Twin Babies with the Billionaire for Christmas

13. Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Rachel

“So,” I say to the young man seated across from me. “What is working for Mr. Black like?”

“He’s really cool,” the kid says with a smile. “He makes sure that we have access to the resources that we need to be good at our jobs and he’s really fair. Plus, he doesn’t mind helping with the work, which is awesome.”

I type a few notes on my laptop, nodding my head. I dismiss an email from Starbucks reminding me that I have a free holiday drink coupon I haven’t used. I can’t have naughty things like sugary coffee now. I don’t want to do anything that will be bad for the baby.

I do think fondly for a moment of the cute holiday cups and the sweetness of a peppermint mocha, before turning my attention back to my interview.

I finish asking questions of the young man, who hurries off to go back to work, and then I rise to go stand by the huge windows that look down onto the park below.

There’s some kind of Christmas fair going on and it looks fun. I check my watch. Maybe Tristan and I can head down there after work to check it out.

“Knock, knock?”

I look over my shoulder to see Tristan standing in the doorway with a silly smile on his face. He comes to join me at the window.

“Some kind of Christmas fair thing,” I say to him unnecessarily.

He nods. “Yeah, I think they do that every year.”

“Ever been?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Naw. I’m always too busy.”

I turn toward him, stepping closer in spite of myself. I instantly feel my panties getting wet. “Want to be less busy than usual and go check it out after work?”

He looks down at me, his eyes trained on my lips. I smile slowly, loving that I can tell how much he wants me.

“Sure,” he says a bit huskily, leaning toward me like he might kiss me.

There’s a knock on the conference room door, and we leap apart like we’ve been burned. Tristan clears his throat and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

“Let me know when you’re done with interviews,” he says gruffly. He glances at the woman in the doorway and then moves past her. “Denise,” he says to her as he slips out of the room.

“You must be Rachel,” Denise says to me, coming to take a seat at the conference table.

I eye her, noting her severe, professional suit, her stick-straight black hair, and her perfectly made-up face. She’s very beautiful in an angular, alien way.

She looks like she walked right off the catwalk at some kind of fashion show. I wonder vaguely how long it takes her to get ready each day.

“Pleased to meet you,” I say, settling in across from her and waking up my computer. “You work in sales?” I ask.

Denise nods. “I’m the sales manager.”

“How long have you worked here?” I ask her, looking at my laptop screen and hitting the enter key to start a new list of information and quotes.

“Long enough to get the measure of Tristan Black.”

I blink, hearing something spiteful in her tone that gives me pause. I look up at her and see that she has her lips pursed, and her eyes are flashing with emotion. I don’t quite know what emotion, but her expression does not make it seem like she feels positive about Tristan. At all.

“Pardon?” I finally say.

She twists her lips to the side and then runs her tongue over her teeth to make sure there isn’t any lipstick on them. She smiles at me, her expression right for friendliness but her eyes showing anything but personable charm.

“I’ve been here long enough to learn that Tristan Black is a hopeless womanizer.”

I blink rapidly again. My brain is whirling as I try to take in what she is saying.

“In his personal life or…?”

She laughs, the sound a bit like a cackle. “Oh everywhere. There are women in the world, and Tristan likes to have his way with them. Even me,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “I’ve been a target of his lustful attentions as well, but I figured things out very quickly and extricated myself from the situation.”

“So, you slept with Mr. Black?” I ask her, wishing that my heart wasn’t twisting with pain in my chest.

I don’t have any official claim on him, and certainly, I should have assumed he would have enjoyed his single life before he met me. After all, he doesn’t even know about the baby, so he has no reason to view me as anything more than another protracted hookup.

“We…had our fun,” Denise says coyly, giving me another sweet smile. “But I would be more concerned if I was you, over the very young women that are always being hired here. He just seems so…chummy with them…and there was that one girl, what was her name…oh! Her name was Amy Searles, I think. You should ask to see the legal documents regarding the…situation…that happened when she was here.”

I feel sick, but it’s not from morning sickness this time. Was Tristan really like this? I haven’t known him for very long, so it might be that the version of him that I have been spending time with…sleeping with…is not the real man.

But Cara knows him and likes him. It’s all too much for me. My brain feels like it’s going to turn off entirely.

I somehow manage to stumble through the rest of the interview, only a small portion of my attention on Denise. By the time that she rises to her feet and minces out of the room on her spiky black heels, I wish I had never made the mistake of spending all this time with Tristan. I wish I had never fallen in…

My heart stutters to a stop. I’ve fallen in love with him .

“Oh, God,” I say out loud, rubbing at my temples and closing my eyes. “Oh God, oh no.”

I stare at the notes that I took from Denise’s interview, and I realize that I have to check on the details of what she said before I condemn him, but suddenly it all feels like too much.

I start to pack up my things, suddenly in a panic to escape from Tristan, from his company, from the other people I was going to interview. Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones, or maybe it’s just that I’m suddenly waking up to the situation I am in, but suddenly, I feel completely overwhelmed by the fact that I am in this position.

“I’ll come back tomorrow and do the rest of the interviews. I’m sorry,” I say to the woman at the front desk as I rush by.

I think I see someone standing by the elevator as I hurry out, but I don’t wait around to see who it is or to find out what they want from me.

The cold, wet wind slaps against my face, and I shiver, wrapping my hastily-donned coat around me. I pull out my phone and call for an Uber, then hurry toward the corner where it will pick me up.

I have been such an idiot , I think to myself, my heart aching in my chest. I just can’t get my life running right, no matter what I do.