Carrying The Billionaire's Baby

Jake squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes.”

“Hell. When she told me she was pregnant, she said she had no intention of marrying her baby’s father. And she’s returning to Pennsylvania after the baby’s born.”

“Her leaving New York doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

“It will be to your mother!”

He knew that. But right now, he was more concerned with the picture of himself and pregnant Avery in the newspaper. He didn’t want his mom to see it and have a meltdown, especially when this was an easy fix.

“Okay. I’ll fly to Paris today instead of tomorrow and tell her.” He paused for a second to consider, but only a second. Avery was responsible for most of this mess. He wasn’t flying to Paris alone. “And consider this Avery’s official call that she’s taking the rest of the week off.”

“She can take the next month off because there’s no way in hell I can let her touch anything that even remotely relates to any of your cases. You do realize at some point you’ll be on opposite ends of a custody battle? The conflict of interest is off the charts if she even touches a file that relates to you or your family or your company.”

“I know that. But you have to give me a minute to catch my breath, Pete. She only told me on Monday. I’m just starting to wrap my head around the ramifications of all this. What I need from you right now is a summary of my rights and choices.”

“This is something I’d usually hand off to Avery.” He sighed deeply. “This is a mess.”

“It doesn’t have to be. We all just have to keep our heads and handle it.”

Pete sighed again. “I’ll assign someone to write your summary.”

“Good.”

“It’ll be waiting when you get back.”

“Email it to me.”

Jake hung up and phoned his driver then dressed quickly, but not in a suit. He pulled on casual pants and a sports shirt and covered them with a navy blue blazer. When he reached the street, the limo awaited him. Twenty minutes later, he was knocking on Avery’s door.

Wearing black slacks and a pretty peach-colored blouse that highlighted her long red hair, she opened the door.

When she saw him, she groaned. “If whatever you want takes more than two minutes, I’m going to be late for work.”

As she stepped back, he walked into her condo. “You don’t have to go to work today. Remember how you worried someone would see us yesterday?”

She crossed her arms on her chest.

“You were right. A reporter for the Gazette took a picture. We made the society pages. Baby bump and all.”

“Oh, no.” She sank onto one of her club chairs.

“My mother’s in Paris and I had planned on flying there for the weekend, but I told Pete we’d go today and tell my mom before she sees it online.”

She gaped at him. “You told my boss my baby is yours?”

“No. My lawyer saw the picture in the paper. He figured it out and called me.”

“And he’s sending me to Paris with you?”

“No. Having you go was my idea.”

She bounced out of the chair and grabbed her briefcase. “Then I’m not going! I have a job.”

He winced. “Well, you do but you’re off anything that has to do with McCallan, Inc.”

Her face fell. The briefcase slid to the floor.

“Pete says it’s conflict of interest since we could be on opposing sides of a custody battle.”

“There are still plenty of other things for me to work on. The firm has defense cases that don’t even nip the edge of any of your corporate work. Those are the ones I want anyway.”

“That’s for you and Pete to settle when we get back. Right now, we have to tell my mother about the baby. And before you argue, I’m not doing this alone. You kept this from me for six months. I’m sure you had your reasons. But the bottom line is, we are both this baby’s parents. If we want to make fair, equitable decisions for our child, that starts with us presenting a unified front right from the beginning.”

* * *

Avery stared at him for a few seconds. Though she wanted to argue, she saw his point. They did need to start being parents to their child. And she suddenly saw what her mom was talking about when she said they needed a step to begin trusting each other. If she did this for him now, that could begin a trend of cooperation.

Or maybe this could be the first step of their negotiations?

“I want to strike a deal.”

His eyes narrowed. “A deal?”

“I’ll go to Paris with you, if you agree not to use something in my dad’s past against me when we start talking custody.”

“Something your father did?”

“Do we have a deal or not?”

“Was he a serial killer?”

“Actually, he didn’t do anything wrong.” She winced. “That’s kind of the point.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong, but people thought he did.”

“Yes.”

“So, he was unjustly accused of something.”

“He was actually tried and convicted. He spent six years in prison. Then one of his coworkers confessed that he’d framed my dad. He also produced sufficient evidence that my father was innocent and eventually he was released.”

“Oh.”

She pointed at her watch. “Time is ticking away. If you don’t want the deal I need to go to work. My father is as innocent as a newborn baby. One of the nicest guys you would ever meet. It wouldn’t be fair for you to dredge it all up again. Worse, if you did, it would reflect poorly on you.”

“Yes. It would.” His head tilted. An odd expression flitted across his face. “So, the deal is you’ll go to Paris with me if I don’t bring up what happened to your dad.”

“Yes.”