Not his baby: A BWWM Billionaire Romance

by Rebecca Dupree

  He had no idea how this happened. He had always been good at reading women, and when one of them was lying to him, for whatever reason, he could smell it a mile away. He was that good. What happened this time…he couldn’t really tell. He loved Gina with all his heart and he thought that would be enough to give her everything she had ever wanted, everything she had ever needed to be happy. And she didn’t seem to be happy. She was going to leave him soon, even though she promised she would stay and try to work it out.

  When he returned home for his lighter, he heard voices, and something told him to be quiet and just listen. He couldn’t really hear everything that was being said, only snippets of the conversation. Gina mentioned blackmail. If there was blackmail involved, that meant there was a big secret that he wasn’t in on. She kept something hidden from him and was ready to succumb to blackmail to keep him from finding it out. This stabbed him right in the heart. He didn’t expect this of her. And there was her best friend, urging Gina to leave him, suggesting it as the most painless option of all. Painless for who?

  Being the leader of an international company, he knew that one needed to have the entire picture revealed in order to be able to act properly, so he knew he would need to find the missing pieces of the puzzle that was his wife. He thought he knew who she was, but it turned out he had been living with a stranger all this time, and now, he needed to find out who exactly this stranger was and what she wanted with him.

  “Jeanie?” Tyler suddenly rose from his seat and called for his secretary. She just peered through the slightly ajar door. “Get me Phil Perkins on the phone. Immediately.”

  “Yes, Mr. Reid.”

  Tyler knew this wasn’t the right way to talk to his employees, at least not in his company, but he couldn’t be bothered with that now. His life was about to come crashing down and he couldn’t be bothered with politeness at such a moment. His phone rang and he rushed to grab it, like a desperate man grasping for a straw.

  “Phil?” he said into the receiver.

  “Tyler.” He heard a friendly voice on the other side of the line. “Long time no see. How have you been?”

  “Good, good. Thanks. You? The wife?” Tyler tried to do the pleasantries as quickly as possible and then get back to business. Time was of the essence.

  “All good, thanks,” Phil replied. “But I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.” Phil was the best detective in town, and he knew very well that people who called him, friends or not, rarely called him just to check up on him and his life.

  “No, Phil. Afraid it’s not.” Tyler sighed.

  “Who is it?” As always, Phil needed just a name and he would come up with everything else. Phil could dig up a bone which even the dog himself had totally forgotten about, so Tyler knew that if there was anything to discover, Phil was the guy.

  “Gina Reid,” Tyler said through clenched teeth, as if a part of him refused to reveal the name that meant everything to him.

  “Your wife?” Phil thought he didn’t hear it right. Yet it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened, for a husband to do some checking on the wife. Though it was usually done before the wedding.

  “Yes,” Tyler confirmed.

  “Give me a week.” Phil knew that in such conditions, it was best not to ask any questions.

  “I need it faster, Phil.” To anyone else but Phil Perkins, a longtime friend of the Reid family, it would seem like a direct order, but Phil knew better.

  “I can do it in two days.”

  “Thanks, Phil.” Tyler paused, as if he needed a few seconds to compose himself and actually realize what he was doing. “I appreciate it.”

  “Sure thing, Tyler. Talk to you soon.” He hung up.

  Tyler held on to the receiver for a few more seconds, then placed it back gently. It was done. If there was any secret Gina was hiding, Phil would get to the bottom of it, and so would Tyler. It was only a matter of time now.

  Chapter 21

  Exactly two days later, just as he had promised, Phil was in Tyler’s office. The two men didn’t like wasting time, so they got straight down to business. Tyler was sitting in his chair, and even though he offered Phil a seat, he refused it.

  “I don’t plan on sticking around for long,” Phil explained.

  “That bad?” Tyler asked, his gaze fixed intently upon the heavy-looking folder Phil was holding in his hand.

  “It’s not good, I can tell you that much,” Phil revealed as he placed the folder on the table, just within Tyler’s reach. “Everything you wanted to know is here.” He patted the folder.

  Tyler looked at him, then back at the folder. He felt a heaviness in the air. He couldn’t wait to be left alone with the secrets this folder was holding, and yet he didn’t want Phil to leave. As long as Phil was there, and as long the contents of that folder weren’t revealed, Tyler could go on believing that everything Gina had told him was the truth and nothing but the truth. He still loved her that much; to be able to turn a blind eye to everything and just keep on trusting her. But her words wouldn’t let him be, and he knew they would always come back to haunt him. He had to know, no matter what the price for this knowledge would be.

  “I appreciate the help, Phil,” he managed to mutter.

  “I can still take it back,” Phil suddenly said. “It’ll be like none of this ever happened. And in some cases, it’s better that way.” He paused. “Is this one of those cases?” Tyler shook his head. “Then, I’ll take my leave.” He tipped his hat and left Tyler’s office.

  Seconds passed, then minutes, and every minute was as long as an hour. Tyler could almost feel the passage of time as something tangible, something that was sitting on his chest, making it increasingly harder to breathe. He wanted to believe Gina; he wanted to believe her so badly, but he knew she was hiding something, and he would never be happy with her knowing there was a secret that could tear them apart at any given moment.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. He grabbed the folder and started pulling out papers, one by one. He read them hungrily. It was all there: Gina’s entire life. Tyler knew about her mother, but the part about the huge debt surprised him. Gina never mentioned she was in any financial trouble. He wondered why. She must have known he would have paid off any amount of money that she owed. He didn’t understand this.

  He also didn’t know that her ex was in prison. Of course, this was nothing to brag about, but he thought she could have at least mentioned it. Then he noticed the timeline Phil generously created for him. It seemed that the guy went to prison just around the time Gina started working for his company. And one word was written in capital letters: baby. There was a question mark after it.

  Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle were in their place. Tyler shook his head. He was dizzy. It was hard to breathe, as if an invisible hand was holding him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. He had to talk to Gina about this, and he had to do it now. All sorts of thoughts started swarming inside his mind as he rushed out of his office, telling Jeanie to cancel all his appointments for the day because he was feeling unwell and he was headed home.

  As soon as got in his car, he turned the ignition and blasted out of the parking lot. He was squeezing the steering wheel, pressing hard on the gas pedal. He didn’t care if he died right then and there. He felt like his entire world had been destroyed by the hand of the very same person who helped build it, and it was killing him. He almost didn’t want to know if this was true, if the baby really wasn’t his. But if he didn’t find out, he wouldn’t be able to go on, with or without Gina.

  Chapter 22

  Gina was taking a nap on the couch when she heard the front door slam violently.

  “Gina!” Tyler yelled. She had never heard him speak like this before.

  “In here!” she shouted back, still a little taken aback by his tone of voice.

  He entered the living room holding a bunch of papers in his hand. He looked a total mess. His usually well groomed hair was sticking up every which way,
his shirt collar twisted the wrong way, and he entered the apartment in his shoes, something which he had never done before. All this revealed to Gina that something was terribly wrong.

  He knows. There was nothing else that could shake him this much. She thought she had more time, as she always did. She wasn’t even sure if she was going to leave Tyler yet. She was still weighing her options. But Tyler knew everything. That much was obvious.

  “Why?” He said just this one word, and nothing else. His gaze was fixed upon her, as if she would disappear any moment and he wanted to keep the memory of her inside his mind for as long as he could. She truly was beautiful. Even more so when she felt she was endangered.

  Gina stood up, trying to face him, but she didn’t want to get too close to him.

  “Why, Gina?” He threw the papers on the little coffee table that stood between the two of them, separating their bodies.

  She recognized a few documents. She knew immediately that he must have hired a private eye to check her past. She just wasn’t sure if Benjamin was involved in it. Not that it mattered too much at this point. It was all over. Benjamin didn’t get his money, so of course he’d go to Tyler with all that info. There was nothing else to win or to lose. She had to forfeit.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this?” He gestured at the documents. “You lied to me. About everything.” His voice was on the verge of breaking. He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t whispering. He wasn’t using his normal voice. “I loved you. I trusted you. I needed you.” He shook his head. He was pacing the room like a caged animal. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted to be far away from her, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to slam the door on the way out. “But now you are dead to me.”

  “Please…” She grabbed his hand. “Let me explain.”

  “There is nothing to explain,” he said coldly. “I know everything. What else can you tell me that I don’t know already?”

  “The truth,” she whispered. “My truth.”

  “I’ve been hearing nothing but your truth and I’m tired of it. My eyes are finally open, and I won’t let you close them again. And as for…” He looked at her protruding belly. “I can’t know if it’s mine or not.” He sighed. He loved that baby. She knew it well. She knew he wouldn’t let her go through it all alone. “I’ll pay for everything. Doctors. Hospital bills. Whatever you need. I won’t let this poor innocent thing suffer for the mistakes of its parents.”

  “Tyler, please…” She tried to grab his hand again, but like before, he rudely pulled it back, not allowing her to touch him. She understood why he would feel this way. “If you just listen to me, for just a second, you’d see—”

  “Gina…” He sighed, interrupting her. “I’m done playing your games.”

  “It’s not a game!” she shouted as if her life depended on it. “My life is not a game!” She threw herself towards the papers and shoved them to the floor. “This is the truth. Yes.” Her voice became quieter as she noticed he wasn’t interrupting her and that he was actually listening to her. “Whatever it says in these documents, it’s true. I don’t want to read it, I don’t want to look at it. It’s probably all true. And now you don’t want anything to do with me. I understand. I really do. I mean, after what I’ve put you through, who’d want to have anything to do with me?” She snorted. “But please. Just hear me out. Give me a chance to tell you what happened. To tell you how sorry I am to have caused you pain. And then I’ll be out of your life forever. You won’t have to see me ever again.” She paused, as if she remembered something very important. “You don’t know this, but I went to see your lawyer a few days ago, and I signed a waiver.” He didn’t take his eyes off of her, but he said nothing. “In case of a divorce, I get nothing. The lawyer warned me against this, but I did it anyway. I don’t want your money, Tyler. I did…in the beginning, I admit. I needed it desperately to pay my bills and my debts, and I needed money to take care of my unborn child. And when you showed interest in me, I felt like I hit the jackpot.”

  She sighed, and then sat down. She felt a little dizzy. It felt liberating to finally be able to tell him everything without holding back. “We started dating, then when you asked me to marry you, I thought this must be what it feels like to be born under a lucky star. I never felt that way before. I felt safe. Protected. Sheltered. Like I didn’t have a care in the world. And I didn’t. And it was all because of you. But then it started becoming more than just that. I started falling for you. Your charm, your way of talking to me, of treating me like a true lady, all that won me over and I fell head over heels for you. I never felt this way about anyone, and I can truly say I feel you are my soul mate. But I know that no relationship can be built on a foundation of lies, and a part of me always knew that you’d find out eventually. Whether Benjamin told you or not, it doesn’t really matter now. What matters is that you know this baby isn’t yours. It belongs to that moron who’s in jail, and who I’ll never see again, if I’m lucky enough. He was the worst mistake of my life, but there is nothing I can do about that now, except move on. I also can’t change anything about the fact that this baby isn’t yours, no matter how much I’d like to. I would give ten years of my life to do that, but I can’t. Things don’t work that way. And now I see how much I’ve hurt you with my lies, so I think it’d be best just to leave you alone. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t need your money. I’ll be just fine, one way or another. But I still want you to know that I love you and I would have given anything to be able to turn back time and tell you the truth from the start. Maybe it would have ended the same way, maybe it would have ended differently…all that doesn’t matter now.” She stood up, and tapped him clumsily on the shoulder. “I’ll be quick to pack my things and go. I really am sorry.”

  She walked out of the room slowly, like a man walking to his grave. She cradled her belly as she opened the wardrobe and, again, took only those things which had always been hers. She packed her suitcase slowly and painfully. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but in a strange way, she felt liberated. She was finally free from the cage of lies she had created for herself, and even though she had lost everything, she was able to walk with her head held high and be proud of herself. There was nothing to be ashamed of anymore.

  All of a sudden, she heard footsteps behind her. She didn’t turn around. There was nothing more left to say, so why waste her breath?

  “Why did you sign the waiver?” he asked.

  She turned around and looked at him, slightly confused. She had no idea why he wanted to know, not like it mattered anymore. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.

  “Why did you do it? I didn’t ask you to.”

  She didn’t understand the purpose of this question. But she decided to reply nonetheless. “I didn’t want anyone to think I married you for your money,” she explained. Even though it started off as a scheme, she wanted to end it as anything but that.

  “But you did. You did marry me for my money. You just needed me to fix your life, to pay for your bills, to be your baby daddy. You didn’t love me, and yet you accepted to be my wife. This is what I don’t understand. What kind of a person does such horrible things?” he asked her, not believing it.

  “In the beginning, yes. Then everything changed. I fell in love with you. It was so easy to do this, to love you, don’t you understand?” She went back to packing her bag, with her back turned to him. “I actually don’t expect you to understand. I myself don’t understand, but that’s how it happened. I started loving you, without even noticing it, and everything changed. My whole life changed. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but it did.” Her suitcase was half full.

  The room was eerily quiet after all that shouting. In a strange way, it gave them comfort. This silence made them feel too far away from each other to be able to fix anything.

  “Love is not something you can understand,” he suddenly said. She stopped packing again. “It just happens, whether we want it to or not.” He stared at her back. She could alm
ost feel the heat of his gaze upon her.

  “It does.” She didn’t know what else to say. Then she felt his hand on her shoulder. It electrified her. The butterflies in her stomach all woke up and started fluttering about. She could feel her cheeks glowing red. She dared not turn around and face him. Not yet.

  “We love. But we don’t know why we love,” he whispered in her ear, pulling back an unruly strand of hair that escaped her ponytail. “We just know we do. And we love with a love that’s more than love.”

  She smiled. He was quoting Edgar Allan Poe, her favorite poet. Not many of her friends and family ever knew she enjoyed poetry. It was a secret pleasure she indulged in, and yet, Tyler knew. He knew everything about her, every inch of her body, mind, and soul, even the things she would gladly hide. Now, he really knew everything.

  “I and my Anabel Lee.” Gina smiled, and finished the quote.

  “Don’t leave,” he said. “Stay.” His words were mere whispers, so silent that her fluttering heart thought she must have imagined them. She turned around and saw the truth in his eyes.

  “But I can never forgive myself for hurting you this much. How could we ever go on?”