Billionaire’s Missing Baby Read online

  “Yeah, yeah,” Andrew muttered lightly. “I know what you think.”

  “Thinking is for people that don’t park people’s cars for a living,” the valet answered dryly.

  Andrew sighed and shrugged. “Stay warm, kid. See you tomorrow.”

  But once he got back to his condo, Andrew immediately felt restlessness itching over his skin. Emptiness seemed to echo into the spotless corners of his living space, an emptiness that had seemed perfectly comfortable just a few hours ago. Gandalf rubbed his face against his legs. Andrew reached down to pick him up.

  “What, did your new friend go home?” he asked the cat. Once cuddled, however, Gandalf was perfectly happy and slumped over Andrew’s shoulder without a care in the world. “If only it was that easy for me,” Andrew complained, settling Gandalf on the couch.

  It was late, but he still had some paperwork to run through before tomorrow. He hadn’t expected his date—not a date—with Dana to go so late, and he’d put off some of tomorrow’s preparations until the last minute. Andrew still had his shoes on, so he pulled on a coat, too, and went back out the door. Downstairs he nodded to the valet and took off down the street, to the 24-hour Starbucks, to get a pick-me-up and some exercise to clear his mind.

  The cold air felt great, but the walk wasn’t clearing his mind as he hoped. Instead of helping him focus on the project and the last few odds and ends that he had to wrap up tonight, it was work that was blowing away on the wind. Andrew was left daydreaming about Dana all the way to Starbucks, all through the line. He’d momentarily forgotten what he wanted when he reached the counter, but got himself together and bought his own cup, then a second one.

  He thought about her smile. He thought about that red dress, and the silly way she tucked an outrageously expensive emerald into her bra like it was nothing. Andrew caught himself thinking about what that bra might look like, too, and struggled to bring his mind back under control.

  “Here,” he handed the second coffee cup to the valet outside his building. “It’s colder than the South Pole out here.”

  The startled valet took the coffee, shivering. “Thank you. That was really nice of you.”

  “No problem. Have a good night,” Andrew let himself into the building. He wondered how long it would take the kid to catch the twenty-dollar bill he’d tucked into the cup’s sleeve.

  His condo was just as quiet and empty as before, with the dishwasher rumbling gently through the end of the cycle. Andrew took off his coat and shoes and went back into his office.

  Even if we’d been on a real date, Andrew thought wryly, I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to ask her to stay the night. He’d been that way since he was in high school—too shy to say what he meant to pretty girls. Too shy to ask them out. Too shy to give compliments or love letters or even ask for a dance at prom. If he wasn’t filthy rich, he’d probably never have had a girlfriend before at all.

  He brought up the final draft of his presentation for the following day and pored over it without actually seeing a word of what was on the screen. He’d wanted to make some final adjustments and improvements—what were they, again? He couldn’t recall exactly what had needed fixing.

  Instead of work, Andrew’s mind wandered over the evening with Dana, meticulously, obsessively, picking at everything he’d said and wondering if she’d really enjoyed herself. It was hard to tell with Dana. She was such a happy person, she’d never admit if she hadn’t really had fun the whole evening.

  Frustrated, Andrew dropped his head onto the desk. This was absurd. They were just pretending to be engaged. He was just getting too much into character. He sat back up and put Dana from his mind.

  Not for long, though. The clock was ticking on towards one in the morning, and so far he hadn’t made a single change to the presentation. Andrew pulled his phone out and looked through his contacts. He had Dana’s number right here…

  Before he could do anything dumb, Andrew called Nick instead.

  “Hello? Andrew?” Nick’s groggy voice crackled over the phone.

  “Hey, Nick, I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “No… It’s fine.” Andrew could just hear the sounds of movement on the other line, and the click of a lamp switching on. “What’s going on? Has something happened?”

  Andrew winced. “Nothing with work, I just needed someone to tell me I’m not crazy.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. I can’t say yes or no just on blind faith.”

  Even sleepy and doubtlessly still sitting in bed, Nick was snarky and sharp. The gnawing doubt in Andrew’s gut widened, and he hesitated. What was he doing, calling him up at this hour?

  “Andrew,” Nick groaned. “I can hear you hem-hawing over the phone. Just tell me what’s going on already.”

  Andrew sighed. “Fine. Look, Dana agreed to pretend to be my fiancée, right? Well, tonight, I invited her over to talk about the plan and get the specifics sorted out about what we’re doing…”

  “Did she drop out?” Nick’s voice was tense instantly.

  “No!” Andrew said quickly. “No, no, she’s still in on it. She came over and we went over the dinner with Marcel, and the charity ball, and all that fun stuff. No, she’s still totally good with the plan. We’re both on the same page with the plan.”

  “Oh,” Andrew could almost hear the sound of Nick’s blood pressure returning to normal over the phone. “Well, why are you crazy, then? I mean, besides this whole plan. This whole plan is pretty wacky, sorry to tell you.”

  “You don’t need to remind me.”

  “Someone has to. Anyway, get on with it. What’s the issue?”

  Andrew paused, trying to find the right words to convey what he meant without making it sound the way he knew it would. “Well she came over.” Another pause.

  “And.”

  “…and… she was wearing this great dress, Nick, I mean, really. She’s beautiful all the time, but she looked really nice tonight—”

  “Did you sleep with her?!”

  “No!” Andrew almost dropped the phone, and juggled it frantically for a moment before he could get it back to his ear. “No, Nick! I didn’t sleep with her! What’s wrong with you?!”

  “You acting like you did something interesting,” Nick muttered. “What? Spit it out. Clock’s ticking. We have work in eight hours.”

  Andrew rolled his eyes. Who was the employer here? “Okay, here it is. I invited her over, and we had a really, really great time. At least, I did. I think she did too—that’s not it, though, I’m not calling to tell you how great it was. I’m sitting here trying to work, and all I can think about is her. It’s just the pretending to be engaged thing, right? Like, I’m method acting or something?”

  “You accidentally starting method acting?”

  “No—not exactly, I mean I’m… getting too deep into character or something. It’s just the situation that’s distracting me.”

  “What exactly are you asking me?”

  Andrew rubbed his eyes. The presentation on his computer screen was not getting worked on tonight, obviously. “I’m asking if you think it’s just me playing a role, or if I’m taking this too seriously.”

  “Look, Andrew, as a gay man, I understand the dangers of overthinking things. In my professional and personal opinion, it sounds like your worst problem is just that—overthinking. You’re spinning yourself in circles trying to not take all this too seriously. So, just don’t. Simple as that.”

  Sitting back in his chair, Andrew tried to find the words to tell Nick that was ridiculous. He couldn’t just not take this seriously. But, on the other hand, maybe he could. It wasn’t that ridiculous. When he was with Dana, it was easy to fall into the routine of this game. It was only when she was gone that he started smoking at the ears trying to wrap his head around it all.

  “That’s it?” he asked, trying to joke. “Just stop worrying, basically?”

  “Please do,” Nick agreed. He yawned into the phone. “Your problem is that you�
�re used to being the person arranging all the plans. Your job has gotten you in the habit of just setting things up the way you want, and then fixing it as you go until it’s perfect. But personal relationships—even fake ones—aren’t like that. You can’t plan out how you’ll interact with someone on a personal level, and you can’t make arrangements for how they’ll affect you.”

  “It is philosophy hour already?”

  “Hey, you called me,” Nick pointed out. He yawned again. “Just stop trying to control how you feel about things. I think what you’re worried about is that you actually care about Dana for real. Is that what all this boils down to?”

  Hearing it said so matter-of-factly sent a cold chill into Andrew’s chest. “I… I guess. Yeah, maybe. Sounds… pretty close…”

  “Well, good,” Andrew replied. “No one is holding a gun to your head and telling you that you aren’t allowed to actually care about this woman. It’s perfectly normal. You like her and trust her enough to ask this sort of favor from her, and that’s a pretty big start. Is it so weird that you might actually care about her more than that?”

  “I suppose not. But—”

  “But what?”

  “How… how can I even know that I’m not just imagining all this?” Andrew asked finally. There. There it was. “What if I’m taking this more seriously than she is? I don’t want her to think I just asked her into this arrangement—what if she thinks it’s some weird erratic fantasy thing, or that I’m just really messed up and couldn’t just ask her out like a normal person?”

  “Why would she even think that, Andrew? You’re overthinking again. Stop it.”

  “I just don’t know for sure how far is normal. How much should I care about her before it’s not really a part of the plan anymore?”

  “Andrew, get some sleep. Seriously. We’re moving into the realm of stuff we’ll never be able to figure out at one in the morning. Just go to bed, take some Zzquil, and whatever you do, just stop worrying. Worrying is only going to make things worse. You have a presentation to give tomorrow. Focus on that—that’s what you know how to do.”

  “Fine. Good night. Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Anytime. And I mean that literally.”

  Andrew could hear him chuckling at his own joke as Nick hung up.

  The presentation was good enough, he reasoned. Andrew closed it up, packed up his briefcase for tomorrow, and left his office yawning. He had to wake up in six hours for work. It was time to get some sleep.

  But Nick’s advice was easier to hear than it was to do. Andrew climbed into bed and shut the lights off, but spent another hour rolling around, thinking not of work, but of Dana. Eventually, he fell asleep, having fervent dreams about acting and stages and lies.

  Chapter 9

  “Oh my goodness, Maya, I can’t wait to show it to you.”

  Dana was sitting at her easel at work, bright morning sunlight streaming in through the big windows of the Seven Diamonds Tower. It hit the giant emerald on her left hand and shattered glinting green and white sunbeams across the inside of her cubicle, fully distracting her from her work.

  The last couple days had been full of distractions, and Dana couldn’t really afford to fall even more behind. When Maya texted to ask if she was at work safe, Dana had had to call and tell her about the prior night. Maya worked the evening shift today. She’d been sleeping when Dana arrived home, and she was still in bed when Dana’s alarm had gone off in the morning. She still seemed miffed that Dana hadn’t come in, shaken her awake, and regaled her with details about her night at Andrew’s condo.

  “I can’t wait to see it! Don’t send a picture—I want to wait until I see it in person.”

  Maya was probably on the couch, surrounded by papers. Since she’d discovered that medical school was paid for, she’d been on a rampage of snapping up documents and forms and making phone calls. She wasn’t going to make the fall semester this year, but she planned to weasel into the spring quarter, and perhaps catch up a little over the summer. The sooner the better, seemingly.

  Dana laughed. She set her pencil down completely and leaned back in her chair. “Fine, fine. I don’t think I could take a good enough picture with my phone, anyway.” Her voice dropped to a half-nervous whisper. “Did I tell you how much he spent on this thing? I’m terrified I’m going to lose it.”

  “Oh, you’re not going to lose it. It’s not like you go out and play rugby on your lunch break. Your gloves are on when you’re outside, and when you’re inside you’re at work or at home.”

  Dana opened her mouth to argue, but realized that Maya was right. She never really left the house except to go to work, anymore. She’d turned boring without even realizing. Yesterday night out at Andrew’s place had been the first evening out she’d taken in far too long.

  “As long as it doesn’t slip off my hand,” Dana said finally.

  “I can’t believe you just stuck it in your bra, right in front of him.”

  Dana felt a blush creep up her neck. “I didn’t want to knock it down the drain by accident! That’s what I do with all my rings when I’m afraid I’ll lose them!”

  “Yeah, but this is a little different,” Maya snickered. “What did he say, again?”

  “He didn’t say anything. He just made a face, and I told him that’s what I always do, and he found it funny, thank you very much.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Is that all you care about? Me making a fool of myself?”

  “Well,” Maya seemed to think about it. “I am pretty surprised that he could make anything more impressive than boxed lasagna or Kraft Mac n’ Cheese.”

  “He definitely did better than that,” Dana assured her again. “You should have seen it. I thought for a minute he ordered food from your restaurant. What’s it called again?”

  “La Mielleur Sous du Ciel,” Maya replied. “Maybe he did. We do offer take-out.”

  Dana shrugged, realized Maya couldn’t see it over the phone, and tried again. “No, I don’t think he ordered out. The dishes from him cooking it all were in the sink.”

  “So, you still haven’t told me what happened after dinner.”

  Dana, who was trying to pick up her pencil and get some actual work done while she was talking, frowned in confusion. She sketched a couple lines and stared at them for a while. “What do you mean? Of course I did. We did the dishes, and had Oreos, and then he walked me out to my taxi—”

  “Is that all?” Maya asked slyly. “You were out awfully late to have been just doing dishes…”

  Her mouth dropped open, scandalously delighted. “Maya!” Dana forgot her sketched lines again as Maya laughed through the phone.

  “So you mean you didn’t get to know Mr. Poole a little better than you thought you would—?”

  “It’s a good thing you’re starting school,” Dana told her. “You’ve had too much time to read those… which ones do you read? Janet Evanovich?”

  “Hey, those are excellent.”

  “And giving you ideas,” Dana insisted, still smiling. “Just because I went over to a man’s house doesn’t mean anything. It’s not 1852, sheesh. And don’t you tell Mom.”

  Maya laughed out loud at that. “Why not? If you just went over there for a business meeting, then there’s no reason why I can’t tell her.”

  Dana chuckled humorlessly. The thought of what Mrs. Deshaun would do if she knew her daughter was involved in a ruse like this was definitely not funny. “You know exactly why we’re not going to talk to Mom about this. Or Dad. Maybe I’ll tell them later, when it’s all over and you’re done with medical school. If they found out, they might try to stop you from accepting Andrew’s help with tuition, don’t forget.”

  That levelled the conversation. “Yeah, no, I’m not going to tell them.”

  “Good.”

  “Dana?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Dana, just promise that you won’t do whatever they ask just for me? I can’t tell you how thankful I am th
at you agreed to play along for my tuition—I never imagined anything like this coming along. But I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret just for me. You’re more important than tuition money.”

  Touched, Dana’s hand—which hand been reaching for her pencil again—dropped. “Oh, Maya, don’t worry. I trust Andrew. He wouldn’t ask me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with.”

  “But if he does, don’t think of me, first, okay?”

  “He wouldn’t,” Dana argued. “But I promise, Maya. I won’t do anything I’m not all right with in this. I don’t want you feeling guilty about school. When you’re a doctor, I don’t want you to have to think about… I don’t know, me doing dumb stuff to get you there. It’s all going to be on the up-and-up. Except for the part about me pretending to be Andrew’s fiancée.”

  Except that part.

  Maya seemed to read her mind and sighed. “I guess it’s not all that bad. I mean, it’s pretty stupid of this Westcorp company to discriminate against single people. Can’t he report them for that?”

  “Well, I’m sure he could,” Dana picked up her pencil again and determinedly began drawing. “But they don’t put that in any contract, and no one’s said it straightforwardly. It’s hard to prove that sort of thing. And besides—I doubt they’d want to do business with Bellwethers after they’ve had to deal with a lawsuit. In fact, if Westcorp is as important and Andrew makes them sound, I bet a lot of businesses wouldn’t want anything to do with them if they made Westcorp mad. Like a queen bee situation.”

  Maya blew a raspberry into the phone. “That’s ridiculous. But I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. People are so juvenile. I should tell you about this couple I had at the restaurant last night…”

  And as she dove into the story, Dana held the phone with her left hand and sketched absently with her right, coming up with a very rough outline over the course of about ten minutes and deciding it would be an excellent filler for their upcoming issue, if the boss wanted it. She laughed as Maya wrapped up her story, and looked at her watch.