Chapter 15
Nixon
I had to admit that Katana had stupefied me when she flat-out turned down my help. But it did let me know the woman was no gold digger, not that I’d truly suspected that anyways. It’d been a week since I’d left her to take care of things on her end, and I expected her to show up at any time. The movers had already brought her things to my place the day before, and everything had already been put away. She’d come home to find she had nothing to do. I hoped she’d be pleased about that.
Before I left her in Portland, I gave her a house key and wrote down the code to the security system for her, just in case I wasn’t home when she arrived for some reason. But I couldn’t wait for her to come home, so I took off early to be there.
When the front door opened around noon, I hopped up, feeling excited about our new beginning. “Hey!”
My face dropped, and I stopped right where I was as I saw it wasn’t Katana, but Shanna who’d come in. “Hey, yourself. What in the hell are you doing home so early on a workday?”
I hadn’t said one word about my news to anyone. And out of everyone in my life, I knew Shanna would be the one to think what I was doing was stupid.
Sitting back on the sofa, I said, “I’ve got something going on. And just what are you doing here? And why aren’t you at work?”
“It’s Friday. I always get off early on Friday’s. And I often come over here to lie out on your deck and chill from the weekly grind for a few hours.” She took the seat across from me. “You did give me your key, and you did tell me to come over anytime I wanted.”
I had done that. And now I kind of regretted doing so. How would Shanna take Katana, and vice versa?
Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on my thighs and steepled my fingers, trying to think of how I should tell Shanna my news. There really was no right way to tell her about this, so I just went for it. “Okay, you need to know something. Things are about to change. And I mean a whole hell of a lot.”
I saw her eyes move across the room to the brand-new rocking chair I’d bought for us for when the baby was here. She jerked her chin at it. “Why the new rocker, Grandpa?”
She’d left me a perfect opening, and I went for it. “I’m going to be a father, Shanna.”
Her blue eyes came back to me, and her jaw hung open. “No!”
I nodded and sat back. “The woman I told you about, the one who’d been on my mind so much …”
“The mindless whore?” she gasped.
“Hey!” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Shanna, you’ve been my best friend for a very long time, but I’m not about to let you talk that way about the mother of my child. She’s not what you think she is. She’s actually a freelance book cover designer, and a sweet woman. She’d thought we’d be fine, but she’d forgotten to take her birth control pills before we met that night at the club.”
“Sure she did,” Shanna said as she narrowed her eyes right back at me. “This whore might not be mindless after all. She might be very devious. Going to a club like that, filled with rich men—she knew exactly what she was doing. You’re a fool, Nixon. Lucky for you, I can take care of this gold digging bitch.”
“You won’t be taking care of a thing, Shanna. Katana isn’t at all what you think she is. She’d had a hell of a rough week and forgot to take the pills. I believe her.” I got up and paced, trying to calm myself down. She’d gotten me pretty damn mad, which didn’t happen very often, especially with her.
“Nixon, you need to face the facts. She used you to get her broke ass pregnant so she’d have a meal ticket she could use the rest of her pitiful life.” Shanna got up too and walked toward me, grabbing me by the shoulders to stop my pacing. “You’ll need to get a DNA test done once the kid’s born. If it is yours, you should get custody of it and leave her ass out in the cold. I’ll help you raise the kid, and you know your parents would drop everything to come help you too. Don’t let this tramp screw you any further than she already has.”
As I stood there looking into the eyes of this woman who I’d always trusted, I didn’t know what to think. What if she was right?
I didn’t know Katana Reeves at all. I knew so little about her, and yet I’d already made a huge commitment to her. Shanna might be right about everything. But what could I do now?
“She’ll be here today. I asked her to come live with me,” I blurted out.
Shanna let me go and turned around, slapping her forehead. “Shit! Are you fucking serious right now? Why in the hell would you do something that damn drastic, Nixon?”
“I want to do what’s right. Look, you really don’t know her. She’s not what you think. If she were a gold digger, then she’d have let me do all I wanted to do for her. She wouldn’t let me spend a dime to get her out here. She offered to pay half the bills here, which I said no to, of course.”
Shanna spun around with a terrible frown on her face. “Nixon, please tell me you can see through all of that. Sure, why not take on the little expenses of moving all her things and whatever else she had to do? In the end, she’ll be rich—because you’re being a fool.”
I just couldn’t see Katana being that type of person. “She’d never even been to that club before. She’s a foster kid with no family she knows of. I couldn’t leave her to fend for herself while carrying my baby. She’s been sick with the pregnancy …”
“Is that what she told you?” Shanna asked as her hands went to her narrow hips. “Because people can lie, you know.”
“She’s lost weight—at least a good ten pounds, and in a very short amount of time. She’s not lying. I want to be a part of this whole thing. I want to share this with her. Understand or not, it doesn’t matter. I’m moving her in with me, and we’re going to raise this child together.”
“Are you saying you’re going to marry her?” she asked, then blew her blonde bangs out of her eyes.
“I didn’t say that. We’re not in love. We’ve only been together twice. It would be insane to ask her to marry me, right?” I asked, as it kind of had been on my mind, the idea to make things real between us. The last week had me thinking about her even more than I had been before she’d told me her news. I kept picturing her beautiful face, hearing her delicate voice, and I missed her even more than I had in the first place.
“This entire thing is insane, so yes,” she answered. “Asking her to marry you would be such a giant mistake.”
I sat down and put my head in my hands. Shanna’s reaction was the exact reason I hadn’t told a soul about what I was doing with Katana. Without other people’s input, I’d made every decision quite easily. But now I was second guessing everything I’d decided.
“I miss her, Shanna. You know I already missed her before.” I decided to do some confessing to my best friend. Maybe I’d been wrong to hide so much from her. Maybe that was why she’d taken this firm position, because she didn’t understand everything. “When we got back from Texas, I had already decided I was getting back on the jet and going to Portland to find her. But she called me before I even started heading her way. When we met at my hotel, we couldn’t keep our hands off one another and ended up in bed before she could even tell me a thing.”
She looked stunned. “You hid that from me? Why?”
“I knew you would’ve tried to stop me.” I looked at her and hoped she could see how I really felt about Katana. “I didn’t want to take Bianca to the bar that night because I had Katana on my mind. I’ve had her on my mind since I left her that first day. I have no idea if she’ll ever fall in love with me, but I can tell you this—I’m on the fast track to falling in love with her. But I won’t push her about that. I don’t want her to feel she has to love me for me to be in the baby’s life.”
“Well, fuck, dude.” She shook her head.
And her words just about summed it all up.