by Leslie North
"You care about me?" He grabbed her hand. "Then stay with me. I can't lose you, Cassandra."
She shook her head. "I can't be with you here. I'm done with the two of us following a script. I'm done with only looking happy. I wanted reality with you, Arthur, but there's nothing real about this. And I wanted it to be real. So badly. I really did but—"
She rushed out of the room before finishing her sentence.
16
She was done.
The show wasn't.
Cassandra shifted from side to side as she watched the rehearsal. Kendra was beaming, a gorgeous, happy bride walking down the aisle to her perfect man. Well, maybe Rory wasn't perfect, but he was the right guy for Kendra. They completed each other in a way that made Cassandra almost believe love was real.
She used to believe it wholeheartedly. Now she wasn't so sure.
Arthur's eyes bored into her from across the room. He hadn't said a word to her since her outburst in the fitting room yesterday, and maybe that was best. What could he say?
Except that you have him all wrong, and that he's not acting when he kisses you, and that everything you feel for him, he feels the same. He could say this is real.
Cassandra shook her head to clear it, then laughed aloud. "Cut!" Amy yelled. "Baby! What the fuck was that?" the producer snarled at her. "One more giggle out of you, and I'll rip your pretty hair out of your scalp and wear it as a scarf."
"Sorry, Amy," Cassandra said, unbothered by Amy's threats. They were just as real as all the rest of this—hollow and unnecessary, just used to create drama. "I'm ready."
"And, action!"
"Cut!" Arthur's voice made them all jump. "Amy, do you need me in this shot?"
Amy peered at her monitor. "Nah, you're just scenery baby."
Cassandra looked away to avoid meeting his eyes. But his frustrated growl carried over on the breeze. "I'm taking a break then," he announced.
He couldn't be near her without wanting to scream. He couldn't be away from her without wanting to be near her again.
Arthur moved without thinking, all his pent-up frustrations propelling him across the lawn and around the side of the house into the wing where the editing team worked. Sam looked up from his monitor in alarm.
"Hi," Arthur said. "I'm going insane. No TV, no radio, no distractions. I need to zone out."
Sam gestured to the monitor, "Can you zone out to yourself?" the big man asked.
Arthur peered at the grainy images on the grayed- out screen until he realized what he was seeing. "Is this footage from…"
"A few nights ago," Sam finished. "Night vision stuff."
Arthur sat down heavily. "Can you rewind?" His heart thumped dully in his chest.
The midnight snack. He was watching himself search the fridge for food. He'd had his back to her, so he didn't see the cute way she smiled as she hopped up on her stool. There it was, so happy and satisfied, so different from the way she looked at him now.
And there he was. He'd forgotten all about the cameras that night. He'd been so intent on feeding Cassandra, so excited to cook something for her.
He watched, startled to see himself drop to one knee on the screen. He'd forgotten about talking to the baby.
"We got this from a different angle too," Sam explained. He tapped a few buttons, and suddenly there was Arthur's face in close-up as he talked into Cassandra's stomach and then smiled up at her.
"Wait, pause it. Can you pause it?"
"I can do anything with video," Sam huffed. "I'm actually a tech genius. But yeah, sure, I can pause it."
Arthur gritted his teeth. "Thank you," he said mechanically. Then leaned in. "What am I seeing?" he asked.
"Looks to me like you're grinning up at your lady like you're a lovesick fool," Sam intoned. "Not that I blame you. Cassie's a hell of a girl."
"Cassandra," Arthur corrected automatically. "And wait a minute." He looked closer at the frame, like it held the secrets of the universe. And maybe it did. "That’s what love looks like?"
"I dunno, you tell me."
"I can't. I've never been in love before. But I've also never looked like…that." He touched the screen in wonder.
No smirk. No sneer. No sarcastic eyerolls or angry posturing. He barely recognized his own face on the screen, but the longer he stared at it, the more he realized he was seeing something he'd never seen before.
The real him. No act. No persona.
Just a man who got up in the middle of the night to make a snack for the woman he loved.
17
Pregnancy cravings were a cliché. An overly exaggerated old-wives tale used to make pregnant women seem crazy and unhinged. She didn't understand what all the hype was about. She'd never woken up in the middle of the night, seized with the desperate need to eat something specific.
Until tonight.
She sat bolt upright in bed and gripped her stomach. This wasn't hunger, although it gnawed at her the same way. This was a bone-deep need for something very specific, but she had no idea what.
She groaned in frustration and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to picture what her mouth was already tasting. Something crisp and buttery, oozing with fatty cheese that dripped unctuously onto her tongue. Something that would fill up the hole she was certain had opened up inside of her.
The spot next to her in bed was empty, as was the couch. For one moment, she allowed herself to miss Arthur with the same intensity as her craving. He would know what she needed. And he wouldn't object to waking up in the middle of the night to give it to her either. Maybe she'd never been able to tell if what they had was real, but the way he cared for her was more real than anything.
She gripped the sheets, wondering why she was just realizing this now. She'd been so worried about the future that she'd lost sight of the present. She'd missed all the ways he'd showed her how real this was to him, from helping her mask her pregnancy symptoms to the eager way he'd spread out the ingredients to make her a midnight snack. She'd been so focused on all the ways he was wrong for her that she'd been oblivious to all the ways he was perfect.
And now he was gone.
The emptiness inside of her felt like a gaping chasm. It was the middle of the night. She wasn't going to be able to fix the Arthur-sized hole in her heart. But she could at least rummage through the refrigerator until she found something to soothe her craving.
She opened the door and instinctually turned her face away from the camera. But something made her glance up anyway. She held her breath, waiting for the telltale blink of the red light that indicated it was recording.
It never came.
Cassandra was confused. That little red light was such a fixture of her life now that not seeing it was somehow unsettling. But freeing too. As she walked down the hall, she felt strangely lighter knowing that she wasn't being recorded right now. It was probably stupid, since they could have just moved the camera somewhere else. But for the moment, she felt the freedom of being able to draw a full breath without worrying if it made her stomach poke out too much. She inhaled.
And then gasped in delight when the scent hit her. That was it! She moaned aloud, wondering if she was hallucinating. How else was she able to smell the exact thing she was craving—a grilled cheese sandwich—in the middle of the night?
She hurried the rest of the way to the kitchen, sniffing and mmm-ing the whole way, until she turned the corner and stopped short.
He had a dishtowel over his shoulder, but otherwise his chest was bare. His hair was rumpled, as if he'd just gotten out of bed, and he gripped a spatula in one hand.
He was the most handsome man she'd ever seen, and she loved him with all her heart.
The thought hit her like a ton of bricks to the chest. The air rushed out of her lungs with the force of her realization.
"I'm sorry," Arthur said. Cassandra wondered what the hell he was apologizing for, until she realized he must have misinterpreted her gasp of wonder for a sigh of frustration. "Did I wake you u
p?"
She shook her head. "I woke up on my own. What are you doing?"
The corner of his mouth kicked up. "You talk in your sleep."
"I do not!" She shot a horrified glance at the cameras.
And then realized those were missing too.
Arthur caught her astonishment and grinned. "Don't worry. I took care of it." He pointed to the kitchen island, where a pile of cameras lay, some still covered in plaster dust after being ripped from the wall.
Cassandra clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh my god, are you allowed to do that?"
He shrugged one shoulder and then flipped the sandwich. "Probably not. But they can survive without one night of footage." His grin widened. "I guess the bad boy isn't so reformed after all."
Cassandra suppressed a gleeful giggle. "That smells so good."
"Glad you think so." He scooped the dripping, cheesy mess onto a plate and extended it to her. "Here. Wait for it to cool."
She stared at him. "How did you know?"
"Like I said, you talk in your sleep. You were in very earnest conversation with someone about how hungry you were and how much you needed a grilled cheese right now. You actually shouted the words ‘right now’ pretty loudly, so I figured I'd better listen to the woman I love and get on that."
"That was nice of you," she said, shoving half the sandwich into her mouth in one gulp. Then froze. Swallowed. "Wait, what did you say?"
"I figured I'd better listen?" His eyes gleamed with mischief.
"No! The other part!"
He hopped up onto the counter and broke the sandwich in half again. "Chew it all the way, doll. I don't want to go through all the trouble of telling you how much I love you and how sorry I am for being an idiot only to have you choke and die." Cassandra stopped chewing and stared up at him. Her mouth was so full, she couldn't say anything, and Arthur nodded, looking pleased. "Good. You're too polite to talk with your mouth full. That'll give me a chance to tell you that I know how bad I screwed up. I 've always known who I am, but I let other people dictate it because it felt easier to be a character than a real person. And I thought that because it was harder to be real, that meant I was unhappy being real. I took my mom's good advice and twisted it around until it was the worst thing I could do to myself." He touched her cheek. "You opened my eyes to how much happier I am when I'm myself. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's confusing. But it's real. It's as deep as the ocean and as rich as the pound of butter I used to make you that apology sandwich."
Cassandra swallowed. The sandwich was rich, all right. It made her feel full and sated, but it wasn't just her hunger that he'd fed. "Since I was a little girl, I knew exactly what the right man for me would be like. What he'd look like, what he'd do, all of it." She rested her hand over his. "I wrote volumes about him in my vision journal. And you're not a bit like him."
Arthur's face fell. She held his gaze as the emotions worked across his face, all the disappointment and dashed hopes.
She couldn't torture him any longer. "You're better," she promised, jumping to her feet and grabbing his hands. He slid from the counter, his eyes full of hope as she cupped his cheek and nodded, finally certain. “You’re real. And I love you for it. I love you, Arthur McClellan, bad boy chef."
He snorted. "I feel like it's time to retire that brand."
"I'm glad to hear it. What would you like to be now?"
He kissed her softly before pulling her to his chest. With a deep, contented sigh, he said, "Arthur McClellan, happiest man in the world."
Epilogue
She'd always had a vision of what motherhood would be like. The quiet mornings in the nursery, sun slanting through the windows as she rocked her cuddly baby against her breasts and they gazed adoringly at each other. And she'd achieved that vision—a few times, anyway. She could count exactly three mornings when little Jack had been content to just sit quietly. The other one hundred twenty-five mornings of his life had been spent in constant motion.
"He never stops moving," Cassandra complained as her son tried to launch himself from her arms for the fifth time in five minutes. "I swear, he's going to skip crawling and go right to sprinting."
"He just wants to see the pretty pictures," Arthur laughed as he came around to her side and opened his arms. "C'mere, Jumping Jack. Let's pick you out some ink to celebrate making it to five months old."
Cassandra sighed as she watched her husband heft their baby closer to the laminated sheets of sample tattoos. "I can't believe we brought our baby to the tattoo parlor."
"Why not? What else were we gonna do—leave him home and let the dogs babysit him?"
A rush of affection for her husband flooded through Cassandra. He seemed genuinely confused. Of course, he wouldn't be thinking about how improper it was to bring their infant into a place like this. It was the kind of obliviousness to social niceties that would have driven her nuts a year ago.
Now they only made her love him more.
"You know, if you'd let me get the nanny cam I wanted, we could have at least watched to make sure the dogs were taking good care of him," she teased.
Arthur shook his head. "No cameras."
"I know," she relented immediately. She'd turned down the full series offer in the end. Just like they'd both turned down the fat check Taste had offered to broadcast their wedding. Destination: Wedding had been a huge hit, giving them the ability to transfer their star power into Cassandra's passion project, funding dream weddings for deserving couples. "I wasn't serious."
"I know you weren't, doll." He grinned at her. "You sure you're ready?"
"Of course, I'm not. But I'm still doing it." She kissed him. "I have the perfect idea for a design, too."
That bad boy gleam in Arthur's eye used to frighten her. Now it excited her. "Too late. I already picked it out."
"What?"
"Come on in," the tattoo artist called, waving them into his studio. "I worked it up according to your idea. What do you think?" he asked Arthur.
He leaned over the drawing and grinned. "It's perfect." Turning to Cassandra, his cheeky smile softened. "I wanted something that would always remind me of the night we fell in love."
She loved him so much it made her woozy. "That sounds perfect. I'll get the same one. In fact, I'll go first."
She smiled at her husband, and squeezed her son's foot. And then bit her lip with laughter as she got a tattoo of a grilled cheese sandwich.
It was perfect.
End of The Billionaire Chef’s Baby
McClellan Billionaires Book Two
The Billionaire’s Pregnant Assistant, October 10 2019
The Billionaire Chef’s Baby, October 17 2019
The Billionaire’s Ward, October 24 2019
Do you want to be swept off your feet? Then keep reading for exclusive extracts from The Billionaire’s Ward and The Billionaire’s Accidental Baby.
Thank You!
Thank you so much for purchasing my book. It’s hard for me to put into words how much I appreciate my readers. If you enjoyed this book, please remember to leave a review. Reviews are crucial for an author’s success and I would greatly appreciate it if you took the time to review the book. I love hearing from you!
You can leave a review at:
About Leslie
Leslie North is the USA Today Bestselling pen name for a critically-acclaimed author of women's contemporary romance and fiction. The anonymity gives her the perfect opportunity to paint with her full artistic palette, especially in the romance and erotic fantasy genres.
Find your next Leslie North book visit www.LeslieNorthBooks.com or choose:
PS: Want sneak peeks, giveaways, ARC offers, fun extras and plenty of pictures of bad boys? Join my Facebook group, Leslie’s Lovelies!
BLURB
Vane McClellan is all business. He might come from money, but he’s worked hard to make his architecture firm one of the top in the country. But things have slammed to a halt in the wake of becoming guardian to Annabelle, his
late cousin’s daughter. Vane fears Annabelle may need more than he can give her.
Maggie Stewart, Annabelle’s teacher, cares deeply for her students but likes to live footloose and fancy free. She’s about to move—again—but not before she gets Annabelle settled. They’ve grown close since the girl joined her class, and now Maggie has one final job: drop Annabelle off at Vane’s summer home.
When Maggie gets stranded at Vane’s vacation home, she gets a chance to see Vane vulnerable. The sight of a strong man doing his best in the face of new fatherhood melts her heart. When he asks her to stay and nanny Annabelle for the summer, Maggie agrees in hopes that she’ll be able to teach Vane how to be a father before her new job starts. Vane is happy to have someone he trusts to shepherd his young ward. As the three begin to become a family and Vane and Maggie give in to the passion that’s plagued them from day one, they’ll let themselves be something both have feared for a long time: happy. But when summer comes to an end, Vane and Maggie will have to decide if they want to follow their hearts...or their plans.
Grab your copy of The Billionaire’s Ward.
Available 24 October 2019.
www.leslienorthbooks.com
EXCERPT
Chapter One