Christmas Baby for the Billionaire (South Shore Billionaires 1)

“So why were you walking the beach?” she asked, picking up a roll and breaking it in half.

“Thinking,” he replied, meeting her gaze. “I had a lot to think about.”

“And did you come to any conclusions?”

Her voice was calm, but he could see a tightening around her mouth. She was nervous about this, too. It gave him a little comfort. The lives they’d both built—separately—were about to be disrupted.

“A few,” he admitted. “But I’m not sure you’re ready to hear them.”

CHAPTER THREE

UNEASE SETTLED THROUGH HER, making her limbs feel heavy and her breath short. This was never going to be easy, but despite all the thinking she’d been doing the last twenty-four hours, she felt ill-prepared for whatever was going to come out of his mouth next.

She nibbled on a corner of the roll, though her appetite was diminishing rapidly. “Oh?” she asked, keeping her voice deceptively light.

He met her gaze and held it. “One thing is for sure, Tori—I can’t go back to New York and pretend that this isn’t happening. I’m going to be a father. I’m not going to abandon you or my child.”

Tears stung her eyes and she looked down at the napkin in her lap. It was lovely to know that he accepted the pregnancy and wanted to be a part of their baby’s life. But it stung that they were no more than an obligation to him; that he was tied to them out of duty and DNA and not affection.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“And whatever you need, you only have to ask. You need to know I’m willing and able to support you financially.”

Financially. She clenched her fingers into fists under the table.

“Tori?”

She’d been silent so long he reached over and touched her arm, prompting her to look up. She took a deep breath, met his gaze and said quite clearly, “Thank you, Jeremy. But I’m quite able to provide for us.”

His expression grew puzzled as his brows knit together. “Then what do you want from me?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Time, I suppose. To figure this out.”

He looked at her tummy and then back to her face, and a hint of a smile quirked at the corner of his lips. “Well, we are on a bit of a ticking clock, don’t you think? And it’s halfway to midnight.”

She raised her eyebrow in response. “I’m hardly Cinderella. Or a damsel in distress that needs rescuing.”

At that moment their lunch was served; piping-hot bowls of soup along with bacon-and-avocado paninis that seemed to satisfy some sort of craving of Tori’s right now.

“This smells delicious.”

“It is. I’m kind of addicted to these sandwiches. I’m not sure if it’s the avocado or the bacon that the baby likes so much, but it’s my favorite.”

They ate in silence for a few moments, and then Jeremy spoke again. “This feels so weird. Last summer...”

His voice trailed away and Tori’s cheeks heated. Last summer she’d felt about ten years younger and stupidly carefree. Days on the beach, toes in the sand, love in the middle of the day. She’d told herself she deserved a bit of fun, but she’d been careless. They both had.

“Last summer was just...what it was.” She wiped her lips with her napkin and tried to calm the rapid beat of her heart. “We got carried away. We were impulsive, and now there are consequences. We can’t be impulsive this time, Jeremy. We have to make the right decisions.”

“I know.”

She thought of her mom, who was both dismayed at how the pregnancy had occurred and ecstatic about being a grandmother. There were just the two of them now. She was an only child, a bit of a miracle baby, really, since her mother had been told she’d probably never conceive. Her grandparents lived in Newfoundland and she rarely saw them. Her father had died two years earlier. Tori felt a certain responsibility to be there for her mom. Without Tori, Shelley had no family.

She looked at Jeremy. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“One of each.”

The topic had never come up during their few weeks of bliss. Now that Tori thought back to those sun-soaked days, she realized that anytime she had gotten close to talking about his family, he’d changed the subject. Even now, he didn’t offer any explanations. Just “one of each.”