Billionaire Baby Daddy

by Claire Adams

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, starting to feel a little scared.

  I knew that I was taking advantage of him, but I had thought that this was okay. He'd asked for us to stay for a few months while he and I figured out our relationship, after all. And he'd set up Emma's room so that it was perfect for a little girl. Anyway, if he didn't want us there, I thought he was going to help us move out. He knew that I didn't have any money. I still didn't have a job.

  Andrew grabbed a manila folder off the table by the door and thrust it towards me, wordlessly watching as I opened it up.

  It was a DNA test.

  I gaped at it and then turned my eyes towards Andrew, wondering when he'd decided to get the paternity test done after all, and why he hadn't told me about it. Did he think that I would have minded? I totally understood if he felt like he had to get one done. After all, I was asking a lot, asking him to take us in like this, and I knew that someone in his position, with his billions, needed to worry about girls trying to take advantage of him.

  The words on the paper swirled in front of me, making it difficult to read them. But I didn't need to read them. Andrew told me all that I needed to know about them a moment later.

  “As you'll notice, that DNA test shows conclusively that I am not Emma's father,” Andrew said, his voice dark and dangerous. “Now what I want to know is, were you actually trying to con me, or did you really not know that she is someone else's child?”

  I stared down at the results, feeling bile rise in the back of my throat. But the results made no sense. Emma was his daughter. There was no way that she could be anyone else's daughter. The timing didn't make sense, and anyway, I'd seen pictures of Katherine when she was a kid. There were a couple of them around Andrew's house. The two girls could have been twins.

  But even beyond that, the timing of it all. I had already told him I wasn't the kind of person to sleep around. Misty could vouch for me, too. She'd known who the father was as soon as I'd told her I was pregnant, without trying to count the months or anything. Emma had to be his child. It was physically impossible for her to be someone else's.

  “Andrew, I don't know who you got this from, but it's not true,” I said, wishing my voice sounded stronger, that I spoke with a little more conviction. But it was hard just getting the words out. I occurred to me that I wasn't breathing right, and that I felt faint.

  “You don't think those documents look legitimate?” Andrew asked, a sneer on his face. “With the signatures and the legal stamps and everything else? You think that I've just made this all up? If I wanted you out of my life, all I had to do was tell you to get out. I could pay you to get out, rather than paying no-doubt extraordinary amounts of money to get someone to fabricate a legal document for me.”

  It did look official. That was true. But the words on the paper baffled me. “There must have been some sort of mix-up. Maybe they accidentally used the wrong sample. Those things can happen, can't they? And it’s not like you took Emma to the lab for someone to collect her DNA. Whatever sample you used, it might have been compromised.” A desperate note had crept into my voice, but I didn't care how I sounded at that moment. I just needed him to realize the truth.

  Surely, he wouldn't just kick us out, would he? Me maybe, but not Emma, right? Where would we go? Emma was already asleep for the night. How would I explain to her that the room that she'd been calling her own for weeks now was no longer hers? That we were no longer living there and that she was never again going to see the man who she'd been calling Daddy?

  Then, something else from the documents caught my eye. “Hang on,” I said, shaking my head. “Andrew, even if the DNA test is true, even if Emma isn't your daughter, I've never been arrested for fraud. I swear on that one. I've never even gotten a speeding ticket!”

  Andrew narrowed his eyes at me. “If you're not telling the truth,” he said warningly, leaving the threat hanging between us.

  I burst into tears. This was all too much for me. “Is this some sort of test?” I wailed. “Andrew, I swear to you, I swear to you, I've never been arrested. You don't have to believe me about Emma, but don't kick us out, please. Not tonight. Not when Emma's already in bed. Please.”

  Andrew looked pale and unhappy, but his mouth set into a firm line. “I'm not going to kick you out,” he said slowly. “But I am going to go stay at a hotel for a few days. I know that none of this is Emma's fault, whatever it is that you've done in the past. And I want to believe you. I want to believe that she's mine and that I can trust you. But I just don't know what to believe anymore.”

  “Where did you even get this from?” I asked, shaking the documents. “I just don't understand.”

  “That's private,” Andrew said, shaking his head. He moved past me towards the stairs. “I'm going to pack a bag. Please don't call me while I'm gone.”

  “Don't leave,” I begged, reaching for him. “Please. I'm sure we can talk this through. I'm sure we can figure it out. Just tell me where you got this information from, please. I swear it isn't true. Emma's your daughter. You know that. You have to feel that. Please.”

  I sobbed uncontrollably. I was shaking. But Andrew was cold and distant. He brushed away my reaching hands. It was just like he'd been the morning after that first night. He wanted nothing more to do with me. What I didn't understand is how we had gotten to this point. I had thought that things were going so well between us. And now, this.

  “Please Andrew,” I whispered. “Please, I love you. I love you so much. I'd never do anything to hurt you. I'd never lie to you. I swear it isn't true. Don't go, please. This test is wrong.”

  I had never meant to say those words in this situation. I had meant to save them for some perfect moment, some special time. They'd been on the tip of my tongue for a month now, ever since the Fourth of July, but I'd held back, kept myself from saying them, because I wanted to make sure that we were both ready to hear those words spoken out loud.

  Now, here I was, wailing them in the front hall, hurling them at Andrew's back as though they were some magic spell to bring back his affection for me.

  But even those words, “I love you,” were clearly not going to be enough to sway Andrew, not when he was like this. Instead, he barely even blinked. He stomped over to the stairs and disappeared. I collapsed to the floor like a marionette whose strings have been cut, sobbing desperately.

  The one saving grace was that Emma wasn't awake to witness this. But I knew, with a sickening feeling in my gut, that in spite of all appearances over the past few months, my luck had never changed from bad to good after all.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Andrew

  I knew I was scaring people at the office the following morning, but I didn't care. I'd had a sleepless night, alone in a hotel bed, and I'd come into the office early, angrily throwing myself into my work and trying to forget about the mess at home.

  From everything that Lexi had said the previous night, from how upset she'd been, I wanted to believe that she was telling the truth. But I also knew that if she was conning me, she would likely be a skilled actress.

  I didn't know what to believe. And I didn't want to think about it anymore.

  My secretary poked her head into my office, looking pale and terrified. I scowled at her. “I have my 'do not disturb' on for a reason,” I snarled. “Get out!”

  “Sir, it's your sister,” the woman said, barely audible. “She told me to interrupt you, whatever you were doing. Said it was an emergency.”

  I felt my blood run cold at the thought of anything having happened to Katherine. She was the only person who I could ever trust, the only person who had proved time and time again that my love for her wasn't unfounded. I hurriedly clicked off the “do not disturb” on my phone and nodded to my secretary to patch the call through.

  When I picked it up, I felt stupid for even thinking that something might have happened to Katherine. No, she was just as all right as ever, but she was angry. It was the first time I thought I
'd ever heard her truly angry about something, despite all the times that I'd missed our brunches or forgotten to call her when I'd said that I would.

  “Andrew Patrick Goldwright!” she snapped. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! I know that you have no manners, and I know that you're a misogynistic asshole, but seriously? I never thought that you would be this much of a dick. An absolute dick. What the fuck is your problem? Where the hell do you get off?”

  I pulled the receiver away from my ear and stared at it, wondering if this was really my sweet, good-natured sister on the other end of the line. I'd hardly heard her cuss before, let alone cuss like this.

  She continued to rant for another minute or so, and I just sat there listening, letting her work it out of her system. It was a tactic that I usually employed with other businessmen when they called irate about some product not being delivered or some other failure in our system. But when it was upset businessmen that I was working with, rants like this tended to bore me. When it was Katherine ranting like this, and ranting at me, I started to get agitated.

  “Are you going to tell me what you're so upset about?” I asked when she finally wrapped up what she was saying. I tried to keep my tone mild, but I didn't quite manage to. Instead, I sounded almost embarrassed, and I didn't even know what I had supposedly done wrong. It was something big, though, from the sounds of it.

  “I can't believe you,” Katherine said. She sounded disgusted still, but much more like her usual self. “Do you even realize how badly you've upset Lexi?”

  I felt a pang of guilt, but I tried to remind myself that none of this was my fault. I had all the evidence. Katherine just didn't know the full story.

  I tried to laugh it off. “That's actually a pretty smart move, her coming to you for her next play,” I said, as though I were nonchalantly discussing a chess game rather than the object of my romantic affections, who had turned out to be a con. “I guess she thinks that if she can get you on her side, this whole thing will blow over.”

  “I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but you're wrong, whatever it is,” Katherine said succinctly. “I came over to your place to surprise Lexi and Emma with tickets to a show for the afternoon. I found Lexi distraught and packing her bags while Emma sat in the kitchen with Janice. When I asked what was going on, Lexi told me that you wanted them to leave and that you didn't believe that Emma was your daughter. I thought we'd been over that already.”

  “Renée cornered me after work yesterday,” I told Katherine.

  Katherine groaned. “Don't tell me you've decided to get back together with that bimbo? So you've sent Lexi packing? Do you have no conscience? You've just spent the past few months cozying up to Lexi, and now you're done with her, just like that?”

  I tapped a pen against a stack of papers at the side of my desk. “Renée hired a private investigator to dig into Lexi's background,” I told my sister. “Lexi apparently has a criminal record that I didn't know about. For fraud.” I threw the pen across the room. “How could I have been so stupid? I didn't even bother to look into her background. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I just went along with everything that she was saying.”

  “Did you ask her about the conviction?” Katherine asked, sounding surprised. “Maybe there was a good reason behind it. I mean, not that there's ever a good reason for committing fraud, but if she was trying to, I don't know, help Emma and she thought that that was the only way to do it, then at least it would make sense.”

  “This was before Emma came along,” I said grimly. “And that's not the whole story. Renée also got the guy to do a paternity test. Emma isn't mine. Lexi was conning me all along.”

  Katherine was silent for a moment, and then she started laughing. “Seriously, Andrew?” she asked, sounding as though she was beside herself.

  “Katherine, it's not funny,” I snapped. “I have enough people trying to weasel me out of millions. It was a great scheme, I suppose, but the jig's up now. It's over. And although I didn't tell her to pack her bags, I'm glad that she realizes that it's over and is going to get out of there. I'm staying in a hotel for the meantime.”

  “Andy, you idiot,” Katherine said, her voice gone soft. “Forget your feelings for a moment. Think of this as though it were a business deal. If one of Orinoco's competitors showed up at your office and offered you information on a company that you were interested in acquiring, telling you that that company was crap and that you were wasting your time, you'd question their information and their motives, wouldn't you?”

  “Of course I would,” I snapped.

  “Even if it was legal-looking, all nicely typed-up with tables and graphs,” Katherine said.

  “What are you getting at?” I asked.

  “That's exactly what Renée did,” Katherine said. “She came to your work with the goal of convincing you that her rival wasn't worth your time. But you're so worried about things not working out with Lexi that you started to wonder if maybe Renée's information was right.”

  “Lexi and Renée aren't rivals,” I said firmly. “And Renée knows that. She said that she respects that we aren't in a relationship anymore and that we are never getting back together. She said so, in as many words. Your whole argument is invalid.”

  “Of course, Renée was going to say that,” Katherine said gently. “Because she couldn't very well say that she was there to try to win you back, could she? You would never have listened to her if she had put it that way.”

  “She said she was just trying to look out for me because we'd been friends long before we started dating one another,” I said. “Friends do that sort of thing, looking out for one another.” I knew saying this out loud, made me sound stupid, but at the time I had believed her.

  Katherine laughed again. “I don't know what's funnier, you calling Renée a friend, or your insistence that she was just looking out for you. She managed to destroy your relationship, the thing that made you the happiest that I've ever seen you, all in one night. And the two of you were never friends.”

  “We've known each other for a long time,” I maintained stubbornly.

  “And Renée has only ever been self-motivated and petty,” Katherine said. She sighed. “Are you really telling me that there's nothing about this that seems weird to you? Like how she managed to get a paternity test at all? Where the hell did she get Emma’s DNA, you moron? And don’t you feel the least bit guilty at how much you’ve upset Lexi?”

  The truth was, I did feel guilty. I hated the idea of Lexi packing up her bags, almost as much as I'd hated sleeping on my own the previous night. But I couldn't let my feelings get in the way of what I knew to be a logical decision.

  “Even if I throw out the evidence that Renée gave me, doesn't it say something about Lexi's and my relationship that I even considered the evidence to be true?” I asked, putting my head down on the desk.

  Katherine was silent for a moment.

  “It doesn’t say anything about your relationship with Lexi,” she said. “It says something about you. Your suspicion has always been your biggest flaw. And I understand where that comes from. It's also what makes you such a great businessman. One of the many things that makes you such a great businessman, rather.” She paused. “The thing that you have to remember is that, yes, Renée does know you. I get the feeling that she's been watching you for a lot longer than you think. I think she's had her eyes on you since long before the two of you started dating.”

  “She does seem a little obsessed with me,” I admitted. “I actually threatened to get a restraining order if she came near me again.”

  “And this is the woman you trust over Lexi?” Katherine asked with a sigh.

  I’d never heard her sound so disappointed in me. I had no response.

  “A restraining order might be a good idea,” Katherine said. “Although, it'll ruin her family's reputation.”

  “I know,” I sighed. “And that's the only reason I haven't had the paperwork drawn up already.”<
br />
  “Your safety and well-being are more important than her family’s reputation,” Katherine said. “Besides, she had no problem destroying your family. The one you built with Lexi and Emma.”

  “We don’t know that they’re my family,” I said.

  “Come on, Andrew. If anyone knows how to play you and push your buttons, it’s Renée. She knows what your fears are and how to manipulate you. It doesn't mean that your relationship with Lexi is doomed to fail. You need to learn to trust Lexi more, sure. I don't think you would have let her live in your home for as long as you have if you didn't trust her, though.”

  “What am I going to do?” I asked. “She's never going to forgive me, after this.”

  “There's still time,” Katherine said confidently. “She hasn't told Emma that they're leaving yet. To be honest, I don't think she knows where they're going to go if they leave. You can still catch them.”

  I swallowed hard, a sickening feeling in my gut. “You don't think she's going to hate me, do you?”

  “Let her know how bad you feel,” Katherine advised. “And talk things out, explain to her exactly what happened and what you were feeling. Lexi has Emma, and she has to carefully think through every decision that might affect the girl. I'm sure she'll understand your fear and suspicion, better than you might think.”

  I nodded my head. “Katherine?” I asked, sensing that she was about to hang up.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Thanks,” I said quietly. I hung up with her and quickly dialed Janice's number. I needed a favor.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lexi

  I stared listlessly down at our suitcases, trying to think if there was anything that I'd forgotten to pack that we'd need right away. Or ever again, really. I was sure that once we walked out these doors, we were never going to be allowed back into Andrew's mansion again. The thought still made my heart clench.

  I had never meant to let Andrew's mansion feel like home, but it had definitely become that way over the time that we'd been living there. It wasn't just that all of Emma's and my things were there. It wasn't just that I had no idea where else we were going to live. No, it had something to do with the fact that Andrew and Emma and I were all there together. It had something to do with lunches and family outings. It had something to do with finally, for the first time in my life, feeling comfortable in a home.