Written with Regret (The Regret Duet #1) - Aly Martinez Page 0,6
behind on the pillowcase, Hadley had all but vanished.
Until tonight.
“Caven?” Ian called. “What’s it say?”
I sucked in a deep breath and looked at the baby in his arms. The blanket had fallen off its head just enough to reveal a patch of fine hairs, more orange than its mother’s red.
I hadn’t heard from Hadley in over eight months. It seemed awfully convenient that she’d reappeared long enough to dump a child she claimed to be mine on the night the Kaleidoscope deal had been finalized and the contents of my bank account had become public knowledge.
“Call the police,” I declared, turning on a toe and walking back into my apartment, leaving Ian standing in the hall with Hadley’s child.
Shoving through the crowd of concerned onlookers, I headed straight to the bottles of liquor lining the counter. I didn’t bother with ice or even a glass. I threw back that bottle of vodka, hoping like hell the burn of the alcohol could numb the panic coursing through my veins.
Through it all, that baby never stopped crying.
CAVEN
“Do you have any reason to believe the child is yours?” the older, gray-haired police officer asked.
Avoiding his gaze, I stared blankly at the screen of my laptop as Kaleidoscope booted up, all the while fighting the urge to throw up or tear out of my skin and run as far away from that apartment as I could get—possibly both.
In the twenty minutes since we’d found the baby, I’d spent all of them thinking back on my night with Hadley.
I wasn’t an idiot. When your sex life revolved around one-night stands or the occasional repeat performance, protection wasn’t optional. I had a busy life, and if I didn’t have time for a relationship, I sure as shit didn’t have time for herpes or a toddler. I’d worn a condom every damn time I’d been with a woman for as long as I could remember. And that night with Hadley, I’d gone through at least four.
But it was the one time, when I’d woken up to her riding my cock, that was currently torturing my thoughts.
One time. One fucking time.
“Mr. Hunt?” the cop prompted.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I hung my head. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Oh, God. Maybe.
“Right,” he muttered. “Well, do you happen to remember Hadley’s last name?”
I looked up from my computer to scowl. “If I did, I probably would’ve mentioned that when she robbed me.” I cut my eyes to the team of paramedics huddled around my couch, inspecting the baby. It was still shrieking to the point that I feared the soundwaves were going to split my head.
Christ. How had I gone from chugging champagne and celebrating a multimillion-dollar business deal to listening to a baby who may or may not be mine screaming its head off?
Everyone, including Veronica, had left. Turns out, having a baby dumped on your doormat was a real mood killer. Ian was still there though, quietly standing in the corner, typing away on his cell phone. Every so often, he’d pause to ask how I was doing.
I had no interest in conversation. I was too busy searching for Hadley all over again.
When she’d taken my wallet months earlier, I’d had no way to track her down. And trust me, I’d tried. Cameras at the small bar we’d met in were nonexistent. I’d spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to track down footage of us walking back to my place, but by that point, it had been over twenty-four hours and the whopping two businesses that had cameras aimed at the street had already purged the previous day’s recordings.
My own damn building didn’t even have working cameras.
It was a nightmare. That woman had taken close to ten thousand dollars in electronics. But I’d have gladly let her keep them all if she’d just returned my wallet.
I wasn’t a particularly sentimental man, but inside that leather bi-fold was the necklace I’d stolen off my mother’s neck while she’d lain in a coffin when I was ten. After months of watching the cancer crush her spirit and ultimately her body, my father hadn’t even waited for her funeral to purge everything she had ever touched. My older brother, Trent, told me that it was part of Dad’s grieving process. However, the morning of the service, when a woman showed up with a U-Haul, I’d figured the quick cleanup had more to do with her than it had the loss of my mom.