The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,27
got up and walked away. Out of that enormous office at the top of the flashiest building in New York, and into the elevator, to take it down, down, down to street level, where I hoped I could get my feet back on the ground and my head back in place. Because right now, it felt like my life was spinning out of control.
Chapter 15
Ethan
I watched her walk out of my office, my throat dry and my eyes brimming with moisture, and then I spun around and stared out the windows of the suite. The windows I’d fought so hard for when I was younger, and the ones I took for granted now that I was at the top of the heap. The top of the building, literally.
It had taken a whole lot of work to get here. Even as the owner’s son, I’d started at the bottom as an intern, and worked my way up to manager and then to partner and finally to CEO.
I’d earned my stripes here. And I absolutely enjoyed being at the top. I liked all the perks. Creating my own hours and not having to answer to anyone else except for our board. Having the biggest office. Being able to get reservations at all the top restaurants whenever I wanted and driving the best cars money could buy. Having a terrific apartment, also at the top of a building. Also with many windows.
But none of it, and I mean none of it, had prepared me for this.
Babies. Twin babies. I hadn’t known what to do about one. I had even less of an idea of what to do with two. And that didn’t even touch their mother. Bella Mayfair. Talented lawyer, she of the laughing eyes, and, it turned out, a woman who definitely knew what she wanted—and what she didn’t.
She didn’t want to give up the babies. Any idiot could see that. And it hadn’t changed now that there were two of them. Yes, she definitely wanted the money—but that wasn’t her motivator. She wasn’t in it for the riches. She was in it for the safety it would bring her. The security.
The guarantee that rent would be paid next month.
And from what she’d told me of her childhood, I couldn’t blame her.
I couldn’t imagine growing up as she had. Couldn’t imagine not having enough food or clothes. Couldn’t imagine the struggle it must have taken her to rise as high as she had.
I also couldn’t imagine the sort of baggage it must have left. The sort of fear.
It remained to be seen, I guessed, whether that fear—that need for security—was going to override her need to keep those babies. I was betting it would. I was betting she’d take my deal.
And that was exactly what I was going to tell Dustin tonight when I had dinner with him. Because the moment she took that contract, I would finally be able to get my family off my case about having an heir. And that was going to be worth the entire experience.
I took a long swig of my beer and then turned to my older brother, grinning. We’d finished up with his bragging sessions—mostly about his kids, given the fact that one of them had just won a state spelling bee—and now it was my turn.
“Dust, I’ve done it,” I said quietly.
His forehead crinkled with doubt. “Done what? Finally admitted that you don’t know what you’re doing and turned the company over to someone better suited to leadership?”
I snorted. He and I both knew that I’d taken the company from making about half a million a year to generating more than three billion annually. The entire family knew what I’d done for that company—and for them. Which was one of the reasons they kept teasing me about it, I assumed. It was safe ground. Facts that no one could argue with—and therefore a sort of teasing that I couldn’t really take too personally.
“No, doofus,” I responded. “I’ve got a kid.”
And that one took him down a peg or three. It took him at least thirty seconds of swallowing before he managed to respond to me.
“Like… a baby goat kind of kid?”
I laughed, but shook my head. “Like a human baby kind of kid. One of my own making, even, so it’ll have DNA that matches the family’s and everything. Hell, it might even have Mom’s eyes or the nose we all got from Dad. So now you can all be satisfied. I have