Carrying the Billionaire's Baby, Book 2: The Billionaire's Gift (3 page)

“No,” I said, flatly,
doing my best to betray no emotion. “Nothing at all. Let’s just…
um, go to the bedroom. I’m ovulating. It’s a good night for
it.”

“Something’s bothering
you,” he observed, his hand on the back of my T-shirt, tracing the
counters of my spine. “You can talk to me.”

My face fell. I broke our
shared eye contact and looked away. “I can’t,” I admitted. “It
wouldn’t be right.”

He put a hand to my chin
and softly lifted, so that I was looking into his eyes again. The
look on his face was so sincere and so kind. So much so though that
I started to wonder if maybe Ms. Brook was wrong. Maybe Alexander
did want something more with me — maybe this wasn’t just business.
Maybe it was emotional. Maybe he wanted to let me in.

I didn’t stop to think
about what I was saying. I just spoke. “I just… want to know why
we’re doing this. Why
you’re
doing this. Why is it so important you have a
child? Why this way? Why me? Why?”

The look of kindness and
sincerity on his face vanished almost immediately. He stepped back,
no longer touching me. Instead, he put his hands in his pockets and
stared tersely at the floor of the penthouse. A long pause held the
air.

“Maybe another night,” he
said flatly. I didn’t know what exactly he meant. Did he want me to
leave? Did he just mean that maybe he’d explain and answer all my
questions on another night?

But he didn’t say anything
else. There was no sound in the room except for the ticking of a
clock. I realized quickly that I had crossed a line.

“I’m sorry,” I almost
whispered, worried that I had screwed everything up. I sighed
deeply, fought back tears, then just started rambling. “Look, Mr.
Atherstone, it wasn’t — I don’t know. I talked to Ms. Brook and she
got me thinking and maybe I was also worried a bit that I was
falling into something. You know, with you. And for you. And for
this penthouse and this tower and, well, everything. And I
just…”

He silenced me by quickly
raising his hand, still looking at nothing but the
floor.

“Wait,” he said. “What did
Ms. Brook say to you?”

“She said I would never
really know you.”

He looked up at me,
locking his eyes with mine. “Did she? Well, I guess she’s right. No
one can ever know me. Not anymore. Look, Ms. O’Connor, we have a
contract…”

“I know!” I said, pleading
with him. “And I want to keep that contract! Let’s just start
again. I shouldn’t have asked!”

He walked over to the big
floor-to-ceiling windows. It was dark outside. The lights of the
city twinkled like stars.

“You shouldn’t have,” he
agreed. “But you did. And now everything is different. This isn’t a
game, April. You knew what you were signing up for. If you had
questions, you should have asked them before you
signed.”

“I’m sorry,” I said,
wanting to sink into the floor. “But I just… I don’t know. I
thought maybe we were moving beyond the contract. I thought maybe
you cared about me. And I know now that was stupid and wrong. And I
just always say the wrong thing. And I want you to know, Mr.
Atherstone, that I’ll just be 100% professional from here on out.
No more questions.”

He turned from the window
but said nothing. I just kept talking.

“I should have just
realized that Ms. Brook was right. That there was no way a man like
you could really picture himself with a girl like me.” I forced a
small laugh. “I mean, come on — that’d be crazy, right?”

He breathed in deeply. The
lights from the city illuminated the faint scar on the side of his
face. I hadn’t been fishing for an answer, but for a moment he
looked like he was about to give me one. But he didn’t speak. My
face went flush and I realized I had been sweating. I knew then
that I was in no condition to try to make love with this man — or
any man.

“I’ll go,” I said quickly.
“We’ll start again tomorrow. Again, you know, I’m so sorry. I know
I was prying. I know that was wrong. I’ll just leave…”

I whirled around and
pushed toward the nearest door, not looking back or hanging around
to hear if he had anything else to say. I didn’t want to wait for
the elevator, but I knew there was a stairwell accessible through
one of the hallways. I pushed through a heavy door, then another
one, but I didn’t find any stairs to descend. Instead, I came out
in the open air, high atop his tower on a landscaped rooftop
terrace. Just a few feet away, I could see the large rotors of a
helicopter with Alexander Atherstone’s name written on the
side.

I had tried to escape him.
But I couldn’t.

I shivered in the cold air
on the rooftop, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot. I couldn’t
go back inside. I didn’t want to face him again — not tonight,
anyway.

It’s not that I was mad at
Alexander. I wasn’t. I was mad at myself, mostly. Mad because I
once again had maybe screwed up something good by putting my foot
in my mouth. Mad because I had let myself start to fall for this
man. Mad because I knew I was better and stronger than this — that
I wasn’t a girl who was slave to her emotions all the
time.

My brain knew all that,
but then there was my heart. I couldn’t deny what I was feeling
when I looked at him. I like to think I’d be mature enough to have
a purely business relationship like this with anyone else. With
anyone else, I could shut off my emotions and focus on the job. But
Alexander was different.

I walked through the
rooftop garden atop the tower until I came to the edge of the
building. I sighed deeply and looked at the city. I wished so much
then that I was a stronger person. I wished that Ms. Brook hadn’t
said what she said and hadn’t forced me away from the safety of my
innermost hopes. I wished Alexander could just be honest with me —
not because I wanted to be his lover, but just because I so badly
wanted to know him. To really know this mysterious man who had come
into my life.

But that was too much to
ask. I knew that now. Asking may have ruined everything.

I found a small stone
bench next to an ornate fountain, and sat down heavily. The weight
of all the emotion and confusion of the evening pressed down on my
shoulders. I did my absolute best not to cry, thinking about him
and even more thinking about what I’d have to say when I talked to
him next. Which, I figured, would probably have to be pretty soon —
because the only way off this rooftop was through his
penthouse.

That cold night was alive
with sounds and crackling energy. The fountain behind me babbled.
Beneath me, traffic hummed and honked. I could hear the buzz of
overhead planes. It all came together as a kind of peaceful urban
tranquility.

But then there was another
sound. Soft footsteps. And the sound of Alexander’s
voice.

He appeared as if in a
dream, walking slowly, hands in his pockets. He spoke without
looking at me, his eyes turned downwards at the terrace.

“I was married once,” he
said. “Not very many people know that. We kept it as quiet as we
could. I hate the tabloid stuff. It’s not for me.”

He paused and walked over
to the edge of the rooftop, putting his hands on the smooth steel
rail, his back to me on the bench.

“Her name was Eva. She
worked for an NGO opposed to ruthless capitalism. I was a ruthless
capitalist. It should not have worked, but it did. We found
something in each other that, well… that I didn’t think I would
ever find with anyone.”

I could see his hands
gripping the steel railing tightly.

“I had never wanted
children, really. I always thought I was too busy — too focused.
But she wanted children. And so I started to want them
too.”

He turned around now,
looking at me, his face stony as if he was trying to hold in
emotion.

“It was not easy for Eva
and I to get pregnant. I had to bring in some of the world’s top
fertility specialists. But we did it.
She
did it.”

He stepped toward me. I
shifted instinctively to make room on the bench beside me. I was so
glad when he sat down beside me.

“I still remember so many
things about the night she told me the news. We were in Zurich. I
had bought this garish flashy red sports car. It was winter. We had
dinner at the Spice im Hotel, laughing in the dim lights of the
restaurant. She didn’t order her wine, and that was all the
indication I needed. I knew. We didn’t need to talk, her and I. I
always loved that about her. We never needed to talk. After her
drink order, I just looked at her with hopeful eyes, and she looked
back. Then she smiled.”

He let out a small
smile.

“
She never looked more
beautiful.”

I watched his face as his
spoke, but he didn’t look back at me. His words got more
pronounced, almost spiteful — syllables trembling as they tumbled
out of him.

“We had dinner. I don’t
remember what. It didn’t matter. I was just happy to be with her in
those moments — to be with her and our future child. But then the
valet pulled up to the curb with that stupid flashy red car. I
remember that kid tossing me the keys with a smile. But, well,
there was ice on the bridge. The car didn’t handle well in the
snow. We hit the river like a brick wall. The water was so cold and
I looked and looked and looked for her — for them —
but…”

In the dim light of the
terrace, I could just faintly see the outline of the scar across
the side of his face. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to put my
arms around him. I wanted to hold him close to me and tell him it
was all right. I wanted to show him how much it had meant to me
that he was sharing himself with me like this.

“By all rights, I should
have died that night, Instead of her. Instead of them. That would
have been better.”

He turned to look at me
finally, his face still stoic.

“I have really enjoyed our
time together, April. But you have to understand that I can’t ever
replace
her
. I
have tried and failed at that. But maybe I can have something like
the family she so wanted us to have. That’s why you’re here. That’s
why I made you the offer. Because I still want the family she
wanted.”

I finally knew exactly
what to say. I reached out and put my hand on top of
his.

“I can give you that,” I
said.

And I knew it was true.
Listening to the billionaire’s story, I could only think about how
selfish I had been. This was never about me. This was about him.
This was a man who desperately wanted something, and I could help
him have it.

A heavy silence held the
night air. His fingers thread through mine, his hand feeling warm
pressed against mine.

“I’m…” he started, but I
stood up, silencing his words. Our eyes locked as I stood in front
of him.

“Shh,” I whispered to him.
“We don’t need to talk.”

I turned to face him and
wordlessly gripped the sides of my shirt. I pulled it up over my
head quickly and kicked it to the side. The night air caressed my
skin, so cold that I could barely stand it. But I was determined to
give Alexander what he needed. I wanted him to put his seed inside
me tonight.

I undid my jeans and
slipped them down, standing in front of him in just a mismatched
set of bra and panties. I wished for a second that I had made more
of an effort to dress up for him, but then he stood up quickly and
slipped his arm around my back — his hands so warm against my bare
skin — and I knew he didn’t care.

“Take me?” I whispered, my
lips close to his ear as he embraced me. I didn’t meant it to sound
like a question, but after all the emotion of the evening, a part
of me still worried he wouldn’t want me to carry his child
anymore.

But there was no sign of
that. Instead, he gripped me tighter, his hands caressing my bare
back. Finally, our eyes met — and I could tell he was feeling a
million different kinds of emotion, but mostly a yearning. He
wasted no time in telling me what he wanted.

“Stand over there,” he
ordered. “Lean over the railing.”

I was never a big fan of
heights, but I was compelled to obey — to do whatever he asked. I
stepped slowly to the railing along the edge of the rooftop. My
hands gripped the rail. The metal was cool against my bare stomach
as I leaned against it. I took one look down, then shut my eyes.
High atop the Atherstone Tower, the distance to the ground was
dizzying.

He approached me from
behind, his hands drifting down my bare sides and across my back.
He fingered the clasp of my bra, then unsnapped it. The feeling of
outdoor air on my sensitive nipples shocked me enough that I let my
eyes snap open, just for a moment — enough time to watch my purple
bra fall from the edge of the building down into the abyss below
us. I shut my eyes again.

His hands ran across my
bare breasts, brushing against my erect nipples. I could feel all
of him now, pressed against my back. The thin material of my cotton
panties and his suit pants did little to disguise the feeling of
his erect manhood pressing against my ass.