Billionaire's Package_A Billionaire Romance Novella Page 5

  “Five hundred?” The guy ran his fingers through his hair again, then raised his index. A tarnished gold ring glinted at its base. “No, no. No deal. I give you one hundred. Final offer.”

  Frustration lumped in my throat and I gritted my teeth. Don’t attack him. He’s just a sleaze bag store dude. Don’t attack him. It’s your hormones talking.

  “Well? What do you say?” He wriggled thick, dark eyebrows at me.

  “I say –” I cleared my throat. “You know what you can do for one hundred dollars?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “You can kiss my lily white ass.” I spun on my heel and marched for the exit.

  “Oh ho! Let me call my wife and tell her I will be home late, yes?”

  I ignored him and pushed out into the sunlight, still gripping the camera. I stood on the sidewalk for a second, impeding the flow of foot traffic and drawing a couple grunts from passersby.

  What a shitty way to start the day. Was everything going to be this difficult from now on? I didn’t want to be pessimistic here, but it was hardly a good sign that the first obstacle in my path had grown in size.

  One hundred for a Canon. He really can kiss my ass.

  I shoved angry thoughts from my mind and hailed a cab. The short ride over to my apartment was uneventful, apart from a couple weird coughs from the driver that made my skin crawl.

  Ever since I’d discovered the pregnancy, I’d become super paranoid about getting sick. It was as if all the concerns about not being good enough had been replaced by concerns for the health of my unborn baby.

  Our unborn baby.

  The cab pulled up in front of my apartment before I could dissect that juicy nugget of a thought.

  I paid him what little cash I had, then scooted across the pitted sidewalk and up the front stairs. I let myself into the building and huffed and puffed my way up to the second floor. I hadn’t even picked up any weight yet, or started showing, but everything seemed a little more strenuous now.

  I unlocked the front door and stifled a yawn.

  Something dropped to the carpet in the tiny living room at the end of the even tinier hall, and I frowned. “Carly? I thought you were going to be out all day picking China patterns.” I’d gladly opted out of being a bridesmaid, though she’d begged.

  No answer from my friend.

  “Carly.” I shut the door behind me. Shoot, something had dropped in there. What if she’d fallen? Or hurt herself? Stubbed her toe? “Carly, can you hear me?” I trotted down the hall, keys jingling in my hand, and stepped into the living room. “Carl –”

  I cut off and shuddered a gasp.

  Bain stood in the center of the room, eyes as blue as the Hawaiian ocean, sharp, gaze laser-focused on me. His cotton t-shirt tugged at the packed muscle beneath it, and his arms were bare of sleeves for once, exposing a vast range of tattoos, crawling up his tanned skin.

  Sex with him twice and I never saw those. He never took off his shirt.

  “Hazel,” he grunted.

  I gripped the doorjamb and steadied myself. What the fuck? “How? Why – what are you doing here?”

  “I think you know what I’m doing here,” he said, and his nostrils flared. “Did you think you could hide the truth from me?”

  The words reminded me of Carly’s back in Hawaii. Ice seeped through my veins. “How did you get into my apartment?” I squeaked. “Did you break in?”

  “Break in, huh? Because I’m an ex-con. Yeah, I get what you’re saying. However, if you think you’ll be able to push me out of my child’s life on some vague belief that I’m not a good influence, you have –”

  “Wait,” I squeaked. He knew. Of course, he knew. Why else would he be here?

  For one sweet second, I’d believed he’d come after me for another reason. God, what a dumb assumption. The silence swelled between us, and, finally, I moved across the space and took a seat on my ratty, worn sofa.

  He didn’t. He watched me, towering, imposing in all his ruggedness. I could still taste his lips, smell his skin if I tried.

  “Are you going to sit down or just stand there all morning?” I asked.

  He blinked at me and didn’t move.

  “You can be angry with me if you want,” I continued, wearily. “I didn’t keep this from you on purpose. I’ve only found out, actually, a week ago. I was figuring out how to go about contacting you. I was figuring out a whole range of things.” I removed the camera’s strap from my neck and placed the device on the coffee table. “So, you’ll forgive me if I didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity to contact a guy I knew for the entirety of a day to tell him, oh, hey, like, I’m pregnant by the way, just so you know. No biggie, guy who I don’t really know at all.”

  The corner of Bain’s lip twitched, then settled.

  “Which is on me, I guess. I shouldn’t have slept with you in the first place. It was reckless and stupid.”

  “Fuck that,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  Finally, the hunk of man strode toward me and took a place on the sofa at my side. Up close, with his cologne spiking in my nostrils, and that gaze hot on my face, I experienced the same flush I had the first time he’d spoken to me.

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” he said. “What we did. Nothing happens by accident.”

  I blinked at him, gulped. How was I supposed to deal with this, now? He was here, and I’d do my best to put up a brave front, but what we’d shared, just those two times, and the little conversations in between, had meant more to me than two years with Jacob.

  And here was Jacob’s brother, oh god. This was wrong on so many levels.

  “Okay,” I said, at last, and focused on the knees of my worn jeans – yeah, that had happened, no sexy dresses today. “Okay, so obviously you know I’m pregnant. You’re here because, what? You want to be a part of the baby’s life?”

  “Yes,” he said, right away. “It’s my child.”

  “But you’ll want a paternity test,” I continued. “Which is totally fine. I’m happy to do that. And it’s great you want to be involved, but it’s important for you to know that you’re not obligated to be.” It was the speech I’d prepared on and off for the past few days as I worked up the courage to call him and ask to see him.

  “I’m glad you’re going to keep it,” he said, softly.

  My spine stiffened, and I spun toward him, at last. “Keep it! Of course, I’m going to keep it. Why wouldn’t I? It’s my baby.”

  “Relax,” he said. “My brother mentioned you hadn’t decided what to do yet.”

  “Your brother –” Of course. Carly had told her fiancé and her fiancé had told his brother, and now, this was the situation I was in. “That’s fine,” I said. “It’s fine that he decided to tell you, because I was going to do that anyway.”

  “Were you?” he asked and raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought lies of omission were all the rage in our weird-ass relationship,” I snapped.

  “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “Omitted information,” I whispered and looked away. “I made a fool of myself with you.” That was another thing that’d streamed through my mind consistently over the past few months. “I trusted someone I barely knew, told you private thoughts, stuff about myself that I didn’t even tell my best friend, and yeah, you told me nothing and I went with it. I just wanted to please.”

  “Hazel.”

  “Well, that’s not me anymore,” I thundered. I rose from my seat. “I’m not here to please anyone. I’m not –”

  He stood and faced me, looked down that slightly crooked nose. “Stop,” he said and took me by the forearms.

  I wriggled a little bit.

  “Stop,” he repeated. “I didn’t lie to you. And we didn’t know each other.”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t.” He nodded. “But that’s going to change, now. Hazel, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you ran out of that hotel room.”

  �
�Oh, yeah? Then why didn’t you come for me?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Out of some stupid belief that I owed my brother anything. That he was anything more than an asshole. And I did call,” he said. “You never answered.”

  My brow wrinkled. I’d gotten a couple calls from withheld numbers, but I never answered those. It was just plain creepy. “You called, so what? Look, this doesn’t have to be something it’s not. It was all a mistake.”

  “No,” he growled, then dragged me against his chest. “It wasn’t a mistake. The only mistake was on my part. I should’ve found you sooner.” He pressed his lips to mine, then kissed me hard.

  I melted on the spot, dissolved into a puddle, and looped my arms around his neck. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be happening. I hardly knew a thing about him – apart from the furious Google search I’d done one night stuffing my face with Twinkies.

  Bain didn’t let go. He held me to his chest and our hearts beat in time, kiss deepening, heat shuttling through my arms, my legs, my core.

  Chapter 10

  Bain

  This was the woman. I couldn’t deny it, anymore. Whatever connection we’d forged in Hawaii hadn’t faded a damn bit, and now I had her in my arms, and she had my baby in her womb.

  I kissed her, gently at first, then deepened it, tasting her again for the first time in months, tightening up all over. It wasn’t just my dick that throbbed. It was every cell in my fucking body.

  I’m done trying to work this out.

  I broke the kiss and looked at her. “I get it. We don’t know each other. I don’t know your favorite food or color, or what you look like when you wake up in the morning. And if it makes you feel better, you can pretend that what we did out there was nothing but physical. But deep down, you know that’s not true, Hazel.”

  Her bottom lip trembled, so full, succulent, begging to be kissed all over again. I ran my thumb along it.

  “This was meant to happen.” I cleared my throat. Fuck, am I really going to do this? Yeah, I had to. I wanted her to see that I was committed to the baby, and to showing her that I was responsible.

  There had been too much confusion since we’d met. It was past time to clear the fucking air.

  “My name is Bain Mitchell,” I said. “You know that much. But you don’t know what my life’s really been like. I was adopted, and my brother, well, he was my parents’ first biological kid. They favored him, and god knew, I loved the little fucker, but things were tough at home.” I rolled my neck. Fuck, I hated this emo crap. “My parents pretty much ignored me; it was that or cracking the whip.”

  Her silvery eyes glinted with unshed tears. It wasn’t pity, but empathy. “I was in the foster system, too,” she whispered. “I – after my mom died. Car crash.”

  My heart thudded.

  Meant to be. God damn.

  “Eventually, it got to me. I acted out. I started boosting cars, coming home late. They gave me final warnings, but I was an asshole. The night I was arrested, I stole a Mustang GT. Christ, it was a thing of beauty, that car, but it was my downfall. I ended up in juvie. It was a slap on the wrist, but it was enough for me. After that, I moved out. A friend I’d made got me a job working at one of these resorts and the rest is history.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  “Yeah,’ I replied. “You told me your sob story; now I’ve told you mine. And you know what else?”

  “What?” Hazel asked, pure as snow.

  “You can’t do this on your own.”

  She stiffened and her blond eyebrows wrinkled toward each other. “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t because I won’t let you.” I kissed her again, silencing a complaint. Our bodies melded together, her softness against my hard planes of muscle, and it took every ounce of my resolve not to rip her clothes off and take her on the sofa.

  The next time will be special. It will be real.

  Finally, we parted, and Hazel pressed her fingers to her lips, reddened and wet from the passion of that kiss.

  “I’m not asking you to marry me or even be my girlfriend,” I said. “But I want us to get to know each other properly. I want us to go on a date. Fuck it, loads of dates. We don’t have to have sex until you’re ready. Until you’re sure that this isn’t just some island fling gone wrong.” Gone right, god damn it.

  She swallowed, then reached up and pressed her palm to my cheek. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m positive,” I said.

  “I thought you just wanted to know if it was your baby. I didn’t realize you felt the same way I do,” she whispered. “I’ve spent the last couple months thinking about you, Bain. And the stuff I did wrong. I shouldn’t have run, but I didn’t think it could ever work out. I was mortified.”

  “I understand,” I said and brushed blond curls from her cheek, pink as it’d been that day on the beach. Fuck, don’t think of that. Do not think with your dick, right now. “And I don’t blame you for it. Don’t blame anyone but myself.” Fuck it, enough talk. “Let’s go out, now. We’ll get something to eat and talk about the future.”

  “The future?” she asked, so sweet, in the voice that twanged my fucking heart strings like a country guitar.

  “Yeah, the future. There’s a lot to discuss.”

  “Such as?” Hazel rolled her shoulders ever so slightly.

  “Such as, you can’t possibly stay in this apartment. You’ll have to move.”

  “Move!”

  “That’s right,” I said and glanced around the gloomy living room, with its single sofa and the window hidden behind a set of blinds that had seen better days. Fuck it, better years. “I’ll buy you a bigger place. Are you set on living in New York or would you prefer to move to Hawaii?”

  “Hawaii,” she squeaked.

  “Well, yeah. The school system there is great. And it’s a nice place to raise a kid. If we move into a –”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.” She stepped out of my arms, and I let them drop, gave her whatever space she needed. “I’m not moving anywhere. I mean, we don’t even know – ”

  “Okay, too fast,” I said and raised my palms. “I get it. We’ll talk about it later. Let’s go grab something to eat, just you and me. All those plans, they can wait for tomorrow.”

  Or the next day, or the next.

  I’d spend each of them with Hazel. Let this go? Not a chance.

  This was the beginning of something bigger than me and her, and I couldn’t wait to find out what that was.

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  All I’ve ever wanted to do for years is write my own books. I spent an ungodly amount of time ghostwriting a few bestsellers for other authors before realizing it was time to start taking credit for my own work.

  My personal struggles in life, love, and money have driven me to start doing what I love most: Writing full time.

  I started writing when I was a teenager. I fell in love with a boy who didn’t quite love me back--admittedly, I was terribly insecure and slightly overweight--and the entire experience drove me to start practicing my craft. Writing helped me to escape, to reimagine a world where happy endings actually existed. If I couldn’t have the love of my life, I’d just create Mr. Right in my romance novels… with maybe a few embellishments.

  I’ve found my calling. Having the experience of doing what I love most as a full time job has given me happiness and confidence galore. And, soon after I found those, I was able to find companionship. Shout out to my guy and my kitty!

  I so hope you enjoy my books! I wish you the very best in this crazy thing called life.

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  This is typically the part where I make up some boring lines about my life and dog and significant other. Let me just cut through the bullshit.

  I want to help you by providing the best romance ON PLANET EARTH, Muhuhuhu. Too much? Anyway, I’m serious. My goal is to entertain you. I want to make you cry and laugh every time you read one of my books. I want you to be able to escape all the bullshit you’re dealing with and just relax for a few hours. I also would love to hear what you want me to write about. So, if you want me to write about something, email me and let me see if I can write a story just for you.

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