Bound By A Baby

Bound by a Baby

Have Baby, Need Billionaire

Maureen Child

The Boss’s Baby Affair

Tessa Radley

The Pregnancy Contract

Yvonne Lindsay

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Have Baby, Need Billionaire

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

The Boss’s Baby Affair

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

The Pregnancy Contract

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Copyright

Have Baby, Need Billionaire

MAUREEN CHILD is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur. Visit Maureen’s website at www.maureenchild.com.

For Carter

He’s never met the Lonely Bunny

But he loves the Little Critters

One

Simon Bradley didn’t like surprises.

In his experience, any time a man let himself be taken unawares, disaster happened.

Order. Rules. He was a man of discipline. Which is why it only took one look at the woman standing in his office to know that she wasn’t his kind of female.

Pretty though, he told himself, his gaze sweeping her up and down in a brisk, detailed look. She stood about five foot four and looked even shorter because she was so delicately made. She was tiny, really, with short blond hair that clung to her head in chunky layers that framed her face. Big silver hoops dangled from her ears and her wide blue eyes were fixed on him thoughtfully. Her mouth was curved in what appeared to be a permanent half smile and a single dimple winked at him from her right cheek. She wore black jeans, black boots and a bright red sweater that molded itself to her slight but curvy body.

He ignored the flash of purely male interest as he met her gaze and stood up behind his desk. “Ms. Barrons, is it? My assistant tells me you insisted on seeing me about something ‘urgent’?”

“Yes, hi. And please, call me Tula,” she said, her words tumbling from her delectable-looking mouth in a rush. She walked toward him, right hand extended.

His fingers folded over hers and he felt a sudden, intense surge of heat. Before he could really question it, she shook his hand briskly, then stepped back. Looking past him at the wide window behind him, she said, “Wow, that’s quite a view. You can see all of San Francisco from here.”

He didn’t turn around to share the view. He watched her instead. His fingers were still buzzing and he rubbed them together to dissipate the sensation. No, she wasn’t his type at all, but damned if he wasn’t enjoying looking at her. “Not all, but a good part of it.”

“Why don’t you have your desk facing the window?”

“If I did that, I’d have my back to the door, wouldn’t I?”

“Right.” She nodded then shrugged. “Still, I think it’d be worth it.”

Pretty, but disorganized, he thought. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Ms. Barrons—”

“Tula.”

“Ms. Barrons,” he said deliberately, “if you’ve come to talk about the view, I don’t really have time for this. I’ve got a board meeting in fifteen minutes and—”

“Right. You’re a busy man. I get that. And no, I didn’t come to talk about the view, I got a little distracted, that’s all.”

Distractions, he thought wryly, are probably how this woman lives her life. She was already letting her gaze slide around his office rather than getting to the point of her visit. He watched her as she took in the streamlined office furniture, the framed awards from the city and the professionally done photos of the other Bradley department stores across the country.

Pride rose up inside him as he, too, took a moment to admire those photos. Simon had worked hard for the last ten years to rebuild a family dynasty that his father had brought to the brink of ruin. In one short decade, Simon had not only regained ground lost, thanks to his father’s sloppy business sense, he’d taken the Bradley family chain of upscale shopping centers further than anyone else ever had.

And he hadn’t accomplished all of that by being distracted. Not even by a pretty woman.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, coming around his desk to escort her personally to the door, “I am rather busy today….”

She flashed him a full smile and Simon felt his heart take an odd, hard lurch in his chest. Her eyes lit up and that dimple in her cheek deepened and she was suddenly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Shaken, Simon brushed that thought aside and told himself to get a grip.

“Sorry, sorry,” Tula said, waving both hands in the air as if to erase her own tendency to get sidetracked. “I really am here to talk to you about something very important.”

“All right then, what is it that’s so urgent you vowed to spend a week in my waiting area if you weren’t allowed to speak to me immediately?”

She opened her mouth, shut it again, then suggested, “Maybe you should sit down.”

“Ms. Barrons…”

“Fine,” she said with a shake of her head. “Your call. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Pointedly, he glanced at his watch.

“I get it,” she told him. “Busy man. You want it and you want it now. Okay then, here it is. Congratulations, Simon Bradley. You’re a father.”

He stiffened and any sense of courtesy went out the window along with his sense of bemused tolerance. “Your five minutes are up, Ms. Barrons.” He took her elbow in a firm grip and steered her toward the door.

Her much shorter legs were moving fast, trying to either keep up or slow him down, he wasn’t sure which. Either way, it didn’t make a difference to him. Beautiful or not, whatever game she was playing, it wasn’t going to work. Simon was no one’s father and he damn well knew it.

“Hey!” She finally dug the heels of her boots into the lush carpet and slowed his progress a bit. “Wait a second! Geez, overreact much?”

“I’m not a father,” he ground out tightly. “And trust me when I say that if I had ever slept with you, I would remember.”

“I didn’t say I was the baby’s mother.”

He didn’t listen. Just kept moving toward the door at a relentless pace.

“I would have worked up to that little declaration slower, you know,” she was babbling. “You’re the one who wanted it direct and fast.”

“I see. This was for my benefit.”

“No, it’s for your son’s benefit, you boob.”

He staggered a little in spite of knowing that she had to be lying. A son? Impossible.

She took advantage of the momentary pause in his forced march toward the door to break free of his grip and step back just out of reach. He was unsettled enough to let her go. He didn’t know what she was trying to pull, but at the moment, her eyes looked soft but determined as she met his gaze.

“I realize this is coming as a complete shock to you. Heck, it would be for anybody.”

Simon shook his head and narrowed his eyes on her. Enough of this. He didn’t have a son and he wasn’t going to fall for whatever moneygrubbing scheme she’d come up with in her delusional fantasies. Best to lay that on the line right from the start.

“I’ve never even seen you before, Ms. Barrons, so obviously, we don’t have a child together. Next time you want to convince someone to pay for a child that doesn’t exist, you might want to try it on someone you’ve actually slept with.”

She blinked up at him in confusion, then a moment later she laughed. “No, no. I told you, I’m not the baby’s mother. I’m the baby’s aunt. But you’re definitely his father. Nathan has your eyes and even that stubborn chin of yours. Which does not bode well, I suppose. But stubbornness can often be a good quality, don’t you think?”

Nathan.

The imaginary baby had a name.

But that didn’t make any of this situation real.

“This is insane,” he told her. “You’re obviously after something, so why not just spill it and get it over with.”

She was muttering to herself as she walked back to his desk and Simon was forced to follow her. “I had a speech all prepared, you know. You rushed me and everything’s confused now.”

“I think you’re the only thing confused here,” Simon told her, moving to pick up his phone and call security. They could escort her out and he’d be done with this and back to work.

“I’m not confused,” she said. She read his expression and added, “I’m not crazy, either. Look, give me five minutes, okay?”

He hung up. Wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the gleam in her blue eyes. Maybe it was that tantalizing dimple that continued to show itself and disappear again. But if there was the slightest chance that what she was saying was true, then he owed it to himself to find out.

“All right,” he said, checking his watch. “Five minutes.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath and said, “Here we go. Do you remember dating a woman named Sherry Taylor about a year and a half ago?”

A thin thread of apprehension slithered through Simon as he searched his memory. “Yes,” he said warily.

“Well…I’m Sherry’s cousin, Tula Barrons. Actually, Tallulah, named after my grandmother, but that’s such a hideous name that I go by Tula….”

He was hardly listening to her now. Instead his mind was focused on those nebulous memories of a woman in his past. Was it possible?

She took another steadying breath and said, “I know this is hard to take in, but while you two were together, Sherry got pregnant. She gave birth to your son six months ago, in Long Beach.”

“She what?”

“I know, I know. She should have told you,” the woman said, lifting both hands as if to say it wasn’t her fault. “I actually tried to convince her to tell you, but she said she didn’t want to intrude on your life or anything, so…”

Intrude on his life.

That was an understatement. God, he could barely remember what the woman looked like. Simon rubbed at the spot between his eyes as if somehow that might clear up the foggy memories. But all he came up with was a vague image of a woman who had been in and out of his life in about two weeks’ time.

And while he’d gone on his way without a backward glance, she’d been pregnant? With his child? And didn’t even bother to tell him?

“What? Why? How?”

“All very good questions,” she said, smiling at him again, this time in a sympathetic fashion. “I’m really sorry this is such a shock, but—”

Simon wasn’t interested in her sympathy. He wanted answers. If he really did have a son, then he needed to know everything.

“Why now?” he demanded. “Why did your cousin wait until now to tell me, and why isn’t she here herself?”

Her eyes filmed over and he had the horrifying thought that she was going to cry. Damn it. He hated when women cried. Made a man feel completely helpless. Not something he enjoyed at all. But a moment later, the woman had gotten control of her emotions and managed to stem the tide of those tears. Her eyes still glittered with them, but she refused to let them fall and Simon found, unexpectedly, that he admired her for it.

“Sherry died a couple of weeks ago,” she said softly.

Another quick jolt of surprise in a morning that felt full of them. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing it sounded lame and clichéd, but what else was there to say?

“Thanks,” she said. “It was a car accident. She died instantly.”

“Look, Ms. Barrons…”

She sighed. “If I beg, will you please call me Tula?”

“Fine. Tula,” he amended, thinking it really was the least he could do, considering. For the first time in a very long time, Simon had been caught completely off guard.

He wasn’t sure how to react. His instinct, of course, was to find this baby and if it was his son, to claim him. But all he had was this stranger’s word, along with memories that were too obscure to trust. Why in the hell would a woman get pregnant and not tell the baby’s father? Why wouldn’t she have come to him if that child really was his?

He scrubbed one hand across his jaw. “Look, I’m sorry to say, I don’t really remember much about your cousin. We weren’t together long. I don’t see why you’re so sure this baby is mine.”

“Because Sherry named you on the baby’s birth certificate.”

“She gave the baby my name and didn’t bother to tell me?” He didn’t even know what to say to that.

“I know,” she said, her tone soothing.

He didn’t want to be soothed. Or understood. “She could have put anyone’s name down,” he pointed out.

“Sherry didn’t lie.”

Simon laughed at the ridiculousness of that statement. “Is that right?”

Tula winced. “All right, fine. She lied to you, but she wouldn’t have lied to her son. She wouldn’t have lied about Nathan’s name.”

“Why should I believe that the boy is mine?”

“You did have sex with her?”

Scowling, Simon admitted, “Well, yes, I did, but—”

“And you do know how babies are made, right?”

“That’s very amusing.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” she told him. “Just honest. Look, you can do a paternity test, but I can tell you that Sherry would never have named you as Nathan’s father in her will if she wasn’t sure.”

“Her will?” The silent clang of a warning bell went off in his mind.

“Didn’t I already tell you that part?”

“No.”

She shook her head and dropped into one of the chairs angled in front of his desk. “Sorry. It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, what with Sherry’s accident and arranging the funeral and closing up her house and moving the baby up here to my house in Crystal Bay.”

Sensing that this was going to go on far longer than the original five minutes he’d allowed her, Simon walked around the edge of his desk and took a seat. At the very least, he was now in the position of power. He watched the pretty blonde and asked, “What about the will?”

Tula reached into the oversize black leather bag she had slung over her shoulder. She pulled out a large manila envelope and dropped it onto his desk. “That’s a copy of Sherry’s will. If you look, you’ll see that I’ve been named temporary guardian of Nathan. Until I’m sure that you’re ready to be the baby’s father.”

Her voice, her words, were no more than a buzz of sound in his head. He read through the will quickly, scanning until he found the provisions for the child Sherry had named as his. Custody of minor, Nathan Taylor, goes to the child’s father, Simon Bradley.

He sat back in his chair and kept rereading those words until he was fairly certain they’d been burned into his brain. Was this true? Was he a father?

Lifting his gaze to hers, Simon found Tula Barrons studying him through those wide, brilliant blue eyes. She was waiting for him to say something.

Damned if he knew what it should be.

He’d been careful, always, in his relationships with women. He’d had no desire to be a father. And yet he had a vague memory of being with Sherry Taylor. The woman herself was hardly more than a smudge in his memories—but he did remember the night the condom had broken. A man didn’t forget things like that. But she’d never said anything about a baby, so he’d forgotten about the incident.

It was possible.

He might really have a son.

Tula watched as Simon Bradley came to terms with a whole new reality.

She gave him points. Sure, he’d been a little edgy, temperamental…all right, rude, at first. But she supposed that was to be expected. After all, it wasn’t every day you found out you were a father, for heaven’s sake.

Her gaze moved over him while he was reading the will and Tula had to admit that he wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. She and her cousin Sherry hadn’t been close, by any means, but Tula would have bet that she would at least know Sherry’s taste in men.

And tall, dark, gorgeous and crabby wasn’t it. Normally, Sherry had gone for the quiet, sweet, geeky type. Simon was about as far from that description as a man could get. He practically radiated power, strength. Ever since she had walked into the room, Tula had felt a sizzle of attraction for him that she was still battling. She so didn’t need yet one more complication at the moment.

“What exactly is it you want from me?”

His voice shattered her thoughts and she met his gaze. “I should think that would be obvious.”

He dropped the sheaf of papers to his desktop. “Well, you would be wrong.”

“Okay, how about this? Why don’t you come out to my place in Crystal Bay? Meet your son. Then we can talk and figure out our next move together.”

He scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck. She’d dumped a lot of information on him all at once, Tula told herself. Of course he was going to need a little time to acclimate.

“Fine,” he said at last. “What’s your address?”

She told him, then watched as he stood up behind his desk in a clear signal of dismissal. Well, that was all right with her. She had things to do anyway and what more was there to say at the moment? Tula stood up, too, and held her right hand out toward him.

A moment’s pause, then his hand engulfed hers. Again, just as it had happened earlier, the instant their palms met a bolt of heat shot up her arm and ricocheted around her chest like a manic Ping-Pong ball. He must have felt the same thing because he dropped her hand and shoved his own into his pocket.

She took a breath, blew it out and forced a smile that felt wobbly. “I’ll see you tonight then.”

As she left, Tula felt his gaze on her and the heat engendered by his stare stayed with her on the long ride home.

Two

“How’d it go?”

Tula smiled at the sound of her best friend’s voice. Anna Cameron Hale was the one human being on the face of the planet that Tula could count on being on her side. So, naturally, the moment she’d returned from San Francisco and facing down Simon Bradley, she dialed Anna’s number.

“About as you’d expect.”

“Ouch,” Anna said. “So he had no idea about the baby?”

“Nope.” Tula turned to look at Nathan, sitting in his bouncy seat. The babysitter, Mrs. Klein, had said that the baby was “good as gold” the whole time she was gone. Now, as he bounced and pushed off with his toes, the springs squeaked into motion, jolting him up and down in the small kitchen.

Tula’s heart gave a little Nathan-caused twinge that she was starting to get used to. How was it possible to love someone so much in the span of a couple of short weeks?

“In his defense, it must have been a shock for him to be faced with this out of the blue,” Anna said.

“True. I mean I knew about Nathan and it was still a stunner when Sherry died and suddenly I’m responsible for him.” Although, she thought, it hadn’t taken more than five minutes for her to adjust. “But when I told Simon, he looked like he’d been hit with a two-by-four.”

“God, honey, I’m sorry it didn’t go well. So what do you do now?”

“He’s coming here tonight to meet Nathan and then we’re going to talk.” Tula thought briefly about the little buzz of sensation she’d received when he shook her hand and then pushed that thought right out of her mind. There was already plenty going on at the moment. She so didn’t need anything else to think about.

But her mind couldn’t quite keep from remembering him as he stood over her, all fierce and furious.

“He’s going to your house?” Anna asked.

Tula shook her head and paid attention. “Yeah, why?”

“Nothing. But maybe I could come over and help you get ready.”

She knew exactly what Anna was thinking and Tula couldn’t help laughing. “You are not coming over to clean my house. He’s not visiting royalty or something.”

Anna laughed, too. “Fine. Just warn him when he walks in to watch where he steps.”

Tula stepped away from the kitchen counter and shot a look into her tiny living room. Toys littered the floor, her laptop was sitting open on the coffee table and her latest manuscript was beside it. She was doing revisions for her editor and when she was working, other things—like picking up clutter—tended to go by the wayside.

Shrugging, she silently admitted that though her house was clean, it did tend to get a little messy. Especially now that she had Nathan living with her. She hadn’t had any idea just how much stuff came along with a baby.

“Why did I call you again?” Tula asked.

“Because I’m your best friend and you know you need me.”

“Right, that was it.” Tula smiled and reached out one hand to smooth the wispy hairs on the top of Nathan’s head as he scooted past, babbling happily. “It was weird, Anna. Simon was crabby and rude and dismissive and yet…”

“Yet what?” Anna prompted.

There was a buzz of interest, Tula thought but didn’t say. She hadn’t expected it, hadn’t wanted it, but hadn’t been able to ignore it, either. The suit-and-tie kind of guy was so not what she was interested in. And for heaven’s sake, the last thing she needed was to be attracted to Nathan’s father. This situation was hard enough. Yet she couldn’t deny the flash of heat that had flooded her system the moment her hand had met his.

Didn’t mean she had to do anything about it though, she assured herself firmly.

“Hello?” Anna said. “Finish what you were saying! What comes after the ‘yet’?”

“Nothing,” Tula said with sudden determination. One thing she didn’t need was to indulge in an attraction for a man she had nothing in common with but a baby they were both responsible for. “Absolutely nothing.”

“And you expect me to just accept that?”

“As my friend, I’m asking you to, yeah.”

Anna sighed dramatically. “Fine. I will. For now.”

“Thanks.” She’d accept the reprieve, even though she knew that Anna wouldn’t let it go forever.

“So what’re you going to do tonight?”

“Simon comes here and we talk about Nathan. Set something up so that he can get to know the baby and I can watch them together. I can handle Simon,” she said a moment later and wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince Anna or herself. “I grew up around men like him, remember?”

“Tula, not every man who wears a suit is like your dad.”

“Not all,” she allowed, “but most.”

She was in the position to know. Her entire family had practically been born wearing business suits. They lived stuffy, insular lives built around making and keeping money. Tula was half convinced that they didn’t even know a world existed beyond their own narrow portion of it.

For example, she knew what Simon Bradley would think of her tiny, cluttered, bayside home because she knew exactly what her father would have thought of it—if he’d ever deigned to visit. He would have thought it too old, too small. He would have hated the bright blue walls and yellow trim in the living room. He’d have loathed the mural of the circus that decorated her bathroom wall. Mostly though, he would have seen her living there as a disgrace.

She had the distinct impression that Simon wouldn’t be any different.

“Look, the reality is it doesn’t matter what Nathan’s father thinks of me or my house. Our only connection is the baby.” As she spoke, she told her hormones to listen up. “So I’m not going to put on a show and change my life in any way to try to convince a man I don’t even know that I am who I’m not.”

A long second passed, then Anna laughed gently. “What does it say about me that I completely under stood that?”

“That we’ve been friends too long?”

“Probably,” Anna agreed. “Which is how I know you’re making rosemary chicken tonight.”

Tula smiled. Anna did know her too well. Rosemary chicken was her go-to meal when she was having company. And unless Simon was a vegetarian, every thing would go great. Oh, God—what if he was a vegetarian? No, she thought. Men like him did lunch at steak houses with clients. “You’ve got me there. And once we have dinner, I’ll talk to Simon about setting up a schedule for him to get to know Nathan.”

“You?” Anna laughed. “A schedule?”

“I can be organized,” she argued, though her words didn’t carry a lot of confidence. “I just choose to not be.”

“Uh-huh. How’s the baby?”

Everything in Tula softened. “He’s wonderful.” Her gaze followed the tiny boy as he continued on his path around the kitchen, laughing and making noises as he explored his world. “Honestly, he’s such a good baby. And he’s so smart. This morning I asked him where his nose was and he pointed right to it.”

Well, he had been waving his stuffed bunny in the air and hit himself in the face with it, but close enough. “Harvard-bound already.”

“I’ll sign him up on the waiting list tomorrow,” Tula agreed with a laugh. “Look, I gotta go. Get the chicken in the oven, give Nathan a bath and…ooh, maybe myself, too.”

“Okay, but call me tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”

“I will.” She hung up, leaned against the kitchen counter and let her gaze slide over the bright yellow kitchen. It was small but cheerful, with white cabinets, a bright blue counter and copper-bottomed pans hanging from a rack over the stove.

She loved her house. She loved her life.

And she loved that baby.

Simon Bradley was going to have to work very hard to convince her that he was worthy of being Nathan’s father.

The scent of rosemary filled the little house by the bay a few hours later.

Tula danced around the kitchen to the classic rock tunes pouring from the radio on the counter and every few steps, she stopped to steal a kiss from the baby in the high chair. Nathan giggled at her, a deep, full-belly laugh that tickled at the edges of Tula’s heart.

“Funny guy,” she whispered, planting a kiss on top of his head and inhaling the sweet, clean scent of him. “Laughing at my dance moves isn’t usually the way to my heart, you know.”

He gave her another grin and kicked his fat legs in excitement.

Tula sighed and smoothed her hand across the baby’s wisps of dark hair. Two weeks he’d been a part of her life and already she couldn’t imagine her world without him in it. The moment she’d picked him up for the first time, Nathan had carved away a piece of her heart and she knew she’d never get it back.

Now she was supposed to hand him over to a man who would no doubt raise Nathan in the strict, rarified world in which she’d been raised. How could she stand it? How could she sentence this sweet baby to a regimented lifestyle just like the one she’d escaped?

And how could she avoid it?

She couldn’t.

Which meant she had only one option. If she couldn’t stop Simon from eventually having custody of Nathan—then she’d just have to find a way to loosen Simon up. She’d loosen Simon up, break him out of the world of “suits” so that he wouldn’t do to Nathan what her father had tried to do to her.

Looking down into the baby’s smiling eyes, she made a promise. “I’ll make sure he knows how to have fun, Nathan. Don’t you worry. I won’t let him make you wear a toddler business suit to preschool.”

The baby slapped one hand down onto a pile of dry breakfast cereal on the food tray, sending tiny O’s skittering across the kitchen.

“Glad you agree,” she said as she bent down, scraped them up into her hand and tossed them into the sink. Then she washed her hands and came back to the baby. “Your daddy’s coming here soon, Nathan. He’ll probably be crabby and stuffy, so don’t let that bother you. It won’t last for long. We’re going to change him, little man. For his own good. Not to mention yours.”

He grinned at her.

“Attaboy,” she said and bent for another quick kiss just as the doorbell sounded. Her stomach gave a quick spin that had her taking a deep breath to try to steady it. “He’s here. You’re all strapped in, so you’re safe. Just be good for a second and I’ll go let him in.”

She didn’t like leaving Nathan alone in the high chair, even though he was belted in tightly. So Tula hurried across the toy-cluttered floor of her small living room and wondered how it had gotten so messy again. She’d straightened it up earlier. Then she remembered she and the baby playing after she put the chicken in the oven and—too late to worry about it now. She threw open the door and nearly gulped.

Simon was standing there, somehow taller than she remembered. He wasn’t wearing a suit, either, which gave her a jolt of surprise. She got another jolt when she realized just how good he looked when he pried himself out of the sleek lines of his business “uniform.” Casual in a charcoal-gray sweater, black jeans and cross trainers, he actually looked even more gorgeous, which was just disconcerting. He looked so…different. The only thing familiar about him was the scowl.