By the time I got off the phone with Aspen, things were starting to look up. Mentally, I was in a much better position than I'd been before the call. I still had a mountain of work to do, but none of it needed to be done right at that moment. Everything could wait until the next day when Jade was back, hopefully feeling much more rested.
Then, I could talk to her about joining me on the trip.
5
Jade
As much as I appreciated Christian giving me the rest of the day off, I was really regretting taking him up on it. Sitting at work had been bad, but at least then I'd had short bursts where I'd been able to push everything out of my mind and just focus on work. But once I was back in my apartment, alone, I had no distractions at all.
And no matter how much I thought about my situation, I couldn't figure out any way around it. An abortion was an option, but it was one I was loathe to go through with. While I respected any woman who made that decision, it wasn't the right choice for me. I was perfectly able to support myself and a child, even without the father in the picture. It would probably throw my career goals out the window, or at least slow them down considerably, but I could do it.
No, the baby itself wasn't the problem.
The problem was the father. Christian Frost, the most perfect man I'd probably ever laid eyes on. The one person I should not have gotten knocked up by.
If I had the baby, how was I supposed to ever look at Christian again? How was I supposed to continue working for him, with his child at home, never knowing their father was so close, yet so far away? How was I going to keep the two apart? It wouldn't be fair to the baby, to not be able to know who their father was. And deep down, I knew it wouldn't be fair to Christian, either. Didn't he deserve to know that he had a child on the way?
But, at the same time, I was sure he wouldn't be thrilled with that. No doubt he'd blame this all on me, he'd insist that I'd only slept with him at that party so I could get pregnant with his child. I wouldn't have been the first woman to have gotten pregnant by a rich and powerful man for the purposes of extorting him. That idea had never even crossed my mind, but I doubted he'd believe that.
He would just see me, a single woman, who'd worked her way up the ladder of his company just to get closer to him, to weasel my way into his life. I would just be another one of the gold diggers that were constantly trying to leach money out of him. It wouldn't matter that I didn't want a penny from him. My salary wasn't amazing, but it was more than enough to support myself, and a child, without anything from him.
How was I going to convince him of that though?
I paced around my apartment all evening, mulling everything over, trying in vain to come up with some magical solution. More than once I'd tried to distract myself from the situation. I flipped through channels on the TV for about an hour, trying to figure out something I could watch that would distract me, but nothing came even close.
Then, I got out my Kindle and tried to read a book, figuring to distract myself from my situation. But I ended up reading each page three or four times before I was able to figure out what was going on. I gave up reading after I got a few pages in and the story still hadn’t grabbed me. I put the kindle aside and rolled my head back on the couch, just glaring up at the ceiling.
How had a single night of fun turned into this much headache? I wondered to myself.
That night had been one of the best nights of my life. I'd gotten to let loose a little, express a side of myself I'd never let out before. And for the most part, it had been consequence-free. No one at work knew it'd been me they'd all been captivated by. I'd gotten to show off the sexy side of myself without compromising the persona I'd built up for myself at work.
And then I'd gone and gotten fucking pregnant.
God, how had I been so freaking stupid? I hadn't been on the pill, since I hadn't been seeing anyone, much less sleeping with anyone, and it just hadn't seemed worth the effort. So why hadn't I insisted Christian use a condom? I'd even gone to the store beforehand and bought a couple, had made sure they were in my purse, just in case. I hadn't planned on sleeping with Christian, but I'd been hoping to sleep with someone that night and had planned accordingly.
So why I hadn't I used them?
It didn't take a genius to figure out the answer. I'd been so captivated by him, drawn in by his natural sexiness, that I hadn't even thought about it. It was a mistake teenagers made. It was one I should have known to avoid. And it just made me feel even worse about myself. I'd worked so hard for everything I had, had busted my ass in high school and then college to earn my place.
And then I'd thrown it all right out the window in a single stupid night of fun.
Wasn't that just my luck? So many years of hard work, of careful planning, and the first time I let loose, I throw it all to Hell.
By the end of the night, I'd decided one thing. I couldn't keep working with Christian. There didn't seem to be any
