The Billionaire's Christmas Son - Leslie North Page 0,6
questions about Jonas, the man she’d slept with, and her present self for thinking she could just waltz back into the lodge as if nothing had ever happened. She should have at least recognized his voice on the phone.
She lifted the camera to her face and snapped a few more photos.
Scott suddenly started to cry, and she turned to find he’d fallen in the snow on his side. Perfectly capable of getting up but unwilling to do it, not without mama’s help. She scooped him up, tickling his chin to make him laugh. A two-year-old did not make a photography gig easy, but they’d have to make the best of it. It wasn’t like any of her problems were Scott’s fault.
They made their way back down to the main lodge building, where Rachel half-managed to get some exterior shots. Scott ran toward every flake of falling snow, this way and that, and though no cars were driving on the road, it made her nervous.
Holding his hand and shooting photos was impossible, and she didn’t want to take the risk of the chairlift. She managed to get photos of the ski shed, the bottom of the chairlift, and the hill from the only vantage point she had. Stopping every few minutes to take deep breaths, she tried to find a way to quell her frustration.
It wasn’t working.
“Buddy.” Scott ran around in a tight circle at her feet, making it less and less possible to get any shots. She tried for a few more, then looked down to find her son burying his hat in the snow. “Scott, it goes on your head.”
He looked up at her and shook his head. “No.”
“And where’s your other glove?”
“No,” he said, then delicately put several fistfuls of snow on top of the hat.
“Okay.” Rachel snapped her lens cap back into place and dug his hat out, which made Scott royally furious. His screams echoed over the ski hill, attracting the attention of other guests. Perfect. This could not be going any better. “Maybe we should go back inside and try for some photos there, buddy.”
He wailed, letting himself become a wet noodle at the end of her hand, and finally, Rachel picked him up and took him into the lobby. Jonas wanted photos of the lodge with its holiday decorations, too. But once they were inside, Rachel saw it for the minefield that it was.
Scott wouldn’t be able to leave the decorative gifts under the tree alone, and as they walked past the enormous Christmas tree, he writhed in her arms until she put him down on the floor. “Please, buddy. We’ll go back to the room. We’ll do something fun in just a bit. I promise,” she said, whispering in his ear.
Scott lay down on the floor.
“Just perfect,” Rachel said to no one. The last thing she needed was for him to go into a full-fledged temper tantrum. Not in here. She stood close by, using the attentive but calm expression she’d learned from one of her prenatal parenting classes, and waited.
“What’s going on?” Jonas’s voice broke into her attentive waiting, and she wanted to sink down onto the floor next to her son. Everything was already fraught with tension, and the last thing she needed was Jonas, wearing a worried expression on his face, slightly out of breath. “Are you having trouble with the landscape photos?”
“No,” she lied, then thought better of it. “Yes.” It was always a fine balancing act, talking about her son with people who hired her. Usually, things weren’t so last-minute. Usually, there was a babysitter, but this morning, there wasn’t one available at the lodge. And usually, she wasn’t trying to wade through the supreme awkwardness of having just revealed your son’s parentage to his father and sticking around to deal with the emotional aftermath.
Jonas’s eyebrows knitted together. “You are?”
“I am,” she admitted, glancing down at Scott to make sure he was all right. Looking like a snow-suited starfish lying in the middle of the carpet in the lobby, he made her wish she was anywhere but here. “It’s too hard to keep Scott entertained while I get the shots. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten more than a couple that do this place justice.”
Rachel braced for his response, fully expecting him to fire her.
Instead, Jonas stepped around so that the two of them were forming a protective barrier around Scott. “I can help,” he said, his words surprising her speechless.
The frustration was clear on her face, obvious