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

  “Going somewhere?” I asked, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes. He grinned.

  “I’m taking you with me.”

  Niall

  Present Day

  Dearest Niall,

  I trust that you have been keeping well. The household is fine. I would never write simply to trouble you. Make your way home this month. You're needed on family business. We expect you on the first.

  All my love,

  Father.

  The letter was written on his personal stationery in fine calligraphy. The letter. My father sent me a letter. Who the hell even did that anymore? But then again, a text message from him would have been more of a shock. The fact that he addressed it ‘dearest Niall’ was enough of an indicator that he hadn’t written it himself.

  The letter was short and managed to tell me exactly nothing. I seldom came home. It didn't really feel like home, so what was the use? I balled the letter up and launched it across the room, narrowly missing the wastepaper basket. I was at a hotel. Who the hell came back to their hometown and stayed at a hotel? With just one word from me, my living quarters would have been arranged at the family home, but again, it wasn't really a family home if you didn't feel like family.

  It wasn't the first yet. I had flown into London early so that I could have some time alone before facing him. It was just him. My mother had died a long time ago. I didn’t know how much better she was because she was married to him, but at the very least, she had more patience than he did. Maybe that was just me remembering her fondly and wanting some connection, any connection with my so-called family.

  I knew better by now than to look for it. What was wrong with me? I was strangely sentimental all of a sudden. Must have been being back in rainy old London again. The weather in New York had its moments but London’s constant precipitation was something I had never missed. It was already night time. I had slept on the flight here from New York, so I wasn't tired. I was restless. I didn't want to stay here, and I certainly didn't want to look my dad up, not even to tell him that I had gotten here safely. Let's face it, he didn't care.

  I went up to the bar. I liked this hotel. Compared to other chain places, it was smaller but a hundred times more exclusive. Their presidential suite was always ready for me whenever I needed it, which granted wasn't often. If I wanted though, I could have my own personal bartender up here mixing drinks for me.

  I never did anything too fancy. I mixed myself a quick gin and soda and downed it. I was heading out tonight. London was full of places to go and get into trouble if that was what you were looking for. I preferred New York, but that was just because of the distance mostly. American girls loved the accent and there was so much you could get away with once they knew you were a any kind of titled gentleman. They loved that British aristocracy shit. I never used the title to get girls these days. I wasn’t really on the hunt anymore.

  My suite was huge but I still felt strangely closed in. After one more drink, enough to get a little bit of a buzz going, I headed out. Right across the street from the hotel was a casino. There was a fine drizzle coming down as usual. I put a jacket on and went. I was greeted at the entrance by name. This place was exclusive, exclusive and old. The members list featured international businessmen, celebrities and members of various countries’ royal families. Hobbyists didn't come here, only people hoping to do some serious damage. All the men in my family were members but as far as I knew, I got the most mileage out of mine.

  There was something about casinos that felt like home to me. The chandeliers and opulent interiors weren't my thing, but I like to play with fire. I liked it when the odds were not in my favor. I went straight for the poker tables and got out some cash. There were a couple of guys at the table already and they grunted in admiration. I didn't play small. I hailed the passing waiter and ordered a scotch, and then the game began.

  “All in,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” the dealer asked. Yes, I was sure. I was chronically lucky. It was a problem. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care that the house always won. I was yet to see it since that didn’t seem to be the case with me. I had more money than I could hope to burn through in this or several more lifetimes.

  In a perfect world, I was disinherited for being such a fuck up. That perfect world would have been crafted by my father. My worst crime against him had been going against my purpose as his son and heir to his estate. He could still do whatever he wanted to me; I had the mother of all safety notes. When my mother died, I got everything, and it was a lot. It was ungrateful to say, but fuck it, I was just ungrateful then. I had never had to worry about money in my life and I never would, but I always wondered what my life would look like without it.

  Normal parents who let me be myself. Who loved me, who were interested in what I wanted and who I was? I was desperate for that as a kid and never got it. As far as I was concerned, it was the money’s fault. The money meant expectations and tradition. Duty, my least favorite word in the English Language. All of those things were more important to my parents than I was. So I gave up. I never chose that life so I just did what I wanted. It had mostly worked out for me since I didn’t give a shit either way what it did to my dad’s blood pressure. He was past the point of stopping me anyhow. I did whatever I wanted every day. Woke up in a different time zone whenever the fancy took me. Never had to try hard for women. Bought anything, and I do mean anything I wanted whenever I wanted.

  Yeah. I was living the dream.

  My interest in the game went in and out. Lose, I thought. If nothing else that would be a nice change of pace. I threw my drink back, draining it and looked around the room. The typical crowd was out tonight. Men and their suits who had come straight from work. The female partners who were beautifully crafted and dressed for the occasion.A few obvious foreigners who were there to try their luck. And then I saw her.

  Wow, I thought it was her. I saw hair, auburn hair. My eyes focused on the face, then the body, and then recognition kicked in.

  Holy God.

  It was her. The Baroness. The memory of our night together hit me like a ton of bricks. It was never that far away from consciousness.

  It wasn't every day that you won a men's wife in a card game and then proceeded to have the most passionate night of your life with her. It was five years ago, and I remembered it like it happened five minutes ago. She was just as beautiful as ever, dressed in a teal dress that looked amazing with her skin and hair. She was walking around the table, looking a little lost. What was she doing here? Once the shock of seeing her past, questions came up. She had had a pretty, let's call it rough, experience at a casino the last time that I checked. If I was her, I would be a little gun-shy.

  If she was here though, that man with the baron was too. I felt a burn in my chest like the scotch I was just drinking. What kind of man feels chalice of a woman's husband? Married women are the best kind. There was no use of lusting after them. You don't have to bother, spend that energy. There's already somebody taking care of her, so your services aren't needed. Only, he wasn't taking care of her last time I checked. From what she told me, she merely tolerated him. Keeping in mind that he put her up as collateral during that gambling game, my jealousy felt a little more justified.

  Where was he? Was he back to do it again? Lose his wife to me, again? I just knew that I treated her better than he ever had. Five years was a long time. She was married then, but marriages ended all the time. She didn't fuck me like she was married.

  I never had any intention of making a move, but then she did and who the hell was I to say no to that. She was absolutely gorgeous, both of us were tipsy, and both of us had basically been given the go-ahead from the Baron. She rocked my world that night. I felt my body react remembering it as she approached the table. Suddenly, not only was I hard, I was nervous. She scanned the table, her eyes passing my face, and then she paused looking at me again. She seemed to freeze, her features freezing on her face.

  O
h no. She recognized me and I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. It seems like time slowed down, but I knew it hadn't. It felt like the two of us were having a private moment in this room full of people. Slowly, her face broke into a smile. She looked over the table one more time, then stopped and waited as the dealer dealt her in. I watched her every move. She was one person away from me. I was staring, shameless, I knew the way it looked, but I couldn't stop. I watched her look at her cards and then set down her chips.

  Not even a hello, I thought. If someone asked me my name right then, I wouldn't know what to tell them.

  The game started and I tried my best to concentrate. Honestly, watching her was more important than winning the game. Her luck wasn't good. She lost the hand. She frowned and shook her head, and she shrugged.

  “I should have known,” she said.

  “Are you playing again?” I asked her, finally gaining control of my tongue. She looked at me and I was rendered speechless once again.

  “I should have learned my lesson from the first time. I'm rubbish at poker.”

  “I reckon anyone can learn.”

  She shook her head. “It's just not my game.”

  “Then what is your game?” I asked. She smiled a smile right on the borderline of innocent and devious. It sent blood rushing down to my cock. Five years later and she still did it to me.

  “Hearts.”

  2

  Edwina

  Back in the belly of the beast, were we?

  My dress felt tight. It wasn't tight, it fit perfectly, but even the sensation against my skin was irritating me. Rich people. My husband's people. Maybe a few of them even recognized me through him. Luckily thus far none of them had stopped me to say hello or make otherwise useless small talk.

  Needless to say, I hated casinos.

  I never thought that I would be walking back into one, but here we were. Even after his death, my husband still managed to make me humiliate myself in new and cruel ways. I wasn't even sure that the plan would work. I made my way around the tables of people gambling. Disgusting habit if I did say so myself. Maybe a little hasty of an assumption but without my husband's gambling problem, I wouldn't be in this position.

  After dying and leaving me with nothing, money was tight. He was an addict and what he had left us was barely enough to keep the estate going. Recently, I found out that he had written a check to this casino in exchange for chips. Our banker was the one who had to break the bad news to me. What very well could have been the last of our money, was in the form of casino chips that my husband had secreted away in an old suitcase.

  “So, do I take them back?” I had asked the banker. “They’re basically money, right? I can swap them for the cash, can’t I?”

  “You can, but they are going to treat it like debt repayment.”

  “I don't want to lose more money. I didn't even know that my husband wrote this check.”

  “What you can do to get some money out of them is sell them to somebody at the casino, someone gambling. Give them a better deal than the house and maybe you can get a deal.”

  It sounded easy enough at the time, but who the hell was going to buy a bunch of casino chips off of me? A stranger wandering the casino offering casino chips?

  This place was high end, exclusive. I thought that that would work in my favor. To be quite honest, I thought that if someone did recognize me as the Baroness of Belshire, that would be a good thing. Maybe they would have mercy on me when I made my ludicrous request. The poor widow who was broke because her husband had lost all their money doing exactly this.

  This networking thing had never been so difficult before. My husband had been well-connected, and I had taken advantage of that. Still though, I wished I never had to do this. I wished that I never had to still, still be cleaning up after the messes that he made.

  The plan was simple enough on the face of it. Find one person just one, talk to them long enough to get them to like me, leverage any useful connections and then tell him that I happened to have a few thousand pounds worth of chips for them if they were interested.

  And then what if they asked me why I had them?

  At that point, I could either lie or tell them the truth. I would have much preferred lying, but I could hardly think of a believable tale at the moment. Nobody just had casino chips lying around. Nobody just had a degenerate gambling addict for a husband like I did. And if they did, God bless them. I hoped that they never ended up in the same situation that I was in. I would probably have to come clean if I did end up finding someone who would take the chips off of me about the Baron and being close to financial ruin. I was dreading it.

  Running around in my husband's old circles, they could tell just by looking at you, just by hearing you speak, whether or not you were good enough to be around them. I did not want them to treat me like the Baron's poor, impoverished widow, even though that was what I was. I would tell the story to anyone who would buy the chips. I needed the money more than I needed my pride. A windfall of cash would keep the estate running for at least another few months, giving me time to figure out what to do then. If this didn't work, I would have to finally admit defeat and call my parents. A chill ran through me thinking about that. That was the absolute last resort. I had come all the way to London for this. I was not leaving before I had some cash for these chips.

  I scanned the room for a likely target.

  All the usual suspects were present. Rich guy number one with a much younger wife. Rich guy number two with a much younger wife. Rich guy number three who was yet to divorce his starter wife for his future much younger wife, but surely already cheating on her. My eyes wandered to the poker table.

  Oh, hello, who was that?

  A young looking guy with messy blond hair locked eyes with me.

  Hang on.

  No, it couldn't be. I froze. It was. My heart was already racing a mile a minute, now it felt like it would jump out of my mouth.

  It was him.

  Oh my God. What were the chances? I had a feeling that I would run into at least one familiar face, but not one that I wanted to see. That might have been an overstatement. It wasn’t that I wanted to see him, it was just that he was... we had history. Funny that the first time we had met had been in a casino. After the casino, we had gone up to his presidential suite and well... a lot of things had changed since then. That night had completely changed the course of my life.

  He would do it right? He would buy the chips from me if I told him what was going on, wouldn't he? He already knew a little bit about my situation. Maybe he even knew that the Baron was dead. The night we slept together was one of my fondest memories. It bonded us. I could tell him this if no one else. I smiled at him. His face slowly softened, and he returned it. I started walking up to the table and took the empty seat one person away from him.

  We started playing.

  Aren’t you going to say something to him, I thought. Well, yeah, I was going to but it was much easier said than done. He was there the night that my husband put me up in a card game. There was nothing more humiliating than that. He had seen me at my lowest and not judged me for it. That was what I thought coming in but now, I couldn't imagine admitting to him the real reason why I was here. I stayed with Russell even after he did what he did to me. I stayed and eventually outlived him. What the hell did that say about me? I should have gotten rid of my degenerate, drunken, gambling husband as soon as he offered me up in a card game, but I didn't. I have never felt as much shame over my decision as I did right then, about to ask the man who won me in a card game to help me financially.

  And then there was the secret. This was a bad idea from the start. I shouldn’t have walked into a casino again expecting things to go my way. I had terrible luck in places like this and I was about to see the worst of it.

  Of course, I lost the game. Good thing I hadn’t bet that much. I sighed and shrugged, trying to look gracious as I gave up the equivalent of one of our monthly bills. “I sho
uld have known.”

  “Are you playing again?” he asked me. I looked at him. I was studiously avoiding eye contact the whole game. Now that he had initiated, I felt like it was almost an invitation. Of course, his voice after all these years sent prickles over my skin. The good kind.

  “I should have learned my lesson from the first time. I'm rubbish at poker.”

  “I reckon anyone can learn.”

  “It's just not my game.”

  “Then what is your game?” he asked. I smiled at him. He still had that knack to make me feel comfortable, even in the most uncomfortable, ridiculous circumstances.

  “Hearts,” I said.

  He frowned suddenly looking around at the table, and then he stood up.

  “Would you like to join me for a drink?” he asked. Oh, so suddenly? I stood. Any excuse to get out of there.

  “Yeah, I'd love that.”

  Amazing. He wasn't even going to make me work for it. With any luck, this was going to be easier than I thought.

  It was still too early to count my chickens. I needed to keep my guard up. I couldn’t let go the way he or I really wanted to. The closer I got to him, the closer he would get to my secret. I needed him though. This wasn't the first time that I was in front of him with a bruised pride. I followed him out of the main room and into one of the smaller rooms. It seemed like a little bar for people to come take breaks between their games. There was a small bar and few tables scattered around the room. He told me to sit while he got us some drinks.

  I sighed and felt a wash of relief when he left, grateful for the few moments away from him. Being in his presence again was having an unexpected effect on me. I never thought it would happen. Never thought I would be so lucky. In the mess that followed my husband dying, the financial struggle and uncertainty, he just never really crossed my mind anymore. I could not fuck this up. I needed to get him to buy me out. I have never asked him for anything before, surely, with our history, he would give this to me.