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I bend over to snag the bottle from the bar and pour myself another glass of vodka. Everything else is going to shit, so I might as well get drunk, right?
“My sample wasn’t inseminated into just any surrogate; it was inseminated into a woman who was using the clinic to have a baby of her own.”
Bee’s eyebrows flatten. “Fucking hell.”
Cold laughter cracks through my lips, which only contributes to the miserable uncertainty hanging in the air between us. “That’s not even the worst part.”
Bee winces. “What could be worse?”
“The woman who was impregnated with my sample—she’s on my payroll. Wren Turner.”
She cocks her head to the side as the furrow between her brows deepens while she thinks. “Wren Turner…” she repeats. “Wren… Turner. Why does that name sound so—wait! Your P.A.?”
I raise my glass in a sardonic cheers. “That’s the one.”
“This is the green-eyed brunette with the great ass and the knockout smile?”
My forehead puckers. “Uh… sure.”
Bee gawks at me open-mouthed before holding up a palm toward me. “Okay, hold on. So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that the five-star, super-duper-accredited, state-of-the-art clinic we went to so that we could create a baby without actually having to fuck each other has botched up the surrogacy plan we established very fucking carefully and implanted your sperm into the womb of your personal assistant who is now pregnant with what is supposed to be our baby with each other but is really your baby with her?”
I incline my head infinitesimally. “That about sums it up, yeah.”
There are a few seconds of silence and then the penthouse fills with the sound of her guffawing.
“Oh… my… God!” she gasps through her laughter, tears studding her eyes. “Talk about a cosmic fuck-up! Talk about a sick fucking joke! Talk about…” She breaks up again into more gales of laughter, hugging her ribs with both hands like she’s going to explode if she keeps going.
While she cackles, I sit and drink.
And drink.
And drink.
When she’s finally done and seated back on the stool next to mine, she wheezes. “Pass me the tissues, will you? I’m gonna fucking laugh-cry my makeup off.” She dabs her eyes with the tissues. “Well. Doesn’t this just go to show, huh?”
“Go to show what, exactly?” I demand irritably.
“Hell if I know.” She shrugs, the ironic smile lingering on her face. “Definitely something, though. Maybe it’s the universe telling us that you and I were never meant to have a baby together and we shouldn’t try to cheat Mother Nature.”
“Neither Mother Nature nor the universe need to tell us shit. You and I already knew it shouldn’t happen. It’s your father that needs to get the fucking message.”
Bee’s eyes tighten and darken, the way they always do anytime her father is mentioned. “Hell really would have to freeze over before that happened.” She eyes the drink in my hand. “Gimme that.” She downs it in one glug and wrinkles her nose as she deposits the glass back into my hand. “Fuck, that’s strong.”
I let my gaze go unfocused as I stare into the window over the sink. It’s dark out, so I see our own faces reflected back at us. Mine is stony, shuttered, grim.
But as I look, Bee’s melts and morphs into someone else’s.
Into Wren’s, from the moment she looked up and saw me approaching her at the bistro. The shock that bordered on horror. The nerves that bordered on panic. She was a ticking time bomb and I was a lit fuse coming to blow her world the fuck up.
“She wants the baby,” I murmur, almost to myself.
Bee’s jaw drops and she clutches my elbow again in both hands. “You already spoke to her?”
“I had to meet the woman carrying my baby,” I explain, running a hand through my hair. “I didn’t expect it to be her.”
“Hm.”
I hate when she makes that sound and she knows it. “What?” I snap, skewering her with an angry glare.
