The Billionaire's Baby 3: A Single Dad Romance

by Lila Bella

  I pulled back from our kiss, tearing my lips from his, and I looked into his eyes, so full of something deeper than desire and lust, something I wasn’t ready to see, though deep in my heart I wanted to.

  “I can’t right now,” I told him. “And you shouldn’t either.”

  He blinked, and I saw the moment he snapped out of the spell cast by our desire. He chuckled and gently shook his head, sliding back from me. He sat next to me on the bed with his hands in his lap.

  “You’re right. We need to be trying to find Kaylee.”

  “But do you have any idea where to start? Because I don’t.”

  If his ex-fiancé had her, I figured he probably knew a way to start looking at least. Because I didn’t know her, I had no idea where to start in order to track her down.

  For all I knew, she’d fled town after setting off with Kaylee.

  He thought about it for a moment. He furrowed his brow while he looked down at his hands, like he was thinking the same thing I was—he knew somebody who knew where she was —but he couldn’t think of who he needed to call in order to get started. Finally, he shook his head again and groaned.

  “I don’t know where she would be, but I think I know how to reach her.” He got up from the bed and turned back to me. “I’m going to go try giving her a call. Are you going to be okay up here?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Let me know if there is anything I can do.” I felt useless again, like I was going to be in the way if I stayed around while there was no baby for me to watch, especially if I couldn’t help him look for her.

  “Stay up here and relax. I’ll let you know if I need anything.” He ducked out of the room and left the door open as he went back downstairs.

  He’d told me he thought he could get in touch with her, and I found that odd as I sat there thinking about it.

  If he knew how to get in touch with her, why hadn’t he done it before? I finally reasoned that he must have just gotten her number when she called him awhile back.

  He had warned me then that she was likely to try something stupid. I should have listened, of course, but I hadn’t, and now here we were.

  No matter what he told me, no matter how he made me feel in his presence, I couldn’t stop finding ways I’d contributed to Kaylee’s abduction.

  Of course, this was better than when I’d been hauled down at the police station, where they’d been convinced I had been the one who abducted Kaylee from Jude’s home.

  They’d bought Marie’s story hook, line, and sinker. They believed I had taken the baby, despite my efforts to explain that the actual situation was completely opposite of what they believed.

  “I’m his nanny. Jude hired me to watch Kaylee,” I’d argued over and over that afternoon before he got there to pick me up.

  “Jude is Mr. Black, correct?”

  “Right, and the baby’s name is Kaylee. If you hadn’t let Marie run off with her, you could verify that by asking her. You should also talk to Jude about it and let him tell you why I was at the park with his daughter.”

  I had eventually stopped talking. They weren’t listening, and had flat-out accused me of lying about it.

  Nothing I said at that point was going to change any minds down at the station. For whatever reason, they believed Marie without reservation.

  While I sat upstairs going back over everything that had happened that afternoon, I decided I needed to know exactly how things had gone between Jude and Marie to begin with.

  There had to be something I was missing, I thought. The story wasn’t adding up. If she’d run off, why was she back suddenly, demanding the right to see her daughter?

  We hadn’t talked about it much outside of when he’d warned me about her trying something, a warning which had fallen on deaf ears.

  I slid out of his bed and started downstairs, knowing that he’d told me to stay put and relax unless he needed me, but we needed to talk. Careful not to creep—I didn’t want to sneak up on him—I hurried down to the living room.

  He wasn’t there, so I walked about the first floor of the house until I found him in the kitchen, sitting at the small table with his phone up to his ear. He looked at me and shook his head, holding his finger over his lips.

  I took the gesture to mean more than to simply stay quiet. He seemed not to want me in the room.

  When I tried to sit down at the table, he shook his head again and pointed out of the room. Whatever he was saying to the other person on the phone was private, and I wasn’t supposed to bear witness to it.

  I got up and left, trying not to be offended. How was I supposed to sit idly by and do absolutely nothing while I waited?

  I went back upstairs and stopped in front of the nursery. I caught myself wanting to check on her, as if my body didn’t understand yet that she was gone, and somewhere deep inside, I expected to see her in the crib when I looked into the room.

  I knew she wasn’t there, though, and standing in the upstairs hallway staring at the door to her room was merely torture. I tried to shrug it off and laugh at myself but I couldn’t. My shoulders slumped as I moped my way to his room and climbed back onto the bed.

  Even sitting down at the table listening in on his conversation with whoever it was he had on the phone would have felt like I was contributing, instead of lying here with the covers pulled up to my chin, waiting to hear something from him about what was happening.

  I wish I had known more about the situation with his ex. I felt like that would have helped somehow.

  I didn’t know which I was more upset over—the fact that Kaylee had been taken from me the way she had, or the fact that I felt like I was useless to Jude. Marie didn’t deserve to be holding the beautiful child she’d abandoned.

  We’d only just begun to form a real bond when they took her from me, and my biggest fear—aside from never seeing her again—was being associated with that trauma when we were finally we reunited.

  I didn’t want to reach out for her only to have her freak out because she thought I was going to hand her back over to someone else again.

  My phone rang while I lay there in the bed. I pulled it out of my pocket, almost expecting it to be Jude telling me to come back downstairs. But it was Violet, interrupting my little pity party.

  “Hey.” I sat up in the bed so I didn’t sound like I’d been sleeping.

  “Hey. How are things going?”

  “Oh, everything here is fine I guess, or, you know, as fine as things can be right now, given the circumstances.” I tried to hide the fact I’d been crying.

  “So you’re still there? He hasn’t fired you or anything?”

  “I’m still here.” It brought a smile to my face to confirm that fact. “He’s made it pretty clear he’s not going to let me go over this. He’s said a few times that we are going to find Kaylee and get her back.”

  “We, huh? That sounds promising. Well, do you need anything?”

  “Vi, do you think it was my fault?” There was only one thing I needed, and it was the answer to that question.

  “Do I think what was your fault? What happened in the park? No way, that was definitely not your fault. That was all his ex… plus the police get a little credit as well, even though they thought at the time they were doing their job.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  I kept my tone even and steady, but there was no overstating how happy it made me feel to hear her say that. Violet wasn’t one to tell me things that would make me feel better.

  If she had felt it was my fault, she would have said so.

  3 - Jude

  “Are you alone? Is anyone listening to us?”

  Marie sounded as paranoid as the villain always did in the movies when they requested a secretive phone call where they laid out their plans.

  It would have been funny if her paranoia hadn’t been so genuine, and his fear for Kaylee profound. She really didn’t want anyone listening in.

  “I’m in my kitchen, Marie. No one is here e
xcept my nanny, but she’s upstairs.”

  I didn’t tell her I’d left Hollie in my room, lying in the bed we were sharing while she stayed with me.

  And no sooner had the words come out of my mouth than she came strolling into the kitchen, trying to sit down at the table where I sat talking to Marie. I shook my head and sent her out of the room so I could talk in private.

  “Poor thing, is she packing to leave?” She laughed. “It’s kind of pointless to have a nanny when you don’t have a kid anymore, I would imagine. Tell her I’m sorry she has to go.”

  “She’s not leaving, Marie. I’m keeping her on because I’m going to get Kaylee back from you. You gave up any right to your daughter when you abandoned her.”

  I didn’t raise my voice. There was no need to argue and yell about it; I was telling her the simple facts.

  “I know why you’re really keeping her on. She’s a really good, convenient piece of ass, isn’t she? How many times have you had her, Jude? Are you hitting it every night when you get home from work? I mean, I saw her. She’s a tight little thing. I imagine you’re wearing her out.”

  “You’re sick, Marie. How can you even talk about all that right now?”

  The better question was how I could let it affect me the way it was. She was right about Hollie’s tight little body. Every time I saw her, I wanted her, wanted to shove myself inside her.

  It didn’t matter what she was doing. Her body was perfect, and she felt fucking great wrapped around my cock. I loved the way her soft, round ass pressed against me when we fucked.

  But that wasn’t why I had called Marie, I told myself. We weren’t on the phone so I could fantasize about the girl I’d been sharing my bed with. We were supposed to be talking about how I was going to get Kaylee back from her.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? You’d be denying it if it wasn’t. I bet she’s upstairs in the bed waiting for you right now. Do you think of me when she makes you cum, Jude? Do you have to cry out ‘oh, baby’ so you don’t call out my name in bed? I bet you don’t. I bet you’ve forgotten all about me. Hell, you’d forgotten all about me months before I left.”

  The crazed intensity in her voice left, and she sounded hurt. It was as if she’d finally gotten to the point of what she was doing.

  “How is this supposed to work, Marie? I’ve got a pretty solid case against you if I were to take you to court to win legal custody of our daughter and ensure that you never see her again,” I told her.

  I hadn’t wanted to start our conversation with threats, but she was obviously too concerned about Hollie to get to the point herself, so I figured I’d help her along.

  “No, we don’t need to go to court. If you give me ten million dollars, I’ll let you have our daughter back.”

  “I’m sorry, ten mil? That’s extortion, Marie.” I barked out a hoarse, humorless laugh.

  “It’s only fair, Jude, don’t you think? I mean, after all, you’d still be working for someone else if I hadn’t helped you get your firm off the ground, right? Do you realize the kind of financial bind it put me in to help you?”

  “Do you realize that if you hadn’t run off, you wouldn’t need any help?” I snapped back at her. “You abandoned your daughter, you abandoned me, and you abandoned the company you helped build. Now you want to try to hold her for money? Mark my words, Marie. You’re not getting a dime of that money, and you’re going to lose Kaylee altogether in the process.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Jude. I’m not going to lose my daughter again without getting that money from you. Do you know how I know?”

  She had an idea up her sleeve that she thought was pretty clever, I could tell.

  “How do you know?” I asked, taking the bait out of curiosity.

  “Because I know you. You won’t let me keep her. You’ll give in eventually and pay what you need to in order to get her back. That’s who you are, Jude. You’re a good, reliable man.”

  I heard the smile on her face in her voice. It was a sick little grin. She felt like she’d figured out some secret of the universe, like she was telling me something that would make me go ahead and give her the cash without a second thought.

  I wasn’t about to do that. She didn’t deserve a dime of the money I’d made running the firm she’d helped me start. She’d invalidated any claim she had to anything the moment she walked out of that door and left us wondering where the hell she’d gone.

  “You obviously need the money more than you need our daughter. Do you mind telling me what that’s all about?”

  I sat back in my chair at the table. I still hadn’t raised my voice or allowed my tone to reflect how I really felt. There was no reason to turn it into a fight. She was wrong, and I was right; I was confident of that much.

  “Fine. I’ll tell you. I need to satisfy some debts, Jude. Things haven’t worked out for me as well as I’d intended when I left. Now I’m stuck in a bind, and I need some help.”

  “Why didn’t you just come to me and ask for a loan?”

  It would have been a cold day in hell before I’d have given her any money, but I wanted to know why she was going about it the way she was.

  “Do you really expect me to think you would have loaned me any money? First off, would you have?”

  “No, probably not. I wouldn’t think you’d be able to pay me back,” I chuckled. “And I would have expected it to lead to more drama eventually anyway.”

  “You’re probably right,” she agreed.

  The person on the phone with me now was sounding more like the Marie I knew—calm and straightforward, not screaming and making hysterical claims about Kaylee’s safety.

  To hear her talking like this, though, made me wonder what had happened between us to send her into the wild hysterics our relationship had become back before she left.

  I wondered why she thought she had to stand on her own two feet in the first place. If she’d have stayed, everything would have been fine.

  Of course, that wasn’t to say I would have taken her back. There was no room for her in my life. I had something going on with Hollie now, even though we hadn’t taken the time to define or even discuss it yet.

  My reluctance to get rid of her after losing Kaylee to Marie like that made me realize that letting her sleep in my bed, the sex, and the breakfasts and dinners together nearly every day meant more than I’d been willing to admit before.

  Her reaction to losing Kaylee also went deeper than merely fearing for her job. She was genuinely upset and worried for my daughter.

  The woman on the other end of the phone, despite how calm her tone had become and how sensible she was trying to sound all of a sudden, had gladly given up her daughter and the cozy life she’d been living for something else—though he wasn’t sure what.

  She was barely worth my time. I should have gone straight to the police as soon as that first text had come in. I should have had someone listening in on the phone call so they could get a location on her phone or at least document what she was trying to do.

  “Look, ten million’s not that much,” I told her finally, and in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t.

  “I know. That’s why I asked for it. It’s not much for you, but it’ll make a huge difference for me.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath and checked around to make sure Hollie wasn’t nearby listening. “Where are you? I can run it by and pick Kaylee up tomorrow.”

  “Like I’m going to tell you where I am. You must think I’m stupid. I don’t want you sending the cops after me.” She laughed, then continued, “Call me back when you have the money and we’ll talk about where to make the drop.”

  “The drop? Oh, no. I’m not going to have you backing out of this deal and not delivering on Kaylee. I drop the money, you pick it up, and then you decide not to bring her back to me. It’s not going down like that, Marie.”

  “You have such little faith in me. What did I do to earn that?”

  “Look who’s talking. You jus
t said you would expect me to call the cops on you instead of dropping off the money so I can get our daughter.”

  “Give me the night to think on it, Jude. Call me when you have the money, and we’ll figure out how to make the exchange. I’ll talk to you then.”

  I opened my mouth to say something else, but she hung up before I could do it. I sat there listening to the silence on the line for a moment before putting the phone back down on the table. I sat and stared at the blank screen.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked the lifeless phone staring back up at me.

  She’d called me out right away on calling the cops instead of taking her the money. I had no intentions of giving her ten million, but I was ready to make her think I was going to if it got Kaylee back quickly.

  Unfortunately, she acted like she’d done this before, or like she had someone coaching her who had. I was at a loss and didn’t know what else to try to do.

  I didn’t know who to call for advice, either. Did I call the cops and admit I’d been talking to her without letting them know?

  Did I call that clueless lady from Child Protective Services to let her know my daughter’s mother was essentially trying to sell her to me?

  I didn’t see either of those phone calls working out very well for me.

  If I called Lane, he’d tell me to lawyer up and take her to court over custody, because my case was probably good enough to do exactly as I had threatened—take Kaylee from her completely, leaving her with no parental rights.

  But a court case would have taken months, though, and I didn’t have that kind of time. I wanted to go ahead and handle it, and I wanted to make sure she didn’t come back around down the road to cause more trouble.

  I was going to have to figure something out on my own. Somehow we were going to have to trick her into giving up the baby and leaving us alone. I wasn’t thrilled about not having a better plan than that, but it was all I could think of at the time.

  I got up from the table and poured myself a glass of Scotch. I took a sip of the smoky liquor and felt it course through me. I stood at the counter and drank the whole glass, taking it down in several sips.