Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 132464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
I make a face registering my disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”
Kat shakes her head. “No, sir. I am not.”
I leap up again, pulling at my hair in frustration, and immediately sit back down. Goddamn, this woman. When that nurse said I couldn’t accompany Kat to Colby’s room because I’m not fucking family, Kat looked at me in that moment like she would have given anything in the world to call me her husband—I’m positive I didn’t imagine those puppy-dog eyes she flashed at me—and now that I’ve asked her to marry me only sixty minutes later, she’s turning me the fuck down? The woman’s deranged. What sane woman would ever dream of turning me down?
For fuck’s sake, I’m a thirty-year-old with over six hundred million dollars to my personal name—I’m talking personally here—and that’s not even including unvested shares in Faraday & Sons that will soon be coming my way to the tune of half a billion bucks if we play our cards right—or the eight hundred million bucks my uncle has told Jonas and me he’s earmarked for us in his will. And on top of all that, I’m not exactly Quasimodo to look at, either, let’s just be real—not to mention the fact that I’ve got a magic cock and I make the woman come like a fucking freight train every time I fucking glance at her. And she’s turning me the fuck down?
“Kat, don’t be a fucking terrorist right now,” I say, my voice filled with barely contained rage. “Think about what you’re doing.”
“Oh, you want me to think?” she says. “Am I having trouble thinking—perhaps due to the pregnancy hormones, good sir?”
I throw up my hands. “Would you stop calling me ‘good sir’? You’re annoying the shit out of me. Look, the bottom line is you’re having my baby, Kat, and it should have my name.”
Kat crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. “Fine. The baby can have your name. Happy?”
I’m stunned. “Well, no. I mean the baby should have my name and so should you—the mother of my child. We should be, you know, a unit—a legal unit.”
“Aw, you think so? You think ‘the mother’ should take your name because that’s the way we ‘should’ do it so we can be a ‘legal unit’?” She scoffs. “How sweet.”
I nod, not understanding her reaction in the slightest. “That’s right.”
“You really think so?”
I nod again. Why the fuck is she reacting like this? If anyone should be mad it’s me. Kat’s the one who didn’t take her goddamned pill. And now we both have to pay for her mistake for the rest of our lives. Under the circumstances, I think I’m behaving exceedingly well.
“You think we should, Josh?” She glares at me like she’s laced my iced tea with arsenic and she’s waiting for me to keel over. “Golly gosh, Joshua, I truly appreciate your incredible sense of duty. You’re a man of endless integrity, through and through (and, actually, I’m serious about that, even though I’m pissed at you—you really are a man of integrity). But I’m not gonna marry any man out of sheer obligation, not even my filthy-rich-hot-as-fucking-sin-baby-daddy.” Her eyes prick with tears. “Not even if he’s you.”
“Kat,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Stop acting like a fucking lunatic. I’m the one who should be pissed, not you.”
Kat raises an eyebrow. “Why should you be pissed?”
“Because you’re the one who fucked up and didn’t take your pill.”
Kat doesn’t speak for a long beat. “I’m really sorry about that,” she finally says. “You’re right—I totally fucked up.” Her eyes catch fire. “But I’m sure as hell not gonna compound one mistake with another. I’ll be your baby-momma, Josh, and I’ll certainly expect you to step up and be a father to this kid, financially and otherwise (which, by the way, I have no doubt you’ll do—again, I know you’re a man of integrity). But I’m most certainly not gonna marry you for no other reason than I’m gestating your accidental Faraday. Now, if you actually want to marry me, that’s a different story...” She pauses, her eyebrows raised, obviously expecting me to say something. “If that’s something you want, regardless of the baby...?”
I stare at her blankly. She’s got to be kidding. Why the fuck would I want to get married, other than the fact that she’s gestating my accidental Faraday? She knows I have no interest in marriage—I’ve told her so, as plain as day. There’s literally no other circumstance when I’d even think of asking Kat, or any woman, to be my wife, sorry-not-sorry. “Kat,” I say, emotion suddenly rising up inside me. “You’re asking too much of me. Stop being a terrorist and be rational.”
Kat’s eyes soften with sudden and surprising sympathy. “Josh, I’m not being a terrorist, though if I were, you’d certainly deserve it. I’m being kind to you in the long run, though you obviously can’t see it now. This baby was an accident, plain and simple. We both made it, but you’re right, I’m the one who flubbed taking my pill. You were relying on me to have my shit together and I blew it—so I hereby release you. You’ve made it clear how you feel about marriage—you don’t see the point in it.” She adopts a deep voice obviously intended as an impression of mine: “‘If you wanna go, go—if you wanna stay, stay.’ I haven’t forgotten what you said. Just because I’ve got an accidental Faraday in my uterus doesn’t mean you suddenly want to marry me in your heart. And I deserve to marry a man who loves me—not a guy who’s asking me to marry him to appease the ghost of his asshole-father.”