The Billionaire's Christmas Bundle Of Joy - A Secret Baby Romance Read online

  The steps featured a large window at every landing, and Mia had to force herself not to pause and gasp at each view. The backyard was overflowing with countless evergreens, each bouncing with fluffs of snow. A light wind had come out of the north, and it made the tiny stairwell frigid. Mia wrapped her coast tighter around her and her baby. “I can’t believe people actually live in this part of the world.”

  “It’s insane, isn’t it?” James laughed.

  Mia held her tongue. To her, this view, this mansion, this forgotten past, it was all magic. And when James drew back the third floor’s door, she audibly gasped at the coziest nook she’d seen in her life.

  To the left, an enormous stone fireplace lined the wall, housing a roaring fire. Couches and plush chairs sat warming themselves beside the fire. A bit further back, Mia glimpsed a kitchen, which attached to a small hallway that presumably led to more rooms. More coziness. More life.

  “Now this is more like it,” Mia breathed.

  “Let’s see what Mike got for us, huh?” James said, and Mia nodded enthusiastically.

  He led her to the kitchen, where groceries lined the counter, shaded in the flickering firelight. “Ah. He knows me so well.” James gestured, clearly bursting with affection for his friend. “Hard cheeses—for a starter. Gouda and Havarti. And vegetables, garlic, pasta.” He finally smiled, and became peppy, filled with electricity. “I think I’ll make linguine.”

  Mia watched as James came to life, then, dancing around the kitchen, grabbing pots and pans from their hiding places. “I’ll pour you some sparkling grape juice,” he called to her as she sauntered toward the fire, lifting her tired feet to the coffee table. “He thought of everything.”

  “He must mean a lot to you,” Mia called back. She felt anxious, perturbed that she hadn’t heard of this house before, and that a person named Mike seemed to know more about James than she did.

  “Like I said,” James called back. “We grew up together. He was my only real friend in this area of the world. The village is just down the road. It has a single neighborhood, a post office, a police station, for some reason…” He trailed off. “News didn’t really make it up here. We were stranded. So we had to make do with each other.”

  “Wow,” Mia whispered. She leaned her head back, thinking about how isolated James’ childhood had been. How comparable to hers. She wondered if, as she fell asleep in her various foster homes, James was all the way up here, imagining what a life without loneliness felt like. Perhaps, now, they were filling in that blank for each other.

  “Rest your eyes, Mia,” James called then. The water had begun to boil, and his focus was purely on the food. “Lean your head back. Don’t think about anything but your body and the baby. Let me take care of you both.”

  His words were like drapes falling over her eyes. She fell into slumber for what seemed like hours, in that magical castle in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. James was revealing his truth to her. And so far, things were starting to make some kind of sense.

  TWENTY

  Mia woke to find James nudging her shoulder, rousing her. “Hey, sleepyhead,” he whispered. “Dinner’s ready.”

  Mia stretched her arms above her head, hearing the small pops and hisses of the crackling fire. In her dream, she’d been playing in the snow with James. A small shadow had danced between them, giggling. In the dream, she’d known that it was their child.

  “I’m starting to dream about the baby,” Mia said, her voice groggy. “I wonder if my unconscious mind can sense what the baby is like.”

  “What were they like in the dream?” James asked, helping her to her feet. He led her down the hallway, past the kitchen, to a small dining room. The table was a gorgeous, dark wood, clearly at least a century old.

  “The baby?” She blinked for a moment, her memory of the dream receding. “I don’t remember. I just know we were happy.”

  James filled her plate with linguine, accompanied by a salad, and brightened her glass with another cup of sparkling grape juice. In his own glass, he’d poured red wine. He lifted his glass toward her. His face was relaxed, with a deeper, fuzzier beard than he normally wore at the office. She liked his scruffiness; it was endearing, fit for the wilderness.

  “Thank you for coming up here today,” James said, clinking his glass with hers. “I didn’t know how much it would mean to me to show you my life and my past.”

  “It means a lot to me, too,” Mia replied. She sipped the bubbly grape juice and then dove into the linguine, her stomach aching with hunger.

  “You are the hungriest woman I’ve ever dated,” James joked then.

  Mia gave him a sharp look, raising one expertly groomed eyebrow in his direction.

  “No, no, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing! I think it’s really sexy that you eat so well,” James said. “Maybe it’s a biological thing, you know. I want the baby to be healthy, and I want to feed you well.”

  Mia paused for a moment. She felt the questions weighing on her. She knew the conversation needed to happen.

  The words burst from her quickly. “Why did you spend so much of your childhood in the Canadian wilderness, James? I know you’re not Canadian, yourself. I read online that your parents were both from Chicago.”

  James bowed his head. “I can’t believe they got that much information out of me,” he laughed.

  “It just said your birthplace. I put the rest together myself.”

  “I should have expected as much from such a marvelous journalist,” James winked. But soon, his face fell. He knew she was waiting for his answer. “Well, I was born in Chicago, on the south side. My parents were quite poor when I was young, until my father fell into some money in the stock market and bought a coalmine up here, in the mountains. After that, things seemed to get rockier between my mother and father. He was coming up here a lot. He wasn’t a family man. They split up when I was maybe four or five. I’ve never been able to get the details precisely down.”

  Mia frowned, thinking of what it must have been like for him having this chaotic home life. Perhaps every person lived with tragedy, carrying it around with them, buried deep, as they maneuvered through their life.

  “Anyway. Since my father had come into so much money, and it continued to sweep in via the coalmine, he bought this place, just a few miles from the mine. Granted, this mansion wasn’t as expensive as your classic mansion, outside of the Canadian wilderness. Some English duke had had it built maybe a hundred and fifty years ago, and after his descendants didn’t want it, my father scooped it up. He became obsessed with it… almost like a hermit. He made it into something incredible. His interior design of it was featured in architectural magazines all over the world.”

  “But you stayed in Chicago?” Mia asked. Her heart thumped.

  “I did. My mother was my primary caregiver, and I didn’t like leaving her alone. I had to be home from school on time, give or take maybe five minutes, or else she worried. She was that kind of mother.”

  “A helicopter parent before they became so prevalent?”

  “Maybe. But more so, she was lonely. She had loved my father, and he had abandoned her when he’d gotten enough money to leave. I was far too young to understand this, then. I just assumed that my mother and I were better off on our own. But it was hard on her, of course. I could see it in her eyes. They got married young; she was only 25 or so when I was 5. Your age, I suppose,” James said, gesturing.

  “I can’t imagine that. Being abandoned and having a child to care for.” Mia shuddered, sweeping her hands over her bump.

  “I’m not sure what it was,” James continued, “But I have this thought that the stress of being alone and of caring for me eventually led to her medical problems. I first noticed them when I was maybe eight or nine. She always had a cough. Sometimes it got really bad, but each time, she got better. She would take some kind of over-the-counter medicine—always generic—and greet me the next day with a sunny smile.” James shook his head. Pain ribbed
at his eyes and cheeks.

  “That is, until I was maybe eleven. I remember that day when she picked me up from school, her eyes were swimming with tears. She grabbed my shoulders and brought me toward her, giving me this most ridiculously passionate hug. I remember she did it in front of my friends, and my face turned beet red; I was so embarrassed.”

  Mia gave him a subtle laugh, knowing this story would quickly devolve into tragedy; she was moments from tears.

  “She told me she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. She told me they’d said she only had maybe six months to live—but not to worry, because she’d had worse before and she could get through it.” James placed his hands on the table and lifted his fingers, clearly causing himself stress.

  Mia reached across the table and placed her palm over his arm, clinging to him, grounding him.

  “The hospital visits were rough. I stayed with friends while she went through chemo, and I sat at her bed during the evening, doing my homework, or trying to. But mostly, we just joked with each other. We could chat for hours. I was only twelve, but I could tell she was surprised by my intelligence. I was wordy, like her. During her final weeks, she kept telling me how proud she was of me.”

  Around them, the air felt tense. Mia closed her eyes. “She passed away.”

  “She did. Just like the doctor had told us. I didn’t get a final conversation with her, like they do in the movies—where you’re meant to say all the things you want to say. I was at school when she passed, taking a science test. I got a 92%, which probably wouldn’t have satisfied my mom; she’d have told me to study harder.” He swallowed. “I’m sorry I’m so emotional. I don’t ever tell this story.”

  “You have a lot of grief to process,” Mia whispered. She allowed a moment of silence to pass before she continued, still revving with questions. She hadn’t realized his past was so edged with tragedy. “Did your father come to the funeral?”

  James shook his head. “No. He just sent the plane ticket, knowing he had to take care of me from then on. He didn’t even write a note, telling me he was sorry. To him, my mother was a stranger at that point. He didn’t need her, and he didn’t need the memory of her.”

  “And then, you came here.”

  “That’s right. My room was on this floor, actually. A twelve-year-old with my own kitchen. I didn’t have to interact with my father if I didn’t want to. But I grew lonely and often escaped to the village, where I met Mike and a few of the others. They became my family up here. My lifelines. I missed Chicago, but I knew that if I returned, my mother wouldn’t be there, and things would have changed. My life would be upside down. So, I made the best of it.”

  “Did you grow closer to your father?” Mia asked.

  James shrugged. “I saw him maybe a few times a week. When I turned thirteen, he had finished with the interior design of this place and wanted to throw himself into something else. So he started spending more and more time at the mine. He would come home covered in soot and stinking, and I hated to be around him; the way he spoke about my mother. I knew he was the only family I had, which kept me here. Perhaps otherwise, I would have fled. Discovered a new life somewhere.”

  Mia looked at her plate, the words filtering through her brain. How could all of this be true? She shoved her plate forward, toward the candles. “I don’t think I can eat any more,” she whispered. “Maybe I can save it for later?”

  “I’m not hungry anymore, either,” James murmured. “Do you want to take a walk outside in the snow? I know a good path through the trees. It’s not quite dark yet; it’s lighter later up here, near Alaska. The tilt of the Earth, and all that.”

  Mia nodded, rising to her feet. She felt heavy, aching, filled with his stories. James held her hand as they walked down the back steps and through a side door, into the snow. They were bundled tightly, and Mia peered out at him over her scarf. “But nobody lives here anymore,” she began, her voice tentative. “What happened to this place, after you went to college?”

  “You aren’t going to let me leave out of any of this story, are you?” James teased.

  “We’re already too far into it,” Mia replied. Around them, the evening sun gleamed across the snow; the evergreens twinkled. It looked like the last moments of a holiday party. It was filled with nostalgia.

  “All right. Well. I went to the University of Washington, as you probably know, before moving to Portland. I loved being down there, back in the States. I felt at home there. And since I hadn’t felt close to my father growing up here, I didn’t really feel anything tugging me back to Canada. Our relationship grew more and more strained and distant. And then—you’re going to love this—my father called me one December night, nine years ago, asking me if I wanted to come home for Christmas.”

  Mia frowned. She felt something ominous in his words.

  “I didn’t really have plans, and I didn’t mind coming up here,” James said, shrugging. “I wanted to see my childhood friends, my bedroom, the scenery. I admitted to myself that I missed it, and maybe that I even missed the old man. I was 21, and I wasn’t pretending to have all the answers yet. So I let him buy me the ticket, and I flew.”

  “On your own private plane?”

  “I wasn’t quite ready for that life yet,” James laughed, surprised. “My, how things change. Anyway. I arrived on Christmas Eve and woke up the next morning, Christmas Day. My father had had the chefs prepare a grand breakfast for us. We sat together in our pajamas, just two men, and began to talk—to really talk, the way we hadn’t in our entire lives.

  “He told me how he first fell in love with my mother,” James continued. “He’d seen her at a bookstore in Chicago, and he hadn’t been able to let her go without saying something. It hurt me, hearing that; it was hard for me to discuss her. I look at everything about her with rose-tinted glasses. I asked him how he could have ever broken her heart, to which he told me that life gets complicated. He looked ghastly in that moment, as if he were moments from death. I asked him if he regretted it, and, to my surprise, he said yes. He said some part of him wished he had remained in Chicago with my mother, but that he would have been miserable. I remember smacking my hand on the table, demanding how he could knew that with such certainty. ‘You didn’t have to go,’ I started screaming at him. ‘We could have been a real family. You could have given her the support she needed. She was always sick, dad. She was always so alone. You did that to her.’ Something like that.

  “After that, I stood up. I spit on the ground in that immaculate dining room, filled with Christmas trees, and I told him she had died because he was too frightened to live a life filled with love. And I told him I hated him for that.” He shook his head, lost in the moment. Mia gripped his hand tightly. “I called Mike to take me to the airport so I could fly back to Seattle. I settled back into my new life and tried to forget that that Christmas had ever happened. I moved to Portland the year after that, when I graduated. And I suppose the rest is history—the money, the fame… and the continued fight to forget everything that had ever happened with my parents.”

  James rubbed his free hand on his scalp, clearly anxious. Mia wrapped her arms around his neck, planting a soft, gentle kiss on his cheek. “What happened to your father?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Suddenly, James’ reaction to the story on Christopher Parsons, the man who’d attempted to keep the Christmas spirit alive through April, made sense.

  “We haven’t spoken since then,” James replied. He began to lead her back toward the mansion, crunching through the snow. Above them, the stars were springing to life in the twilight sky. “Mike’s informed me of the goings on, of course. It’s a small town, with few things to talk about. But my father sold the mine maybe two years after that Christmas, and he moved to some Caribbean resort. I’ve considered trying to make contact with him. I’ve even looked up his resort. But frankly, Mia, he knows where I am. My name is all over the news. He could reach out to me in an instant.”

  Mia’s muscles
and bones ached with the power of his story. She followed James back upstairs, into the safety of that cozy room. James dropped a few logs on the fire, causing it to roar while it tickled the outer edges of the bricks. Mia wrapped herself in a warm blanket and snuggled close to James, feeling deeply intimate with him after hearing his tale. She felt she could see James from afar, now, assessing the root of his problems and anxieties.

  “You’re so good to me,” Mia whispered. “Despite the turmoil you’ve been through. You’re able to dive beyond it and see your surroundings for what they are.”

  “Except Christmas,” James whispered, pressing his lips on her forehead. “Except that.”

  “I realize why, now,” Mia returned.

  After a small pause, James spoke. “I want to apologize for never asking you about your past. I wanted to avoid the topic of mine so badly that I just skipped the topic of backgrounds altogether. But I see now how important your history is in knowing who you are.” He whirled a brown curl around Mia’s ear, giving her a sweet smile. “Please. Tell me about your past, little Mia. Who is the mother of my child, really? Deep beneath that head of beautiful brown hair?”