Page 22 of Enemy Ex's Secret Baby

Silver Lake is already one of the most expensive areas in LA. Another luxury apartment complex is just a blip on the landscape.

Yet, here we are.

I’m on my third whisky of the night. The programming for the night included a dinner and some sort of ceremony honoring top donors to a music program for underprivileged kids. I nearly vomited hearing people crying while a boy from Compton went to town on a Chopin number. He was great. The virtue signaling, not so much.

Although part of the reason I’m here is to be honored for a humongous donation Hitchins has just made toward the program. Talk about virtue signaling.

Now, I’m just biding my time, waiting it out. Dad said I had to stay until eleven and it’s currently a quarter to. I can make it. I can definitely make it if I just don’t make eye contact.

I feel a tap on my arm. “Mr. Hitchins!”

I turn around and find a woman who must be at least fifteen years older than me, draped in velvet and skin pulled so tight I wonder how much of her face is original.

She pats my cheek. “Have you gotten some work done, Paul?” she asks, clearly making a joke.

“Oh, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong Hitchins,” I say, forcing a smile. “I’m Axel, his son.”

She gasps playfully. “Axel Hitchins? So grown up already! It’s not possible.”

I must have met this woman before.

“I bet you don’t even remember me.”

“Of course I do.”

She shakes her head and holds out her hand for me to take. “Linda Drosney.”

Of the Drosney fortune…of course. I take her hand and begin to shake it, but she has other ideas. She engulfs my hand in both of hers and pulls herself closer. “I met you and your father at the Philharmonic several years ago. Does that ring a bell?”

Oh god, I don’t like this. “Yes, it does.”

“Good. Good.” She leans in even closer. This is fight for fuck territory. I’m certainly not going to punch this woman for standing too close, but I’ll be damned if she thinks I’m going to kiss her either. “I’ve been watching you standing here alone, waiting for your wife to come join you.”

“Oh,” I say, flustered. “No wife. Just me.”

Linda rubs my hand. “Yes, I can feel that now.”

She must mean my ring finger, but the way she says it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

“I’m recently divorced.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She guffaws. “Don’t be! You should be saying congratulations. Because that’s what it is! A congratulations.”

I chuckle lightly. “Well, then congratulations.”

Linda beams. “Thank you, Axel. That means a lot coming from you.”

I’m not sure why, unless that’s her lame attempt at a flirtation. “Any time,” I reply with a curt nod, then take a sip of my whisky to put a pin at the end of this conversation.

However, that’s not an overt enough signal to Linda Drosney. She tilts her head to the side, glancing over her shoulder, before fixing her eyes on me again. Like a cat, her pupils widening as if fixated on her prey. “You’re too handsome to be at something like this alone.”

I force a smile. “Oh, well, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, no wife. No girlfriend?”

---