Christmas Baby for the Billionaire (South Shore Billionaires 1)

He’d been fighting his feelings all week. He’d kept telling himself that he wasn’t capable of love. That it wasn’t on his agenda. That it wasn’t necessary for them to make this work.

But he’d been lying to himself. He did love her. Maybe he had from the beginning, when their connection had been so strong it had knocked him off his feet. When he’d looked for a reason to go back and see her again. Bringing her here to New York.

Making love.

It had been love, too. Not just sex. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it because it scared the hell out of him. Love was a weakness that could be exploited.

Except Tori would never do that. He knew that in his heart, and he’d lied to himself until it was too late and she had walked away.

And he could tell her all of that, but she was right. She didn’t know which version was true, and she couldn’t uproot her life for someone she didn’t trust.

She’d loved him. She’d said it. And he’d messed it up by denying what was right in front of his face.

He sat on the sofa until the light turned dark again.

* * *

Arrivals seemed to take forever. First, she was seated at the very back of the plane, which meant she was last to get off. Then there was the long walk to customs, and the line to get through. Then waiting for luggage. Finally she cleared the secure area and walked through the doors to see her mom waiting, a smile on her face.

Tori started to cry.

“Oh, honey!” Shelley came forward and gave her a big, reassuring hug while Tori’s hand clung to the handle of her suitcase. “Come on. Let’s get you to the car and you can tell me what happened.”

She had never been so glad to see someone in her whole life.

It took only a few minutes to reach the car in the parking garage and head out onto the highway that would take them first into Halifax, and then down to the South Shore. For the first few minutes, Shelley simply reached over and patted Tori’s hand, as if to say, It’s going to be okay. She kept quiet for ten minutes or so, and then simply said, “So what went wrong?”

Tori sighed. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Then let’s stop somewhere to eat. Neither of us has had lunch. Did you even have breakfast?”

She shrugged. “I had a yogurt at the airport.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care.”

Shelley quieted again, and then turned off the highway and drove to a diner in Bedford. “Quieter here than Cora’s on a Sunday,” she said. “And breakfast all day. Come on.”

She wasn’t feeling very hungry, but she ordered a breakfast skillet anyway, to make her mom happy. And orange juice, because it was her favorite.

Once they’d placed their orders, Shelley looked at her with a “tell your mom about it” expression. “Okay. So you came back a few days early, looking like a whipped puppy. What happened?”

She told her mom everything. By the time she finished, their meals had been placed in front of them and Shelley had gotten a refill of her coffee.

“Baby girl,” she said, on a sigh. “You’re right. You deserve a man who will stand up for you, and for your family. Who will do the right thing.”

“I thought he was that man, you know? That’s what hurts so much.” She picked at a chunk of hash-browned potato in her skillet.

“You think he was pretending the whole time?”

Her fork kept moving the piece of potato around and around. “I did when I first heard what he said. And then... Oh, Mom. I don’t know. It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t real. The whole week was actually pretty magical. And when he heard the baby’s heartbeat...”

“You wonder how he could be such a good actor?”

“I...yeah. And I get mad at myself for wanting to believe him. But he never said he loves me. I keep coming back to that. And the fact that I don’t know if I could believe him even if he did say it.”

She sniffled. Put down her fork. “He had a rotten childhood. He never had a solid family unit like I had with you and Dad.”