Page 5 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

It took a little digging and a few carefully placed phone calls, once again pretending to be people she was not—namely, the secretary of a specific, higher-placed woman in her organization, because she doubted very much that a man like Tiago Villela could be found by anyone socially if he didn’t wish it.

And that was how, in the space of an hour and a half, she discovered not only that Tiago Villela was currently at his London headquarters but that he would remain there for the remainder of the week.

Once she knew that, it wasn’t terribly hard to ring down to London and manage to set an informational meeting with him—and the woman she was not—to take place the following afternoon. Because Tiago Villela was apparently well known for taking meetings that would normally go to his underlings. He liked to hear some cold calls and pitches himself—but only on select Wednesday afternoons when he was in the office and had no raging fires to put out elsewhere. That had been the point of the news segment on him. His surprisingaccessibility.

And once she’d secured the meeting, she found herself looking, almost regretfully, for the next cheap flight south because the sleeper train would take far too long.

“I beg your pardon?” Patricia asked in astonishment when Lillie informed her of this upon her return from the meeting. “You’re leaving in the morning? Are you mad?”

“Notmadas such,” Lillie replied. “Though I am pregnant.”

And maybe there was something wrong with her that she found it amusing, the way Patricia let her gaze travel down the length of her body to her bump, then back up.

“I just thought you’d gotten fat,” Patricia said, with her usual directness that Lillie had come to find refreshing. It was such a pleasant change from her housemates’ typical passive-aggressiveness.

“I have,” Lillie agreed, tapping her round belly with a laugh. “But not from too many sweets, I’m afraid.” But there was no time to laugh. She had a plane to catch in the morning.

Because it was the right thing to do, as she kept telling herself. That was all.

“I finally tracked down the father, you see. And this is my chance to let him know. So he can be involved in his child’s life, if he wishes.”

Patricia had eyed her for a moment, looking almost wise—and far kinder than usual. It put a lump in Lillie’s throat.

“I certainly hope he’s someone you can stomach having in your life, then,” Patricia said, almost gently. “And the child’s life, for that matter. I’ve personally never met a man who would be worth the bother. You could also...not trouble yourself with a bloke at all, surely? In this day and age?”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Lillie said.

Virtuously.

Patricia only looked at her, for a moment that stretched on far too long. “Right. Well. Better you than me, my girl.”

Lillie thought about that a lot as she boarded the plane, with only a measly carry-on bag she still had to pay extra for. She thought about that when she landed in Heathrow Airport, heaving with people, and had to work out how to get herself where she needed to go on the legendary Tube.

It was all a bit much for someone who had taken precisely one school trip to London, long ago.

She turned it all this way and that inside of her, the way she’d been doing for months, as she walked down gray, cold streets and got turned around, then had to retrace her steps. And when she finally reached the right building and went inside, it wasn’t much better.

Because this was a different sort of before-and-after moment, she knew. She explained to the security guards that she had been sent to step into a meeting for her boss at the last moment, showed her work identification, and was directed to the gold-edged lift that offered only one stop—the very top floor.

As the elevator rose, taking her closer and closer to a lightning strike once again—or, maybe, no lightning at all, and she could admit she wasn’t sure how she’d handlethatif it happened—she slid her hand down over her belly, held on tight, and tried to get her pulse to settle.

“I think this is the best thing,” she said aloud, and pretended she was talking to the baby inside her instead of to herself. “I really do. It’s the right thing to do no matter what happens now.”

And when the lift doors slid open, she walked out into a marble lobby and felt nothing short of dizzy at all the understated—and not so understated—opulence.

It took every scrap of willpower she had not to turn around and leg it back to Aberdeen as fast as she could. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t know what to do with all this obvious wealth beaming down from chandeliers better suited to castles, by her reckoning, marble for miles, and everything gilt-edged and gleaming.

But she was to be a mother soon enough and so it didn’t matter if she, personally, was brave. She couldn’t let that matter. What mattered was what she did to make her child think he or she could be, too, and it started here.

So she took a deep breath, fixed a smile on her face as she announced herself to reception, and prepared herself for another lightning storm.

One way or another.

CHAPTER TWO

WHENHISOFFICEdoor opened, Tiago Villela glanced up from a typical afternoon of paperwork between meetings and froze.

“Impossible,” he bit out.

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