Page 31 of Man Seeking Woman

Chapter Eight

August

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"I'm telling you thesame thing I've told everyone else, I have no comment about last night." Hanging up the phone, I spun in my chair to face the window. Looking out at the city, it was frustrating to love and hate something so much.

This city had gifted my family everything we had, it made me the man I was, but I hated how the money we had turned us into a circus the masses were interested in. My mother basked in the exposure, doing things on purpose to keep us in the headlines. She always said that there was no bad press.

I couldn't have disagreed more.

Since I took the brewery over about a year and a half ago, I did my best to keep us drama free. The cameras flashed for the reasons I wanted; a new flavor beer, donations we made to the community, and not for my mother's new facelift because my father had stepped out into the lime light with a new girlfriend.

And suddenly, it had come around full circle, back into quick snapshots of moments and misconceptions of the truth. I hated having to explain myself and my life to people who served no purpose in it to begin with.

I wish I could just tell them to get fucked. . .

The reporters wanted to know if the baby rumors were true and if marriage was in the future. They questioned how long our relationship had been going on, or if it was a one night stand gone wrong. There was speculation about possible due dates and whether I thought it was a boy or a girl, or if I thought the baby was mine at all.

Fucking media is always jumping four steps ahead.

The only thing that really bothered me was the seed hadn't even been planted yet, the date last night was merely just the start of a possible future. A future I desperately needed or I'd lose everything.

With the rumors swirling, I felt this urgency to knock her up and make it true. Make it real. Make her mine.

Staring off at the horizon, I felt stuck. I knew what had to happen, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get there. Swooning a woman who thought I was fucking crazy wasn't going to be easy.

"Mr. Burke?" Diane asked, poking her head inside my office as she lightly knocked at the same time. "There's a woman here to see you, she says you know her—Ella Day?"Quirking an eye, my face must have changed in a way that wasn't pleasant. "I—I can just tell her you're not available."

Didn't see this coming so soon.

As she started to shut the door, I spoke up quickly. "No, no, it's okay, you can send her in."

Giving me a curt smile, she closed the door. I didn't even want to know what was going through her head. Diane had been the secretary at the brewery for years, she had watched women come and go with my father, and saw the way they used him for his money.

I never wanted to be like my father, because I never planned on getting used. He had no problem leaving my mother to live like Hugh Hefner, but I wanted no part in it. Woman after woman walked through those doors, all of them acting as if they were entitled to a small piece of his fortune.

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