Page 54 of The Billionaire's Virgin

“I didn’t see the difference at the time,” I said. “So I asked Alison what she was planning on doing. She told me that she was going to keep the baby and then… I knew what I had to do. I told her I wanted to be involved. I told her I wanted to be a part of the child’s life.”

“And she was okay with that?”

“I think she was relieved,” I admitted. “She was not doing too well financially and she needed some support, which was why she had come to me in the first place. I let her stay with me, and I went to all the doctor’s appointments and… somewhere down the line, the annulment papers showed up.”

“What happened then?”

“She came to me one morning, and she told me that she had… fallen in love with me,” I admitted. “She told me that she didn’t want us to get the annulment, especially now that we were going to have a child. It didn’t seem… logical.”

“And you agreed?”

I sighed. “It made sense to me at the time.” I nodded. “Even though I wasn’t in love with her.”

“But you agreed anyway?” Taylor asked.

“Because she was carrying my child and I wanted to give Jenna the best chance she had at the kind of childhood I never did. I wanted to give her a happy home, and I was fairly certain I could keep Alison happy.”

“But you weren’t in love with her,” Taylor pointed out.

“But I hoped that one day that would change,” I admitted. “She was a good person… she was funny and interesting and ambitious, and in an alternate reality, we might have been good friends. I just wasn’t sure we were meant to be life partners. But I hoped, so I agreed to throw out the papers. We agreed to try to be a family.

“Four months later, Jenna was born,” I continued. “And three hours after she was born, Alison suffered from an amniotic fluid embolism.”

“Three hours?” she gasped.

I nodded. “It’s extremely rare, but there was nothing the doctors could do once she went into cardiac arrest. Her heart was too weak, and so was her body.”

“Did you… speak to her before?”

“I think I told her how proud I was of her,” I said. “I told her to get some rest and that I would be with our daughter. We didn’t have a long, meaningful conversation though.”

Taylor put her hand on mine. “I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for you.”

“It was more surreal than anything,” I admitted. “I cared about Alison. She was still the mother of my child and to have her die so suddenly right after Jenna was born… it felt like some sort of nightmare. But then my whole life since Vegas had felt a little like a dream. I think I just sleep-walked through those first few months.”

“Does Jenna ask about her?”

“Sometimes… always when I least expect it.”

“Just because you don’t have a partner or a wife, doesn’t mean you have to do everything alone,” Taylor pointed out.

“I know that now,” I said. “It’s one of the reasons I hired you.”

“That and Jenna wore you down.”

I smiled. “Jenna did wear me down,” I admitted. “And I’m glad she did. You have made a massive difference in our lives, Taylor… mine and Jenna’s.”

I saw a flicker of sadness pass across Taylor’s face, and that confused me. But I decided not to pry until she felt comfortable enough to share her thoughts with me. I needed to be patient because despite how early in we were to this relationship, I knew already that I wanted it to last.