Reunited: A Billionaire Secret Baby Romance (Lost Love Book 2)

by Marcella Swann

  But then I noticed that the guy with the giant teddy bear wasn’t heading for the main entrance to the building, to go upstairs. He was headed in the direction of my apartment, or at least one of the three units on the ground floor at my end of the building. “What the hell?” There was no one he could be bringing that bear to in the other units--and all at once I remembered what Tanya had told me, about talking to the billionaire that had come to her classroom in the process of his tour through the school he’d donated the obscene amount of money to.

  I left the window and went outside, just in time to see him enter the hallway. I geared up in my mind, getting ready to explain to some clueless billionaire that bringing a five-year-old he didn’t even know a giant teddy bear was inappropriate. But the man pushed the bear away from his face, and as he stood there, putting his phone away, I recognized him. The next moment, he looked up, smiling to himself--probably because he figured where his destination was--and spotted me, and for a few moments we just stared at each other.

  “Sienna?”

  Chapter 5

  I couldn’t help but stare at the woman who had come out of her apartment; the apartment that I’d actually been on the way to. I’d given Kara the slip earlier in the day, after finishing up my obligations with the school, and giving her the task of making the big trip for the school come together. But after I’d left the school, I couldn’t shake memories of talking to the little girl, Tanya. She’d been a refreshing change from a lot of what I normally dealt with: she wasn’t impressed or afraid of my wealth, she spoke to me as if I were just another grown-up in her life, and she’d been cute as a button and clever to boot. So instead of catching up with my friends and whatever they were doing after they’d finished up at IHOP, I’d grabbed lunch and thought about the little interchange.

  I’d decided to grab the girl a teddy bear, and got one of my associates--a guy who did private investigator work for me from time to time--to find out what he could about the kid. All I knew was that her name was Tanya and that she was in Ms. Sellers’ class at J.D. MacCallister, but he’d managed to come up with an address for me, and texted it to me right about when I’d picked out the biggest stuffed animal the store had. From there it hadn’t been too much trouble to get the limo and make my way on over.

  I couldn’t really say what I’d been thinking, other than that Tanya was adorable and that the mother of a kid that cute had to be pretty cute herself. I’d thought I’d bring the brave kid a teddy bear, meet the mom, and see what happened. If nothing else, I figured I could maybe get them out of the apartment for a while, invite them to help me find an appropriate pet--since Tanya seemed to think I needed one. I was also thinking about how hard the mother worked, based on what the little girl had said, and I’d wanted to do something for her. Giving money to the school, announcing the trip to the waterpark, had made me feel good--better than the last party I’d thrown, even with the hangover I’d had doing it that morning. I wanted to do more, somehow.

  But the woman standing outside of the door of the apartment I went to was someone I knew, and for a while I could only really be shocked at that fact. In all the information I’d gotten Ricky to find for me, I hadn’t even thought to ask for the mom’s name. Big mistake. “Sienna?”

  The last time I had seen that woman was five or six years before, at a wedding. And as I stood there staring at her for a moment, it all came back to me, in spite of the fact that I hadn’t even really thought about the girl I’d met that evening in years. I’d seen her at the wedding itself; she’d been seated on the bride’s side of the aisle, rather than the groom’s, which was where I’d been. She’d been wearing a green dress that showed off her curves just a bit, but not so much as to be offensive to the bride; there wasn’t much in the way of cleavage at the neck of the dress, and the hem fell to below the knee, but it was easy for me to imagine what she would look like out of it--and I definitely, right from the beginning, wanted to see if I was right about it.

  We’d ended up being seated at the same table for the reception, the “singles” table so to speak, or one of them--most of Grant’s guy friends were single, but about half of Jessica’s friends were, with the rest of them either engaged or in serious relationships. I’d been attracted to her from the moment I’d seen her, and when a couple of the other people at our table got up to start dancing, I saw my in.

  “What did you end up ordering for dinner?” I’d overheard her debating the issue with one of the other women at the table, but hadn’t heard the conclusion.

  “What?”

  “Oh--I heard you agonizing over whether to get the chicken or the fish,” I had said, and she’d grinned, the corners of her eyes crinkling up just a bit, and I’d known that I would do whatever it took to get her back to my room that night.

  “I decided on the fish,” she’d said. “Just seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, even if the chicken sounded delicious.”

  “I actually ordered the chicken,” I told her. “So if you wanted, maybe we can get our neighbors to switch seats around, and we can split? See what the other one of us would have missed out on?” She looked me up and down and I could see her thinking about it.

  “That sounds like a great idea, actually,” she said. And we introduced ourselves, and switched the seats around so we were sitting next to each other; the people who’d been sitting between us hadn’t minded at all. So we shared our entrees and chatted about the bride and groom, and I played it as cool as I possibly could. We danced a bit out on the dancefloor, but no slow dances--both of us agreed that it was too hokey to do that sort of thing with someone we barely knew at a wedding reception. She caught the bouquet, I got the garter, and we both gave them away to the best man and the maid of honor, who were engaged, and laughed about the idea of either of us being the next to get married.

  “So you’re in school,” I’d said, when we got to the get-to-know-you part of things.

  “Yes! I am hoping to go on to med school, eventually, but working on my undergrad right now,” Sienna had said. “How about you?”

  “At Harvard, working on a degree in Finance,” I replied. “Yeah, yeah, I know: most boring topic in the world.”

  “You know, I would have guessed finance,” Sienna had said, grinning at me in that eye-crinkling way again.

  “Am I that obvious? Oh god,” I had said, shaking my head in pretend disappointment.

  “You’re one of the few people here who look like your tux isn’t rented,” Sienna had pointed out, ticking off the separate criteria on her fingers. “You are friends with Grant, and everyone who knows Jess knows that Grant is only friends with people he met at prep school, and prep kids only go into one of maybe four different fields.”

  “Okay--I have to interrupt you here,” I told her. “What are the other three?”

  “Law, business, and medicine--but that last one is all guys who want to grow up to be plastic surgeons or neurosurgeons or cardiothoracic surgeons. You know: make the big bucks.” I couldn’t help snorting.

  “Okay you’ve got me there,” I’d said. “What else?”

  “Three: your present to the bride and groom was professionally gift-wrapped,” Sienna said.

  “Guilty,” I admitted. I’d actually ordered the gift for them online and had the retailer do the wrapping; I hadn’t even seen it in person.

  “So yes, I was betting that you were either in finance or business,” Sienna had said.

  “And how do you feel about finance majors?” She’d given me that raking look again, a little smile playing at the corners of her lips, her eyes glinting in the dim light of the reception hall.

  “Usually? Not the biggest fan,” she had admitted. “But I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, since we have all night--don’t we?”

  “I’ve got a room, just in case things go late,” I had pointed out. I hadn’t wanted to be too pushy about it, or too obvious that my interest was in getting her to come to the room with me at the end of the night; but
I did want to just put it out there.

  “We’ll see how the night goes,” Sienna had said, with the kind of expression that told me that she had no intention--in that moment at least--of actually coming back to my room with me. But while I wasn’t about to pressure her, I thought that if I played my cards right and stayed the perfect gentleman all night, I could convince her. And we’d gone on, talking and joking, dancing a few more dances, drinking toasts, eating the bits and bites of things that the reception hall served in addition to the seated meal, and then a little bit of the wedding cake each.

  The evening started to wind down; it was all a blur, probably more so because of the champagne. And finally the bride and groom left the building, and there wasn’t much left to do. “We can take the party upstairs to my room, if you want,” I’d suggested, hoping that I would get the yes.

  “I could maybe have one more drink before I’m ready to call it a night,” Sienna had told me.

  “I’ve got a bottle of champagne in the room, in the fridge,” I’d countered, and it was true--I’d been hoping that I might meet someone at the wedding, and even if I hadn’t I’d figured that champagne made even a midnight Pay-Per-View purchase an event. So we went back to my room together, and Sienna slipped off her shoes, and we sat on the couch in my suite, drinking the champagne and talking about the wedding reception we’d just left, in the fullest safety possible: just the two of us, able to crack jokes and make comments as we pleased without any danger of anyone overhearing us.

  We weren’t drunk, but I think we were both a little tipsy by the time I made my move, leaning in for the kiss. She didn’t tense up, or pull back, so I kept it up, kissing her more deeply. I let my hands go a little wild, moving from her shoulder down to her hips, back up to her chest, caressing her through the soft, silky fabric of her dress. And then we were tangled up in each other, taking each other’s clothes off, and I was kissing her throat, her collarbones, down to her breasts.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” I was just sober enough to ask again, to make sure of it.

  “I’m definitely sure,” Sienna had said.

  We moved on to the bed, and I got to see her fully naked: every bit as glorious as I could have hoped, even more gorgeous than she’d been in the dress, her eyes dark and her cheeks and chest flushed from how turned on she was. We fooled around for what felt like an hour until neither of us could stand it anymore, touching each other everywhere, bringing each other to the edge and then backing off. By the time I got inside of her, it was almost too much--I almost came right then and there. But I managed to hold back, take a few breaths and get her off at least once before I finished.

  I wasn’t even sure what time it was when we finally both fell asleep, but the next morning she’d been gone by the time my alarm went off for me to rush to the plane to take me back to Harvard. I had to get out of the room as fast as possible, and I didn’t even really think about Sienna until I’d gotten through security; and then, waiting to board, I realized I didn’t even know her last name. I didn’t know how to get in touch with her--and I couldn’t interrupt Grant and Jessica’s honeymoon to call and ask them about one of Jessica’s friends. I figured that she probably wanted to stay anonymous--after all, wouldn’t she have found a way to stay in touch otherwise? I chalked it up to one of those things that happen: a great thing, of course, some of the best sex of my life, but I’d figured that every person was entitled to a few one-night stands, and if Sienna hadn’t wanted anything beyond that, who was I to judge?

  But I still hadn’t entirely been able to shake the thought of her, even five years later. When my uncle had left me his fortune, and I’d found out the different stipulations on it, I’d remembered the girl I’d met at my friend’s wedding; but I’d thought about all the girls I’d hooked up with, going through a mental list of who might be worth revisiting. But there was no way--I’d thought then--that I’d ever have even a chance to find her, especially so long after the fact.

  Chapter 6

  I couldn’t believe that the guy who’d run up to my front door with a teddy bear for my daughter was the same guy I’d hooked up with five years before. It brought the whole situation back to me in a flash, and all I could do was just stand there and stare at him, thinking about the fact that even though it had been years, somehow he looked exactly the same. I’d gone to Jessica’s wedding mostly because she’d insisted--I’d been dating a guy when she’d announced her engagement, and broke up with the guy about three months before the wedding. “I’ll just put you at a singles table and maybe you’ll find Mr. Right at my wedding, and maybe it’ll be a great story,” she’d said.

  And I’d met a guy at the singles table, indeed. At first I hadn’t taken him seriously at all--I hadn’t even thought there was a chance in hell I would end up going to his room with him at the end of the night. In fact, I’d planned entirely on just going straight home from the reception--catching an Uber and getting my shoes off as soon as Jess and Grant left for their honeymoon. He was wearing the kind of suit that previous experience had warned me was the warning signal for a guy who only wanted to talk about himself, and who would bore me to tears while expecting me to be absolutely fascinated about his proposed future for himself.

  But somehow, Bobby had charmed me; the fact that he’d paid attention to my silly little discussion with Karen, seated next to me, about whether to order the fish or the chicken. He hadn’t been offended at my pointed comments about how he was obviously a finance major. He had shared his chicken with me, sampled my fish, and we’d talked about the merits of each other’s dishes and decided that they stacked up equal--and that we were glad to have someone order the other one so we could try it.

  “Okay, so you have got to tell me,” I’d said at one point, while we were finishing up the main meal.

  “Tell you what?” I hadn’t been able to help myself grinning at him a bit.

  “What is it with finance majors and wearing these ridiculously expensive suits? How on earth does it make sense to have a tux just...available?” Bobby had laughed.

  “Well a lot of us only get into finance because we have wealthy family in finance, or something similar,” he’d said. “So with that comes a lot of black tie events. Would you rather rent a dress every time you have to go to a wedding--assuming you have to go to, say, at least ten weddings a year?”

  “I guess I can see that,” I’d said. “Still though: if you’re interested in pulling Texas chicks, you’re going to have to learn to look a little less completely at ease in a getup like that.”

  “Oh, normally this is not at all my look,” Bobby had said. “I’m a jeans, tee shirt, and blazer guy on the best of days.”

  “I do wear dresses pretty often--just not quite this nice,” I’d conceded. “But that’s mostly because it’s so much less effort compared to trying to put together outfits with four or more different pieces.” Bobby had laughed at that.

  “I have to say that the shoes are great,” he’d said, looking down at my feet.

  “The pain to hotness ratio is pretty steep,” I had told him confidentially.

  “I have heard from many women that that’s usually the case,” Bobby had said. “They need to start a company, somewhere--making flats that are just dead sexy.” I’d laughed.

  “Well, part of why they’re so hot is because of the angle of the heel,” I’d pointed out. “These things make me look like I have a great ass, no matter what I’m wearing.” Bobby had given me a quick look.

  “Sienna, I would wager that you just happen to have a great ass, no matter what you’re wearing--the shoes might help a little bit, but there’s only so much they can do.”

  We’d danced, and drank champagne, and I would have sworn Jessica had thrown the bouquet directly at me, as a prank--so I’d passed it off to her maid of honor, and Bobby had passed off the garter to the best man. And then, eventually, we’d ended up in his hotel room, and he made a move on me. I could have called it a night then, and gone w
ith my original plan to go home by myself, but instead I’d given into the kiss, and actually really enjoyed it. Bobby had surprised me; he was actually a good kisser--and that was a rare thing indeed compared to any of the other guys I’d dated, no matter what their majors were.

  And then I’d enjoyed it even more as things started heating up, as kissing became fooling around, and the fooling around moved to the bedroom. Bobby seemed to actually be paying attention to me, listening to the noises I made when he would touch me somewhere, experimenting to see what turned me on more, what I didn’t seem to react to as much. I didn’t have to steer him at all--he was just in tune with what we were doing, and just paying enough attention to know when to move on or when to do something else even more. It even made me step up my game, wanting to get him as hot and bothered as he’d made me almost from revenge. Then when we both got naked, I had to admit that under the tailored tux, he had more than a decent body to look at. I knew I had to think of something, I knew in the moment that we were forgetting something, but I hadn’t had enough presence of mind between being tipsy on champagne and being so turned on I could barely stand it to think of what it was.

  We’d gone at it for what seemed like hours and I had no idea what time it was by the time we both were spent--but I’d definitely managed to get off three times at least, maybe four. We laid in the bed together. Just sort of cuddling and being in the same place, and I thought to myself that maybe finance majors weren’t all bad; certainly Bobby had been less self-centered than I generally had found the guys to be, on the few dates I’d been on before swearing off any guy who was in a business-adjacent major. I thought about taking a shower--we were both sticky with sweat, and that wasn’t all--but I was too tired, and instead just curled up under the sheets with him and fell asleep.