Admit You Love Me: A Secret Baby Romance (Irresistible Billionaires Book 2) Read online

  “A few years ago, at least. Don’t worry. Nothing nasty on the sheets.” She tugged the sheet and tried to force it under the corner of the mattress but it didn’t yield. I went around the bed and helped her.

  “Let me lift and you tuck it,” I said. I got my hands under the mattress and hauled it up. It weighed a ton. Eddy shoved the sheet underneath the few inches that I managed to lift it up. I heard her yelp and stumble, falling into me. I let go of the mattress and caught her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She laughed. “Yeah, yes, of course. I swear I know how to make a bed. I promise,” she said. She looked up at me. She was pressed into my chest. Her clothes were thin enough for me to feel her body underneath. Her eyes seemed to drill into mine, seeing right through me. My body felt hot. I was barely dressed; we were in a bedroom and it would take nothing to get her out of her clothes. Nobody could in their right mind expect me to control myself around her. Had they seen her? It had been something of a long day with some very surprising revelations and we were finally having a nice, quiet night alone. This was the perfect way to end it. We kissed.

  I pushed her back onto the bed. She lay back and I climbed on top of her, immediately getting rid of the towel. I started on her clothes. She helped me, matching my intensity. I loved it when I could see her hunger. It made me stand up stiff, ready for her. It made me want to devour her.

  Once her clothes were off, we kissed again. I pawed her breasts and ran my hands over her curves. Back in a bed again, I didn’t want to lose out on a chance to properly work her over. I started at her neck, kissing down her body until I was between her legs. I looked up to see her reaction. Her eyes were half-lidded watching me. I held her thighs open and dived in.

  She gasped. I tried a couple of different touches, pressures, techniques, gauging how much they made her squirm. She was incredibly responsive which made sex with her that much more enjoyable. When I got into the right rhythm, I plunged two fingers into her. It almost finished her.

  “Fuck, don’t stop,” she whispered. Not if my life depended on it. I kept going, watching her come to pieces underneath me, until she let out a scream and a shudder ran through her. I smiled to myself. I licked my fingers clean coming up from between her legs. Her eyes opened slowly and she looked up at me.

  “Okay?” I asked. She smirked.

  “Now it’s your turn.”

  16

  Edwina

  It was about time I got the guy on his back.

  I knelt down between his knees, looking down at him, just looking. He was beautifully made. He was lean and muscular whereas the lifestyle Russell had led had made him doughy and easily winded. I would admit it. Sometimes, when Russell was gracelessly thrashing on top of me, I closed my eyes and imagined it was Niall. It was more than just sometimes if I was honest. my imagination completely failed to get close to reality though. I indulgently ran my hands up his firm legs. He let out a small laugh when I skimmed his sensitive inner thighs.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Taking my time,” I said. I let one of my hands run up to his crotch and jerked him off slowly. He sighed. I lay between his thighs and touched his tip to my tongue, bathing it generously before sucking it into my mouth. He groaned. I used my tongue, running it over his head every time I worked my way up his length. My pussy was soaked. It turned me on to do this to him. I watched his reactions, making him groan. I got into a rhythm bobbing up and down. His hand went to my hair, gripping.

  “Not so fast,” he said. I ignored him. Suddenly, I was being pulled up over his body, so I landed in a straddle over his body.

  “You want this to be over before it even starts?” he asked.

  “You could take a little longer. I believe in you,” I said. He laughed and kissed me, pulling me down onto him. Naturally, his cock found its way to my opening. I gasped as he slid his way inside. The stretch felt sinfully good. His body was perfect in every way. I wondered why I couldn’t seem to resist him but whenever we were together, it was glaringly obvious.

  I rode him slowly, grinding my hips. He reached for me, pulling me down so we could kiss. He matched my strokes, so we were moving in synch. I had never had such explosive sexual chemistry with anyone. My body opened up for him like it had never for anyone in my life. I let myself get lost in the experience. Minutes later, my orgasm swept over me. He rolled us over and fucked me through it until he came.

  We spooned when it was over, laying there in the silence. My lids kept drooping. I was tired and I wanted to fall asleep with him. There was nothing I wanted more than that, but it was impossible. Riley was in the house and I had to go and be there for him. I knew that it wasn’t wrong to leave Riley with Prue for the night. I did it routinely when I couldn’t be home, but this felt wrong somehow. Spending the night here with a man while my son wondered where I was made me feel a little guilt. On top of that, the man in question happened to be the biological father that he knew nothing about. We never got to do this part. It would have been amazing to wake up next to him, but things were more complicated than that.

  When I thought about it, I never imagined getting to this point. Usually, I could deal with the guilt but that was when I never thought that I would meet Niall again. I never thought about the possible revelation of the truth or having to let Russell or Riley know. In the beginning, I thought Riley was Russell’s. We had been intimate before and after the night with Niall and I was happy when I found out I was pregnant. Finally, someone who I could love unconditionally who would give me the same thing back. Parenthood was far more complex than that but being in a loveless marriage so young, I was desperate to feel wanted. To feel needed. Our honeymoon had been shortly before the night with Niall. I had no reason to believe the pregnancy wasn’t my husband’s.

  My wedding had actually been quite beautiful. Since Russell’s family had paid for it, they spared no expense. I felt and looked like royalty. The Baron getting married was a big deal. I knew only a handful of the two hundred guests but I smiled and socialized with the best of them. I would be a great wife, even though Russell wasn’t my choice. He was nice to me at the beginning, but it became clear very fast that the arranged marriage would never blossom into anything real. Those dreams were crushed quickly by Russell.

  He never said it outright that he didn’t want me or love me but it was clear that he loved his cards, horses, and games more than he would ever love me. It was the little things. Ignoring me, dismissing me when I asked him why he smelled of perfume, the way he would pick fights with me. Sometimes, I met people when I was alone and when I said I was his wife, they would act surprised since he never let them know that he was married. By the time I was spending nights alone, I was resigned to the truth. Worst of all were the looks from other people. Walking through the town and taking the looks from other people pitying me was enough to drive me to shut myself up in the estate. It cut to the bone that they knew my husband was a philandering, gambling drunk. I hated being the object of their gossip and pity.

  A baby meant that I would have someone to love me, even if my husband didn’t want to or couldn’t. A baby would make it all worth it. When Riley was born it wasn’t immediately apparent that he wasn’t Russell’s and Russell didn’t care either way to spend any time with him. As his features came through, it became apparent that he could not have been fathered by Russell and I lived in fear for months that Russell might catch on and discover the secret. Though he had my red hair, his nose, eyes and, mouth were strikingly similar to Niall’s. I was certain that he would be the spitting image of a baby picture of Niall if I ever saw one.

  Russell never noticed.

  He never changed a diaper, fed him, bathed him, nothing. He probably wouldn’t have been able to tell me what color his eyes were if I had asked him, so I never said anything. Keeping the secret filled me with guilt at the beginning but then it felt good. It felt like my small victory against Russell who had done nothing but hurt me our whole marriage
. Fantasies of how upset he would be at the prospect of not being Riley’s father were my selfish little win against his mistreatment. I never had to think about telling Riley or anyone else the truth until Niall reentered my life.

  I should have said something to Niall.

  He was similar to Russell in many ways, but he wasn’t evil the way Russell was. He wasn’t spiteful and he wasn’t a degenerate. He was a good man but besides that, he deserved to know. A child didn’t fit into his playboy lifestyle, but he should have at least had the opportunity to know the truth.

  Okay, you tell him the truth and then what, I thought. He wasn’t going to restructure his life around being a father all of a sudden. He lived in New York for one thing. He wasn’t interested in bringing a four-year-old into his bachelor pad. He was an Earl. How would the news of Riley, supposedly the heir to another man’s title being his illegitimate son go over with his family? They would have to know since inheritance would become involved. He wouldn’t be thrilled to find out and they would be even less happy about it. I knew that I wouldn’t be happy to find out I had a child all along if I was in his position. This wasn’t the time to say this to him. This was never what he wanted out of the connection that we had. After this, when we went our separate ways, he didn’t want this hanging over his head. I was saying nothing.

  I wriggled out of his arms.

  “I have to go back to the house,” I said.

  “Stay.”

  “My son will be asking for me.” I sat up and pulled my top back on.

  “Will we be heading to London together tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The boy?”

  “He’ll stay here with the housekeeper. I don’t think he’ll be well enough to make the trip,” I said, thinking about Riley bouncing off the walls right now waiting for me to put him to sleep. One day, all these lies I had told Niall would come back to bite me in the ass and there would be nothing that I could do about it.

  “So, when will you spend a night with me and not run away during the night?”

  I sighed, standing up. “It’s not running away when I tell you first. And besides, if I chose to stay here with you instead of going home to my son, that would make me a bad mother.”

  “You could never be a bad mother. When do you have fun?” he asked.

  “Clearly you’ve never raised kids,” I said.

  He chuckled softly. “I understand,” he said.

  “You sound upset.”

  “I am but it’s okay,” he said. I looked over at him, laying there still naked. What if I told him right now? What would he say to me if I told him that the little boy in the house who was allegedly sick and needed me was his son?

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  I left the room and quickly cleaned the dishes, gathering them into the basket with the containers that weren’t empty yet. That wasn’t happening. I was probably dying with this secret. That was that. I walked out of the cottage and picked up my umbrella, trying to think about other things.

  The trip to London tomorrow. Speaking of all the lies that I had told Niall lately, I needed to figure out what I was doing about the watch.

  17

  Niall

  Did I risk it? I squinted, holding the razor to my face to examine it. It looked about seven hundred years old. The blades were rusted and who the hell knew when the last time it got washed was. Who the hell knew who the last owner was? No. I was not going to risk it. I felt like me and the last resident of the cottage had gotten pretty close at this point, but that was crossing the line. I wasn’t risking tetanus to get a shave in. I put it back in the drawer next to the sink. I ran a hand over my stubble, inspecting it in the mirror. It didn't look bad; I just wasn't used to it. My accommodations were making it so that I was getting used to a lot of things that I wasn’t used to in my normal life.

  I walked out of the bathroom to the bedroom. I had taken a shower, and that had gone off without a hitch. I thought I'd be a lot more uncomfortable at night sleeping on the old, lumpy mattress, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The night would have been made better if Eddy had stayed there with me, but I knew there was no way to convince her. I tried. I wasn’t going to convince her not to be a mother to her child just because I wanted to spend time with her which honestly, made me respect her even more.

  I went through to the living room to see whether my clothes were alright. They had spent the night drying by the radiator. Drying, more like baking. My jeans were dry but they were stiff and they smelled a little funny. The same with my shirt. I wasn't really keen on putting them back on. Did Eddy have a lot of men’s clothes lying around the house? If she hadn’t gotten rid of Russell’s things already, she would. I wasn’t sure how I felt about wearing the clothing of the man whose widow I was sleeping with. I had technically slept with her before she was his widow. No, I wasn’t going to walk over there half-naked to ask.

  This place had turned out more than a couple of items that I could use, maybe there would be clothes left behind? I wondered what state I would find them in. The search was kind of fun. It was like camping, out foraging for my own food. I went back to the bedroom and searched the drawers. Most of them were empty, but then I came across a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt, plaid. Both of them smelled kind of musty, the smell that clothing got when it spent too much time in storage being unworn. They were in better condition than my clothes though, so I figured why not.

  I changed and looked at myself in the mirror. I had to laugh. It was definitely a new look for me. I didn't usually dress like this. I didn’t consider myself a fashionista but I cared about what I looked like. I never would have been caught dead in hand-me-downs that I found in a caretaker’s cottage. Usually, the price tag on my clothes tended to be a little high as well. That wasn’t the case here, but the outfit was decent. The clothes were worn but nothing had holes in it. They fit rather well and were comfortable. I looked kind of... rustic in a way. I look like I might have been the actual caretaker left at that cottage.

  Not bad. Now, coffee.

  While the bedroom had yielded some treasures, the kitchen had not. There were some old, dust cover dishes, but the refrigerator wasn't connected and there was nothing available in the drawers, much less coffee or tea. My caffeine dependence was over a decade in the making and it wasn’t about to let me get anything done before I had downed something strong and black. I let myself out of the cottage. The scent of fresh dew and earth that has been freshly watered welcomed me. The sun shone and I could hear the birds chirping. That wasn't a sound you heard very often in New York City. It was somewhat refreshing in a way, even though I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Sometimes you lived in the city for so long that you forgot what the horizon looked like when it was unobscured by skyscrapers. The estate wasn’t all bad. A little unkempt but nothing a good groundskeeper couldn’t fix.

  I started my trek up to the house. I came around the front and was welcomed by the sight of a little boy in rain boots at the foot of the porch, launching himself into the puddles that had collected during the night. I froze like I had just walked up on a wild animal. It was him; it was Eddy’s son. He had bright red hair freckles and he was squealing with joy to himself as the water splashed up over his clothes, making him a muddy mess. I couldn't help smiling a little bit. I caught his attention as I walked up.

  “It's you,” he said. I stopped walking and smiled at him.

  “It is me. Were you waiting for me?”

  “You're the man with the nice car.”

  “That's right,” I said, laughing. I was a sucker for cars when I was a little boy too. The Aston Martin got a lot of stares, as it should. Some of my first big purchases when I was finally in charge of my own money were cars. If the boy loved this one, he needed to see the one I used in the States.

  “Can we go for a ride in your nice car?” he asked.

  I laughed. Honestly, in the ten seconds that we had known each other, I was ready to
tallow the little chap to do anything. His toothy little grin was to die for. The hair was unmistakably his mother’s but so was that smile. Just before I handed over the keys and told him to have fun, a woman charged out of the house.

  “Riley? Riley. What have you gotten into? You know your mother doesn't like it when you play in the puddles and get yourself muddy.” It was the lady from yesterday, the older woman, the housekeeper. Riley frowned at being scolded.

  “You're supposed to be inside cleaning up your toys,” the woman said, taking Riley's hand and heaving him up the porch.

  “But the puddles are more fun.” I watched the exchange between the two of them, the woman taking off the child's rain boots and muddy jacket before she let him go into the house. When she was done with him, she finally turned her attention to me.

  “Good morning sir, did you have a good night?”

  “Quite,” I said.

  “Please excuse the child.”

  “Not a problem at all. I remember those days myself.”

  She chuckled. “He’ll send the few dark hairs I have left grey. You must be hungry. Come inside. Coffee and breakfast are served.”

  Was that the child who was supposed to be under the weather? He had made a miraculous recovery in the hours since Eddy told me he was unwell. I walked into the house after the housekeeper and she directed me to the kitchen. The inside of the house bore more resemblance to the outside than I expected. We passed the sitting room on the way to the kitchen, or what I thought was the sitting room because it was almost totally empty. There was barely any furniture inside. Well, that told me why I wasn't directed there yesterday when I showed up. Inside the kitchen, I sat at the small breakfast table and looked around. It looked like a normal kitchen, but on one wall there were two hanging portraits of Eddy and the little boy. Next to them was a rectangle-shaped light patch on the wall where it seemed there used to be a third. That was odd.