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Slowly, gently, with a level of emotion deeper than either had experience before, they made love for the rest of the night.
Chapter 22
The next time they went to court, a few things had changed. Firstly, Archer had finally employed a full-time security guard to prevent Mia and her friends from breaking into their house. Secondly, Kady’s belly was rapidly getting bigger and he’d begun teasingly asking her if she was having twins. And the third was that Archer’s mother had finally decided it was time to meet the young woman Archer had been dating for the past six months.
Kady hadn’t been expecting the visit, of course. And since she was Archer’s mother, Athena Caldwell didn’t bother to knock on the door before she’d simply stepped inside. It was a huge surprise, to say the least, when they came face-to-face, as Kady began heading down the stairs and had found a familiar face on the way up.
“Hey, you’re that woman from Dazzle,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m Archer’s mother—what are you—oh, I see,” she was staring pointedly at Kady’s baby bump. “Now I understand. You must have seen Archer’s silly billionaire surrogate ad and decided to go there. But I don’t understand why.”
“Oh, I—I’d just lost my place, and I just couldn’t see how I’d be able to keep the job even if I did get it at that point,” said Kady. “But I don’t understand. Why would you have been trying to get hired at Dazzle when you’re so rich?”
“Daft girl, I should have known,” she chuckled, but there was a note of kindness that blunted any sting it might have incurred. “You didn’t realize who I was then, and you still haven’t figured it out now, have you?”
“I guess not,” she said with a frown, as they both stepped down the stairs and headed up the hall towards the study. “Why don’t you explain it then?”
“I am the owner of Dazzle,” she said, as if it were painfully obvious, a fact everyone should know. “If you’d stayed there just a few minutes more, you could have been working all this time.”
“But—no, I wasn’t able to hold a job right then,” Kady negated what she was saying. “I didn’t have a home to return to beyond that night. If I hadn’t come here, I don’t know where I’d be now. And besides, Archer really, really loves me. I have no doubts about that. I think things turned out exactly as they should have done.”
“And all your dreams of your future in the fashion industry have just vanished in a puff of smoke, just for the sake of my son and this child?” she scoffed. “I hope you don’t intend to fall into a trap like that one!”
“Trap?” Kady repeated, somewhat annoyed at the snap judgments this woman was making about her, even if she was Archer’s mother. “Is it a trap to want to bear your lover’s child and spend your life in his arms?”
“Of course not,” she sco
ffed. “I’m talking about the trap of not pursuing your own dreams while you’re doing all of that. So many women who could be doing something more get caught up in doing everything for their loved ones and nothing for themselves. I don’t want to see that happen to you as well.”
“What are you trying to say, exactly?” Kady asked, not exactly sure where she was taking their odd conversation.
“That I have been looking for you since the day we met, months ago!” she explained. “You had left your home without a trace, and you’ve never told anybody what became of you.”
“Why would you have been looking for me?” Kady wanted to know. She pressed the intercom button beside the couch and said into it, “Maggie, could you bring in some tea for myself and Archer’s mother in the study? I believe the two of us might be here for a while.”
“Archer’s mother is here?” she answered on a gasp. “I’ll get it out to you right away, Miss Kady!”
Bemused by this, Kady cast the woman a shrewd glance. “Why are all the staff members around here so afraid of you, anyway?” she wanted to know. “I don’t find you all that intimidating. I think you’re rather pleasant, in fact.”
She smirked. “Just don’t get on my bad side then.”
“You were looking for me?” Kady prompted, bringing the conversation back to where it had been before the interruption and subsequent detour.
“Yes, after you disappeared before I could interview you, I just couldn’t stop thinking about the ambitious young woman with the great sense of fashion, so I figured out which application must be yours and did some leg work,” she explained. “I even called your mother looking for you, but you haven’t contacted her in the past six months either. She didn’t even know that you were gone.”
“Yeah, I sort of forgot to mention it,” Kady answered guiltily. “How long ago was that?”
“Three months now,” she answered, crossing her arms over her chest. “The poor woman must be worried sick about you.”
“I should call her, I suppose,” Kady said. “It’s just that I can’t stand that new husband of hers. That’s why I didn’t ask her to help me out—because of him.”
“I understand,” Athena replied. “But the job I was hoping to hire you for is still waiting for you, my dear. If you would like to have it, of course. And I’d even be willing to let you do it from home. However, I do think that you could benefit from more training in the fashion design aspects, since I understand that your degree was in computers. Wouldn’t you like to learn more about that sometime?”
“Of course I would!” She would be a fool not to jump at the rare opportunity to get her foot and name into the fashion world, “as long as you understand that Archer and our baby are very important in my future as well,” Kady replied. “I would never make a decision like that without discussing it with him.”
“Court is tomorrow morning, Kady,” she said, suddenly sounding more like the stern woman that terrified the staff, than the kind person who took the time to look at her sketch and encourage her before the interview. “Perhaps we should save that discussion until we see the outcome?”
“You may be right about that,” Kady agreed. “The last thing we need to do is bring up something to distract him from his own issues. You know how he gets when things don’t go the way he wants them to. And I have no idea what his opinion on this topic is going to be.”
