Page 115 of Wrong Room, Right Billionaire

“You weren’t,” she says, and I blink up at her. But Claire has a warm smile on her face.

“I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I just mean you were being you. This job seemed like a dream.”

“And it was. Until it became a nightmare. Listen, Claire,” I start to say. And my sister knows me well enough to know I’m about to apologize. But she just shakes her head.

“No. I just want to know that you’re okay. And I want to know what happened.”

“Which part?” I ask. “Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning,” she says, and I snort. “What?”

“It’s just that…this story includes a prologue.”

“Alright. Well, I put on another kettle of tea then. I would offer one, but considering one of your plot twists,” she says, looking down at my belly. “I think we’re going to have to cut out the alcohol for another seven months or so, yeah?”

“Yeah…” I sigh. “So the night I wrote the article,”

“For CB Anonymous, yes.”

It isn’t until she says the name that I put two and two together. CB. Conrad Bale. Obviously. Not that I am surprised.

“Right. I may or may not have slept with the mystery man,” I admit.

“The mystery man who was also your boss after the fact is also Morgan Bale. Right, I knew it,” she says with a triumphant smile. Then her eyes widen. “Sorry, it just occurred to me that Morgan Bale…of Bale Resorts…who is a well-known millionaire.”

“Billionaire,” I correct her.

“Jesus.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, not important, go on.”

“Well, when I did the interview, he pretended not to know me. So I did the same. He hired me and then eventually told me that due to a family issue with his brother Conrad Bale, he needed to appear to be engaged so that when his brother took him to court in an attempt to bypass him as CEO it would be harder to accomplish.”

“So you agreed to a fake relationship clause,” she says.

“Yeah,”

“Okay. Wild, even for you, but go on.”

“So we traveled. Stayed in the same rooms. In the same bed,” I tell her.

“But he didn’t know you were pregnant.”

“No. I figured that out right before we left. And I wanted to wait to tell him.”

I go on, telling her the rest of the story. How we butt heads until he saw that I was very good at my job and he wasn’t the asshole I thought he was. I told her everything. The bucket list book and falling for him, and the last night we spent together.

By the end of it, we are both crying again. The kettle is whistling and neither of us are doing anything about it because we are both emotionally exhausted.

“So, what are you going to do?” she asks. “About you and the babies?”

“Raise them alone?” I shrug, my voice still shaking.

“Okay, first of all, you will not be alone, and you know that. You can even move in with us if you want,”

“Claire.” I shake my head. “I can’t do that.”

“I mean it, Scarlett. You’ve been through so much. And I just want to make sure that you and the babies are okay. Unless…” she trails off.

“Unless?” I ask.