The Baby Bargain Read online

  The Baby Bargain

  Layla Valentine

  Holly Rayner

  Contents

  Want More?

  1. Harley

  2. Ashton

  3. Harley

  4. Harley

  5. Harley

  6. Harley

  7. Ashton

  8. Ashton

  9. Ashton

  10. Harley

  11. Harley

  12. Harley

  13. Harley

  14. Harley

  15. Harley

  16. Harley

  17. Harley

  18. Harley

  19. Ashton

  20. Harley

  21. Harley

  Epilogue

  More Series by Holly Rayner

  Copyright 2018 by Layla Valentine and Holly Rayner

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

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  Chapter 1

  Harley

  This isn’t going to go well.

  “Stop it,” I muttered to my brain, which was being unhelpfully pessimistic. “This has to go well.”

  Dating’s changed since you were last in the game.

  Was my inner voice cock-blocking me? Why couldn’t I just go on a regular old date without being plummeted into a well of self-doubt? I was still only twenty-five, far too young to hang up my bra and resign myself to spinsterhood.

  But, yeah, it had been a while. Last week, about two thirds of the way through a bottle of cheap prosecco, Megan had grabbed my phone and downloaded a slew of dating apps.

  “Oh, come on,” I’d grumbled. “Those things were invented for younger, baby-less women.”

  “Twenty-five is young!” she’d shrieked back, and that was the end of the conversation.

  She’d downloaded Tumble, MeetKute, SayHey, so on and so forth, and made a full profile for me within minutes. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she was some sort of matchmaker.

  And, for what it’s worth, Megan sure knows how to make a profile; I’d had twenty matches by the time she’d passed the phone back with a yawn, already bored of the men. Had I looked that cute in my pictures? Or was it her chirpy, friendly little bio? I’d need to study the analytics at some later date.

  My hands tapped nervously on the steering wheel. Hey, at least if it goes badly, you can blame it on her, my inner voice offered helpfully.

  Great, just what I was looking for—advice on how to isolate my friends and lose dates. Soon, there’d be no one left but me and Levi, all alone in our one-room apartment. And then he’d be a teenager, and he’d hate me, and I’d be really, truly alone.

  No, this was no good.

  “Just breathe,” I instructed myself under my breath. “It’s just a date, not the SATs. No testing here.”

  But, if I were being honest, well, I didn’t think I was in a place to trust a man farther than I could throw him. And, asking, “Hey, do you think you’re gonna walk out on me and my newborn?” to a first date is, as a rule, fairly off-putting. I know, crazy; you’d think men would be dying to become step-fathers in their mid-twenties, but nope!

  Kyle “Asshole” Jones had been proof enough of that.

  Don’t think about him, my inner voice growled.

  I’m weak, though, and couldn’t help it. How could I not think about him when I was about to go on my first date since he left? My capacity for recovery is solid, but Kyle was a bridge too far.

  Walking out on your pregnant girlfriend and your unborn son? Asshole moves indeed.

  No, hold on, “walking out” isn’t the right phrasing. Let me clarify: he lied, cheated, and accrued ridiculous amounts of debt—which led to a whole battalion of debt collectors descending upon Kyle’s moronic head. Could he have foreseen the consequences of his relentlessly stupid actions? I imagine so, yes. I just don’t think he cared enough to look even slightly into the future, into our future.

  Because, unbeknownst to me, he hadn’t seen a future for us. In retrospect, I think it was the moment I found out I was pregnant that he decided he needed to seek greener pastures. He wasn’t ready to be a father, no more than I was ready to be a mother.

  In any case, Kyle wasn’t ready, and the debt collectors were snapping at his heels by the time he left, around the five-month mark. It was the perfect excuse to high-tail it into the darkness, leaving me high and dry. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in the fifteen months since, and I didn’t expect to.

  Jackass.

  “Forgiveness, Harley, forgiveness,” I reminded myself. “You are forgiving.”

  Saying that, maybe I’d have made further progress with my mission of forgiveness if he hadn’t left me with a mountain of his crap to shovel. Because when Kyle had disappeared, his debts hadn’t disappeared with him. Instead, they’d fallen on me. I was now ducking phone calls from collectors like a messed-up game of dodgeball. My evasion tactics could only hold for so long; I knew that I could break at any moment. And all because of deadbeat Kyle.

  Sorry. I’m calm. The point being, could anyone in good conscience ask me to trust men, after what he did to me? I don’t think so.

  But here I was, at Megan’s bequest, en route to a date.

  I owed her this; she’d been my patron saint after Kyle had skipped out, helping me cook and clean and take care of Levi when he arrived. She’d become a one-woman coven, brewing me herbal teas and even burning incense. So, when Megan had asked me to do something as simple as go out for drinks, well, it was hard to refuse. Seemed like the very least I could do.

  My parents were caring for Levi for the night. I’d initially expected they’d be disappointed with me for getting knocked up by a complete ass—and out of wedlock, no less—but in reality, they were just thrilled to have a grandkid. My mom likes babies, but my dad loves them. He spends every waking moment he can with Levi, playing with blocks and building train tracks.

  Luckily, Dad was able to see plenty of Levi because I had settled in San Bravado, the same town where my parents had raised me, and where they were now retired. In fact, at the moment, we lived only a few blocks from one another, making them the perfect last-minute babysitters. Tonight, however, they had a bridge game arranged, so I was on the hook for a sitter.

  San Bravado had changed a lot in the last two decades, and I wasn’t sure how much longer it would even slightly resemble the place where I grew up. In my early childhood, it had been a small town in the body of a city, so to speak—all quaint awnings, local bookshops, healing wellness spas. It had been the actualization of the expression “it takes a village.” Every adult who’d lived on the street where I’d grown up had helped me and my family, in both tangible and intangible ways. McMully did our composting, Deirdre sewed my pants when I tore them again, Felix made us an eerie custom doorbell that I would constantly press to drive my mom nuts…

  You get my point. It felt like home.

  I must have been nine or ten when the tech boom hit. From around the world, people flocked to San Bravado to pursue start-ups and venture capital work, leaving simple, middle-class folks like my family in the lurch.

  As I drove through the streets
on my way to this damned date, the signs were everywhere: old, Art-Deco apartment buildings being knocked down to make way for tech company housing, quirky storefronts being converted into outlandishly expensive boutiques. Gentrification was destroying my city like a creeping vine, wrapping its tendrils around the communities and squeezing tight.

  On top of destroying our local culture, the tech bubble had ruined my finances. Kyle had had a part in that, to be fair, but the rapid development wasn’t helping matters. Whereas the city used to be middle-class accessible, it was now designed—and priced—for the rich. The average coffee was up to $5 a cup. Five dollars! How was a single mother supposed to provide for her child? I was making ends meet, but just barely.

  “Stop,” I said aloud, halting my train of painful thoughts. I rubbed my forehead, trying to get the creases that had set in to iron themselves out. That’s not to say I wasn’t cute. I was cute. Hot, even. But life was beginning to take its toll on me, and my face was starting to reflect it.

  Suddenly, my GPS pinged—I had arrived at the restaurant, Lola’s. It was new San Bravado to a tee: lights in mason jars, “farmhouse” wood trimmings, a miniature succulent garden. I sighed, knowing in my heart—without even looking at a menu—that everything was going to be vegan. Damn it. Meat was what kept me going, and I would have to suffer through hummus and crudités just to have the chance with this dude. No man was worth this sacrifice.

  But I had to do this. For Megan, if nothing else.

  I scanned the street; no parking. With a reluctant sigh, I drove up to the valet and handed him my keys. Damn. Now I was on the hook for this bill, too.

  Disembarking from the car, I straightened out my sheath dress and used my phone to check my makeup. Perfect. Dewy cheeks, big lashes, and a light tint on my lips. The valet passed me a ticket, which I pocketed, and then, I turned towards Lola’s, steeling myself with a deep breath.

  I entered via the overhung cobblestone path and was soon inside the restaurant. The place bustled with the noise of diners; people chewing noisily on their kale salads, sipping overpriced drinks made with organic everything, and chatting about the Next Big Thing. Yuck.

  I sighed and began to search for Mike. Once, twice. Nada. Had he stood me up?

  Annoyance was just beginning to color my face when I saw a rather chubby hand wave from a corner table. Was that…Mike?

  “Oy,” I muttered.

  Mike had been, shall we say…generous, with his choice of profile pictures. If I had to take a guess, I’d say they were taken about five years ago. Since then, Mike had clearly put on some weight and lost a good deal of his hair. False advertising was an understatement.

  You’re doing this, my inner monologue proclaimed. Oh, so now it was in favor of this date? Why couldn’t my angel/demon just pick a side and stick with it?

  I shook my head. No more debating. Time for action.

  Mike didn’t rise from the table to come greet me, which I guess was fine. Seemed a little informal for a man of his age, but maybe I was just out of touch with dating customs.

  I strode to the table, weaving around people wearing oversized beanies and two-hundred-dollar T-shirts. At last, I closed in on Mike.

  “Hey there. Harley, right?” he said with a polite smile. Yeah, those pictures were definitely generous, but I didn’t want to dwell on it.

  “Hi, Mike. Nice to meet you in person.”

  “Sit down, sit down. Can I get you a matcha tea?”

  I sank into my chair and raised an eyebrow, asking, “Uh, they got anything stronger?”

  He was too slow to hide his grimace.

  “I believe they have craft beer. If you’re not concerned about your microbiomes,” he added, implying that I should be very concerned.

  “Beer is good.”

  His skeptical eyes raked me over, but I wasn’t taking that kind of scrutiny; I looked good, and significantly out of his league.

  Mike apparently came to the same conclusion, because he immediately fell into a pose of casual recline, as if he hadn’t just been hyper-analyzing me like I was some kind of data program to be pitched to potential investors.

  “So, where do you work?” he asked.

  Classic San Bravado. In this town, the place where you worked completely defined who you were.

  Wearily, I replied, “Swann Innovations.”

  His mouth rounded a little and he leaned in. I recognized that look on his pale face, and I could have put good money on the question he’d ask next.

  “What’s he like?” Mike queried furtively.

  Yup, that was the one. So predictable.

  Mike was, as I’d anticipated, asking me about Ashton Swann. Oh, Ashton. Where to even begin? Billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, and total monster. The guy had a reputation for being—well, actually, I won’t go into that. Let me just tell you the infamous Ashton story, the one that had been passed around the city for weeks and had cemented his reputation.

  Ashton had walked into an office, seen an employee browsing social media on her phone, and grabbed the phone out of her hand. He’d then inspected the picture on her screen and discovered it included her baby, who was suckling on a bottle made by Swann’s competitors in the childcare market. Ashton had fired her on the spot, saying that if she liked the other company so much, she could go work for them.

  So, he was rumored to be an absolute prick. But I hadn’t ever encountered that side of him, nor had the notorious story confirmed by any witnessing parties.

  Thus, in reply, I told Mike the truth.

  “I’ve only ever passed him in the hallway,” I said frankly. “And he seemed fine—pleasant, even. Smile, polite nod. You know. Nothing too histrionic.” I omitted from my recount that Ashton was indubitably hot as it probably wasn’t the best thing to bring up on a date.

  “Oh,” Mike sighed, obviously disappointed.

  “Sorry. I know people think that every employee has a blow-up story with him, but not so much, in my experience.”

  “But you guys have cycled through, what, a new vice president every year?”

  “A little longer than a year,” I said, surprised to find myself defending the CEO’s antics. “More like a year and a few months.”

  “Okay, fine,” Mike said with a barely-concealed eye roll. “A year and a few months. And the board of directors is terrified of him, right?”

  Was this supposed to be sexy date talk? Because it wasn’t revving my engines.

  I sighed, and returned, “Allegedly.”

  “They for sure are,” he shot back with confidence.

  “Then why’d you ask me if you were already certain?” I asked, irritated by this inquisition.

  A scowl flitted across his face, but he soon reined it in.

  “All right,” he said, obviously put out by my response, “let’s talk about something besides Ashton Swann.”

  I acquiesced, and the date continued in a less interrogative, friendlier vein. Mike worked at another tech company—shocker—lived in an up-and-coming area that used to be genuinely cool before the hipsters took over, and liked indie rock music. All in all, exactly what I’d come to know the average San Bravado man to be. That being said, I’ll modulate my response and contend that the date was going decently.

  Were we going to get married? Probably not. But it was an okay start.

  The vegan food (I’d been right, of course) was actually pretty yummy, and I enjoyed the tapas platter we shared. Mike and I were finding a rhythm, when I happened to bring up Levi.

  “So, the other day,” I began, “my son did the funniest thing. I know everybody hates parents’ stories, but—”

  “Wait, what?” he interjected.

  “My kid. I was going to tell you a story about him.”

  “You have a kid?!” Mike asked, stressing the question.

  “Yeah, it says that on my profile. Why do you sound—”

  Mike shot a pudgy finger in the air, waggling it in the direction of our server.

  “Che
ck, please!” he cried out over the din of the restaurant.

  In shock, I sputtered, “Excuse me?”

  “I, uh, just remembered I have somewhere to be,” he said by way of hurried explanation.

  “Really? At seven on a Saturday?” I scorned. “Sure. Okay. Let’s pretend like that’s a real excuse.”

  His eyes went wide, like a naughty kid getting caught stealing a cookie.

  “No, it’s absolutely the real thing, I swear—”

  “Don’t swear. I know you’re full of it; just get out of here.”

  Mike opened his mouth as if to say more, then thought better of it. He clamped his lips shut and threw a couple of twenties down on the table to cover his portion of the meal.

  “Bye, then,” he blurted out. His stubby legs carried him to the door with surprising haste, and I sat back in my seat, appalled.

  We’d been a whole hour into the date, and he had left with a fake excuse in under a minute. And all because I had a child—a fact that shouldn’t define me, but more importantly, one that was readily available on my profile. I wasn’t trying to hide Levi; he was the most important thing in my life.

  My guilt-ridden maternal side scolded me for wasting money on such a douche. You should have known better, the voice said, and for once, I had to agree with it. Why had I let Megan set me up on this?

  I just wanted to go home, put Levi to bed, and collapse on my couch with a pint of ice cream and my favorite show.

  Flagging the waiter down, I grimaced when I realized how much there was left to pay on the bill. Nearly a week’s worth of baby supplies.

  “Leaving so soon?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” I replied shortly with a pointed look at the empty chair opposite me.

  He deposited the check on my table without further inquiry. I immediately regretted my snippiness, but there was no undoing it now.

  Somewhat forlornly, I plopped my share of the bill onto the counter. With the check settled, I forked over even more cash to the valet, and drove home through the sleepy streets.