Page 68 of Mile High Baby

I shifted, wondering if I should be trusting this woman with so much information. For all I knew, she was going to run back to George and tell him all we'd discussed. But even if she did, it wouldn't change anything. George knew that we had Tommy. He probably had eyes on Amiee right now, which meant he currently had eyes on me. I didn’t like that so much, but it was what it was.

She pulled my hands to her lips, giving my knuckles a kiss. "Bless you, Sterling." The move was a little off putting. Was she an Oscar-winning actress or sincerely relieved that she was being given an opportunity to escape from her uncle's orbit?

I’d need to keep in mind that she might be fucking with me, but for now, I was going to move forward with the idea that she wanted out. She and Tommy were going to be the answer to getting George Pitney put away and making Henry and Victoria safe.

22

Victoria

Isat in the window seat of the makeshift office I'd made in my grandfather's old bedroom, just as I had done for the last three days. I should've been working. I should've been going to the doctor. I should’ve been doing something, but instead I was sitting, staring out the window without really seeing. I was a mixture of depressed and anxious. I knew that I'd been developing feelings for Alex, but I didn't realize just how strong they were until he was gone. And by gone, I meant completely. The closest thing I'd heard from him was through my father, who at dinner last night explained that Alex and his team were working on some plan that hopefully would free my father as a target of George Pitney.

But he hadn’t contacted me. I supposed he wouldn’t. Our adventure was over and he'd moved on. I wondered if his next conquest was Pitney’s niece who was caught in a restaurant kissing his hand. There was an intimacy to it that broke my heart. Was she part of a honeypot scheme? Is that what it was called when operatives had sex as part of their jobs to get information? Did Alex do that... sleep with women as part of his job? Or was she just convenient, like I’d been on the plane and in my home?

The anxiety came from the unexpected pregnancy. I rubbed my hand over my belly, both in awe and terror that a life was growing inside me. After the initial shock, I spent hours on the Internet trying to figure out how it was possible that I was pregnant. I was shocked at the number of stories about women getting pregnant on the pill, as well as a host of other birth control methods. There were even stories of failed vasectomies. Why wasn't this better known? I decided that someone needed to write an article about it, and I surreptitiously included it in the list of ideas that I sent to my senior editor to consider.

All that research really was a distraction. What was done was done, and no matter what, research wasn’t going to change it. But I wasn't sure what to do about it. My conscience told me that the right thing to do would be to tell Alex. He was a part of this and had a right to know. But we weren't in love. He wasn't a man who wanted to make a life with someone.

And then there was the fact that he was friends with my father and paranoid beyond hell that my father would find out. That begged the question, is ignorance really bliss? Would it be better for him to live the rest of his life not knowing that he had created a child?

The feminist in me reminded myself that the child was also partly his responsibility. But I was financially secure and had a stable home, so I didn't need Alex for anything. But would my baby miss having a father? I grew up without a mother, and while I was curious about her, I didn't feel that my life lacked anything because my father was such a loving and attentive parent. Still, now that I was pregnant, I'd been thinking more about my mom. I had been a boo-boo baby, so I had some understanding of how she and my father must've felt discovering that she was pregnant. What I couldn't understand was how she walked away and never looked back. Even now with the uncertainty and terror, I knew that I would be in this child's life. I already loved it. What did it say about my mother that she simply walked away from me? She hadn't loved me. She hadn't wanted to be a wife and mother. And considering the wealth of my family and how easy her life would have been had she stayed, she very clearly didn't want any of that.

Just like Alex. I knew he was a good and decent man, but I also suspected that he too would walk away. He didn't want to settle down, and he didn’t want my father to know about us. So, did I protect him from the stress of all this by not telling him?

And of course, the questions didn't stop there. What would I tell my father? If I didn't reveal my relationship with Alex, the only solution was to tell him that I’d hooked up with somebody in England.

While I had some time before I needed to explain things to my child, I had to consider what I’d tell him or her about their father. I didn't want my child to feel abandoned by learning that his father didn't love us, or at least him or her. So maybe I could tell the baby that their father died.

I let out a groan, hating that my child wasn't even here yet and I was already planning to lie to it. Maybe I needed to go away for nine months and consider adoption. The child didn't need to be brought into the world with such complications. But the idea of handing the child over to other parents, no matter how perfect and lovely they might be, didn't feel like something I could do. I had the means and resources to be a good mother, and maybe instead of worrying about all this other crap, I needed to focus on the baby.

It would be nice to have somebody to talk to about all this. But I definitely wasn’t going to talk to my dad, Knightly, Mrs. Tillis, or Caroline. I still wasn't allowed to leave the house, so it wasn't like I could go talk to a counselor. I definitely wasn't going to talk to my staff about it. The only one I could call was Samantha, but it didn't feel right to put my burdens on her with all she was going through.

Then again, she was a single mother. I didn't know how that came to be, and chances were that our situations were different, but maybe she could give me some advice. At the very least, she could be a sounding board to help me sort through all these feelings and thoughts bouncing around in my head like a pinball machine.

I checked my watch, discovering it was nearly nine in the evening. Was that too late to call her? Taking a chance, I dialed her number. She surprised me by picking up on the second ring.

Even before I said anything, I felt guilty about calling her. She was going through so much. I hadn’t bothered to check in on her while I was living in a bubble with Alex, yet here I was, in the middle of my own chaos, reaching out to her when she probably didn't have much more to give.

"Tori?"

"Hey, hi. Sorry to call so late."

"No. This is a good time. Both Mom and Pax are out for the night. This is my time to have a moment to myself."

Oh, hell. I was encroaching on her respite time.

"Tori? You alright?"

"I'm trying to decide whether I should talk to you about the thing I called you for, but that would be selfish when you've got so much going on."

"You can talk to me."

I ran my fingers through my hair, letting out a long breath. "I'm in a bit of a conundrum."

She was silent for a moment. "By conundrum, do you mean trouble?"

"If by trouble you mean pregnant, then yes."

"I take it, it's not planned."