Page 46 of Vegas Daddies (Forbidden Fantasies #17)

ALLIE

I was on my way into work, having just dropped Daphne off at her grandparents’ house for the day, when my phone started ringing.

I wasn’t fancy enough to have the kind of car that would connect to my phone, so it was lucky that I was stopped at a light and had a second to fumble through my purse to get it.

I didn’t recognize the number, and normally I’d reject the call on those grounds.

More often than not, it’d just be spam calls, or debt collectors when it got to the desperate times between paychecks and I had to pay my water, electric, or Wi-Fi bills a little late.

But I was caught up at the moment, and something told me I should hit the green accept button, so I answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Allie Tate?”

“Yes, who is this?” I said, and the reply had my heart skipping a beat in my chest.

“Allie! It’s Delia Nance from Ratliff Records. How are you?”

Oh, fuck. I hadn’t expected that. At least the rush of excitement I felt was a nice change from the more negative anxiety I’d been feeling since Luca found out about Daphne’s father and threatened to tell Cade before I could muster up the courage.

I paused just a second longer than was probably acceptable.

“I’m good!” I said, my voice too bright. It was a little phony, but considering she’d only met me once when I was pretty tipsy, I didn’t think she’d notice. “How are you?”

“Oh, fine, fine. Look, I’m calling because I wanted to set up a meeting. How soon can you come to LA?”

I was having heart palpitations. The urge to squeal was strong. “Um, I’ll need to get some stuff arranged, but next week, maybe? What would we be meeting about?”

“Making your dreams come true,” she said flippantly, and I heard the smile in it.

“We can talk about it more at the meeting, but I thought you might like to try and cut a few tracks with us and see how they do. It’s not a guarantee that I’ll be your representation going forward, or that you’ll get a full record deal.

But with your talent, I think you’ve got a good shot of going far. ”

Oh. My. God. I wished Kara was with me, or Brandon, or my mom, who had always been a huge fan even as she’d shown some skepticism about the idea of me having a career in the arts.

I also really, really wished I wasn’t driving, especially since I started to feel the twinge of nausea that had been plaguing me for days. Blessedly, another red light showed up.

I’d never had that thought before. First time for everything.

“That…sounds great,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Yeah, I’d love to meet.”

By the time I got to work, the buzz of my excitement had turned to full-on birds of prey flapping around in my stomach.

The prospect of my career maybe taking off at last felt too uncertain for me to commit to telling Kara, but I wanted to as I got started on an otherwise normal day at work.

We were a little too busy to have time for gossip anyway, which was honestly for the best. Any obstacles to blabbing were welcome.

The only interaction Kara and I had for my whole shift, I forgot all about the call from Delia Nance of Ratliff Records.

Kara looked a little panicked, lingering in the hallway by the back room of Marv’s.

Before I could even ask her what the deal was, why her face looked like that, she ambushed me, grabbing my arm in a vise grip.

“Allie, do you have a tampon? I think I’m about to have a period emergency.”

Suddenly, there was a ringing in my ears.

Something was dawning on me. Something big and scary enough that the thought wouldn’t fully solidify in my brain.

I took Kara with me to where I’d stowed my purse for my shift, fishing out a pink plastic wrapper for her.

She took it gratefully, running off to deal with her potential crisis before she could use her best-friend senses to get that I was in the start of a crisis of my own.

I’d had no reason to be diligent about tracking my periods since Daphne was born, since I’d been celibate before the guys came into town.

I’d always been pretty regular anyway, so it didn’t seem like something I had time to worry about.

But I knew enough about my usual cycle to know that I should’ve had it already this month.

And we were nearing the end, just a couple of days out from the last little square on the calendar, and no bleeding.

And I’d been…tired. Queasy. Not feeling much like myself. They were familiar symptoms, bringing up memories from five years prior, though that scary, exciting whirlwind time before Daphne had been born felt far enough away that it hadn’t crossed my mind when I first felt icky at the zoo.

Oh my God. The zoo. I’d been close to passing out, and it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I could be pregnant.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I checked the time, swore quietly, and got back out into the dining room. One more hour. I had one more hour of my shift, and then I could actually think about this.

I picked up a test on the way home, stowing it safely into my purse as I nabbed Daphne for fear that she’d see the box and ask questions.

Then I got to not think about it for a little while.

I had dinner with my little girl, enjoyed hearing about her shenanigans at daycare and watching her work on her zoo play set for a while before it was time for a bath and then bed.

It wasn’t until Daphne was tucked in and zonked out that I allowed myself to panic again.

I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test in five years, and I felt just as freaked out and out of my depth taking it this time, though I didn’t have to look at the instructions until after I’d done the deed.

I set a timer on my phone for the recommended number of minutes, then promptly left the bathroom, flopping face-first onto my bed.

The darkness helped me think. It would be unlucky, though not impossible, if I’d gotten pregnant by Gavin, Cade, or Luca again.

We hadn’t used condoms, and though I had my own usual methods of birth control, I knew it was recommended that you use two forms. Nothing was foolproof, and I was still scatterbrained and a little messy, the type who would fuck up like this again, no matter how much motherhood had helped me mature.

I was still me. The return of my libido and my thriving, exciting sex life had been proof enough of that.

An incredible reminder of who I was before I was Daphne’s mom, and a return to the parts of myself I’d neglected for all these years.

But this uncertainty was a different kind of reminder of who I was.

A less pleasant one, maybe. Even if the thought of another baby, of sharing the experience of motherhood with the men I now thought of as my guys, had a sweet flutter of magic to it.

My phone timer went off, making me jump a little. The moment of truth. Fuck, my heart was racing.

And it skipped a beat—maybe a few beats—when I picked up the test and saw two lines, clear as day.

I was pregnant again.

Daphne was going to be a big sister. I was going to be a mom of two, which I’d never really thought would happen, even though I’d fantasized hopelessly about Daphne having a sibling to grow up with more than once over the years.

And once again, I had no idea which of the three guys I was falling for—the guys I had fallen for, I realized then, another complicated joy striking my heart at the idea of loving them—was the father.