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Reggie walked in and went to the sofa, his eyes on Malaika almost the whole time. Malaika and Keisha both walked to the center of the room and sat in chairs near him. Naomi sat on the sofa beside him.
“Good afternoon, Reggie. To what do we owe this surprise visit?” she asked as cheerfully as she could, trying to suppress her frustration and annoyance with Scott.
He leaned back on the sofa and looked around at all three women. “I have some news about the buyers.”
Naomi’s heart caught in her chest. “You do? What is it? What’s going on?” She didn’t want to sound desperate, but she wasn’t far from it at that point.
“Well, the buyers are both ready to purchase this building, and they have both increased the offers they are willing to pay for it. They are set to get into a bidding war, because this is prime real estate, but I told them that there was a third buyer interested, and that I had to talk to them first. That would be you, Naomi.” He looked at her seriously.
She swallowed as her heart pounded against her chest. “They raised their offers? How much?” she asked in as steady a voice as she could manage. The job for Jennifer Jones was going to be just enough to cover the original offers, with a small amount left over. There would be no way that she could compete with an increased offer. Her mind spun wildly as the implications clawed at her.
Reggie looked over at Malaika and gave her a smile. “Well, I understand that things might be a little tight here for you, so I’m willing to consider letting you have it for the original high price that was being offered the first time I talked to you. That is… if you can get the entire amount for me. I’d want one payment in total. I don’t want to hold on to this property, but because of how close my father was with all of you, I also don’t want to pull it out from underneath you either. You still have a little more time left before the end of the month.”
He turned his gaze back to Naomi. “Will you be able to get the money for me by the end of this month?”
Naomi took a deep breath. “Yes, I think I can. We’re working on a job right now that will pay us enough to take care of it for you. We just need as much time as we can get to earn the money for you.”
He shrugged lightly. “You have until the end of the month. That’s when I have to close the deal for a buyer. I hope it’s you. I’d like to see you keep this place.”
Naomi smiled as best she could and gave him a nod. “We’re going to make sure that it’s us. Thank you for taking the original bid. I know you could make more money on this place if you wanted to.”
“Well, my father was really fond of all of you, and I know it would mean a lot to him to see you keep this place, so I’m glad to do what I can to try to help you do that. I just can’t keep it, so if you have the amount for the original bid, then it’s yours; end of the month.” He stood up then and the ladies all stood up with him.
He shook Naomi’s hand and then turned to look at Malaika. “I wonder if I might speak with you for a few moments.” He smiled at her and she nodded, giving him a smile in return. They walked toward her desk and spoke in low voices.
Keisha eyed Naomi curiously as they both walked back to their desks. After a few minutes, Reggie left, bidding the ladies all a good afternoon. Malaika sat down at her desk with a grin on her face, and Keisha and Naomi nearly pounced on her.
“What did he say? What was all of that about?” Keisha asked, hurrying over to Malaika’s desk.
Malaika turned toward them both and laughed lightly. “He asked me to go out with him for dinner.”
“A date? You’re going out on a date with him?” Keisha gushed excitedly.
Malaika nodded. “Yes, I am. He’s a handsome man, and if he’s anything like his father, then he’s a good man. I feel like he’s doing all that he can to help us, and I don’t think that it would hurt us in our position for me to go out with him if I keep it casual, so I’m going to go.”
Keisha squealed and giggled, and Naomi smiled at her. “Good. I’m glad that someone around here will be dating a good man.”
She sat at her desk and thought about everything that had happened with Scott. She needed to talk to someone about it, and the only person who knew everything was Eva. She texted her best friend and asked her to meet up for coffee. Fifteen minutes later, they had set a coffee date for that afternoon.
Neither Keisha nor Malaika asked Naomi anything about Scott, and Naomi was grateful for it, but she did feel as if she was keeping too much from them. Her pregnancy was going to start showing at some point in the near future, and she knew that she would have to tell them something eventually, although she didn’t know just quite what she would tell them. Sleeping with a client and becoming pregnant from the tryst was about the most unprofessional thing she could think of.
She left the office a little early and met up with Eva at their favorite café. She didn’t notice the man who followed her in, watching her carefully. She didn’t see him sit at the next table over from her and Eva, and she didn’t notice at all when he set up his phone at an angle to record them as he turned on the video on his phone. Neither of them saw him take out a small notebook and begin to write swiftly in it, eyeing them once in a while as they spoke, and listening to every word that they said.
“You look good,” Eva told her as they sat down. “I think most pregnant women do, but certainly not all of them. You’re doing all right?” she asked, looking at Naomi with some concern.
Naomi nodded. “I’m okay. The sickness I have been feeling has been mild, and it seems to be going away a little bit.”
“Well, that’s good. So what’s going on? What’s the latest with all of it? Did you wind up telling Scott that you were pregnant with his baby?” Eva eyed her suspiciously.
Naomi sighed and her shoulders slumped. “That’s such a mess. I did wind up telling him, and he said he wanted to talk with me and work things out, so I went over to his house to do that, and things just got worse.”
Eva frowned. “Worse? How could they get worse?”
With a disgusted sigh, Naomi continued. “Well, we were sitting there talking and his agent, Harold… oh, what’s his name…is Harold Klein showed up, and walked right in on us while we were talking. He started getting mad at Scott, and he told him that he was being irresponsible for getting two women pregnant—”
Holding her hand up, Eva stopped Naomi mid-sentence. “Wait… what? Did you just say…?”
“Yeah. I did. Harold was chewing him out for getting two women pregnant. So of course I got mad and I left. I told Scott that I didn’t want to see him
