Page 52 of Breaking the Ice
“Zach, it’s Anthony Jenkins, from Fame.”
Shoot. “Hey Tony, what’s up?”
“I hoped I would have heard from you by now. Did you get the message I left with your assistant?”
“I did. I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to return your call.” The truth is I’ve been so annoyed by the way Fame has been handling the situation with Yolanda, that in my head, we’ve already parted ways.
“I wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to cut ties with Yolanda,” he says. “We’ve learned some things about her that we find concerning.”
“Oh? What have you learned?” Maybe that she’s a lying she-wolf bent on world domination?
He clears his throat loudly before saying, “According to her agent, the stakes have been raised for her to get her own show. It used to be any semi-attractive person with vocal cords could be a talk show host, but nowadays the slots are rare.”
“We all knew she wanted her own show and was willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to get it. What’s changed?”
“All we knew was that she needed to be able to secure big names,” Tony says. “But now she’s looking to create a major scandal.”
I roll my eyes. “Isn’t that what she’s been doing all this time?”
“There’s more to it than that.”
I stop my progression toward the team and lean against the boards. “Is she telling everyone I’m an alien come to Earth to prepare it for takeover?” Sarcasm drips from my words.
“She’s pregnant.”
My knees nearly buckle. “Excuse me?”
“We have a confidential source who works at a fertility clinic in Beverly Hills. A lot of our clients who don’t want the world to know they’re having trouble conceiving use them.”
“And?”
“Yolanda had an IVF transfer two weeks before her first date with you.”
I feel simultaneously feverishly hot and icy cold. It’s like my nervous system can’t keep up and all pistons have decided to fire at once. “She had in vitro right before our first date.” I’m hoping that by repeating him, my brain will absorb the information.
“Which can only mean one thing,” Tony says.
“She’s been planning to pin a baby on me since the start of this charade.”
“Exactly.”
“While that’s horrific,” I tell him, “All it will take is a DNA test to show I’m not the father.”
“That’s old school thinking, Zach.”
“How do you figure? If I’m not the dad, I’m not the dad. End of story.”
“Don’t you remember the Sharman Feliz case from two years ago?”
“I’m a busy man, Tony. I don’t hang around the house watching Court TV.” I know Tony isn’t the bad guy here, but it’s hard not to sound annoyed, especially as his firm has done nothing to help me out until now.
“Sharman was the woman who accused the Spokane Snow’s goalie Hondo Hudson of getting her pregnant.”
“The world is full of opportunists, Tony.” I say this knowing he’s already fully aware of that. Heck, he’s probably representing half of them.
“True, but while the DNA test showed Hondo wasn’t the father, Sharman had a slew of supporters who claimed he paid off the doctor to say it wasn’t him.”
I exhale loudly. “He doesn’t have to pay her child support, so what’s the problem?”