He’s right. I can’t deny any of it. But I have what he needs too. “Don’t pretend for a second you didn’t come storming into my office like some virile–”
“Odessa,” he interrupts. “I have no issue admitting that fucking you last Friday was one of the highlights of my week. All things considered.”
I can’t shake the mutual feeling. I tried all weekend.
“That why you told me I shouldn’t have let you fuck me?” For the better part of three days, I tried to simultaneously decode his comment and not let it bother me.
I failed miserably at both.
Beckham’s mouth twitches, his right dimple flashing. “Because I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my hands off you in Vermont. Several days together, just us? Hotel. Private jet. Could get reckless, don’t you think?”
My shoulders tense as I glance up at him. My eyes snap from his sharp gaze to the window behind him.
“Jeremiah’s back.” My confession dissolves the charge in the air.
Beckham steps away, his hands rising to protest. He swallows, his lips straightening. “Well then.”
“We’re not…back together.” The overwhelming urge to clarify that fact consumes me for reasons unknown. “Not engaged. Not…”
“You don’t need to explain, Odessa.” He cuts me off, raking his palm along his five o’clock shadow. I’ve yet to see him with one, and I’m shocked it took me this long to notice it. Can’t blame him after the past few days.
“Jeremiah and me.” I continue anyway. “We have issues. There are a lot of cracks in our relationship. Hairline fractures really.”
I neglect to tell him the “hairline fractures” have taken shape in the form of recently-unveiled doubts. My doubts. And not because of Beckham. God, I’m not in love with him just because he fucked me tirelessly on a Friday afternoon.
It’s just that I forgot I could feel that way; so electric. So all-consumed. So alive.
Beckham says nothing.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” My cheeks burn.
He returns to his desk, taking his seat. The distance between us grows. I feel it. “Because like it or not, we’re friends now.”
I force a smile that doesn’t want to be there and ignore the shattering sound my resolve makes as it falls apart. “Yeah. I guess we kind of are.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
BECKHAM
An unfamiliar number calls my cell after lunch on Tuesday. Something feels off today, and going two days without a peep from Eva was too good to be true.
I answer just before it goes to voicemail. “Beckham King.”
“Hi, Beckham, it’s Elizabeth from Smyth Nanny Brokerage.” She speaks with the sweet natured patience of a preschool teacher though I hardly hear her over the cackling and shrieking of a woman in the background and the shrill cries of a newborn.
My heart pounds against my chest. “What’s going on?”
“I was given strict instructions to contact you first, in the case of any non-life threatening emergencies.” An apology resides in her tone, but I wish she’d cut the niceties and get on with it. “Anyway, I think you need to come to Ms. Delgado’s apartment. Immediately if possible.”
“Eva put you up to this?”
“No, no,” she says. I can hear Eva yelling in the background, something in Spanish. “Ms. Delgado hasn’t slept in days. She’s ransacked her cupboards and torn the house upside down. She keeps asking for her pills – the blue ones. And she talks so fast I can hardly understand her. There’s this sort of feverish look in her eyes. She’s shaky. This morning I caught her having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. She kept saying ‘baby’ over and over, but she wasn’t talking about the baby.”
I knew Eva had issues with anxiety and dependencies on men, but I’ve never known her to have clinically psychotic episodes.
“I’m not a mental health professional, Mr. King,” she says, “but I’ve seen this once before with a past client. I think it may be postpartum psychosis. It happens. It’s rare, but this is what it looks like.”
My face pinches. I hate that I have to ask this question. “And you’re positive she’s not faking any of this?”
“I’m positive.” Elizabeth’s voice is louder now and so are the baby’s cries. I can imagine her scooping the baby into her arms, protecting her from a psychotic Eva. I should be there. I should be the one protecting her, even if she’s not mine. “She won’t hold the baby either, sir. She won’t nurse and she refuses to pump. If she’s not pacing in front of the window, she’s checking the peephole over and over. It’s like she’s paranoid or she’s waiting for someone.”