Page 16 of The Billionaire Alpha's Surprise Baby

Grabbing the other test off the bathroom sink, I pull off the cap and try to summon the urge to pee as hot tears well up in my eyes.

I can’t be pregnant. I only have this sublet until September, at which time I’m supposed to be embarking upon the trip of a lifetime. I have enough money saved for my trip — even without the last two weeks of pay from my coffeeshop gig.

The day after my tryst with Garrett, I called in sick and never went back.

Part of me was afraid he’d track me down and persuade me to stay in Aspen. The other part was afraid he wouldn’t — that I was just another lay.

And now . . . Now I might be carrying his baby.

The thought brings a surge of hot bile to my throat, and I hurriedly swallow it down.

I can’t be pregnant. I’m twenty-four years old. Unmarried, without a steady job.

I can’t take care of a baby and support myself at the same time. And yet the thought of crawling back to Garrett after what I did is more than I can stand.

He probably doesn’t even remember my name. I’m just some girl he met at a coffee shop — some girl he knew would be gone by the end of the season.

I don’t know much about Garrett, but I know he comes from money. I looked him and his family up after the butler let his full name slip.

Garrett’s father, Lester Von Horton, is the owner and CEO of the Von Horton Oil Group, a private corporation estimated to be worth billions. I’m sure Garrett has been groomed since the day he was born to take over the family business.

Guys like that don’t raise babies with girls like me. Guys like that pay for you to have an abortion and go the fuck away.

And yet, even as I dismiss Garrett as a possibility, my heart aches for him. I can still hear the sound of his laugh and see the way his blue eyes crinkled as he threw his head back. I can still feel the light touch of his fingertips as he entered me — hear him telling me that I was his.

Tears run down my cheeks as I remember the feeling of him wrapped around me. I’ve never felt so safe. So loved.

Garrett might have taken my virginity, but he left something else behind — this sense that only he can make me whole. That only he can make me that happy again.

Dragging in a shaky breath, I scrub the tears from my cheeks and pull myself up off the toilet. There’s no point in replaying those moments or considering what might have been.

No one is coming to save me from this —especially not Garrett Von Horton.

GARRETT

The ice cubes clink together at the bottom of my glass, and I stare bleary-eyed into the highball to find it annoyingly empty. Again.

They really need to invent a more efficient way to get blackout drunk in a hurry.

“Barkeep!” I holler, my voice coming out raspy and slurred as my vision wavers.

Hugo, who’s worked at The Ponderosa since I was a kid, shuffles over to refill my glass.

As payback for my brother’s fucking ambush, I stole a bottle of Anders’s nicest bourbon. I’m drinking it like it’s nine-dollar hard cider, not hundred-year-old liquor.

“Thanks, old man,” I slur as Hugo gamely refills my glass. The Ponderosa is an exclusive club for billionaires, and the lounge is practically empty at this time of night.

I just received a call from the third private investigator I hired to find Ava, telling me he’d hit a dead end. He said he’d keep going for another ten grand, but considering it took him four days to link Ava’s PO box to an apartment in Alma, I’m not overly confident in his abilities.

I went to look for her myself the day after we slept together, but the owner of the coffeeshop said my girl had called in sick that morning.

For two weeks, I sat at the café like a creepy stalker, but she never turned up. I questioned her coworkers and even a few regulars, but no one had seen Ava since Friday.

The coffeeshop owner finally gave me Ava’s address, but the leasing office at her apartment said they’d never heard of her. The apartment number she’d given her boss was registered to a couple who were backpacking through Europe. The leasing office said they’d probably sublet their apartment to Ava without going through the proper channels.

I hired the first PI because I was worried that something might have happened to her. He learned that her phone was registered to a PO box, which he traced to that cheap apartment twenty-five minutes from Breckenridge. That place hadn’t heard of Ava, either.

I called her phone over and over until I got a generic message that the number was no longer in service. That should have told me everything I needed to know, but I didn’t stop looking.

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