Page 24 of Expecting an Argument
“This is only temporary,” I promised.
As soon as my twins were born, I wasgone.
“You’re…you’re going to be a father?”
I clicked out of my inbox and closed my browser window before getting up from my desk. “Yeah, that’s what I just said in my email.”
“Sure, but I had to call to make sure you weren’t hacked,” Chuck said through the phone. “You said that you wanted nothing to do with women when I called about those galas, and now you’re emailing me saying you have babies on the way? Forgive me for being skeptical.”
I let out a short laugh as I spun the giant antique globe next to my desk—the one my mother had glued googly eyes all over. “I pay you to be skeptical. If this were a test, you would have passed with flying colors.”
I grabbed the water bottle that I had drained after my run and walked out of my study. “And I never said I wanted nothing to do with women.”
“Could have fooled me,” Chuck said as I entered the kitchen. “Anyway, it’s pretty early to be doing everything in the list you sent me—trust funds and the like. Do you even know what names the babies are going to have?”
“No.” I set my water bottle by the sink and grabbed the handle of the first brightly-colored steel cup from the line of tumblers I had bought last night. “Their mother thinks the twins are getting her last name, but she’s not going to win that fight.”
I set the phone on the kitchen island as I opened the freezer drawer.
“I don’t know,” Chuck groaned through the speaker. “My mom didn’t give me my dad’s last name, but he also wasn’t a Fontaine.”
I dropped a couple pieces of daisy-shaped ice out of their silicone molds into the steel cup. “Exactly. If your dad was going to have you inherit a generations-old family business one day, maybe your mom would have seen things differently.”
“She gave me his first name, but I don’t go by it,” Chuck said. “Not that it mattered. He walked out on us when I was five, so he wasn’t around to call me anything. ”
I opened the refrigerator door and swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat. “I…I didn’t know that about you, man.”
I silently grabbed the first of four pitchers of water out of the fridge.
“Eh, it doesn’t bother me,” he said, and I could almost hear him shrug through the phone. “It happens a lot more often than people think.”
The ice in the cup cracked as I poured the water over it. “Yeah.”
“As far as the kids go, I can at least look into making trust funds for the little beans. You have enough capital to play around with, so I’ll see how I can make their money grow thefastest.”
I put the pitcher back into the fridge. “Speaking of which, I need you to make an account for child support. Open up a card for Olivia Adams.”
“You know you don’t have to legally pay child support until the babies are born, right?”
“Do you think I give a shit?” I screwed the lid securely onto the cup and walked out of the kitchen. “This is the best way to make sure my babies are taken care of without their—”
I stopped in my tracks as soon as I entered the foyer and looked up at the second floor landing to check for movement. Even though I found none, I still dropped my voice to a whisper. “—without theirstubborn assmother fighting me on it. You can’t imagine just how prideful this woman is.”
“You picked her.”
I scowled at the phone. Olivia Adams was the last person I would have ever picked to be the mother of the only Fontaine heirs. Thanks to their mother’s genes, my poor babies would probably be born with miniature encyclopedias in their hands, have horrible eyesight, and I would hear“Did you know…?”in stereo for the rest of my life.
“What can I say,” I replied cooly. “I’m a man who honors my obligations regardless of the circumstances.”
I crossed the foyer and headed up the stairs. “And on that note, put ten percent of my monthly income in the child support account.”
“T-ten percent?” Chuck replied. “Are you insane?”
My feet hit the carpet runner of the second story landing and I paused in front of one of the green knights.
I considered just how much ten percent of my monthly income was. “You’re right. I’m having twins—make it twenty percent.”
“But—!”
