Carrying His Baby

Chapter 4

Hallie wished her profession didn’t require keeping track of the date.

If she was an engineer or a doctor, she probably could get away with vague ‘It’s a Wednesday in the middle of the month’ kind of awareness of the date. But she was a caterer, with events scheduled meticulously, and dates and times were extremely important.

As she walked to work rather morosely, she caught sight of a newspaper stand.

For heaven’s sake, thought Hallie, irritated, weren’t newspapers just done now? What were they used for? Everybody read everything online. She glared sourly and a man bundled up in a coat, who was buying every financial paper he could see.

“Download an app, idiot,” she muttered.

Newspapers reminded her of the date, too. They all had the damn date on them. She couldn’t focus on anything because of the bloody date.

It had been two and a half weeks since That Night.

Hallie thought of it as ‘That Night’. She refused to think of Aldous Banks or the way they had ripped into each other and found ecstasy. She just thought of it as That Night.

For the first week after That Night, Hallie had deliberately put it out of her mind and gone on with life. She had worked events, met clients, slipped into her duties as junior manager quite effortlessly, and got a really nice bonus that went towards the dream cottage fund.

If she lived anywhere but Manhattan, she would probably have put it towards a really nice car. But cars were pointless since she planned to live in Manhattan until she found that dream cottage. Maybe she would find it somewhere in the suburbs.

Of course, at the rate she was going, even with all her expenses trimmed to the bone, she would be about seventy before she could afford a deposit on a house in the suburbs.

That was an unpleasant and unwelcome thought, and Hallie put it out of her mind.

Unfortunately, another unpleasant and unwelcome thought intruded.

It was the tenth. That Night had been on the 23rd. That meant that her period was definitely overdue.

It was just the stress of all the added responsibilities of her new role, she told herself. When she made the high school swim team, the stress had knocked her cycle out of whack by two weeks. Of course, she hadn’t had unprotected s*x before that, so she hadn’t worried.

She probably hadn’t had unprotected s*x, anyway. Hadn’t she managed to convince herself that there was really nothing to worry about? Aldous Banks didn’t go around fathering children everywhere. He was obviously good with using protection. So, logically, he probably had used protection.

If only she could remember.

She would never, ever drink a whiskey sour made by that man again.

She would never have the opportunity to turn down a whiskey sour made by that man unless he hired them for another event.

He hadn’t called. She hadn’t expected him to call. He’d been tipsy, she’d been tipsy, and they had found each other attractive. They had ended up with each other, despite the fact that she wasn’t his type at all.

That was perfectly fair, she told herself. He was definitely not her type, either. Arrogant, superficial billionaires that treated people like disposable cutlery were not her type, and never would be.

She was driving herself nuts with worry for absolutely no reason, she tried to reassure herself as she walked into their offices and went to take her coat and gloves off. It had gotten quite cold in the last few days.

Besides, she told herself as she walked to her table, she wasn’t feeling queasy or anything similar. That was part of the requirement for being pregnant, wasn’t it? On the one hand, she had no cravings and she wasn’t queasy in the morning.

On the other hand, she didn’t think you got morning sickness just a couple of weeks in.

But on yet another hand if you had a third one or could borrow a friend’s, didn’t they measure from the last cycle, in which case, wouldn’t she be a month along now, and didn’t that mean she should get queasy?

Stop it, she told herself. She was just a few days late. A few days late was no big deal. Weather was changing and she was coping with new responsibilities. It was just taking her body a while longer to get used to it than she expected.

Tentatively, she rested her hand on her stomach and felt, experimentally. No, she definitely didn’t feel like there was anybody setting up residence in there. She was just making a mountain out of a molehill.

“This soufflé is dying!”

The dramatic declaration had Hallie slipping on an apron and heading to the kitchen. It had just fainted and was easily revived. She soon got swept up in the rest of her work. She hardly realized it was almost time for lunch when Valerie asked to talk to her for a few minutes.

“Val, what’s up?”

Hallie was cheerful again. She had managed to put the pregnancy scare out of her mind.

“There’s a high tea, rush job, private residence, today. Think you can deal with it? I have the client’s number here. The client met you at Aldous Banks’s event, actually, and specifically asked for you.”

Hallie glowed, but not, she told herself, in an expectant mother kind of way. It was good to be appreciated and know that she was building a solid reputation for herself.

“Sure, I can do that. Did one of those fancy ladies decide to try their hand at cooking?”

“Worse,” quipped Valerie, “because she tried it at baking and her oven seems to be fried, too. So you’ll have to do the baking here. Call the client and sort out a menu that looks like she might have managed it. She plans to pass it off as her own.”

That made Hallie pout.

“So no referrals from this one.”

“No, but a decent bonus and, I’ll wager, and excellent tip from the client.”

“Well, I’ll need Bridget to help if there’s a lot of prep, but that’s it. Bridget is nearly done, we can spare her.”

“Your call, Hallie,” said Valerie, walking away.

Hallie checked the name of the client and sighed.

Great. It was Mango, which was an absolutely ridiculous name for a woman – maybe they meant Margo and their handwriting was terrible – and Mango was one of Aldous Banks’s former flames.

Or current flame. How would she know?

But the event was apparently a ladies’ high tea, with champagne, so she didn’t have to think about Aldous Bank.

The prick who hadn’t called her, at all.

Well, she had sneaked out early morning before leaving and not called him, either. She supposed she should understand why he hadn’t called her.

But still.

Put it aside, Hallie, she ordered herself, and she called the client. It was time to get to work.

*****

Five hours later, Hallie was beyond exhausted. Mango was quite the lemon, and she had been a nightmare. She had, however, come through with that tip of hers, so that was something. She and Bridget split it as usual and she went home.

She was walking by the drug store when she decided, quickly, that she would go in and get a pregnancy test. She could just pee on it and see that she was worrying for no reason. That way, she reasoned, she could stop worrying about it and she could get on with her life.

Constantly worrying about being pregnant was distracting and it was draining her. Two weeks ago, she could’ve handled Mango and her sour requests without batting an eyelid. Today, she had had to exercise much restraint to keep from beaning her with her dessert tray.

“The crusts have not been trimmed satisfactorily. I wish I’d satisfactorily stuck them up where the sun don’t shine,” she muttered to herself as she walked to the aisle with the pregnancy tests.

Bridget had noticed that something was a bit off. She had suggested going out. But Hallie had wanted to be alone.

Bridget was a dear, and her closest friend at work. She did excellent work, made the events they did together a pleasure, and she knew Hallie. She knew when Hallie wasn’t herself.