Pregnant.
Clover was pregnant.
My stomach had dropped when Logan had said it. He could have some time before I confronted Clover, but in the meantime, I wasn’t sitting on my laurels and doing nothing.
Taking a deep breath, I leaned against the wall. If one of my pack was the father, it would change everything. Fuck. What ifIwas the father? I’d always wanted my own family, but not in such a chaotic manner.
I steeled myself and quietly made my way to my office.
Protecting my pack was my first priority. Whether that included Clover or not would require a DNA test. If the baby was ours—and that was a big if—then she’d be several months along and we’d need to move fast. If my math was correct, instead of the usual nine months to prepare, we would only have about five months.
Babies were a big undertaking and required a lot of care: doctors’ visits, a good education, healthy food. Some members of my pack thought a bag of tortilla chips and cheese sauce was a balanced meal. If they’d add salsa, at least they’d have somesemblance of a vegetable added to the mix, but no—they were cheese-with-bacon-bits guys.
Thank fuck we had a chef. We’d need him to go full-time. Until now, he had been working three to four days a week, meal prepping some easy snacks for us or meals that reheated easily for the days he wasn’t there.
Cooking wasn’t a skill I possessed. My strengths lay in finance, thanks to being raised filthy rich, and I used those abilities to help my pack whenever I could.
Clover might not be who we’d expected for the mother of our children, but she was intelligent and beautiful, both excellent traits to pass on to a child, even if she did lack the refinement usually expected of omegas in my world. We were at a stage where we no longer needed to chase money, and a child would bring a new level of joy to our lives. Fuck, I wanted to believe it so badly. I wanted to be a father, but I refused to believe people blindly.
Clover was a human like any other, and whatever she might have said, wealth was a temptation few could resist. I had seen firsthand how Logan folded like a wet paper towel when it came to his family. Delia knew what buttons to push, and she’d been harassing him—and me, since the calls were rerouted—every damn day, so sometimes I had to step in to protect him. I didn’t relish having to protect him from Clover, but he was obsessed with her and would be just as weak to resist.
Emotions and finances were never a good mix. Running a trust as large as ours took a certain level of ruthlessness. Part of me hated that I was so good at it. Every time Logan’s family had chipped away at him, it pained me to watch. He was a good man, and he deserved way better than what he got. My pack was my family. They had been by my side when I’d branched out on my own and here for every success and failure since.
I needed to be prepared for whatever the outcome was. If the child was ours, we’d be ready. If they weren’t, we’d be prepared for the future. So, returning to my desk, I opened my laptop, scrolled through my emails, and drafted a few quick messages to our lawyers on retainer. I clicked over to another tab and started looking up interior designers.
Like any affluent family, we already had one—but they also worked with my mother, and I couldn’t be confident that any of my details wouldn’t end up shared with her if I went through them for this project. I hadn’t bothered to find someone myself when I needed to set up the house to keep up with appearances.
Thankfully, after a few minutes of searching, I recognized one of the design firms who’d been responsible for the remodel of a swanky hotel I’d stayed in a few months ago and really liked.
I dialed their number.
“Hello,” a calm, soothing female voice said on the other end of the line after two rings.
“This is Parker Ashcroft. I need someone to design a private home nursery. Sooner rather than later.”
“Of course, Mr. Ashcroft. Could you give me some information about your preferences for it? I’ll get one of our designers started on it immediately.”
“Make it peaceful and not too overstimulating. Minimalist and classy,” I said. My own bedroom was made up of many shades of gray—with hints of pink glittery bullshit that stubbornly refused all attempts to remove it.
Babies needed contrast for their developing brains, though—or, at least, I was pretty sure they did.
“Do you already have the space selected?” she asked.
“We have several rooms that could be suitable,” I said. “I’ll connect you to the architect who designed the house, he can give you more specific details.”
“We love to hear that,” she hummed. “Now, we can do that pretty quickly for you. If you’re on a time limit, we’ll design based on available stock so we don’t have to worry about importing or backordered products. I’ll email several proposals today with images to help give you an idea of what the room will look like.”
“Thank you. I look forward to it.” I passed along my contact information and hung up the call without further preamble.
Tapping my fingers on my desk, I looked through my emails. If Clover really was pregnant with our child, I was going to have to find a way to reduce my workload soon. Unlike my fathers, I wanted to be more present in my child’s life. Hunter’s record label was thriving, so he probably wouldn’t be able to cut back on work all that much. We’d been up his ass about learning to delegate, and in time, I had no doubt he would figure that out.
A notification on my computer let me know that the lawyers were available for a call.
Another benefit of being obscenely wealthy was, when I contacted the lawyers, one of them answered immediately.
When I had made it on my own in business, I had hired a separate team from the same law firm as my family. I was going to prepare us for every eventuality and keep my pack safe. They meant everything to me, they grounded me, and they were the one thing that kept me going.
I wasn’t going to risk that. I’d seen too many families fall apart because of the wrong omega. No matter how much I liked Clover, I wasn’t going to potentially put my pack in danger because we were all thinking with the wrong head.
