The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,22

Because we’re about to take the first pictures of your baby. Lie back and get ready for some cold goo on your stomach.”

I stared at the images on the screen, my mouth hanging open in shock, awe, and something that felt a whole lot like my heart actually exploding. The images were grainy and hard to make out, mostly a bunch of moving blobs, but I could also hear sounds, and that… was blowing my mind.

“That’s my baby?” I whispered.

Dr. Madden, who had one hand on the screen and the other on the instrument she was using to scan my belly, tipped her head instead of answering. Then she went back over the place she’d been going over three more times, frowning.

“Yes…” she said, drawing the word out as if she didn’t quite believe it to be the right one.

“What?” I asked, immediately knowing that something was wrong. “What’s happened? Is something wrong with the baby?”

The doctor took another long look at the monitor without answering, and when she turned to me her eyes were big. “Nothing’s wrong,” she assured me. “It’s just that I was surprised.”

“By what?” I asked, still trying to understand what that had to do with what we’d been looking at—which I hadn’t been able to identify as anything more than gray and white blobs.

Biting her lip, she stared at me for a moment. And when she finally answered me, I understood why she’d been so hesitant.

“Because that isn’t your baby. Those are your babies, plural.”

Chapter 13

Bella

“Twins?” I asked my reflection in the mirror. “Twins?!”

How could that be true? How could that have happened? I didn’t think I had any twins in my family… though a quick scan of my memory banks told me that I wouldn’t have known if I did. My mom and dad had moved far from their families to come to New York to try to make it big, and that meant I’d never known any of my aunts, uncles, cousins…

And then my mother had left and now my father was gone. And it wasn’t like I’d ever talked to him about babies. I hadn’t thought I had the time for them when he was still alive. No, I’d known I hadn’t had the time for them when he was still alive.

Just like I didn’t have the time—or money—to do it now.

I lifted my chin and met my reflection’s eyes. It didn’t matter if I didn’t have time or money for it. I was doing this.

Still, the question remained. Twins in the family? When it came to easy research on my family tree—and whether or not twins ran in it—I was fresh out of luck.

“Dammit,” I breathed, leaning on the counter in front of me and looking down at the sink as I fought to get my emotions under control. Fought to get my brain to work. It had been lightning-quick my entire life, and now, now it was failing me?

“Think, think!” I commanded, hoping that maybe if I said it out loud, something would break loose in my head and my brain would start moving forward again.

Because right now, the only thing I could think—the only thing I was thinking over and over again—was that I had to tell Ethan. I didn’t want to see him again—particularly before I’d come up with an answer to his offer—but if he’d deserved to know about one baby… then he definitely deserved to know about two.

I looked up, gave my reflection another glare, angry that she hadn’t come up with a better plan, and then stalked out of the bathroom, trying to decide what outfit worked best for a ‘Surprise, you’re not only going to be a dad to one baby, but to two’ visit to one of the richest men in New York.

The cab ride to the Harmon-e offices was both too long and too short. Too long because it gave me too long to think, and too short because it still didn’t give me enough time to come up with any sort of answer to Ethan’s insane offer.

Or a good way to tell him that we were no longer expecting one kid. Now, we were expecting two.

The one thing I knew was that I’d always wanted a family I could call my own. I’d always wanted, someday, to have kids and a husband, that white-picket-fence living—or at least, large-apartment living—and the security of having someone that was there for me at all times. The comfort of being there for someone at all