Billionaire's Secret Baby: A Second Chance Romance (Hamptons Filthy Novel) Page 2

  Or… or the father? The man with whom I had spent a single, passionate night, forgoing protection in favor of burning need and desire?

  The father. “The father,” I murmured, testing if the words sounded better spoken aloud. They didn’t. I couldn’t imagine Zeke Blackburn having so much as a dog, let alone a child. We dated for a year during high school, but we broke up after graduation for a reason – multiple reasons, actually. “Zeke” and “responsibility” didn’t go together. And while I had always had goals and pushed myself toward a successful career first in modeling, then fashion, Zeke had always known he would inherit his parents’ estate and investments. His inheritance let him live the glamorous life of a billionaire without working for any of it.

  I didn’t blame, envy or, otherwise judge him, I really didn’t. Zeke had passions and hobbies, things he loved to do. He was an active person with lots of friends. But Zeke had always been able to do whatever he wanted without worrying about money or things that might tie him down.

  The wind gusted against my little rental car and the tires touched the line between lanes of the road. I nudged the car back into the lane proper and devoted both hands to steering this time, feeling drained. I had gone years and years without making a truly bad decision, and then just within the last few months, I had made many – most of them involving other people. There was Zeke, and then there was Leon, my French financial partner.

  Ex financial partner. And just ex in general. He was so handsome, genteel and motivated, and when we had shaken hands over our intention to sell and market my brand of designer clothes in Paris as partners, something else had sparked between us. We hadn’t just worked closely, we became close friends. And when he asked me out, I said “yes.”

  I had kept saying yes until I had found out that he was bisexual and he was seeing a man behind my back. It had been a betrayal on two levels – professional and personal, and I was still recovering from both. I had to find a new financial partner soon, somehow… but I didn’t have many connections in Paris yet, and most of our contacts here knew my mother as the businesswoman who originated our brand — not me. I hadn’t really proven myself, not yet, and people were hesitant to back me without a partner.

  Except, maybe, Zeke. Funding my business would hardly make a dent in his bank account. And as much as I hated to admit it because I had never been one to use someone for their money, maybe that had been a factor why I had been so willing to reconnect with Zeke a month ago.

  “Reconnect,” I snorted to myself, flicking on my high beams since the storm clouds were blotting out the setting sun. I might have wanted to reconnect when I saw Zeke across the lawn that night, but then we had just… I don’t know. Maybe I really needed to unwind and get out some of the overwhelming stress I had been feeling lately.

  As childish as it seemed in retrospect, Zeke had helped me do that beside the large pool next to the guest house out of sight of my mother’s windows. I never meant to get pregnant, especially not after I had been forced to buy out Leon’s share of the business or throw in the towel.

  My eyes softened and I went back to driving with one hand to lay a hand on my stomach. No matter what happened, I did know one thing. I was having this child. The idea of being a single mother terrified me, but my baby would have the best grandma in the whole world. Besides, if I had learned anything about myself from my ambitions, it was that I could succeed at anything to which I put my mind. My child would have not only my full focus, but my whole heart as well.

  Feeling a little better, I checked the time left on the GPS I had pulled up on my phone. Just forty-five minutes more, and I would be settled on the couch with a bowl of chowder, chatting with my mother.

  Mom… the reason I hadn’t told her about my pregnancy yet, was partially because I didn’t know how to even start. She and I shared a love for fashion, but she was much more conservative than me, and Mom had always disliked Zeke.

  Every time I went home to the Hamptons, I heard about how Zeke Blackburn had woken her up by zooming in and out of his driveway at all hours of the night, Zeke Blackburn had thrown yet another loud party, or Zeke Blackburn had yet another new Harley in the driveway. She would not be happy to learn that he was the father of my unborn child. She would support me and love me as she always had, but she wouldn’t be happy.

  Let’s just focus on the finances for now, I decided. I couldn’t – wouldn’t – change the pregnancy, but I could work even harder to find a replacement for Leon so that my child would grow up comfortably, and my mother could continue to live in the old family estate.

  The estate needs some work, too, I reminded myself. Much of the once-pristine and beautiful grounds had become overrun by weeds and undergrowth, the roof needed re-shingling, and both the house and guest house needed repairs inside as well. Before my father had passed a few years ago, he had done much of the work around the place himself. But Mom had never gotten around to hiring anyone after he died, and now we didn’t have the money for that.

  My fingers wrapped around the wheel, gripping it as firmly as I was determined. It all came down to our brand’s future in Paris. Find a financial backer, promote the brand, sell the clothes, get the money to fix the house, and take care of my baby. It’s that simple. I had a few more financial contacts to call. I would figure this out and make things work. You have too… there is no other way.

  Until then, I needed some caffeine if I was going to finish this drive. I’d never heard of Roadside Brews, but it had a big cup of coffee for a sign and the neon letters OPEN blinked in the window. The wind gave my car another playful push as I pulled into the parking lot. Wrapping my coat snuggly around me, I stepped out of the car.

  It was cold, but I just squared my shoulders and marched toward the door. My career in modeling had given me plenty of practice in dealing with cold. If every outdoor photoshoot waited for the perfect weather, I would have been out of a job half of the year.

  I sighed loudly. “Oh, sorry,” I told the woman in line in front of me, realizing I must look like I was impatient with the wait. "I've just got a lot on my mind."

  The woman gave me a smile. "Oh, don't worry about it. I think anyone out during this storm has something on their mind. Mine is money, what's yours?"

  "Money, my career, and a man," I admitted wryly. All those problems had multiple layers of complexity that I would have to solve before my life was back on track, but I didn’t need to share my entire sob story with this lady who had her own problems to solve.

  "What are you getting?" the woman suddenly asked when it was my turn to order.

  "Just a medium coffee with cream," I told her in surprise, thinking she was asking for a recommendation or something.

  "Two medium coffees with cream," the woman told the barista.

  "Oh no, thank you, I can get my own," I protested. Hadn't she just said she had a money problem?

  "Too late," the woman said with a smile before she handed me a steaming cup of brew. "I needed a smile today, and doing a little something kind for someone did the trick. Besides, it’s almost the holidays.” She gave my arm a pat. “Good luck."

  An invisible bell tinkled as the woman turned and walked out of the quaint shop. I was left standing at the counter with my cup of coffee warming the cool skin of my hand with a bemused look on my face.

  “Thanks,” I told the cashier, even though I hadn’t technically ordered anything. She didn’t hide her amusement at the whole exchange and sent me out of the shop with a warm smile of her own.

  I settled into the driver’s seat, holding the key aloft with one hand. For a moment, I watched as the street lamps flickered on and a pale light glinted across the cold metal of the Toyota’s hood. Then a slow smile inched across my lips.

  That woman had helped me more than she knew. If she could smile and buy a stranger a cup of coffee even amid her own troubles, I could go home and put on my widest smile for my mother, trust in the love we shared, and believe that everything would turn out alright. r />
  I took a sip of the coffee, turned onto the main road, and pointed my high beams toward home. And I had a little inkling my uplifted mood had nothing to do with the caffeine.

  Chapter Three

  Zeke

  My leather loafers skidded on the luxurious mahogany floors as I did a double-take. Fingertips just spanning the open doorway into the large formal dining room, I leaned against the elegant archway, which was also made of mahogany. There was a lot of polished wood paneling in this mansion. “Hey, Charles,” I began, addressing the elderly, suited man with the duster in his hand. “Will you–”

  “I’ll have the car out front in half an hour,” Charles cut me off with one of his urbane smiles. Then he went back to waging war against the dust that had accumulated on the old family portraits that littered the walls.

  “Thanks!” I called as I started to turn away, but then I did another double-take – or was it a triple-take? “And, uh, Charles, I might have mentioned this once or twice or a hundred times before, but you don’t have to wear a suit around the house anymore.”

  “It’s your late parents’ mansion, not any ordinary house, and they would have expected it of me.” Charles chuckled and turned back to his work.

  I rolled my eyes. My parents wouldn’t have minded what Charles wore, but the man was as old-fashioned as his years. I wasn’t going to win arguments about his attire, but I couldn’t help but bring it up from time to time.

  A banging from behind my closed bedroom door stopped me in my tracks. Robbers? Or maybe that girl I slept with two months ago had come by for round-two. It wouldn’t be the first time a one night stand came back to haunt me.

  I realized I was wrong on both silly accounts when I opened the door to my massive room. The sound was coming from a loose piece of molding that framed the windows. It was flapping in the same raging wind that had prompted me to ask Charles to give me a ride. After all, it was Thursday night again — time for another evening of fun with my friends at the Hamptons’ Peak. Tonight, though, I would have to go by car instead of riding my Harley.

  Glancing down at the floor as if to validate what I was thinking, I smiled to myself. Both of my bikes were safe from the storm and actually, they were right underneath me if you didn’t count the layers of elegant wood flooring, support beams, and concrete between my bedroom suite and the garage.

  I shrugged and quit staring at the floor to glance over my clothing options hanging in my closet. There would always be other days – days with blue skies and sunny weather – to ride the shoreline roads of the Hamptons to my heart’s content. Besides, if I didn’t give Charles something to do every once in a while, he would spend all his time puttering around my old estate alone.

  I called it “old”, but as I tossed my clothes haphazardly into the closet, I had to admit that Charles had done an excellent job of taking care of the mansion both during my parents’ lives and after. The loose piece of molding still smacking against the window might be the only item on the property that wasn’t in pristine condition.

  Sometimes, I wondered why Charles stuck around. Not that I minded his presence, despite the occasional scolding he gave me when I pulled into the garage too fast or disappeared to Europe without letting him know I was leaving. I hated to admit it, but there were too many empty rooms in this house for a man to live alone – almost too many for two men.

  Occasionally, the silence was filled by a girl I met at the Hamptons Peak. The rest of my time was spent out and about. Honestly, even when my parents were alive, I had often felt lonely when I spent too much time hanging around the estate.

  But not always. There had been one whole year when that loneliness had disappeared — a year where laughter, delicate footsteps, and flurries of dark hair had filled this room and the halls. Granted, I was often looking at that hair from the back while Claudia and I ran out the back door as my parents came in through the front. But I wouldn’t change any of the times we had spent here even if I could. I only wished they had been longer. But I was set to inherit my parents’ fortune here in the Hamptons, and Claudia had a career to pursue. So, we had drifted apart.

  Then, we came back together. I still couldn’t get that night out of my head, but that was okay. When Claudia came back from Paris again, I would go next door and… well, that was about as far as I had gotten with that plan.

  If past encounters with women had taught me anything, though, it was that I could be pretty smooth when I wanted to be. And I was sure I would think of the perfect words to say when the time came.

  For now, if I didn’t want to start my evening with a lecture. I needed to get a move-on. Charles didn’t mind taking on chauffeuring as one of his many duties, but he did mind tardiness. And I had used up a lot of those thirty minutes he had mentioned on self-reflection.

  I speed-walked around the room, gathering a pair of designer jeans and a black leather jacket — appropriate for the weather and the upscale atmosphere of the Hamptons Peak. Just as I fastened my favorite watch around my wrist, I spotted the Bentley stopped outside on the looping driveway, its headlights illuminating the fountain in the center.

  I made it all the way down to the front door before I realized that I had left my bedroom lights on. Oh well. Charles would notice when he got home and turn them off. He was always discreetly following me around the mansion, tidying up behind me.

  “Whoo!” I exclaimed when the wind nearly closed the passenger door on my foot. “Do you think it’ll snow?”

  “I think it’s a bit early in the year, yet, for snow. It’s still too warm.” Charles expertly pulled the car around and started heading down the driveway, paralleling the rows and rows of decorative trees.

  “Warm?” I muttered as I shrugged off the jacket I had found necessary to wear just for the short dash between the house and the heated car.

  “Warm. So, are you meeting Riker and Nate tonight?” Charles shot me a sideways glance.

  “Like always.” Charles knew that perfectly well. What was he playing at?

  “Oh, I was just curious. I’m still hoping that one day you’ll walk through the door with a decent woman on your arm. You can’t marry a motorcycle, you know.”

  I shook my head. The way he accented “decent” made me wince. “Maybe one day. I’ve never –” I caught myself when Claudia’s name popped into my mind and told him, “I’m not ready to settle down.”

  “You are settled down, Zeke. This is your estate, you live here, and you’ve never once mentioned leaving. Having someone special in your life doesn’t mean you have to stop traveling or tinkering with your bikes.”

  “Maybe.” But most wives of the guys I rode with hated that their husbands put themselves in danger when they took off on their Harleys. My mind raced, searching for a way to change the subject, but I drew a blank. So, I did a mental shrug and glanced out the window.

  Wow, we just now only reached the end of the driveway. I swear, this had become almost a daily discussion between Charles and me. And this evening it felt longer than usual.

  Charles stopped before pulling onto the main road, waiting for two bright headlights that had just appeared to the right. The compact car slowed. Then a turn signal flicked on, so Charles started to roll toward the road.

  Both cars turned at the same time. Our Bentley headed toward the highway, and the other car turned down the driveway of the Moore estate, my next-door neighbor. I caught a brief flash of sleek white paint before a hideously loud snap, and a series of quick, heart-stopping cracks came from somewhere behind us outside. For a second, I thought we had hit something.

  We hadn’t, but something had hit the other car. The wind had torn a branch from one of my trees and united with gravity to fling it forcefully onto the roof of the white car.

  “Charles!” I was out of the Bentley before Charles even had time to stop, struggling my way through the chaotic weather to reach the other car. The wind howled through the torn roof and shattered windshield – no, wait, those cries didn’t
belong to the wind.

  "Claudia?" An entirely new spike of adrenaline rushed through my body when I slid to a stop at the driver's side window and recognized the woman uncontrollably crying seated behind the wheel.

  Surprise flitted across her tear-stained face, but the appearance of help did nothing to calm her. "I'm stuck!" Frantically, she grasped at the wheel, the seat belt, the center console and anything, and everything else she could reach in an attempt to escape the sagging dashboard.

  "Hey, it's okay, it's okay," I consoled her, ready to pry this car apart with my hands if that was what it took to free her. It might come to that, because the door didn't budge when I pulled the handle. "Are you hurt?" I tossed a glance over my shoulder in search of Charles, knowing his cell phone was in his pocket. But everything had happened so quickly his old bones were just now getting out of the car.

  "Yes, no, I mean I’m not sure…” Claudia wouldn't remove her right hand from her stomach.

  "I'm calling 911," I decided as Charles rushed to stand next to me.

  "No, no," Claudia insisted, taking a deep breath but still visibly shaking all over. "I'm okay. Really. Nothing hurts, I'm just stuck."

  I scanned the damage. The branch still rested on top of the car and the smashed windshield, but it shouldn't be blocking her from getting out. The door must just be jammed from the impact. “Can you roll down the window!”

  The window was half-broken, and I could tell Claudia didn't understand why I wanted her to roll it down, but she pressed the button anyway. Glass ground loudly, but the window disappeared. I brushed the jagged shards away with my sleeve. Gripping the door frame with one hand and the handle with the other, I tugged.