Page 10 of Secret Baby for Dr. Billionaire

“Do you think Aunt Maggie will paint with me tomorrow?”

Maggie didn’t know how to paint to save her life, but she did it so she could spend time with Billy Anne. Billy Anne didn’t seem to mind that her aunt didn’t know the difference between an easel and a palette.

“She will,” I assured her, just as I stopped in Maggie’s driveway. I honked twice, letting them know we were there. The door slammed open, and three kids came running towards the car. Billy Anne waited for me to kill the engine before unbuckling herself, but she already had a wide smile on her face as she peered out the car window to see her cousins.

I grabbed her backpack and paint supplies from the trunk just as Maggie appeared behind me in her two-piece turquoise athleisure suit, her hair tied in a high ponytail. She had been an aesthetic nurse when she was younger, but after she and Ralph had kids, she decided to stay home, a change she had had zero problems with.

“You know you can stay with us for dinner, right?” she said, taking the bags from me.

“I know, but I have so many things to do.” It was mostly a lie. Being alone in my apartment meant I got to clean the house the way I couldn’t when Billy Anne was at home. She and Charlie, our golden retriever, hated the sound of the vacuum.

“You need to see someone for your cleaning obsession, brother.”

“It’s not an obsession, Maggie. Hygiene is essential, and I can’t do much when Billy Anne is at home.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved her hand in the air before turning to get back inside. “If you change your mind, you know where we are.”

“Billy Anne wants you to paint with her tomorrow again, by the way,” I called, seeing Billy Anne stay back to wait for her Aunt. She hugged her by her hips before running into the house with the kids.

“At least Billy Anne knows a great painter when she sees one.”

“Bye, Daddy!” Billy Anne yelled over her shoulder, waving her hand at me.

“Bye, baby, love you!”

***

Two hours later, as I walked out of the private elevator to my penthouse, I noticed the door across from me was ajar. Nobody had stayed in that penthouse since I moved here, and I usually had the entire floor to myself. Just the way I liked it.

Deciding against the idea of meeting my new neighbor and suffering through small talk, I headed to my side of the building and unlocked the door with my keycard.

Charlie, my sixteen-week-old golden retriever, wagged his tail as he greeted me by the door. He was a present from Maggie to Billy Anne on her birthday—a gift she didn’t tell me about in advance, saying that it was the perfect thing to teach Billy Anne about responsibility. And it did. Teach her that is.

She was expected to be hands-on with scooping Charlie’s poop and helping me feed the puppy each day. Beach walks were also part of our routine. I could leave them both on the beach the entire day, and they wouldn’t complain. If only Charlie didn’t shed and had occasional zoomies, I’d be one hundred percent cool with him.

Charlie stomped by my feet, his tail wagging as he waited for me to rub behind his ears. I did this after I placed the grocery bags filled with dinner ingredients on the kitchen counter.

“Just you and me tonight, bud.” Charlie was sporting a red bandana around his neck, his wagging tail softly tapping the hardwood floor as he heard his dog bowl clatter, knowing it was time for his dinner.

After I stored the food in the pantry, restocked the fridge, and cooked my dinner, I grabbed Charlie’s leash from behind the door, and we went out for a potty break.

By nine p.m., I was in my home office, answering all my emails for the day, reading contracts for PharmaCorp, and doing an hour-and-a-half meeting with a potential investor.

Despite the fact that I had a cleaning lady come by twice a week, having to clean up after my kid and the pup was a daily task I had to do. Besides, me and Maggie were raised to take care of ourselves regardless of having help.

At ten p.m., while washing the dishes, my phone rang for a patient who needed an emergency appendectomy. I was stalled at the hospital for another hour before coming home by eleven to return to what I had been doing.

I put Billy Anne’s old clothes into storage, a chore that I had been pushing back because I didn’t want to face the fact that she was growing this much. Now, here I was, at almost two in the morning, grabbing the vacuum cleaner from the storage room in the hall. This chore was last on my list before heading into the shower and hitting the hay.

But when I plugged the thing in the socket, and it did its usual hum, Charlie got up from his bed by the living room door and started tiptoeing around the machine like he did at least once a week. Then the hair on his back started to rise, and then it was chaos. Charlie barked at the vacuum, his voice booming in my penthouse. I had to turn off the machine.

“Charlie, no!” Charlie paused to look at me, tilting his head to the side. When I turned the device on again, all my commands went out the window. This fucking pup was unhinged. I was thankful that Billy Anne wasn’t here to hear all this commotion. But the neighbor was.

After about five minutes of me cleaning my floor and Charlie barking nonstop, I heard pounding on the wall despite my noise. It took me a moment to realize that I had a new neighbor. I had gotten so used to being alone on this floor that I had forgotten being loud was a problem.

Switching off the vacuum cleaner, I heard my neighbor pound the wall again.

“See what you did there, Charlie?” I wrinkled my nose at the dog, who was now sitting on his butt, panting in joy, thinking that his bark had saved us from the machine. “Now our neighbor hates us before I even had the chance to drop by and say hi.”

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