Normally, Melanie paid her bills with the money that she made from the bigger projects, like creating programs and databases, and used the money she made from designing websites and apps to pad her savings account, but right now, the big projects were out of the question. She couldn’t handle the eighteen-hour days that she usually put in for her projects and there was no way that she could guarantee any deadlines right now.
Smaller projects would be easier to handle and thank god those jobs were easier to come by. Five or six small projects a week should be enough to keep her going until after the baby was born and she had more time for work. Until then, she was going to have to do her best to make this work and be careful about her spending.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to control how much she spent on food, Melanie thought with a wistful sigh as she took a bite of the delicious powdered cinnamon donut that she was going to have to get more of. She really didn’t want to think about how much she was spending on food. The only thing that was stopping her from having a nervous breakdown over her food bill was Lucifer.
He was always cooking for her, checking on her to make sure that she had enough to eat, and refused to let her pay when she ate at the Fire & Brimstone. She wasn’t sure if he was doing this because of her relationship with Rebecca, his lovely bride who lived to torment him, or because they’d become friends in the last few months. The only thing that she knew for sure was that without him, she probably wouldn’t have made it this far.
She probably would have-
“Open the fucking door!” a terrifyingly familiar voice suddenly demanded, startling her, which of course, resulted in her dropping her delicious donut on the floor and making her realize that there was a very good chance that she was going to have to make another trip to the grocery store.
That is, if the man pounding on her door didn’t kill her first.
Chapter 3
“Melanie,” Aidan said tightly as he stood there, glaring at the apartment door that belonged to the woman that he’d prayed that he would never see again.
“I’m not here right now, but if you would like to leave your name, number, and a brief message, I’ll get back to you later,” the smart ass hiding behind the door managed to say before adding, “beep,” further convincing him that she was out of her fucking mind.
“Open. The. Door,” Aidan bit out, enunciating every syllable as he struggled to remember that he was a doctor and that he’d taken an oath not to strangle the infuriating woman that was fucking with his life.
There was a slight pause before she said, “Yeah, I really don’t think that would be in my best interest at the moment. So, if you’d like to come back later after you’ve had some time to calm down then-oh, crap,” Melanie finished with a groan when he decided to stop playing games and press his luck and see if the door was unlocked.
It was.
He threw the door open to find Melanie standing in the middle of the room, hugging a bag of donuts against her chest, pregnant, and looking completely surprised to see him. Taking a deep breath, Aidan forced his attention back to the large swell of her belly and had to remind himself that he wasn’t an asshole.
He didn’t yell at women and he sure as hell didn’t yell at pregnant women, but right now, he really wanted to do some fucking yelling. Needing something to do, Aidan rubbed his hands down his face and forced himself to remember that there was an innocent baby in all this, an innocent baby that might be his.
Exhaling slowly, Aidan dropped his hands away from his face and asked the question that he was afraid that he already knew the answer to. “Is it mine?”
Chewing on her bottom lip as she shifted nervously, Melanie slowly nodded.
“I see,” Aidan murmured, having absolutely no idea what he was supposed to say to that.
Well, that wasn’t completely true, because there were quite a few things that he wanted to say right now, most of them at the top of his lungs. He never should have asked her out after Lucifer kicked them out, but he hadn’t fucking listened to the warning bells that had been going off in his head because he’d wanted her.
God, had he wanted her.
She was beautiful, incredibly sexy with an abundance of curves, but it was that damn smile of hers that had nearly dropped him to his knees the first time that he saw her. He still couldn’t explain it, but that smile of hers just completely destroyed him. It was sweet, innocent, and so fucking provocative that it had him losing his fucking mind. She should have been off-limits since she was one of his brother’s tenants, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.
From the first moment Aidan saw her, dragging Rebecca by her ear into one of his exam rooms, he’d wanted her. He’d tried to shake it off, but his mind kept coming back to that smile of hers, the one that she’d given him when he’d walked into the exam room. It had taken everything that he had to focus on his patient and his brother’s demands to fix her.
He’d nodded, taken notes, suggested tests, but his focus had never left the beautiful woman barricading the door and threatening to beat the shit out of her best friend. She was the reason that he’d suggested a house call to give Rebecca the news because he’d wanted an excuse to see her again. Not even her vicious pillow attack, and Aidan really wished that he’d known that the carb addict had promised to give up whatever had been ailing her best friend before he’d announced that Rebecca had celiac’s disease, had changed his mind.
If anything, Melanie’s over-the-top defense of her best friend, or rather her love of carbs, had made him want her even more. When Lucifer kicked them out of the apartment, Aidan decided that he’d waited long enough and charmed her into having a drink with him. When she’d flashed him that damn smile of hers and tried to blow him off so that she could stay with Rebecca, he’d almost lost his fucking mind and kissed her right then.
More determined than ever, he’d laid on the Bradford charm, suggested a drink and the best apple pie that she’d ever had, and he’d had her. Only now, he wished like hell that he hadn’t. He didn’t want children, never had and never would and he’d made that perfectly clear during that fateful morning when he’d turned into the biggest asshole on the planet. He never should have talked to her the way that he had, but he’d been hungover, seeing double, sick to his stomach, and panicking as he’d tried to remember everything that happened the night before and failed.
He remembered going out with her, having more than a few drinks, dancing with her, pushing her up against the wall in the men’s bathroom and telling her everything that he wanted to do to her as she ran her hands over him, but after that…
It was all kind of a blur.
Feeling the condom break as she’d moved on top of him had quickly knocked him back into reality. He’d always been careful, always made sure that he’d used his own condoms because he knew that he could trust them, but that night he hadn’t had any on him.
Instead of using his fucking head and getting a cab to take them to the nearest pharmacy, he’d grabbed a handful of condoms from the restroom at the bar, allowed her to drag him to the closest hotel, and continued making the biggest mistake of his life. The way he’d treated her the next morning had been his second, and something that he would never forgive himself for. He’d been angry, scared, and dealing with the worst hangover of his life and he’d taken it out on her.