It’s Complicated (Her Billionaires #5)(22)
Author: Julia Kent

Well, almost exactly. Josie—unlike Laura—would use a condom. Plus she was on the pill.

That was one certainty in Josie’s very uncertain life. No babies—not now.

And not ever.

She’d decided that a long time ago, even though her mind faltered along with her heart, especially yesterday when she’d held that tiny, mewling infant in her arms, cradled close, warm, and new, and innocent, and just wanting to be loved. Love she could give. It was the whole idea of stability and emotional care-taking and being a good role model that scared the ever-loving shit out of her.

Her fear that she could never rise to the occasion, could never be a good parent because she had not been parented well herself, was what made her freeze in place at the thought of being handed an infant and told, “Love this! Mother this! You’re it!” One hundred percent in charge of this entire human being.

No way.

Hell, she was one hundred percent in charge of herself and she couldn’t even manage to figure out what to wear to go see her best friend and her new baby. For that matter, most days she could barely make her socks match and remember to pay her bills on time. Being the sole caretaker of a new life was something so far out of her grasp that Laura was suddenly catapulted into a whole new category of person that made Josie feel smaller. It wasn’t that Laura did that—it was Josie who did it to herself.

When her friends started having babies—not her friends back home, who spat them out at nineteen and twenty by accident and were little more than babies raising babies—no, it was when her best friend had an accidental pregnancy but turned it into a loving family, that was when Josie’s world view was shaken to the core.

Most of her friends back home who’d become teen or near-teen mothers did fine. They weren’t abusive, they loved their kids, they just…didn’t have a spark in them to do better, to be better, to rise up above the trailer parks, the minimum-wage jobs, the social network that kept people in place rather than encouraging them to spread their wings and see what they could do with their lives.

Josie was one of a handful of people from her graduating class who had actually gotten out of her little town in Ohio, and not a single one of the women she’d known who had babies young had ever left. That was one reason she was so extraordinarily paranoid about birth control. She did not want to find herself one hundred percent in charge of another human being and limited by life choices. In her world, the fathers faded away and weren’t part of the equation, and so it was with great incongruity that she watched the saga of Jillian’s two dads unfold.

Why was Jillian’s birth triggering so many of her past issues at the same time that she was grappling with some very right-now issues, all wrapped up in the tall, dark, and handsome Dr. Alex Derjian? Every inhale, every exhale made her think of him, how his hands were on her, his lips exploring her in the elevator, how hot just being with him in the on-call room felt, how far she would have gone if baby Jillian’s emergence into the world hadn’t interrupted them.

Thanks, kid. She wasn’t sure whether to think that in her usual sarcastic tone, or whether it was genuinely heartfelt. Giving herself to Alex so soon might have been an enormous mistake, and now she was relieved that they’d been interrupted by nature, the visceral reality of what happens when two (or three…) people have sex and biology marches in its unyielding path toward fulfilling its pre-programmed destiny. No birth control? Then you roll the dice and take your chances.

Time to go see Laura and her little chance.

Alex walked into the hospital feeling more uncomfortable than he’d felt the first day of his residency. He never set foot on hospital grounds unless it was his shift. He was not the type to hang out, trying to curry favor or get in extra face time so that it looked like he was more serious about his work. When he was on shift, he was one hundred percent there—in mind, body, and spirit—and when he wasn’t on shift he stayed the hell away, because otherwise this job, this vocation, could completely consume his soul.

Walking into the hospital wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and sunglasses made him feel like a civilian. He headed in and, on autopilot, found his body directing him to the changing area where he would put on scrubs and turn into a doctor, morphing from a human being to someone who was supposed to be both humble and god-like; know everything but be flexible when a patient had an idea that he had never heard of; be proficient at paperwork and yet drop everything the second a medical emergency came up; have outstanding social skills and yet know when to keep his mouth shut; be gloriously ecstatic for a family when the birth of a healthy little baby came to fruition after a long labor—and be respectfully mournful when it didn’t.

Doctors—and especially OBs—were expected to be omnipresent, omniscient in some ways, and to be everything for everyone. And for some cases, to stay as far away as possible so that nature could do its work.

Entering the elevator after backtracking a bit from the changing area, he pushed the button for the maternity ward and then realized that he was going to the postpartum wing, furiously pressing a different number as he shook his head. A bundle of nerves this morning, he found himself worried about what he was wearing, which was insanely stupid because he never worried about what he was wearing. He just put on clean clothes and went about his day.

He knew exactly why he was here on his day off and why he was so nervous. It was a little bundle of joy—but it wasn’t Laura’s baby. It was Josie and the taste of something far outside his expectations that he’d gotten yesterday with her—and not just the raunchy taste that he had thoroughly enjoyed, too—that made him want more. His life was so circumscribed—work, the occasional trip with his grandfather, and more work—that when a flash of something deeper, of a connection so intense that he overrode all professional instinct and nearly took her in the on-call room—when that came along and was handed to him in the form of fate, he needed to seize it.

Coming in on his day off, lingering in the postpartum wing looking like your average Joe, meant that maybe he’d run into her and maybe he’d be able to convince her to go for a walk, or grab a cup of coffee. Could they do something that seemed so banal, so inane, and have it be a tipping point, a turning point, in developing a stronger relationship with her if that was the path that this was meant to take?

That was the path that he hoped it would take.

As the elevator doors opened onto the postpartum wing, he walked up to the main desk, took his sunglasses off, and asked for Laura’s room. Just as the nurse started to tell him, “I’m so sorry, sir, are you a member of the family?” and he realized that he wasn’t even recognized up here without his scrubs on, Dylan walked past with a stuffed giraffe taller than either of them.