deliver it with haste.

I sit in the armchair again and toy with my phone. Curtis, as is typical for him, has a point. I have long held to the philosophy that you can wait for things to happen or you can make things happen. Maybe there’s a kind of middle ground between the two, something that doesn’t entail sitting on my hands or trying to force a desired outcome.

I sigh. In a perfect world, I would call Steph, and after a little initial awkwardness, we would reconcile and she would board the first available plane to England. We would spend several weeks here, holed up in this luxury hotel, making up for lost time.

The phone is still in my hand. I bring up Steph’s number. I am five hours ahead of Chicago, so although it is almost eleven here, it is only six o’clock there. She’ll be at work, no doubt, but that could be said of most hours on any given day. I could wait until I was reasonably confident she was home, but I feel like I am done with waiting.

There’s a knock at the door. The guest experience managers are famous for their promptness, and this is no exception.

I answer the door, prepared to tip heavily to compensate for the lateness of the hour.

“Hi,” Jamie says from the doorstep.

Chapter 23 - Steph

In five minutes, you can read two to three pages of a book. You can also declutter your junk drawer in five minutes. In five minutes, you can brush the dog. You can also go through your kitchen cabinets and put together a grocery list.

In five minutes, you can find out if your life is going to undergo a tremendous, massive, planet-sized change.

“Anything?” Tira calls from the outside the bathroom.

“All quiet so far,” I answer, still studying the window on the home pregnancy test with the intensity of a scientist.

Oh, yes—when you’re waiting on something like this, five minutes can take up to a year to pass.

I had called Tira the day after I had had my bizarre-o dream. I had plucked up the courage to go out and buy the test on my own but had spent the rest of that day putting off using it. I had reasoned that I would be just as pregnant or not-pregnant the following day and that it could wait until I was in a little better state of mind. Not exactly great reasoning, but there you go.

When Tira had learned of my…predicament, she had shown up at my apartment so fast, she might as well have teleported there. She insisted that we would get through the situation either way, but it was important to know for sure, and right now.

“Check again,” she says.

“I haven’t stopped checking, T.”

“Check again anyway.”

“I’m the one who’s supposed to be a nervous wreck here, remember?”

She laughs a little jaggedly. “Can’t we both be nervous wrecks?”

I’m about to reply when the positive sign begins to show up in the window of the test. It’s faint at first but rapidly solidifies into a definitive pair of crossed lines. It glares at me like a miniature neon sign, one that causes all the blood to rush to my head. I can feel my pulse thudding around my eyes. All of a sudden, I can’t catch my breath.

“Steph?” Tira calls. “You okay?”

Feeling disconnected from my body, I watch as my hand goes out and opens the bathroom door. Tira leans in expectantly. I watch as my other hand holds up the test for her to see. I hear my voice, trembly and faint, saying, “It’s a boy. Or a girl.”

It’s difficult to read the emotions on Tira’s face. They flutter by so quickly: happiness, fear, concern. She comes forward and puts her arms around me, drawing me close and hugging me.

“Oh, Steph,” she murmurs, then holds me at arm’s length and looks me in the eye. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I can’t be pregnant,” I say, and my voice still sounds washed-out, barely there. “I can’t be. My life can’t accommodate something like that. I have my career and…my career! There’s no way! And besides…” I trail off and almost laugh. It comes out sounding like a weak hiccup. “Trent and I were only together two times.”

“One time is all it takes, honey,” she replies.

“Apparently so.”

She waits for a beat, then asks, “What are you going to do?”

At first, I don’t have a sense of what she means. Do? I’m going to sit down; that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to sit down so I can fully immerse myself in the full-body numbing shock I am experiencing. After I’ve done that for a while, I may stand up, go to the kitchen, and have some ice cream.

I tell Tira my plans. “Do you even have any ice cream?” she says.

“A trivial detail. I’ll just make some. I’m a chef, you know. Or I was up until a couple of minutes ago. Now I’m a mom-to-be.” I do laugh this time, and Tira looks as though she doesn’t trust the sound of it.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says