Secret Baby: Billionaire Stepbrother (6 page)

“Hell,” I exclaimed, because I was alone and I could. “This stuff
never
gets easier.”

Then, because I was dying to know, I went to the brown sack and opened it. That’s when my world tilted sideways and I had to grab the counter. Inside was a pregnancy test.

I stood there trying to breathe for a little while, then once I got over my shock, I tried to reason out Beck’s actions. The only thing I could come up with was he was apologizing through his actions. No words—he was just doing it.

“I kind of wished he would say the words though,” I muttered.

I needed to be sure I was right.

Chapter Seven

Beck was pushing Bart in his stroller out of the lobby of his hotel, after Millie had started letting him take Bart during the day, when he ran into someone he knew.

“Damn, is that you, Beck?” a big quarterback-looking guy said out front. The guy looked like he’d been getting into a cab.

Bart was fussing for his bottle that he’d dropped so Beck only glanced at the guy.

“Yeah, I’m Beck,” he muttered, digging Bart’s bottle out of the folds of his blanket and handing it to him. Then Beck straightened and looked at the man. “James, hell, is that you?”

“Yeah, man,” James said, then he bent and told the cab driver to look for another fare.

Beck pushed Bart over to James and they shook hands. They knew each other from school. “Man, were the rumors about you and Tracy Taylor true?” James asked looking down at Bart.

“Rumors?” Beck asked, with a raised eyebrow.

James gave him a schoolboy smirk as he gestured at Bart. “Rumors that you had a baby with her.”

Beck was shocked. “Hell no.”

“It was all over the Autumn Festival and Dance. Tracy even confronted your sister about where was the father of her baby, yada, yada,” James said, with a speculating gaze looking down at Bart. “Your sister was crying, and she ran out.”

Beck cursed silently, he had dated Tracy for maybe one outing to a party or something. But he’d found out she was a self-centered woman and he’d never asked her out again. He certainly never touched her and he’d damn well never gotten her pregnant.

Besides at the time he’d still been sinfully lusting after his stepsister big time, and they’d finally hooked up.

Beck’s mind started placing dates, and he frowned, but to James he emphatically said, “This is not Tracy’s baby.”

“Okay, man,” James said, holding up his hands.

He looked as if he was going to get into whose baby it was, and Beck glared at him. So then James wisely started a new conversation.

“Man, I heard you sold that damn company you were working on all the time. While your head was in that, I got picked up by the pros, but drop from that team after an ASL injury. Now, I’m looking around for a new team, keeping my options open.”

Beck held his smirk back, thinking that meant his old friend was having a hard time finding a new pro team to take him. Next came what Beck was finding out was becoming inevitable, since he’d worked very hard and made money doing it—friends or relatives asking him for money to invest or basically outright asking for it, like his stepmom had done that morning on the phone.

Beck tried to be polite blowing James and his money request off, but he still wished him well. Like he’d done with Phyllis that morning, who had wanted a million dollars so she and Murray could really start over, she’d said.

As if that was his responsibility, Beck thought, pushing Bart’s stroller to the nearby park. In fact, as he sat on a bench by the play area, deciding where he and Bart were going to start playing first, he realized about the only person that hadn’t hit him up for money was Millie.

Beck picked Bart up out of his stroller and he put him on his knee to look out at the play area filling with kids on a sunny morning. Right then Millie was working her butt off, and she’d never once tried to swindle him for money over Bart like she could have or definitely as some women would have.

But he knew his stepsister wasn’t like that, and now he wondered if she’d had more of a legit reason than only plain cowardice to run off with his son without telling him. Millie had never mentioned the Tracy thing to him ... ever.

After he and Bart had played most of the morning, with three young mothers on the playground coming onto him in the process, Beck had a wayward thought that would not leave him alone.

So without thinking it through, which seemed to be his non-work mode he was discovering, he took Bart, who was comfortably worn out sucking on his bottle, and he headed to his rental car in the hotel garage.

On the way, he and Bart picked up a bag of food from the deli. Once he had Bart in his car seat, Beck typed an address into his GPS, which he’d just happened to hear that morning when he’d picked Bart up at Millie’s.

While he’d been getting Bart ready that morning, Millie had been on the phone and he’d been eavesdropping, so now he was satisfied to see Millie’s car in the driveway of a huge upper scale home as he pulled up to the curb and parked. Beck got out and rounded the car to get Bart and the sack from the deli.

“Come on, buddy, let’s go surprise your mommy,” Beck said.

He lifted Bart up, who caught his shirt and helped with a tug, while making sounds around the nipple on the bottle he was chewing, which sounded suspiciously like “mommy.”

“Did you say mommy, buddy?” Beck asked him, as he walked up to the open front door.

Bart just grinned at him and dribbled down his chin. There were workmen bringing in pieces of furniture out of a loading van that he followed inside. Then there was a pixie looking young woman that burst energetically in front of them from a side room, and she exclaimed to someone in the room behind her.

“I’ll make sure they get that in the right bedroom, boss!”

The petite woman barely glanced at them as she hurried up the grand staircase leading off the foyer, while Beck went to find “the boss.” He found her in a room she was setting up to be what looked like the formal living room.

She was bent over as if she was doing a weird yoga pose. Beck’s eyes lingered with appreciation on the curves of the nice womanly behind facing him, and he remembered holding those bare cheeks in his hands, while she had—

Bart gurgled a couple loud baby sounds, and Millie shot upright from adjusting a multicolored patterned rug, with her blond hair flying.

“Bartie,” she exclaimed, then she whirled around.

Bart started an instantaneous I-want-to-get-down wiggle and his bottle dropped between their chests, while his little arms reached out for his mom. He was bouncing, excited to see her. Beck felt a decent feeling filling him at doing a really good thing.

“Are you guys okay?” Millie asked, hurrying forward to grab Bart up into her arms, where he immediately tangled his fingers in her hair.

Beck could agree with his son, that hair was soft as silk and nice to touch. Then he nodded quickly to Millie so she would know everything was fine, and her clear gaze went from slightly worried to curious.

Beck shrugged. “Bart told me he wanted to see his mommy.”

Her eyes crinkled in a silent laugh and she raised Bart up, bouncing him. “Did you say that, Bartie?”

Beck had to admit when Millie said “Bartie” like she had a way of doing, it did sound kind of right. But he’d do Bart a solid and get her off it by age five. Then it startled him to be thinking so far in the future, and to be thinking about them all as a unit.

His gaze lowered to Millie’s belly as he wondered if he’d given her another baby.

“He said it,” Beck told her. “And he said he wanted to have lunch with you.”

Beck held up the deli bag.

“Bart!” a young woman’s voice exclaimed behind them. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“Oh,” Millie said, looking uncertain. Then she looked as if she were silently scolding herself, before she firmly said, “Penny, this is Bart’s dad, Beck. Beck, this is my cannot-live-without-her assistant Penny.”

Beck felt something loosen inside him as if a screw had been turned and he could let go of some of his lingering anger and resentment.

He held out his hand to Penny, who looked quite surprised. “Nice to meet you.”

“Ah,” Penny muttered, with her gaze whipping between them. “Nice to know you exist too,” she said.

That made him grin as he shook her hand, while Bart held her finger and they played tug.

At that moment there was a loud bang somewhere in the house, and Penny exclaimed, “I’ll get that, boss!”

To Penny’s retreating back, Millie said, “I’m taking lunch, Penny. I’ll relieve you when I get back.”

“Okay, boss,” Penny shouted, from somewhere in the house.

Beck looked down on Millie as Bart pulled on her hair. “Thanks for that,” he said.

She smiled, a little uncertainly. “It wasn’t so hard.” Then she added, “This is just the best thing you could do, Beck. Getting to seeing Bart at lunch.” She did smile then. “And getting to see you too,” she said.

Chapter Eight

I had always known Beck was hot, it wasn’t the only reason I had lusted after him throughout my teenage years, but it was a pretty big reason. He was also smart, funny, and he paid attention to me, where I sometimes got lost in the shuffle. But having Beck come to my job, meet Penny, and have my crew eyeing him, focused me once again on his masculine fineness.

My stepbrother was without a doubt a man’s man. He did it really well. And I was actually flattered that my crew was going to find out Beck was Bart’s dad, and that a man like Beck had actually found me attractive enough to make that happen.

And oh, wasn’t one of my long dreamed fantasies all about making babies and living a life with Beck. So I was trying hard not to act like a happy fool, because Beck had brought Bart to have lunch with me, just like
we
were a family.

Of course the minute I thought that word “family” it started reminding me about our incestuous connection. But I did not want to go there. It was so unfair. It wasn’t at all true ... because we were
not
blood related. Just because we grew up part of our young lives together, did not mean we should be forever forbidden from falling in love.

“Deep thoughts,” Beck murmured, as he handed Bart a whole quarter of a pickle.

I giggled as Bart fisted his little hands around it and squeezed. “What’s he going to do with that?”

Beck gave me his most devastating, lazy smile. “Gum it to death.”

That did get a couple laughs out of me, as I nodded my surrender to his plan. Then we both watched to see what Bart would think about sticking that pickle wedge in his mouth. First Bart hit his cheek, then his nose, and then it sort of slid in his mouth. His gray eyes widened and he had the cutest that-is-kind-of-sour-tasting look.

I don’t think Beck knew that he’d grabbed my hand as we both laughed. Even though it looked as if Bart thought the pickle was pretty sour, he wasn’t giving up his first opportunity to gnaw on something new. It made him bounce up and down in his car seat with excitement.

Then there was a pastrami sandwich under my nose, with Beck ordering, “Eat. And, back to those deep thoughts.”

I tried once again to sidetrack him, by saying, “You remembered I like pastrami. Thanks.”

Beck’s speculating gray eyes, so much like Bart’s, took in my first bite and then he handed over a chocolate milk to me.

“I remembered the horseradish mustard too,” he said. “I also remember the ways you use to avoid subjects.”

That brought an instant hot blush to my cheeks, because one of the ways I used to get Beck off the subject was by attack kissing him, maybe even attack fondling him. We’d gone to second base dozens of times before we were finally so overcome we’d done the illicit deed.

Beck must have remembered too, because his eyes turned up the heat that I remembered so well.

Well, he had caught me; I wasn’t going to sidetrack him from that, so I finally spilled.

“Just thinking for a moment about how peoples’ judgments are so unfair.” I raised my hand and swept it around. “You know that vicious circle we’ve been through.”

Beck leaned back with one knee bent up as he took a bite of his sandwich looking at me thoughtfully.

When he’d finished chewing, he said, “No one here needs to know that. I think you introducing me as Bart’s dad was the first time you and I could ever feel something like that.”

“I know,” I whispered, with my head down.

Beck’s fingers caught my chin and lifted it, until he was searching my gaze. “It felt good,” he said, quietly.

It almost felt like he was accepting ... maybe like he was forgiving me.

“If we just never go back home,” I muttered. “Not as if that would be any huge loss.”

Beck dropped his finger from under my chin and we continued to eat, when he finally muttered, “No grandma or grandpa for Bart.”

“Yeah,” I muttered back, thinking about it.