My Secret Irish Baby: A Second-Chance, Secret Baby Contemporary Romance (Irish Kiss Book 7)

by Sienna Blake

  ____________

  My Secret Irish Baby:

  An Irish Kiss Novel

  ____________

  Sienna Blake

  My Secret Irish Baby: a novel / by Sienna Blake. – 1st Ed.

  First Edition: September 2020

  Copyright 2020 Sienna Blake

  Cover art copyright 2020 Cosmic Letterz. All Rights Reserved Sienna Blake. Stock images: depositphotos

  Proofreading services by Proof Positive: http://proofpositivepro.com.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Contents

  Your free copy of the Bound duet

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Michael

  Abbi

  Abbi

  Michael

  Abbi

  Michael

  Epilogue

  Excerpt of Mr. Blackwell’s Bride

  Books by Sienna Blake

  About Sienna

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  Who has journeyed through the Irish Kiss series with me.

  PS. Read past the end for a special gift.

  Michael

  I needed to get the hell out of there.

  It was all such a façade, the glittery gold balloons, the black silk tablecloths, the opulent flowers that in a few hours would wither and die and rot in a dumpster in the back alley of the hotel. But if the decorations were fake, they were nothing compared to the sea of fake smiles, fake laughter, fake giving a shites.

  Sophisticated jazz music from a trio on stage played over forced polite conversations delivered in gentle, hushed tones. But as far as I was concerned, everyone might as well have been shouting, “I am using you! I want to wring what I can from you and your connections and your pretty little title and then move on like a vulture moving on from a pile of picked-over bones!”

  Men and women strutted around like peacocks in expensive tailor-made suits and fresh-off-the-runway designer dresses to parade their wealth and influence and hide their empty souls behind overflowing bank accounts.

  I hated it all—the gilded scratching of backs, the shiny, dazzling tit for tats, the dripping-in-diamonds winks implying, “You do this for me, I'll do this for you.” Self-congratulatory, self-promoting, self-serving vampires in fucking Gucci.

  Worst of all was the massive banner hanging behind the stage in the luxurious ballroom. It was a congratulations banner and it made my stomach turn. It was so loud, so gaudy, so pompous. I wanted to tear it down, rip it to pieces, and burn it with one of the hundreds of gold candelabras from around the room.

  I wanted to get out of there and fast, far away from that party and everything it stood for.

  The only problem was that this was a party for me.

  This was my party.

  That was my name up there on that banner.

  And I couldn't leave.

  Not that that stopped me from sipping my martini sulkily in the corner while plotting different escapes. There was the classic food poisoning. Though this was the Merrion, the finest hotel in all of Dublin, and it would be unlikely that the caviar and crème fraîche tartlets or the duck confit crostini with parsnip puree and fig or the lemon garlic butter scallops were below standard. There was the family emergency, but that would be hard to pull off considering my family was presently raiding the open bar, and the only one likely to drink enough to require an early trip home was unfortunately in Australia with the All Ireland rugby team he played for. That left me with pulling the fire alarm or quitting.

  Pulling the fire alarm was a misdemeanour and quitting was out of the question. I lived for my work. I had no idea what I would do without it.

  I was considering the viability of cutting electricity to the hotel somehow when Caroline, the secretary for the firm's CFO, picked her way through the crowd toward me. She was all long legs, pursed lips and no bullshite. She didn't greet me, instead pulling up a schedule on her tablet and jumping right in.

  "Alright, Michael, so Bill will get up and say a few words first and then he'll invite you up onto the stage," she explained, her tablet pressed against her ribcage daring her cleavage to spill out from her black leather cocktail dress. "You have your speech prepared, don't you?"

  Her blue eyes, seductive in a veil of long black eyelashes, looked up at me.

  "Of course." I patted the breast pocket of my slate-grey suit.

  She had no idea it was empty.

  "Did you have a chance to review the final list of potential secretaries I sent you?" Caroline asked, blood-red nails typing a note onto her tablet.

  Along with a salary increase, a sizeable end-of-year bonus, a company Flying Spur Bentley, a top-floor office with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking all of Dublin, a Rolex Submariner, a timeshare in Monaco, and a Black Amex for “business expenses” like steak dinners at Shanahan’s on the Green and silk suits from Brown Thomas, my promotion to junior partner at PLA Harper afforded me a new, youthful, eager, DD+ secretary like some twenty-six-year-old Babylonian king with his rotation of virgins.

  Caroline's fingers stopped typing when I didn’t answer straight away and she looked up at me, eyebrow raised.

  "Any one of them is fine," I assured her, eyes moving over her shoulder toward the door of the opulent ballroom.

  "You don't have a preference?" she asked, those perfectly manicured brows now knitting together.

  She didn't mean a preference between a bachelor's and a master's or three years’ experience versus five or seven. She meant di
d I want a brunette or a blonde to suck me off beneath my desk while I negotiated a 1.2 billion dollar contract with Hong Kong.

  "Any one of them is fine," I repeated.

  Caroline hesitated, but then nodded. "Alright then."

  Without a word, let alone a word of goodbye, Caroline spun on her Louis Vuitton heel, her silky black bob whipping around and falling right back into place. At the last moment, I reached for her, touching her elbow.

  "Hey, Caroline?"

  She only went as far as to glance hastily at me over her shoulder.

  "What if I weren’t to give a speech?" I asked.

  She frowned. "You're expected to."

  "I know, but—"

  "You're expected to give a speech. The senior partners expect you to give a speech."

  I gave her a curt nod.

  "Do you want me to review your speech?" she asked, her eyes roaming now with suspicion to the breast pocket of my suit jacket.

  "No, no," I said, shaking my head. "I followed the guidelines you sent me."

  Caroline's eyes narrowed at me. "This is your special night, Michael. Don't fuck it up."

  With that pleasant remark of congratulations, she stalked off and disappeared into the crowd. I had tried to write a speech. I had. I had sat in my office till the light of dawn crept across my desk every day for the last week, trying to write the goddamn speech.

  I tried to say how grateful I was to the company, to PLA Harper, to Bill, to Gregory, to Walter, to whomever else Caroline's memo instructed me to include.

  I tried to force my fingers to type that this was the happiest day not just of my professional career, but of my life, my whole life.

  I tried to get out the words: this is everything I've ever worked for, everything I've ever wanted, everything I could ever hope for.

  But every time I managed to get to the end, I would read back over what I'd written, hastily delete it all, and slam shut the screen of my laptop angrily.

  Because I knew the company and PLA Harper and Bill and Gregory and Walter and whomever else Caroline's memo instructed me to include were all just using me. I was nothing more to them than a foot soldier, a yes-man, a shiny new cog in their filthy machine.

  Because this was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, and it wasn't. And I didn't really know why. And that pissed me off. And irritated me. And scared the fuck out of me.

  Because this was everything I'd worked for, everything I'd ever wanted, everything I could have ever hoped for, but I no longer knew what “this” was. A fancy new car? A hot secretary to fuck? More sleepless nights and zeros in my bank account I won't have the time or energy or interest to even spend?

  The worst part was I didn't know what else there was besides that. So I'd work toward a fancier fancy new car, a hotter hot secretary to fuck, and more sleepless nights and more zeros in my bank account, because that was success.

  I guessed.

  The band played on and like a choreographed dance I shook hands, laughed at jokes about golf and hookers and tax law loopholes for billionaires. I accepted congratulations and pretended I didn't see the greedy, jealous eyes of my subordinates and the predatory, threatened eyes of my superiors. I was a willing marionette as the band played on.

  The third martini was perhaps a mistake.

  By the third martini I was forgetting to laugh at jokes I was supposed to laugh at, I was drifting off during conversations I was supposed to be paying attention to, and I was dangerously close to doing the worst thing imaginable: speaking my mind.

  Instead of complimenting a senior partner's secretary on her diamond necklace, I almost said, “Bad investment. Those looks won't keep you employed forever. I could recommend some high return portfolios instead.”

  Instead of nodding along about how lovely the ballroom had been decorated, I almost, almost said, “Hate it. Absolutely hate it. I envy the little animal that gets to choke on those balloons.”

  And when Caroline came over later in the night to inform me it was almost time, I almost, almost told her where she and her guidelines could shove it.

  "Can I at least go take a leak first?" I asked instead. "As you know I've got a long list of names to get through up there."

  Caroline's face darkened, clearly not amused.

  "Make it quick," she said, glancing at the clock on her tablet. "It will be quite the embarrassment to Bill if you're not here when he calls you up."

  I saluted her, something two-martini me would have never dared doing. "I'll piss like the wind, Captain. Piss lightning."

  Caroline glared after me and I grinned a little. It felt good to be something slightly less than the epitome of professionalism. Two-martini me would have protested, arguing that you could jeopardise your career with nonsense like that.

  But three-martini me had the reins now.

  As I wandered a little more than a little drunk toward a hallway I thought might have a bathroom, I realised my life was perfect. I had the perfect career. I had the perfect apartment with the perfect furniture and the perfect espresso machine and the perfect king-sized bed where I fucked perfect girls who perfectly left before the sun rose the next morning. I was in perfect shape, wore perfect clothes, drove a perfect car.

  It was all motherfucking perfect.

  And all I wanted to do was making a perfect fecking mess of it.

  Abbi

  A back alleyway at night wasn't what you'd call an appropriate changing room for a proper lady, but then again, I wasn't exactly a proper lady.

  I ducked behind the cleanest dumpster and threw down my duffel bag, which was covered with tags and stickers from so many planes and buses and trains and ferries, I'd lost count: LA to Berlin, Rome to Prague, Sicily to Bern, Budapest to Lyon, Lisbon to Athens.

  My stomach growled as I tore off my wrinkled t-shirt and slipped into a white button-up shirt. It was the only thing I kept folded in my duffel bag along with a pair of black slacks and a black vest I'd bought at a flea market in Zagreb for less than a euro. The rest was a mess of tattered blue jean shorts, bikini tops, and cheap gas station sunglasses.

  "Hey there, little girl."

  I whipped around in my underwear and black high top Converses to find a drunk wobbling precariously against the brick wall across from me. Traveling across Europe on your dead parents' inheritance at nineteen was so glamourous. I rolled my eyes, flashed him my middle finger, and hopped into my slacks. I tucked in my shirt, buttoned up my vest, and smoothed down the front.

  "Hey," I called to the drunk who was mumbling to himself, "how does my hair look?"

  My cell phone was dead and there weren't exactly tons of mirrors hanging around alleyways in downtown Dublin. It wasn't like I owned a mirror.

  The drunk squinted one glossy eye at me.

  Hell, maybe it could be the start of a beautiful friendship, whatever the hell that was.

  "Does it look like I just got off a ten-hour bus ride?" I asked, pulling at my tangled locks.

  "Looks like you just got off a ten-hour ride on my d—"

  "Thanks," I interrupted before the obvious conclusion.

  I did my best in the dim light from the lamp post at the end of the alley to corral my long windswept blonde hair into a braid down my back.

  "Better?" I asked the drunk, who I then realised had finally fallen over and was passed out, his empty beer bottle rolling away down the cobblestones.

  All that was left to do was wait by the back door and pray I didn't die of starvation in the meantime. I lit a cigarette I bummed off a guy from the bus and leaned against the brick wall. I was nineteen and though I'd been everywhere, it felt like I'd gone nowhere. The more countries, cities, towns I added to the list, the more I realised the answer wasn’t out there. I was alone and there wasn't any place on earth where that wasn't going to be the inescapable, unavoidable, unalterable truth.

  The back door swung open and I hastily flicked away the butt of my cigarette, slung my duffel over my shoulder, and hurried toward the door.
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  "Oh my gosh, my boss is going to kill me!” I cried. “I'm so late!"

  I barrelled inside past the startled line chef so quickly that he didn't have time to see me, let alone question what I was doing. The door clicked shut behind me, and I found myself in a back hallway with concrete floors and low ceilings. I stashed my duffel on an abandoned silver serving cart and followed the noise of clattering pots and pans, the sizzle and pop of grease on the stovetop, and the loud curses and shouts of stressed and worn-out chefs.

  I slipped into the kitchen and swerved to avoid colliding with a sweaty-faced server struggling under the weight of a silver tray of steaming-hot mini beef wellingtons. I managed to snatch one, plop it into my mouth, and mutter after him, "Hey, watch it!"

  The key to feeding yourself for free when you just spent most of your remaining money on a bus trip is chaos. The more chaos, the better. You want to hit the busiest restaurant on the busiest street on the busiest night. Find the place where the staff looks like they're chickens running around without their heads and you've found dinner. Because when people don't have time to even tell their right hand from their left, they're not going to notice that you're not wearing a bow tie when everyone else is. They're not going to notice that your Irish accent sounds like it was learned from Gerard Butler in P.S. I Love You, who, by the way, is actually Scottish. And they're not going to notice that you're doing much more eating than serving.

  In the chaos of twisting smoke and spitting oil and clattering metal on metal, I ducked under the serving line.

  "What's next, chef?" I shouted. "They're like hungry wolves out there."

  The row of men stooped over the grill in their dirty white jackets didn't even turn to look at me.

  "Two minutes on the chicken satay."

  I drummed my fingers on the hot metal edge. Chicken satay and I weren't exactly on great terms after a regrettable street food selection in Bangkok.

  "What else you got?" I shouted.

  The server next to me swept up the chicken satay tray, wincing at its heat and disappearing within seconds.