Riot novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Lobby
Joss tells Rhys she is pregnant in front of his staff and he calls her a trapper; she walks out wanting nothing, and his mother catches her at the curb.
I told Rhys Ambrose I was pregnant in the lobby of his own tower, in front of forty of his employees.
I had tried the front desk first.
The woman there said he did not take walk-ins and his assistant had a six-week wait.
I said I would sit and wait.
That was at nine in the morning.
By noon my feet had swollen, my stomach was rolling, and I had not eaten since a dry cracker at six.
A woman in a gray cardigan on the next bench pushed a cold water bottle into my hand.
"Drink that, honey. You're white as paper," she said.
"He walks through here every day at noon for the press photos. I'll make sure he stops for you."
I thanked her twice.
I was the kind of fool who thanked people.
At noon the elevator doors opened, and Rhys came out with an assistant on one side and a man filming on a phone on the other.
He had the black turtleneck on, the same dark hair, the same hard jaw.
Eleven weeks ago I had watched that jaw go slack against my shoulder.
I stood up and stepped into his path.
"Rhys. I need two minutes."
He looked at me for a full second before he placed me.
"The bar," he said. "We had one night. We agreed on that."
"I'm pregnant."
The lobby went quiet.
The man with the phone raised it a little higher.
Rhys's face went flat, and then his voice went worse.
"Is it mine?"
"Yes."
"You're sure."
"You're the only man I've slept with this year."
He laughed once, short and ugly, and he said it loud enough for the whole floor.
"Of course you came here. Of course you brought an audience."
"I didn't bring anyone," I said. "I've been on that bench since nine."
"Then explain how it happened."
"The condom tore. You saw it tear, and you asked if I was covered. I said I was on the pill, and I thought I was."
"You pulled it out of your own nightstand, Rhys. From the box your housekeeper keeps stocked."
"My housekeeper restocks that drawer every month," he said. "Nothing in it fails."
"Then something did."
He stepped closer, and his voice dropped low and rough.
"So you were going to keep it from me. I find out I have a kid from a girl in my lobby, eleven weeks late."
I stepped back.
"I almost called you a dozen times," I said. "Then I remembered what you said at the door. No calls, no repeats. I figured you wanted no part of a baby either."
"You figured."
"I did the math on what you wanted, Rhys. I thought I was doing you a favor."
His jaw worked.
"A favor," he said. "A woman tells a man she's covered, and eleven weeks later she shows up at his office with a belly and a camera in the room."
"That camera is yours," I said. "It's your press man. I don't even know his name."
"Mr. Ambrose," his assistant said quietly, "the photographers are outside at the revolving door."
Rhys did not look at her.
He looked at me, and then he turned his head to the room.
"She's on no list in this building from today," he said. "Anyone who lets her up here answers to me."
Somebody near the desk snickered.
Another voice said, "Wow."
I felt every one of those eyes crawl over my plain jacket and my work shoes.
"A paternity test before she gets a dollar," he said to his assistant, as if I had left.
"I haven't asked you for a dollar."
"Everyone asks."
"I'm not everyone."
"You're a mistake I made on the worst night of my life," he said. "Don't make it worse."
His father had been buried that afternoon.
I had been working the bar next door when he walked in alone, still in his funeral suit, and asked for whatever was strongest.
I never went home with customers.
I went home with him because he looked like he was going under, and I was the nearest person.
I looked at the phone, still pointed at my face.
I looked at the forty faces, and at the assistant who would not meet my eyes, and at the man who had once put his forehead to mine and said my name like it hurt.
I put the water bottle down on the front desk.
"I came here because he had a right to know," I said. "He knows. I'm done."
"Jess," Rhys said.
That was not my name.
He had never asked it.
"It's Joss," I said. "Eleven weeks, and you still don't know it. Keep your money. I'm having this baby, and I don't need your name on it."
So I turned around and walked out of the tower.
The revolving door spat me onto the sidewalk in a wind that smelled like the lake, and I barely made it down the block before my knees began to shake.
Footsteps hurried up behind me.
It was the woman in the gray cardigan, out of breath, holding it closed at her throat.
"Joss," she said. "Wait. I'm so sorry."
I turned, and she took both my hands in hers, and hers were warm.
"My name is Honor Ambrose," she said. "I'm his mother."
My stomach dropped.
"I heard every word," she said. "I believe you. I believe every word."
Her eyes were wet.
"Come to Sunday dinner at the lake house at six. He will be there, and I'll sit you next to me, and he'll listen."
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