He reached for his towel and wrapped it around his waist.
She fixed the waistband of her cream silk pyjama bottoms. “Kinda used to it. It’s supposed to get better any day. Or so the books say. Do you have any arrowroot cookies?”
“Pretty certain I don’t, but if you tell me what they are, I’ll get dry and go buy the closest thing to them from the shop. Or make you some toast? That’ll help.” At least, he thought it would because he wasn’t a fucking pregnancy almanac.
Willow looked up at him, her skin sallow, and he felt sorry for her. He’d been hungover enough to puke occasionally. Never fun. “That would be good, thanks.”
Luke stepped out of the bathroom and retrieved clean bath and hand towels. “Here,” he said, handing them to her.
Once dressed, he stepped into the living room, and saw the space through Willow’s eyes.
It was a fucking tip.
Now the cleaning dream made sense.
Remembering how the smell had made her feel sick the day before, he threw the windows open wide before grabbing a couple of large, heavy-duty black bin liners from the cupboard.
Leftovers from the party he’d thrown the evening before last were littered on every surface. He’d gone to bed with a groupie from Wilmslow. Hot, but not the beauty Willow was. They’d stayed in bed all day, only coming out for leftover pizza, water to chase away the hangover, and his packet of cigarettes—until he’d had to shower to go to the party.
Shit, even a small patch of coke powder residue from the lines that had been cut on the glass table. He ran his fingers through the dust and rubbed it on his gums. A powdered morale boost to get through another shit-tacular day.
He grabbed the bowl from the sink, filled it with soapy water, and returned to clean the glass table, unwilling to risk the dust from the coke harming Willow or the baby.
He’d become a bona fide slob, and he hadn’t even noticed it happening. Too busy partying, enjoying his fucking life. He put the rubbish in his narrow hallway to take out, but even there was a mess. Mismatched shoes kicked into a pile, coats for every season crammed onto two hooks. God knew how long the single football sock had been gathering cobwebs in the corner.
After washing his hands, he grabbed some bread from the freezer and put it into the toaster, then set the kettle to boil. He opened the fridge to grab some milk for tea and butter to go with the toast and noticed his fridge was down to slim pickings. Hell, he should go shopping and stock up on, well, everything.
And tidy up.
And just like that, his whole Sunday was consumed. Which it would totally be every Sunday with a child.
Now he felt sick.
They’d used protection. He always carried his own in a size that fit him perfectly, given he was a little wider than most. But he’d had to grab vending machine ones in the hotel in the middle of their night together, and he should have known they’d be shit.
Luke breathed through it.
How could he think about the next twelve months when his heart felt like it wouldn’t make it through the next five minutes?
“Can I help with anything?” Willow asked as she walked into the living area. She wore a pair of loose-fit jeans and a thin, cream sweater.
“Nearly done,” he said, just as the toaster popped. He gave both slices to her before he put two more in for himself.
She looked fresh faced after her shower, her hair still damp. Pretty pink lip gloss covered her lips, and he bit down the urge to slide over there and nibble it off.
“Have you had time to think?” she asked, buttering her toast.
“I’d love to tell you that I have a master plan, but I still think I’m in the denial stage. It’s a lot to get my head around. We barely know each other. It’s not like we did a lot of talking.”
“Perhaps if we’d talked a bit more, we wouldn’t have had time to make, well . . .” Willow smiled at him, then continued applying butter to her toast, and yeah, he suddenly felt as though he were right back in her suite in Detroit. Before the whole baby shit kicked off. When he’d found her sense of humour endearing, her body hot, and her mouth captivating.
He jumped when the toast popped out of the toaster and he reached for his plate. Once he’d buttered it and smeared it with strawberry jam, he took a seat next to her at the breakfast bar.
“I know this is a shock,” she said, brushing the crumbs from her fingertips over her plate. “But I really do need your help.”
Luke swallowed his toast. “I’ve got my head that far around it. What was the absurd talk about a deal?”
Willow turned to face him. “The easy answer is: I don’t want to lose my sponsorships or platforms. And I need to know you will never breathe a word of this to the press.”
“For fuck’s sake, Will. Do you honestly think I’d do that?” Luke’s heart skipped a beat. A warning that he wasn’t going to like the next thing out of her mouth.
“I barely know you, Luke.”
“You said that’s the easy answer. What’s the hard one?”
“I’ve been let down badly by my family. It’s raw and unresolved. They betrayed my trust. How am I supposed to trust you? We slept together, one night. We talked for a little while backstage and in the cab. I don’t know who you are, or what kind of person you are.”
Luke raised a questioning eyebrow. “Who let you down?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “My dad, lawyer, and accountant. My business was set up by Dad when I was a minor. Everything is in his name. Everything my money was spent on is in his name. And the contract we have is outrageous. It’s going to take me a while to legally and financially emancipate myself from him.”
“Shit. That sucks. Do you have any money?”
“Yes. I have a Coogan account.”
“What’s that?”
“A studio legally has to put fifteen percent minimum of a child’s salary into a Coogan account to protect it from anyone around the child. The rest goes to the parents to manage. Taxes. Reasonable expenses. Management fees. The balance is meant to be saved for the child. My parents spent all of what was left on houses and investments in their own names. We were dirt poor when I got my first role, now my parents lead an extravagant lifestyle.”
“How do you unravel all that?”
“With a lawyer and forensic accountants who go back and work out where all the money went, and where it should have gone. Resolving it will take a while. Meanwhile, I’m focused on my influencer income, and I changed all the passwords on my social media accounts before I flew out. Dad had access before. I set up a new bank account, independent of Dad, and I’ve started to contact my sponsors, asking them to deal directly with me.”
“It sounds like you have this all under control, though. Why do you need me?”
“Apart from the fact you are the father?”
Luke bounced his knee and eyed the Scotch he kept next to the fridge. “Yeah, apart from that.”
“Brands can be puritanical. They may ditch me because of the legal fight, or the pregnancy. That’s why I need you and an angle to announce the pregnancy.”
“Angle?” he asked.
“Yeah. Angle. You commit to being in a relationship with me for the next twelve months at least. We’d say we met when we met, but that we kept in touch in between, realised we couldn’t live without one another, and that we are now thrilled to be together and expecting. And maybe you could be in the content with me. Like videos of us doing baby stuff. Make it look as wholesome as it could be, without anybody knowing I got knocked up during a one-night stand with a total stranger.”