ODESSA

“You going to silence that or what?” Dane groans from across the conference table, his eyes fixed on Beckham’s glowing phone. It’s been chiming and buzzing almost nonstop for the last three hours.

“Never,” Beckham says. “If Peterson calls, I don’t want to miss it.”

“Who’s been calling all morning? Can’t you block their number?” I interject, though it’s not my place. Can’t help but feel comfortable around these two. Despite hardly knowing them, they’re easy to be around. Hardly intimidating once you get past Dane’s tungsten-strength front and Beckham’s relaxed arrogance.

“I don’t block anyone’s number,” Beckham says.

“Maybe you should stop giving it out so much.” Dane slams his pen down, flipping to a new page in his legal pad. “Ever think of that?”

“Don’t go there, Dane.” Beckham sits up, silencing the fresh call that comes in.

“May I?” I place my hand out, palm up. “It’s a woman, right?”

The men exchange looks, and Beckham carefully slides his phone my way.

“Beckham King’s phone,” I answer, injecting friendliness into my tone. “How may I help you?”

There’s hesitation from the other end though I can hear someone breathing.

“Hello?” My voice lilts. “Are you still there?”

“Who is this?” The woman on the other end finally speaks.

“This is Mr. King’s personal assistant. I handle his social calendar and other engagements.”

“I want to talk to him.” She sounds like a child stomping their foot at a toy store. “I don’t want to go through someone. This is ridiculous. Put him on the phone.”

“Unfortunately he’s preoccupied at the moment,” I say. “I’m happy to take a message.”

“Put. Him. On. The. Phone.” Her voice falls an octave, but it doesn’t intimidate me.

“And your name?” I ask sweetly. It’s an old trick from when I used to answer phones at a doctor’s office. Patients would call and make demands, and the second you lead them to believe they’re about to get their way you ask their name. Half of them would hang up and never call back. The other half would pretend they didn’t just have a conniption fit over the phone and offer their name without hesitation.

“Listen, you’re going to put him on the phone.” The woman’s words are sharp but weightless.

She’s still not getting through.

“I’m terribly sorry,” I say. “I just can’t do that. Are you a personal friend of Mr. King?”

“You could say we have a connection.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

She sighs.

I peer across the table. The guys are watching me like I’m about to perform some kind of Voodoo ritual. I point a finger up and excuse myself, dashing from the conference room and finding a quiet hallway.

“Listen,” I say to the woman when I’m alone. The things I’m about to say are hurtful but only half-true. Beckham doesn’t need to hear them. “He’s not that great. He’s just good at making people think he’s great. He’s like a desert mirage, you know? He looks like something we want, but it’s all an illusion.”

She’s quiet.

“You still there?” I ask.

A sigh comes through her end. “Yes.”

“Calling him repeatedly is a huge waste of your time, and honestly, you’re not doing yourself any favors by acting like some crazy ex-girlfriend,” I lay the words as gently as possible, though it’s difficult to be sympathetic when someone’s behaving like a lunatic. “Am I making sense?”

“Give him a message for me, will you?” Her voice is surprisingly pert all of a sudden. “Tell him to go fuck himself. And I hope his fucking cock falls off. Oh, and my friend is about to give birth to his baby.”

“Y-your friend?”

“Yeah,” she snips. “I’m not stupid enough to sleep with that fuckwad but she was. She’s being induced tonight at New York General. It’s a girl. Tell him congratu-fucking-lations.”

My heart falls, sinking to the deepest part of me. “D-does he know?”

“Hell if I know. She won’t tell us a damn thing, just that the baby is his.”

“I’m sure if he knew, he’d be there.”

Beckham might be a lot of things, but I can’t imagine him being a deadbeat father.

“He probably doesn’t know. I’ll talk to him,” I say.

“Yeah, you do that. And tell him to man up or I’ll personally see to it he’s paying out the ass for child support for the next eighteen years.”

My heart races at the thought of dropping this bomb on him. Here I thought I was saving another broken heart Beckham left in his path of manwhoring destruction.

“What’s your friend’s name?” I ask.

“Eva Delgado,” she says. “And if he wants to talk to her from now on, he’ll go through me.”

“I’ll relay the message right away.” My fingers quake, weighted by the kind of news I never expected to deliver.

My legs wobble as I amble back to the conference room. The walk back feels longer than the one that carried me to that quiet hall. Beckham and Dane observe with amused smirks as I shut the door quietly and hand Beckham his phone.

“How’d it go?” Beckham asks.

A long breath drags across my lips as I sink down into my chair. My bottom lip falls, and my gaze drifts between theirs.

“Congratulations,” I say.

“What the hell are you talking about, Odessa?” Beckham laughs.

“You’re going to be a father.” I search his eyes for a hint of something that tells me he had no idea.