Page 30 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

“I’m going to go ahead and assume there was never a mistress,” Amy said dryly, and Jason shook his head.

“I was having lunch at a restaurant, getting handed a menu by a waitress. That was this idiot’s idea of a gotcha moment. He gave up pretty quick when I threatened to sue him. No idea what happened to him, though.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s in jail now,” Kai said. “If it was the same guy who threatened to publish my social security number on his website?”

“That’s the guy,” Jess said as if they were simply talking about an old acquaintance. “With the weird hair?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Good God. Why were they all being so casual about this? Amy felt like she’d been dropped into the middle of a bizarre psychological thriller.

“Why am I just learning this now?” she asked Kai.

“Learning what?”

“That someone threatened to leak your social security number.”

“He never actually had it,” he said with a shrug. “He had my phone number, which he used to call me.”

Jess snorted. “What a melon.”

“Besides,” Kai said. “You would have freaked out.”

“Well, yeah,” she sputtered. “But I could have helped.”

Kai smiled at her gently. “No, Amy, you couldn’t have. But it’s all fine now, I promise. Like I said, that’s why I have so many meetings with my lawyers.”

That really didn’t make her feel any better, like at all. But then Jess elbowed Amy to get her attention.

“Don’t stress,” she said. “You’re one of us now. We’ll teach you the ropes. It’s not that bad, honestly.”

Amy didn’t know what to say to that, so she just smiled gratefully. Because the truth was, she wasn’t really one of them. This was all temporary, all pretend. At the end of this trip, she would go back to her normal life without the fear of men with cameras popping up wherever she went, without the fear of defamation hanging over her head. There was a whole lot of fear that she wouldn’t have to carry that was a part of the others’ lives. And that thought was terrifying in a whole different sort of way.

Despite the mental exhaustion of the day, or maybe because of it, Amy laid wide awake in bed that night, miles away from any semblance of sleep. Kai, however, had passed out pretty much the second his head hit the pillow, sleeping on the sofa without a care in the world.

Amy watched him sleeping there, his chest rising and falling slowly, the few scattered lines that had started appearing on his face smoothed out and worry free. He looked so peaceful that she hadn’t been able to look away.

Something he had said earlier kept bugging her, and it wasn’t the part about paparazzi not only taking his photograph but also wanting to commit literal, federal crimes against him. It was when he had said that he hadn’t told her because there was nothing she could have done to help. Amy could have helped, though… She might not have been able to do anything about the legal side of things, and she certainly couldn’t have stopped any of the threats or the blackmail. But she could have been there for him. She could have reassured Kai, told him that it was all going to be okay. She could have given him a hug and made him dinner and distracted him for a bit. The man was obsessed with offering her help she didn’t want, but he was just as stubborn. Throwing money at a problem wasn’t the only way to help a situation.

Mostly she just hated how he’d gone through all of it entirely alone. Jason and Jess had each other, at least. They were two peas in a pod, a partner to lean on who understood the ins and outs of it all. Meanwhile, Kai was all alone.

All the glitz and glamor that surrounded this life of luxury suddenly seemed tarnished and dull, and it all left a bad taste in Amy’s mouth. Because people were weird and creepy, someone as sweet as Jess couldn’t go out of her house without having wild accusations thrown at her.

God, it was all making her brain turn circles on itself, her skull starting to thump with it all. She turned over in the bed, tearing her gaze away from Kai, who was still sleeping in blissful oblivion, in favor of staring at the closed door of the cabin. She closed her eyes, desperately wanting the thoughts to slow down just enough for her to drift off to sleep. It seemed unlikely that it was going to happen anytime soon, but in the meantime, Amy swore to herself that she wasn’t going to let Kai go through something like that all on his own. Never again.

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