Best Laid Plans

Plan B

A/N: Thank you all for the positive feedback on the first chapters! Your comments always make my days brighter! 🥰❤️

Perrie

Remember that movie about the two guys who crashed weddings in order to pick up women without having to pay for drinks or dinner?

This isn't that.

This is a pregnant girl crashing a retirement gala so she can get a moment to notify her baby daddy... mommy? Whatever.

I wouldn't normally stoop to such a level, crashing a retirement party of all things, but I'm desperate. Besides, it's not like I'm staying for dinner. I'm just gonna slip in and out. No one but Jade will even know I was there. I probably won't even have an appetizer, unless a waiter walks past with a tray of pickles or something and I can't resist. Just kidding, I don't have a cliché pregnancy pickle craving. It's more of a cliché craving for everything that isn't a pickle.

Anyway, that's my amazing plan B.

If she's there.

I think the chances are good that she'll be there because her grandfather is the guest of honor at this shindig and my internet sleuthing tells me that Jade just took over as CEO of the family company.

Family company as in Amayzin, the largest retail chain in UK.

Recently promoted, as in the week after she knocked me up.

Her promotion to head of the company is the only reason I know who she is and where to find her. I got her name that weekend, but it didn't mean anything to me. Why would it? She was just a girl I'd met during my work trip in Manchester.

When I realized I was pregnant, I Googled her, hoping it'd lead me to a Facebook profile with her picture so I could send a quick message and be done with it. Done with her. Instead, the first search result was a story in the Guardian accompanied by the Amayzin logo and a professional business photo of Jade. The accompanying article announced the retirement of Jade's grandfather, company founder William Thirlwall, and named Jade as the new CEO of Thirlwall Enterprises.

Thirlwall Enterprises, which owns all three thousand Amayzin locations in the United Kingdom. Locations ranging in size from corner convenience marts to supercenters and warehouse clubs. The penny finally dropped, and I understood two things. Firstly, Jade Thirlwall was the heiress to a retail empire bearing her name. And secondly, she was going to be impossible to get hold of.

Then in a stroke of good luck or serendipity or cosmic intervention, I was invited to a conference taking place next week in London. I figured two birds, one stone. Am I right? I could attend the conference and while I was in town, find Jade. So I poked around the internet a bit, figuring maybe I'd get a second stroke of luck and find a home address for her. Camp out on her doorstep until she showed up, whatever it took. I know stalking isn't nice, but desperate times requires desperate measures.

Besides, who hasn't stalked? Everyone does it in one form or another. Looked through their crush's Instagram feed. Listened in on a stranger's conversation in public. And everyone with access to the internet has looked up something that's none of their business a time or five hundred. Totally normal.

So I looked. And looked and looked. Turns out my stalking skills are shit, because I couldn't find anything on her other than the mention of a younger sister named Julia. Apparently, the Thirlwalls keep their lives private. I couldn't find a single social media account for the sister either. I'd been hoping to reverse-stalk Jade through her, but no such luck. Their parents are deceased, having passed away in a plane crash five years ago. There were a few old articles about that, but otherwise not much to go on. Until I ran across a mention of a retirement gala for William Thirlwall. Jade was bound to be there, right? How could she not be, when she'd just taken over as head of the company her grandfather founded and was retiring from? Crashing this party was my best shot at speaking to her in person.