Sadie and Apollo hang out all the time and, through him, she’s met some of Hollywood’s inner circle. For a while Dallas and I wondered if there was something romantic going on between the two them but Sadie said he’s got a “rabid harem” and she’s “not interested in joining it.”
Last time I talked to her she’d met an aspiring director named Santiago and they’d gone on a date. She’s over the moon and I couldn’t be happier for her. We’ve made a plan to catch up when Dallas shows me his (our—Dallas refused to sign a prenup, even when his lawyers recommended it) house in the Hollywood Hills.
Boone is the new co-CEO of Wilder Enterprises and we see him all the time. He’s one of my favorite people. Dallas said he’s a natural and business is booming because everyone he meets loves him.
Dallas still works a lot, helping show Boone the ropes of the business, but he mostly does this from his home offices because he says he can’t bear to leave me and our babies even for a single minute. Which works for me just fine.
We have two nannies who help out with the babies when we need them, but Dallas and I prefer to do most of the caregiving ourselves.
The babies are only three months old but we can already see their little personalities taking shape. Sabine, Dallas laughed, is my tiny little clone, with strawberry-blond fuzz, but with Dallas’s turquoise eyes. Dallas says she’s got my personality and insists on getting whatever she wants as soon as shewants it. She already has her daddy wrapped tightly around her finger. To me she looks like a perfect little angel.
They are just unbelievably beautiful babies, but maybe that’s how all mothers feel. Jack has my hazel eyes but with more green than gold in them, and Dallas’s dark hair. Everyone comments that he has an old soul, and it makes me hope that all the people who came before us and who are no longer here can somehow see these perfect tiny humans from wherever they are and bestow them with all the best of who they were.
My babies are very cuddly and they insist on breastfeeding every two hours. It’s a lot, but Ilovefeeding my babies, even if it’s exhausting at times. It’s such a miraculous thing, to be able to feed them from my own body.
I’m in bed with them now, a baby at each breast. We’re snuggled up in the huge California king-sized bed Dallas insisted on buying for our new house’s master suite. The babies are asleep, still suckling. Dallas is next to us on the bed, sitting up against a pile of pillows while answering emails on his laptop.
I watch him and I watch my babies and I have never felt so content and so thankful. “I love you,” I whisper.
My husband’s smile is slow and his eyes are green in the low light. It’s late now, after a magical night. And that’s what our life has become: magical day after magical night. He closes the laptop and puts it aside. He leans over me, kissing me, then he very carefully takes Jack in his arms. “I love you to the moon. I’m going to put these babies to bed and then I need to show my wife exactly howmuchI love her. I haven’t done enough of that today.”
Dallas takes Jack into the nursery room, which is attachedto our room and has been decorated with murals, soft furnishings and their two luxury bassinets, each equipped with its own high-tech baby monitor. Then he comes back to get Sabine, who fusses sleepily before Dallas croons to her and tucks her into her bed.
Once the babies are settled, Dallas comes in and climbs in next to me. “Have you checked your emails today?”
“No, I haven’t had a chance.”
“One just came through from Eden Jackson. She said she’s been trying to get a hold of you. She has news.”
“What news?”
“MoMA wants to exhibit one of your paintings, Boo.”
“What?”
“The one of the hotel at sunset.”
It’s my favorite painting. I painted it at the end of my senior year of high school, when my father was either drunk or gone somewhere (I now know he was at the casino), the hotel was at its worst and the pain of my red and blue embers were at their brightest. I poured all of my sorrow into that painting and it shows. I’ve never quite been able to duplicate the dark emotional impact that painting seems to hum with. To be honest, I’m not sure I ever will, and I’m relieved about that. My paintings now are lighter, more hopeful. But it was that one that contains, and in some ways absorbed, the hardest days of my past.
I had no way of knowing it was just the beginning of my rocky road toward destitution.
And I never imagined then that, once I reached the end of that road, under some lucky star on an ordinary Friday night, Iwould discover a detour. Wearing a baseball hat. With inked muscles and turquoise eyes. The perfect solution to every algorithm and the love of my life.
He pulls me close and I wrap myself around him, taking his hot thickness deep inside.
“Congratulations, sweetheart. Another wildest dream unlocked.” I’d almost forgotten. He added it to the list when he first showed me around New York.
“Youare my wildest dream, Dallas Wilder.”
“And you’re mine, Amelie Thibodeaux. Let’s make another baby and live happily ever.”
And that’s exactly what we do.
Thank you so much for readingBillionaire Falls First. If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a quick review or rating on Amazon.
Want to see what happens with Dallas and Amelie five years down the road? Get the free bonus epilogue here: https://BookHip.com/JMMVCXD
Below I’ve included the first chapter ofBillionaire Devil,from theNew York Billionairesseries, starring Colton and Lila.
