Never Have A Baller's Baby

She looked at him in confusion. “Why is that?”

He chuckled with a slightly wicked gleam in his eyes. “Because the editor-in-chief at the paper really heard it from me this morning. I told him that his reporter had it all wrong, and that Jennifer and I weren’t engaged and that I was considering suing him for all the articles they had been printing, and he apologized left and right and told me he would personally put a retraction in the newspaper tomorrow, clearing it all up. He also told me that he was going to fire the reporter. He said anyone who works like that isn’t a journalist, and I had to agree with him. The man was let go today. We shouldn’t be seeing him again.”

Naomi stared at him in disbelief. “You’re kidding! He was fired?” she asked in amazement. “I mean… I don’t really like to see anyone lose their job, but I have to tell you, I’m pretty glad to hear about that!”

Scott agreed. “Me too. Anyway… then I had another visitor this afternoon. Cora Evans, the other woman who said she was pregnant with my baby, came by the house again. She was by the other day and I told her that I didn’t want anything to do with her unless she could prove to me that she was actually pregnant with my child. I made her get a paternity test. She brought it back to me today and we opened it together.”

Naomi’s heart began to pound again. “Well? What were the results of the test?”

“The test came back negative. She isn’t pregnant with my child. She’s pregnant with her husband’s child. She just cheated on him, and then got pregnant with his baby. I didn’t know that she was married when… when we were together that night. I had no idea, or I never would have done anything with her. Now I know. I told her that I never wanted to see her again and I told her to go home to her husband and try to fix her marriage.” He scoffed and shook his head.

She looked at him in consternation. “Why would she try to pin the baby on you?”

He shrugged. “She is a trophy wife. She married him for his money, and now she’s miserable. She wants a younger man in her life instead of the old guy she married, and she decided that I was the guy she had to have. Now she has to stay with the old man she married and she’s trapped. She hates her life. That’s her problem, not mine, and not yours.”

Blinking in surprise again, Naomi thought through all of the information he had told her. “So… you aren’t engaged to Jennifer and you aren’t having another baby except this one?” she asked, placing her hand on her belly.

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Naomi opened the top drawer on her desk and pulled out a large envelope, one that was identical to the one that Scott had seen earlier that day when he had talked with Cora about her baby. Naomi handed the envelope to Scott.

“Here. It’s unopened. I know what the results are, but I didn’t bring them to you when I got them, because I didn’t know what was going to happen with us. Everything has been so crazy lately… with you having another baby and getting engaged to Jennifer, and me being followed by psychotic reporters… I just… tucked it away.” She sat back in her chair and watched him.

He nearer to her and looked her in the eyes. “I already know what this says. This says that the t little one in your belly is my baby.” After he spoke, he reached down and ripped the envelope open, and pulled the papers out. Naomi watched as his face lit up with pure joy, and he beamed at her in excitement as he handed the papers to her. “Just as I thought.”

She didn’t look at them. She didn’t need to. She set them on her desk and gazed at him seriously. “So now a lot of things are cleared up, but there is one thing that’s not.”

“What’s that?” he asked her with concern.

“Us,” she answered him. “What do you want to do about us?” It was the million-dollar question, and she truthfully had no answer to it, and no idea what he was going to say to her.

Scott didn’t hesitate even a second. “I want you. I want you to be with me and I want to raise our little one together in the same house and have a family. I love you, Naomi Peters, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and with this baby and any other babies that we have in the future.” He looked at her imploringly, and she felt as if he had just reached into her chest and taken her heart of out of it with his bare hands.

She swallowed and cleared her throat. “I want that, too, Scott, but… I want a relationship where we can be out in the open. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to be kept as a shameful secret, and something that you don’t want anyone else to know about or see. I’m worth more than that. I’m worth someone loving me for who and what I am, and I’m worth being proud of. I want that, and I want it with you, but I’m not going to commit to you at all if that’s not how it’s going to be.

You’ve kept me hidden from the world long enough, and if you want to be with me, then you have to be willing to bring me and our baby out into the public eye. I’ll deal with the press. I don’t care about that. I’ve just had a huge lesson in it, and I get now; I do, and I appreciate you trying to protect me, but we are not going to have a relationship where you are the only one out in the open. That’s not going to happen. Not to me, and not to our baby.”

She had laid it all out on the line. It was the bravest moment of her life, and she was fairly certain that she had never been more scared of what someone might tell her, but she was not going to back down from it. She had meant every word that she said, and she was standing by it, both for her and for the baby.

Scott nodded. “That’s fair. I understand that, and I deserve that. I never should have hidden you away from the world. These last few months would have been totally different if I hadn’t hidden you away, but I made a mistake while I was trying to protect you, and I’m sorry for that. I should have had you out on my arm the whole time. I’m never going to do that again, Naomi. I’m proud of you, and the whole world is going to know it, and I’m going to make sure of it.”

She stood up from her desk and walked around it to him, and he reached for her and pulled her down to sit on his lap, wrapping her in a warm hug. “I love you, Naomi. Marry me. Make an honest man out of me, and let me be the husband you deserve, and the father that our baby deserves.”

She didn’t answer at first. She just looked at him, and then she leaned down and kissed him softly. “I will marry you, Scott Thompson, and I love you too. Always.”

THE END