The Billionaire's Heir Read online

  The Billionaire’s Heir

  Part 4

  Sierra Rose

  Copyright 2016 Sierra Rose

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Runaway Bride? | Nick Hunter’s Fiancée Vanishes into the Night

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 1

  Well, I’ve never been to Peru, right?

  At the time, it seemed like as good a reason as any to make that South American country my one-way destination—that and the fact that the only outgoing flight from the airport within the hour was headed there. The spectacular beaches and clear, crystalline water in no way factored into my decision-making process, but once I was there, digging my toes into the white, warm sand, I felt confident that I’d made the right choice, at least about Peru. Of course I couldn’t say the same about any of the other choices I’d made recently.

  After I settled into a hotel that had an opening, I went straight to the beach, and blended in like one of the tourists, another faceless member of the crowd. A waiter informed me that I’d arrived just in time for Mai Tais. It didn’t take me long, though, to realize that things in the Southern Hemisphere just weren’t the same. Even time was different; it moved at an addictively leisurely pace.

  The magazines were different too, something I was grateful for. Not once did I see my own face staring back at me as I made my way out of the terminal and into the sun. Not a single fangirl or fanboy stopped me on the way out to ask, with the customary lack of tact, “Hey, what’s it like to fuck a celebrity billionaire anyway?”

  Still, even on the other side of the world, I knew I could only hide for so long before the truth of my identity and my romantic involvement with a VIP finally caught up with me, before the sleepy South American paradise figured out what the rest of the world already knew and the news began to trickle out. The publicist in me kicked alive, and I could almost see the headlines:

  Runaway Bride?

  Nick Hunter’s Fiancée Vanishes into the Night

  Worse than the exposure itself, the fallout would be vicious. If there was one thing the press loved more than a fairytale romance, it was a devastating breakup. As high as we’d climbed, the media and the internet would tear us down twice as fast, and the mass majority would love to hate it, secretly adoring it at the same time.

  The people who had helped perpetuate our scheme would be called into question. The members of my little uptown firm uptown would be dragged through the mud. Nick’s staff would be harassed day and night, and his father would start breathing fire. Even James would be caught in the fray, thanks to his helicopter rescue at our engagement party. In a strange Beauty and the Beast moment, I pictured Ferdie and the rest of the lake house staff warding off paparazzi with hat racks and a stash of spare Armani shoes.

  Still, as horrifying and global as all of that would be, I really gave it more than a passing thought as I drifted farther up the beach, away from the hordes of cheerful people. My eyes glazed over as I dug my toes deep in the sand, purposely leaving a trail of smudged, thoughtful tracks behind me. Try as I did to concern myself with the problems waiting back in New York, one thing insisted on taking up residence in the forefront of my mind: I’m going to have a baby. Me, a freaking mom.

  The implications and ripple effects of that single statement were too numerous to count, but for the moment, those two little sentences were enough. I’d never imagined even thinking that, let alone facing it as a reality. Not in a million years would I have pondered being pregnant, having a child, and becoming a parent.

  Parent? Moi?

  Just like that, another unexpected title slipped into my dossier. Lately, it seemed a whole list of them had been building, a list of roles it seemed I was only partially aware of or was always the last to know about.

  Of course, if I was going to be a mother, that implied another title as well: Nick was going to be a father. Nicholas Hunter, the Big Apple’s shining prince and a renowned playboy, suddenly a daddy. He was the man who had notoriously bedded at least one member of every royal family still left in Europe, yet he was about to become a parent too.

  Or...maybe not.

  I really couldn’t imagine even telling him about it. Somehow, it felt as if that would be a colossal betrayal. We had finally earned our freedom, finally taken our future back into our own hands, only for it to be taken away by my little secret.

  I remembered every minute detail, every vivid nuance of the look on his face. I recalled the overwhelming, beaming euphoria when we realized we’d successfully cut the puppet strings, clipped every rope that had been holding us down. For so long, we’d been imprisoned by those twisted chains, but we’d finally, finally cast off every mitigating factor.

  “I am so impossibly happy right now,” he said to me, practically glowing with excitement. It was a contagious feeling, a warmth we both felt, as if the sun had come out for the first time in three months, and we wanted nothing more than to bathe in its brilliance.

  No, I can’t tell him, at least not for a while, I concluded, rubbing my hand across my belly as I traversed the gorgeous beach, not until I knew where things stand. After all, I wasn’t even sure at that point how I felt about things myself. There were things I still had to figure out, but I was finally able to admit that I was falling for the man I’d been waking up to every morning, falling for him fast and hard. For the first time in my life, I, too, was incandescently happy.

  Now, though, that seemed to be in danger. I feared it could all vanish in the wake of a single thought, that thought that kept looping through my mind: I’m going to have his baby, going to be a mom.

  The sun was just starting to set in Peru. While I wasn’t quite sure of the time difference, I was certain the horizon had already swallowed it up in Manhattan, so it was a done deal. That’s it, the famous merger, signed and complete, I surmised. The bulbs have flashed, and the champagne is flowing. Mitchell Hunter is finally free to open the celebratory bottle of scotch he’s been having. Either that, or he’ll celebrate by cheerfully murdering his son. Either way, he’s gonna need that scotch.

  A faint grimace flickered across my face as I turned to face the sparkling water. That was the one thing I felt bad about, the solitary New York concern I’d been unable to fully leave behind. The rest of the people on my inconvenienced individuals list would be able to shake it off. The quest
ions would die down, and most lives would quietly return to normal as newer scandals and stories took over the entertainment tab on the news tickers. One life, though, would likely never be the same again.

  What the hell is Nick thinking right now?

  I knew it would look awful in the eyes of the general public, only worsened by the spin the cruel media would certainly put on it. We were given three months to pretend to be in love, and on the final day of that agreement, I vanished without a trace. Just like that, I left both him and his father high and dry, under an international spotlight of intrigue.

  Yes, I knew exactly how it looked, and I was truly sorry for it, but I tried to reason in my own defense: Maybe they just told everyone I got food poisoning or just stayed back at the penthouse to cheerfully work on wedding plans. “She sends her love,” they probably said. That was precisely what I would have done if I was still Nick’s publicist instead of his girlfriend.

  Wait. Girlfriend? Is that all I am? Is this just one of those average boyfriend-knocks-up-his-girlfriend stories, only elevated to a global scale because of who the baby-daddy is?

  I honestly wasn’t sure about that. The only thing I did know for sure was that the whole thing was, to put it lightly, complicated.

  Back at the lake house, Nick and I had the talk, right after I overheard him telling James that the two of us weren’t in a relationship. Being the passionate people we were, we really hashed it out, and in the end, the only conclusion we could come to was that as hard as we tried to fake it, the scripted act we’d been putting on had somehow morphed into a reality show. We refused to refer to it as love, didn’t dare to venture that far, but it was real.

  So this is real too, I thought. This baby is real too.

  A warm smile lit my face as I gazed out at the ocean. The sun was just touching the tip of the water, spilling orange-gold light across the choppy waves, as if someone high in the sky had overturned a can of paint just to watch it ooze over the horizon like icing on a warm cake.

  I glanced down at my shoes, now completely submerged in and, and then I looked back up again. There wasn’t anyone in sight for miles, and for a split second I thought, I could just stay here...forever.

  “Kind of addictive, isn’t it?”

  “Huh?” I said, startled by the intrusion of the voice.

  “The running.”

  I whirled around and let out a gasp at the sight of a beautiful man standing behind me, his feet also sunken in the sand, the same beautiful man I’d left back in a penthouse in New York, but instead of being excited to see him, every beat of my heart filled me with dread. How the hell did he find me? And now that he has... What is he going to do?

  Chapter 2

  I wasn’t sure if Nick had just curse me out for ruining his life, drag me back to the big city in chains and force me to go on highly publicized lunch dates till Christmas, or simply throw me into the sea and have his PR team write up a believable cover-up story, but I was sure that he was no longer “impossibly happy” with me. I should have known better than to expect any of those punishments though; the Nick I knew would do no such things to me or anyone else, which was part of the reason what had started out as a faux love affair had turned into something else.

  Sure enough, he simply kicked off his own shoes and strolled casually up beside me. The breeze gave his honey-colored locks a playful toss, and the flickering sunlight burned bronze upon his skin. His eyes softened as he stared toward the horizon for a few seconds. Finally, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and released a contented sigh. “I came here once, when I was sixteen,” he said, a faraway nostalgia illuminating his face. “I was supposed to go to a Christmas party hosted by my father at the MET. Harold was going to pick me up within the hour, and he even laid a tuxedo across my bed. For whatever reason, I skipped the party and just...came here.”

  A faint smile broke through my shock upon seeing him, knocked down the wall of dread wedged between us. For some reason, even though Nick was the last person in the world I should have wanted to see, my entire body warmed just at the sight of him. “So...instead of putting on a tuxedo, you ran away to Peru?” I questioned, wondering why his stories always seemed to end with him behaving in some absurd, abrupt manner.

  He lifted his shoulder in a shrug, his eyes never leaving the water. “It made sense at the time.”

  I cast him a sideways smile, but it faded when I saw the profound sadness written all over his face, the kind of incurable sadness that was a symptom of being left behind.

  “Everyone told me not to come,” he said softly, “from Max, to Louise, to Stacy. They all warned me, told me to just let you go. James didn’t, of course, but we both know he’s famously crazy.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. My spur-of-the-moment escape was thwarted almost as quickly as it had started, and now I found myself suddenly standing face to face with the walking personification of every uncertainty and fear I’d been trying to avoid. Fortunately, Nick didn’t seem to expect a response; rather, it was almost as if he was just thinking out loud, talking to himself.

  “Maybe they were right,” he muttered. A sudden wave of insecurity tightened his handsome features, and he pulled in a sharp breath. “I don’t... I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  At that point, all I wanted to do was reach for him, to take his hand and assure him that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to somehow force him to accept my apology, to demand that he take me back into his arms so we could start afresh on building the life we’d spent three months talking about, that together we were going to share.

  Sadly, I knew I could do none of those things. There was now a game-changing secret between us, even if I was the only one who knew about it. All I could do was stand there and stare at the water, trying to keep the ocean of tears out of my own eyes.

  “I guess...” Nick pulled in a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “I guess I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” He finally turned to look at me, hitting me with the full force and inescapable power of those perfect eyes. “So are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Okay.”

  Just say yes, I told myself. Just say yes, and he’ll hop back on his private jet and be gone, so you can put this whole thing behind you. If nothing else, at least fucking nod! You owe him that much, damn it. Don’t just stand there gawking at him like an idiot!

  I tried. I honestly did. I even went so far as to think about something happy. Prancing puppies and bouncy balloons and triple-layer chocolate cake and... It didn’t work, and even my best attempt at a smile failed miserably.

  Nick’s eyes tightened as his skin paled several shades. His hand reached automatically toward me in concern, but then he deliberately stuffed it back in his pocket, as if it had misbehaved. “You’re crying,” he said to himself, not a question or an answer but just another layer of confusion, hiding an even deeper layer of pain. “Abby, why?”

  Crying? I am? Shit! Prancing puppies, my ass. I’m gonna sue YouTube for mental duress!

  “I just... I’m not,” I retorted, wiping my face to eliminate the evidence. “I’m, uh...”

  “You just had to do that,” he muttered, pacing a few steps away. A flash of scarcely contained frustration danced across his eyes, sparking hot against the hypnotic blue before he circled back. “I only came to make sure you’re all right, Abby. I had to know that I...that nothing drove you away. I needed to make sure you made this decision on your own, that running to another continent was your idea, what you wanted,” he said, his voice now sharp and defensive, heavy with accusation. When he stared into my eyes again, his tone softened. “Then you had to go and cry.”

  Once again, Nick was a study in contradictions. How does he manage to be sweet while losing his temper at the same time? How does he always put my feelings first, even when we both know I messed things up in the first place?

  “I didn’t mean to,” I mumbled. “You can go. I’m fine. Really.”

&
nbsp; “I can’t leave now,” he said quietly, with an as-if kind of smirk, “not till you tell me what’s wrong. I need to fix it, Abby, make it right.”

  “Nick, please! I just—”

  “Not us,” he clarified quickly. “I mean, I know there’s no fixing us. I understand why you left, and I don’t blame you in the slightest. It’s really completely my fault. I just meant, I wanna fix whatever’s, uh...making you cry. I mean... Fuck! I must sound ridiculous.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, looking uncharacteristically uneasy in his own skin. The legendary cool had abandoned him, and the smooth-talking charmer was nowhere to be found. There was a strange flush to his face, and I heard an unfamiliar tremor in his voice. He even seemed to be having trouble figuring out where to put his hands. Still, none of that puzzled me as much as the words he said.

  “You understand why I left?” I repeated in a daze.

  For a moment, his manic fidgeting stopped, and his eyes cooled rather sarcastically. “The day of the merger, right? You took off just a few hours before we would be free to stay together of our own accord...or not.” A well-deserved note of bitterness leaked through at the end, but he managed to clear his face back to neutral. “It’s fine that you don’t love me, Abby. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to believe or expect that. Still, I don’t want to put you through anything more. You’ve gone through enough for me already. Just tell me what’s the matter, what drove you all the way here, so I can—”

  “You think I don’t love you?” I cut in, now taking my turn to cast an as-if smirk.

  He paused, suddenly coming up short. His lips parted for a second, and a fleeting look of hope flashed across his face, only to die in his eyes like an ember splashed with ice water.

  “C’mon, Abby,” he muttered. “I’m not your client anymore. You don’t have to protect me, lie to spare my feelings, or butter me up. I’m a big boy, and I’ve been dumped before.”

  I took a sudden step forward, shrinking the gap between us. “For one thing, I know for a fact that’s not true, and for another...” I trailed off, unable to even blurt the ridiculousness. Finally, I managed, “Do you really think I don’t love you?”