Accidental Baby for the Billionaire (A Billionaire's Baby Romance)

by Lia Lee

  "Store?" she asked. "We could get salads."

  Or rather, Marnie could get a salad, and then Victoria could pick what she wanted to out of it.

  "That sounds like a fantastic idea," Marnie said. "We'll have some breakfast, and then we can head out, all right?"

  They were on the subway, Victoria watching out the window with avid eyes, when Marnie's phone beeped. It could have been Cassie, or her agent or any number of people, but she knew from the first moment she picked it up who it would be.

  I want to get to know Victoria. I want to get to know you again. I'm working on your schedule and your rules. Tell me the place and the time, and I'll be there.

  Marnie took several deep breaths. There it was. Perhaps a small part of her wished that he had decided to stay away. Then nothing would change and life could roll on as it always had. Still, she had gotten done telling Victoria just a few months ago that change was good, and that the change between staying at home and going to school was going to lead to great things.

  "Victoria, I need your attention right now."

  Victoria, who knew that her mother only used those words when she was serious, turned around to watch her with those liquid black eyes. Sometimes, it had been hard at the beginning to be reminded of Philip so often. Now she looked at them and only saw her daughter.

  "All right, Victoria, do you remember the man who sat next to you at the store last night? He talked with you a little bit?"

  "Yes …"

  "Well, he's … a very old friend of mine. A very good friend that I haven't seen since before you were born. He's in town again for the first time in years, and he wants to get to see me and to know you."

  Victoria nodded, processing this in her serious way. Sometimes, Marnie wondered if her daughter would be a writer too. She thought about everything with that same seriousness.

  "Now, I want you to understand that you can say no, but I was thinking it might be fun to invite him along today at the park."

  Victoria thought for a moment, and Marnie wondered what Victoria would say. If Victoria said no, she would arrange another meeting, but if she was honest with herself … she truly wanted her daughter—their daughter—to say yes.

  "I think you should invite him along," she said finally. "I liked him."

  "You did?" Marnie asked in surprise. She had heard from Victoria that she had talked with the dark-haired stranger, but she hadn't heard more than that.

  "I did," Victoria said decisively. "He talked to me like I was real."

  Real was Victoria's word for being spoken to seriously. Sometime around the age of three, she had learned to disdain baby talk, and whenever Marnie had forgotten, she would glare. As an adorable little girl, there were plenty of strangers who talked to her as if she wasn't real, and it was a source of constant aggravation.

  "I am glad that he spoke to you as if you were real," Marnie said, oddly pleased in spite of herself. There were plenty of adults who, unwilling to accept that Victoria had certain needs and preferences, persisted in using baby talk with her, and Marnie had come to realize that most of those adults were not people she wanted around herself, let alone her daughter.

  "He did." Victoria proclaimed. With the conversation apparently over, she turned back to the window, and it was left to Marnie to write back to Philip.

  After a deep breath, she texted him the location of the park where they were going, and after a moment of hesitation, she added, I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

  If she was being honest, she was more than just looking forward to it. When Marnie glanced at Victoria, her heart hurt with how much she loved her daughter. However, old feelings that she had thought were gone forever were stirring over Philip, Philip who she knew could easily destroy the entire life that she had worked so hard for.

  As they traveled towards the park, Marnie prayed that what came next would not hurt her small family.

  ***

  The day was bright, unseasonably warm for spring, and the moment that Victoria was allowed to do so, she ran for the bushes, inspecting the new leaves and the budding day lilies. At some point, she would likely want to play on the equipment, but ever since she was born, she had been much more impressed with the flowers and shrubs than she was with the playground equipment.

  Marnie stretched a little, enjoying the sun. She tried to get out often when she was writing, taking Victoria with her to the little bodega around the corner and staying active, but the end of a book was always hard on her. Now that things were a little slower, she could take her time and start to have some fun again.

  "She's lively," said a familiar voice behind her, and Marnie swung around to see Philip.

  He was still so handsome that he could take her breath away. He wore a light jacket and a scarf, and in his hands, he held a cardboard tray with paper cups.

  "She is," Marnie said, swallowing to get rid of her dry mouth. "She's been cooped up all winter, and this is the first time she's really gotten out to play."

  He frowned a little at that. "Does she not get out very much in the winter?"

  Marnie smiled a little. "Are you already criticizing my parenting skills? Have to say, not a great way to begin."

  To his credit, Philip looked startled and scandalized. "Not at all! I talked with her, and she seems to be a lively, smart child. All I have is my own childhood to base things off of. Navarra is far more temperate than New York, so we were able to play outside as much as we liked."

  "We New Yorkers have come up with ways to cope with the unseasonable weather," Marnie said with a slight grin. "There's an indoor playground that we go to, and I bundle her up and take her with me to the store, which, believe me, in a New York winter is pretty tiring. Are those for us?"

  Philip looked down, almost as if surprised that he was still holding the drinks. "They are … I guess I didn't want to come empty-handed …"

  Abruptly, she realized that he was nervous. The thought was mind-blowing. The entire time she had known him, Philip had always been cocky, sure of himself. However, now he was in unknown waters, and he was terrified of making a misstep. It made her warm to him in a way she hadn't expected.

  "Calm down," she said, impulsively touching his hand. "Victoria and I can be hard to impress, but we're pretty easy going. Honestly … I'm glad you came."

  "You are?" he asked. "From the way you talked to me at DiMartino's, I thought you would have been just as happy to see the back of me."

  "Being a mom means that you sometimes have to draw some pretty broad lines," Marnie said with a shrug. "I want to make sure that Victoria only has people in her life who are going to be kind and thoughtful. If you were going to show up, make a fuss, maybe dump some presents on her and disappear … well, that's not something that would be good for her. If you're genuinely here to get to know her, that's different."

  Philip nodded understandingly. "Yes. I do want to get to know her. Can we … that is, I don't want to interrupt her while she's playing …"

  Marnie laughed. "You are new at this," she said fondly. "She's easy. If we interrupt her while she's playing, she might pout a little, but I think the juice will fix it. Victoria, come on over here!"

  Despite her earlier approval, Victoria approached Philip with caution. Marnie wasn't surprised. Victoria was a quiet girl, and some strangers misread that as shyness. The truth was that Victoria was fairly fearless all things considered. She was only exuberant around people she knew well.

  "Sweetie, this is Philip, my old friend. He's a good man, and he'd like to spend some time with us today."

  "Hello, Philip. I am pleased to meet you," Victoria said dutifully. Philip looked a little surprised when the little girl offered him her hand, but he took it. When he touched her, Marnie could see something pass on his face—joy, awe, and stark terror all mixed together. She assumed that she had looked somewhat similar when they had first put Victoria into her arms.

  "I'm pleased to meet you too, Victoria," he said. "I'm … well. I brought some juice.
"

  "What kind?" asked Victoria skeptically, and Philip laughed.

  "Well, I don't know what anyone likes, but I have apple-lime, banana-strawberry, and mango-dragon fruit. Which one do you like most?"

  Victoria looked torn, and Philip was frozen. Marnie decided to step in and help out. "Sweetie, you know you like banana and strawberry, so why don't you take that one? You can try a sip of ours, and if everyone agrees, we can trade, how about that?"

  Victoria decided that that was acceptable, and Philip shot her a grateful look.

  Marnie couldn't help but smile a little at the way Philip watched the little girl drink her juice. He looked as if he had never seen anything so interesting or brilliant in his life, and despite her suspicions, her doubts and her fears, she felt herself warm to him a little more.

  When Victoria finished her drink, she gave the cup to her mother and started to run back to the playground.

  "Hang on, what do you say?"

  Victoria looked a little guilty, and glanced at Philip. "Thank you for the juice and may I be excused?" she said all in one breath.

  He looked less surprised this time and nodded. "If it's all right with your mother."

  "Good answer," Marnie said drily. "Go ahead and play, honey. I'm just going to go sit with Philip for a little while."

  Philip looked a little torn as she ran on without a backwards glance. "How do you do it?" he asked quietly as they went to sit down with their juice.

  "You're going to have to be a little more specific than that," she said wryly.

  "How do you let her run off when she's got your heart in her hands?"

  Marnie was prepared with a flippant remark, but the question caught her square in the chest. There was something there that was so similar to what she had gone through in those first early days that she impulsively reached over to touch Philip's hand.

  "You have to," she said gazing out over the playground at her daughter.

  As they both watched, Victoria ignored the other children to climb up to the top of the play tower, her eyes looking up at the perfect blue sky. She looked rapturous, entirely contained in her own world.

  "When she was born, I couldn't stand to be apart from her. I did a lot of baby-wearing, where you sort of rig up a sling to carry your baby around, and for a while, the only time that I felt safe and sound was when I could feel her against me, hear her breathing and feel her heart beat."

  "What changed?" asked Philip, his eyes still on Victoria.

  Marnie laughed. "The fact that I had a life I wanted to live, and the fact that I realized that raising Victoria as a little clinging octopus was not good for both of us. The first time I let her run off to wander around the playground, I felt just as you do right now. My heart ran off without me. As a parent, you have to take a lot of things on faith. Terrible things could happen. Most of the time, happily enough, they don't. I imagine your childhood was a little different?"

  Philip thought for a moment. "My parents were very busy," he said. "They carry a great deal of responsibility as the King and Queen of Navarra. I was largely raised by nannies, though of course I did get to know my parents as well. I remember not being alone very often, and how much I wanted to be sometimes."

  Unexpectedly, Marnie found herself aching for Philip in a way that she had never expected. Their affair, no matter how passionate, had been so very short. They had never really gotten to know the details behind their lives; they were all too consumed with fun and the things they could make each other feel.

  Now that she knew the man a little better, she could see the hurt boy that also lived inside him, and something about that spoke to her. It made her more cautiously open to sharing their daughter with him, with seeing what had become of Philip after a half-decade apart.

  "The childhood that Victoria has is in no way conventional," Marnie said thoughtfully. "She's a writer's daughter. She gets stories with everything and thanks to all my friends, she gets lessons on just about everything that her little heart desires. You should hear her speak French. She might not be a princess, but she is happy."

  "I can see that," Philip said softly. "But the thing is, she is also a princess."

  Marnie tensed at the tone in his words, but he didn't press it. At the moment, he seemed content to watch his daughter who didn't even know that that was what she was. Finally, he turned to Marnie.

  "Thank you for letting me have this," he said quietly. "I wanted to see her very much."

  "And now that you have?" Marnie asked. Though she gave no sign, her heart was beating a little faster. It was possible that Philip would simply be happy seeing Victoria, and, conscience assuaged, would simply climb back onto his plane and wing off to Europe again. That would honestly be the safest and most predictable response. However, there was a part of her that wanted to cry for him to stay. She dismissed it as being the part of her that was still the young girl lovesick over him, but it was loud.

  "I want to continue doing this," he said. "Christ, it sounds terrible because I've not been here for her entire life, but I do want to be a part of her life. I want to get to know her, and I know that the only way I will do that is with your permission. So, please … Marnie, can we do this?"

  Marnie was torn. On one hand, she might have once loved this man, but she hadn't known him as well as she should have. His princely reveal taught her that. On the other hand, she wanted to see what would happen.

  "What's your end game?" she asked, and when he looked baffled, she clarified. "What is your plan? If you just want to come by and play weekend fun time daddy before winging off back to Navarra and then not being heard from again in the next ten years, I'll say no thank you. Children need stability in their lives."

  Philip was already shaking his head. "No, I understand that, and you're right, Victoria deserves better than that. I … if I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, I have responsibilities waiting for me back in Navarra. However, the moment that I saw Victoria, I knew that she was a responsibility as well, albeit one I was unaware of for half of a decade. I see her, and I want to do right by her. I'm not sure what that entails now, but I want to find out."

  Marnie was quiet for a moment. She watched her daughter cautiously engage with another girl before breaking into a small cautious grin. The other girl, smaller, with two adorable natural puffs in her hair, grinned much more widely, grabbed Victoria's hand, and dragged her off to the tire swing.

  "Good answer," she said finally. "All right. Neither of us know where this thing is going to go, but we want it to go at least for now. Sounds good to me."

  "And what are we going to do about this?"

  To Marnie's surprise, Philip lifted their hands, which had somehow become intertwined. She had touched his hand to comfort him, but they had started holding hands as if they had never stopped.

  Marnie flushed slightly. She was suddenly aware of him in a way that she hadn't been a few moments before; aware of the warmth of his body and the way his black eyes watched her with an intense avidity.

  "What … what do you mean?" she asked hesitantly.

  Philip raised an eyebrow. "I think you know," he drawled. "Or were you not looking at me as if I were something particularly good to eat when we were at that poetry reading?"

  She knew exactly what he was talking about, and if she was honest, she had no idea what to do with it. It would be better for Victoria, she thought, if she could keep her mind on an even keel, making decisions without the added stress of her attraction to Philip. On the other hand, she could feel that hunger that she had always had for him swirling around and rising up again.

  "I was," she admitted. "I … I don't know what to do with it. We could ignore it, I guess …"

  She made a small surprised noise as he shifted closer, his hand coming up to cup her face. For a split second, he rubbed the ball of his thumb over her smooth cheekbone before leaning in to kiss her.

  The moment she felt his lips on hers, something in Marnie gave way. Ever since she saw him, sh
e had been fighting her own instincts. She had been trying to stay levelheaded and aware of her surroundings, and she had been on the defensive. Now she knew why. It was because in all of the years they had been apart, she was no less vulnerable to him than she had been the first time that they had met.

  She could feel the heat and need for him build up just as it had before, and Marnie realized that those feelings for him had never been resolved. In the tumult after he left and as Victoria was born, those feelings had simply been pushed away, and now they roared out, as powerful as ever.

  She was completely lost to the kiss until his tongue brushed against her lower lip. Then, summoning strength that she didn't know that she had, she pulled away. She was distantly surprised to see that the day was still bright and that people were still walking and running through the park. When Philip had kissed her, it felt like he had changed everything.

  "No," she said, and then when he looked as if he would argue, she held up her hand. "Not in front of Victoria," Marnie said clearly. "She understands a lot, but she also believes that … that physical intimacy of that kind is something that you save for someone that you care about. Seeing us like that … I think it would just confuse her."

  For a single solitary moment, Philip looked shocked and hurt. Then he shook it off to nod at her. "I would like to think that I do care about you," he said softly. "I have thought about you … so often since I was gone. During this last year, it feels as if I have thought about you every day. But you have not told me how you feel, and I understand …"

  "I don't know how I feel," she blurted out, and Philip looked up at her in surprise. "I don't, really," she continued. "You have to understand, Philip. What went on between us changed my life. I remember you as this amazing interlude in my life that led to one of the most wonderful things in it. Without you, I would not have had Victoria, and sometimes I look at her and it feels like my heart will break because I love her so much.

  "However … it means that I don't know how I feel about you, not really. Can you understand that? Do you think you can keep your distance, at least in front of Victoria, while we muddle forward?"