My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out and saw it was Drew. “Excuse me for a minute,” I said, answering his call.
“What the hell are you doing? Elle just came in screaming at me that you’ve left Lily so that you can have an affair,” he muttered.
“Huh?” I huffed, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“She had a news alert on her phone that you’re out wining and dining some model-type girl.”
“Delilah isn’t a model, she’s a musician.”
“So you don’t deny it? Elle thinks you’re having some kind of mid-life crisis.”
Of all the things I could have said. The first words out of my mouth should have been to deny that there was anything amiss about our dinner. “Look, she’s a student at college. Derek asked me to mentor her. Neither of us had eaten all day, and I offered for her to come to dinner.”
“Not cool, dude. You should be fixing your marriage. This isn’t the time to be playing the Good Samaritan. I suggest you get your head on straight and figure out how to mend your marriage with your pregnant wife.”
“Your pregnant wife is your responsibility,” I replied.
“I’m not talking aboutmywife—I’m talking about Lily.”
My mind emptied of every thought in my head as I shot to my feet in shock. And it was only when his clarification sank in that I remembered to suck in a breath. “What did you say?” I whispered. I glanced down at the innocent student in front of me, who stared back at me with alarm on her face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“What do you mean, what did I say?” Drew yelled, sounding irritated.
“About Lily, what did you just say?” I was met by silence until I prompted Drew again. “What did you say, Drew?”
“Fuck,” he whispered. “You don’t know, do you? She didn’t tell you?” he asked. His question carried a note of incredulity, pity and an apology in his tone. “I’m sorry that you’ve heard it from me first. Go home and talk to her. Lily’s pregnant.”
CHAPTER 28
LILY
I’d turned to Jack expecting support and for the second time since Alfie had left, Jack handed me my ass on a plate.How did I fuck up so badly?If I’d been failing Alfie, why didn’t he say something sooner?
From my perspective all I’d been doing was my job. A job that wasn’t as easy for women to be taken seriously in, as it was for my male counterparts in the industry.
Exhausted from crying, I had fallen into a fitful sleep and woke when I heard a boat approaching our waterfront property.
With my heart beating hard, I climbed out of bed and stared with an uneasy feeling toward our small jetty in the dark. Relief, fear and apprehension ran through me, in that order, making it vibrate on a totally different frequency than it had been once I saw it was Alfie and Oscar.
I wasn’t made to live alone, and with the added vulnerability of being famous I usually had someone around whenever I was home. But since Alfie had left I’d stayed alone, and I’d constantly been on edge that strangers might come calling at night.
“Lily, get up,” Alfie bellowed the moment he entered the house. The fury in his tone hit me hard and I knew immediately that he hadn’t come back because he had missed me.
I felt a bolt of shock down to my soul when I reached the top of the stairs and saw him look impatient when he shifted his weight from hip to hip.
As I took him in from the top of the stairs, my heartbeat grew faster because I still loved him completely and took in my beautiful man. And despite his obviously livid expression, I’d wanted nothing more than to throw myself into his arms.
Pure, unadulterated wrath swarmed in his dull eyes when mine met his. “Get down here,” he ordered in a menacing tone as he jerked his index finger toward the floor.
My heart pounded as I rushed down beside him, guessing immediately that he’d found out I was pregnant. As I stopped next to him, my body buzzed with fear when pure rage rolled off him.
Alfie’s jaw tensed so tight that a terse muscle popped near his ear, doing little to hide his raging temper. He rolled his shoulders as he stared me down. For a few seconds silence hung in the air as I waited for the incendiary device that was brewing inside him to go off and shatter the calm between us.
“Do you have something to tell me?” he pressed in a chilly, ominous tone. The weight of his icy stare sent another bolt of shock through me, which left a tingling feeling in my lips, fingers and toes long after its initial impact.
“I-I was going to tell you—” I began.
