Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(24)
Okay, maybe that’s just me being a big pile of happiness. Since Thursday night, though, I’ve been standing on a pile of panic asking my staff for favors, alternated with begging Alessandro and Tiana, my personal assistant, to help me discretely donate to college funds for orphaned kids and send shoes and toiletries to homeless shelters, that finally results in Lucinda shooing me outside late Saturday morning with orders to let someone else take care of you.
As if she hasn’t been doing that anyway. But now, for the first time in thirty-six hours, I can actually take a full breath and relax. I’m sitting next to the sun-shielded cabana hut she set up for Remy by the pool inside my D-shaped courtyard, not to be confused with my dick pool on the outside of my own fortress, for the record.
That pool’s there basically just to challenge my grandmother’s Botox.
I know. I know. If I want her approval, I shouldn’t bait her. But the Bluewater community is the only thing I have in my life that I’ve done on my own—Cameron, Emily, Luna and I designed and built it, not Carter International Properties—and I wanted a pool shaped like a dick.
So I have a dick pool.
I glance over at Remy, who’s hangin’ in a baby swing in the shade, fans blowing around him, bottles chilling in an ice bucket until he gets hungry, diapers stacked and ready for battle under the small changing table, while I sip a virgin pi?a colada and catch up on emails, checking in on my staff not just here in Miami, but also in New York and Atlanta, and I pretend everything’s normal while I let the sunshine reassure me.
West is inside unpacking, which means I haven’t been disinherited yet.
It also means I owe him favors basically for the rest of my life. I might be breathing easier at knowing that I can soak up all the baby knowledge I can get from him. But lucky for him, I have a very good idea of where to start with favors.
Alessandro got his hands on the background check and private investigator reports my grandmother had done before she brought Julienne’s will to light, and I have a lead on West’s maybe-girlfriend.
The thought both sours my stomach and gives me a huge sense of relief, because if he has a girlfriend, then he’s off-limits, and it doesn’t matter how ovary-popping it is to watch him holding Remy or how I’ve noticed that he smells like sawdust and has rough fingers that send shivers across my skin every time we accidentally touch. There aren’t many lines I won’t cross, but cheating is a definite no-no.
The report doesn’t definitively say she’s his girlfriend, but it definitely says there’s something there, and so I’m making it my mission to speed that process along.
I owe him, don’t I?
And what’s a better gift to give someone than love?
Just as I’m finishing up a text to Tiana with instructions on what I’d like to do, the door near my outdoor kitchen flings open, and three of my very favorite people in the entire universe tumble out onto the patio.
I leap up with a cheer, completely forgetting anything but the sight of these three women. “Yay! Friends!”
“Daisy! Oh, I’m so sorry.” Luna reaches me first, wrapping her long, deeply tanned, slender arms around me. She’s dressed in a bright sundress that reminds me of a party bar in Jamaica, and she smells like sunshine. “Why didn’t you tell us about Julienne’s funeral?”
“She and I weren’t all that close. Actually, turns out, she wasn’t really close to anyone. It’s okay. Mom was there. You didn’t need to witness all that awkwardness too.”
“It was still a funeral. Do you need some dog hugs? Dog hugs make everything better. I can bring Penelope over.”
“Oh my god, a baby,” Cam whispers as she hugs both of us tight. She’s taller than Luna, with gorgeous, natural red hair that makes my extensions look the adorable kind of trashy, and in a business suit that’s basically the opposite of my red bikini. And the huge opal surrounded by diamonds on her ring finger is also the opposite of everything I’ve ever thought I wanted in life. “You should’ve texted sooner! Do you know anything about raising babies? I don’t know anything about babies. But there’s so much stuff about raising babies on the internet. We’re going to be fine.”
“Have you talked to your lawyers yet? Wait. Of course you have. Does he have a trust fund? A college fund? An IRA?” Emily, the natural blonde of the group, and also closest to me in height, wraps her freakishly strong arms around all of us and squeezes us until we all squeak. She’s business-casual and so genuinely gorgeous that flowers bow to her. “Derek’s team’s going to get what they can out of Julienne’s house—the electronics, I mean—before anyone seals it up pending the auction, and they’ll see if they can find anything about when Julienne and Rafe made their will. He’s also working on a plan to make you look like an angel and the Rodericks look like unfit parents. I can’t believe they’re refuting the will. Did they honestly claim your grandmother forged it?”
“What else can we do? What do you need?” Cam asks.
I swallow hard as reality hits me in the face again. Playing babysitter for a couple days is one thing, but telling my three besties that I’m basically a mom now makes it more real. And being a mom to Remy makes Julienne being dead a little more real. No matter who you are, dying in your early thirties and leaving a baby behind is sad.