The Billionaire Chef’s Baby (McClellan Billionaires Book 2)

by Leslie North

  Their shared bedroom was echoingly quiet. Arthur's blankets were neatly folded at the edge of the couch where he'd been sleeping since they arrived. As she looked at it, some of the irritation in her veins fizzled away, leaving her feeling drained and strangely sad.

  In so many ways, he was a nice guy. Why couldn't he be the right guy?

  She shook her head to dislodge that thought and headed out the door. She skirted quietly around the set, grateful that everyone was too absorbed in taping today's confessionals to notice she needed some time to prepare. She dashed towards the prop closet, but at the last second, Arthur's head darted up and he caught her eye.

  She tossed her head and let the prop closet door swing closed behind her. Let him deal with this on his own. He didn't need her. And she didn't need him…

  Cassandra clapped her hand over her mouth just before the squeak of fear could escape, then snatched her other hand away before she touched the absolutely massive spider sitting right on top of the glass bottles, she'd planned on planting with succulents for the cake table decorations.

  She leaped back, sending the pile of brooms and mops in the corner clattering to the floor. Heart in her throat, she grabbed a dust rag from the ground and flicked it in the direction of the eight-legged horror. "Go. Go away! I need that! Go!"

  The spider scurried away to safety. Right into the main glass bottle.

  Stifling a sob, Cassandra cracked the closet door open again. "Hey!" she hissed.

  Arthur's head jerked up again. When he quickly stood, she almost wept with relief. "What's wrong? You look like hell."

  "Thanks." She waved her hand, dismissing the insult. She didn't need his praise. She needed him to dispose of her worst nightmare. "Could you help me?"

  "I'm here, aren't I?"

  God he was infuriating. "You're not in here."

  He took one step forward, then looked around the inside of the closet with a glint in his eyes. "You know, we have a bedroom all to ourselves. You don't need to call me into the closet with you to get me alone."

  "Will you stop it and kill that thing?" Frustration was making her cry, which pissed her off.

  "What thing?" He leaned way over, too far over, and Cassandra shielded her eyes, certain the spider would lunge for his face. "That little guy? I'm not going to kill him—he's not doing anything wrong."

  "He's on my prop."

  "And he'll get off your prop once you stop waving that rag around and scaring him." Arthur snatched the dust rag from her hands and tossed it onto the floor.

  Cassandra narrowed her eyes. "You won't kill a spider for me?"

  "You're perfectly capable of killing your own spiders if you want to be some kind of spider murderer. But that's on you. And we need to talk, anyway." He glared right back at her.

  His level gaze was unnerving. She tossed her head. "I'm not going to have a talk five feet away from a blood-sucking nightmare."

  "Spiders don't suck blood, but fine." He closed his fingers around her wrist. The heat of his hand was like a brand marking her skin. She felt seared and scarred by his touch, and that only made her angrier at him for not being the man she wanted him to be. "Let's get out of this damn closet."

  "Let go of me first."

  "What if I don't want to? What if I let you go and you lock yourself in the bathroom again just to avoid me?"

  "I wasn't avoiding you! I was—" She looked around wildly. Her secret wasn't out yet, and the crew was spilling into the kitchen area for their late breakfast. The last thing she wanted was someone eavesdropping and spilling the beans. "I was sick and you know why." She brushed her hands futilely against her wet cheeks. "And maybe I'm naive, but I thought that meant you might help me."

  Arthur's eyebrow zoomed up sardonically. "By killing a spider for you? That's helping you?"

  She wiped at her eyes again. What was the point? She kept trying to make him into something he wasn’t, even though she knew, from the very beginning, what he really was. "I need that prop," she explained petulantly.

  "Get it later. Better to leave things alone than try to kill them and miss." All of a sudden, his gaze seemed far away, like he was looking at something she couldn't see.

  She inhaled sharply. “What are you—" She clapped her hand over her mouth as a wave of nausea hit her. She quickly held her breath, but the putrid scent already had her stomach churning. Arthur's hand was instantly at her elbow.

  "Cassandra? What is it, doll?" He drew in a deep breath as he searched her face, and as he did, understanding dawned on his. "The smell?"

  She answered with a moan.

  He sniffed again. Then winked at her before turning around. "Are you kidding me?" he bellowed to the breakfasting crew. "Who cooked this?" He stabbed a finger at the plate of scrambled eggs, and Cassandra retched again. The smell of eggs was so strong she felt woozy.

  "I did," the head of craft services, a barrel-chested man named Vinny answered. "What's the problem?"

  "The problem?" Arthur swaggered over with an exaggerated roll of his hips. "The problem is that you don't know how to cook eggs. See this?" He wiggled a rubbery yellow piece in Vinny's face and then threw it into the garbage. "It's sacrilege, is what it is." He turned to Amy. "No one cooks eggs around here until I give a cooking lesson, you hear me? Now I'm going to go outside and try to get the smell of burnt eggs out of my clothes, and when I come back, I better not see a single trace of this crap." Vinny's nostrils flared angrily, and Arthur laughed. "Are you really getting pissed about getting a free cooking lesson from a Michelin-starred chef? Stop looking all butthurt and grab a fan. You'll never be able to tell what good eggs are supposed to smell like if all you can smell is bad." He stared at Vinny and then nodded. "Fan!" he barked to the awestruck crew.

  A crew member appeared with an industrial fan and plugged it in. As soon as the blades started whirling, the smell dissipated.

  Cassandra swallowed hard and then smiled weakly at Arthur. "Thank you," she mouthed.

  "For what?" he asked with a crooked smile. "Helping you?"

  She licked her lips. "Yeah."

  He squeezed her hand. With another nod, he turned back to shout at the crew some more, this time for the benefit of the cameras Amy had hastily set up. The impromptu cooking lesson, complete with Arthur's customary foul-mouth, was the perfect cover.

  Her secret was safe because he'd stepped in and handled things.

  Confused but grateful, Cassandra grabbed a piece of toast from the craft services table. She wasn’t irritated any more, and she wasn't nauseous either.

  In fact, she was feeling much, much better.

  8

  Arthur drummed his knuckles against the tabletop as Cassandra sighed heavily. "Listen, I don't know what to tell you," he finally burst out. "They literally look exactly the same."

  Cassandra pressed her lips together. She was fully made up for the cameras, the heavy, pancake makeup obscuring the lovely glow her skin had developed these past few days. Seeing that glow was one of the best things about sharing a room with her. The other best things included seeing her bare toes peeking out from under the crisp white sheets as she slept diagonally across the huge bed, listening to her mumble herself awake before she realized he was listening, and watching her brush her hair away from her neck before she twisted it up into that bun she always wore.

  But thinking nice thoughts about sharing a room with her wasn't how this scene was supposed to play out. From behind the cameras, Amy mimed snapping her fingers at him and then drawing her finger across her throat. He rolled his eyes and sighed.

  Right. The ratings.

  "They're definitely not the same, Arthur," Cassandra said, her smile brightening. "See right there? The variegation in the colors on the petals?"

  Arthur frowned and leaned in. "Nope," he growled.

  Behind the camera, Amy grinned.

  This morning she'd pulled them both aside. "Babies, I gotta tell you, this dynamic you're working? The sunny optimist and the foul-mouthed pessimist
?" She kissed her fingers and looked to the sky. "Perfection. It's looking killer in editing. Let's lean into that, okay? Baby?" She pointed her tattooed hand at Cassandra who looked wary. "You keep that bright Pollyanna thing going on. And you?" Her finger thudded against Arthur's breastbone. "The further you want to take that whole 'eat shit and die' thing you've got working—"

  "That's what I have working?" Arthur tried to hide his shock. So much for thinking he was giving off the reformed bad boy image. Apparently, he was just giving off "asshole."

  "That's what we're seeing in the dailies." Amy pressed her hand to her headset, promised to kill whoever was on the other end slowly and painfully, and then smiled at Arthur. "It's exactly why we hired you, baby. Go nuts. The more opposite we can get you two, the better this whole ‘opposites attract thing’ will play."

  "Are we really still doing that?" Cassandra had squeaked. "The attraction thing?" But Amy had shooed them away, shouting to her crew that if they weren't in place in five minutes, she would raze their hometowns and sow the ashes with salt.

  Four minutes and fifty-five seconds later, Arthur had found himself in front of a camera being negative about the flowers Cassandra had chosen. It's what everyone else wanted him to do. But it sure wasn't what he wanted.

  Her smile drooped in a way he hated. "Tell you what," she said, keeping to the script. "I bet if we went to the greenhouse, you could really see what I'm talking about."

  "Cut! Perfect!" Amy shouted. "The B crew is already set up at the greenhouse, so let's strike this set and get the talent over there! Move people, if you want to live to see the end of the day!"

  The crew scattered. Arthur exhaled and unclenched his fists. He wanted to tell Cassandra that he really could see the variegation—he didn't get as far as he did in his career by missing little details like that—but she was already being tugged in the direction of hair and makeup.

  The greenhouse was a bumpy, ten-minute ride away. Sandwiched between a stone-faced cameraman and Amy, who was cheerfully issuing threats to everyone within earshot, Arthur didn't find it hard to scowl at the cameras once he emerged from the black SUV. This trip was pointless, this show was pointless, his whole frigging career was just a giant joke.

  And then he saw Cassandra.

  She'd washed some of the heavy makeup from her face, and in the bright, tropical sun, her glow was magnified tenfold. She looked like an angel with her hair tumbling loose, a white sundress both hiding her shape from him and clinging to her curves with every gentle puff of the ocean breeze. Arthur felt something unknot under his breastbone. She was an oasis of calm in his otherwise frantically anxious life. Just looking at her made him relax.

  And then she smiled, and he was lost.

  "What's that look about?" she murmured to him. Ten feet away, the cameras were rolling, capturing every little nuance of his expression, but suddenly he didn't care.

  "What look?" he asked, trying to keep up his negative facade. But he didn't much care that it was unconvincing.

  "Haven't you ever seen flowers like these before?" she asked him as they headed into the greenhouse. The humid air filled his lungs with a heavy, heady scent that made him feel instantly lightheaded. Cassandra reached up into a hanging basket, and tugged a white bloom to her nose. "These are the ones without the variegated leaves," she explained.

  As if his spinning head had anything to do with the flowers.

  "Huh."

  "Huh?" She tilted her head to the side expectantly. He was supposed to complain about how flowers weren't his job, how she was the one who cared about it, he just wanted to cook. It's what Amy had coached him to say.

  But fuck the script.

  He pressed his hand to hers. "Stop working a sec."

  She blinked. "What do you mean?"

  "Look around." He threaded his fingers into hers and gave her a gentle tug, leading her deeper into the greenhouse and further from the cameras prying eyes. "This is incredible isn't it?" Deep green leaves twined upwards in a canopy of green. Bright orange hibiscus bobbed like Japanese lanterns floating in a deep green sky. "It amazes me," he exhaled. "I've seen the world, but mostly my view is the same. If I'm in the kitchen, if doesn't really register to me whether I'm in Paris or Tahiti. But sometimes, when I get out of the kitchen and look around—" He caught himself as her eyes widened. Shame suddenly burned through his veins. "That was corny as fuck. Sorry about that."

  She blinked again. "I feel the same way sometimes." She reached up, lightly tracing the corners of a bloom. "My job is all about making someone else's dream come true." Arthur swallowed hard as she looked longingly upward. "That's why I keep that journal. So, I don't lose sight of my own dreams."

  Arthur's heart swelled in his chest. She got it. She understood how easy it was to lose sight of yourself and how the image that they projected wasn't necessarily the real thing. He snatched her other hand in his, and she looked up at him. Her eyes darted back and forth across his face, and Arthur felt like she was reading him like a book.

  "Cut!" Amy yelled.

  Cassandra snapped her eyes from his. Instantly, he felt severed, like someone had flipped a switch and left him in the dark. His temper flared. "What the fuck?" he snarled.

  "Babies, babies." Amy stomped over to them clutching her hair. "I cut you off before I fell asleep. What the hell was that?" She pressed her palms together and feigned sleep. "Boooring. You're supposed to be bringing the drama today." She waved her hands. "Let's take it from the entrance, okay? Arthur, baby, look at me." She shook her head. "Repeat after me: 'I don't give a fuck about flowers.' Say it. You're not here to get all goopy. You're here to boost ratings."

  "Yeah, you've mentioned that." Arthur could feel Cassandra's eyes on him, but he didn't want to look at her. He'd fucked it up, and now they had to shoot again. He'd thought they were having a genuine moment.

  But there was nothing genuine about what they had. It was all for the cameras and it was time to start rolling again.

  There were three stages to her father's drinking, Cassandra recalled as she watched the crew crack open their celebratory beers at the end of the day. His first stage was a lot like theirs—happy to the point of giddiness and shouting with laughter. Cassandra always hoped he'd stay at that stage, but he never did. He kept going to the second stage. The dangerous stage where he'd go quiet and brooding. That was the stage that had Cassandra tiptoeing around the house, fearful of making any noise that might bring his attention her way. Because if he kept drinking and didn't pass out, he'd reach stage three.

  The violent stage.

  Giving up drinking had not been a problem for Cassandra when she got pregnant, because she'd never had a drink of hard liquor. She didn't mind being around people when they were drinking and at stage one, like the crew.

  But it still made her nervous.

  She'd assumed that Arthur would be a drinker. But they'd been here a week now, and she had yet to see him crack open a beer.

  She was surprised, and that made her wonder what else she'd gotten wrong about him.

  Her feet were moving before she realized she was looking for him to find out.

  The door to their bedroom stood open, revealing the unoccupied room. Cassandra's heart sank just a fraction more than she wanted it to. But then she heard the creak of a chair as it thumped across the balcony floor.

  Smiling, Cassandra touched her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear before going to the balcony doors. The breeze caught the sheer drapes, sending them fluttering up, rising like a curtain at the beginning of of a play.

  And revealing a shirtless Arthur McClellan as the star of the show.

  Cassandra's throat tightened even as her stomach dropped. His broad, sculpted back was covered in ink, each twisting tattoo perfectly placed to highlight the perfection of his body. He leaned against the railing with his face to the setting sun. The angle sent brooding shadows along his face, but the glints of sunlight from the ocean streaked across his neck and down his arms.

&nb
sp; Heat gathered in the pit of Cassandra's stomach. Her knees turned to jelly, and she felt blindly for the wall to keep from collapsing. She'd slept with him, but she'd never really seen him. How could she have missed just how jaw-droppingly gorgeous he was?

  She stepped towards him, making the floorboard creak. He turned with a smile.

  And that's when she saw the glass in his hand.

  The smell hit her immediately. Bourbon. Her father's drink of choice. Bourbon was the drink that led him to stage three more often than not.

  A cold panic seeped into her chest and she had to grip the doorframe to keep from fleeing. Every deeply honed instinct was screaming danger danger get away! But she couldn't do it. Her fingers trailed to her stomach, and she cupped it protectively.

  Okay. Arthur was a drinker. She owed it to her child to see just what kind of drunk he was. If he reached stage three…no, even stage two, she would pack her bags tonight.

  "I grabbed another chair," Arthur said. She must have done a good job of hiding her turmoil, because he still smiled. "I figured after a day like today…"

  "You needed to unwind?" She gripped the back of the chair he offered.

  Arthur looked at his glass, then raised it to his lips. Cassandra watched him carefully. Would he knock it back in one go and then tell her to go get more? Would he swear into the glass and mutter about his bad luck in life? Her fingernails dug into the soft wood of the chair.

  Arthur sipped, then swirled the ice in his glass. "It seemed appropriate." His eyebrow zoomed up. "Yeah, okay, I fully admit I'm an asshole drinking this in front of you when you can't…"

  "I don't drink," she snapped.

  He nodded. "Wise move." He eyed his glass again, and Cassandra waited for him to take another sip.

  Instead he sank into his chair and gestured for her to do the same. "Come on, doll. Relax. It's been a hell of a day."

  She tucked her skirt under her legs and perched at the end of the chair. But the second she was off her feet, the exhaustion that had been nipping at her heels all day suddenly overtook her and she sank back into her seat with a long sigh. "Yeah," she relented. "It has been."