Loren was pregnant. She was carrying a child, but that wasn’t the kicker that damn near stopped my heart when she whispered it in the building.

It wasmychild. I didn’t even have to ask. I wouldn’t ask, because I could be confident that I was the last man she’d slept with.

That wasn’t me being smug. It was just a fact of the matter. She admitted that one night that she didn’t sleep around often, especially not with strangers. That was a similarity between us, one that I thought meant we could be “bad” and go against our norms together.

If she wasn’t prone to sleeping around or familiar with frequent, casual sex, then it stood to reason that of course I was the last man who’d fucked her.

Also, I had the innate knowledge that she lacked free time to date and sleep with anyone. Without fail, as the hard worker she was, she was often the last person to leave the office before I would. And she was typically one of the first to arrive in the morning. Someone plugging in for that many hours simply wouldn’t have the idle downtime to get ready for going out and then staying up all night for having fun between the sheets. That was just math.

She had been with me last, and I walked through the city musing on the notion that the baby she had in her belly had to bemine.

I wasn’t going to ask her if she was sure, either. I wouldn’t be that kind of an ass. Of course, she’d know her body well enough to assume she was pregnant. Knowing how much of a stickler she was to pay attention to details, I bet she’d bought several different brands of pregnancy tests to take. She would be able to notice differences about her health, especially her reproductive system, and I knew I could take her news and have it be true.

As if she’d lie about something like this.

“She wouldn’t,” I muttered aloud. Loren wasn’t a liar, not to me, and not like that.

Loren wasn’t a gold digger either, trying to take my money or to con me into giving her some.

It was real. I could take her word for it. If she was pregnant, then that was a fact, just as much as I would have to be the father.

For so long, I'd resisted the mere thought of settling down with someone. Thoughts about starting a family hadn’t percolated in my mind, but since my conversation with my grandmother, I wondered if she’d prompted me to have it lingering in the back of my head.

What if?I’d tossed those words at myself so many times.

What if Loren and I tried to make this real and legitimate?

It sure as hell was real now! With a baby on the way, she couldn’t be trying to fake anything or trap me into child support for our unborn son or daughter. That wasn’t who we were. That wasn’t how she behaved.

On I walked, letting all these facts kick in. They all had to have a place because I couldn’t stay distracted for too long.

One other thing that stood out to me was the fact that she must have only just learned about this.

If she already knew that she was having my baby sooner, she would’ve mentioned it in the conference room when I was going down on her and shaking her loose with an orgasm. Shewasn’t duplicitous enough to mess with me first. I didn’t know everything about her, but I knew enough. And I swore that she had a good heart with her sharp mind.

We used condoms, though.That was a surprising element as well. We used protection. I did pull out for one time, but other than that, we’d seen to the necessary resources and precautions.

Accidents do happen…

Thinking of my baby didn’t feel like he or she was an accident.

Unplanned.That sounded better. This pregnancy was unplanned. Just like my chance encounter of meeting Loren before she showed up for her first day, everything happened so quickly and spontaneously between us.

But, I realized as I slowed my walk and stuffed my hands into my pockets, that didn’t mean I was adverse to the thought of Loren carrying my baby.

It was just such a shocker. The last thing I expected her to say. I had been so convinced that she was struggling with the fact that we had been caught being romantic and intimate at the office. I figured her attitude was because she was struggling to get over the humiliation of being seen with me like that, perhaps bothered about how it could impact her workplace reputation. That others could see her in a worse light somehow.

No one, and I meant no one, could dare to insinuate she was getting benefits from me. I hadn’t known she was a Richards’ employee when we had sex. And since I learned that she was, we’d been the opposite of friendly, merely cordial when working together.

It’s so sudden.It seemed like with this race to get Gammon as a client, all I’d been seeing and hearing about were baby products. It was almost like the assignment had been projected onto my personal life.

Sudden, but not… bad.

Anything I could have or share with Loren couldn’t be bad. We’d proven that we can work together no matter our ups and downs. And at the end of the day, she was still the woman in my thoughts and hovering near my heart. Just like I seemed to be the man she wanted to get a rise out of each time she pushed my buttons. All those times she looked at me when she likely thought I wouldn’t notice. Every time she sighed when we were near.

Lorenwasgood. For me. For my future. It wasn’t a hardship to convince myself that we could have something good, something lasting and solid, if we only just worked with each other.

Walking off probably hadn’t helped matters, but it was all that felt right at that moment. I didn’t want to stand around near her and be tempted to argue with her or bicker. She’d floored me with her news, and it didn’t make me an unforgivable asshole to need a moment to collect myself.