Silver Fox’s Secret Triplets (Billionaire Baby Daddies #6)

1. Ivy

IVY

I rolled out of bed, my bare feet finding the cold hardwood floor. The house settled around me as I padded down the narrow hallway to the room the three of them shared. Elena stood in her crib, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks, her dark hair matted against her forehead.

"Shh, baby girl." I lifted her warm body against my chest, feeling the dampness of her pajamas. Another diaper blowout. The third one this week.

Elena's cries subsided to hiccups as I carried her to the changing table wedged between the two cribs.

The streetlight filtered through the thin curtains, casting everything in pale yellow shadows.

I worked by muscle memory now—stripped the soiled clothes, cleaned her up, fresh diaper, clean pajamas from the basket that never seemed to empty.

Sammy stirred in the crib beside us, his thumb sliding from his mouth.

I froze, holding my breath. If he woke, Chrissy would follow, and then my night would become a symphony of demands I was too tired to conduct properly.

But he settled back into sleep, his small chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm I'd learned to depend on.

Elena's eyes grew heavy as I rocked her in the old wooden chair my landlord had left behind.

By the time she drifted back to sleep, the sky outside had shifted from black to deep gray.

I placed her carefully in her crib and checked on the others.

Chrissy had kicked off her blanket again, her small body curled into a tight ball.

I covered her and brushed a strand of auburn hair from her face—hair the exact shade of mine, though her eyes were blue where mine were hazel.

All three of them had blue eyes.

After hours of attempting to sleep and being unable to, the coffee maker gurgled to life in the kitchen, and I curled up in the window seat that overlooked the harbor.

Bar Harbor slept peacefully below me, the boats bobbing gently in their slips.

Three years I'd watched this view change, three years of building a life from nothing, of proving to myself that I could do this alone, though it wasn’t truly alone.

My father still insisted on sending me a thousand dollars a month for "expenses", which he had no clue was being spent on legitimate needs. He probably assumed I went shopping like other twenty-somethings of affluent businessmen and bought shoes and purses like they were trendy.

When my phone rang, I stared at the screen, my father's name displayed in stark letters. He never called this early. He never called at all unless it was the monthly check-in that felt more obligatory than affectionate.

"Dad?"

"Ivy." His voice sounded older than I remembered, strained. "I need you to come home."

The words hit me before I could prepare for them. Home. As if Boston had ever felt that way to me.

"What's wrong?"

"It's your mother." He cleared his throat, and I heard the careful control he used in business meetings.

"She's been in and out of the hospital. They found a mass.

It's…" He paused, and in that silence, I understood everything—especially the early call.

My heart sank and fear wrapped around me like a cold, wet blanket.

"How bad?"

"Stage three. Maybe four. The doctors want to start treatment immediately, but she's asking for you."

I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the cool glass. Three floors below, a fishing boat chugged out toward the open water, its engine cutting through the morning quiet, distracting me long enough to make him pause.

"Ivy? Are you there?"

"I'm here." My voice sounded steadier than I felt. "I'll drive down today."

"Good. That's… good. I'll have your room ready."

My room. The bedroom I hadn't seen since the night I left, pregnant and terrified and convinced I had no other choice.

After he hung up, I sat in the growing daylight and tried to figure out how to pack three years of secrets into a minivan.

The triplets would wake soon, demanding breakfast and attention and the thousand small things that filled our days.

I needed to call Chelsea, my friend who watched them when I worked my part-time shifts at the marina gift shop.

I needed to figure out how to explain to three-year-olds why we were leaving the only home they'd ever known.

I needed to figure out how to walk back into a world I'd run from.

The drive south took five hours with stops for diaper changes and snacks and the inevitable meltdown when Chrissy dropped her favorite stuffed elephant and couldn't reach it from her car seat.

I pulled over at a rest stop near Portsmouth and sat in the parking lot while they napped, and I let a few tears escape.

Fear crawled up my throat as the city skyline appeared ahead of us.

Boston rose from the horizon in familiar spires of glass and steel, and with it came the memories I'd spent three years trying to bury.

Duncan's hands on my skin. The weight of his body.

The way he'd whispered my name in the darkness of his apartment while rain drummed against the windows.

The way I'd run from him the next morning and never looked back.

My father's office building stood near the center of downtown, forty-two floors of success and ambition.

I wondered if Duncan still worked nearby, if his corner office still overlooked the harbor, if he still stayed late into the evening because work was easier than going home to an empty apartment.

I wondered if he ever thought about me.

Boston looked exactly as I'd left it, the narrow streets lined with brick townhouses, the gas lamps that glowed even in daylight, the sense that time moved differently here than in the rest of the world.

I parked in front of the house I'd grown up in—four stories of perfectly maintained Federal architecture, complete with a garden my mother tended obsessively and shutters painted the exact shade of green she'd special-ordered from a company in Connecticut.

The triplets woke as I turned off the engine. My heart hammered against my ribs as I unbuckled them one by one, lifting them from their car seats and setting them on the sidewalk. They clustered around my legs, uncertain and clingy in the way that meant they sensed my anxiety.

"Mama, where are we?" Chrissy tugged on my jeans, her blue eyes wide with curiosity.

"We're going to visit Grandma and Grandpa," I told her, though the words felt foreign in my mouth. They'd never met their grandparents. In their world, family consisted of me and Chelsea and the other children at the playground we visited on sunny afternoons.

I carried Elena while Sammy and Chrissy walked beside me up the front steps. The brass knocker gleamed in the afternoon sun, polished to perfection by the housekeeper my mother employed twice a week. I hesitated before ringing the bell, my finger hovering over the button.

Once I pressed it, there would be no going back.

The door opened before I could change my mind. My father stood in the doorway, and for a moment, neither of us moved. He looked older than his forty-eight years, his dark hair now laced with gray, lines carved deep around his eyes.

Then his gaze dropped to the children pressed against my legs.

The color drained from his face.

"Jesus Christ." The words came out in a whisper, but they cut through the afternoon air between us. His eyes moved from one child to the next, taking in their dark hair, their blue eyes, the unmistakable resemblance that I'd prayed he wouldn't notice.

But he noticed. I could see it in the way his jaw tightened, in the way his hands clenched at his sides.

"Bill? Who's at the door?" My mother's voice drifted from somewhere inside the house.

My father didn't answer. He kept staring at the children, his face cycling through shock, understanding, and finally, a cold fury that made my stomach clench.

"How old are they?" His voice was deadly quiet.

"Three." The word barely made it past my lips.

He did the math in seconds. I watched him count backward from the present to the night I'd left, watched him reach the inevitable conclusion that made his face go white with rage.

"Three years old." He repeated it slowly, as if testing the words. "Three years, Ivy?"

My mother appeared behind him, and the moment she saw me, her face crumpled. She looked frailer than in the photos she'd sent, her cheekbones sharp beneath pale skin, but her eyes were the same clear blue I remembered.

"Oh, sweetheart." She stepped forward, her hands reaching for me, but then she noticed the children and stopped short.

The suffocating silence stretched between us. Elena squirmed in my arms, babbling "Mama, Mama" in her clear voice. The sound seemed to snap my father out of his shock.

"Inside." His voice carried the authority I remembered from childhood, the tone that brooked no argument. "Now. We're not having this conversation on the front step."

He stepped back, and I guided the children into the foyer I hadn't seen since the night I'd left. The Persian rug still covered the marble floor, and my mother's collection of antique vases still lined the mahogany table. Everything smelled faintly of the lavender sachets she kept in every closet.

But the familiar surroundings felt alien now, tainted by the tension crackling between my parents and me.

Chrissy and Sammy stared up at the crystal chandelier hanging above us, their mouths open in wonder. Elena squirmed to be put down, and when I set her on her feet, she immediately toddled toward the staircase.

"No, baby." I scooped her up before she could start climbing. "These aren't for little hands."

My mother watched this interaction with an expression I couldn't read. When she finally spoke, her voice was carefully controlled, but I heard the tremor underneath.

"They're beautiful." Her eyes lingered on Elena's dark curls, on Sammy's solemn blue gaze, on Chrissy's animated chatter. "They look…"

She didn't finish the sentence, but I knew what she was thinking. They looked familiar. They had features that didn't come from me alone.

"We need to talk." My father's voice cut through the moment. "But first, let's get them settled. They look tired."

It wasn't kindness that motivated him—it was strategy. He wanted the children out of earshot before he demanded explanations I wasn't ready to give.

He helped me carry the bags upstairs to my old bedroom. The space had been converted into storage—boxes stacked against the walls, furniture covered with dust sheets. But the bed remained, and there was enough floor space for the portable cribs I'd brought.

The triplets explored cautiously while I set up their sleeping arrangements. The long drive had exhausted them, and they went down for their naps without protest, their small bodies finally surrendering to sleep.

I closed the bedroom door quietly and found my parents waiting in the hallway. The silence between us felt heavy with unasked questions and barely contained fury.

My father's eyes were cold when he looked at me. "Downstairs. Now. Your mother needs to rest, but you and I are going to talk."

My mother placed a trembling hand on his arm. "Bill, please. She's been driving all day, and?—"

"Three years, Barbara." His voice was quiet but deadly. "Three years she's been keeping this from us. Three years we've had grandchildren we didn't know existed."

The word "grandchildren" felt like a knife in my heart.

My mother's face went pale, and she gripped the banister for support. It wasn't something I hadn’t thought of before, but I hadn’t quite figured out a way to explain it.

Not after years of explaining away every reason I never came home for holidays or Mother's Day, the reasons I had to "work all weekend" every time they wanted to visit, which was rare thanks to Dad's busy schedule.

Mom squeezed my hand before letting me go, and I followed Dad downstairs, grateful for the sound of his phone ringing on his desk across the hallway. He glared at me and snipped, "I'll be back. Go to the kitchen."

Cold dread washed over me as I watched him shut himself into his office, and I clutched the baby monitor as I finished my walk of shame to the kitchen where a slew of dirty dishes peppered the kitchen table, as if I'd interrupted their snack or tea time.

I sank into a chair and stared out the window, letting the paralyzing anxiety conjure every demon I'd run from since the night I slept with Duncan Walsh—my father's best friend.

He had no clue that Pandora's box had been sealed up and hidden away and that as soon as my father opened it, his life would change forever.

I just prayed he forgave me.