Susan Mallery: Sweet Trouble

Matt took the photos and flipped through them. At first he didn’t register much more than a small boy. A boy who was laughing and smiling at the camera. Her words had meant nothing to him. A child? He knew she’d been pregnant. His child? Not possible. He’d refused to believe it then and he still didn’t believe it. She was back because he was successful and she wanted a piece of the pie. Nothing more.

Almost against his own will, he went through the pictures a second time, then a third, noticing the way the kid looked almost familiar. There was something about his eyes that…

He saw them, then. The similarities. The curve of the chin reflected back at him every morning as he shaved. The shape of the eyes. He recognized parts of himself, hints of his mother.

“What is this?” he growled.

His child? His child?

“His name is Gabe,” Jesse said softly. “Gabriel. He’s four and a really great kid. He’s smart and funny and he has a lot of friends. He’s good at math, which he probably gets from you.”

Matt couldn’t focus on her words. They washed over him like rain, making no sense, then moving on. Anger flared, then grew into fury. She’d had his baby and never bothered to say anything?

“You should have told me,” he said, his voice thick and cold with rage.

“I did. You refused to believe me, remember? Your exact words were that you didn’t care if I was pregnant with your child. You didn’t want a kid with me.” She squared her shoulders. “He wants to get to know you, Matt. He wants to get to know his father. That’s why I’m here. Because it’s important to him.”

But it wasn’t important to her. She didn’t have to say that-he already knew it was true.

He thrust the photos back at her, but she shook her head. “Keep them. I know this is a lot to take in. We need to talk and you need to meet Gabe. Assuming you want to.”

He nodded because he was too enraged to speak.

“My cell number is on the back of that first picture. Call me when you’re ready and we’ll set something up.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry about all of this. I wanted to talk to you before coming by but you weren’t available. I wasn’t trying to keep him from you. It’s just, you made it so clear how much you didn’t care.”

Then she turned away. He watched her go.

Something inside of him yelled that he needed to go after her, but he didn’t bother. She might run but she couldn’t hide. Not from him. Not now.

He closed the front door and started for his office. Electra glided into the hallway.

“Who was that? What did she want? You’re not seeing her, are you, Matt? She didn’t look like your type.”

He ignored her and walked into his study. After shutting the door, he crossed to his desk, where he sat down. He spread the pictures out and studied them one by one.

Electra pounded on the door, but didn’t open it. He heard something about her threatening to leave. He didn’t bother to respond.

He had a son. He’d had one for more than four years and he’d never known. Technically Jesse had tried to tell him the kid was his before she’d left Seattle, but she’d known he wouldn’t believe her. Not after what had happened. She’d done this on purpose.

He reached for his phone and dialed a number from memory. “Heath, it’s Matt. Do you have a minute?”

“Of course. We’re heading out on the boat, but I have time. What’s up?”

“I have a problem.”

He quickly explained that an old girlfriend had shown up unexpectedly with a four-year-old she claimed was his.

“The first thing we’ll need to do is establish paternity,” his lawyer told him. “What are the odds you’ll come back as the father?”

“He’s mine.” Matt stared at the pictures, hating Jesse more by the minute. How could she have kept this from him?

“So what do you want to do?” Heath asked.

“Hurt her in every way possible.”

Five years ago…

JESSE SIPPED HER LATTE as she read the want ads in the Seattle Times. Technically she wasn’t looking for a job. She wasn’t qualified for anything she wanted to do and nothing she was qualified for was better than her crummy shift at the bakery. So what was the point in changing?

“Someone needs to work on her attitude,” she murmured to herself, knowing feeling like a failure wasn’t going to help her situation. Nor was feeling trapped. But both seemed to loom large in her life.

It was her most recent fight with Nicole, she thought, even though fights with her sister were nothing new. Maybe it was her entire lack of direction. She was twenty-two. Shouldn’t she have goals? Plans? As it was, she just sort of drifted through her days, as if waiting for something to happen. If she’d stayed in college, she would have graduated by now. Instead, she’d lasted two weeks before dropping out.

She folded the paper, straightened in her seat and tried to inspire herself to some kind of action. She couldn’t keep drifting. It wasn’t healthy and it made her crabby.

She sipped on her latte and considered possibilities. Before she could decide on one, a guy walked into the Starbucks.

Jesse was a semi-regular and knew she hadn’t seen him before. He was tall and could have been kind of cute, but everything about him was off. The haircut was a disaster, his thick glasses screamed computer nerd. His short-sleeved plaid shirt was too big and-she nearly choked on her coffee-he had an honest-to-God pocket protector. Worse, his jeans were too short and he was wearing geeky tennis shoes with white socks. Poor guy-he looked like he’d been dressed by a mother who didn’t like him very much.

She was about to return to her paper when she saw him square his shoulders in a gesture that spoke of determination. Ordering coffee wasn’t that hard.

She turned in her seat and saw two women at a table against the far wall. They were young and beautiful-the kind of women who looked like models and probably dated rock stars. He couldn’t, she thought frantically. Not them. They weren’t just out of his league, they were on another plane of reality.

She’d never lived through the phrase “train wreck” before, but she did now. He walked toward them, his hands twitching slightly. His gaze seemed to zero in on the brunette on the left. Jesse knew it was going to be a catastrophe. She should probably leave and let him crash in private. But she couldn’t seem to get up and walk away, so she slumped down in her seat and braced herself for disaster.

“Uh, Angie? Hi. I’m, um, ah, Matthew. Matt. I saw you last week at the photo shoot on campus. I kinda ran into you.”

His voice was low and had the potential to be sexy, Jesse thought. If only he weren’t mumbling. He sounded so tentative.

Angie looked at him politely as he spoke but her friend grimaced in annoyance.

“At Microsoft, you mean?” Angie asked. “That was fun.”

“You were beautiful,” Matt muttered, “in the light and stuff and I was wondering if maybe you’d like to get coffee or something and it doesn’t have to be coffee even because we could, ah, go for a walk or ah, I don’t know-”

Breathe! Jesse willed him to pause and break his conversation into sentences. Amazingly enough, Angie actually smiled. Could the geek possibly get the girl?

But Matt didn’t notice because he kept on talking.

“Or do something else. If you have a hobby or you know, something with a pet, a dog, I guess, because I like dogs. Did you know that there are more cats as pets than dogs, which doesn’t make sense because who likes cats, right? I’m allergic and they don’t do anything but shed.”

Jesse winced as Angie’s expression hardened and her friend’s face began to crumple.