His Unexpected Baby by Jamie Knight

Chapter Sixteen - Skye

I couldn’t quite move properly. Not at first, anyway. My nerves had recovered from the previous night’s activities, but my muscles hadn’t.

Forcing myself to get up off the couch, I gathered the scattered clothes and went up the stairs to my room. After dumping the stuff in the laundry pile, I looked for something to wear.

I put my bra on but decided not to wear panties. The decision was partly practical. I couldn’t imagine having anything close to me down there— I was so sensitive after how good Simon had made me feel.

But it was also for experience. I’d never really gone ‘commando’ before and was curious as to what it felt like. Not dumb enough to go walking through a winter wonderland with my nether regions unprotected, I wriggled into some comfy yoga pants before pulling a woollen skirt up over them and putting on my socks and a sweater.

I didn’t look particularly fashionable, but I would be warm, which was much more important in New York in December.

Doing up my Nordic hiking boots, I cocooned myself into my Russian style overcoat and set out into the polar vortex in search of the bus stop, feeling a lot like Robert Falcon Scott.

Even on such a dreadful winter day, the bridge looked beautiful. And that was with the stalagmite-like icicles hanging from it, ready to perforate any boat that happened to pass underneath it at the wrong time.

I’d really thought I’d made it. The bad news hit, as bad news so often did, when I least suspected it, which was just as I was stepping down off the bus into a passing ice flow. I’d been so caught up with Simon and discovering previously unexplored dimensions of my sexuality that I’d neglected to get a present for my Secret Santa recipient.

Determined to fit in with the office culture, I set off in search of something. Finding a local drug store, I looked until I found a blank greeting card at three times the price of the highest-grade Hallmark card back home.

With the expensive bit of cardboard tucked safely in my pocket, along with its included envelope, I trudged to the café. Fueled by a small hot chocolate with whipped cream, I got out my best pen, which was still nowhere near as beautiful as the pieces that Simon used, and I composed a poem.

Playing it safe, I stuck to inoffensive and mostly generic winter and wilderness imagery, rendered with poetic flourish. Even with the slight set back, I managed to make it across the street to the office with ten minutes to spare, always glad that I was the type to be early.

Sam had the book ready for me to sign as I arrived at the security desk. I nodded and he winked. It was good to have allies.

I got past Inga without a peep. I was beginning to wonder if she ever actually left her desk. I’d never actually seen her legs. Could she have been an urban mermaid of some kind?

Then I set about my mission to get the poetical card on my target’s desk without him noticing. I snuck my way to the cubicle without anyone really noticing. With my poetic stylings safely on the desk of my intended audience, I went to my own cubicle to see what Simon had in store for me.

Shock held me paralyzed. There was nothing. At least not what was nothing that wasn’t supposed to be there. The space in front of the computer where the first three gifts had been were now as empty as the feeling in my stomach.

Explanations spun in my head. The most logical, although upsetting, was that he regretted what we had done. To be fair, there was an age gap, and he was in a position of power over me at work.

But, I argued mentally with myself, the gap wasn’t that big, I was old enough to make my own decisions and everything we’d done had been completely consensual. Plus, Simon had gone a long way to build my trust in him. Despite the short time we had known each other, I trusted him completely, and felt certain that he only had good intentions and that he would never harm me.

Just as I was trying to think about how I was going to live without him if Simon really was gone from my life, another notion hit me.

What if he hadn’t come into the office at all?

This possibility was more than enough to drive me to get the current book finished and the analysis is typed up. I needed an excuse to go see him, and check on whether or not he was actually here.

Lunch rolled around at about the same time I’d finished the assignment. I had never typed an analysis so fast. With about forty minutes to spare on my lunch break, any semblance of appetite long ago leaving me, I went to Simon’s office and knocked on the door.

There was silence.

I waited a while, shifting a bit from foot to foot. Trying the knock again, I was faced with the same stony silence.

The office was in such a position that Simon was able to come and go without anyone in the cubicle farm noticing. This gave me just a little bit of hope. Hope that he hadn’t even come into work that day, rather than thinking that he was snubbing me. It was just possible I was making something out of nothing.

Feeling much more relieved, I went back to my cubicle to surf the net for the rest of my lunch break, ready to keep going until Simon came in. Handing in the analysis was my last job of the day, of course.

I gave a thought to emailing it to him, which he had said was the normal custom. At least then there would be a record of me finishing it. The only problem with that plan was I wouldn’t be able to see him. As well as the fact that there would be a record of it, and strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have been given more work according to the company’s policies.

It shouldn’t matter too much, Simon having broken the stupid rules before, but it could also show favoritism on his part because he only had only given me more work, and not other editorial assistants who may have finished their prior assignments early. In our precarious position, any kind of scrutiny wouldn’t be good.

Despite my impatience, Simon never came. I waited right up until Ingra was getting ready to lock up for the night. At least I knew, almost for sure, that Simon had never showed up at all, rather than thinking he had been hiding in his office.

I was out of the building by the time I finally got an answer as to whether or not he was going to come in at all.

“Skye.”

I turned so fast I nearly got whiplash, fairly sure I was hallucinating as I saw Simon approaching me. He must have been waiting by the stairs for me to come out.

“Simon.”

“Hey,” he said, lovingly.

With a quick look around for anyone we knew, Simon embraced me, giving me the most warm and tender kiss.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t come in today. I hope I didn’t scare you. I was shopping all day, looking for just the right gift.”

He slipped the nicely wrapped package carefully into my pocket, acting all coy and super spy.

“Don’t open it now,” he whispered.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Would you like to come to my place for dinner?”

“Yes, please, sir,” I said, nearly crying with relief.

He kissed me again, quicker this time, and took me by the hand, leading me to his nice warm car.