The Billionaire's Troublesome Triplets - Holly Rayner Page 0,27
travel, but she isn’t stupid. Why didn’t she just look it up?
And now she had come into his office and made this announcement in front of his board of directors.
Lucas was humiliated. He was going to have to sit here with his investors and talk about the one-night stand he’d had with Elise. He was going to have to talk about his birth control practices so they could try to figure out what had gone wrong. And when it was all over, they would have to send the product he had been so proud of back to the drawing board.
I’m going to be a father, he thought, and all I can think about is the bottom line.
He was becoming more and more like his own father every day.
Suddenly, he felt as if he was drowning. This was all too much. Everything Elise was telling him. The glares of his board members. The implications it all had for his future, both personally and professionally.
He couldn’t deal with all of these things at the same time.
Elise was still trying to apologize. “I know I should have tried calling you again,” she said. “I honestly thought it wouldn’t work. And maybe I went about this the wrong way, but I saw you here yesterday and I knew I had to do something, or you would go back to Boston and I’d never get the chance to tell you. And that wouldn’t have been fair, to you or to the baby. You both deserve the chance to get to know each other.”
“And you deserve generous child support payments, right?” Jack asked, a heavy sneer in his voice.
“Just go home, Elise,” Lucas said.
“Aren’t you even going to say anything?” she demanded.
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t deal with this right now. You have to give me some time to think.”
“Think about what?” she said. “I’m not asking you for anything, despite what your cronies here seem to think. I notice you didn’t have a problem standing me up in front of them and making me answer their rude questions, by the way. It’s just you who shouldn't have to address the issue, I guess.”
“That’s not fair,” Lucas said. “I defended you.”
“Yeah, right before you told me to go home and stop bothering you.”
“That isn’t what I said,” Lucas said. “I just asked you for some time so I can think things over.”
“What do you have to think over?” She pointed at Karen. “Do you agree with her? Do you think I’m lying to you?”
“You don’t have to get so angry.”
“I don’t have to get angry?” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve been doing this alone, Lucas. All I wanted was to tell you the truth.”
“And now you have,” he said. “But you’ve known about this pregnancy for a lot longer than I have. You’ve had time to work out how you feel about it. You can’t insist on a response from me immediately like this. You have to give me time.”
“Lucas—”
“Come with me,” he said, getting to his feet and turning toward the door of the conference room.
She rose to follow.
“Hang on,” Jack interrupted. “You can’t just—”
Lucas turned. “This is my company,” he said. “You might be a shareholder, but I’m still the CEO. I can certainly go where I want to go within my own building.” He modulated his tone slightly, barely managing to speak politely. “Please wait here while I escort my guest to the door.”
He walked out of the conference room without looking back.
Elise hurried to catch up with him. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Are you at least going to call me?”
He pulled out his phone. “I have your number now,” he said.
“That’s not an answer.”
He knew what he should say. He should arrange a date and time to speak with her. He should send her home with assurances that their next meeting would be soon.
But this was happening so fast. He was afraid to promise anything. How could he know when he would be ready? How could he know when he would have the answers she needed to hear?
“I’ll call you,” he said. It was the most he could offer.
She looked up at him. A single tear escaped and trickled down her cheek.
“This isn’t how this was supposed to go,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want anything from you, Lucas. I didn’t come here to make any demands of you. But I thought it would be…nicer than this.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “You didn’t