Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 76984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Once I was inside, I placed the baby seat on the plush carpet, then collapsed with my hands on my knees. My shoulders heaved with each breath I took. I thought I was in shape. Could have been all the adrenaline pumping through my veins, getting the best of me.
It took a second for me to realize the elevator was quiet. The kid had stopped screaming. She’d found her thumb again and was sucking away. Big blue eyes blinked, judging me, or so it seemed.
When the elevator doors opened at my floor, I scooped up the seat and headed toward my apartment. I punched the keypad at my door and heard the releasing click. Once inside, I placed the kid down on my granite kitchen island. It brought our faces closer together. I looked at her. She looked at me. Two identical pairs of eyes caught in a stare down, but there was one difference: I wasn’t sucking my thumb.
“What should I do with you?” I spoke the words out loud as if the kid would answer me. I was met with silence and a small grin.
Yeah, you won the staring contest. Whatever.
I texted my attorney, telling him to get back to me ASAP. I didn’t want to call the authorities or child protection services until I had his advice. At this point, I might even be kidnaping an innocent child.
Either way, I couldn’t take care of this kid alone. Command the financial markets? Easy. Change a diaper? Never. Pull off a multi-million dollar merger? Routine. Burp a baby? Insanity. I needed someone to help me until I figured out who she belonged to.
Also, I wanted personal advice from someone who knew me well, warts and all. Page Six was already onto the fact that I had an infant in my possession. I could only imagine how they found out. Damn Coco, or whatever her real name was. I couldn’t even give the police a real name or identity to find her or keep her from boarding a plane. All the photos of our time together had been deleted from my phone. The kid, who was watching my every move, was the only evidence I had that Coco even existed, along with the staff at Knave.
I had only one true friend in my life, Barclay Hammond. We grew up in the same Connecticut neighborhood, a land of estates and limousines. All the other guys I partied with in New York were as shallow as a baby pool, avoiding reality just like me. The kid in my kitchen was beyond their comfort level, so I couldn’t turn to them. It appeared Barclay was the unlucky winner.
“Hey, Lucas. Long—”
I interrupted him before he finished his hello. “I need your help.” I took a breath, needing more air to keep speaking.
“Are you in trouble?” Barclay asked, his tone laced with concern. I had gathered his full attention.
“Yes and no.” I paused, summoning up the courage to tell him what was sitting on my kitchen island. “See, I have a baby in my apartment.”
“A what?”
“A baby girl named Esmé.”
“Okay, Lucas.” He whistled a long breath. “Start from the beginning.”
12
Lucas
I gave Barclay the entire story, from Coco leaving the baby with me and claiming I was the father, to a reporter confronting me in front of my own building. I left out the photographer part, but he would see the photos in The Post soon enough.
“Lucas,” he drew out my name. “Here’s the truth. I’ve worried about your lifestyle for years. The escorts. Young women you pay to be with you. How many have there been over the last ten years?”
“Well—”
Barclay interrupted me before I counted all the names and faces. “It doesn’t matter now. But it looks like you had one too many. A troublemaker, unless you are the father of this child. Is there even a remote possibility?”
“Remote? Yes.” I neglected to share the child and I had the same unique eye color.
“Then you have to do the right thing.”
“Which is?”
“Find out if you’re her father.” It all sounded so simple to him, but thinking it was a possibility made me grab the edge of the counter.
“It’s Saturday night, Barclay. I don’t think there are any walk-in DNA clinics—even in New York.” I scoffed at the nightmare I was living.
“True. True.” We both were quiet for a moment. “How are you going to take care of her until Monday? I’m assuming you’ll find a lab then.”
“I have no fucking idea. The last baby I held was your niece at her christening, and it was only for five seconds.” I cringed at the memory.
Barclay’s sister, who had teased the hell out of me when I was a kid, made me hold Beatrice, her newborn baby. She’d told me to cradle my arms, and thankfully, Barclay had been standing behind her, secretly showing me how. When the baby was resting in the crook of my elbow, she’d emitted an explosive sound, along with a pressure I could feel against my arm. A horrendous odor had filled the room as people laughed all around me. The baby had blown out her diaper and some of what was in it had escaped onto me.