She shook her head. “I am not pregnant with anyone else’s baby! This is Scott’s baby, and he needs to take responsibility for it! That’s it!” She turned then, and looked at Scott, realizing that he might not have been sleeping with Jennifer Jones, but he was certainly sleeping with some other woman if he had gotten her pregnant as well.
“You lying bastard. You went on and on to me about how you and Jennifer weren’t sleeping together or seeing each other, how you’re just friends, and how I’m the only woman you’re with and the only one that you want, and now I find out from your agent that not only are you sleeping around with someone else, but you’ve gotten another woman pregnant?
No wonder you don’t want anything to do with this baby. You’re already having one with someone else!” she hollered at him.
He felt like there was a black hole where his heart had been. He couldn’t even look up at her. He couldn’t think of anything to say to her, or any kind words to speak to her. He knew that everything had gone too far then, and that no matter what he told her, she wasn’t going to believe him, and she wasn’t going to stay. He remained silent.
“I’m going. I never should have come back here, Scott. Every time you make me think that I can trust you, you go and prove to me just how wrong I am about that. Every time. It’s like I’m a sucker for every lie that falls from your mouth.
Well, not anymore. You go on ahead and date Jennifer Jones publicly, and you have your kid with whoever this other woman is, and don’t bother picking up the phone to call me or to find out about this baby, because you’re never going to see either one of us. Goodbye.” She shoved her chair in underneath the table and, giving a hot glare to Harold, she turned and blazed through the back door of the house, vanishing inside of it, determined never to go back.
Harold nodded and shook his head. “Damn broads… always so full of themselves.” He pulled the seat out that she had pushed under the table and he sat down across from Scott.
Scott looked up at him angrily. “Why did you do that? Why did you bring up the other baby in front of her?”
Harold shrugged. “Why not? It’s true, isn’t it? You banged some other broad and now she’s having your kid. You seem to be spreading your seed everywhere. We have to talk about this, Scotty. I like screwing a hot looking chick just as much as any other fella, including you, but you gotta lay off of the dames, Scotty.
Either that or get your balls snipped. Wear a condom. Something. You can’t keep knocking chicks up like you have been. That’s never going to work for your image. You can’t singlehandedly try to set an all-time high for the population of Los Angeles.”
“You’re being stupid, Scotty. You’re taking your career in your hands, and you’re being irresponsible with it. I don’t know what that Naomi chick wanted, but you aren’t doing anything with her until you get a paternity test on that kid. You don’t know who she could be out balling.
She could be pregnant with anybody’s kid, and be trying to pin it on you because you’re successful and wealthy and famous! What in the hell are you thinking?” Harold leaned forward and bit down on his cigar, blowing a thick cloud of pungent smoke from the gritted teeth in his mouth.
Scott leaned back to avoid the smoke. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! She’s not like that!” he snapped defensively.
“Yeah, I do know exactly what I’m talking about! That kid could have been fathered by anybody! Hell, it could have been fathered by me! Except I’m more careful than you are… bu
t that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not about to let you screw your life up over some dame!
Now listen to me! You make her get a paternity test, or you walk away from it. She wants to pin this kid on you? Well, fine. Make her prove it, then you can talk about what you want to do about the kid. Not until then. You got me? You savvy?” Harold opened his pudgy eyes wide.
Scott sighed. He was sure that Naomi wasn’t that way, and that she hadn’t been sleeping around, but he realized that Harold had a solid point. He’d slept around. He’d gotten another woman pregnant. There was a chance that if Naomi really was pregnant, that the baby may or may not be his. He knew that he was going to have to follow Harold’s advice.
“All right, fine. I’ll talk to her. I’ll ask her to get a paternity test,” Scott acquiesced unhappily. He looked down into his frosty lemonade glass and frowned. He had no idea how Naomi was going to take his request, and he wasn’t at all looking forward to finding out.
“Good boy,” Harold said, standing up and patting Scott’s broad shoulder. “That’s a good boy. You can give me the results if it comes out positive that it is in fact your kid. In the meantime, keep that snake in your trousers or wrap it up. We can’t afford for you to keep knocking chicks up.”
Harold turned and left without another word, and Scott sat there alone in the quiet southern California heat, wishing at that moment that he was almost anyone else.
Knowing that he had to do something about what had happened with Naomi, he gave it considerable thought and drove down to the design firm a few hours after she left. He was going to have to try to fix it one way or another.
She glared at him furiously when he walked in the door, and he could tell by Keisha’s and Malaika’s polite smiles that they probably didn’t know anything about anything that had happened between Naomi and him, though he did wonder if they weren’t curious about who her baby’s father was.
She stood up from her desk abruptly, and went straight to him.
“What are you doing here?” she almost hissed at him. Keisha looked at her in surprise and then turned back to her computer politely.
“I have some… business… to discuss with you,” he said subtly as he looked around them surreptitiously.
Naomi pressed her full lips into a thin line. She knew that she was going to have to talk to him. There was no way out of it with him standing right there in the foyer of the firm. She hadn’t told Keisha or Malaika about the affair or the baby, and they would wonder why she was acting so angry and frustrated with a client.
“Follow me, please,” she said shortly, turning on her heel and walking toward the break room and kitchen at the other end of the office. Once inside, she closed the door sharply behind him, and spun around, her eyes burning through him.
“What are you doing here? I told you that I didn’t want to see you again!” she kept her voice quiet, but there was no mistaking her anger at him.
He held his hands up and spoke as gently and quietly as he could. “I just wanted to talk with you about the baby. You said you’re carrying my child. If you are, then you need to come up with proof of that for me.”
Her mouth fell fully open. “What? You must be kidding me! You got me pregnant, and you got some other woman pregnant and never bothered to tell me that you were cheating on me and screwing around, and the only reason that I found out is because your agent has a big mouth!