His Secret Baby

The Morning After

The man in the navy suit didn't run. He walked, calm and unhurried, like a man who already knew how the night would end.

Aria's arms tightened around Adrian without thinking. His body was dead weight against her side, his breath shallow, and for one panicked second she considered screaming, hitting the elevator button, anything. But screaming would bring cameras. Cameras would end whatever this was before it started.

"That's far enough," the man said, stopping a few feet away. Up close, he had the kind of face that photographed well and meant nothing — smooth, practiced, forgettable on purpose. His eyes flicked to Adrian, unreadable. "He's had a bit too much tonight. I'll take him from here."

"He can't stand on his own," Aria said. "You weren't taking him anywhere. You were leaving him for the cameras."

Something shifted behind the man's eyes, gone as fast as it came. "You should be careful who you accuse, sweetheart."

"You should be careful who you drug," she snapped back, surprising herself.

For a second nobody moved. Then the man smiled — a thin, unpleasant thing — and stepped aside like the whole conversation had been a joke he'd already gotten bored of.

"Room 4102," he said. "Card's in his jacket pocket. Get him inside before somebody with a camera actually cares." He turned and walked back toward the elevator, unbothered, like a man who'd already covered every angle he needed to.

Aria didn't wait to see if he meant it. She found the key card, got the door open, and half-dragged Adrian to the bed, where he collapsed like something had finally let him go. His eyes were fighting to close. His hand found her wrist again, weaker this time.

"Thank you," he mumbled. "Whoever you are."

Then he was out.

Aria stood over him for a long moment, heart hammering, unsure what she'd just walked into. She should have left right then. Instead she checked his pulse, made sure he was breathing evenly, propped him on his side the way she remembered from a first-aid class years ago. It was nearly three in the morning by the time she trusted herself to leave him sleeping safely, and she told herself that was the end of it. A stranger, one bad night, nothing more.

She should have known better.

She came back at seven, before her shift, because some stubborn piece of her needed to know he was okay. The door was unlocked. She meant only to look in.

Adrian was already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, and when he looked up and saw her standing in his doorway, something in his face went cold in an instant.

"You're still here," he said. His voice had none of the gratitude from hours earlier. It was flat, clipped, already suspicious.

"I wanted to make sure you were alright," Aria said. "You were drugged last night. Someone put something in your drink, and a man in a navy suit was trying to—"

"Stop." Adrian stood, and even hungover, even rattled, he carried himself like a man used to ending conversations with a single word. "I don't remember much about last night. But I remember enough to know how this works."

"How what works?"

He crossed to the desk, pulled out his wallet, and set a thick fold of bills on the table between them without looking at her. "Take it. Isn't this what you wanted? A vulnerable man, alone in a hotel room, more money than you'll see in a year. You didn't have to work this hard for it."

The words landed like a slap. Aria stared at the cash, then at him, waiting for some sign he was joking. He wasn't.

"You think I did something to you last night?"

"I think a waitress doesn't 'happen' to end up alone in my room unless she's angling for something." His jaw was tight, his eyes cold in a way that made her chest ache with something close to grief for a man she'd known for six hours. "So take the money and we'll call it even. I won't say anything to your employer. That's more generosity than you deserve."

For a moment Aria couldn't speak. She thought of her mother's hospital bracelet, the unpaid bills stacked on the kitchen counter, sixty-three dollars that had felt like nothing yesterday and felt like an insult now, next to the stack of bills he thought would buy her silence and her shame in the same breath.

"I'd rather stay poor," she said, "than sell myself to a man who thinks this is who I am."

She swept the bills off the table with the back of her hand. They scattered across the floor, and for one small, furious second, she felt something like power.

"I saved your life last night," she said, voice shaking. "A man drugged you and was going to leave you for the tabloids to find, and I got you out before they could photograph you falling apart. That's the truth, whether you believe it or not. But you clearly need a villain more than you need the truth, so fine. Be the man who thinks every woman who's ever been kind to him wanted something. I hope it keeps you warm."

She turned and walked out before he could answer, before the tears building behind her eyes could fall in front of him.

She made it as far as the hotel's side entrance before the first flash went off.

A photographer — one of the same reporters from the party, apparently more patient than she'd given him credit for — lowered his camera with a satisfied grin, already checking the screen. Aria froze, mortified, imagining exactly what the photo would look like: a waitress in yesterday's uniform, hair a mess, slipping out of the same floor where Adrian Knight kept his private suite, at seven in the morning.

It would look exactly like what Adrian had just accused her of.

By the time she got home, her hands were still shaking. She told herself it didn't matter — nobody cared about a waitress, no one would recognize her face, the photo would disappear into some unused folder by lunchtime.

She was wrong. It would resurface in five years, at the worst possible moment, with a headline already half-written.