Chapter 10

"Pregnant!" Rebecca cried, causing the teenage barmaid to flinch. "As in proper pregnant."

Eva nodded and withdrew a pregnancy test from her bag that clearly showed a blue line where I would have hoped to see nothing. I wiped a tear from her eye, causing her to flinch again. "I thought I should tell you." She bit her lip as she fidgeted. "My parents and me..." She shrugged as she stared into the knot in the wood on the table and looked up at me with red, puffy eyes. " ... they said I was disgusting and threw me out." Our eyes met and she squeezed her bag tight to her waist.

"Where are you staying?" Rebecca asked.

My mind was a blur; as naïve as it sounds, it simply didn't occur to me what the consequences of uncomplicated and unsafe sex would be. I had taken advantage of the young lady that night and she was living with the consequences. I wasn't sure I was ready to be a father, but Eva's eyes were filled with the weight of expectation bearing down upon her, and were laced with fear. I had no right to be scared, she was the one who was set to become a teenage mother.

"I'm staying on a friend's sofa but I have to leave soon. Her parents don't like it." She passed me an ultrasound picture and I looked at it without saying a word. "I've gone past twelve weeks." She looked across the table, willing me to say something. "I so hoped it wasn't, but it was."

"I'm ... I'm so sorry," I muttered, but felt ridiculous for saying so. Her eyes watered further and she asked to go to the toilet; I pointed her towards an oak-panelled door in the corner of the room and watched guiltily as she made her way over to it.

"I said that it was dangerous," Maisie said, sniping at me the moment Eva had passed through the toilet door. "I..."

"Yes," I interrupted. "No good preaching. How do you think I feel?"

"You feel?" Rebecca asked in surprise and indignation. "You've got an eighteen year old girl pregnant and she has been made homeless for it. She can't have an abortion and if her family are Catholic which they probably are, being Italian and all that, then that wouldn't be possible anyway. She is alone, scared and young. No idea where to turn to and you think we should care what you feel?"

I gulped. "But..."

Rebecca jabbed her finger into my chest. "You've totally screwed her life up."

"You pressed the button," I moaned, but Rebecca rebuffed my words with a dismissive flick of her bony wrist. "And what do you expect me to do? I can't go back in time and..."

"You should stand by her," Rebecca replied, forcefully in an aggressive tone. "Not as her partner, but you must help support her as she raises your child. Or you're not the person I want as my business partner."

"Nor me," Maisie added and crossed her arms, as they both stared at me. I gulped at the wine.

"But having a child is a big commitment and how do I know that this isn't some ruse to get some money out of me. And anyway, settling down with someone is a big deal and..."

"You are having a child," Maisie interrupted. "And we didn't say settle down, although we do need to offer her lodgings for tonight." She cocked her head and glanced towards the toilet door. "She needs someone. And it doesn't matter if that person has only known her for one night. She needs some support."

I groaned, but they were right. Eva's predicament was my fault, and I had a responsibility. My business partners left the room before Eva returned and I was waiting with a hug and a cuddle, promising her that I would offer her support, where I could. Maisie returned with a key for "Room Eight" and I escorted her to the smallest suite in the building, and the room adjacent to my bedroom door.

Eva cried a bit, when I sat her on the bed, and put my arm around the young lady; she said she came to warn me I would be a father, and had been worried I would be angry or threaten her. How she thought I could be angry with a vulnerable girl whose problems were down to me, was a mystery. I was not happy about the situation, but she was blameless; I was very far from being blameless.

It was as she was sobbing, that I felt it: a surge of arousal engulfing me and looked at the pregnant teenager, gripping her crotch through her wet clothes and sniffing; either Maisie and Rebecca had deliberately turned on the zappers for the room, or they had forgotten to reconfigure the nightly cycle when they gave me the key. I groaned inwardly; sending shockwaves into the bedrooms was a key feature of our business plan, but I didn't plan to arouse the youthful Eva.

We could hear the sounds of couples having loud, vocal sex through the walls, and I looked at the young lady. "I always feel like this around you," she cried and gripped my wrist as I flooded my underwear with pre-cum.

"Ah Eva," I cried, as she frantically undressed herself. "I feel..." She glanced at my erect cock prominent underneath my clothing.