Page 271 of The Billionaires

As I enter Adrian’s penthouse—correction, our penthouse, temporarily—I recall that today is the first time I’m going to meet Piper. That means I probably shouldn’t ask him about my GD just yet.

His dad duties seem more important.

“Hey,” Adrian says, coming around the corner. “How was it?”

“Amazing,” I say. “Where’s Piper?”

He looks at his phone. “Sydney is late, as usual.”

I can tell that this bothers him a lot more than he’s letting on.

Poor guy.

To distract him, I suggest we eat dinner together, and once we sit down at the kitchen table, I talk his ear off about my new job.

“What about you?” I ask, shoveling the last of the scallops into my mouth. “What were you up to?”

“I started to babyproof some of the rooms,” he says and looks at his phone again.

I grin. “Is Piper crawling already?”

“Not yet, but I wanted to get a head start.”

Adrian’s phone pings. He checks it and looks relieved. “Sydney just texted,” he says. “They’re here.”

He rushes to the elevator, and I don’t know if I should follow, but Leo herds me like he would a fellow sheep, so I don’t have a choice.

When we reach our destination, Sydney is smiling coquettishly at Adrian. As she spots me, her eyes narrow and lips turn down in a scowl.

“What is she doing here?” she demands.

Adrian sighs. “We went over this already. Jane is my fiancée. Obviously, we live together.”

Sydney grabs on to the handlebar of the stroller so hard her knuckles turn white. “If she’s going to be around my daughter, I need to run a background check.”

“Our daughter,” Adrian says as he pulls up his phone and makes a few swipes. Looking back at Sydney, he says, “I ran a background check on Jane after we got serious. The results are in your inbox. Anything else?”

She reads whatever he sent her and mumbles something about doing her own investigation as soon as she gets the chance, but her hands relax their death grip on that handlebar.

“Here.” She takes off a backpack and hands it to Adrian in such a way that their fingers brush.

Do background checks say anything about murderous urges one sometimes gets when a baby mama touches one’s fake fiancé?

“There’s a batch of breastmilk in here,” Sydney says. “Warm it to ninety-eight degrees exactly and make sure it doesn’t boil.”

For the first time, Adrian’s chilly façade breaks. “Don’t worry Syd,” he says soothingly. “Piper was fine with me the last time, and she’ll be fine today. I know what I’m doing. I’ve read all the books and taken all the classes. Just relax.”

Sydney’s eyes turn icy. “Don’t tell me how to feel. You’re not a mother. You have no idea what it’s like to part with your baby.”

Adrian’s jaw flexes. “I’ve got laboratory-grade equipment for the milk that will warm it to 36.6 degrees Celsius—exactly normal body temperature. Do you want to inspect it? Test it out?”

“No,” she says. “But promise you’ll call me if something happens.”

“Nothing will happen,” Adrian says. “But if anything does, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Bye, sweetie,” Sydney says into the stroller with such tenderness I forgive her for the earlier nastiness… but not for touching Adrian. I’m not a saint.

A part of me was worried that Sydney saw this baby only as a means to trap Adrian. Now it seems that even if that had been the starting point, Sydney loves their daughter as a mother should.

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