Page 27
“What am I, your permanent backup plan?” There was laughter in his voice, softening his words. “It feels more and more like you call me up whenever you don’t have anything better to do.”
“Your window of opportunity is rapidly closing,” I replied. “I’ll even pay. I’m feeling generous.”
“Far be it from me to say no to an offer like that.” Even so, I heard the hesitation in his voice.
“Anything wrong?” I asked, putting on my shoes.
If Aiden was good at one thing, it was getting straight to the point. “Are you sure you’re not going to be in a piss-poor mood the way you were the last time you called me up out of the blue asking if I wanted to go out?”
The night Mom confessed to her scheming. “What are you, my girlfriend?” I countered with a snicker.
“I mean it.” He did too. The humorous note that normally hung in his voice was nonexistent. “Because between you and me, you were a real bummer that night.”
A dozen arguments rang out in my head, ready to be made. Somehow, I couldn’t find the heart to make them. “I just got a piece of news that hit me out of nowhere.”
“What is it?”
I shouldn’t have said anything. Right away, my throat tightened, and my pride reared up. Why was I having such a hard time with this? “Winter has a kid. She just ran out of here saying he was being taken to the hospital.”
“No shit. What’s wrong with him?”
She wouldn’t tell me. I wasn’t worth telling. “That’s not the point. She’s got a kid, and she deliberately kept it from me.”
“So what?” he asked, making me groan. “I don’t understand.”
No, he didn’t. I barely did, myself. Why did it infuriate me to find out she had a child? We weren’t part of each other’s lives back then. Winter, being a mother, changed nothing about our working relationship.
What about the rest of it? “We slept together tonight.”
“Oh, fuck. You could’ve led off with that part. Still…” he decided, “… having sex doesn’t give you any reason to get all up in your head about this. She probably has a reason why she was keeping it a secret. The working-mom stigma or whatever. It still exists.”
He also had a way of surprising me with how insightful he could be. “You’re right.”
Then he snorted. “Are you sure he isn’t yours?”
Mine? I dropped to the sofa instead of leaving the suite the way I’d intended. My kid? No, it was impossible. “She would tell me.”
“Would she, though? Maybe that’s the reason she didn’t tell you. Maybe she didn’t want you to know for some reason.”
He couldn’t be right. He was talking out of his ass again after a brief flash of insight. “Sure. I got her pregnant, and she flew to France rather than tell me about it.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Heaving a sigh, he continued, “So, are we going out, or are you going to be a boring pain in the ass the whole night?”
Forget going out and drinking my problems away. “I’ve got to go. Raincheck.” Without waiting for his reply, I hung up on my way into the hall. Aiden had planted a seed in my mind that was already growing into something unwieldy and full of thorns. I wouldn’t rest a second unless I knew for sure he was full of shit. By the time I set out with Summerlin Medical Center in my car’s GPS, I had come up with a handful of reasons why Winter’s son couldn’t be mine.
We had always used condoms.
She wouldn’t have left the country with my kid in her without telling me.
Even if she didn’t know she was pregnant until after she got there.
Why wouldn’t she call?
Why keep this from me?
The ER was busy by the time I arrived, but there was no sign of Winter in the waiting room. The harried triage nurse behind the desk barely had time to greet me before I explained, “A friend of mine was supposed to bring her three-year-old in with what sounds like the flu. His name is Liam. I was hoping to get back there and sit with them.”
She was unmoved. “We can’t allow too many people back into the ER, especially if they haven’t come in with the patient. If you can get a hold of the mother and she gives us permission, we might be able to arrange something.”
