Page 16 of The Workaholic Down the Hall

“Not just to talk about the baby,” Nora said. She moved toward the door. “To see how perfect you are for each other.

“This is a matchmaking scheme?” I sat down at the table across from George's brother. He looked up and gave me a sympathetic grimace before returning to his phone. “You realize you could go to jail for this, right?”

George followed Nora toward the front door. “I'm just the muscle,” he said. “I owed my dad a few favors and this is how he chose to cash 'em in.”

I looked to Nora, sure she had to see reason. “If your son wanted me, he had plenty of chances to tell me so. Trapping us here together won't make him love me.” I almost choked on those words, but I managed to get them out. I'd accepted he didn't love me, couldn't love me, but I hadn't figured out how not to be sad about it.

George's brother stood and pushed his chair in. “I don't think the problem is he doesn't love you, he said—”

“Hush up,” Nora said. “He needs to tell her.”

“Right,” George's brother said. “Call Nora if he doesn't wake up.”

He joined Nora and George as they crossed the living room and left. I didn't try to follow, because I wasn't going to leave Noah. I was mostly sure they wouldn't go if he was in any real danger, but I wasn't sure enough to risk leaving him.

I crossed the room to the couch. Noah was sleeping on his side, an impressive growth of stubble that could quite fairly be called a beard obscured his face and there were dark circles under his closed lids. Even in sleep, his forehead was creased in worry. I watched his chest rise and fall, my anxiety increasing by the second. If he'd been pissed when I'd shown up at his office, how was he going to react to being trapped here in this house with me? I laced my fingers together to stop them from shaking. I had Oscar. If Noah was cruel, if he really didn't want to be there, I'd call Oscar and he'd get Noah back to Nora's Inn.

I watched Noah sleep until I couldn't stand the silence and the dread of anticipation. I needed to do something. I pushed to my feet and wandered the house, looking for messes to right, stuff to organize. I couldn't fix Noah, I couldn't make him care about me or our baby, but I could dust base boards and arrange the bookshelves in alphabetical order.

CHAPTER FIVE

Noah

Bright sunlight warmed my face. I forced my gritty, dry eyes open. My throat was scratchy and tight. Had I been sick? Was I hung over? I hadn't been hung over since the last family get together, which was…Oh, crap, I'd been with Mom and May and there'd been alcohol and I'd needed a lot of alcohol to get through learning Mom wasn't really dying, that she'd lied to me to get me there so she could talk about…Even thinking her name hurt. I rolled away from the sun burning my retinas and made out an unfamiliar room with familiar furniture. It looked like she-who-will-not-be-mentioned's coffee table, a teak lattice-work one she'd gotten at a flea market with me, had been dropped into a huge living room with floor-to-ceiling windows. I shut my eyes and opened them again, but the scene didn't change.

“Noah?”

I forced myself to a sitting position, ignoring the fuzzy feeling in my head. Aubrey walked into my line of sight. She looked worried and her belly…She was wearing a tight tank top, that showed off her stunning breasts and I should have been distracted by them, but it was her belly that took my breath away and made my heart cramp like someone had punched me in the chest. “You're pregnant?”

“Yes.” She looked so, so sad. Was this a dream? It had to be. Or a hallucination. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but she was still there, still pregnant, still looking incredibly sad.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “How did I get here?”

She sat in an armchair next to the couch and sighed. “We're in a cabin in Catalpa Creek. Nora, she…She just wanted to explain and you wouldn't listen, so she may have had a couple guys bring you here after you passed out last night.”

“They brought me here while I was passed out?” This wasn't a dream, it was a nightmare. “My mother would never…” I looked at Aubrey again. “You. You wanted to talk to me, so you got my mother involved and convinced her to. . .” I looked around. Why was Aubrey's furniture in Catalpa Creek? My head hurt and I felt foggy and out of it. None of this made any sense.

“Noah, I know this has got to be overwhelming and crazy for you. If you'd just let me explain…”

“Let you explain? After you dragged my mother into this mess and convinced her to kidnap me? What are you doing in Catalpa Creek? Have you completely lost your mind?” Okay, I admit I was talking a little crazy myself, but my mother wasn't the sort of person to be okay with kidnapping anyone. She cried at Hallmark commercials, for fuck's sake. More likely this was some scheme concocted by Aubrey and May, and focusing on that seemed a hell of a lot better than wondering who the hell had laid his hands on Aubrey and gotten her pregnant.

Aubrey wasn't cowed by my anger or my brusque tone. In fact, she narrowed her eyes and squared her shoulders in a posture I knew meant she was well and truly pissed. “I can't talk to you until you calm down. And I won't sit here and be accused of something I didn't do.” She pushed to her feet, which would have made a much better dramatic exit if it hadn't taken her three attempts to get on her feet. I watched her struggle and I wanted to go to her, to help her, but touching her would make me forget that I was pissed at her. I needed to stay angry, until I figured out how bad this was going to hurt. She finally got to her feet and stalked out of the room. “If you want to talk, I'll be on the back porch.”

I watched her go and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of that house and never look back. It was bad enough she'd left me, she'd turned her back on me, and now she was trapping me in a house with her when she was carrying another man's baby? When she was probably still with some other guy. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes to get rid of that image. Why was she doing this to me? What could she possibly want from me? I had nothing left to give her and I hated to see her, hated to think of her knocked up by some other guy. Some guy who'd stripped her clothes off and gripped her hips while he…I shook my head. Aubrey had been my friend once and I should be happy for her. Iwashappy for her. I just needed to get out of the house and be happy for her from farther away.

I found my shoes by the front door and headed outside. The door wasn't nailed shut, so that was a good sign. I walked out onto the front porch to see trees. Trees and an empty driveway. It was the first indication that Aubrey might not be the one orchestrating this kidnapping. I didn't see a garage attached to the house, so maybe she was as stuck as I was. No. There had to be more to it than that. She probably just wanted me to think she was trapped, so that she could…I pushed that thought aside and started walking.

I had a company to run, a company to save from bankruptcy, and I needed to find some way to get back to Atlanta. If Aubrey had something to tell me…She could tell me over the phone. Maybe if I promised to take her call once I was back in Atlanta, she'd let me go.

I walked for a good twenty minutes down some back-country road that twisted and turned down the mountain without seeing any sign of civilization. Two cars and three trucks flew by me on their way somewhere, but I wasn't quite ready to risk my life trying to hitch hike out of there. I'd turn around and convince Aubrey to be reasonable.

I could get back to the office, back to figuring out how to save the family company, which was my father's legacy and the future wealth for me and my siblings and their children. I didn't dwell too long on how much the idea of going back to the office sounded bleak and unpromising. It was what I had to do, it was my job to take care of the family, as it had been since I was a kid. Now, it was also my job to ensure a prosperous future for them.

I put together a mental list of names, people who might be interested in buying the Brantley properties, in the event the current prospective buyers fell through. Nothing was ever certain in business and I'd learned a long time ago it was smart to have at least two back-up plans. If my father had been more of a planner, maybe we wouldn't be in the situation we were in now.

I climbed the stairs back up to the cabin. It was an impressive house, almost looked like new construction, and I wondered if Aubrey had bought the place. Maybe she and the baby's father had bought it together. I wondered what he'd think of me being stuck there with her. The thought almost made me smile.

Aubrey wasn't in the living room, but I could see her through a back window, on the porch in a rocking chair. The sun was shining on her, but there was a chill in the air and a cold wind. I started toward the back door, to make sure she was sufficiently bundled up, but I stopped myself. She wasn't my problem. She'd made sure of that.

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