Jessie Slaymaker's Rules of Engagement (The Jessie Slaymaker Series Book 2) (13 page)

After saying a quick goodbye to Rachel, Jessie raced back to the serviced apartment. She’d considered sending the man of the moment a forewarning text, but what could she say?
Your crazy ex-girlfriend is up the duff and it looks like you’re the father
. It wasn’t really a text-appropriate subject. This was a conversation that had to be conducted in person.

When Jessie threw open the door she was dismayed to find that Jack wasn’t there. She’d been confident that he’d still be there, recovering from his exerts the previous night, but she’d been wrong. She searched the apartment quickly, even checking behind the shower curtain, but there was no Jack.

She spent the next five minutes prowling around the living room, wearing holes in the wood laminate. She was about to start yet another circuit, when she heard a key in the lock.

‘Did you know about this?’ she launched at him loudly the second Jack’s face appeared. She waved the pilfered, toxic magazine in front of his face, in case he was in any wonder as to what
this
meant. Then she took a step back and chastised herself. She’d been planning on sounding rational and reasonable, but instead the demented hysterical woman within her had blared at him and accosted him before he could even get through the doorway.

‘What?’ he asked in genuine confusion as he struggled to focus on the paper that Jessie seemed unable to hold still. He tugged it gently from her hand and studied the picture of the double-page spread as he entered the apartment, kicking the door closed behind him. Then he froze as the full magnitude of what he was looking at hit him.

‘It’s not mine. It can’t be,’ he said as though thinking aloud, the shock still registered all over his face and in his body language.

‘You
were
together though, when this baby was conceived,’ Jessie said carefully, finding some inner calmness from somewhere deep inside. ‘It says in the article she’s between five and six months pregnant. That puts it around about the time that you…’ Jessie trailed off, lost for words.

‘Well after I shagged her by accident you mean, and then shacked up with her,’ Jack said angrily, saying what they were both thinking. ‘But how can we even believe this is true?’ he added. It was his turn to wave the offending magazine at her. ‘We hardly ever did anything.’

‘It’s this week’s edition,’ Jessie said, somehow managing to detach her emotions and focus on the facts, choosing to blank out the thought of Jack and Sonia doing anything together, let alone making a baby. ‘Look at the picture, Jack. She’s pregnant. She’s clearly
very pregnant
. And there’s a chance it could be yours.’

‘I guess,’ Jack offered by way of an inept reply. He threw the magazine on the floor and began pacing around the living room, just as Jessie had been doing moments earlier.

‘Don’t you want to find out? So you can be sure?’ Jessie began. ‘I really think you need to call her and find out what’s going on.’ Jessie felt a wave of assertion wash over her from somewhere. It felt familiar and therefore good for her to think rationally and pragmatically about a problem. She had already overcome her shocked phase—it had somehow helped to pass that baton onto Jack—and had moved onto her constructive, let’s troubleshoot phase, no longer coming apart at the seams.

‘And then what? It’s not like she’s come hounding me with the information. She obviously doesn’t need me to do anything,’ Jack said, turning surly.

‘You
are
kidding, right?’ Jessie asked, fixing him with an incredulous stare. ‘You seriously want to just ignore all this and pretend that some woman isn’t walking around with Jack Junior in her gut?’

‘That’s precisely where you’re wrong, Jessie. She’s not just
some woman
. She’s Sonia Shum. I’m finally rid of her, or so I thought. Why would I actively seek out contact with her, if I don’t have to?’

‘Because it could be yours!’ Jessie said, exasperated with him. She knew he was still in shock, but she was finding it hard to make allowances for him.

‘So what?’ Jack replied, demonstrating more surly teenage-esque characteristics.

‘I don’t believe you’re that indifferent to your potential offspring for one second,’ Jessie snapped at him impatiently. ‘You need to speak to her. It’s the right thing to do.’ There was a finality about her words, as though that was the end of the conversation. She began to gather her phone, keys, and bag together.

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ Jack said defiantly.

‘Like I said, it’s the right thing to do,’ Jessie repeated, sounding highly moralistic.

‘Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree,’ Jack replied, giving her a semi-smirk, like he’d just hit her with some kind of award-winning argument. ‘Where are you going?’ he then asked, looking suddenly panicked at the thought of being left alone.

‘I have to go and meet this real estate agent,’ Jessie said wearily. She’d told him several times already she had this appointment booked in the diary. He obviously hadn’t been listening to a word she’d said. Probably about anything. The bank had assigned her the serviced apartment for her first six weeks in Hong Kong, but she needed to find somewhere to rent sooner rather than later.

‘Okay, then I’ll come too,’ Jack said, sounding relieved at a task to do.

‘I’ll be fine on my own,’ Jessie replied. She didn’t really want him following her around in his present mood. She was none too impressed with Jack the teenager and needed some space to think.

‘Come on, Jessie. Be rational here. I want to have a say in where we live,’ Jack said, holding his hands out in a truce-like gesture.

‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t be living together,’ Jessie blurted out as she checked her watch and saw that she was late. Her emotions were all over the place. She felt calm and in control one second, and then insanely emotional and stressed the next. Her suggestion had escaped her lips before she’d even realised what it was she was saying. It’s not like she’d given the idea any serious contemplation. She’d merely vocalised a passing whisper of a thought, one that ordinarily wouldn’t have even lingered long enough to become a proper thought. But by saying those words, her passing whisper of a thought had manifested itself into a tangible idea, and ultimately something else to fight with Jack about.

‘Pardon me?’ Jack asked, stunned. She didn’t think it was possible, but he looked more surprised now than when he’d seen Sonia’s pregnancy picture.

‘You heard me,’ Jessie said, as her suggestion gained traction in her own mind. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be living together. I mean, how well do we
really
know each other? We’ve been together for a couple of months. If anybody I knew told me they were moving in after only a few months, I’d tell them to slow down. I think we just sort of assumed it would happen without actually talking about it properly. It’s a big step, Jack. For both of us.’ She walked around Jack, towards the door.

‘Great. That’s just bloody great. So you don’t want to live with me now,’ Jack said angrily, just as she placed a hand on the door handle. ‘Because of this,’ he said, snatching the magazine from the floor, walking towards her, and brandishing it in her face. He looked angry. Really angry. Jessie had never seen him like that before. It was like he was about to breathe fire.

‘It’s not just that,’ Jessie said in a small voice, fighting to meet his eye.

‘What are you talking about?’ he said, fixing her with an ever-increasing angry look that had her pinned with her back to the door.

‘Well, we haven’t had much fun at home this past week, have we?’ Jessie pointed out with a weak smile. His physical presence wasn’t so much intimidating, it was just claustrophobic and made it hard for her to think properly. She half expected him to pounce on her and kiss their argument away. He did things like that from time to time, and part of her was longing for him to do that now, so she could get out of the silly mess she’d created for herself.

‘Need I remind you that I have been sick,’ Jack said, backing off half a pace. Jessie saw red and any daydream of him suddenly snogging her face off was superseded by her desire to punch him clean on the nose. The only reason she didn’t was because she didn’t want to hurt herself.

‘Of course you don’t
need
to remind me,’ she snapped back, with venom. ‘I’ve had enough daily evidence to have it fucking tattooed on my mind for all eternity,’ she shouted at him, forcing him to take another step back. He looked at her like she’d transformed into some kind of lunatic before his eyes.

‘Does this mean you want to see other people too?’ Jack asked quietly, with grave seriousness. Unlike Jessie, he sounded totally calm, unemotional even. His question took Jessie completely by surprise. She hadn’t expected him to say that in a month of Sundays. It was tantamount to asking her if she thought they should split up.

‘No, of course not,’ she replied defiantly, raising her chin slightly. ‘Do you?’ She narrowed her eyes, a note of challenge in her voice.

When he failed to respond, Jessie opened the door and slammed it as hard as she could behind her.

‘How the hell did that happen?’ Jack muttered to himself as he tossed the crumpled magazine onto the dining table. The rag was offensive to him. He didn’t want that kind of trash touching his skin. He slobbed out on the sofa and switched on the television for a bit of robotically aimless channel surfing.

That morning he’d woken up, seriously hung over and hungry. He’d gone out to grab a quick bite to eat, and when he came home, he’d found his whole world had all but imploded. Sonia was apparently pregnant. And more worrying, there was a very high probability that he was the father and that his first offspring was on its way. His mother would not be impressed.

Jack screwed up his face as he tried to recall when it could have happened. He was definitely with her when she’d conceived, but had be been
with
her? He couldn’t be sure one way or the other. Jack wouldn’t have put it past Sonia to have faked the whole thing, but there was something about that picture of her that had been thoroughly convincing. It was scary to think that he might become a father soon. He always thought he would be a dad at some point, but no way was he ready for a life commitment like that. And no way was he ready to become a father if Sonia Shum was the mother. He wanted nothing more to do with that woman, let alone raise a child with her.

And as if that prospect wasn’t bad enough, to top it all off, now Jessie didn’t want to live with him. Jack would ordinarily have written off her sudden mood change to the Sonia pregnancy shock, but then she’d confessed to having not enjoyed living him over the past week. Well, it hadn’t been a bed of roses for Jack either, now he came to think about it. He’d been sick and he’d barely seen Jessie once she’d started work. She’d made it clear that work was her priority, and would probably be even more so since her latest job revelation. She would be doing her utmost to prove herself at her bloody bank, and he would be relegated down her list of priorities.

He hadn’t even answered her when she’d asked him if he wanted to see other people. He’d said it to be cruel in the heat of the moment to cause her pain. Jack didn’t want to see other people, and he most certainly didn’t want Jessie to.

‘It was just a fight,’ Jack muttered to himself as images danced across the screen in front of him. When she came home they could talk things through properly and get things back on track.

Maybe even someday they’d laugh about it. They’d both been in shock over the whole baby thing and had said things they didn’t mean and no doubt now regretted. ‘Just a fight,’ he continually muttered to the empty apartment. They were just blowing off steam and now needed some time apart to calm down. And then all would be well.

Jack forced his woes with Jessie aside, assuring himself that whatever damage had been done could be fixed when she got back. Whilst his personal life seemed to have taken a nose dive, his professional life was thankfully—and rather surprisingly—heading in a positive direction. He actually had something to do with his life and a direction in which to head. The previous evening, the one which had resulted in his god-awful hangover, had been a rather fruitful catch up with Irish Greg.

Greg had relocated to Hong Kong several years earlier and had set up a number of successful bars and restaurants in the city, and Jack had gone to see Greg with a view to gleaning information from him about the industry in Hong Kong. But he had come away with a hell of a lot more. Jack had heard through the grapevine that Greg had been looking for a business partner to share some of the workload of the day-to-day running of his growing empire, but he didn’t think that Greg would be interested in him after one meeting.

Yet they’d found they had a lot in common personally, and so they agreed to work together on one project to see if they could work together professionally before committing to a more formal business partnership. The project in question was for Jack to oversee the refurbishment and relaunch of one of Greg’s bars—one which wasn’t performing as well as it should have. This was going to serve as a prototype: a test for Jack to see if he liked working with Greg, as well as to discover if he had the necessary skills to make it in the food and beverage industry. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, Jack had a new direction. Greg had been more than happy to celebrate their fledgling business arrangement until the wee small hours. Hence the hangover.

To distract himself from dwelling on his questionable relationship status with Jessie—and the whopping great magazine-shaped elephant in the room—Jack pulled out his laptop and set about researching and planning what he wanted to achieve with his bar project. It was the first time since he’d departed Shanghai that he had something constructive to do with his time. And the more he thought about it, the more exciting a prospect it was to him. He couldn’t necessarily control the situation with Jessie, and he most certainly couldn’t control anything when it came to Sonia. But a bar refurbishment could be controlled. And now all he wanted to do was get stuck in and make something happen.