Irish Billionaire's Black Surrogate: A BWWM Romance

by Ciara Cole

  Trent found himself lost in reflection more times than he cared for lately.

  Six months after losing his wife to cancer, he still felt those dark moments of dispiritedness. They never lasted long, but they left a strange chasm where his heart should be. How long, before all that was left was an infinite black hole of nothing?

  Trent concealed a deep sigh. It was too early in the day to get melancholy. One would think he was heartbroken from his wife’s death, but that was far from the case. They’d bonded over her battle with cancer, but before then he’d known for a fact that the only reason she’d married him, was because of his fortune.

  He’d come to miss her like a friend rather than a lover. And if there were times he felt a twinge of loneliness, he engaged in brief, discreet relations with like-minded females. No questions asked, no demands made—and definitely no strings attached. As for romance, he wasn’t interested. The loss of his wife, and the long struggle with her illness, had been a sign to Trent that marriage just wasn’t for him.

  Brushing aside these musings, he shifted his gaze from the passing scenery outside his window and broke the silence in the smoothly chauffeured Mercedes. “What’s my schedule for today?” he asked his secretary.

  Edmund instantly sprang to life, turning around in his seat and reading out the items on his tablet screen. “Certainly, sir. This morning you’re to attend a meeting to fundraise for an inner city school. You’ll be having lunch at the Historical Center. You’ll be at the press building in the afternoon for your press conference. Then there’s dinner with the youth group in Chelsea. And then …”

  Trent let out a long-suffering sigh. “You’ll kill me at this rate.”

  Edmund gave a weak chuckle. “Well, you do have to attend all of these, sir.”

  “All right, all right,” Trent muttered. He turned to glance at the man seated next to him. “Max?”

  “Yes, Mr. Matthews?” Max asked deferentially as he faced his boss.

  When his boss asked if he had any cigarettes, Max missed a beat, though he didn’t let his expression show any reaction. The next moment, he spoke in his ear piece to the driver, asking for the car to be stopped in a quiet spot.

  Soon the car was parked on a tree-shaded side road with the city’s skyscrapers in the foreground. Trent now sat alone with Max in the car, while the other occupants had exited to stand at a safe distance away, along with the security detail from the other car that followed them.

  Trent viewed the suited security men standing close to the car with their backs to them, and he imagined what they must be thinking. They were possibly wondering what trouble their boss was bound to be causing this time.

  Well, it had been quite an eventful last few months for Trent Matthews, CEO and heir to a billion-dollar shipping conglomerate fortune.

  Max now turned to Trent with a nod of his head. “This car is safe, Mr. Matthews. You can speak freely,” he said, indicating there was no chance of their conversation being overheard or recorded.

  Trent had every need to be cautious. He’d just scaled through one foul scandal and he didn’t need another.

  Already perceived as a bit of a recluse hard-ass, going back to work the day after his wife’s funeral hadn’t helped his image. The Times had a field day castigating him and companies had threatened to jump ship. Trent only made matters worse when he’d unthinkingly made a scathing comment regarding work ethic to a popular blogger. Well, shit literally hit the fan, and since then, Trent was tasked with becoming approachable again.

  Trent had never really known what it felt like to be the public golden boy. He’d just focused on business and hadn’t cared for popularity, unlike his wife who made sure her exploits as a doer of good deeds, fashion and beauty icon, and bride to the Matthews’ bloodline earned her the glossiest reputation.

  Trent lately began to realize how vital it was to keep in the public’s good books, after almost losing a few lucrative business pursuits. It was now up to his team to fix things and they thought that helping students in need would be a good way to start.

  He couldn’t help but smile as he glanced at the ever attentive Max. “Today’s upcoming meeting with the principal has me thinking about the last time I was in high school.” He didn’t expatiate, and simply reminisced on the one big mystery of his life: where his high school girlfriend had disappeared to after the start of their senior year.

  “I’m pathetic, aren’t I?” he asked aloud, more rhetorically than anything else. “Six years of marriage, gone without a trace. I can’t even play the widower right, and managed to have a scandal in the wake of my wife’s passing. Wherever she is, she’d be laughing at how much of a mess I’ve made of things.”

  Max shifted slightly in his seat, but otherwise made no response.

  “Max,” said Trent, his gaze looking into the distance as his bodyguard straightened with attention and waited. “I know Hailey’s family is watching my every move,” Trent added. “I can’t be sure which of their people they planted around me even before my wife died. They’d do anything to take me down, almost as if they blame me for what happened to their daughter.”

  “It’s been a couple of months since you visited her resting place, sir. Would you like me to drive you there sometime this week?”

  Trent turned to glance at Max. “You know I can’t do that right now. I need to focus on the whole image drive. The election for company president is coming up and I have to be prepared.”

  Max nodded in assent, not pointing out that a visit to his deceased wife’s grave might actually look good for the media.

  What Trent couldn’t forget, was that his wife Hailey had been buried next to their daughter Sara. He wasn’t ready to face those memories head on in the present situation he found himself in, neither mentally nor emotionally.

  “You don’t have to worry, sir,” Max said firmly. “No matter what, I’ll keep things running smoothly until then.”

  Trent sighed heavily, feeling much more than his twenty-eight years. Finally, his lips moved in a small smile as he thanked Max, the one person he found he could trust right now.

  Trent was stretched tight, and any chance of something going wrong could cause him to snap irretrievably. He would avoid any kind of aggravating situations, or something would have to give. He’d spent too many years trapped in a lie, and wondered if he’d ever feel thankful about life, and find the chance to truly breathe again.

  ***

  Gwen cut a distinguished and professional looking picture walking through the halls dressed in her tailored suit jacket and skirt that was cut straight at the knee. Her hair was in a bun and her heels were just sensible enough without being dowdy. She still had a slim figure after giving birth to Jonah eight years ago. For someone below thirty, her presence and stature demanded respect and there was no question she was the one in authority in the thriving elementary school.

  Being the youngest principal in the school’s history, it also happened that her beauty was renowned considering she could pass for a model with her slim, tall figure and arresting chestnut skin. Her oval face was enhanced by her refined cheekbones and bright brown eyes, while her pert nose sat cutely just above her full-bottomed lips.

  It had been ages since Gwen cared to notice any undue attention to her appearance. She was more interested in tackling the lack of resources for the school as well as improving the school’s ranking in the district.

  Glancing at her wrist, she checked the time and hurried her step. If she delayed any further she’d be some minutes late for her meeting with the donor and she couldn’t be that discourteous. In her mind’s eye, she pictured a middle-aged man or woman, with a kindly demeanor and a true interest in the welfare of the students. And not just someone out to promote their own personal manifesto. It had to be all about the kids, or Gwen wasn’t buying into the scheme.

  With a new determination in her outlook, Gwen headed for the principal’s conference room where the meeting was to take place.

  **
*

  Trent was actually waiting for a meeting with an elementary school principal. He, the type of man who wouldn’t wait for the president if he had to, somehow found himself anticipating the appearance of one G. Stanton.

  It had been his PR consultants who’d set up the opportunity to pair with the school in a bid to promote Trent’s personal image. He’d viewed the whole concept with skepticism and yet, here he was getting the strangest premonition.

  Could it stem from the fact that the principal’s initials seemed all too similar to those of his high school girlfriend’s?

  To think that just minutes ago in the car, he’d been thinking about her and wondering what could have become of her. After she’d disappeared without a trace all those years ago, he’d heard or seen nothing of her. Over the years, she would pop into his mind and he would smile at the fond memory. It had been one of his happiest, in fact.

  It put him in a light mood for the meeting, and now he was filled with expectation, thinking—What if?

  He brushed the possibility aside just as quickly. It would be too far-fetched to think that the principal, who was most probably in her fifties and graying, would be the person he hoped it was. Those types of coincidences only happened in movies, didn’t they?

  Trent was about to discover the accuracy or not of his speculation, because just then the door to the conference room opened and the plump, bespectacled secretary let in a tall, brown-skinned woman in a black skirt suit.

  She walked in and smiled, her eyes meeting his. Trent froze with instant recognition, while she seemed to falter, her smile slowly slipping. It took a few more moments for her to recognize him, and then she just stared, speechless.

  Trent was just as dumbfounded but he was the first to recover, and in an instant he stood before her, grasping her hand. “It’s you, isn’t it? Gwen Stanton? It is you.”

  Gwen could barely remember to breathe as the incredibly handsome stranger, dressed in a designer suit, embraced her in his powerful arms. She caught his scent of expensive cologne and sexy male goodness, and gasped. This stranger, this god-like hunk of a male, was Trent? Her Trent?

  She shook herself out of her daze as he pulled back, his eyes intent on her shocked features. He looked so intensely happy to see her, and for a moment she lost herself. Her whole body thrummed with that forgotten teenage love, butterflies flooding her stomach. Her lips split in a wondrous smile and she just laughed along with him as they stared with incredulity at each other.

  It felt so foreign to them to start up a ramble of conversation as they tried to catch up. In the midst of it all she offered him a chair beside hers and she just couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from him. He looked like something straight out of a classic Bond movie. The perfectly tailored bespoke Italian suit, the immaculate grooming, the sexy baritone, and just that aura of unattainable masculinity left Gwen spinning internally.

  It took all of her practiced poise to stay coherent, and try to steer their cheery discourse to the main matter at hand. She just got more and more excited as they began to share ideas for the school. Trent seemed to have put much thought into it and Gwen could just see herself going with most of his highlights.

  Wow, this just might turn out better than I imagined, mused Gwen with rising positivity. To think how worried she was that she might find it tough meeting the donor on common ground, it was a relief to see how willing Trent was to be cooperative.

  “I’m fine with being hands off as long as the PR turns out great. I trust your judgement in distributing the money where it’s needed most,” he said.

  Gwen smiled. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  They were having the most easy going conversation, and yet Gwen couldn’t ignore the underlying physical friction. Trent’s deep green eyes on her made her ready to squirm with a strange pulsing heat forming between her thighs. She couldn’t understand why her brain and her hormones just seemed so out of whack all of a sudden. The way her eyes kept being drawn to the impressive breadth of Trent’s shoulders in his power suit, and the chiseled angles and curves of his sexy lips, had her wanting to smack a hand to her forehead in embarrassment.

  She was acting like she was in heat, all fluttery and quivering from being in such proximity with a gorgeous man. It wasn’t like he was even a stranger. And yet, in a way he seemed to be. She had no clue about this Trent. She couldn’t picture what his life must have been like all these years since they’d parted.

  She’d never forgotten of course, just who Trent Matthews was. He’d always had money, and access to the best of everything thanks to his shipping magnate father. Gwen’s background had been starkly different.

  All those years ago, she’d never planned to become another statistic. Getting admission into the top-tier private high school on the basis of a scholarship, she’d believed that she was going to be an exception to the rule.

  She’d become a black woman who changed her fate, graduated college, and elevated her destiny. But getting pregnant by her high school boyfriend had put a wrench in the works.

  Gwen shoved aside the shadows of those memories, and gave Trent a genuine smile. She just had to stick to the plan and focus on the project only. Trent returned the warm grin, and he almost seemed like the young charmer of his high school days, with irresistible dimples and smoky green eyes at play.

  They were about to shake hands to seal the agreement, when the worst thing happened.

  Gwen’s son walked through the office door unannounced. “Mom? Oh, are you busy?” asked the eight-year-old looking from his mother to the man standing beside her.

  The force of the reality hit Gwen like a sledgehammer, her eyes widening in concealed horror at her son. Holy. Cow. This was so not happening right now!

  If she thought she was in a panic, Gwen only had to look at Trent’s face, and watch him stare from Jonah to her—and then like whiplash Trent was staring at the boy again.

  There was no mistaking the identical moss green eyes, and the handsome face that was all sharp-edged angles in the jawline and cheekbones, well defined even for an eight-year-old that resembled so much the man standing there, still as a pillar.

  Gwen didn’t know how she expected Trent to react. She felt her skin go cold and pale and she could see Jonah looking quizzically at them as they all stood in rigid silence. The next moment Trent spun away to face the window, and Gwen finally got her wits back enough to act as normal as possible.

  She went to Jonah and said a few words to get him to quietly leave and come back later. Gwen wasn’t sure she even breathed until Jonah was safely out of the room. She then turned to Trent and her relief turned to a quaking sensation in her gut, which she forced down resolutely.

  She didn’t need to be afraid of him, she thought, even though she could feel he was mad, could sense the chilling wrath radiating from around his stiff shoulders. Clearing her throat, Gwen made to speak since Trent obviously didn’t intend to be the one to break the silence.

  “Trent, about the donor project. Maybe we should reconsider,” she said as firmly as she could.

  She must have been crazy to even think it could work out. She’d been thrown so off guard, and of course her whole desperation with finding a solution for the finance problem in the school, had blinded her completely. Coming in any kind of contact with Trent Williams was unacceptable. Considering what lay between them, it would make Gwen have to choose between her personal life and her professional one. There was no way to only let Trent into her professional life now, not after what had just been revealed.

  “He’s mine, isn’t he?” Trent asked without turning around. “Don’t try to deny it.”

  “We’re not discussing that. Not here, not now … in fact, never. Just forget whatever you think you saw,” Gwen said.

  Where she got the daringness to speak that way, she couldn’t tell. She just knew she had so much to protect and everything to lose.

  “Now, about the agreement,” she began, and only then did Trent swivel around. Gwe
n almost winced as he approached with a leisurely stride that belied the gleam in his eyes of a stalking predator. The relaxed, approachable Trent Matthews was gone, replaced by this dangerous looking epitome of premium masculinity, lips stretched in a thin straight line.

  He now loomed over her, making her aware of the fact that his height was much more towering than she remembered. What was he, a giant? She fretted with both irritation and awed consternation. Glaring way up at him in defiance, she showed none of the discomfiture she felt.

  She wasn’t seventeen anymore, helpless and confused. She’d come a long way from that and Trent would realize soon enough that this time, she wasn’t going to be intimidated.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, meeting his unwavering gaze with a raised chin.

  “He’s the little secret you’ve been hiding?” Trent asked softly after a beat. “He’s the reason for your disappearing act eight years ago?”

  Gwen sighed. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Oh, you’ll talk. But right now I’m not interested in conversation either. This meeting is over.”

  His clipped words made Gwen want to sag in relief.

  “But I’ll get to the bottom of things, even if I have to claw out the truth with my bare hands,” growled Trent.

  Gwen felt her body literally spin like a top with how fast Trent brushed past her and exited the room. How could someone so big and tall move so fast? He was gone with a loud slam of the door and Gwen shuddered. She reached for the nearest support which was the edge of her desk, and held on to it as she finally moved to sink into her chair. Overwhelmed by the stress brought on by experiencing one shock after another in quick succession, she would have collapsed. But she still had the school day to get through, on top of everything else. She couldn’t crack, not when something told her that her worries were only just beginning.

  ***

  It had felt perfect. You just didn’t forget that kind of feeling. It was like a thousand tons of cotton candy cushioning you in every color of the rainbow, making your heart flutter like the frailest of butterfly wings … that was the innocence of teenage love.