Chapter 186 186
Chapter 186 186
PIPER
Ashley holds up her phone with the article displayed on it and cackles. “You two are cruel! Absolutely ruthless!”
Akim is leaning over the back of her seat in flagrant disregard of the flight attendant who just told us to buckle our seatbelts. He shakes his head. “This was supposed to be your make-nice with the press. I think you’re about to make an enemy of Monica Pruitt.”
Timofey waves a dismissive hand. “So I fibbed a little. She’ll get over it.”
“A little? We fibbed a lot!” I grab Ashley’s phone and read the headline aloud. “Piper Quinn and Timofey Viktorov Don’t Need the Tax Write-Off; Couple Forgoes Marriage to Focus on Charity.”
Timofey winces, obvious amusement written all over his face. “If she wanted the truth from us, she shouldn’t have peppered you with questions about your dad.”
My dad has been raking in checks from every trashy magazine and online blog he can get a hold of. I know stories about me will stop paying his bills eventually, but I don’t want to drag out his press relevance any more than I have to.
There is no story to tell.
He isn’t in my life, and he never will be.
“Oh my God. What a bitch!” Ashley starts reading another excerpt out loud. “Piper Quinn is cagey when it comes to questions about her father. I’m not surprised; someone in the family has to be. Her father has aired all of their dirty laundry in the last twelve months, and the youngest Quinn isn’t a fan of the public therapy. If what the elder Quinn says is true, Quinn’s beau, ousted CEO of Viktorov Industries Timofey Viktorov, paid her father fifty-thousand dollars to stay away from her. How’s that for bringing families together?”
Akim drops down into his seat when the middle-aged attendant glares at him from the doorway of the cockpit. “Yeah, I take it back. Don’t make nice with the media. They suck.”
“She really was okay,” I say, defending the woman. “She was just doing her job. It just so happens that I hate her job. I want my privacy.”
Ashley spins around and wags her brows at me. “I’m sure you do. You just had your six-week postpartum appointment last week, right? Did she give you the all-clear to—” Ashley makes a crude gesture with her hands.
I gasp and turn to make sure Benjamin isn’t paying any attention. He’s happily tapping away at the buttons that adjust his seat. He buzzes forward and back over and over again, giggling all the while.
“He doesn’t know what this means,” Ashley says, doing the gesture again with a little more vigor.
I glare at her. “No, but other people might. I don’t want his nanny to see him doing that. It would make us look bad.”
“Imagine what the press would say about us then?” Timofey says it softly in my ear, goosebumps blooming all over my skin.
Ashley is crude, but she sure as hell isn’t wrong.
Everything about Timofey calls to me. Those first few weeks, I was beyond exhausted and enamored with the new little bundle we brought into the world.
But it's been eight weeks and things are starting to settle into something resembling a manageable routine. Which means, between nursing sessions and middle-of-the-night crying fits and keeping Benjamin from coloring on the walls with his chunky toddler crayons, I occasionally have five minutes of free time in which all I want to do is tear Timofey’s clothes from his body.
“Easy,” I whisper. “I thought we wanted to wait until after the wedding.”
Timofey groans softly. “You wanted to wait. But that’s hours and hours away. And it has been two long, torturous months.”
“Torturous?” I raise my brows. “I’ll be sure to tell Samuil when he’s older that you found his newborn days ‘torturous.’”
“Tell him whatever you want. So long as you end my celibacy. I’m starved for you, baby.”
Heat floods through me, pooling between my legs. I press my thighs together and readjust in my seat.
When I look back at Ashley, she’s staring at me with one eyebrow raised. “And you think I’m inappropriate?”
I discreetly flip her the bird, and she blows me a kiss.
The next twenty minutes are a haze of takeoff procedures and nursing Samuil. He does better during takeoff when I nurse him. The added bonus is that he’s in a milk coma for at least the first hour of the flight.
I settle him into his travel bassinet, which buckled into the plane seat next to Akim. Ashley unbuckles and scoops Benjamin into her arms the moment the attendant tells us we can remove our seatbelts.
“As the bestest godmother in the world, I packed copious amounts of snacks.” She unzips a duffel bag and reveals a stash of mini muffins, cheese crackers, and gummy worms.
Akim frowns and points to a cooler in the corner. “As the bestest godfather in the world, I baked chocolate chip cookies, mixed berry scones, and made strawberry lemonade with basil.”
Ashley wrinkles her nose. “Have you ever been near a child, Akim? Do you have any idea what kids actually like?”
“I know what kids like! I basically raised Benjamin right after he was born!”
Timofey swats the back of his head. “You were a temporary nanny. As his father, I raised him.”
Akim rolls his eyes and turns back to his face-off with Ashley. “Put all the snacks in front of Benji and see which ones he picks if you’re so confident.”
“Oh, you are so on, pretty boy,” Ashley says with a sultry wink.
For a long time, Ashley was almost always drunk or high or both. Her flirting was sloppy. Ever since we asked her to be the godmother to the kids, she’s been stone cold sober.
It looks very good on her.