“They’ll quit sooner or later, when they get sick of your ass. And I’m sure most of our vendors won’t be supplying your stores or patronizing it either.”
“Funny, I had quite a few well-wishers stop by the store yesterday to welcome me. Almost all vendors are confirmed to keep selling.”
Teela made sure that her face gave nothing away. None of the betrayal that she felt. None of the hurt. None of the irrational disappointment. It wasn’t about her co-workers not following suit and quitting on principle. It wasn’t about the vendors or the people of Nestor Falls.
It was about Ross. Not wanting a thing to do with his child.
What did I expect? It wasn’t like he actually wanted to create it. He did it for the money. He seriously probably has fifty kids out there already. Why should he care about one more brat?
Her hand flew to her stomach and rested there. She imagined her child, healthy, tiny, growing. She promised her baby that she’d be worth more than a million of Ross. She’d move far away from Nestor Falls and her child would never know that its father was a bastard. The world’s worst. Heartless. Cold. Spiteful. Evil. The damn hairy, slimy, horrible troll-devil beast bastard.
“You can leave now,” Teela breathed. “Show yourself the way out. And don’t worry. You’ll only get a brick through your store’s windows once a week. I’ll make sure I limit myself.”
Ross shrugged. “If that’s the way you want to go, then so be it. Doesn’t change anything. Please do us both a favor and stay away from the store. Better yet, leave town. Don’t come back. It seems like it would be less painful for you. Less memories and all that.” He winked at her and flashed her a fake as fuck smile before he stalked out. A minute later, the front door slammed shut, betraying the fact that he was anything but calm and composed and put together. He was as pissed off as she was. He was seeing red too.
“Don’t worry,” she breathed into the empty space where he’d been sitting. “I plan on doing just that. And you don’t know the first thing about memories, fuck you very much, Ross Day.”
CHAPTER 6
Ross
A child.
Ross stretched out on his living room couch. The TV blared on uselessly with some home show, but the sound didn’t register with him. He might be exhausted. He might have put in long hours at the new store, trying to stifle the raging chain of thoughts that ran on an endless loop through his brain.
And up to now, he’d been so far from successful it was laughable. Except that it wasn’t funny. Not by a long shot.
For all Ross knew, there was probably a few kids around by now, given that he’d donated sperm as many times as he could. He needed the money. Fast. He was working full time and it still wasn’t enough. He’d been willing to do whatever it took to get his stores off the ground. He wasn’t going to fail.
He was pretty sure that women weren’t supposed to know who the donor was though. Someone had leaked it. Probably a friend Teela knew or someone who hated him. God, it could have been anyone. They might not even work at the clinic. They could have paid someone to give them the information then given it to Teela.
Who was he kidding? This wasn’t some conspiracy theory. No one wanted to take him down. He hadn’t made many enemies if his ex’s didn’t count. He ran grocery stores for god sakes, not some hitman operation or a string of underground gambling operations. He was about as vanilla as it came and so was his business operation. He flew straight. Never fudged books to save taxes. He tried to be a fair boss, as fair as he could be.
So of course, it was one of Teela’s friends who leaked the information. Someone she knew probably worked at the clinic and found out which sample she’d been given or however it worked. Or maybe they’d lied about it all. Maybe they’d just got wind that he’d donated sperm a while back and decided it would be a good way to scam money out of him. For Teela to tell him she was pregnant with his kid so he’d support her, and she could ask him for anything and he’d have to pay for a kid that wasn’t even his. Could that even happen? He was sure it probably could, some way, somehow.
It wasn’t going to happen.
It probably wasn’t even real.
Teela probably wasn’t even pregnant.
So where did that leave him?
What if she was? What if it really was his?
The difference between her and all those other women that might have received his sperm was that she knew. If she was telling the truth, she knew. She knew that she was having his baby Maybe, despite everything, she was just trying to put their differences aside and give him a chance to be a father. She clearly wasn’t pleased to tell him the news. She didn’t really look like she was going to ask him for a big fat paycheck on her next breath.