AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If only she knew who the father of her twins was.
If it was Alan, she would be devastated. If it was Heath, she wasn’t sure, but there was a good chance that she could end up equally devastated.
She remembered running across the link to the “20 Richest Men” list when she was seven months pregnant. Finding Heath’s last name and realizing she could contact him about her pregnancy was shattering.
She had cried for days because she didn’t know what to do. In the end, she’d taken the coward’s way out and done nothing.
Eventually, she found that she could justify her inaction. Heath had so much money; he could do whatever he wanted. He could decide that he wanted her babies. It would be so easy for him to have her declared an unfit parent. She wouldn’t be able to fight him since she didn’t have his kind of money to hire the best cutthroat lawyers.
She conveniently overlooked the fact that Phae was now loaded and would move heaven and earth to help Sylvie keep her babies. But Sylvie’s justification didn’t sound so hot when she thought about Phae, so she told herself she could never let Phae do that for her (which wasn’t at all true — Sylvie would do anything and accept anything to keep her babies, but never mind).
Heath didn’t seem like the type of guy who would take her children away from her, but learning he was a father might shift everything. She hadn’t wanted to risk it by getting in touch with him. And anyway, she told herself, she had no solid proof that he was the father.
She reopened the “Chicago” folder and allowed herself to skim through the other URLs that had given her small glimpses into Heath’s life over the months.
He kept an extremely low profile in the media. But there were still some pictures of him here and there and some mentions in business articles. She had collected everything in her Chicago file.
She sipped the rest of her wine. Her favorite pictures of Heath were the ones where he was caught with just a hint of a smile. She liked to pretend that he was smiling at her.
The photos she liked least were the ones where he had some slinky model-type beside him. She would study the women and couldn’t help comparing herself to them, and she always felt she came out unfavorably. Thankfully, there weren’t many pictures with Heath and dates. He wasn’t a social type.
She closed all of the files and cursed herself. She couldn’t believe that she had agreed to have lunch with him. It would end badly.
She cursed her mother for convincing her to enter the online recipe contest. When Sylvie found out that she’d won second place and the contest committee asked her to submit a photo for the announcement, Momma had also been the one who had insisted she send one that included the babies.
She’d been reluctant but had done it against her better judgment. It was silly how something so innocuous was probably going to blow up her whole life.
Of course, having somehow stumbled upon the contest page, Heath would have seen the photo, too. He was a smart guy, and the math around their ages added up to one big question mark.
He asked her how old the boys were because he was trying to figure out if they were his. She couldn’t answer that question, which is why she had avoided it altogether.
She just wanted him to go away. No, that wasn’t true. She wanted to grab his face and kiss him until neither of them could breathe. But she couldn’t do that either. She had responsibilities to think about, and their names were Quentyn and Jadyn. She had to tread lightly when it came to Heath.
She’d agreed to lunch to appease him and hopefully satisfy his curiosity enough to make him go away and leave her alone. She was certain after they had lunch, and he realized how small-time she actually was, he wouldn’t want to spend more time with her anyway. On top of that, she had the additional baggage of two babies.
Heath was a billionaire and could have any woman he wanted. He could lead the most glamorous of lifestyles if he chose. He wouldn’t want anything to do with Zeke’s Bend.
He would probably think it was a blessing to know that the twins weren’t his. She was going to have to figure out some way to make him believe it wasn’t even a possibility they could be his children.
She set her empty wineglass and laptop back on the nightstand and switched off the light. She settled into bed, noting the emptiness around her.
Sylvie couldn’t help but remember that night so long ago. Lying there in the dark, she imagined that she could still feel Heath’s hands on her body. The way he took control during their lovemaking — it still curled her toes.
She hadn’t been with anyone since Heath.
But now, he was here and a teensy, tiny part of her wondered if maybe everything she imagined could go wrong might turn out to be right. Maybe he hadn’t just accidentally found her and just dropped by to check in. Maybe he’d been looking for her all this time. Maybe he’d been desperately seeking Sylvie for nearly a year. Wouldn’t that be something?
It was a such a fanciful, romantic notion that she let her mind wander, imagining Heath ordering private eyes around, shouting at them to find his mystery woman, or else! Eyes closed, she snuggled under the blanket and smiled at her own silliness.
If she were going to play the fantasy game tonight, she decided she might as well go all the way. She imagined Heath meeting her at the cafe and the moment he saw her, sweeping her off her feet and kissing her passionately. He’d tell her how much he longed for her, how much he wanted her. How no other woman had ever made him feel the way Sylvie made him feel.
Sylvie giggled. How ridiculous. That was never going to happen.
But it sure was fun to think that it might.
Chapter Thirteen
HEATH WAS NERVOUS IN A way that he couldn’t remember being nervous since his very first business deal. He’d been twenty-two. Looking back on it, he realized that he hadn't known what he was doing.
Somehow, though, he’d managed to walk into that boardroom and charm the pants off every person in the room. He always recalled the deal fondly. It was the first time that he’d been completely out of his league and still managed to achieve his goal.
He made his first million dollars that day. Not too shabby for a kid who once thought he’d never amount to anything on his own. Persistence and a lot of hard work were the keys to success, something he’d had to learn on his own. His parents had never set any kind of example for him.
Heath’s parents had been fairly generous with their money in his childhood but not so generous with their time or attention. He grew up under the watchful eyes of a series of nannies. They were all warm and kind to him, but they hadn’t been his mother.
As soon as his parents deemed him old enough to handle it, they’d sent him off to boarding school where he lived for nine months of the year. It didn’t take long before school was more his home than the place where he went on holidays to visit his parents when they weren’t busy traveling. And they were pretty much always busy traveling.
Since he’d left home, he had maintained only a cold, distant relationship with them. He didn’t think he had spoken to either one of them in well over a year, and he had stopped wondering long ago if they cared about him. The only thing he wondered now was why they bothered to have a child to begin with; he had never fit into their lives.
These were the thoughts that ran through his mind as Heath anxiously made his way to the café. He was excited to see Sylvie again, elated that his feelings for her hadn’t dimmed with time.
But there was an elephant in the room that needed to be addressed: the babies. Maybe, his babies.
He didn’t know how he would react if he was bold enough to ask her the question and the answer was yes, they were his children. He didn’t have the least idea what to do with a baby, let alone two of them.
It had been a restless night’s sleep. He dreamed about baby bottles, the sound of babies crying in the distance and the sensation of cold marble tile under his feet as he went in search of them.
This whole idea of being a parent had surfaced old
resentments towards his parents that he thought he’d long since buried.
His earliest memories involved endless questions to his nannies about when his parents would be home. They were always traveling, always without him.
When they did return home, he mostly saw them from a distance at events like dinner parties and summer BBQs in the Hamptons. Heath’s parents would parade him in front of their friends, pretend to be family people when nothing could have been further from the truth.
Heath understood now that it was a game to them, and to their guests. None of them knew the first thing about family. And because of that, neither did Heath.
He couldn’t quite find it within himself to be completely dismissive of what his parents had done. Perhaps it was because of the dramatic change in his own lifestyle since his company had taken off. He was rich and successful, and most everything he had touched in the last fifteen years had turned to gold.
His work took him all over the world, and he enjoyed waking up in Seattle and going to bed in Singapore if he wanted. Right now, he could call up his private jet and fly anywhere in the world. He could have nearly any woman that he wanted on his arm. He could do or see anything that he wanted to see.
His parents hadn’t done too poorly by him if his success was any reflection on how they’d chosen to raise him. He wasn’t sure they deserved any credit, though. Not that credit mattered.
When he thought of his life, he wondered what it would be like to insert children into his lifestyle, and he’d wondered before he’d learned about Sylvie’s twins. He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think the two would mix well.
Yet even with all of the billions in his bank account, he was alone. That was the cold hard truth of things. He’d thought he’d accepted that, just as he’d stopped blaming his parents for their neglect. But maybe, he wasn’t as accepting as he thought.
Perhaps loneliness was why he had obsessively sought out Sylvie after his intense connection to her. He was tired of being alone.
And it was time to face that, at some point, he was going to get old. He chuckled to himself at that. He was still labeled one of the top eligible bachelors under 40. But there was plenty missing in his life. He marveled that it was possible to have so much money and yet feel so unfulfilled. This wasn’t how things were supposed to work.
It was confusing. He wasn’t ready to try to wrap his brain around all of it yet, especially when he didn’t have all the facts. He told himself to live in the present.
Right now, in the present, he had a lunch date with the most beautiful and fascinating woman he’d ever met. He would focus on that, on learning about her.
He was glad that the cloak of lies surrounding their first meeting was gone. Now they could just be two people who had met each other and had a great time once. They could open up to each other without having to worry about keeping their true identities a secret. At least, that’s what he hoped was about to happen.
He brushed aside the fact that there was still one lie left between them: his last name.
Heath got to the cafe fifteen minutes early. The place was bustling with customers, most of them people who worked nearby and were on their lunch hours. Almost all of the tables were full.
