“She’s on a call. Should I interrupt?”
“No. I’ll wait.”
This was news he needed to tell her today and in person.
Sometime later, Jeff was searching stages of pregnancy on his phone, checking them against his calendar and travel commitments when Olivia’s office door swung open and she walked out to greet him with a welcoming smile.
“Jeffrey, what a wonderful surprise!”
“Got a few minutes for me?” he asked, unfolding from the deep sofa to lead her back into the office. And once there, he closed the door behind them. “Is it private in here?”
Olivia’s brow crumpled a bit at the question as she looked at the closed door behind him and then her neatly organized desk loaded with her current projects. “I was thinking you might be here to take me to lunch.” Her nose crinkled before reluctantly meeting his eyes again. “But are you here for something...else?”
A bark of laughter escaped him as he realized the direction of her thoughts. She’d thought he was here for some kind of afternoon desktop quickie. Yeah, now he got her confusion. It wasn’t exactly like that between them.
Shaking his head, he crossed to the cluster of club chairs across her office and held a hand out asking her to join him. “No, Olivia, I’m sorry. Something...unexpected has come up. We need to talk.”
A little furrow had cut between her delicate brows as she lowered herself into the chair across from him. “You’re worrying me, Jeffrey. What’s happened?”
Looking at her guileless face and earnest eyes, he wished there was some way to sugarcoat the bitter news he was about to give her. But it wouldn’t help either of them. “A couple of months before we met, I spent the night with a woman who came to my office today. She’s pregnant.”
Olivia sat stone still, her eyes gone wide. “Was there something between you?”
He opened his mouth to say no, but said instead, “It was one night.”
“Who is she? Would I know her? Is she the type to keep quiet? What does she want from you?”
“I doubt very much you know her, unless you’ve spent more time in Vegas than you let on.”
“She’s a stripper. Oh, God, Jeffrey, please tell me she isn’t a prostitute.”
“No!” He raked a hand back through his hair. “No, she was the waitress at a bar I was stuck at waiting for Connor the night he met Megan. I was killing time and one thing led to another.”
He didn’t like the sound of his explanation, but the deeper, expanded version of the truth wasn’t something Olivia needed to hear.
“You just found out? So, there hasn’t been any time for conclusive paternity testing, then. This baby might not even be yours. I mean, Jeffrey, one night with some Vegas cocktail girl three months ago. We don’t know anything yet.”
A part of him wanted to agree. Tell her she was probably right and to give him a few weeks to sort it out. Only she deserved the whole truth. “We’ll have the DNA testing done, but I already know this baby is mine.”
She didn’t ask for details but he could see the understanding in her eyes. The way the hope shifted toward disappointment.