Accidental Baby for the Billionaire (A Billionaire's Baby Romance) Read online

  “I’m sorry, what? What happened?”

  “I can explain when you get here—”

  “I’m at work, at a company that I run,” Brent said in a firm but smooth tone. “It isn’t optional for me to be here. We have projects that need to be done today, some that need to be sent out in less than an hour. I would consider it a professional favor if you could tell me directly why you’re sending my daughter home for the day.”

  Davenport hesitated, but eventually said, “Cara had a bit of a problem with a couple of other girls in the bathroom in between classes.”

  “I find it incredibly difficult to believe that Cara would start a fight. Are you bringing in the other girls’ parents?”

  “We are looking into it, Mr. Sanderson, but it wasn’t really a fight.” Davenport paused. “Another girl apparently grabbed her pigtails and cut them off. We’re not sure who is responsible yet – since, of course, Cara couldn’t see them, and there were multiple grades out at that time. Still, she’s very upset, and I think it would be best for her to take the rest of the day off.”

  Brent felt his heart pounding so forcefully that he thought it would jump out of his chest. “Let me get this straight: you called to tell me that you failed to prevent my daughter from being assaulted?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far—”

  “Trust that I know the law, Mr. Davenport. And trust that you and I are definitely going to schedule a meeting about how you and the teachers are handling the situation with my daughter,” Brent said sternly.

  Had he not told Cara’s homeroom teacher just this week that the problem was the other girls?

  ***

  Nothing became clearer when he’d reached the school. Cara was staring solemnly at her black buckle shoes with her hair hanging loose and unevenly shorn. It was jarring to see her without all that long hair streaming from either side of her head.

  One look at her, and he’d swept into the principal’s office to read the man up and down in a voice booming enough to startle students out in the hallway. Cara said nothing as she waited for it all to finish, then followed him out to the car, her little body heaving the occasional sigh.

  She didn’t cry. She barely looked up. In the car, she fixed her gaze on the passing scenery and refused to lift her head.

  “I’m proud of you,” Brent said after a time. “You were very strong back there. It isn’t always easy to be different, and children can be cruel and foolish. We’ll get your hair taken care of before school tomorrow, and you can show them how little effect they have on you.”

  Cara didn’t acknowledge what he’d said. She just sighed again.

  Brent didn’t know what more he could do to help her immediately. Once they entered the office again, he instructed Mona to find a salon where she could take Cara that afternoon and order the girl some lunch.

  “What do you want, darling?” he asked her.

  “I’m not hungry.” Cara hopped on the sofa, kicked off her shoes, and pulled out a book.

  Stumped, Brent decided to leave her alone for a while. Mona could take care of the problem with her hair, and Cara could keep herself occupied. She was very good at that.

  The next time he looked up, an hour had passed, and there was a gorgeous young woman in his doorway. He was captivated by her large, dark eyes and the pout of her lips. His first thought was that an actress had slipped past Mona to beg for a quality role. She was pretty enough.

  The girl approached him with a slim 8x11 envelope.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Sanderson, but I have a delivery from your CFO, Allen Billings. He said you needed to sign these papers right away, and I’ll just run them right back to him,” she said.

  He found himself frozen for a moment. Her voice was thick and just a shade deeper than he’d expected from the doe-eyed young woman. Brent recovered after a moment and rose to take the envelope from her.

  “I’ll take care of these right away,” he said.

  “And if you need to make any changes, he said to just initial them. I’m not sure what they’re in reference to, but he indicated that you’d seen them before,” the girl added.

  “I’m sure.” Brent opened the envelope and glanced at the papers. “And your name is?”

  “Oh! It’s Jessica.” She put her hands behind her back and shifted her weight to one foot.

  Brent gestured to the side of the room. “You can sit on the sofa while you wait.”

  She looked over and rocked on her heels once, as though deciding what to do. Brent returned to his desk to look over the papers carefully.

  “Hey, shouldn’t you be in school?” Jessica’s voice teased.

  “I had to leave,” Cara said quietly.

  “Oh? Are you not feeling well?”

  “I feel fine. Some sixth-grade girls cut my hair,” Cara said with an edge to her voice that added, silently, “Obviously. Can’t you see?”

  “Ugh. Middle school is the worst. Something in kids’ hormones from sixth-eighth grade makes them all insane. It starts to get better after that. When I was in middle school, these girls spread so many rumors about me that I just hid in the bathroom during lunch.”

  “If you do that at my school, you’ll get in trouble.”

  “I would have, too, but I just got so tired of dealing with them.”

  Brent looked up and saw Jessica reaching out to touch Cara’s hair.

  “It’s not so bad though. I mean once you get it evened out. This is a pretty good length for you. I bet now that it’s short, you’ll get just a little bit of curl. You could even have the hairdresser give you a swing bob. You’d look like a flapper.” Jessica smiled. “Do you know what that is?”

  Cara arched a brow. “Of course I do.”

  “Sorry. I don’t know what references fly anymore, now that kids have Netflix. I heard my friend’s little brother make a Friends joke the other day. So old!”

  Cara smiled a little. “Kids in my grade are always repeating memes. That’s all they ever say. Over and over. And the boys all do this thing where, if you trick someone into looking at you doing this—” She made a circle with her index and thumb and let the remaining finger curve just slightly. “—they get to slug you.”

  “Oh my God. Why so violent?”

  “It’s so dumb. Two kids got suspended a few weeks ago ‘cause Troy hit Gabe too hard, and he fell and cut himself on the edge of something. So now you’re not supposed to do it. But they still do.”

  Jessica shook her head. “I’m sorry to say, it’s gonna take a while for the boys to start acting like humans again. Some of ‘em never really make it back.”

  “They dab for life,” Cara lamented solemnly.

  “They dab for life, definitely.” Jessica looked up and crossed herself.

  Cara giggled.

  This Jessica had gotten Cara to laugh. Brent realized that he hadn’t heard Cara laugh in quite a while. And as Brent finished reading through the paperwork, Cara laughed twice more and started talking about her lacrosse season.

  Brent could only stare. For the first time in ages, Cara sounded like a normal ten-year-old girl. It was unsettling to realize that Ms. Ramirez may have been partially correct; he didn’t entirely know what was going on with Cara.

  “Tell me, Jessica.” Brent strolled over to the sofa as he tucked the papers back into the envelope. “How much is Billings paying you?”

  “What?” Jessica tilted her head to the side.

  “I’ll double it. No more running around town, fooling around with silly errands.” Brent toyed with the envelope, running his finger along the side. “What do you say?”

  Jessica shifted on the sofa and looked up at him curiously. “I dunno. It’s a little sudden. I think Mr. Billings might wonder about you poaching his errand girl.”

  “Allen and I have known another for a long time. He can forgive me this one trespass.” Brent flashed her a smile. “I need someone to stay with Cara when I’m not available. She’s my world, and you two seem to g
et along.”

  Cara tucked her feet under her. “So, Jess would just hang out with me?”

  “For the most part. Today, she could help you with your hair. Tomorrow, she could come to your lacrosse practice and spend the evening with you when you get home.” Brent shrugged. “Then, hopefully, on weekends and days when school is out, she would make sure you don’t have to be alone.”

  Cara looked down and played with the end of one of her socks. “It sounds like you’re hiring her to be my friend.”

  “The proper word is ‘nanny’,” Brent said. “What do you think, Jessica?”

  Cara glanced up at her hopefully, and Brent found himself tensing with anticipation himself.

  Chapter Three

  Jessica

  “Bitch, fill me up!”

  Jessica shot a dirty look at her roommate, Ashley, who lounged by the kitchen table with a smug smile on her lips.

  “I’m not your intern,” Jessica snapped. She walked by and pushed Ashley’s feet off the table before fetching her harvest grain toast from the toaster.

  “You can always use the practice, babe.” Ashley smiled sweetly.

  Jessica pursed her lips, then took out two mugs and poured coffee into each one.

  She frowned as she blew on the coffee, her grumpy demeanor not entirely due to the ungodly hour. Ashley, damn her, hadn’t even gone to bed yet, but Jessica had to be up and at work by 7:00 a.m. If she had gotten the internship at the San Diego Zoo – which she had wanted, which would’ve actually been applicable to her degree – she might not have minded getting up at the ass crack of dawn quite so much.

  As it was, she was headed to a boring office job, and to add insult to the injury of being rejected from the job she wanted, this office job was really just working for her dad.

  Jessica loved her dad, she did, but she’d rather spend time with him binge-watching cooking challenge shows while splitting a nice red wine. He had convinced her, though, that she really had to get some real experience, something she could put on a resume, before she graduated next spring.

  So, she nursed her coffee as she stumbled around the apartment and attempted to make something presentable of herself. She’d laid her outfit out the evening before: a vertically striped button-up blouse and a below the knee pencil skirt. Her wardrobe ranged from a few going out dresses to study-wear, so she was going to have to get creative for a five-day-a-week job arrangement.

  “You look marvelish!” Ashley said, making a kissy face.

  Jessica pulled her hair into a bun on top of her head. “Are you still drunk?”

  “Jealish?”

  “I’m jealous of you getting to stay home today, but your liver is probably jealous of mine right now.”

  She should’ve known better than to get an apartment off campus with a couple of her sorority sisters. Ashley wasn’t too bad most of the time. But the concept of a regular daily schedule was beyond her willful actress’ spirit. Jessica turned to the mirror on the back of her bedroom door to give herself one last check.

  ***

  When she arrived at the office, her father wasn’t even there yet – just his personal assistant, Garrett, who looked over her outfit (very unsubtly) and took her to the breakroom to show her how to make the coffee.

  “Half the time they want you to go out and get them something anyway, but just make it, and the assistants will drink it,” Garrett explained.

  “Will they give us money to go get Starbucks or something?”

  “Rarely. If they ask you to get them an Americano or latte while you’re out, save the receipt and I’ll reimburse you with petty cash.” Garrett leaned back against the desk. “But mostly, you don’t have too much to worry about for the first couple of weeks. Get things when they ask for it. Take things where they want them. Ferry messages back and forth with papers, mostly. They can text for everything else.”

  His eyes dropped to her shoes. “And those are gorge, but you’re gonna want to wear more comfortable shoes from here on out. In fact, no one is going to care if you come in a clean blouse and a nice pair of jeans. Just no holes or anything.”

  Jessica raised a brow. “Dad—Er, Mr. Billings made this sound like it would be a lot more formal.”

  “He’s wrong. I have to be formal. You have to be neat, clean, and timely.” The phone rang, and Garrett reached behind him to pick it up. “I’ll try to make sure they don’t trap you in any meetings or piles of paperwork until you’ve been here a while. It’s a learning curve, but it’s not too steep, honestly, if you have good organizational skills.”

  “Good morning,” Garrett chirruped, “you’ve reached Billings and Cash, LLP. This is Garrett. How can I help you today?”

  Jessica was a little mesmerized by how fluidly the greeting rolled off Garrett’s tongue. Like a song, almost.

  ***

  By midmorning, Jessica had discerned that gofer-ing was her primary duty with the company. She’d gotten breakfasts, picked up copies from the printer, taken checks to the bank, and come back with two trays full of various specialty coffees.

  The job wasn’t so bad. It seemed boring but easy, and the people were friendly. Well, mostly. Some of the accountants had gotten grumpy with her for things like not knowing where someone’s office was or having to be shown how to fax something (who faxed instead using email anymore?), but on the whole, her day hadn’t been bad. At least she was getting paid, which was more than she could say for most interns her age.

  Jessica could roll with it. Disappointment would fade, and there would be other opportunities. Or so she told herself. In the meantime, she would keep up with her latest Sarah J. Maas audiobook while flitting all around town.

  “Hey, munchkin,” her father said as she appeared in his doorway. “How have they been treating you? I’m sorry I haven’t been around to show you the ropes.”

  “No problem. I’ve got this. Garrett’s shown me everything I need to know, and it’s no worse than waitressing. Probably better, honestly.” She entered and dropped into one of the wide chairs in front of his desk.

  “I’d take you to lunch today, but we’re really slammed.”

  “Isn’t tax season over?”

  “Generally, but we have a lot of clients who filed for extensions, and we need to take care of them. Plus, we took on a new start-up last week, and their books are a mess.”

  Jessica took off one of her shoes to massage her arch. She smiled at the way her father’s eyes, deep brown like her own, crinkled at the corners as he studied the papers before him. He was so hardworking. She was really proud of him, especially lately. In addition to co-leading this firm, he was the CFO at an independent studio, and they had gotten one of their films nominated for an Oscar last year.

  “So, raincheck?” Allen looked up at her questioningly.

  “Of course. Whenever you’ve got the time. I’m but a mere intern here,” Jessica teased. “When you have need of me, just call.”

  Allen looked up at her with a wry smile. “How about I get you dinner after we’re both off? I’ll be in the office later than you’ll be expected to stay, but I can give you a call.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “Be thinking about where you want to go.” He picked up a pile of papers from his printer and started flipping through it, making circles and crosses on each page. “And now, I have a job for you.”

  “Oh?” Jessica put her shoes back on and walked around the desk.

  “I’m going to have you send this over to Brent Sanderson at the movie studio. He’ll need to sign these and send them back to me today. If he can just hand them back to you, all the better.”

  “I’ll make sure he does,” Jessica promised.

  “Ah, these young interns – so eager to prove themselves. Right, Garrett?” Allen looked behind Jessica, and she turned her head.

  There Garrett was, in the doorway.

  “Like yappy little puppies.” Garrett handed Jessica a list. “Could you pick up lunch on your way back? I alrea
dy called in the order to the deli across the street. They should have everything ready by the time you get there. Just check the order to make sure it’s right and haul it over here.”

  Jessica bounced on her heels and gave them a salute. “Can do!”

  Allen laughed softly and looked at Garrett with fond pride. Jessica hoped she could make him proud with more than a good attitude in the near future, but it was what she had to work with.

  ***

  “The proper word is ‘nanny’,” Brent said. “What do you think, Jessica?”

  Cara glanced up at her with uncertain, but hopeful green eyes. She looked so vulnerable, with her slouched shoulders and shorn hair. And she’d already had such a terrible day. It sucked to be bullied like that, and nothing you could do about it, really. You were so powerless at that age.

  “Well, I guess… Double the money, just to hang out with you?” Jessica leaned over and bumped Cara’s shoulder. “How can I say no?”

  Cara clapped her hands together over her mouth in excitement. Though Jessica wondered how she was going to explain to her father that she was quitting on her first day, she couldn’t help but be happy to spend her time helping this girl, rather than just running errands.

  “I have to get everyone lunch first though. They’re waiting for it right now,” Jessica explained.

  “Can I go?”

  Brent Sanderson towered over the two of them. “I don’t see why not. After that errand, would you take her out to get her hair fixed?”

  “That I can definitely do. I know just the place.” Jessica rose to take the envelope full of papers from him. “I promise I’ll be careful with her, too.”

  “I trust you, Jessica. It took me a moment to recognize you, but you’re Allen’s daughter.” Brent crossed his arms. “He’ll have to forgive me for stealing you after he sees Cara with you.”

  “You’re Uncle Allen’s daughter?” Cara hopped up and came to stand by Jessica.

  “Um, yeah, that’s me.” Jessica held out her arm for Cara to take. “We’re practically family already, huh? Well, let’s go feed those cranky accountants, and we can have a little makeover.”