Annelise.
I refuse to smile, and I make no effort to hide my disappointment in seeing her here. She’s dressed in a cream cashmere twinset and black leather leggings tailored to her perfect physique. Her face is covered in the kind of makeup a woman buys from a counter at Barneys. Annelise doesn’t belong in a Duane Reade.
It’s too much. We’re past happenstance and coincidence.
“Annelise.” I grip the basket handle until my knuckles whiten and the plastic digs into my palm.
“Odessa.” She pulls her shoulders tight, and dons a devilish smirk. She doesn’t fidget or dither and her eyes don’t shift. If someone told me the woman standing before me was Annelise’s evil twin, I wouldn’t argue.
“What are you doing here?”
Her eyes fall to my basket, landing on the DNA test. My stomach twists. I bet she followed me here after seeing me leave Beckham’s place. If that’s the case, my sympathy for this broken-hearted girl is quickly morphing into concern that she might need professional help.
“I knew the baby wasn’t his.” Her arms fold.
“No clue what you’re talking about.”
Her blue eyes roll. “Not falling for that.”
“You need to distance yourself from him,” I say. “It’s not healthy. And please stop following me.”
She smirks, shaking her head. “Don’t act like you know him better than I do.”
The awkward, shy Annelise I met weeks ago is dead and gone. This psychotic woman is officially leading the charge.
“I’m not going to discuss him with you anymore,” I push past her, heading for the cash registers. My gut tells me not to engage with crazy.
The clicking of her heels match my strides as she follows me. A cold sweat trails down the back of my neck. This woman is completely obsessed with Beckham on a much larger scale than I previously assumed.
“He’s a monster,” she calls after me. “I created him, and only I know how to love him.”
My lips tighten and my skin flushes.
I don’t want to respond, but I won’t sit back and let some crazy stalker woman slander a man who doesn’t get enough credit for the good things he does.
But when I turn to silence her, she’s gone.
Chapter Thirty-Five
BECKHAM
“Here you go.” Odessa places a white plastic sack on my desk Monday morning.
Examining the kit, I read the fine print on the back as she stands before me, fidgeting.
“If you go online, you can pay a fee and upgrade to a rush order,” she says. “Just a quick swab of both your mouths, mail it off, pay the fee, and you should have your answer in less than two weeks.”
“Thank you.” I put the box back in the sack and slip my hands in my pockets, eyes dragging the length of her and catching a small twitch in her fingers. “What’s all this?”
“Pardon?”
“You’re shaking.” I hope to God she’s not being all jittery because we fucked last night and she decided all of a sudden to develop fucking feelings for me.
“I ran into Annelise last night,” she says. “For the third time in three weeks.”
My brows furrow. The name isn’t ringing a bell. “Annelise?”
“Yes.” She puts force into the word, as if that would help me to remember. “Annelise. Your Annelise.”
I chuckle. “I don’t have an Annelise.”
Odessa glances to the left, scratching the corner of her mouth. “She sure knows you. She knows where you work. Where you live. She knew my name two weeks ago. Said you’d told her about me.”
My brows rise. “I haven’t told anyone about you.”
Besides Xavier, but I’m not telling her that. She’ll think I like her or some shit.
I sink down in my chair, resting my chin in my hand. The lack of sleep lately hasn’t done much for my short-term memory. I mentioned Odessa to Xavier a couple weeks ago, but he doesn’t know any Annelieses that I’m aware of. Pretty sure the girl he went home with that night was named Hayley or Heather or Harper.
“She came in here my first day, brought you lunch but you’d left,” she says.
“She came in here?” I lean forward.
“Okay, now you’re freaking me out.” Odessa slumps into a guest chair. “She came in here looking for you. And then I bumped into her the next week when I went out to get coffee. She cried when I told her she needed to get over you.”
“Whoa, whoa.” I lift my hand. “I have no clue who you’re fucking talking about. Some woman walked in here, bringing me lunch, and then you talked to her about me and she cried?”
This is some Eva-level shit.
“Yeah,” she says, eyes wide. “And I ran into her last night, at the pharmacy. She saw me buying the kit.”
My hands rake the sides of my head, nails digging into my scalp.
“What does she look like?” I ask, my heart thundering as my suspicion grows.
Odessa winces, glancing up at the ceiling. “She’s pretty. Short blonde hair. Platinum. Big blue eyes. Lots of makeup. Well-dressed. The second time I saw her, she was wearing this diamond lotus pendant on her collar.”
“Mother fucker.”
“What?” Odessa’s hand flies to her chest. “Who is she, Beck?”
“Her name isn’t Annelise.” My teeth grind, and I swallow the ball in my throat. “It’s Sophie Glass, my ex-fiancé.”
“This woman is obsessed with you.” Her hands tremble in her lap. “She called you a monster. Followed me around the pharmacy. I thought maybe she was some one-night stand who took things too far. You’d mentioned you’d had stalkers before.”
“Yeah.” I huff.
“She said she knew the baby wasn’t yours.”
My lips rub together, and I grab the stress ball next to my monitor, clenching it in my fist until it’s reduced to nothing. A minute later, I stand.
“Where are you going?” She grips the arms of her chair, pushing herself up.
I don’t answer. Anger fills my head, preventing me from speaking even if I wanted to. It’s one thing to follow me around. It’s another thing to stalk my female employees.
But it’s something else altogether for Sophie to bring my fucking daughter into this.
***
“You have a lot of goddamn nerve.”
Sophie stands outside her apartment, which happens to be the penthouse suite of her father’s Lotus Hotel in the Meatpacking District.
“Beckham.” Her finger trails along her collarbone as she paints a slow smile on her red lips. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I push past her, slamming the door. Seething. My neck clenches and my body’s on fire. My blood hasn’t boiled this hot since the night I walked in on Sophie with that washed up actor.
“It’s good to see you again.” She saunters to her mini bar, pulling out a crystal tumbler and a bottle of Scotch. “May I offer you a drink? You look like you could use one. Then again, I always enjoyed seeing you all worked up. Mm. Such a turn on.”
I throttle my breathing. I need to think clearly because the message I have for her today needs to be crystal fucking clear.
Sophie Glass was the first woman who ever broke my heart, at least by standard definition. I hate that she wears that title. It should’ve gone to someone more worthy. Someone with actual blood in her veins and not money, vodka, and self-serving intentions.
“Baby’s cute,” she says, handing me a drink. I don’t accept it. She shrugs and puts it aside. “No need to be rude, Beckham.”
She sashays to her sofa, slinking down and picking up a martini glass from the coaster. It’s a little early for a drink but Sophie Glass has never paid attention to things that matter like time and responsibilities and self-discipline.
“I still have our engagement announcement,” she muses. “Framed too. Daddy never did get over losing the son he always wanted. God forbid he leaves his empire in my hands someday.”
Losing Howard Glass as a future father-in-law was quite the blow, but I’ll be damned if I tell her that.
“I always wondered what our baby would’ve looked like.” Her manicured nail traces the outline of a sequin-striped pillow better suited for the bedroom of a thirteen year old girl. “I feel like it would’ve been a boy. Mother’s intuition I guess.”