Billionaire BWWM Romance 1: The Billionaire's Arranged Marriage (20 page)

“She didn’t want you to begin with. You two were forced into the marriage. Just let her go. You’re still at the beginning with her, so you aren’t really walking out on her or hurting her much. Let her go and take up the yoke of duty that you owe to that child you made.”

Reed sighed and nodded. “Couldn’t I marry Jillian and just support Daisy and the baby financially?”

“What kind of a father is that? Do you want that child to be born a bastard? Is that how you want your child to be seen by the world? As a mistake? As unwanted errors not even worthy of your name? Marry Daisy and give your heir a proper life, Reed, a home, a family, your name. Give that child of yours some honor. Don’t wait on this. You own up to your actions, marry Daisy and make it right. This shouldn’t even be a question in your mind. Where are your values and morals? You were raised better than that.”

Anderson took another long pull from  his glass and watched his brother carefully.

“How am I going to support a family? If I choose Daisy and the baby, Carter is going to cut off every penny to me!” Reed was dizzy at the thought of how he could handle the responsibility without the income.

“We have countless contacts in this area. I’m sure I could help you get a job somewhere. You know I can’t do anything to help you from our end here with the family business, it’s all written up that way, but I can certainly help you find some position with one of our associates or even one of our competitors. They’d love to get their hands on you, I’d be willing to bet. It would be so easy. You go, you marry Daisy, you get a job and a nice place, you raise your child and take care of your family. That’s what you do.”

Reed thought carefully about it. Anderson’s answers were far closer to his own ideals than Carter’s were, but the thought of losing Jillian was almost more than he could stand.

“But, Jillian…” he said quietly.

“She’s a casualty in your wild and chaotic lifestyle, Reed, and that’s just the way that it has got to be. You made your bed, now you have to lay in it and take care of your obligations. Jillian is a sweet dream that is no longer yours. Let her go. You owe this to Daisy and your baby.” Anderson seemed adamant.

Reed knew he was probably right. There was no other way around it, really. He did have an obligation; a situation that he created, albeit unknowingly, and he was going to have a very high price to pay for it. The price of a lifetime of happiness with Jillian.

The Final
Chapter

Jillian was sitting in her new room when there was a knock at the door. She answered it, pulling the door open and saw Reed standing there. He looked wrung out. She opened the door all the way and asked him into the room.

“So you moved into a new bedroom,” he said rather glumly.

“I just needed some space and some privacy so I could think. That’s all. I didn’t know what was going on with you and… everything,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest.

He walked to the chaise at the foot of her bed and sat down. “Well, I’ve really made a mess of things this time. I can’t even believe it myself, now.”

She walked over to him and sat beside him. “So what’s going to happen?” she asked, not really wanting to know.

Reed shrugged. “I guess that part of that is up to you. Carter wants me to take Daisy to a clinic downtown and have the ‘mistake taken care of'. Anderson wants me to own up to my responsibility and take care of the child, as any good father should. Daisy wants me to marry her and help her raise the baby.”

“What do you want?” Jillian asked him, wishing she had the courage to look up into his eyes, but finding that she did not.

He didn’t hesitate at all. “I just want you,” he answered. “I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. I love you. You are all that I want. Unfortunately, it’s just not that easy now. I made some big mistakes and I wasn’t careful when I was with Daisy, and now I am not the only one who will have to pay the price.

“Carter said he’s going to disinherit me and kick me out of the house if I don’t get rid of the pregnancy and Daisy. He’s bent on going forward with our marriage and the business dealings with your uncles. Hell bent. Anderson is in the completely opposite camp. He’s adamant that I face up to what I’ve done and meet my obligations.”

Reed stood up and walked to the fireplace, his back to Jillian. He pushed his hands down into his pockets for the umpteenth time that morning. “What do you think?” he asked quietly.

Jillian spoke softly. “I knew you would ask me that, and I’m sorry to say that I have no answer for you. This is your choice. It’s your responsibility. It’s your life, it’s your child, and it is your decision to make. I can only wait for whatever you decide to do, I guess. I’m not going to try to persuade you in any direction, because I don’t want your choice to be influenced by me at all. Whatever you choose to do has to come from your own heart, and not from anyone else.”

He turned and walked toward her. “If I could choose you and it wouldn’t hurt anyone else, I would choose you,” he said in a whisper. She rose up and hugged him.

“I know that. I’m so sorry that this is happening, but you do have some very important decisions to make, and no one else can do that for you,” she said.

He held her for a long time, and they didn’t speak; they only stood with each other, their arms around one another, their hearts aching for a viable option, but in the end there was no easy answer, and Reed kissed her softly and walked out of the door.

Jillian laid on her bed and cried until she fell asleep, and when she woke up, there was only one person she wanted to talk to. She called her father.

He was still in Japan working with her uncles, but he had told her that he would be home soon, and then they could spend some time together. She missed him terribly. There was no one in the world that she connected with the way that she did with her father. They had the truest, strongest bond of anyone in her life, and in the midst of the turmoil she found herself in now, and she only wanted to speak to him.

Samson answered quickly and she cried when she heard his voice.

“What is it, baby girl?” he asked in a concerned tone.

“Daddy, things are such a mess here.” She sighed through her tears. “Reed found out this morning that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. She came here to the house. She wants him to marry her and raise their baby together.”

“Oh, no,” her father said, and his warm sympathy reached through the phone to her. “I’m so sorry to hear that, baby. How are you handling it?”

“I have no idea what to do. I’m so confused and hurt. I’m so sad about it. Reed and I are falling in love. We actually want to be together and we agreed to get married because we wanted to, not because Carter and Mother told us we had to. Now this has happened and I don’t know what to do!” She wept as she explained it all to him.

“What has he decided to do?” Samson asked quietly.

“He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He said he wants to be with me, but he feels like he has a responsibility to her and the baby. He’s torn,” she said in a thin voice.

“Well, he certainly does have that,” Samson said. “No matter what he chooses, whether it is to stay with you or to be with her, that baby isn’t going anywhere, so have you thought about whether or not you would be willing to become a step-mother to a newborn baby? Because that’s just what will happen if you stay with him and get married. You’ll have to deal with the fact that he has a family with her as well as with you, and you will have to share him with her in a paternal way, for the rest of your life.”

Jillian hadn’t thought about that. “Oh Daddy, I didn’t even think that far ahead. That’s not everything, either. Reed’s brother Anderson has been after me. He wants me to marry him and not his brother. He says he has feelings for me and that if I marry him, our families will still be able to be together.”

Samson chuckled a little. “My goodness! I left for just a little while and look at all the chaos that got stirred up. Well, how do you feel about Anderson?”

“I think of him as a friend. He’s really nice to me. He’s always looking out for me, but he’s also always trying to get me to choose him, too. He’s really been there for me through everything with Reed. I feel like I can trust him and count on him, but that’s about it. I don’t have any romantic feelings for him. At least, not like he has for me. I just really want Reed,” she answered.

Her father sighed. “Well, baby girl, if you don’t have feelings for Anderson, then keep it a friendship. As far as Reed goes, it sounds like you would be taking on an awful lot if you and Reed stayed together, so I think you need to really give it some consideration. Are you willing to share your life with their child and raise that child like it’s your own for the rest of your life?

“Even if Daisy keeps the child, it will still be around you sometimes, and you will be a step-mother. Think carefully about that and be sure that it’s a commitment you are ready to make. The other thing is, you know you don’t have to marry either of them. I realize that your mother is pushing you hard to marry Reed for the business dealings, but those can probably be made without your marriage, if both sides want them bad enough. All I want for you is to know that you are happy. That’s my priority.”

“Thank you, Daddy. You’ve really given me a lot to think about,” she said, giving him a farewell and finally hanging up. She spent a good deal of time considering everything and came to a conclusion. She texted Reed and asked him to come to her room, and minutes later, he was there at the door looking extremely anxious.

“What is it?” he asked, not sure if he could take anymore.

“I’ve made a decision about what I’m going to do.”  By the look on her face, he was certain that he wasn’t going to like it.

“What is it?” he asked, his heart in his throat.

“I can’t stand to see you torn up like this, not knowing what to do, feeling like you have obligations in every direction, and seeing you torn by all of it, so I’m going to give you your freedom. I’m going to go back to my parents’ house and then you won’t have to choose between your child and me.” She reached for his hand and opened it, palm up, then placed her engagement ring inside his hand.

“I love you, Reed, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I can’t stand between you and your child and I don’t know if I’m ready to be a step-mother to a newborn baby. Especially to a baby you are having with Daisy. I feel like it would be selfish of me to stay here and if I leave, then it frees you up to make the best choices for your child, and I think that your child should come first.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry.”

Reed knew he wasn’t going to like what she had to say. His hand closed around the ring in his palm and he closed his eyes and pulled Jillian to him, holding her tightly against his chest as tears began to fall from his eyes.

He wept and she wept with him as they let go of what they had both learned to want together. After a long time, he looked down at her and lowered his face to hers, kissing her gently, and looking sadly into her eyes.

“You will always be the one I wanted more than anyone else in the world. You will always have my heart. I love you, Jillian,” he whispered to her.

“And you for me as well,” she said back to him.

He made his exit quietly and she watched him go, then she packed up her things and left instructions to have it all taken back to her parent’s house, and she dressed to leave. She had come to think of this house as the home that she would probably be in for the rest of her life, but now it was just a place she was leaving.

She had no idea what the rest of her life was going to be like, now that she would not have Reed in it, or any man for that matter, at least for a while.

She thought about what Anderson had become to her. He’d been such a good friend, such a wonderful supporter for her. She felt that she owed it to him to say goodbye and she smiled, thinking about the door between their rooms. He had said that it would be closed but never locked so that she knew she was always welcome to come into it. She thought that she would see if he was in his room for her to say goodbye to him, and she quietly turned the handle and opened the door, walking in just a few steps before she heard him and it was then that she heard a woman as well and she stopped in her tracks. The sound of the woman was completely unexpected and it caught her totally off guard.

Her eyes flew to the bed and she gasped silently at what she saw there. Daisy was bent over the side of Anderson’s bed and she was nude. He was standing behind her, his pants dropped down to his ankles and his body planted deeply inside of her, as he pumped away at her, his hands reaching around to the front of her, clenched to her full round breasts.

The sight of them having intercourse was not all that stopped Jillian in her tracks. Their conversation froze her in place.

“You’d better get pregnant this time, Daisy. We are running out of time to make this plan work! I can’t keep screwing you like this day in and day out, trying to fill in for what my brother didn’t do.” Anderson almost growled at her as he shoved himself into her over and over.

“I haven’t been able to get Reed to sleep with me. Not since Vegas,” she said, almost apologetically.

Jillian could not believe her eyes. No matter what, Reed had to know what was going on. She slipped her phone from her pocket and silently texted him, telling him to come back to her room quietly and not to say anything when he got there.

Anderson moaned loudly as he worked away at Daisy, grinding himself into her, and finally he climaxed and his orgasm was delivered deeply into her. He grunted in pleasure, and then let go of her body, pulled himself from the depths of her, and then yanked his pants back up and buckled them.

“Listen, Daisy, we’ve got to make this plan work fast, or it isn’t going to work. If the last time Reed screwed you was in Vegas, then you don’t have much time to get pregnant before it becomes obvious that it isn’t his baby you are carrying. You can’t screw this up for me. We have one shot to get it right. I get you pregnant, you make Reed marry you and you two leave.

“I will give you the million dollars I agreed to, and you two can live together, in love, high off the hog for a long time, and have your little family. I will inherit the business that is rightfully mine, I get the house and everything, and I get Jillian. My father gets his business deal with her Japanese family and I become the hero that made it happen. I become the golden boy. Everyone wins.”

By that time, Reed was standing behind Jillian and listening to every word his brother was saying. He texted his father and told him to get to Anderson’s room immediately.