Cinderella's Secret Baby Read online

  It was fairy-tale-perfect, and her father was ruining it.

  Amelia swerved off the walkway to intercept Tobias as he came out of the guesthouse and charged toward the pergola. Everyone swiveled their attention to her, making her feel extra clumsy as she kept a firm hold on Peyton while trying not to trip on the grass.

  Oh, God, look at him. Hunter Waverly was so blindingly handsome in his morning suit, clean-shaven and tall with his wide shoulders and his stern, narrow face, he made her eyes sting. From the concrete pad of the pergola, he was even taller and looked down his bladelike nose at Tobias before shifting his gaze to Amelia as she rushed up behind her father.

  Hunter stood in dappled shade, but she thought he jolted as he recognized her.

  She felt naked then. And small. Smaller even than when she’d left his guest room last year. Her face was blistered by that old humiliation and this new one. Her heart was cracking down the center, falling open to pulse unprotected because her baby was exposed. Here. In front of hundreds of eyes where their very different positions in life were even more pronounced than they had been then.

  Hunter had bought out a vineyard for his bride. He had only offered her what was in his wallet.

  “You,” her father said again, voice dripping with contempt. He avoided Amelia’s attempt to catch his arm. “You ignore your own flesh and blood, leave the mother of your child to fend for herself while you...” His impatient hand waved with disdain at the guests, the tranquil setting and the loving union that was about to be blessed.

  “Daddy, please. I am begging you.” Amelia managed to catch a fistful of his sleeve and tugged. “Come on. We’re leaving. I am so sorry.”

  The kindly grandmother was staring at Amelia as though she was a skunk that had waddled into the kitchen. Amelia couldn’t make herself look at anyone else, especially Hunter. Her stomach had risen to churn in the back of her throat.

  “She’s better off without you.” Her father shook off her grip. “But your friends and family ought to know what sort of man you are. Your wife should know what she’s marrying. And I’ll be damned if you won’t even feed and clothe the child you made.” Her father shook his finger at Hunter. “Judging by this, you can afford to, so quit being a bum.”

  “Dad!” she cried. “He didn’t know. Okay? I never told him.” And if she didn’t have the helpless bundle of Peyton snuggled in her arm, she would wish herself dead right now. She really would.

  Someone in the crowd guffawed a curse of enjoyment.

  Her father snapped a look at her. “A man has a right to know, Amelia.”

  “I have a right to decide what happens to my baby.” She was furious with him.

  “I care what happens to my baby,” he barked straight back.

  He did. She knew that. He was a dear, loving father, but such a dinosaur sometimes. Old-school and old-fashioned and so protective after losing Jasper, but how did he even know Hunter’s name? How had he known Hunter would be here?

  “Is it true?” Hunter’s voice was deep and tight and sounded like it came out through clenched teeth even as it boomed from a speaker off to her left.

  Oh God.

  With an appalled snarl, he ripped the wire from his lapel and pulled something from his pocket, handing it to the man beside him.

  “Is it?” he demanded of her without the bullhorn effect.

  “Of course not,” she lied blatantly. “This is all a horrible misunderstanding. I’m very sorry for the interruption,” she added to the crowd. Her face was about to combust, it was boiling so ferociously in embarrassment. Her head was dizzy. She could hardly see straight.

  “You just said you didn’t tell me. That I didn’t know,” Hunter pointed out with subdued outrage.

  Take the free pass, you idiot.

  “Hunter.” The man beside him—Remy, Amelia recalled—nudged Hunter.

  Hunter lifted his gaze over Amelia’s head.

  Amelia looked over her shoulder and up.

  The bride had come to the rail of the terrace. She was red-carpet-gorgeous with midnight-black hair and luminous golden shoulders accentuated by the stark whiteness of her strapless satin gown. Her veil caught the sunlight so it created an angel’s halo effect around her astonished yet beautiful face.

  Could this moment get any worse?

  Hell, yes, Peyton assured her. She began to stir and whimper, rubbing her face into Amelia’s neck, rooting for the nipple she wanted.

  Amelia’s full breasts were ready. So ready.

  No. Please no.

  But the tightness in her heavy breasts became a hard sting. A rush of tears rose to her eyes as letdown happened. Damp warmth began soaking into the pads of her bra, leaking around the edges to stain her shirt.

  Mortified, Amelia spun and started back to the walkway.

  Behind her, she heard something drop like a shoe.

  She glanced back to see that the bride’s bouquet, a spray of ivory rosebuds interspersed with baby’s breath and lacy fronds of spring ferns, had landed on the grass.

  * * *

  Hunter wished he were a stranger to outrageous public displays.

  Sadly, this pageantry was all too familiar. His sister was equally familiar. With a sharp nod from the terrace, Vienna assured him she would stay with Eden and followed his bride back into the honeymoon suite.

  Through the speakers, Eden’s voice cried, “Is it true?”

  With a squeeze of his arm, Remy also conveyed, I’ve got this. He cut a sharp line across his throat, indicating to the wedding planner that the microphone feeds should be cut.

  Hunter left the pergola and brushed past the older man still working his mouth in search of further words to berate him.

  As he went after the woman who may or may not be holding his baby, Hunter’s mind raced. No fully formed thoughts seemed to stick. That wasn’t like him. He knew how to grasp hold of catastrophe and mitigate it. He’d been doing it since his eleventh birthday party, the first occasion his stepmother had ruined with her obscene behavior and the last time he had celebrated that annual milestone.

  Get things back on course, he kept thinking, but his “course” was marriage. To Eden. He couldn’t let that be derailed by a woman he had fooled around with once. Okay, three times. It had been a very active night, but it had only been sex. Not conception. Surely not.

  “The woman with the baby,” he snapped at one of the servers in the tasting room even as he looked to the exit to the parking lot. “Did she leave?”

  “She asked for somewhere to sit and—”

  Hunter stopped listening and followed the pointed finger around the corner, stalking through a closed door labeled Operations Manager.

  “Excuse me.” Amelia glared from the love seat crammed beneath the window.

  Her face was bright red. The dark roots of her hair were so long, only the fraying bun on the top of her head was still blond. She looked a lot younger without the makeup she’d worn when he’d met her. Her brows were pulled into a knot of affliction, her wide mouth pinched.

  “Get out,” she said more insistently.

  While nothing was on show, she was clearly uncomfortable as she cradled the nursing baby against one breast and held a pink blanket against the other.

  Hunter swore, but he’d seen a baby nurse before, and this was more important.

  “Is it true?” he demanded.

  “Get out!”

  He rolled his eyes and turned to face the closed door, stepping forward to lock it.

  “I’ll insist on a test either way, but I don’t have time for games. There’s a woman next door who deserves to know.” He deserved to know.

  Amelia muttered something and said, “Ouch. Yes, I know.” She seemed to be talking to the baby because there was a cry of protest then, “There. All better.” She sighed.

  Silence resumed, broke
n by loud gulps.

  As he warily turned back to face her, Hunter was doing some quick and dirty math, trying to work out if this was even possible. Nine months from July would take the birth to April.

  Amelia had draped the blanket over her shoulder, and the baby was now hidden beneath the tent. One bare foot was kicking out from beneath it, working an invisible pump. Amelia kept her glower aimed at his shoes.

  “How old is...?” He? She? Check that gender bias, he reminded himself. A child. Could he have made this baby?

  “Nine weeks. Almost ten,” Amelia admitted sullenly.

  May. June.

  Hunter swore again, using a clear, all-purpose curse that encompassed the act that had brought him to this point and the complexity of his reaction. It spanned everything from resignation to disgrace. Irony to self-disgust. Anger to injustice. Remorse.

  And, flittering around the edges, a nascent curiosity coupled with a small resentment that she had hidden the baby for months. From his eyes right now.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she mumbled. “Any of this.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before today?”

  “I tried.” Her voice grew tougher. Belligerent. “I called your office, trying to reach you. You texted back that you were engaged. You told me not to text again.”

  “That’s not trying. For God’s sake, Amelia. I wanted to hear that. Why did you wait... What? Five months after we were together?” He had been engaged by then. “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you found out you were pregnant?”

  “I did.”

  He snorted, never quite believing those I didn’t know I was pregnant urban legends.

  Her lashes finally came up. Her lake-blue eyes were pools of sorrow.

  “Do you remember I left that morning because Dad got the news my brother had disappeared? That’s all I could think about. Finding him. When the company quit trying, I decided to go to Chile myself. I needed shots to travel, and the doctor had to screen me for pregnancy before he could administer them. I thought stress was making me sick and stopping my periods. I wasn’t doing anything except sitting at a computer, writing emails, so the weight gain didn’t seem unusual. We used condoms,” she reminded, waving between them. “It didn’t occur to me I could be pregnant.”

  He always used condoms and didn’t recall one breaking. It seemed far-fetched that she could have gotten pregnant by him, but he was having trouble hanging on to his skepticism in the face of how upset she seemed.

  “I wanted to have her, even though it meant I couldn’t travel.” She rubbed her brow, mouth pulled down at the corners with deep sadness. “It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made, but I knew Jasper would never expect me to give up a baby to go look for him, especially if...”

  The catch of torment in her voice struck Hunter straight in the chest, rocking him back on his heels. He tried to imagine making a decision between his unborn child and looking for his sister. His mind refused to go there. The idea of it, the fact that Amelia had chosen to keep his baby rather than search for someone she loved, caused a visceral shift inside his chest, one that hurt in a way he didn’t understand.

  He brushed aside trying to untangle that emotive knot, focusing instead on the word “her.” Such a tiny detail, but now he knew that little foot belonged to a girl. His daughter?

  “I thought I should tell you, but you blew me off,” Amelia said in a lifeless tone. “Given all I was going through, it seemed like a blessing that you didn’t want to be involved. One less person to worry about.”

  You didn’t ask me if I wanted to be involved, he nearly growled, but she was obviously still in deep pain, so he bit that back.

  “And your brother?” he probed carefully.

  “Presumed dead.”

  Hunter rubbed the cynicism from his expression. “I’m sorry, Amelia. That’s rough.”

  “It is. Dad was in pieces. I moved back into his house, we pulled up the drawbridge, and we’ve been looking after each other ever since. Peyton’s been a bright spot, though.” One side of her mouth went up a little as she caught the bare foot that was still working thin air. “Dad’s been more like his old self since she arrived.”

  Peyton. He had a daughter named Peyton. It didn’t seem real.

  “And maybe we don’t live like you do, but we’re fine,” she insisted. “He shouldn’t have made it sound like we’re starving. Dad has a pension, and the house is paid for. I get maternity benefits that I supplement by tutoring. I’m finishing my Bachelor of Ed online. In a year or so, I’ll be a teacher. That’s a perfectly good living for a single mom.”

  “But you let your father believe I don’t care if you’re starving and destitute.” That rankled. A lot.

  “I don’t even know how he found out your name! I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Cheryl—You remember her? She’s the one Remy—”

  “I remember,” Hunter dismissed, vaguely recalling a bubbly redhead.

  “I haven’t really talked to her since I left,” Amelia continued in a distracted mumble, lashes lifting warily. “I don’t post about Peyton. No one knows you’re her father.”

  Yeah. Not even me.

  “But Dad got after me to make a will the minute she was born, especially since Jasper didn’t have one. I finalized it a couple weeks ago. Maybe he read the copy I left in the freezer? I only mentioned you as a last resort. My cousin agreed to raise her if something happens. She lives in Ottawa, but she and Dad would work something out.”

  “I’m a last resort for custody of my child? Wow.” Very few things got under his skin. Hunter had been exposed to every possible slight at one time or another. He was jaded and impervious, but that was a kick in the stomach. “What about her birth certificate? Is my name on that?”

  “No.” Her reply was prompt and remorseless. “I would have needed your permission, so it didn’t make sense to add you. Can you turn around again? She’s finished and I need to put myself back together.”

  He turned his back and absorbed everything she’d said, but kept coming back to that phrase, “last resort.” He’d been tangled up in a legal mess for the last few years, but did that make him so objectionable a person she didn’t want him to have anything to do with his own child? He was gainfully employed and didn’t have a criminal record. He was about to marry—

  He swore and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  What the hell was he supposed to do? Parts of the merger might be salvaged if he called off the wedding, if Eden could stand to speak to the man who jilted her. She didn’t deserve this humiliation any more than he did.

  “I need a paternity test,” he muttered, grasping at the off chance this was a stunt organized by his stepmother, but he knew. Deep down, he already knew the truth.

  “I’ll agree to that, but I don’t expect anything from you. If you want access, we can talk about it, but please don’t feel obligated.”

  “Of course I’m obligated, Amelia. Do you know who I am?” He pivoted around again to see her shirt was down and she held the baby against the blanket on her shoulder.

  Peyton’s fine brown hair was thin on top and turned up in feathery ducktails around the fringe, like a balding old man on a hot summer’s day. In response to Amelia’s pats, she released a robust burp.

  Amelia was glaring at him with resentment.

  “Please don’t accuse me of getting pregnant for money. If that’s what I wanted, I would have come after you a lot sooner.”

  “I’ve already deduced that.” Everything she was saying added up to preferring to keep this baby from him. Which made him furious. And uncomfortable.

  “Please don’t sue me to try to take her.” She tucked her chin, brows low with warning.

  “Is that why you didn’t tell me? You think I would try to separate my baby from her parent? I’m not like that, Amelia,” he said pointedly.


  Her scowl deepened. “I’m not going to apologize. You are in love with someone else, Hunter. About to be married. I did what I thought was right.”

  “By whom? Not our daughter,” he scoffed. “My life comes with a lot of comfort and privilege. Your father is right. My child deserves to benefit from what I can give her.”

  “Her needs are met,” she insisted. “She’s chubby and happy and sleeps in a dry diaper under a sound roof every night. I love her to death. So does my dad. She wants for nothing.”

  “Except the father who wants to be part of her life. Were you really going to wait until she was old enough to ask about me before you sprang her on me?”

  “I refuse to feel guilty over the choices I’ve made! You told me not to text you.”

  He brushed that aside. “If she’s a Waverly, she’s entitled to live like one.” That much he knew.

  “Fine. Organize a paternity test. Make whatever arrangements you want for her. For her,” she stressed. “I need to live with Dad and look after him.” She inched to the edge of the love seat. “And, um, don’t think this is me being a jerk or anything, but I plan to talk to a lawyer and find out my rights. She’s still nursing. I genuinely think it’s better if she’s with me full time. I’m open to something more balanced after she weans. I want to be reasonable.”

  “Nice to know,” he said facetiously. “But nothing about this is reasonable. It’s outrageous.”

  She sighed. “You’re right that I should have told you sooner,” she admitted grudgingly. “I’m sorry it happened like this. I’ll get Dad and we’ll leave and—”

  “And what? The damage is done,” he snapped.

  “To the wedding? Why? This isn’t your fault. You didn’t know.” She blinked incredibly naive blue eyes.

  “I know now. Everyone does.” The press was going to have a field day. The clock in his head was warning that he was losing his chance to get ahead of this. The feeding frenzy had likely already started. Despite his best security precautions, there had been several boats on the water. He would bet at least a few guests or staff were already texting or posting. This was a situation ripe for one of those real-time threads that went viral.