Carrying His Baby

Maybe not quite, but she definitely didn’t want to be there.

Now she had to do the walk of shame. She started to get up slowly, and stopped. Good God, she thought, it was a waterbed. No wonder she’d felt like everything was spinning. It wasn’t all the tipsy.

She got up carefully and started gathering up her stuff. She had left her purse in the limo. She had, hadn’t she?

Panicked, she pulled her dress on, and rolled up her panties. She walked to the living area –and that was huge, too, with an entertainment center, the kind dreams are made of – and, to her relief, found her purse there. She was pretty sure she hadn’t had it when they’d made it up there. Somebody must have brought it there.

Must be protocol, she thought, cynically. Aldous Banks had somebody to take care of the purses of girls he brought back to the apartment. And she, Hallie Holt, had become one of those girls.

She had sunk truly low. She grabbed the purse, checked her phone, and stuffed her panties in there.

She hoped that there was no security system to disable. It seemed like opening it from the inside wouldn’t set any alarms off. Fingers crossed, she opened the door.

There were no sirens and no bars came crashing down. That was good, she figured.

She made her way to the elevator and realized she hadn’t the slightest clue how to work it. It seemed to need a key card or something.

Well, she would take the stairs. Just the thing for a hungover morning when her head was pounding and her stomach was roiling like a stormy sea.

There was probably some kind of lesson to be learned, thought Hallie, but her head hurt far too much to think of it. Belatedly, she realized that she should’ve checked in the bathroom for aspirin. She should’ve peed, too. She really had to pee.

She nearly whimpered in relief when she saw a 24-hour diner and she walked in there.

“Coffee. Aspirin?” she croaked hopefully.

The bored looking waitress pulled a bottle out of her apron. Aspirin.

“Two,” Hallie whispered reverently.

“Here you go. Coffee and fry-up?”

That wasn’t what she’d had in mind, but why not?

“Yes, please,” said Hallie.

By the time she had the bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes and beans in front of her, she almost lost control of her stomach.

Well, if it doesn’t kill you…

She started feeling a bit better once she had a few bites inside her. Her stomach seemed to be distracted by the food. Her headache was a bit better.

Thankfully, she took a hit of extremely strong coffee.

That seemed to clear her mind enough to let through a little, niggling voice that had been trying to get her attention. She’d had too many other things to think about so far. But now, she listened.

Condom! CONDOM! PROTECTION!!

It wasn’t a little voice anymore. It was a pretty loud voice, screaming the words over and over again in her head.

Frantic, she got her phone out and pulled up her calendar. She went through the dates.

Right, she had last got her period…exactly two weeks ago.

That meant that she was most probably ovulating. She couldn’t remember if they’d used a condom.

They had definitely not used the condom she usually kept in her purse, just in case, even if she didn’t make a habit of one-night stands.

But Aldous Banks seemed to, and she hadn’t heard of him being at the end of a paternity suit. Grasping at straws, she Googled ‘paternity suits Aldous Banks’ and found nothing.

So he must be responsible and make a practice of using condoms, and having safe s*x.

Right?

Now she was desperate for any ray of hope.

Think back, Hallie, she ordered herself.

But she could only see blurred images of naked bodies and sweaty s*x. Admittedly, the s*x had been pretty great, and if she could just be sure that they had definitely used a condom, she wouldn’t worry about it at all.

She had gone off the pill when she broke up with her last boyfriend six months ago. She’d had an extremely long dry spell since then, which was why she had been susceptible to that man’s charms, she fumed.

And now she couldn’t figure out if they had used a condom.

She hadn’t seen a foil or wrapper or anything anywhere when she’d been looking for her clothes. On the other hand, she hadn’t checked the garbage. She hadn’t seen Aldous’s clothes lying around, either, and her clothes had been folded and waiting on the dresser. So somebody had come in and cleaned up.

Boy, wasn’t that thought completely mortifying.

Hallie shoved her plate to one side. She really wasn’t hungry anymore. She didn’t want to believe that there was even a possibility that she might have had unprotected s*x with somebody she didn’t even know properly.

She didn’t even know anything about him. She wasn’t ready to be pregnant.

The sickness in her stomach had very little to do with her hangover now, and everything to do with a bone-deep dread that was beginning to fill her.

She might get pregnant.

She might get pregnant with Aldous Banks’s child.

She pushed the thought away. There was absolutely no way a playboy like him could have avoided paternity suits, even false ones, if he weren’t careful about things like safe s*x. He had s*x often enough for protection to be habit. She was sure he must have used it.

He must have, she insisted to herself.

If only she could be quite certain about it.

Maybe she should get the morning after pill, she mused. But she had heard a few horror stories of the side effects of those pills, and she didn’t want to pop one unless there was a solid reason for it.

She felt a bit better as she Googled ‘Aldous Banks paternity allegations’ again and found nothing.

She was just worrying for no reason. Everything would be fine.

But she couldn’t quite wipe all the worry away.