Page 1 of Billion-Dollar Baby Shock

PROLOGUE

Tara Simons lookedat her beloved younger sister Mary and tried to keep the flutter of panic at bay.

‘Mary, tell me again what happened.’

Her sister’s lip wobbled ominously but she said, ‘Can you not put your hands on your hips like that?It’s intimidating.’

Tara forced a reassuring smile and took her hands off her hips and held them out.‘Better now?’

Mary nodded.She was pale.Blue eyes huge.Tara couldn’t help but be reminded of the day they’d stood by their parents’ grave nearly ten years ago.Mary had been only thirteen.Tara, at sixteen, had been the eldest, and had been suddenly thrust into being the matriarch of her four younger siblings.

But the past wasn’t the issue here.She was about to put her hands back on her hips when her sister blurted out, ‘Your eggs.The eggs you had frozen two years ago.There was a mix-up and they got used to create an embryo with a client’s sperm.’

Tara’s legs went from under her.Luckily there was a chair right behind her in their family home kitchen.She absorbed what she’d just heard and looked at her sister, who worked as a nurse at the fertility clinic.‘Okay…well,that doesn’t necessarily mean that—’ She saw her sister’s face and stopped talking.

Mary whispered, ‘I’m so sorry, Tara.I know you froze your eggs because after bringing us all up you wanted to have your independence and a career and be able to choose the right time to be a mother and now…’ She trailed off.

‘Now what?’Tara asked, panic surging.

Mary gulped visibly.‘One of the embryos was viable.It was implanted successfully into a surrogate here in Dublin and she went back to the United States to have the baby…for the client.A man.’

‘A man,’ Tara repeated like a parrot.

Mary nodded.Tara shook her head, struggling to understand what this meant.‘But how…why?Where…?’

‘I only just found out when I went to extract eggs for another client.I saw that yours had been disturbed.Tara, I’m so sorry…’

‘But…you’re telling me that there’s…a baby?’

Her sister looked green now.She nodded miserably.Tara stood up so abruptly the kitchen chair fell over behind her.Her sister winced.Tara didn’t notice.

She felt light-headed.‘You’re telling me that there’s a man out there somewhere who now has my baby?’

The fact that she was still a virgin and yet she’d created a baby with some stranger struck her as almost hysterically funny for a second.But it didn’t last.Panic returned.

She grabbed her sister by the arm and pulled her up from her chair.‘Ow, Tara, you’re hurting me…’ Tara didn’t listen, she all but dragged her sister out of the house to the battered family car outside.

‘Where are we going?’her sister asked nervously.

Even though Tara had made that spur-of-the-momentdecision to freeze her eggs—future-proofing her fertility—and had had no desire to become a mother so soon after gaining her own independence, the thought ofherbaby out there somewhere, without her, was anathema to her.

Tara looked at her sister.‘To the clinic.You’re going to track down the identity of the man who is the father of my child.’

CHAPTER ONE

Dionysios Dimitriou scannedthe thronged room full of the crème de la crème of Athenian society with a practised eye.It was an annual glamorous charity event—a masked ball held in a private villa with jaw-dropping views over Athens.

Dusk was fading into night beyond the wide-open French doors leading out into landscaped gardens.Lanterns threw golden light over the already glittering crowd.The Acropolis was lit up on a hill in the distance, the ancient monument humbling in its magnificence.

Moments like this never failed to fill Dion with a sense of pride—for how much he’d achieved all on his own.

His gaze skated over tycoons, billionaires, politicians and beautiful women.Each woman was more alluring than the last and yet…nothing.He didn’t feel a blip of interest.But in recent months his priorities had shifted quite dramatically so he wasn’t unduly surprised.

His phone vibrated from inside his jacket pocket.He pulled it out.There was a message from the nanny.

Nikolau is asleep, the night nanny will be here shortly.See you tomorrow.Elena.

This was the reason why his priorities had shifted.His baby son, born to a surrogate in America six months ago.Dion was afraid to admit that he’d yet to feel a real sense of connection with the baby but he’d been assured by doctors and experts that this was normal.Sometimes it took fathers a while to connect and he had no experience of babies or children.