Billionaire Boss's Secret Love Child: A Second Chance Romance

by Sophia Lynn

  “I was sorry to hear about your dad,” Travis said, and she shrugged, because if she went down that road the wrong way, she could still end up a crying wreck, and no one needed that.

  “It was fast, and he got to know Sofia and she got to know him a little. Sofia, why don't you help Travis set the table, okay?”

  It did something to her heart as she watched her tiny daughter reach for Travis's hand and lead him to the silverware drawer, showing him precisely what they needed for lunch and where to find the napkins. Travis wore the grave expression of someone who had spent very little time with children and by default began by treating them as adults. Though it might have been a problem for other kids, it was entirely right for Sofia, who Eddy had always considered something of an old soul.

  “Hey, Travis – salami, cheese, and tomato okay for you?”

  “Perfect, and some mustard if you have it. Do you want any help?”

  “Nah, go ahead and sit down. Ask Sofia about her blocks situation today.”

  She prepped three sandwiches and three portions of leftover potato salad she had on hand. That would work for lunch, she thought, and maybe a salad for dinner? She was struck suddenly by how oddly domestic it was. It was and wasn't like days where it was her and Sofia on their own. Of course Travis was new, but there was something oddly perfect about his presence, as if he had been missing for a while and had made his way back.

  “You're being silly,” she muttered to herself. “Of course he hasn't been missing. He's been exactly where he meant to be, where he went as soon as he could.”

  She carried the dishes over to the table, and Sofia sang out her thanks and turned to Travis seriously.

  “Mama made our lunches, so we have to be sure to say thank you,” she said, and Travis nodded back with understanding.

  “Thank you for lunch, Eddy, this all looks great.”

  “What did you get?” Sofia asked, picking up a portion of her own sandwich. It had been cut into quarters for her, and she looked at Travis's sandwich expectantly.

  “Um, it's salami, tomato and cheese,” he said, and then more to be polite than out of curiosity, Eddy guessed, he asked her what was in hers.

  “Cheese and pickle,” she said with relish, and Travis's eyebrows rose.

  “Oh, well that's a little—”

  Eddy flashed him a look, and he nodded.

  “That's really interesting,” he said with every evidence of sincerity. “The only people I know who eat cheese and pickle sandwiches are from England.”

  “Me and Mama heard about it on the television,” Sofia said, biting into one of her sandwich portions. “I want them every day, but Mama says variety is important.”

  She gave Travis a much put-upon look, and Travis managed to stifle a grin.

  “Well, your mama is right. She's older than you, she knows more about... food and nutrition and things.”

  “We have cucumber sandwiches as well,” Eddy said, taking a bite of her own sandwich. “Me and Sofia went through a kinda weird few months when we were watching a lot of BBC, so, you know. Lots of British food for a bit. I learned to make a shepherd's pie.”

  “Yummy,” supplied Sofia happily, and Travis did laugh. It was a pleasant warm sound that seemed to echo through his chest, and Eddy found herself warmed by it, as if she had been cold for a while.

  Travis turned to Eddy. He looked as if he was going to ask something, but Sofia spoke up first.

  “Are you my father?” she asked, and Eddy froze, her blood turned to ice. She tried to find words, but Sofia's calm eyes were focused on Travis, who looked a little like he had accidentally swallowed a whole shepherd's pie himself. He glanced to her, panicked, but when he found no help, he turned back to Sofia with a determined look.

  “Well, what makes you ask me that?” he asked, and Sofia smiled.

  “Your name is Travis. Uncle Sheridan says that my father is named Travis, and that he's not around because he's very busy. He said that—”

  “Sheridan!” Eddy exclaimed, and in that moment, not all of the endangered turtles in the Galapagos could have protected her from wringing her brother's neck if she had had him in front of her.

  "Ah, what else does your Uncle Sheridan say?" asked Travis, who seemed stunned but was dealing with this perhaps a little more calmly than she was.

  "That all the animals on Earth are our friends, no matter what they look like, and that we have to respect them and always begin by giving them their space..."

  "About... about your father, I mean?"

  Travis seemed slightly hypnotized by the small girl watching him so closely, and Eddy could sympathize. Sofia was a thoughtful little girl, and for a five-year-old, she was oddly intense. It could be a slightly alarming prospect to suddenly fall under the scrutiny of her bright green eyes, but Travis bore up underneath it.

  "He says that my father is good, but I might not see him. He says that has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the world. And that if he did meet me, he would probably like me a lot."

  Seriously, Eddy was going to find a way to strangle Sheridan through the satellite phone that was his only connection to the great world on his field expedition.

  "Well, that's certainly a lot of things your uncle has said," Travis managed, but Sofia was not to be denied.

  "So are you my father?" she asked. "I thought maybe you must be, but—"

  Travis shot Eddy a pleading glance, and she reached over to take Sofia's hand, making her daughter turn to her expectantly. Eddy had learned early on that nothing but the truth would do for her daughter, even if it was a truth that had to be conveyed in a way that a child could understand.

  She glanced at Travis over Sofia's head, and she found herself oddly touched by the anxiety in his face which was tinged by a yearning she had never expected to see there. She knew in her bones that he would back up whatever she said to their daughter, but God, he wanted to know her, and she wanted to know him.

  "Okay, kiddo. Yes. Travis is your father. You remember what we said that means?"

  "Yes," said Sofia, eager to show off what she had learned. "That means that he gave me half of what makes me, me."

  Suddenly she broke into an enormous sunny smile, turning back to Travis who looked a little shocked by the full force of her glee.

  "You gave me my hair and my eyes!" she said with every evidence of delight. "I thought they just looked alike, but my hair and my eyes are yours, aren't they?"

  Travis swallowed, glancing at Eddy for help. She shrugged, nodding with a brief smile.

  Go ahead, buddy. You wanted in, and if I'm going to be entirely honest, this is the easy part. Sink or swim.

  "Yeah, I guess they are," he said, his voice perhaps a little thick but otherwise normal. "I... I mean, my dad, who would have been your grandfather, had eyes and hair like ours, too. I'm sorry you can't meet him, he died a long time ago."

  To Eddy's relief, Sofia didn't focus on that part, because they were still wrestling with ideas like dead and gone forever, but instead she nodded with satisfaction.

  "And his father, and his father before him had brown hair and green eyes too, and all the way back," she declared happily. "Do you want a pickle?"

  Travis blinked, but he took the swing in topic relatively gracefully.

  "Don't you want to eat your pickle?" he asked, and she nodded, suddenly solemn.

  "I do, but I want to share," she said if she were imparting some kind of deep and sacred knowledge on him. "Mama says that we have to share with the people who are closest to us, and if you're my father, then that means that you’re close to me."

  A cloud of uncertainty came over Sofia's face, and she glanced back to Eddy for reassurance.

  "Right? she asked, suddenly anxious. "If he's my father, we're close?"

  Eddy started to say that relationships weren't set in stone, that people could grow closer and farther apart, but Travis spoke up, his voice firm.

  "Absolutely," he said. "We're close, and I will acc
ept your offer of a pickle under one condition."

  Sofia giggled, bright as a sunbeam.

  "What's that?"

  "That you allow me to get you another pickle from the fridge so that we can eat them together."

  "And one for Mama too, because she really likes pickles."

  "You drive a hard bargain, Miss Sofia, but yes, that's agreeable. Shake on it?"

  He offered her his hand, and she took it with the fearlessness that Eddy hoped she would never lose. Seeing them together made Eddy want to laugh and cry at once, and she compromised by shaking her head.

  "I want two pickles," she said as Travis rose from the table. "It's only fair, I'm the one who buys them, and that makes me the Pickle Specialist."

  "I bow to your greater pickle authority," he said gravely, and Eddy could feel them sliding towards something she never would have predicted in a million years.

  "Oh my God, where does she get the energy?" Travis asked, collapsing beside Eddy on the couch. "Has anyone studied that kid to see if we've actually created a perpetual motion machine?"

  "It's a factor of being five, I'm afraid," Eddy said, taking her briefcase from its place by the shoes and bringing it to the couch with her. "All of the energy that she's not putting into getting taller needs to come out somewhere, and it's your fault for saying you wanted to race outside."

  "Okay, tomorrow, I'm going to suggest that she put that energy into getting taller rather than trying to run adults into the ground."

  "I think she'll figure it out. I mean, we're both tall, so she'll probably be too..."

  "Please, I only met her properly today. Give me a little time before I'm tangling with things like prom and driving."

  "I just said she was just going to get taller, don't be dramatic."

  Honestly though, Sofia and Travis had been playing hard, and she wouldn't have faulted Travis if he needed to lie down for a little rest and maybe even a nap. God only knew she had needed them at the beginning. Instead, he leaned forward to look at the paperwork she had pulled out, tilting his head slightly.

  "Are you seriously working now?" he asked. "It's past nine."

  She shot him an amused look.

  "And when in the world would I have gotten to this earlier?" she asked. "I figured that of all the people I might talk to, you'd be the one who understood long hours to grow your business. This is all stuff for the Recollection."

  "Yeah, but..." Travis shook his head. "I worked plenty of hours when I was first getting things started up in Chicago, and yeah, there were more overnighters and highly caffeinated drinks than might strictly have been necessary for me. But I wasn't doing it with a kid. I never realized how hard or tiring that might really be."

  "Then you should probably make sure you give your employees with kids some leeway," she commented, spreading her papers out on the coffee table. "They're probably working harder than you think."

  "They're probably working harder than I am, period,” Travis said, making a note for himself on his phone. “That means that I should revisit that idea that came up last quarter to get an in-office creche going. We dismissed it because I didn't think we had that many parents working for us, but if even one of them needs it…”

  He looked up to find Eddy’s eyes on him, a contemplative expression on her face.

  “What?”

  “You're really not what I thought you would be,” she said.

  “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

  “Well. I mean, both.”

  “Tell me.”

  She sighed, picking up a few sheets of paper and holding them in front of her almost as if they were a shield.

  “Well, it's bad I guess because I liked who you were when you left.”

  “Really?” he asked with exaggerated surprise, and she gave him a light smack on the arm.

  “Yes, really. We fought, but you were never a dick about it. And it wasn't just because you wanted to stay friends with Sheridan either. When we fought and you realized you were wrong, you would fix it. You would make the change to yourself, and then you would try to make it to the world as well. And that isn't something that everyone does, regardless of where they come from or where they live.”

  Travis didn't know quite what to make of that, but Eddy kept talking.

  “But now, I see that I don't have to argue with you, do I? You know what's right and wrong, and now you have the power to fix more than you ever could before. I don't know if the guy you were more than five years ago would add daycare to his list of priorities, but for you, it's easy. And I like that.”

  She hesitated, looking down at the papers in front of her.

  “I think that's the kind of person I want around Sofia.”

  “Really?” asked Travis again, but this time, he was serious, more than hopeful, and when she nodded it was as if something broke inside him, letting all the light out.

  “Yes, really,” she said. “I still want to go slow, no matter what Sheridan thinks we should do. And things change, and needs change, and if you break Sofia's heart, then by God, I will end you... But yeah. I want you around for Sofia.”

  Travis knew that he was pushing his luck when he spoke again, but hell, he had gotten exactly where he was today by doing that.

  “And for you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Do you want to keep me around for yourself as well?”

  He held his breath, well aware that she was within her rights to say no, it was too much, she needed more time, she needed more faith from him, more something. Instead she was still a long time, and when she looked up, her gray eyes were so clear that he thought he could see clear down to the very depths of her.

  “Yes, for me too,” she said, and he felt as if he had taken a soaring leap off a cliff and found out that instead of falling, he could fly.

  Chapter Six

  Eddy

  Two days later, Sofia was in day care, and Eddy was having a hell of a day.

  It had started out just fine. She had sold a pair of Rococo chairs to a woman who had been thrilled to get them, and had bought a lot of paper ephemera online, something that was always popular with the college students who were doing art projects.

  Then a big man had swaggered in, saying before he was even in the door that all places like this were rip-offs and that he could find better at any big box store in the country. Eddy very politely bit back her response that if he felt that way, he should just take himself to one of those big box stores, and instead smiled and told him that she hoped he'd find something he wanted anyway.

  He'd snorted, but as a matter of fact, he had, a small glass paperweight designed so that the glass inside looked like a meadow of flowers. It was a lovely piece, real Murano glass, and she was confident in pricing it as she had.

  “Give you twenty bucks for this piece of junk,” he said, pulling her out of her inventorying.

  Eddy put on her best friendly shopkeeper smile, already shaking her head.

  "Sorry, sir, price is firm on that one. It's a hundred and fifty."

  If it was someone she liked a little better, if she was having a month where she was running a little closer to the red, she might have knocked twenty dollars off of the final price. However neither of those factors were in play right now, and she went back to her inventory. She probably wasn't going to get the sale, but right now, she wasn't too worried about it.

  "Hey, twenty's a good price for this kind of thing. Bet I can get one just like it down the street for less."

  "You may want to go down the street, then," she said, and all right, she was maybe getting a little short with him, but that was one of the prerogatives of being a small business owner. The customer wasn't always right here, and she wouldn't get fired for pointing that out.

  Either way, it was probably the wrong thing to say because the man's face darkened.

  "Hey," he said. "I'm talking to you."

  "Yes, you are," she said, and he flushed even darker.

  "You think you can
do business like this? I want to talk to the manager."

  "You're talking to her," she said, her temper fraying. "And I think if you're going to take that tone, you'd better leave."

  "I will leave when I am good and ready," the man snarled, his voice rising, and there was a little voice in the back of Eddy's head scolding her for not being nicer, not being sweeter and more accommodating and a much louder voice that said, to hell with that in her shop.

  "Sir," she said, her voice calm even in her own ears, "this is private property and I am telling you to leave. If I have to do it again, I will call the police and have you arrested for trespassing."

  For a moment, she thought he might actually explode, but he only sneered at her, shaking his head.

  "Fine, and you can take your—"

  He wound up his arm as if he meant to throw the paperweight to the floor, and then somehow, Travis, unnoticed by either of them, was there.

  In what looked like one smooth, impossibly quick move, he plucked the paperweight out of the man's hand and set it on a nearby shelf, and then he took the man's arm and twisted it behind his back.

  "So what's going on?" he asked calmly.

  "This woman—"

  The man gasped with pain as Travis twisted his arm up a little higher.

  "I wasn't asking you," Travis advised. "Shut up. Eddy?"

  Eddy's blood pounded in her ears, and she realized belatedly that her hand was clenched on the edge of her tablet. She removed it carefully and swallowed hard.

  He'd twist that guy's arm off if you asked him to, said a small voice in the back of her head, and she shushed it quickly because that way lay some real trouble. She shook her head.

  "This man couldn't find anything he wanted in the shop," she said. "Just one of those differing tastes sort of things, you know? He was just leaving."

  There was a moment where she thought that wouldn't be good enough for Travis. He was calm, even smiling a little bit, but there was something deadly in his gaze, something that was ready for real trouble.

  Then he turned to the man he still held, the man who had been struggling against his grasp this entire time to no avail.