The Billionaire's Secret Daughter

1. Thea

ONE

THEA

"Baby, are you ready?"

Caleb's voice drifted in from the hallway, but I didn't move. I stood by the doorway, staring into my nursery. My cheeks ached from all the smiling I’d been doing since we got the confirmation from the agency.

I always believed that good things would come to those who wait. And oh, how I’d waited. At some point, I thought I wouldn’t make it. But Caleb gave me all the hope I needed.

As I entered the nursery, I heard Caleb's heavy footsteps behind me. He was wearing boots in the baby’s room.

There was a rule against that. But today was a good day, so I decided to let it go.

His chin settled on the top of my head — he always had to fold himself down to do it — and his palms pressed flat against my stomach.

They were so wide they nearly spanned me.

"You're going to have to stop calling me that," I said.

His lips brushed the curve of my neck. "Calling you what?"

Giggling, I twisted in his arms, but he held me in place. I sighed, taking in the scent of citrus drifting from him. "Baby,” I said, “We're getting our baby. It's going to get confusing."

He laughed against my skin. "Not a chance. You were my first ‘baby’. She'll have to find her own name."

"She has a name." I nodded toward the wall where we’d spelled out L-E-N-A. I was the one that picked the name. Caleb only smiled and agreed with me. "It's right there."

"Then she's covered." He kissed the spot just below my ear. "But you're still my ‘baby.’"

I leaned back into him and closed my eyes. His arms tightened, and I pressed my hands over his and held on.

"Come on." He squeezed my hand. "Let's go get our girl."

He released me and led me out the door. Before we crossed the threshold, I turned back and glanced at the nursery. The next time we walked in here, it would be with our beautiful baby girl. My cheeks throbbed when I smiled again, but I didn't mind.

I grabbed my bag from the couch, Caleb helped me into my coat, and within seconds we were out of the house and settling into the car.

“Lord, I hate the cold,” Caleb said as he fixed his seatbelt.

I laughed. “I know, but it’ll be spring soon. You have all those dad outfits you’ve been dying to show off.”

“Yep!” He started the engine and pulled out of the driveway. “You better warn everyone. Daddy Caleb is coming to town!” He stopped at a red light and picked up my hand. He brought it to his lips, kissed the knuckle of my ring finger, and held it there.

"What?" I turned to look at him.

"Nothing." He was grinning. "I'm just really happy."

"You're going to make me cry before we even get there."

"Good." He kissed my hand again. "Cry all you want."

I laughed and pressed my forehead against his shoulder. The light soon turned green. I sat back up and bounced my knee. He placed his hand on the knee — his palm dark against the pale fabric of my trousers — and my leg went still.

"Do you think she'll like me?" I asked.

Smiling, he shook his head with a smile, but still kept his eyes on the road. "She's going to take one good look at you and never let go. Trust me."

I bit my lip and turned back to the window.

I hoped she did. I’d done a lot of research on the bond between a mother and her child.

One of the sites I visited called it a natural instinct, the feeling that blossoms the moment you feel the child in your belly.

From the first kick right to the moment you hold their tiny, freshly-born body in your hands.

But I didn’t have that. I was starting from the after. Her mother had already felt that. She’d probably bonded with her mother already. Would she have any love left for me?

Still. The fact remained that I was going to be someone's mother. Anything else my wandering mind conjured up didn’t matter.

"Ready?" Caleb asked as we pulled into the parking lot, and he killed the engine. He turned to me.

I nodded. "Yep!"

We climbed out of the car together. Caleb held my hand as we walked into the building.

The receptionist behind the glass partition smiled when she saw us.

Caleb sat with one ankle crossed over his knee.

He held my hand and rubbed his thumb along my knuckle in slow passes. I pulled the file out of my bag.

He glanced over. "Again?"

I shrugged. "I can't help it."

I read the details over and over again. Baby girl. Born three days ago. A heart-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left wrist. I'd read this file so many times that the pages were soft at the corners.

"She's ours, Caleb." I looked up at him. "She's really ours."

He leaned over and kissed my temple. "She's really ours."

I closed the file and held it against my chest. My knee was bouncing again. Caleb put his hand on it.

“Walkers.”

Caleb and I looked up at the same time. Janet appeared in the doorway. The corners of her forehead crinkled as she smiled at us. She tilted her head up, her silver bob swishing as she moved. “Come on back.”

Caleb stood first and offered me his hand. I took it. His palm was dry and warm. Mine wasn't. A stray dark curl fell down my face, splitting my vision into two. I reached up to smoothen it.

We followed her down the hall to her office with the window overlooking the parking lot. I'd sat in this chair enough times to know the left armrest wobbled.

“So…” she began, glancing between us. “How are you doing? Excited?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but I have one question about the birthmark. Has it been checked? I just want to make sure she's healthy."

Janet looked up over her glasses. "Perfectly healthy. Strong. All her screenings came back clean."

I turned to look at Caleb. He was smiling. His blue eyes were bright with excitement. Nothing could go wrong.

"Okay," I said. "Good."

"Everything looks — " Janet's phone rang.

She glanced at the screen. A small line appeared between her brows. She stared at the number for a beat too long, then held up one finger.

"Excuse me for just a moment."

She stepped into the hallway and left the door ajar. Through the gap, I could hear the low murmur of her voice, but not the words. I turned to Caleb.

"Probably just a scheduling thing," he said.

"Probably."

I opened the file again, flipped to the page with the birthmark description, and read it for the thousandth time, running my finger along the words. Caleb stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles.

"So who's taking the first night?" he asked.

"Me,” I answered without looking up. “The bassinet's already on my side."

"I can move it."

"You could, but you won't, because I already set it up. If you move it, I'll just move it back."

He grinned. "Fair enough. I'll take the second shift then."

"You'll sleep through the second shift."

"I will not."

I dragged my attention from the file so I could shoot him a look. "Caleb, you slept through the fire alarm last month."

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. "I'll set two alarms."

I laughed. Caleb nudged my shoulder with his. I nudged him back. I glanced at the door. I looked at the clock on Janet's wall. The second hand ticked past the twelve.

"Hmmm…she's been gone for a while," I said.

"It's only been a few minutes."

I shook my head. "It's been ten. I hope everything’s okay. Do you think it has anything to do with the adoption? I mean…maybe…"

"It’s fine, baby. It’s probably nothing."

I nodded, but there was a lump in my throat. I stared down at the file in my lap. "I know."

I crossed and uncrossed my legs. I read the birthmark line again, put the file down, and picked it back up. Caleb reached for my hand. I gave it to him, but I was still watching the door.

Janet walked back in. She stood behind her chair, one hand on its back. Her glasses were off. She wasn't looking at us. Why wouldn’t she look at us? Janet wasn’t the type to avoid eye contact.

"Is everything okay?" Caleb asked.

Janet put her glasses back on and took them off again. She set them on the desk, picked up a pen, and put it down.

"Janet." Caleb leaned forward. "What was the call about?"

She glanced at the clock on the wall behind her. I followed her gaze, watched the second hand complete a full revolution. She still wasn't speaking. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed, a sound I'd never noticed before.

"I just received a call." Janet's voice came out thin. "From the birth mother."

My ears began to ring. I turned to Caleb. His face was still, rigid, and held in place.

"What about?" he asked.

Janet sat down, stood back up, pulled her chair out, and sat again. Her fingers found a paperclip on the desk and bent it, straightened it, bent it again. Her eyes went to the file, then to the window, then to a spot just above Caleb's head.

"So…" She cleared her throat. "There are…um… There are situations, in any adoption process, where certain…” She paused and cleared her throat again. “Where circumstances can shift…and the…the, um, agency has protocols in place to ensure that all parties are…"

She stopped, swallowed, and looked down at the paperclip in her hands.

"Janet?" Caleb said.

"Right." She blinked fast. Her gaze darted to the door, like she was measuring the distance. "What I'm trying to say is that we always want to prepare families for every possible…for the full range of…"

She couldn't finish the sentence. She started a new one about timelines, about options. Her voice kept catching on words and rerouting around them, and her eyes wouldn't stay anywhere longer than a second — the desk, the wall, her own hands, the clock.

The ringing in my ears climbed higher. My hands were shaking. The file trembled in my lap. I pressed my palms flat against it to stop the shaking, but it moved into my arms instead, my shoulders, the back of my neck.

The room was shrinking. Janet was still talking, still circling, her fingers white-knuckled around that ruined paperclip, and she wouldn't look at me. She kept glancing at Caleb and then away, at the file and then away, at anything in that room that wasn't my face.

How long had it been? Two minutes? Three? Every word she spoke pushed the real one further away, buried it under policy and procedure. I was sitting there vibrating in that wobbling chair with the file in my lap and the ringing in my ears, and she wouldn't just say it. She wouldn't just…

"Just tell us!"

My voice came out raw and too loud, cracking the careful quiet of that small office. Janet stopped. Caleb's hand tightened on mine.

Janet's mouth opened. “The birth mother changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. The adoption could not proceed.”

Caleb's hand slipped from mine.

Janet was talking again. Her mouth was moving. Sounds came out. But they didn't reach me.

I looked down. The file was still open in my lap. The page about the birthmark faced up. A heart-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left wrist. My fingertip had worn a faint groove into the paper from all the times I'd traced that line.

I stared at the words on the page. The ink blurred. I blinked, and the blur ran down my face in two warm lines that dripped from my jaw onto the paper, darkening the ink, bleeding the words into each other until I couldn't read them anymore.

My ears were still ringing.