“If You Can’t Be Nice And At Least Pretend To Smile, You’ll Just Have To Go Away.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Simon had had enough of this. He wasn’t going to be chastised by anybody, least of all the short, curvy woman giving him a disgusted look.
He stalked across the small kitchen, plucked the baby from Tula’s grasp and held Nathan up to eye level. The baby’s pout disappeared as if it had never been and the two of them simply stared at each other.
In that instant Simon was lost.
He knew even as he stood there, beneath Tula Barrons’s less than approving stare, that this was his son and he would do whatever he had to in order to keep him.
If this woman stood in his way, he’d roll right over her without a moment’s pause. Something in his gaze must have given away his thoughts, because the small blonde lifted her chin, met his eyes in a bold stare and told him silently that she wouldn’t give an inch.
Fine.
She’d learn soon enough that when Simon Bradley entered a contest—he never lost.
Dear Reader,
All writers are different. But for me, when I’ve finished writing a book, I’m satisfied with the way my characters’ story has played out and I’m ready to move on.
Usually. But Tula Barrons was different. Tula first showed up in my story “The Wrong Brother” in the holiday 2-in-1, Under the Millionaire’s Mistletoe. Tula was my heroine Annie’s best friend. And I loved her so much, I couldn’t let her go until she had a story of her own.
So in Have Baby, Need Billionaire, Tallulah “Tula” Barrons gets her hero. Tula didn’t have a great childhood, but she does have the best attitude ever. She’s made her own life and she’s happy with it. Until she inherits a baby and falls in love with that little boy’s father.
Simon Bradley doesn’t know what hit him. Finding a son he didn’t know about is a surprise, but the baby’s guardian is the one who knocks him for a loop.
Simon is a rules guy. Tula has never met a rule she didn’t break. Simon likes order and Tula thrives on chaos. Bringing these two very opposite people together was a lot of fun for me. And this time, when the book was finished, I was happy with Tula’s story. I hope you are, too!
Follow me on Facebook, visit my website at www.maureenchild.com or write to me at P.O. Box 1883, Westminster, CA 92684-1883.
Happy reading!
Maureen
MAUREEN CHILD
HAVE BABY, NEED BILLIONAIRE
Books by Maureen Child
Silhouette Desire
†Scorned by the Boss #1816
†Seduced by the Rich Man #1820
†Captured by the Billionaire #1826
††Bargaining for King’s Baby #1857
††Marrying for King’s Millions #1862
††Falling for King’s Fortune #1868
High-Society Secret Pregnancy #1879
Baby Bonanza #1893
An Officer and a Millionaire #1915
Seduced Into a Paper Marriage #1946
††Conquering King’s Heart #1965
††Claiming King’s Baby #1971
††Wedding at King’s Convenience #1978
††The Last Lone Wolf #2011
Claiming Her Billion-Dollar Birthright #2024
††Cinderella & the CEO #2043
Under the Millionaire’s Mistletoe #2056
“The Wrong Brother”
Have Baby, Need Billionaire #2059
MAUREEN CHILD
is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur. Visit Maureen’s website at www.maureenchild.com.
For Carter
He’s never met the Lonely Bunny
But he loves the Little Critters
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
One
Simon Bradley didn’t like surprises.
In his experience, any time a man let himself be taken unawares, disaster happened.
Order. Rules. He was a man of discipline. Which is why it only took one look at the woman standing in his office to know that she wasn’t his kind of female.
Pretty though, he told himself, his gaze sweeping her up and down in a brisk, detailed look. She stood about five foot four and looked even shorter because she was so delicately made. She was tiny, really, with short blond hair that clung to her head in chunky layers that framed her face. Big silver hoops dangled from her ears and her wide blue eyes were fixed on him thoughtfully. Her mouth was curved in what appeared to be a permanent half smile and a single dimple winked at him from her right cheek. She wore black jeans, black boots and a bright red sweater that molded itself to her slight but curvy body.
He ignored the flash of purely male interest as he met her gaze and stood up behind his desk. “Ms. Barrons, is it? My assistant tells me you insisted on seeing me about something ‘urgent’?”
“Yes, hi. And please, call me Tula,” she said, her words tumbling from her delectable-looking mouth in a rush. She walked toward him, right hand extended.
His fingers folded over hers and he felt a sudden, intense surge of heat. Before he could really question it, she shook his hand briskly, then stepped back. Looking past him at the wide window behind him, she said, “Wow, that’s quite a view. You can see all of San Francisco from here.”
He didn’t turn around to share the view. He watched her instead. His fingers were still buzzing and he rubbed them together to dissipate the sensation. No, she wasn’t his type at all, but damned if he wasn’t enjoying looking at her. “Not all, but a good part of it.”
“Why don’t you have your desk facing the window?”
“If I did that, I’d have my back to the door, wouldn’t I?”
“Right.” She nodded then shrugged. “Still, I think it’d be worth it.”
Pretty, but disorganized, he thought. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Ms. Barrons—”
“Tula.”
“Ms. Barrons,” he said deliberately, “if you’ve come to talk about the view, I don’t really have time for this. I’ve got a board meeting in fifteen minutes and—”
“Right. You’re a busy man. I get that. And no, I didn’t come to talk about the view, I got a little distracted, that’s all.”
Distractions, he thought wryly, are probably how this woman lives her life. She was already letting her gaze slide around his office rather than getting to the point of her visit. He watched her as she took in the streamlined office furniture, the framed awards from the city and the professionally done photos of the other Bradley department stores across the country.
Pride rose up inside him as he, too, took a moment to admire those photos. Simon had worked hard for the last ten years to rebuild a family dynasty that his father had brought to the brink of ruin. In one short decade, Simon had not only regained ground lost, thanks to his father’s sloppy business sense, he’d taken the Bradley family chain of upscale shopping centers further than anyone else ever had.
And he hadn’t accomplished all of that by being distracted. Not even by a pretty woman.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, coming around his d
esk to escort her personally to the door, “I am rather busy today….”
She flashed him a full smile and Simon felt his heart take an odd, hard lurch in his chest. Her eyes lit up and that dimple in her cheek deepened and she was suddenly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Shaken, Simon brushed that thought aside and told himself to get a grip.
“Sorry, sorry,” Tula said, waving both hands in the air as if to erase her own tendency to get sidetracked. “I really am here to talk to you about something very important.”
“All right then, what is it that’s so urgent you vowed to spend a week in my waiting area if you weren’t allowed to speak to me immediately?”
She opened her mouth, shut it again, then suggested, “Maybe you should sit down.”
“Ms. Barrons…”
“Fine,” she said with a shake of her head. “Your call. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Pointedly, he glanced at his watch.
“I get it,” she told him. “Busy man. You want it and you want it now. Okay then, here it is. Congratulations, Simon Bradley. You’re a father.”
He stiffened and any sense of courtesy went out the window along with his sense of bemused tolerance. “Your five minutes are up, Ms. Barrons.” He took her elbow in a firm grip and steered her toward the door.
Her much shorter legs were moving fast, trying to either keep up or slow him down, he wasn’t sure which. Either way, it didn’t make a difference to him. Beautiful or not, whatever game she was playing, it wasn’t going to work. Simon was no one’s father and he damn well knew it.
“Hey!” She finally dug the heels of her boots into the lush carpet and slowed his progress a bit. “Wait a second! Geez, overreact much?”
“I’m not a father,” he ground out tightly. “And trust me when I say that if I had ever slept with you, I would remember.”
“I didn’t say I was the baby’s mother.”
He didn’t listen. Just kept moving toward the door at a relentless pace.
“I would have worked up to that little declaration slower, you know,” she was babbling. “You’re the one who wanted it direct and fast.”
“I see. This was for my benefit.”
“No, it’s for your son’s benefit, you boob.”
He staggered a little in spite of knowing that she had to be lying. A son? Impossible.
She took advantage of the momentary pause in his forced march toward the door to break free of his grip and step back just out of reach. He was unsettled enough to let her go. He didn’t know what she was trying to pull, but at the moment, her eyes looked soft but determined as she met his gaze.
“I realize this is coming as a complete shock to you. Heck, it would be for anybody.”
Simon shook his head and narrowed his eyes on her. Enough of this. He didn’t have a son and he wasn’t going to fall for whatever moneygrubbing scheme she’d come up with in her delusional fantasies. Best to lay that on the line right from the start.
“I’ve never even seen you before, Ms. Barrons, so obviously, we don’t have a child together. Next time you want to convince someone to pay for a child that doesn’t exist, you might want to try it on someone you’ve actually slept with.”
She blinked up at him in confusion, then a moment later she laughed. “No, no. I told you, I’m not the baby’s mother. I’m the baby’s aunt. But you’re definitely his father. Nathan has your eyes and even that stubborn chin of yours. Which does not bode well, I suppose. But stubbornness can often be a good quality, don’t you think?”
Nathan.
The imaginary baby had a name.
But that didn’t make any of this situation real.
“This is insane,” he told her. “You’re obviously after something, so why not just spill it and get it over with.”
She was muttering to herself as she walked back to his desk and Simon was forced to follow her. “I had a speech all prepared, you know. You rushed me and everything’s confused now.”
“I think you’re the only thing confused here,” Simon told her, moving to pick up his phone and call security. They could escort her out and he’d be done with this and back to work.
“I’m not confused,” she said. She read his expression and added, “I’m not crazy, either. Look, give me five minutes, okay?”
He hung up. Wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the gleam in her blue eyes. Maybe it was that tantalizing dimple that continued to show itself and disappear again. But if there was the slightest chance that what she was saying was true, then he owed it to himself to find out.
“All right,” he said, checking his watch. “Five minutes.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and said, “Here we go. Do you remember dating a woman named Sherry Taylor about a year and a half ago?”
A thin thread of apprehension slithered through Simon as he searched his memory. “Yes,” he said warily.
“Well…I’m Sherry’s cousin, Tula Barrons. Actually, Tallulah, named after my grandmother, but that’s such a hideous name that I go by Tula….”
He was hardly listening to her now. Instead his mind was focused on those nebulous memories of a woman in his past. Was it possible?
She took another steadying breath and said, “I know this is hard to take in, but while you two were together, Sherry got pregnant. She gave birth to your son six months ago, in Long Beach.”
“She what?”
“I know, I know. She should have told you,” the woman said, lifting both hands as if to say it wasn’t her fault. “I actually tried to convince her to tell you, but she said she didn’t want to intrude on your life or anything, so…”
Intrude on his life.
That was an understatement. God, he could barely remember what the woman looked like. Simon rubbed at the spot between his eyes as if somehow that might clear up the foggy memories. But all he came up with was a vague image of a woman who had been in and out of his life in about two weeks’ time.
And while he’d gone on his way without a backward glance, she’d been pregnant? With his child? And didn’t even bother to tell him?
“What? Why? How?”
“All very good questions,” she said, smiling at him again, this time in a sympathetic fashion. “I’m really sorry this is such a shock, but—”
Simon wasn’t interested in her sympathy. He wanted answers. If he really did have a son, then he needed to know everything.
“Why now?” he demanded. “Why did your cousin wait until now to tell me, and why isn’t she here herself?”
Her eyes filmed over and he had the horrifying thought that she was going to cry. Damn it. He hated when women cried. Made a man feel completely helpless. Not something he enjoyed at all. But a moment later, the woman had gotten control of her emotions and managed to stem the tide of those tears. Her eyes still glittered with them, but she refused to let them fall and Simon found, unexpectedly, that he admired her for it.
“Sherry died a couple of weeks ago,” she said softly.
Another quick jolt of surprise in a morning that felt full of them. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing it sounded lame and clichéd, but what else was there to say?
“Thanks,” she said. “It was a car accident. She died instantly.”
“Look, Ms. Barrons…”
She sighed. “If I beg, will you please call me Tula?”
“Fine. Tula,” he amended, thinking it really was the least he could do, considering. For the first time in a very long time, Simon had been caught completely off guard.
He wasn’t sure how to react. His instinct, of course, was to find this baby and if it was his son, to claim him. But all he had was this stranger’s word, along with memories that were too obscure to trust. Why in the hell would a woman get pregnant and not tell the baby’s father? Why wouldn’t she have come to him if that child really was his?
He scrubbed one hand across his jaw. “Look, I’m sorry to say, I don’t really remember much about your cousin. We weren’t together
long. I don’t see why you’re so sure this baby is mine.”
“Because Sherry named you on the baby’s birth certificate.”
“She gave the baby my name and didn’t bother to tell me?” He didn’t even know what to say to that.
“I know,” she said, her tone soothing.
He didn’t want to be soothed. Or understood. “She could have put anyone’s name down,” he pointed out.
“Sherry didn’t lie.”
Simon laughed at the ridiculousness of that statement. “Is that right?”
Tula winced. “All right, fine. She lied to you, but she wouldn’t have lied to her son. She wouldn’t have lied about Nathan’s name.”
“Why should I believe that the boy is mine?”
“You did have sex with her?”
Scowling, Simon admitted, “Well, yes, I did, but—”
“And you do know how babies are made, right?”
“That’s very amusing.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” she told him. “Just honest. Look, you can do a paternity test, but I can tell you that Sherry would never have named you as Nathan’s father in her will if she wasn’t sure.”
“Her will?” The silent clang of a warning bell went off in his mind.
“Didn’t I already tell you that part?”
“No.”
She shook her head and dropped into one of the chairs angled in front of his desk. “Sorry. It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, what with Sherry’s accident and arranging the funeral and closing up her house and moving the baby up here to my house in Crystal Bay.”
Sensing that this was going to go on far longer than the original five minutes he’d allowed her, Simon walked around the edge of his desk and took a seat. At the very least, he was now in the position of power. He watched the pretty blonde and asked, “What about the will?”
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