The CEO's Little Surprise (11 page)

Gage's vision blacked out for a long minute. Rage tore through his chest and he thought he'd lose it if he couldn't punch something.
Make
her terminate her pregnancy?

Life was precious, so precious. That core belief was the one sole gift Nicolas's death had given him. The fact that Briana didn't know that about him infuriated him. Except how could he blame her? It spoke to the shallowness of their relationship that she'd assumed he wouldn't want his son.

Gradually, he uncurled his fists and breathed until he could speak.

“Fine, okay. I get that she didn't tell me because she—wrongly—assumed I wouldn't support her decision to raise her child. Nothing could be further from the truth. The baby is my responsibility and I appreciate the fact that you've come to me so I can do the right thing.”

His vision went dim again as he processed what the
right thing
actually translated into. After years of cutting all ties with women as quickly as possible, one had managed to hook him with the ultimate string. For a guy who had no practice with commitment, he was about to get a crash course.

He was a father. A
single
father. His child's mother was dead and he had to step up. His carefree days of living life to the fullest had just come to a screeching halt with a set of brakes called parenthood.

And he'd never even held his son. What was he going to do?

All at once, he wished he'd asked Cass to be here with him. It made no sense. But he wanted to hold her hand.

“About that.” Lauren scooted to the edge of the couch, brow furrowed as she leaned closer to Gage. “I'd like to formally adopt Robbie.”

“Adopt him?” he parroted because his brain was having a hard time processing. Lauren wasn't here to pass off Briana's son to his father?

“That's actually why I contacted you, to discuss the paperwork that my lawyer is drawing up. You'll have to sign, of course, because you're the legal father on record. But it's just a formality,” she said quickly. “I'm not asking for any child support or any split custody. He'd be all mine and you can go about your life. I'm sure you're totally unprepared to be a father.”

It was as though she'd read his mind.

Something that felt an awful lot like relief washed through him. He'd give her money, of course. That was nonnegotiable. But Lauren could pick up where Briana left off and all of this would go away.

And the relief kicked off a pretty solid sense of shame. “So you want me to sign away all rights to my kid?”

“Well, yeah. Unless Briana was wrong and you are interested in being a father?” she asked tremulously, as if afraid of the answer, and tears welled up in her eyes. “You've never even met Robbie. I love him like my own son. He's a piece of Briana and I can't imagine giving him up. It would be best if he stayed with the family he's always known.”

“I don't know if that is best,” he admitted and his stomach rolled.

He should be agreeing with her. He should be asking her for papers to sign. Right now. What better circumstances could he have hoped for than to learn he had a son but someone else wanted him? It was practically a done deal.

But he couldn't. Somehow, he'd developed a fierce need to see this kid he'd fathered. He needed it to be real, and meeting his flesh and blood was the only way he could sign those papers in good conscience.

“I didn't know my son existed before today,” he heard himself saying as if a remote third party had taken over his body and started spitting out words without his permission. “And you're coming in here like it's all already decided. How can I know what's best for him? I want to meet him first.”

Gage had a significant number of zeroes padding his bank account, which wouldn't be hard to figure out, even for a casual observer. This could still be an elaborate ploy for a seven-or eight-figure check. But he didn't think so.

She nodded once. “Can it be in the next couple of days? Briana didn't have much, but her estate needs to be settled. Robbie's future being the most critical part, of course.”

Settled.
Yeah, all of this needed to be settled, but unfortunately, this was the least settled he'd ever been. What an impossible situation. And he didn't have the luxury of shrugging it off like he normally did.

Grimly, Gage showed Lauren out and sat on the couch, head in his hands. And he didn't even think twice about his next move. He pulled out his phone and dialed Cass.

When he'd left her in Dallas, it was with a terse goodbye and a promise to call her, but he'd never imagined he actually would, at least not for personal reasons. It should have been a good place for them to break things off and only focus on the business of Fyra's formula. He'd planned for it to be the end, but nothing with Cass felt finished.

Besides, he needed someone with a level head who knew him personally to stand by his side as he met his son for the first time. Someone who wouldn't let emotions get the best of her. Someone he hoped cared enough about him to help him make the right decision. Someone like Cass.

Too late, he realized none of that actually mattered. He wanted Cass because
she
mattered. Yeah, it scared him, but he couldn't deny the truth. The formula had ceased to be the most important thing between him and Cass.

Cass answered on the first ring and he didn't even bother to try and interpret that. Too much had shifted since they'd last talked for petty mind games like guessing whether she'd missed him like he'd missed her. Or whether she'd realize the fact that he'd called her had earth-shattering significance. It did. She could do what she wanted with that.

“I need you,” he said shortly. “It's important. Can you come to Austin?”

Eleven

C
ass went to Austin.

There really wasn't a choice. Gage had said he needed her and that was enough. For now. Later, she'd examine the real reason she'd hopped in the car ten minutes after ending his call. Much later. Because there was so much wrapped up inside it, she could hardly make sense of it all.

When his name had come up on her caller ID, she'd answered out of sheer curiosity. You didn't drop something on a woman like a surprise baby and then jet off. Of course, she'd also been prepared for some elaborate plot designed to see her again so he could coerce her into either giving him the formula or getting naked, at least until he got tired of her again. She'd planned to say no and spend the weekend crossing the finish line on the leak's name.

She had to be close. The list of potentials wasn't
that
long.

But instead she'd found herself saying yes to the surprising request to accompany Gage as he met his son for the first time. He wanted
her
to be by his side as he navigated this unprecedented situation. The sheer emotion in his voice had decided it. What if Gage wasn't involved in the leak and she missed her chance to find out what might happen between them?

Cass held Gage's hand as they mounted Lauren Miles's front steps and wondered not for the first time if he'd literally come apart under her grip. The new, hard lines around his mouth scared her, but the fragility—that was ten times worse. As if the news he'd fathered a child had replaced his bones with dust. One wrong move and he'd blow away in a strong wind if she didn't hold on tight enough.

Just this morning, they'd been drinking coffee on her back porch and she'd been desperate to work him out of her system. So she could let him go and move on. Clearly that wasn't happening. But what was?

Less than four hours had passed since she received Gage's troubling and cryptic phone call and their arrival on this quiet suburban street. The slam of a car door down the way cracked the silence. It felt as if there should be something more momentous to mark the occasion of entering the next phase of your life. Because no matter what, Gage would never be the same. His rigid spine and disturbed aura announced that far better than any words ever could.

“I admire what you're doing,” she told him quietly before he rang the doorbell. “This is a tough thing, meeting your son for the first time. I think you'd regret signing the papers if you didn't do this first.”

The fact that he'd asked her to come with him still hadn't fully registered. Because she didn't know what it meant.

“Thanks.” Gage's eyelids closed and he swallowed. “I had to do it even though I feel like I'm standing on quicksand. All the time. I needed something to hold on to.”

He accompanied the frank admission by tightening his grip on her hand. He meant her. She was the one holding him up and it settled quietly in her soul. In his time of need, he'd reached out to her. She wished she could say why that meant so much to her. Or why the fact that he was meeting this challenge head-on had softened her in ways she hadn't anticipated. Ways that couldn't be good in the long run.

But what if there was the slightest possibility that they might both put down their agendas now that something so life altering had happened? That hadn't felt conceivable in Dallas, but here...well, she was keeping her eyes open.

He rang the doorbell and a frazzled woman answered the door with a baby on her hip.

“Right on time,” the woman said inanely, and she cleared her throat.

Gage's gaze cut to the baby magnetically and his hazel eyes shone as he drank in the chubby little darling clad in one of those suits that seemed to be the universal baby uniform.

“I'm Lauren,” she said to Cass. “We haven't met.”

“Cassandra Claremont.” Since she wasn't clear what her role here was, she left it at that. She and Lauren didn't shake hands as there wasn't any sort of protocol for this situation, and besides, they were both focused on Gage. Who was still focused on the baby.

“Is this him?” he whispered. “Robbie?”

“None other.” Lauren stepped back to let Gage and Cass into the house, apologizing for the state of it as she led them to the living room.

A square playpen sat off to one side of the old couch surrounded by other baby paraphernalia that Cass couldn't have identified at gunpoint. All of it was tiny, pastel and utterly frightening.

That was when Cass realized she knew nothing about babies. She'd always known they existed and murmured appropriately over them when other women who had them entered Cass's orbit. But this was a baby's home, where the process of living and eating and growing up happened.

Gage had told her in the car on the way over that the baby's aunt was seeking to adopt Robbie. Really Cass was floored Gage hadn't signed the papers to give up his rights on the spot. Why hadn't he? The solution was tailor-made for a billionaire CEO who thought commitment was the name of a town in Massachusetts. Give up your kid and go on living life as though it was one big basket of fun with nothing to hold you back.

Sounded like Gage's idea of heaven to her.

The fact that he was here meeting his son instead...well, she wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world.

Crossing to the mat on the floor, Lauren set the baby upright in the center of one bright square and motioned Gage over. “Come sit with him. I can't honestly say he doesn't bite, but when he does, it doesn't really hurt.” She laughed without much humor. “Sorry, that was a lame joke.”

Then Gage knelt on the mat and held out a hand to his son. The baby glanced at the stranger quizzically but then reached out and grasped his father's finger with a small baby sound.

Cass forgot to breathe as a wave of tenderness and awe and a million other emotions she couldn't begin to name broke over Gage's expression, transforming it into something that tugged at her soul. She almost couldn't watch as the moment bled through her, blasting away the last of her barriers against a man whom she could never call heartless again. It would be a lie.

His heart was all over his face, in his touch as he ruffled his son's fuzzy head. In the telltale drop of moisture in the corner of his eye.

She couldn't watch and she couldn't look away as her own heart cried along with Gage. That's what love looked like on him and she wanted more of it.

Thirty minutes passed in a blur as Gage held his son in his strong arms and laughed as the baby pulled at his father's too-long hair. He pumped Lauren for information, demanding details like what Robbie ate, whether he'd taken his first step, what he did when he rolled over. Robbie's aunt answered the questions to the best of her ability but it soon became clear she hadn't spent every waking minute with the boy like his own mother had.

A somber cloud spread over the four of them with its dark reminder that this wasn't strictly a happy occasion of father meeting son. Gage had a decision to make and he needed to make it soon so Robbie could get settled in the home where he'd live for the next eighteen years with his permanent parent.

Lauren announced it was Robbie's nap time. She left the room, disappearing into the back of the house to perform the mysterious ritual of “putting him down” and returned after ten minutes, her eyes puffy and red, as if she'd been crying.

“He's so precious.” She sniffed. “It's so unfair. I can't tell you how it breaks my heart that he's lost his mother.”

“It's hard for me, too,” Gage admitted quietly. “My son should have a mother. Yet if Briana hadn't died, I might never have known about Robbie.”

It was the most brutal sort of turnabout and it was definitely not fair play. But Cass couldn't argue that fate had set that pendulum in motion. And the swings had widened to encompass her, as well.

Gage held out his hand to Lauren. “Thank you for opening your home to him.”

“I wouldn't have done anything else.” Lauren shook Gage's hand solemnly and didn't let go as she caught his gaze to speak directly to him. “I love him. He's my nephew, first and foremost, and we will always share that bond of blood. But you're his father. That's something I can't be to him and I'm prepared for whatever decision you make. Please, take twenty-four hours, though. Make a decision you can live with forever.”

Nodding, Gage squeezed Lauren's hand and turned to go, ushering Cass out the door ahead of him. His touch on her back was firm and warm and it infused her with the essence of Gage that she'd be a fool to pretend she didn't crave.

The best part was she didn't have to pretend. Instead of spending the weekend working Gage out of her system, something else entirely was happening and she couldn't wait to find out what.

He drove back to his mansion on the lake and helped her out of the Hummer, leading her up the flagstone steps to the grand entryway flanked by soaring panes of glass...all without asking if she planned to stay.

No way in hell was she going anywhere.

Throwing a frozen pizza in the oven passed for dinner, and an open bottle of Jack Daniel's managed to intensify the somberness that had cloaked them since leaving Lauren's house. They pulled up bar stools at the long, luminous piece of quartz topping the island in Gage's kitchen and ate.

Or rather, she ate and Gage stared into his rapidly diminishing highball filled with whiskey.

“I'd ask if you were okay,” Cass commented wryly, “but that would be ridiculous under the circumstances. So instead I'll ask if you want to talk about it.”

“He looks like Nicolas.” Gage tossed the last of his Jack down his throat and reached for the bottle. “Robbie. He's the spitting image of my brother at that age. My mom had a shrine to her firstborn lining the hallway. Literally dozens of pictures stared down at me for eighteen years as I went between my bedroom and the bathroom. Today was like seeing a ghost.”

“Oh, Gage.”
More alcohol needed, stat.
Her own Jack Daniel's disappeared as she sucked the bottom out of her glass through a straw. “That's...”

She didn't know what it was. Horrible? Morbid? Unfortunate? Gage had talked about Nicolas in college on occasion, so she knew the tragic story well. It had shaped a family into something different than might have been otherwise.

“It's a miracle.” A small smile lit up Gage's features. “I never would have imagined... My son is a gift that I don't deserve. A piece of myself and my brother all wrapped up into one amazing little package.”

The love and tenderness she'd seen at Lauren's house when he looked at his son appeared again in his expression, and it pierced her right through the heart. It was breathtaking on Gage, a man she'd longed to look at
her
that way, a man she'd been sure didn't care about anything. The fact that he'd shown a capacity for it was a game changer.

And she had a strong feeling she knew what that look signified. “You don't want to give up Robbie.”

Gage shook his head. “I can't. It never sat quite right with me anyway, but once I saw him... I don't need twenty-four hours to decide. He needs me.”

He wasn't going to walk away from his son. And she'd never been more proud of someone in her life.

That burst Gage's dam and he started talking about Robbie. How was it possible that a man becoming a father before her very eyes could be so affecting? But it was. Gage's decision opened up a part of her inside that flooded with something divine and beautiful.

They drifted to bed where they lay awake, facing each other in the dark, as she listened to Gage's plans for his impending fatherhood. There was no subject too inane, from the color of the walls in his son's new room to what kind of car Gage would buy him when he turned sixteen.

Cass smiled and bit back a suggestion that he let his son pick out his own car. Far be it from her to interrupt his flow. This was his way of working through it and her job was to be there for him. It was nice to be needed by the one man who had never needed her. Heady even.

“Thank you,” he said abruptly. “For coming on short notice. For holding my hand. For not heaping condemnation and a sermon on top of me. I had to figure this out and I couldn't have without you.”

What, like he was expecting her to shake her finger at him and give him a lecture about accepting responsibility? She shook her head. “You're giving me too much credit. I just responded to a phone call. You did the hard part.”

“No. I don't do hard.” His voice went scratchy but he blazed ahead. “I get out before anything difficult happens. Back at your house, that was supposed to be about burning off the tension so we could focus. It wasn't supposed to be the start of something. I don't do relationships. You know that, right?”

That was the first time she'd ever heard him admit he had a commitment problem. Admitting it was the first step toward curing it, right?

“Yeah. I knew it wasn't anything more than sex.”

“What if I want it to be?” he asked, sincerity warming his voice and curling through her in the dark. It was as if he'd read the same question in her heart and voiced it out loud.

“What if you do?” she heard herself repeat when she should have been saying
so what?
Or
this is goodbye right now
. “Have things changed?”

Please, God. Let that be true and not a huge mistake.

His hand found hers, threading their fingers together, and the rightness of it drifted through her like a balm. She could listen to him talk all night long if this was the topic.

If she hadn't gotten in the car when he asked her to come to Austin, she'd never have gotten to watch this monumental shift in Gage.

“So many things,” he repeated quietly. “I'm not even sure how yet. The formula... I wasn't going to give up. I wanted it and I was going after it. But somewhere along the way, I started to want more.”