The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,12

looked down at my plate, considering all my options, and finally decided that the best option for right now was just to run. I’d had enough dinner—and even if I hadn’t, I’d lost my appetite. So I pushed my plate away and stood, setting my napkin on the table.

“I have to get going back to the city, so the argument is at an end, regardless. I’d suggest you all get used to me being single for a little while longer. I’m only thirty-four. I don’t need babies or a wife yet. Maybe when I’m in my forties. Love you all, see you next week, bye.”

I gave them the cheeky grin that I knew none of them could resist, then turned and headed for the foyer, and my coat and keys. I had to get out of this baby-crazy house before I found myself agreeing to something I didn’t want—and never had.

Chapter 7

Ethan

As I sped homeward, my blood still hot from the argument with my family, I tried to get my brain to organize itself and go forward again, rather than turning around and around about how unfair they were being to me.

An heir, really? Settle down, were they serious? I was only thirty-four years old! I had a thriving career and I was busy pretty much twenty-four hours a day, because unlike some rich kids, I had never once taken a day off and just rested on my laurels.

I worked hard. I worked long hours. I still made most of the decisions for the company myself—and I was still at each and every company event. Showing my face. Building morale. Making sure the people who worked for me knew how much they meant to me. I’d found that very little motivated my employees like the idea that I was working just as hard as they were, and I’d made it my goal to maintain that particular route for as long as I could breathe.

If you asked me, there was no place in that life for a wife. A kid. Any sort of lasting relationship.

I downshifted and shot into the first turn on the road home, the engine of my sports car revving and then roaring as I hit the gas and flung the car around the turn.

I’d proven that, too. The part about not being able to keep a lasting relationship. I’d proven it again and again and again. Yeah, I’d dated quality girls. Girls that I thought might make good wives. Girls that my mom had approved of and sometimes even suggested. Girls I could see myself spending the rest of my life with. Well, maybe not the rest of my life. But girls that I’d at least considered for the position.

But it had always turned out the same way. They weren’t busy enough themselves, maybe, or weren’t as committed to their own jobs as I was to mine. Hell, some of them hadn’t even had jobs. So they’d inevitably thrown fits about me working so much. About me having my phone on at all times and taking phone calls in the middle of the night if something important happened.

About me choosing to go to the office rather than have Sunday brunch with them and their girlfriends.

It had been a disaster. Every. Single. Time. And yeah, sometimes it had happened for different reasons. Maybe the girl hadn’t been smart enough to keep up with me in conversation. Maybe she’d been smart enough to know that it wasn’t going to work because I was married to the job rather than the idea of a relationship. One girl hadn’t even wanted anything monogamous. She’d just been dating me for the prestige.

That one hadn’t lasted very long.

The one thing that had lasted was the idea that I wasn’t good at relationships. I wasn’t good at making them work or doing what it took to keep women happy. I definitely didn’t see myself being a very good father. Someone who was gone all the time? No. The kid wouldn’t even know me—and I knew enough to know that that wasn’t how you raised a kid.

I hit a straightaway and shifted up, jamming down on the gas and letting the car fly, taking my emotions out on the road as the trees of New Jersey flew by, my eyes on the glow of the city ahead.

How exactly did my family not see that they were asking me for the impossible? Why didn’t they see that I just wasn’t cut out for a relationship—and that