Baby Trapped by the Billionaire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Sunday in Sewickley

Posing as the CEO's girlfriend of eight months, Vera faces his grandfather and a cousin who calls her the waitress.

The Brennick dining room had a glass ceiling, and the whole table glittered under it.

I wore my mother's navy dress with the sleeves taken in.

Gavin's hand rested at the small of my back, and it was the first time he'd touched me since the hallway.

It was warm and steady, and I hated that I noticed.

"Harold," he said. "This is Vera."

The old man at the head of the table did not stand.

He was thin as a coat hanger, in a green cardigan, with white hair brushed straight back and a walking stick that had a glass handle shaped like a swan.

His eyes were the clearest blue I had ever seen on anyone.

"Eight months," he said. "And I'm meeting you now."

"He's a private person," I said.

"He's a hermit with a payroll."

"Then I'm sorry I took so long to find him."

One of those white eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch.

"Sit," said Harold. "Tell me how you met, Miss Hruska. Don't look at him. He'll only lie better than you."

I sat.

Under the table, Gavin's knee pressed mine once, a tiny warning.

I took a breath and decided to tell a story that was ninety percent true.

"He came into the diner where I work on a Thursday night, late, in a suit. He ordered a slice of cherry pie and a coffee."

"Rita's Corner Diner in Lawrenceville," said Harold. "Gavin's secretary told me."

"It's six dollars for the pie. He left a fifty on the counter and walked out."

"He's always been bad with change."

"I chased him into the parking lot holding the bill over my head. He said keep it. I said I'm a waitress, not a charity."

Gavin, beside me, went very still.

"What did he say to that?" asked Harold.

"Nothing," I said. "He stood in the rain and looked at me for so long that my pie got cold."

That much was a lie, and I felt it land.

Harold turned his head very slowly toward his grandson.

"Is that so?"

"She was holding the fifty over her head like a flag," said Gavin quietly. "I couldn't think of anything to say."

It was a good lie.

It was better than mine.

I almost looked at him, and didn't.

The side door banged open, and a man in a quarter-zip pullover strode in with a bottle of wine and a loud steel watch.

Behind him came a woman with her hair in a perfect knot and two small boys, one of them already sticky.

"Sorry we're late, Grandpa. Gavin." He pointed the bottle at me. "And this must be the waitress."

The table went quiet.

"This is Vera," said Gavin.

"I know," said the man. "Spencer. The one who's actually good at family."

He shook my hand with two fingers, then wiped his palm on his pants.

His wife gave me a smile that did not reach the chin.

I smiled back, brightly, the way you smile at a table that has already decided to under-tip.

Dinner was roast chicken and a green bean thing, and the whole time Spencer talked about his boys' soccer, his boys' tutor, his boys' future.

"Children change a man," he told Gavin across the potatoes. "You wouldn't know. Hard to teach a building how to love."

"I'm learning," said Gavin evenly.

"From the waitress?"

I set down my fork.

"From the best teacher he's ever had," I said. "Me. I carry a tray with eight plates up my arm. I can carry a Brennick."

Spencer's wife made a small choking sound into her napkin.

Harold laid his hand flat on the table, and the glass swan on his stick shivered.

"I have an offer," he said. "Founders' Day dinner is Saturday, December twentieth. That is when I sign the shares to whoever has proven he has a life and not a spreadsheet."

"Grandpa," said Spencer.

"Ninety days of Sundays. Miss Hruska comes to this table every one of them. I will watch the two of them across my chicken. And on the twentieth I will know."

"That's fair," Gavin said, and took my hand under the table.

It was cold.

For the first time all night, he was afraid.

When the plates were gone, Harold asked me for a glass of water, and I understood it was an order.

He walked me out to the sunroom on his stick, slow as a clock.

We stood among his dying geraniums.

He didn't look at me.

"My grandson has never brought anyone to this table," he said. "Not once in thirty-four years."

"He told me."

"Did he?"

"He said you'd be difficult."

Harold laughed, dry and short.

"Either you are the best actress in Pittsburgh, Miss Hruska, or he has finally lost his mind."

He tapped the glass swan against the floor.

"I enjoy both."

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