Page 3 of Love In The Spotlight

“Did you sleep with her?” Randy asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “But we got wasted the last time I was there. I remember the guys helping me out to the car at the end of the night.” He laughed when he said it. As if it was all a joke.

It was a friend of a friend’s bachelor party. He never cared about the reason to go out and drink and throw money at some naked women, but he always remembered sleeping with one.

“Well, she says you’re the father of her unborn child.”

“Oh hell no,” he said. “I don’t sleep around nearly as much as people say and I always wrap it up good.”

He didn’t need his parents on his case any more than they’d been most of his life.

“She’s due in February and says it’s yours. She wants a DNA test now or she’s going to the press.”

“Fine,” Jamie said. “We’ll do it. That will shut her up. At least she’s coming to me first before she starts spreading lies.”

“What if it is yours?” Randy asked.

“Fat chance,” he said. “I’m not worried and you shouldn’t be either.”

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BEFORE YOU JUDGE

Two Years Later

“So what is this new business you’ve got me working on now?” Laken Carlisle asked her brother, West. It felt like she spent more time in a plane than on the ground.

As Vice President of Acquisitions, it was her job to get all the new investments that her brother took part in up to speed with the way he ran things.

“This one is going to be a bit different,” West said.

She frowned. “Different how?” she asked.

“First off,” West said, “the business itself hasn’t started production yet.”

“What?” she asked. “You never buy startups.”

“Then maybe it’s time I do,” West said.

“Easy for you to say when you aren’t the one doing the work,” she said.

She liked to give her brother crap on principle. Being the third oldest of eight kids and the oldest girl. The only other girl was Talia, who was twenty-two. Their nine-year age difference didn’t give them a lot to talk about.

West smirked at her. He didn’t often smile. Or hadn’t until the past several months when he found love on a forced vacation.

“I do plenty of work and you know it,” West said. “This is one I handled myself, if you must know.”

“Ohhhh,” she said. “You got your hands dirty in negotiations in person. Has to be something good, not just it being a startup. What’s the product?”

“Baby soap,” West said.

She burst out laughing. “Be serious.”

“I am,” West said. “Dead serious. It’s not a market we are in. Nothing really with kids. This is more than soap. It’s all natural liquid soap that is squeezed into animal-shaped sponges by tubes shaped like baby bottles, sippy cups or straws.”

She was laughing so hard she couldn’t stand it. “You’re pulling my leg. I thought it was serious until you got to the baby bottles and straws.”

“Don’t forget sippy cups,” West said.

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