Page 26 of The Billionaire's Promise

I thought about storming downstairs and demanding he put away the blowtorch and take Rosie, but I didn't. For one, he needed to finish the sculpture. And two, I could handle a three-month-old. Well, I wasn't doing such a great job with it so far, but I was determined. Rosalie had two people in the world she could depend on, Vance and me.

It was ironic that the party boy who never gave a thought to commitment or family was a natural with the baby, while I'd dreamed of having a family for years and I was completely at sea when faced with tiny Rosalie.

I put Rosie back in the floor gym for a minute, ignoring her brain melting screeches, and rummaged through the empty boxes and bags littering the loft for the nursing pillow I was sure we'd purchased. While I wasn't nursing Rosie, the pillow helped me to prop her up in my lap at exactly the right angle to give her a bottle.

I never would've made it through the night before if I hadn't had it, but I'd left that pillow at home, sure I could find the one we'd bought for Vance's loft. I finally located it, shoved underneath the rolling bassinet in the kitchen, and I got Rosie in position to eat. It took some singing and rocking to calm her down enough to get interested in the bottle, but once she started on the bottle, she ate happily enough and fell asleep.

Sleep. There was nothing as lovely as a sleeping baby. I had piles of work on my desk and brochures to lay out, but I sat in the armchair holding Rosie, watching her sleep. She was so tiny and so beautiful, especially when she wasn't shattering my eardrums or throwing up in my hair.

My heart squeezed. She wasn't mine. I would have to learn to live with that. She was Vance's, and someday, there would be another woman who would be Rosie's mom. Not me. I was Vance's friend. I worked for him, but that was it.

I would be Aunt Magnolia. That was okay.It was. It would have to be. Hoping for anything more would be foolish. I'd been left enough in my life. Now that Brayden was out of the picture, I was done with risking my heart. This life I had was good enough as it was. Maybe I didn't need a family. What if I had married Brayden and we'd had children, andthenI found out he'd been cheating on me? How much worse would that have been?

As it was, he'd hurt my pride more than my heart. My whole life, I'd wanted a family to make up for the one that had dumped me in boarding school and left, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe this—being Aunt Magnolia—was good enough. I couldn't lose her because she wasn't mine, and neither was Vance.

At that depressing thought, I stood, carefully, hoping I could tuck Rosie into her bassinet and get a little more work done before her nap was over. I'd only taken a few steps when the phone rang. I'd long ago silenced the ringer on my own phone. I'd forgotten about the landline to the loft office.

Dammit. As quickly as I could, I put Rosie in the bassinet and snatched up the phone before it could ring again.

"Yes?" I asked, trying to sound professional instead of annoyed.

"Why aren't you answering your phone?" Sloane. Of course. Her shrill voice cut across the phone line, drilling into my head more painfully than the worst of Rosie screams. "We're on a deadline, Maggie. Or did you forget the show? I did not hire you to play around over there. I need those brochures, and I needed them yesterday."

"You didn't hire me, Sloane," I said with exaggerated patience. Sloane liked to take credit for my job with Vance. She might have provided the connection between Vance and myself, but that was it.

I'd learned over the last two years that Sloane took any excuse she could to insert herself into Vance's life. She had a reputation for collecting her artists in more ways than one. I knew Vance had never slept with her—he'd admitted that her pursuit creeped him out—but Sloane refused to give up.

Vance would have found another gallery, but he liked Rupert and didn't want to explain his reasons if he fired Sloane. Besides, she was rude, annoying, and regularly sexually harassed him, but she was very good at selling art. Vance didn't have the patience to take over promoting his work, so he stuck with Sloane, ignoring her rudeness and dodging her come-ons.

"Where are the brochures?" she demanded. "They need to go to the printer this afternoon."

"I'm aware of that, Sloane," I said with a sigh. "They're almost done. I'll have them this afternoon, or at the worst, tomorrow morning. You're just going to have to be patient."

"I don't do patient, Maggie. You know that. Get me the brochures, or I'll have to come over there. Put Vance on the phone."

"Vance is in his studio, Sloane."

"He'd better be finishing that piece."

"He is. He said it would be done by tomorrow."

"It was supposed to be done two weeks ago," she grumbled. She wasn't wrong, but Vance didn't care. Neither did I. Not really. This wasn't our first show, and this wasn't the first time I'd been caught between the two of them—Sloane with her schedule and Vance determined to get the work right.

I paced across the office, trying to figure out what to say to get Sloane off my back, when I stubbed my toe on the chair, sending it rolling across the floor and into the side of my desk. Metal hit wood with a crash, and my heart sank. A second later, Rosie started to cry. Crap.

So far, almost no one knew about Rosalie, just Vance's doctor and his attorney. He hadn’t decided what he wanted to say, and I did not want to be the one to spill the beans. Especially not to Sloane, who was as proficient a gossip as she was an art dealer.

"What. Is. That?" she screeched.

Double crap.

"Sloane, I have to go," I said. "I'll get you the brochures ASAP, I promise."

"Is that a baby? Is there a baby over there?"

"Sloane, don't worry about it. I have to go."

"Why is there a baby over there, Maggie? Answer me, or I'll close the gallery and come see what's going on for myself."