“Maybe you should stop giving it out so much.” Dane slams his pen down, flipping to a new page in his legal pad. “Ever think of that?”
“Don’t go there, Dane.” Beckham sits up, silencing the fresh call that comes in.
“May I?” I place my hand out, palm up. “It’s a woman, right?”
The men exchange looks, and Beckham carefully slides his phone my way.
“Beckham King’s phone,” I answer, injecting friendliness into my tone. “How may I help you?”
There’s hesitation from the other end though I can hear someone breathing.
“Hello?” My voice lilts. “Are you still there?”
“Who is this?” The woman on the other end finally speaks.
“This is Mr. King’s personal assistant. I handle his social calendar and other engagements.”
“I want to talk to him.” She sounds like a child stomping their foot at a toy store. “I don’t want to go through someone. This is ridiculous. Put him on the phone.”
“Unfortunately he’s preoccupied at the moment,” I say. “I’m happy to take a message.”
“Put. Him. On. The. Phone.” Her voice falls an octave, but it doesn’t intimidate me.
“And your name?” I ask sweetly. It’s an old trick from when I used to answer phones at a doctor’s office. Patients would call and make demands, and the second you lead them to believe they’re about to get their way you ask their name. Half of them would hang up and never call back. The other half would pretend they didn’t just have a conniption fit over the phone and offer their name without hesitation.
“Listen, you’re going to put him on the phone.” The woman’s words are sharp but weightless.
She’s still not getting through.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I say. “I just can’t do that. Are you a personal friend of Mr. King?”
“You could say we have a connection.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
She sighs.
I peer across the table. The guys are watching me like I’m about to perform some kind of Voodoo ritual. I point a finger up and excuse myself, dashing from the conference room and finding a quiet hallway.
“Listen,” I say to the woman when I’m alone. The things I’m about to say are hurtful but only half-true. Beckham doesn’t need to hear them. “He’s not that great. He’s just good at making people think he’s great. He’s like a desert mirage, you know? He looks like something we want, but it’s all an illusion.”
She’s quiet.
“You still there?” I ask.
A sigh comes through her end. “Yes.”
“Calling him repeatedly is a huge waste of your time, and honestly, you’re not doing yourself any favors by acting like some crazy ex-girlfriend,” I lay the words as gently as possible, though it’s difficult to be sympathetic when someone’s behaving like a lunatic. “Am I making sense?”
“Give him a message for me, will you?” Her voice is surprisingly pert all of a sudden. “Tell him to go fuck himself. And I hope his fucking cock falls off. Oh, and my friend is about to give birth to his baby.”
“Y-your friend?”
“Yeah,” she snips. “I’m not stupid enough to sleep with that fuckwad but she was. She’s being induced tonight at New York General. It’s a girl. Tell him congratu-fucking-lations.”
My heart falls, sinking to the deepest part of me. “D-does he know?”
“Hell if I know. She won’t tell us a damn thing, just that the baby is his.”
“I’m sure if he knew, he’d be there.”
Beckham might be a lot of things, but I can’t imagine him being a deadbeat father.
“He probably doesn’t know. I’ll talk to him,” I say.
“Yeah, you do that. And tell him to man up or I’ll personally see to it he’s paying out the ass for child support for the next eighteen years.”
My heart races at the thought of dropping this bomb on him. Here I thought I was saving another broken heart Beckham left in his path of manwhoring destruction.
“What’s your friend’s name?” I ask.
“Eva Delgado,” she says. “And if he wants to talk to her from now on, he’ll go through me.”
“I’ll relay the message right away.” My fingers quake, weighted by the kind of news I never expected to deliver.
My legs wobble as I amble back to the conference room. The walk back feels longer than the one that carried me to that quiet hall. Beckham and Dane observe with amused smirks as I shut the door quietly and hand Beckham his phone.
“How’d it go?” Beckham asks.
A long breath drags across my lips as I sink down into my chair. My bottom lip falls, and my gaze drifts between theirs.
“Congratulations,” I say.
“What the hell are you talking about, Odessa?” Beckham laughs.
“You’re going to be a father.” I search his eyes for a hint of something that tells me he had no idea.
Chapter Fifteen
BECKHAM
It’s impossible.
But at the same time it isn’t.
Nothing rattles me, but I’m shaking like a leaf and Odessa hasn’t stopped staring at me since this morning. She’s unusually quiet, and I’m particularly grateful. This situation is none of her business, and I’m not about to shell out the complicated details.
The plane grounds at JFK, and I unbuckle my seatbelt before we come to a stop. I’ve got to get the hell out of here, call my attorney, call Dr. Brentwood and rush to the hospital.
If this kid is in fact mine, I refuse to miss its birth. I’ll deal with Eva the first chance I get.
Two cabs wait for us at the tarmac, and I watch Odessa pull away in one as I climb inside mine. I pull up the number from this morning, the one belonging to Eva’s friend, and call her back.
“Where is she? Which room?” I ask the second she answers.
“Is this Beckham?”
“Yes. Where can I find Eva?”
“Room 8174,” she says. “Pitocin’s been dripping a couple hours. Contractions are starting. Doctor thinks she’ll be here soon, so get your sorry ass down here.”
“She?”
“Yep. It’s a girl.” I’ve never felt so much hatred in someone’s voice. Apparently she doesn’t know Eva as well as I do.
“On my way.” I end the call, tapping the driver on the shoulder and handing him an extra twenty to step on it. Spinning through my contacts, I find my attorney’s cell and give him a call. His voicemail picks up on the first ring. He’s probably in Tahiti or some shit like that. I scan through my contacts once more, dialing Dr. Brentwood’s office and telling his secretary that an emergency has come up.
***
“Beckham?” Eva’s covered in a pale pink gown and a thin, flannel hospital blanket. Wires run from a monitor around her exposed belly, connecting to a machine spitting out paper with zigzagged lines. She offers a delirious smile when she sees me. Eva radiates, a healthy flush on her tan cheeks. “You came.”
Her delicate Argentinian accent used to make my knees weak and my cock hard. Ever since things went south and our foray into fuck buddy territory ended with a restraining order, I can’t so much as think about Argentina without breaking into a cold sweat.
A woman sits in a chair in the corner, shooting daggers my way. Her arms are folded and she huffs before looking away. I’m assuming it’s her friend.
“I knew you’d come. I haven’t seen you in so long.” Her eyes close softly, the machine beeping. “I’ve missed you so much, baby. Have you missed me?”
Words catch in my throat, stopped by a heavy dose of apprehension. Dr. Brentwood told me not to engage her, not to feed her obsession. But if she is the mother of my child, if she’s hours from giving birth to my daughter, I can’t be an asshole.
Another time. Another place. Not here.
Eva winces, smiling though she’s clearly in pain. “I’m going all natural. It’s better for the baby that way. And I want to feel it all, Beckham. I want to remember it all. This moment. Bringing our baby into the world.”
She’s crazy.
But I already knew that.
“Have you spoken to Dr. Brentwood lately?” It might not be an ideal time to ask, but I have to know if he’s aware of her current…condition.