Page 2 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

Her eyes had not been deceiving her, there in the lounge.

It was him. It was really and trulyhim.

And he was not, as she’d come to tell herself over time, a pool boy who’d wandered into that particular part of the resort and found her there by the pool bar. Credulous and overwhelmed enough at a glance to take him at face value when he’d said there was no need to exchange anything more than the attraction they both felt so keenly.

She had tried to get the resort to help her once she’d faced the truth about the odd stomach issues and malaise she’d been battling as summer turned to fall, but all she could tell them was that he was dark and tall, almost supernaturally compelling, and had swept her off her feet.

“I am afraid you have described approximately ninety-seven percent of the gentlemen in Spain, madam,” the resort’s front desk had replied at last. Sniffily.

They had even gone back to her room, not his, so she didn’t even have any potential context clues to go on. She’d had to face the fact that she possessed no possible way of identifying him, much less dutifully informing him that he was the father of the baby she was carrying.

He’d been gone before she’d woken up that next morning and Lillie might not have done anything like that before in her life, but she’d told herself she was delighted that he wasn’t there for any awkward conversations that might make him seem as human as anyone. That way it had felt as if he was simply part and parcel of the Spanish adventure she’d never expected to have. She’d assured herself that she wasthrilledthat it was her happy little secret to keep.

She’d intended to keep it forever. Hoard it and hide it away, so she could enjoy all those blazing hot memories in the cold of Scotland that waited for her.

Alas.

Five months ago, she’d been set to have her usual chilly summer holiday. She normally spent a few days with her parents, wishing she could find that kind of love and life’s purpose, then visited Catriona in Glasgow for a taste of the high life for a day or two. But as she’d been beginning to make her actual plans instead of daydreaming about, say, a flash holiday to New York City or the like that she would neverreallydo, her longtime supervisor, the sleek and ferocious Patricia, had called her in all of a sudden one Tuesday morning.

Lillie had obviously assumed she was being summarily sacked.

Instead, Patricia had informed her that the company retreat had been moved at the last minute and Patricia had sadly already booked a week’s holiday in Spain for the very same span of days. Lillie had then assumed that she’d be sent down to the dreary so-called retreat in Swindon in her boss’s place because she couldn’t imagine Patricia—shaped like a gazelle’s front leg and sporting that jet black, always perfectly sleek hair—going without one of her precious weeks in the sun. Because Lillie had been Patricia’s assistant for going on four years now and she’d shown up in her place before, if not at the same high executive level.

But that day Patricia had sighed and said that, sadly, her actual presence was required at Swindon and her assistant would not be able to fill in for her. She’d asked. What she wondered, she’d said then, was if Lillie might like to take her place in the pre-booked accommodation that Patricia would simply lose if she didn’t use it?

“I would love to,” Lillie had said frankly, “but I can’t possibly pay for it.”

Patricia had smiled in her usual way, a bit of a quirk of a closed mouth, nothing more. Her head had inclined slightly.

“You can consider it a bonus for your dedication these last years,” she said. “One of us might as well have fun.”

In the months since, Lillie had wondered what her boss’s life—so seemingly glamorous from the outside—was actually like if her assistant was the only one she could think of to offer such a gift. Then again, the friends she knew of that Patricia had were as sharp and brittle as she was. She could see all too easily how Patricia might not wish to offer any of the lot of them any kind of gift of all.

For her part, Lillie didn’t need to be asked twice. That was how she found herself in a flash resort in Spain for the most outrageous week of her life.

She hadn’tmeantto assume Patricia’s identity. It was only that when she’d checked in, the staff had made that mistake and she hadn’t corrected them. And then it had seemed as if pretending to be Patricia made everything that much more magical. Because while Lillie might not have gone ahead and taken part in the various activities offered of her own volition, she reckoned Patricia certainly would have.

So she did.

There were daytime excursions to Spanish sites, pools to visit, and boats to set sail on. There was dancing with strangers beneath the stars. There were yoga classes and massages, and Lillie indulged in them all. Because she was certain Patricia would have if she’d been there.

That was how she found herself slinking about in a bikini and a sarong on her last night there, as if she was the sort of person who wore such things, with her usually wild and unmanageable curly hair in a state of epic disarray that she’d decided wasa statement. It had been one final and glorious evening in paradise. She’d gone to a cocktail hour gathering at the adults-only resort’s prettiest poolside bar, so she could sip on the resort sangria that had helped keep her delightfully happy the whole week through.

One last night of glory,she’d told herself.

And that was where she’d met him.

Tiago Villela, who hadn’t given her his name.

She stopped this little trip down memory lane, thanks to all the pictures of him on her mobile screen, because she needed a bit of reminding that she was still there in her same old bedroom in the same shared house in Aberdeen. Not in Spain again. Not sunburnt everywhere with freckles she’d never seen in the weak Scottish sun, her hair a mess of snarls and salt, more drunk on the sea air and soft breezes than the all-inclusive drinks.

Lillie wasn’t surprised to find herself breathing a bit too quickly, her head going a little funny. That was how she’d felt then, too.

She went and sank down on her bed. And because she was alone, locked away from prying eyes and not required to make the best of anything, she let the full scope of the emotions that buffeted her take hold.

Because she’d pretended all this time that it had all been a bit of fun. Once she’d gotten the test results and had fully accepted that they were real, she’d understood at once that she would be keeping the baby. She had never considered any other path.

People would think whatever they would think, she’d told herself. And mostly it turned out that they thought she was seizing the only chance she’d ever have to be a mother—which was insulting—but then, so was the clear speculation on the part of every person she knew that she might have ditched the Spanish holiday altogether and got herself a turkey baster baby at a clinic. So impossible was it, her meanest housemate informed her, to imagine Lillie actually naked and having it off with a man.