The Billionaire Married a Homeless Girl novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Eleven Weeks in a Corolla

In the sleet, Nolan learns where she lives, offers money she refuses, and hears she knocked on his door five times.

I picked Benji up in his dinosaur socks and wrapped my own coat around him.

"Ma'am," Nolan Laughlin said from the doorway. "Please. Wait."

"I'm leaving, Mr. Laughlin."

"That boy. What's his name?"

"That's not your business."

He took one step into the coat room and stopped.

"I'm not trying to take anything from you," he said. "I'm asking his name."

Benji lifted his head off my shoulder.

"I'm Benji," he said. "I'm four. I can write my whole name."

Nolan's throat moved.

"Hi, Benji."

"Mama says don't talk to strangers."

"Your mama's right," Nolan said, and his voice came out rough.

I walked past him with my son on my hip.

He followed me through the service hall, past the dish pit, and out the loading door into the sleet.

Nobody stopped us, because nobody looks at the help.

The wind hit like a slap.

My car sat at the far end of the alley, a gray Corolla with a cracked taillight and frost on the inside of the windshield.

I buckled Benji into the back seat, between a laundry basket and a cooler.

I tucked his blanket around his legs and kissed his forehead.

When I stood up, Nolan Laughlin was looking through the rear window.

He saw the pillow, the blankets, the grocery bags of clothes, and the little plastic bin of crayons.

"Is that where you live?" he asked.

"Tonight it's where we sleep."

"How long?"

"Eleven weeks since the landlord sold the building." I shut the back door softly. "Before that, a room above a laundromat. Before that, a shelter."

"And you were carrying trays for me."

"I was carrying trays for the agency. I got paid for nine hours, and they just told me I won't be paid at all."

He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out his wallet.

I watched him count out bills without looking, and I watched his hand shake.

"Take it," he said. "All of it. I'm sorry for what Daphne did."

I took a hundred and ninety-eight dollars.

Nine hours at twenty-two an hour.

I handed the rest back.

"That's what I earned."

"Bridget." He said it carefully, his tone gentle. "That's your name, isn't it? The manager said Bridget."

"Bridget Maslowski."

He closed his eyes for half a second.

"Maslowski," he repeated. "I knew a girl once who said she was Bridge. She told me the name was a joke her father made."

"Did you?"

"She was a server at a Laughlin Marine party. Five and a half years ago. June."

"A lot of servers work your parties."

"She laughed at a dessert cart that tipped over," he said slowly. "She stayed until two in the morning to help me clear it, and she wouldn't take my jacket because she said she'd be the kind of girl who kept it."

The sleet ticked against the car roof.

He stood there in a tuxedo that cost more than my car, with ice in his hair.

"I was the man in the gray tie," he said. "I had to fly to Singapore at six. I left a note on the pillow with my number."

"I never found a note."

"I don't understand."

"I found a pillow." I kept my voice even, because Benji was listening. "I found an empty room and a maid with a cart."

"I called the number you wrote on the napkin. It was one digit short. I tried every combination I could think of for a month."

I stared at him.

I hadn't known that, and I hadn't known he'd tried.

I'd spent five years believing he hadn't.

"That's a nice story," I said. "It's late, Mr. Laughlin."

"Is he mine?"

The question stood between us.

I looked at the back window.

Benji had pressed his nose to the glass and was fogging a circle with his breath.

"I don't owe you an answer in an alley," I said.

"No. You don't."

"I owe my son a warm bed. That's the only thing I owe anyone."

"Then let me give you one. A hotel, tonight, in your name. You don't owe me a word."

"I'm not a charity."

"It isn't charity if he's mine."

"He's mine." I opened the driver's door. "He's been mine since the day he was born, and I don't remember anyone asking if I needed help."

"Nobody told me you needed anything."

"I came to your tower."

He stopped breathing.

"Five years ago, in August. I had just found out I was pregnant, and I walked into the Laughlin building with the napkin in my hand. Your front desk said you didn't see people without an appointment."

I got in and shut the door.

Then I rolled the window down two inches, because I wanted him to hear the rest.

"I came back four more times. A woman with a lanyard told me you didn't want to be found."

I turned the key.

The engine caught on the third try.

"Who was she?" Nolan Laughlin said, and his voice had gone very low. "Bridget, who was the woman at the desk?"

"I didn't ask her name."

I pulled out of the alley with my son in the back seat and my last hundred and ninety-eight dollars on the dash.

In the rearview mirror, a man in a tuxedo stood in the sleet and did not move.

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