Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(17)

“Not really my place, is it?”

The two men continue to stare at each other, and something passes silently between them. I don’t know what, but I know Alessandro is a better judge of character than any dog, and even Luna’s Beck, who spends his whole life around dogs, agrees.

So when my head of security nods to West and holds out a fist for a bump, a puddle of warmth floods my chest.

A puddle of warmth that means absolutely nothing, because in the next breath, West is walking out the door.

“Hey, take my number,” I call after him, making Remy squawk at the sudden noise.

He turns, and I catch the weirdest expression on his face. Like…hope? Or dread?

Or both?

“For attorneys.” I wave a hand, realize I don’t want to take that hand off Remy, and quickly put it back. “And all that boring stuff.”

“Got you covered,” Alessandro says to me.

And then West is gone.

And I have this horrible suspicion I’m never going to see him again, which shouldn’t be a bad thing—we can’t date, for multiple reasons, and having him out of the way so no one is witness to me fucking up Remy is a good thing.

But I still feel the weirdest emptiness, an extra loneliness, at my temporary co-guardian doing exactly what my family wants him to do.

Leave.

It’s right, but it’s also so, so wrong.





Eight





West



I don’t want to leave Daisy alone with Remy, because she has the same look on her face that Tyler had the day our first niece was born—the one that says oh my god I have no idea what I’m doing holding this thing that’s smaller than a football.

But that baby is hers so much more than he can ever be mine. I have no blood claim. I didn’t know his family. And it’s not like I’m leaving him stranded at the steps of a firehouse and hoping he’ll get adopted someday by a family who loves him.

This family has money. They have their own brand of loyalty. And it’s none of my fucking business.

Alessandro walks me down a winding staircase, out through the D-shaped courtyard and past a D-shaped pool, and into a sitting room with another round sunken seating area with a gas fire pit in the middle, crystal penises decorating the end tables, and bright green plants placed about the room beneath the high ceiling. We walk through this room too, straight into a connected foyer with a curved glass staircase.

I pause at the doorway. “Can she handle this on her own?”

He studies me briefly, and I know he’s not going to answer me. So it surprises me when he replies, “Doesn’t matter. She will.”

That’s not ominous. Not at all. “There’s no legit reason for me to stay.”

“Just a legally binding will.”

“You knew Julienne?”

“Unfortunately.”

“She make her will while she was drunk?”

“Probably drew names out of a hat.”

I look down at the textured white marble floor. All I need is one person to stand up and tell me this kid’s parents had a solid reason for putting me in that will, and I’d stay.

I’d fight.

I could give him doting aunts. The best grandparents. An insane uncle—everyone needs an Uncle Tyler—and cousins and pool parties and root beer popsicles and birthday parties and lawn darts and a solid middle-class life full of fun and hard work.

But staying here is nothing more than a shortcut to another family I don’t belong with.

Easier to walk away now than to stay, get attached, and complicate what’s undoubtedly going to be a messy situation. “The Rodericks—they’ll fight for the kid?”

I met Anthony Roderick once. Guy leered at his daughter-in-law like he wanted to take her to bed himself, slapped the housekeeper on the ass, and pissed in the bushes.

Not in that order.

I’d probably be in jail if I’d been any closer when the ass-slapping happened, but he was long gone by the time I made it out of the nursery. My Spanish wasn’t good enough to understand the maid, but I knew the hand gesture. Leave it be. It’s fine.

It wasn’t fine.

“They’ll try,” Alessandro tells me. “They’ll lose. We know people.”

We know people.

See? The baby has Alessandro too. He doesn’t need me. He’ll never even remember me.

I hand him my card. “Either of them need anything, let me know.”

He studies me again, and I get the feeling he’s calling me a pansy-ass for leaving. Or possibly an idiot for thinking I could have anything Daisy Carter-Kincaid might need.

He opens the door, and a parrot squawks an obscenity at us from a perch near a window. “Get out of here, Frank,” Alessandro says.

The parrot tells him to fuck off, then flutters away.

“We’ll keep you on the guest list until the legal dust settles,” he tells me.

I nod and head for my truck, parked in the same place I put it last night. Or fifty years ago. Feels that long.

“By the way, TMZ has a copy of the will and pictures of both of you.”

My head whips up. “What?”

“Might want to keep your head down.”

Fucker.

He grins.

I flip him off and head for my car.