Victoria The Billionaires Maid

Seth’s [POV]

Silence was not the response I expected.

I wasn’t sure what I did expect. The request wasn’t a usual one, not even between longtime friends. Tenth grade was more than a decade in the rearview mirror, and here we were.

Still friends. Best friends, even. Our friendship had survived my marriage and divorce, among other things. If this crazy request of mine didn’t kill her affection for me.

Anyone’s bet at this point.

“Have your baby…what? What does that mean, exactly?” When I didn’t immediately reply, she fanned herself with the laminated menu she’d given me. “Okay, wait, baby means Laurie. Of course it does. She’s your only baby. Right? Right. So you must want me to babysit her or something? I can do that. Sure. Let me consult my planner for dates.”

I stopped her from flying out of the booth. “Laurie isn’t a baby. She’s almost four. As she likes to tell me, that’s almost halfway to ten, and ten is more than halfway to a big person.”

As always, when talk of my daughter entered the conversation, Ally softened. I might have known that and used it to my advantage, if I hadn’t been so addicted to how her cheeks turned pink and her smile warmed at my little girl’s name. God knows Laurie’s own mother hadn’t been similarly affected.

Ally’s love of children, and my child in particular, had weighed in heavily to my choice to ask her this very important question. And if I’d watched her with my daughter a bit too much lately, studying the exact curl of Ally’s hair against her neck, or the way her dangling earrings made shadows, or how her mouth curved and teased out a dimple-well, I was a red-blooded man.

One who could only ignore the beauty in front of him so long without it slamming him in the forehead, apparently.

“She is a big girl. Growing bigger every day.” The wistfulness in Ally’s voice made me lean forward.

“So now that we’ve ascertained I wasn’t talking about you babysitting my child, something you do on occasion anyway, let’s go back to the point of this conversation. You. Having my baby.”

Golden brown eyes settled on mine as a smile toyed with her mouth. “You missed April Fools day by a mile, dude.”

“This isn’t a joke. There’s no hidden camera. This is just me, your best friend coming to you with a simple request.”

Her dark brows knitted. “A simple request to borrow my eggs? And what would you need with another baby anyway? You already have one. You work all the time, and if you had two kids, you’d have twice the work.”NôvelD(ram)a.ôrg owns this content.

“I’d have another child to love and my little girl would have a sibling, something she wants more than anything else in this world.” I toyed with the handle of my coffee cup. “Even more than she wants a mother, and that’s the one thing I can never give her. Fucked that one up royally.”

Ally sighed and tweaked my pinky, curled around the cooling mug. I’d barely touched my coffee. My throat was too tight.

“That wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know Marj was only it for the dough. How could you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, that she was always more concerned about fur coats and jewels than baby formula and lullabies? If I’d been paying attention, that is. But as you said, I’m always working.” I heard the bitterness in my tone and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it, though I knew I was screwing this up more with every passing moment.

I didn’t want Ally feeling sorry for me or guilted into this situation. I wanted her to make the choice because it would be good for her and good for me and Laurie. A positive thing all around.

“She didn’t breastfeed?”

“Is that relevant?”

“No, not really, just that it’s such a healthy, nurturing experience. It’s not an imperative, of course. A baby can be perfectly happy and cared for without it.”

“I’d be fine with you breastfeeding our child.” Just

saying those words had my stomach tightening in weird and unexpected ways.

“Stop it.” She hissed out a breath. “We don’t have a child. Nor will we. I don’t know why you’re pursuing this, really, but it’s not very funny. Now I should get back to-”

I reached out and snagged her wrist. “Let me spell this out for you before you run from me and concoct all kinds of crazy scenarios in your head. I want another child. I do not want another relationship, potentially with a woman who would harm our baby and not be viable long-term. I just want a healthy child. To that end, I am prepared to compensate you for your significant time investment. Four years at the college of your choosing, tuition free. If you desire to go to grad school, that will be covered as well.”

She yanked back her hand and let it drop limply into her lap. “You’ve gone stark raving mad.”

“Actually, I feel saner than I ever have. Instead of lamenting I can’t have what I want, what my daughter wants, I can make it happen with a woman I trust. The only woman I trust.” Swallowing hard, I gripped the handle of my mug and fought not to reach for Ally again. “I’m not exaggerating. It’s you or no one. I can’t risk it with anyone else.”

Her lower lip wobbled and I clutched the handle until my damn knuckles went white. If she cried, I’d be done for.

“Not fair,” she whispered. “So not fair.”

“No, what’s not fair is that you work your fingers to the bone in this place and you have dreams you can’t see your way to because of all the bills.”

She clenched her jaw. “As soon as I sell Mama’s house”

“What, you’ll barely be out of the hole? I am rich. I have more money than I know what to do with. I can make a good life for my kids. Both of them, including the one I’d have with you. And you’d be free, Ally. You could go to school like you want. I know you probably wouldn’t want to quit here, and that’s fine. But school would be taken care of, and then your dreams could be yours. Anything you want.”

She turned her head away and stared hard out the window at some place I couldn’t see. But she damn well wasn’t seeing the tidy, well-kept Main Street of our small town, I was certain. Her gaze was farther off, on a future I couldn’t imagine.

For all I knew, she’d leave Crescent Cove. With the money she’d receive, she could go somewhere else and start over for real. I knew she loved the diner, but more than anything, she spoke of fresh starts. Hard to have one in a town synonymous with so many bad memories for her. So much loss.

Sure, Laurie was here. I was here, plus Sage and her other friends at the diner. But there was a huge world out there, just waiting for Ally to make her mark. This way, she could. Without being tied down by anyone or anything.

As much as I might hate the idea of going even one day without seeing her smile or roll her eyes at me or hearing her laughter, it wasn’t about me now. She deserved a chance to live the way she wanted to.

So did I.

“You’re paying me for my eggs,” she said quietly. “Like I’m a freaking chicken. Except my eggs are like fucking gold lined in platinum, if they’re worth a college education.”

A laugh tickled the back of my throat, but it was too constricted for me to let it free. “Anywhere you want,” I gritted out instead. “A free ride all the way. Ivy League if that’s what floats your boat.”

Her chest quickly rose and fell, drawing my attention to her full breasts heaving under the starched cotton of her uniform. I tried not to notice. I respected the fuck out of her, but I also wanted to fuck her senseless.

Something I don’t think I’d fully realized until that exact moment. Even knowing what I was asking of her, what it would entail…I’d been focused on the result, not the process.

Now that process was playing out in my head in lurid Technicolor, and my stiff dick was lurching against the zipper of my jeans. And she was still breathing hard and worrying the silver rings she wore on each finger, her mind whirling faster than she could give voice to her thoughts. Or else she didn’t want to share.

I wanted to fuck her until every one of those thoughts tumbled out of her pretty mouth. To strip her bare until she could hide nothing from me. Her innermost secrets, her hot tits, her sweet pussy.

All of her, mine for the taking.

But I didn’t say any of that. Not yet. There was one point I needed to clarify, however.

“You keep talking about your eggs. You think that’s what I mean?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, because this is all crazy talk. You never gave me one inkling you were thinking like this before and now you’re all in on baby central.”

“Okay, yes, I know my technique could use some work. But I figured you’d say no, so if we can get to that part, then we can get to the part where I considerately give you time to think about it while I do my level best to convince you. Without acting as if I’m convincing you, of course.”

“I can’t decide if you’re the dumbest dude on the planet for admitting that or the smartest.”