Alpha Billionaire Series
Baby Surprise Chapter 27

CHRISTOPHER Iwas numb.

I stood there in her apartment, the apartment she didn't want me to see. No wonder. It wasn't the apartment of a couple of single adult roommates. It was her family's home. There was a small boy, who looked like he had spent the day home from school on the couch. A sewing machine was out, the kitchen sink was piled high with dishes. The place was a mess. Work looked like it had been an afterthought with her laptop precariously shoved into an empty space on the table.

She pushed me out and told me to leave. I took the drive with the files and left.

I drove home, I don't remember the drive, but I arrived at my condo somehow. The next morning, I flew to the conference and stayed in the hotel room. I did everything on some automatic setting. I did what I needed to do for no other reason than it needed to happen, not because I put any thought into the process. I have vague hazy recollections of giving my presentation to a sold-out crowd. I know I went to the events and the after-parties. I schmoozed, and I drank.

"I didn't even know she had a kid!" I was draped over the shoulders of some guy from Austin. I think.

He held me up and smacked me in the middle of my chest. "My friend, you have had entirely too much to drink."

"Couldn't have." I felt entirely sober. "If I were properly drunk, I wouldn't be thinking about her."

"This woman must have really screwed you over. She's all you've been talking about."

I righted myself so that I was standing on my own. "She has a fucking son. That means she has a husband. She was cheating on me with her f*****g husband."

Maybe I was a little drunk. She was cheating on her husband with me. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought. I didn't f**k other men's wives. That was a line I didn't cross, and because of her lies, I crossed it.

I wandered off, leaving my drinking companion. The party room was next to an open deck that led out to the hotel pool. I stumbled toward the blue glow of the water. It would be so easy to fall in and let my problems float away.

That guy might have been right, I had way too much to drink to consider swimming. Besides, I wasn't in shorts. I kicked off my shoes and rolled up the hem of my pants. I couldn't swim but I needed to get into the water, even a bit.

I sat on the edge of the pool and let my feet hang into the water. With my feet in the water and the stars above me, I contemplated my place in the universe. Particularly how I fit into the same universe with Alicia. She had been nothing but shy and flirtatious. She had told me no. I should have listened. Why didn't she just say she was married with a kid? Maybe she wasn't married? No, someone like her would be married.

No wonder she couldn't, wouldn't do more than stay late with me. No spending the night when there was a family at home expecting you to come home.

I lay back on the concrete with a groan. I was such a complete moron. She had played me so completely. F**k. That night in Nashville, I couldn't remember, hadn't she told me she was a bridesmaid? Or was she really the bride and I was supposed to be that last fuck that no one was supposed to know about?

It was laughable. I was the boss having an affair with my secretary. And instead of me being the philandering shithead with a family at home, it was her.

I threw my arm over my eyes. Damn it, all I could see when I closed them was that apartment of hers. They were getting ready for Halloween. There were pumpkins and silly little ghost decorations all over. Probably made by her kid.

How old was he? If she had gotten married right after Nashville? I guess he was the right age. I wasn't about to try to do the maths.

I kept trying to remember if there was anything in her apartment that shouted out husband. I couldn't recall any sports memorabilia or cars. Not that I had either in my condo. But what kind of man did she have that she was willing to cheat on him with me? Was I so gullible?

I don't remember how I got from the pool to my room. When I woke in the morning, I had one hell of a nasty hangover, and my shoes were gone. F**k. I liked those; they were hand-crafted Italian leather.

That was my stupid tax payment for getting drunk at a convention. I hadn't done anything so banal and base in at least four years. I was supposed to now be some pillar of the printing industry. Hmm, what a joke. I was no longer some lost loser man whose mother ran the show, I should act like it.

I took a cold shower and made my appearance in the booth. No one said anything about my behavior the previous night, and neither did I. I could successfully put the bad judgement of drinking behind me, but as much as I tried, I could not put Alicia out of my mind.

I needed to put thoughts of her aside. I couldn't do anything about any of it until I was back in Atlanta. I could ask her, face to face, what had I walked into. Why hadn't she trusted me enough to be honest with me about her family?

Alicia booked an extra day after the conference. Not sure if I considered it to be thoughtful or not, but it was going to be the only down time I had for the next few weeks. With meetings scheduled back-to-back. I'd be on a plane more than I would be in my own office. I purchased a pair of swim trunks from the overpriced hotel shop, and spent most of the day, sober, and floating in the pool. I don't know why I was so drawn to the water, but it seemed to help soothe my thinking and clear my thoughts. Technically I had no grounds to fire Alicia, and she was good at her job. Had she taken the day off to work on her kid's costume? It's what it looked like. That wasn't exactly on company time, she had taken the sick day.

But was she really sick, or just trying to take advantage of the system? Could I trust her? I didn't want to go through the hassle of trying to replace a replacement. Getting her in had been fucking nightmare.

I was tempted to call Valerie and give her a hard time for quitting on me. The audacity of that woman. But if Valerie still worked for me, I wouldn't have had a day to clear my mind and float in a pool. It would have been a late-night flight home and back in the office the next morning.

I didn't come up with a solution while in the pool. No answers came to me the next day on the flight home. Or the afternoon I spent in the gym, sweating out the residue of my night of drinking, and whatever pool water I had ingested.

I'd come up with a solution soon. Nothing but anger and resentment greeted me the next day at the office when I walked in and saw Alicia. I couldn't look at her.

She was still beautiful. Duplicity must have come easy for her, looking the way she did, all sweetness and light, but underneath she was devious, cunning, and smart. Fuck, the exact qualities I needed in an assistant. It had to be what kept her one step ahead of my needs.

She was an adult. She knew she had been caught in the middle of a lie. I gave her plenty of time to think about what she had done. She didn't follow me into my office with excuses spilling from those lips of hers. I gave her plenty of time to come up with an apology before I called her into my office.

"Come in here," I called over the intercom.

She stepped into my office, shaking like a cornered rabbit. She knew she had messed up. I couldn't look at her as I waited for her to start talking. She said nothing.

She asked about the conference. Pretended to care how my presentation went. But none of that mattered. She took her damned notes and said nothing. And then left.

Fine. I had work to do. As long as she did her job, I guess I could wait her out. I thought I knew her, thought that there was no way she would have been able to keep the secrets she had. I had always believed that Alicia with her spill of golden curls, heart-shaped face, and those kissable lips was the kind of woman to wear her heart on her sleeve. She blushed so quickly at my flirting. She was so responsive to my body in bed.

But did I really know her?

When I left the office that night, I went home and got myself properly drunk. Not drunk to the point of soul-searching philosophy but drunk to the point that I couldn't think about Alicia if I had wanted to. And I did not want to.

I had to work with her, that was going to be difficult enough as it was. I didn't want to think about her or her lies anymore.