Page 64 of His Secret Virgin
Chapter 26
Emma
The sound of chimes woke me up out of a deep sleep. Blinking, I didn’t know where I was at first. But then it all started to come together in my head.I’m at Christopher’s home in his bed. But where’s he?
I sat up, rubbing my eyes as the chimes kept on playing. Then I looked at my cell. I’d forgotten that I’d changed my ringtone the day before. My mother was the calling me.
Hoping she wanted to apologize for everything, I answered the call. “Hi.” I yawned and stretched as I waited to hear her apology.
“Emma, we’ve just had a talk with Christopher, and he’s agreed to do the right thing by you. Your father and I want you to come home now. We’ll help you with everything, but you need to come home,” she said.
“What do you mean Christopher has agreed to do the right thing?” I honestly had no clue what my mother was talking about; Christopher already was doing the right thing by loving me and loving our baby.
“He’s letting you go,” she said, as if that were a good thing for me.
“No,” I simply said. “That’s not what’s best for any of us—not for me, him, or the baby. I’m not coming home unless he asks me to leave.”
Tension filled her voice. “Don’t make him go to those lengths, Emma. He’s not in his right mind. Just come home. Leave before he gets there.”
Now I felt as if she wasn’t telling me the whole truth. “Mom, what exactly did he say to you?”
“That he was going to do the right thing,” she said. “And we’d told him that the right thing would be to leave you alone. You deserve to be with someone more like you, Emma. Someone your own age. And when you’re really ready for a relationship and not being forced into one the way he’s done to you—”
“He hasn’t forced me into anything.” My stomach knotted with nausea, and I had to jump out of bed to run to the bathroom, throwing the phone on the bed as I went.
Once everything from my stomach was in the toilet, I sat on the floor, trying to catch my breath. My head hurt from the force of my heaving, and my body shook.Being pregnant sucks.
Once the lightheadedness wore off, my stomach growled. And just like that, I was starving to death.
There was no way in hell that I was about to go try to find the kitchen. The fact that I might run into Christopher’s daughters or get lost in the mansion was the deciding factor in that.
After washing up, I threw my clothes back on and grabbed my purse, then headed out to the front where I’d left my car. As far as I knew, Christopher wasn’t home. Judging by my mother’s phone call, I knew he’d taken it upon himself to go see my parents without me. That he hadn’t let me know his plans left me feeling a little prickly.
Just as I pulled up to a nearby fast food drive-through, my cell rang again. I’d put it into my purse, so I had to dig through it to find it. When I saw it was my father, I sent the call to voicemail. I didn’t want to argue. I only wanted to get something into my stomach.
Rolling down my window, I made my order. “Two sausage biscuits and a large apple juice.”
“Will that be all?” the person inside asked.
My stomach growled. “A hash brown, too.”
“Drive up, please,” the girl instructed me.
The breakfast was not the healthiest I’d ever eaten—and my parents definitely would not have approved of it. Not one piece of fresh fruit. Not one whole grain. Just white flour-based biscuits, fatty meat, and worst of all, a fried potato pancake. The apple juice might’ve passed their muster, but I just couldn’t make myself care in the least.
What I did care about was Christopher and what he thought was the right thing to do. Somewhere deep inside, I knew he thought it best to keep our baby and me in his life. But a nagging fear brought on by Mom’s call sat in the back of my mind.What if they got to him?
What if my parents had somehow convinced him that I would be better off if he left them to take care of me?
I’d never thought my parents would want to keep control over me so badly that they would consider it best to keep the father of my child out of our lives.
Driving up to the window, I smiled at the cashier as she told me the total.
Pulling a twenty out of my purse, I handed it to her. “Here you go.”
She gave me the change and the bag filled with my unhealthy breakfast foods, and I drove away. The smell made me ravenous, and I had to park in the grocery store parking lot next door to dig in.
I couldn’t recall ever being so hungry in my life. I scarfed it all down in record time. Then a burp came out of me that defied imagination. Gross, but I finally felt better.
